EP31 Kushite Conversations

[Music] it's Hardcore History so I've been looking for someone to talk with me about the ancient Kingdom of kou for years the good news is I finally found the perfect person to do that and I'm having them on the show today the bad news is this person has actually written a brand new book that encompasses the entire history of Africa basically from the beginning to recent times from top to bottom side to side and I'm going to monopolize the conversation to talk about this one region and this one era so I apologize for all the stuff you're not going to get today that's in the book uh that we could have touched upon but I've been trying for years to get somebody on this show to talk about this little pet issue of mine so I'm afraid not only do I monopolize the conversation on the subject but I dive right into it and don't give background so let me do a little of that real quickly so that we know what we're discussing the kingdom of kush is a kingdom that's located um well it starts in ancient Egyptian times it's a contemporary it's really the next door neighbor of the ancient Egyptians back to prehistoric times their relationship is as close as close can be you can see um carvings of the troops of some some of these pharaohs from the Old Kingdom that are buried with them and you know Old Kingdom pharaohs you're talking 2300 2400 BCE 2200 BCE really old stuff Old Kingdom right uh but in their tombs you can see kushite soldiers in their armies already and already famous for the weapon that they are known for this is the uh land the kushites or Kush where they're from was often called the land of the bow and in the old Kingdom Pharaoh tombs there they are armed with their bows thousands of years later Herodotus describing the great king of Persia's Army and trying to emphasize the exoticness and the far-flung nature of his Empire and all the troops that he could call upon he talks about a contingent from a place he calls Ethiopia which is what the Greeks called the region um that's Now sort of Sudan and that encompasses the kushite people and he describes their soldiers similarly says that they are black skinned ...