I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
Shabti of King Taharqa
▶ Listen · narrated
When we say 'Egyptian pharaoh', we picture the throne at Memphis or Thebes. For Taharqa, the throne was in Kush, and Egypt was the province.
At a glance
- Reign
- 690–664 BC
- Dynasty
- Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt
- Capital
- Napata, in present-day Sudan
- Also known as
- Tarqû (Assyrian), Tīrhāqā (Hebrew)
Look closer
Shabti: a worker for the afterlife
A shabti is a funerary figurine, placed in the tomb to perform labour in the afterlife on behalf of the deceased. The word comes from the Egyptian for 'answerer'. Texts describe fields that need ploughing, canals that need clearing, sand that needs carrying. When the gods call for work, the shabti is supposed to step forward and say 'I shall do it'. Royal tombs could contain hundreds. Taharqa's pyramid at Nuri held over a thousand shabti figures, many inscribed with his name and titles.
Kushite pyramids, not Egyptian ones
Taharqa was buried at Nuri, in the Kingdom of Kush, not in Egypt. His pyramid there is steep-sided and relatively small compared to Old Kingdom Egyptian pyramids, following a Kushite architectural tradition that continued for centuries after the Twenty-fifth Dynasty lost control of Egypt. The Nuri necropolis eventually held more than twenty royal pyramids. This is worth stating plainly: the Kushite rulers of Egypt were Kushite first. They adopted Egyptian royal iconography and titles, but their burials and their capital remained in Kush.
The Twenty-fifth Dynasty in Egyptian lists
Manetho, the Ptolemaic-era historian whose king lists shaped later understanding of Egyptian chronology, called Taharqa 'Tarakos' and placed him in the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The Hebrew Bible mentions him as Tirhakah, king of Kush, in the context of Assyrian campaigns. These external sources confirm what Egyptian monuments show: that Taharqa was recognised as pharaoh, with full royal titulary, and that his rule was remembered even by those who later framed it as foreign.
The story
The Twenty-fifth Dynasty is sometimes called the Nubian Dynasty, sometimes the Kushite Dynasty, sometimes the dynasty of the Black Pharaohs. All three names carry assumptions. 'Nubian' is a term imposed from outside; 'Black Pharaohs' foregrounds race in a way that ancient actors would not have recognised; 'Kushite' is more neutral, naming the kingdom these rulers came from. What matters is this: for most of a century, from roughly 747 to 656 BC, Egypt was ruled by a dynasty whose power base, capital, and royal burials were in Kush, in what is now Sudan.
Taharqa was the fourth king of that dynasty, and his reign is the best documented. He ruled for twenty-six years, from 690 to 664 BC. He built extensively in both Egypt and Kush: a colonnade at the temple of Amun at Karnak, additions at other major Egyptian temple sites, and substantial construction at the temple of Amun at Jebel Barkal in Kush. His inscriptions present him as a pious restorer of temples and a legitimate heir to Egypt's long pharaonic tradition. Egyptian texts from his reign use the full apparatus of royal titles and iconography. He was not a foreign occupier tolerated by a resentful population; he was pharaoh, and the priesthood and administration functioned under him as they had under previous dynasties.
The collapse of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty's control over Egypt came from the east. The Neo-Assyrian Empire, under Esarhaddon and then Ashurbanipal, invaded Egypt twice. The first invasion, in 674 BC, was repelled. The second, in 671 BC, took Memphis. Taharqa retreated south but returned and briefly regained control. A third Assyrian campaign in 667 BC pushed the Kushite forces out of Egypt for good. Taharqa withdrew to Kush and died there in 664 BC. His successor, Tantamani, made one final attempt to retake Egypt but was driven back, and the Twenty-fifth Dynasty's rule over Egypt ended.
The framing matters. For a long time, scholarship treated the Twenty-fifth Dynasty as an interlude, a disruption in the 'proper' sequence of Egyptian rule. That framing is not supportable. Kush and Egypt had been in contact, and often in conflict, for more than a millennium before the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Kushite culture was distinct, but it was not unrelated. The Kushite kings who took the Egyptian throne did so as conquerors, yes, but also as inheritors of a shared religious and political tradition centred on the worship of Amun. They ruled Egypt as pharaohs, not as foreign overlords, and their monuments show that they understood Egyptian kingship from within, not as outsiders imitating it.
Taharqa's shabtis, like those of any Egyptian king, were made to serve him in the afterlife. They are part of a tradition that stretches back to the Middle Kingdom. That a Kushite king was buried with them, in a pyramid in Kush, tells you how thoroughly the Twenty-fifth Dynasty integrated Egyptian and Kushite practices. It also tells you that the centre of power had moved. Egypt was not the centre of this story. Kush was.
Why it mattered then
Taharqa's reign came at a moment when Egypt's political centre had shifted southward. The Twenty-fifth Dynasty did not conquer a strong, unified Egypt; they took control of a fragmented one, and they restored a degree of centralised authority. Taharqa's building projects at Karnak and elsewhere were not just displays of piety. They were assertions of legitimacy, visible statements that the Kushite kings were proper pharaohs, capable of maintaining the temples and the cosmic order that depended on them. The threat from Assyria was existential. The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the dominant military power of the Near East, and Egypt, even under strong rule, could not match it. Taharqa's resistance to the Assyrian invasions was significant — he held them off once, and briefly regained Memphis after losing it — but ultimately unsuccessful. The loss of Egypt did not end the Kingdom of Kush. Taharqa's successors continued to rule in Kush for centuries, and the royal burials at Nuri and later at Meroë show a continuous tradition of Kushite kingship long after the Twenty-fifth Dynasty lost its northern territories.
Why it matters now
The Twenty-fifth Dynasty challenges the still-common habit of treating Egypt as the centre and everything else as peripheral. Kush was not a minor neighbour that briefly overran a weakened Egypt. It was a powerful kingdom with its own long history, its own royal ideology, and its own monumental architecture. The Kushite kings ruled Egypt as pharaohs, but they did so from a power base in Kush, and when they lost Egypt, Kush continued. This matters for how we think about African history more broadly. The framing of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty as 'foreign' or 'Nubian' often carries an unspoken assumption that Egypt was somehow separate from the rest of Africa, that its greatness was an exception. That assumption does not hold. Egypt and Kush were African kingdoms, in contact and in competition for millennia. The Twenty-fifth Dynasty is not an anomaly. It is evidence of a much longer and more complex history of interaction, influence, and shared culture along the Nile. Taharqa's monuments are in museums in Khartoum, Cairo, London, and elsewhere. His name appears in the Hebrew Bible and in Assyrian records. He was remembered, and the memory was not neutral. For some later writers, he was a legitimate pharaoh; for others, a foreign king. Both framings are partial. What is certain is that for twenty-six years, the throne of Egypt was held by a king whose capital was in Kush, and who was buried there.
The surprising detail
Taharqa is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in 2 Kings 19:9 and Isaiah 37:9, as 'Tirhakah king of Cush'. The context is the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem under Sennacherib. The biblical text presents Taharqa as coming to the aid of Judah against the Assyrians, though the historicity of that specific intervention is uncertain. What is notable is that a Kushite pharaoh of Egypt appears in the biblical narrative not as an Egyptian king, but explicitly as the king of Kush. The distinction was meaningful even to outside observers.
What is disputed
The exact chronology of the Assyrian campaigns and Taharqa's responses is debated. Some sources place the first Assyrian invasion in 674 BC, others in 673 BC. The biblical reference to Taharqa in the context of Sennacherib's campaign presents a chronological difficulty, as Sennacherib's invasion of Judah is usually dated to 701 BC, before Taharqa became king. Scholars have proposed various solutions, including misdating in the biblical text or a conflation of multiple campaigns.
Remember this
For nearly a century, Egypt's throne was in Kush. Taharqa ruled both kingdoms, and was buried as a Kushite king.
Test yourself
Why does the framing of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty as 'foreign rulers' misrepresent the relationship between Egypt and Kush?
Because it treats Egypt as the default centre and Kush as external to it, when in fact the two kingdoms had been in continuous contact, conflict, and cultural exchange for well over a thousand years before the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. The Kushite kings did not impose an alien system on Egypt. They ruled as pharaohs, using Egyptian royal titles and iconography, and they invested heavily in Egyptian temples. At the same time, they remained Kushite: their capital stayed at Napata, and they were buried in Kushite pyramids. The 'foreign' framing assumes that legitimate Egyptian rule had to originate in Egypt, but the Twenty-fifth Dynasty shows that the political centre could move. Kush was not peripheral. For most of a century, it was the centre, and Egypt was the province.
Go deeper
Image: Matthias Gehricke, CC BY-SA 4.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.