Qualla: Meroë https://qualla.com/meroe en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/0/0/meroe-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Meroë https://qualla.com/meroe Meroë: Introduction https://qualla.com/meroe/ Photo credit Hans Birger Nilsen, CC BY-SA 2.0. There are more pyramids at Meroë than in all of Egypt. Steeper, smaller, packed tightly together in a field above the middle Nile, they mark the tombs of the kings and queens of Kush from around 300 BC to 350 AD. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus had already heard the stories. In the fifth century BC, Herodotus described the city as a great city, said to be the mother city of the other Ethiopians. And in 61 AD, when the Emperor Nero sent a Praetorian reconnaissance party under a tribune and two centurions to probe the limits of the world, they reached Meroë, were given an escort, pushed on upstream until the swamps of the Sudd stopped them, and went no further. This was where Africa, from a Roman perspective, became impossible.

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Image: Hans Birger Nilsen | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/0/0/meroe-wp/sg00-mero-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Meroë: The Kushite Capital https://qualla.com/meroe/ Photo credit User:LassiHU, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Kingdom of Kush spans nearly twelve hundred years, from about 800 BC to 350 AD. For most of its earliest phase, the main capital was farther north at Napata, in what is now northern Sudan. Around 591 BC, just after the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik II sacked Napata, King Aspelta m...

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Image: User:LassiHU | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/0/0/meroe-wp/sg00-mero-the-kushite-capital.mp3 0:06 2 full Meroë: The Birmingham of Africa https://qualla.com/meroe/ Photo credit Public domain. The British Egyptologist Archibald Sayce famously called Meroë the Birmingham of Africa for its iron production, an attribution modern scholars debate but never entirely abandon. Whatever the volume, iron mattered, alongside pottery fine and elaborately decorated, textiles woven ...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/0/0/meroe-wp/sg00-mero-the-birmingham-of-africa.mp3 0:06 3 full Meroë: The Kandake https://qualla.com/meroe/ Photo credit Map created from DEMIS Mapserver, which are public domain. Koba-chan, CC BY-SA 3.0. The king of Meroë was an absolute ruler who shared power with only one other person: his mother, called the Kandake. Queen Mother, Queen Dowager, regent, co-sovereign; the role's precise nature is still debated by historians, but she appears repeatedly in Meroitic inscriptions, a...

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Image: Map created from DEMIS Mapserver, which are public domain. Koba-chan | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/0/0/meroe-wp/sg00-mero-the-kandake.mp3 0:06 4 full Meroë: The Fall https://qualla.com/meroe/ Photo credit Sven-Steffen Arndt, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 300 AD, archaeological evidence points to economic and political decline in Meroë. The external trade with other Nile Valley states that had sustained royal power was collapsing. Then in 350 AD, the kingdom of Axum, in what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea, destroyed the city. A Gr...

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Image: Sven-Steffen Arndt | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/0/0/meroe-wp/sg00-mero-the-fall.mp3 0:06 5 full Meroë: The Pyramids Rediscovered https://qualla.com/meroe/ Photo credit COSV, CC BY-SA 3.0. Meroë was brought back to European attention in 1821 by the French mineralogist Frédéric Cailliaud, who published an illustrated folio describing the ruins, including the southernmost Latin inscription then known. In 1834, the Italian Giuseppe Ferlini excavated (or more accuratel...

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Image: COSV | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/0/0/meroe-wp/sg00-mero-the-pyramids-rediscovered.mp3 0:06 6 full