#meroe

meroë, sudan 1976

nubian pyramids

~ Head of a statue of Dionysos.

Culture: Greek

Period: Late Hellenistic

Date: 150–50 B.C.

Place of origin: Nubia (Sudan), Meröe (Begrawiya), Pyramid N 5

With the 200s BC, we enter fully into an age of empires in Eurasia and North Africa. Moving west to east, the major players are Rome in Italy, Carthage in North Africa, Ptolemaic Egypt (one of Alexander’s successor states), the Seleucids in Western Asia (another Alexandrian successor state), the Mauryan Empire in India, and the Qin and the Han Empires in China. The scale of these players changes over the course of the century, so I’m going to include two maps as context, one from the start of the century and one from its end (maps are from https://www.worldhistorymaps.info/ancient/). I’ve outlined the major players in red and some medium powers in orange. 

300 BC

200 BC

You’ll see a few major changes between these maps. In midcentury we’ve got 1) the growth of the Mauryan Empire into further south areas of India and 2) the Seleucids losing Central Asia to the breakaway Greco-Bactrian and Parthian kingdoms. (Make a mental note of the Parthians, they’ll be important next week.) In the last few decades of the century we’ve got 3) the rise of Rome at the expense of Carthage and 4) the rise of imperial China under the Qin and then Han Dynasties. By the end of the century there’s  almost a continuous string of empires from the Strait of Gibraltar to the east coast of China.

The capital cities of the Mauryan Empire (Pataliputra) and Han Empire (Chang’an) are both estimated at around 400,000 people in the 200s BC, and Rome may have been in the same ballpark (I haven’t found any clear numbers on the size of the city of Rome during the Republic, but by the start of the Roman Empire two centuries later it was 1-2 million people and it grew fast during that time). Alexandria, the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, could have been a similar size. Attempts to estimate populations in ancient history are very fuzzy, so take the numbers with a grain of salt, but these were unprecedentedly large cities. 

In relation to the Axial Age, an interesting trait of the Roman Republic and Mauryan and Han Empires empires is that all had moral definitions contrasting themselves with something else: empire wasn’t just a claim to raw power, it rested on moral claims. The Roman Republic contrasted itself morally with both the abuses of the older Roman monarchy (the tale of the rape of Lucretia as the inciting event for the overthrow of the monarchy and the creation of the Roman Republic) and, once the Punic Wars started, with its enemies the Carthaginians. The Han Empire contrasted an image of their virtuous rule with the tyranny of their predecessors the Qin; they began their rule with a general amnesty for all prisoners, later abolished the most brutal forms of capital punishment, lowered taxes on the common people, and followed Confucianism. 

Ashoka, in the Mauryan Empire, contrasted his later enlightened reign with his own prior actions as conqueror, creating inscriptions and pillars with quite unprecedented moral confessions from a ruler, expressing “remorse…deep distress and sorrow” for the many deaths from his brutal conquest of Kalinga. He was also surprisingly candid about his moral transformation being a gradual process: “I have been an upsaka [Buddhist lay follower] now for more than two and a half years. But for the first year I did not make much of an effort. However, for the past year I have been closely associated with the Buddhist order, and I made a strong effort.” Even if one doesn’t regard Ashoka’s inscriptions as fully sincere, the fact that he considered this a convincing form of royal propaganda represents a fundamental difference from earlier empires like Assyria that regarded power as a justification in itself.

This means that by the end of the century, in both China and India the “wise ruler” strain of philosophy (in Confucian and Buddhist-adjacent forms) had triumphed over the “brutal pragmatist” strain represented by the Legalists and Kautilya respectively.

Another transformation brought about in India by Ashoka was a change to what ritual meant. While in both Rome and China ritual animal sacrifices by the government continued – in Rome they were even ramped up at tenser moments in the wars with Carthage – in India Ashoka banned them under the principle of ahimsa (not harming other beings). This fundamentally altered the practice of Hinduism, where the Brahmins’ role in the sacrifices had been a core element. At the same time, Ashoka sponsored Buddhist religious buildings (stupas, which memorialized the Buddha’s life and contained relics) and made religious pilgrimages. Thus, while some Axial strains had called rituals out as meaningless in the absence of ethical behaviour (including Judaism, Buddhism, and Mohism, but notably not Confucianism), that didn’t mean the end of all rituals, nor of offerings (people offered flowers and perfumes to the Buddha), but their change into something new and more personally devotional, and seen as aiding moral development. Ritual would continue through cycles of being dismissed and reinvented through the rest of religious history.

Ashoka’s ban on animal sacrifices and support for Buddhist devotional sites didn’t mean that the principles he promoted were exclusively Buddhist. The behaviours his inscriptions advocated – compassion, generosity towards renunciates and brahmins, honesty, respect for elders – were ones that Buddhist, Hindus, Jains, and many other religions of the time would have agreed on. He urged respect between followers of competing teachers and religions and avoiding sharp arguments. He provided support for religious communities of many backgrounds; the first monastic communities originated in 400s-200s BC South Asia.

It is quite fascinating to me that we have an answer to the hypothetical question of “what if Qin Shi Huang had a crisis of conscience?” and it’s someone who was a near-contemporary of Qin Shi Huang. And with that we’ll turn to China.

For all its fame and all its impact on China, it’s striking just how short the Qin Dynasty was: 15 years, from 221 BC when it finished conquering its rivals to 206 BC. The Qin Dynasty lasted less time than the MCU has. Qin Shi Huang himself only lived until 210 BC. But in that time, he did a lot. That included major building projects (expansions of canals and roads; flood control and irrigation; connecting walls built by earlier states to make the first iteration of the Great Wall; and his famous tomb), which were generally constructed by mandatory (corvée) labour from the peasantry, and paid for by high taxes, also mostly on the peasantry. It also included standardization of weights, measures, the writing system, and coinage (this is when China's classic round-coin-with-square hole model came in), and a standard gauge for vehicle wheels (meaning that the tracks worn in roads by vehicles would be the same distance apart wherever you went). And it involved large-scale forced relocation as a colonization strategy in newly-conquered areas – to Inner Mongolia in the northwest, and to the east and southeast. 

Most notoriously among China’s Confucians and scholars, it involved extreme intellectual control. The Legalist Book of the Lord Shang was very blunt on the purpose of this: “If the people do not prize learning, they will be stupid; if they are stupid, they will have nothing to do with extraneous matters; if they have nothing to do with extraneous matters they will prize agriculture and not neglect their duties; if the people do not disdain agriculture, the country will be peaceful and safe.” Criticism of the Qin, or even discussion of history or philosophy, was punished by death. And Qin Shi Huang had every single book of literature, philosophy, or history burned except those gathered in the imperial library, to give the regime an absolute monopoly on knowledge. As a result, when the imperial library itself was burned by rebels in the war to overthrow the Qin, the last copies of massive numbers of texts were lost. The fact that we know as much as we do about pre-Qin China is a miracle of scholarship, thanks to Han Dynasty scholars who re-wrote as much as they could from scratch.

The combination alienating the peasantry by forced labour, heavy taxes, and forced relocations; alienating the scholarly classes who made up much of the civil service by extreme censorship; and alienating the nobles with many economic changes, led to the Qin’s rapid demise and the rise of the Han (whose first emperor rose to the position from being a small-time local sheriff, which I would love to get into but this is too long already).

Moving on to Rome!

I’m going to be brief on the First Punic War (264-241 BC) and Second Punic War (218-201 BC). The most important takeaway is that Rome went from being a small state in central Italy to having colonies in Spain and being the dominant naval power of the central and western Mediterranean. In the First Punic War Rome went from having no navy to defeating the Carthaginians – the main naval power of the time – at sea. (This appears to have been achieved in part by 1) capturing a Carthaginian ship, reverse-engineering it, and building hundreds of ship on that model, and 2) developing ship-to-ship bridges that locked their ships to enemy ships and enabled the Romans to carry out essentially an infantry battle at sea.) The Second Punic War was the one with Hannibal bringing war elephants over the Alps; in fact he brought them all the way from Spain, and the war was mainly over control of Spain. Rome won, picking up Carthage’s Spanish colonies and reducing Carthage to virtual powerlessness. 

The rest of the world was also changing rapidly This ranged from migration and settlement of new areas (the Austronesians reached Micronesia sometime between 500 and 0 BC; the Arawak people of South America reached the Caribbean in the 200s BC), to new trade connections, to state formation in new areas. On the Niger River in West Africa, the town of Jenne was established as an important site for trade, at the meeting of trade routes carrying copper (from the Aïr mountains to the east), gold (from the southwest), rice and fish (from where the Niger River spreads into a large inland delta) and grains like sorghum and millet (from the drier Sahel area). It was a junction where trade goods could be transferred between land-based trade routes and river-based ones.

Meroë to the south of Egypt was another major site for trade. It was the successor to the Napata kingdom that had once ruled Egypt, but it had now moved its capital further south (still in the Sudan area north of the meeting of the Blue and White Nile). It had large-scale iron manufacturing, attested by mounds of iron slag. Its trade products included domestically-produced iron and cotton as well as luxuries like gold and ivory obtained from further south in Africa. It transported all these eastward overland to the Red Sea (rapids on the Sudanian Nile made the river route less navigable), where they linked up with the naval trade routes of Ptolemaic Egypt. Meroë also had a substantial agricultural base, and built dams for irrigation and water supply. It had its own alphabetic script, which has not yet been deciphered, and built small pyramids for the burial of its rulers.

Moving east, we see the first geographical spread of Axial religions: in response to ambassadors sent by Ashoka, Buddhism spread to southern India and Sri Lanka. Ashoka’s ambassadors illustrate just how interconnected the world was becoming: he also sent ones to Greek states and to Ptolemaic Egypt. So by this time there would have been Indians in Greece aware of Greek philosophy, and Greeks aware of Indian philosophy.

Based on recent research, Indian Ocean trade appears to have extended eastwards between India and Southeast Asia. Khao Sam Kaeo was an urban centre and trading site dating to this period. It was located on the Isthmus of Kra – the narrowest part of Thailand’s southern peninsula and a key location for overland (or river) transport of goods to connect with sea routes to the rest of Southeast Asia and China. 

Lastly, this was a time of state formation in the Mayan regions of southern Mesoamerica, with some of the earliest ones being centred on the cities of Nakbé and El Mirador. Richard Hansen, the discoverer of El Mirador, calls it the capital of the Kan Kingdom; but it it still an open question of how much of the surrounding area it ruled, and how much may have been ruled by competing Mayan states. Nakbé and El Mirador were also the sites of the earliest monumental Mayan pyramid temples, but building really got going in the next century, so we’ll cover that later. Surrounding these cities, Mayan agriculture involved a mix of wetlands and raised fields. Additionally, the earliest Mayan writing, inscribed in the site of San Bartolo, dates from this period; most of it had not been translated, but one part looks like the Mayan word for “king”, and is located near a large mural (from the a century later) that appears to show a coronation. So the Mayans may have had kings by this point.

Ancient Africa's Stunning Art Secrets

Discover gold, stone masterpieces revealing lost worlds. Ancient African artists crafted breathtaking works that peek into revered animals, sacred souls, and royal lives. From Egypt to southern kingdoms, these pieces dazzle and teach.

Key Facts

Benin brass plaques stood 45 cm tall, showed warriors and rulers in high relief.

Plaques adorned Benin royal palace pillars, captured battles, court scenes, rituals.

Featured regions: Egypt, Meroe, Ptolemaic kingdom, West/East Africa, Mutapa, Mapungubwe.

Materials: gold, stone, metals; themes: animals, human head as soul's seat, trendy jewelry.

Historical Context

Ancient and medieval African cultures spanned the continent, from Nile valleys to southern savannas. Artists drew from daily life, spirituality, and power struggles. Benin plaques, for example, chronicled real palace events and conflicts.

Historical Significance

These artworks unlock cultural minds—why heads held souls or leopards ruled symbols. They prove Africa's artistic genius rivaled anywhere, influencing global views. Surprise: Benin plaques weren't just pretty; they were history books in brass.

Various biological anthropological studies have shown close, biological affinities between the predynastic southern, Egyptian and the early Nubian populations

Frank Yurco (1996) remarked that depictions of pharaonic iconography such as the royal crowns, Horus falcons and victory scenes were concentrated in the Upper EgyptianNaqada culture and A-Group Lower Nubia. He further elaborated that "Egyptian writing arose in Naqadan Upper Egypt and A-Group Lower Nubia, and not in the Delta cultures, where the direct Western Asian contact was made, [which] further vitiates the Mesopotamian-influence argument"

In 2023, Christopher Ehret reported that the existing archaeological, linguistic, biological anthropological and genetic evidence had determined the founding populations of Ancient Egyptian areas such as Naqada and El-Badari to be the descendants of longtime inhabitants in Northeastern Africa which included Egypt, Nubia and the northern Horn of Africa.

Hello all and welcome!

My name is Dian, I'm 21 y/o, I am Latino and a pagan.

This is a sideblog for my journey with my deities. I currently worship deities from different pantheons: my own conpantheon, the kushite pantheon (especially the one in worshipped in the meroitic period of Kush), and the etruscan pantheon (aka Rasenna polytheism). Currently like this:

Devoted to:

Danéh & Darukus (Conpantheon)

Worshipping:

Apedemak (Kushite)

Aman (Kushite)

Amesemi (Kushite)

Considering:

Sutekh (Kemetic)

Djehuty (Kemetic-Kushite)

Atari (Kemetic-Kushite)

Sobek (Kemetic)

Inpu (Kemetic-Kushite)

Sekhmet (Kemetic-Kushite)

Dedun (Kushite)

Menerva (Etruscan)

Turan (Etruscan)

Turms (Etruscan)

Uni (Etruscan)

Artumes (Etruscan)

Fufluns (Etruscan)

Atunis (Etruscan)

Iao Sabaoth (Christopagan)

Péh₂usōn (Proto Indo-European)

This might expand and move around in the future of course!