The stela narrates Tanwetamani's "restoration of the double kingdom of Kush and Egypt from the condition of chaos " after he'd defeated Necho I and the delta & sais chiefs in 664BC
Originally erected in the Jebel Barkal temple in sudan and written in hieroglyphic by a scribe from napata, this dream stela emulated the language of Piye's 'Great Triumphal Stela (Piye was a kushite king who conquered Egypt and established the 25th dynasty in 760BC)
But this fragile peace was short-lived as the Assyrians under Assurbanipal invaded Egypt again in 664 and sacked Thebes
upper Egypt remained loyal to Tanwetamani until 656BC when Psamtik's daughter was adopted as the "God's wife of Amun" elect by the reigning Kushite princes thus
ending Kush's 96-year long rule of Egypt
cc:
detailed read:
The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art
by László Török (from pg 406-413) books.google.co.ug/books/about/Th…
even more misleading when you consider that the pre-sokoto states of nothern nigeria eg zaria and borgu were aligned north-south as well including the more southerly yoruba states like Oyo
rather than geography and other reductive explanations (à la jared diamond), a better explanation for the west-east alignment of Ghana, Mali and Songhai was the control of the Senegal & Niger river valleys which were by then the most populous and productive regions in west africa
Maryam was a prominent scholar & lecturer from the sokoto empire; one of several highly literate women in 19th cent. west africa
in this letter to her son Muhammad Bello b. Ibrahim Dabo; ruler of kano (then province of sokoto), Maryam sought to reassure and calm the people of kano that the rumors of the Mahdi's arrival were false inorder to stem the exodus of faithfuls moving east (to sudan)
This was a time of eschatological anxieties in west africa in anticipation of the prophetic traditions of the 12th caliph and the mahdi leading to a millenarian turmoil
a nubian named Muhammad Ahmad had declared himself the mahdi in 1881 and freed sudan from the ottoman turks
Folios from three of the chronicles of the history of kano, nigeria
1650AD, Asl al-Wanqariyin (wangara chronicle)
1880AD, Tarikh al-Musamma (kano chronicle) written by the scribe Dan Rimi Malam Barka
19th cent., Wakar Bagauda (Song of Bagauda)
1566AD
Letter from Antonio Vieira to king Henry of Portugal reporting on copper in Kongo
written from Sao Tome
-National Archive of Torre do Tombo #randomxt
Antonio was a powerful Mwisikongo noble and diplomat that served as the Manikongo's factor at Lisbon under 1/3
both kings Afonso and Pedro later acting as Kongo's ambassador to Rome in 1595 under king Alvaro later marrying to Margarita da Silva (a Portuguese noble woman and Queen Catharina 's lady in waiting)
He was instrumental during the various successions of kings of the era,
ecclesiastical issues between kongo, lisbon, sao tome and Rome and the trade between Portugal and Kongo of which copper was one of Kongo's biggest exports during the early stages of the Atlantic trade esp after Kongo restricted slave exports in the late 16th and early 17th cent.
#triviaxt
A look at John Thornton's argument that the Atlantic trade was marginal to African economy, on why slavery was mild in Africa and why the primacy of labor over land in pre-colonial African production explains the existence of domestic slavery in pre-Atlantic Africa
He explains that Africans weren't coerced into the trade by european military superiority b'se europeans failed in their first attempts at colonizing the senegambia, west-central africa (plus southeast africa & the swahili coast) b'se it was africans with the military superiority
He has covered it before: the defeats successive european navies suffered in the senegambia, the portuguese defeats in west-central africa (kongo at mbanda kasi and kitombo, matamba's queen njinga, etc)
and if I may add: changamire and mutapa in southeast africa and the swahili
large states were ubiquitous in African history and were never mono-ethnic: the limitations of low population density often meant that a state had to draw resources from a diverse range of groups
secondly, ethnic groups are rarely geographicaly limited but dispersed as diasporas
the most prominent "diasporas" in west africa alone were over half a dozen with distinct states, religions and cultures some as state builders, traders, etc none were delimited by geography
eg the soninke/wangara/Jakhanke, peul/fula/, hausa, tuareg, malinke/mande, songhay, sorko
the best African example of trying to counter the limitations of low population density by incorporating various ethnic groups was the lunda empire of central africa
drawing from the textile belt groups, the salt producing groups, the copper mining groups and ivory trading groups