750–663 BCE: (The Empire of Napata-Meroë at Its Height — The Empire of Napata-Meroë as the Notable African Case, at the High Period of Its Early Conquests Be…

750–663 BCE: (The Empire of Napata-Meroë at Its Height — The Empire of Napata-Meroë as the Notable African Case, at the High Period of Its Early Conquests Between Around 750 and 663 BCE the Sovereigns of This Multiethnic Empire of Mostly Nilo-Saharan-Speaking Peoples Holding Sway from Their Capital at Napata on the Dongola Reach of the Nile in Today’s Sudan Over a Larger Land Empire and a Larger Population Than Ancient Egypt Ever Did, Their Realm Extending North-South Across 2,000 Kilometers from South of the Confluence of the Abbai and the White Nile Through Most of Egypt): The Empire of Napata-Meroë is the notable case in point. At the high period of its early conquests, between around 750 and 663 BCE, the sovereigns of this multiethnic empire of mostly Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples held sway from their capital at Napata on the Dongola Reach of the Nile in today’s Sudan over a larger land empire and a larger population than ancient Egypt ever did. Their realm extended north-south across 2,000 kilometers of lands, from south of the confluence of the Abbai and the White Nile through most of Egypt. Let the dimensions of this achievement settle into the mind. A larger land empire and a larger population than ancient Egypt ever commanded. Not larger than the Egypt of Rameses II alone, or of Thutmose III alone, but larger than Egypt ever — at any point in its three-thousand-year dynastic history. The empire that Western historiography has reduced to a footnote — “the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty,” as if it were merely an episode in Egyptian history rather than the expansion of an independent African state that happened to swallow Egypt whole — governed more territory and more people than the civilization it conquered. The Napatan sovereigns ruled from the Dongola Reach to the Delta, two thousand kilometers of Nile valley, and they did so not as Egyptian imitators but as Nilo-Saharan-speaking rulers of a state whose political and cultural traditions were rooted in the Middle Nile Culture Area. They did not become Egyptian by conquering Egypt. Egypt, for a century, became Napatan.