World History: Africa & Egypt

The first kingdom for which there is documentary evidence is that of Aksum (Axum), a kingdom which probably emerged in the 2d cent. A.D., thus making Ethiopia the oldest independent country in Africa and one of the most ancient in the world.

It was not until c.3000 B.C. that the Sahara transformed into its present arid state. The camel was introduced probably in the 1st cent. A.D. and facilitated occupation by nomads.

Ancient state of NE Africa. At the height of its political power Nubia extended, from north to south, from the First Cataract of the Nile (near Aswan, Egypt) to Khartoum, in Sudan.

THE NILE RIVER is the longest river in the world and flows northward from its sources in eastern Africa toward the Mediterranean Sea.

From A Guide to the Ancient World
A city on the Nile in Upper Egypt, four hundred and forty-six miles south of Cairo. The capital of the Pharaonic empire in the second millennium BC—replacing Memphis—Thebes was later praised for its wealth in Homer's Iliad.

From Encyclopedia of African History
King of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, Akhenaten reigned from approximately 1360 to 1343bce. Akhenaten is notable for having briefly replaced the entire Egyptian pantheon with a single deity, the Aten, the physical manifestation of the sun.

69 B.C.–30 B.C.,Cleopatra was the daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes, who died in 51BC. By the terms of his will he appointed her joint successor, as Cleopatra VII, with her younger brother as Ptolemy XIII.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Carthaginian general. He was assigned the command in Sicily in 247 in the First Punic War (see Punic Wars). From mountain bases near Palermo he made repeated raids on the Romans and relieved the Punic garrison in Lilybaeum.

From The Reader's Companion to Military History
Son of the distinguished Carthaginian general and empire-builder Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal presented the Roman republic with its greatest military challenge.

From The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
Probably born in Mitanni, an empire based in what is now northern Iraq, Nefertiti became the chief wife of the intellectual Egyptian ruler Amenhotep IV (reigned about 1379–1362 BC).

Ramses II, also known as “Ramses the Great,” was one of the most famous pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt (1570–1070 bce). He established numerous building projects, conducted aggressive war campaigns, and created international ties that are still discussed today.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Fl. c.1350 B.C., king of ancient Egypt, of the XVIII dynasty. He was the son-in-law of Ikhnaton and succeeded to the throne after a brief reign by Ikhnaton's successor.

Extinct language of ancient Egypt. Developed during four periods: (1) Old Egyptian (3d millennium B.C.); (2) Middle Egyptian (2134 - 1354 B.C.) (3) Late Egyptian (to 12th cent. B.C.); and (4) demotic (8th cent. B.C. - 5th cent. A.D.).

Extinct language of Ethiopia belonging to the North Ethiopic group of the South Semitic (or Ethiopic) languages, which, in turn, belong to the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages.

Egyptian hieroglyphics appear in several stages: the first dynasty (3110–2884 B.C.), when they were already perfected; the Old Kingdom; the Middle Kingdom.

From the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Inscribed stone slab, now in the British Museum, that provided an important key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. An irregularly shaped block of black basalt with inscriptions in hieroglyphs, Demotic Egyptian, and Greek, it was discovered by Napoleon's troops near the town of Rosetta (Rashid), northeast of Alexandria, in 1799.

Second-largest continent (after Asia), straddling the equator and lying largely within the tropics. Africa's first great civilization emerged in ancient Egypt in c.3400 BC. Carthage was founded by Phoenicians in the 9th century BC.

Ancient civilization, based around the River Nile in Egypt, which emerged 5,000 years ago and reached its peak in the 16th century BC.

Ancient Phoenician port in North Africa founded by colonists from Tyre in the late 9th century BC. A leading trading centre, it was in conflict with Greece from the 6th century BC, and then with Rome, and was destroyed by Roman forces in 146 BC at the end of the Punic Wars.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Battle fought 202 BC in Numidia (now Algeria), in which the Carthaginians under Hannibal were defeated by the Romans under the younger Scipio, so ending the Second Punic War.

From Encyclopedia of African History
Osei Tutu, ruler of Asante from 1701 to 1717, stands out as one of the most important figures in Asante history. He finalized the long task of nation building initiated by Twum and Antwi, the first two Asante rulers.

From Encyclopedia of African History
The kingdom was an absolute monarchy, quite unlike the surrounding traditional kingdoms.

From Encyclopedia of African History
The ancient kingdom of Ghana was founded in the western part of the savanna region of West Africa.

From Encyclopedia of African History
One of the great empires of the Middle Ages.

From Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History
The Songhay Empire was an African kingdom that began in the fifteenth century and grew to prominence in the sixteenth century.

From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations
Although most nomadic Fulbe remained animist, more and more were converted to Islam by marabouts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This later conversion endowed them with a religious fervor that had long since subsided among older and more settled Muslim peoples.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Complex of independent western African kingdoms (c. 1500-1895) around the headwaters of the Volta River, within present-day Burkina Faso and Ghana.

From Encyclopedia of African History
By 1400, Oyo, which was farther to the north at the margins of the forest and savanna, became the dominant commercial and political city of the Yoruba.

The origins of Timbuktu are obscure. According to local tradition and an indigenous chronicle written in the seventeenth century, the Tarikh es Soudan, the city was founded in approximately 1100 as a seasonal nomad camp.

From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations
The Tukolor were essentially Fulbe who had long settled in Muslim towns.

Great Zimbabwe existed for over 500 years as a bustling center of trade and commerce, and it politically dominated the surrounding valley and plateaus.

From Bloomsbury Dictionary of Myth
The cycle centred on nine gods, the Ennead: Ra the Sun (in his manifestation as Atum the creator) and four pairs of his descendants: Shu and Tefnut; Geb and Nut; Aset (Isis) and Osiris; Set and Nebthet.

Ancient Egyptian god, the embodiment of goodness, who ruled the underworld after being killed by Set. The pharaohs were believed to be his incarnation.

Mythological creature, depicted in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek art as a lion with a human head. One of the oldest monuments is the Great Sphinx at El Gîza, Egypt, which was probably built about 2900-2750 BC.

Dead human or animal body preserved by embalming or by unusual natural conditions. Refers primarily to the burials found in Egypt, where the practice of mummification was perfected over the centuries to an extreme of elaboration.