Taharqa (Taharqo)

The Kushite dynasty

Taharqa (also spelled Taharqo, and Tirhaka in some later sources) belonged to the royal house of Kush, the kingdom of Upper Nubia in what is now Sudan, with its religious and royal centre near Napata. In the 8th century BCE Kushite kings united Nubia and then, under Piye, campaigned north into Egypt. Their line is counted as Egypt's 25th Dynasty, and Piye's successor Shabaqo was the first of them to rule all of Egypt as well as Nubia.

Reign

Taharqa succeeded his cousin Shebitku and ruled from about 690 to 664 BCE (Britannica also gives 689 as a possible start). According to an information sheet from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, as a young man he passed through Kawa in Nubia on his way north to Thebes and saw an old brick temple buried in sand, and he vowed to rebuild it if he became king. Around 680 BCE he had a new temple and shrine for Amun-Re built there, bringing architects and craftsmen from Memphis; the work took about four years.

The Kawa shrine survived under sand after the temple was burned and abandoned in the 3rd century CE. Excavations led by Professor Griffith of Oxford University uncovered it in 1930, and the shrine, made of 236 sandstone blocks, was given to Oxford University, shipped to England and rebuilt in the Ashmolean Museum, where it stands today.

Conflict with Assyria

Kushite involvement in the politics of Palestine brought Egypt into conflict with the Assyrian empire. Early in his reign Taharqa supported resistance there against the Assyrian king Sennacherib. In 671 BCE the Assyrian king Esarhaddon defeated Taharqa's army and captured Memphis, along with members of the royal household, and set up an Assyrian administration run through local rulers. When Esarhaddon withdrew, Taharqa returned from Upper Egypt, destroyed the Assyrian garrisons and regained control. Esarhaddon's son Ashurbanipal then invaded again, and Taharqa was forced to withdraw south to Nubia.

Death and burial

Taharqa died in Nubia in 664 BCE and was buried in a large pyramid at Nuri. The British Museum notes that he introduced Egyptian funerary practices to Kushite royal burials, including mummification, Egyptian-style coffins and sarcophagi, and shabti figures; a granite shabti from his Nuri pyramid is one example. His successor Tanutamani briefly reconquered Egypt, but the Kushite dynasty's rule there effectively ended with Taharqa's death.

Legacy

After 664 BCE Kushite kings continued to rule Nubia from Napata for centuries, before the royal burial ground moved to Meroë around 250 BCE. Taharqa's long reign was the high point of the period when a Nubian dynasty governed both Egypt and Nubia, and his monuments in both lands remain key evidence for that era.