Piye of Kush: The Conqueror Who Grieved for Hungry Horses

Nearly three thousand years ago, a king set out from the land of Kush, in today's Sudan, and travelled north along the Nile until he reached Memphis and the Delta. He left us a long inscription in which he tells the story himself. In that inscription we do not find only a conqueror. We find a man who orders his army to bathe before battle, who offers cities the choice of life, and who is furious because horses went hungry in a siege. Then he goes home, and is buried near his horses. In this episode, we meet King Piye and the hidden human sides of his story. Tell us in the comments, yes or no: 1. Was Piye's Victory Stela found in Egypt? 2. Did Piye put his enemy Tefnakht to death, according to the stela? 3. Did all the princes of the Delta enter Piye's palace? Sources: 1. The Victory Stela of Piye (Piankhi), granite, from the temple of Amun at Gebel Barkal, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE 48862. Global Egyptian Museum record: https://globalegyptianmuseum.org/reco... 2. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. IV (Chicago, 1906), §§ 816 ff., the Piankhi Stela: https://www.attalus.org/egypt/piye_ol... 3. Robert K. Ritner (trans.), "The Victory Stela of Piye," in W. K. Simpson (ed.), The Literature of Ancient Egypt (2003): https://www.attalus.org/egypt/piye.html 4. Timothy Kendall and El-Hassan Ahmed Mohamed, Sudan's Holy Mountain: Jebel Barkal and Its Temples, A Visitor's Guide (2022): https://history.org.uk/files/download... 5. Lisa A. Heidorn, "The Horses of Kush," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56:2 (1997), 105-114: https://asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2... 6. Sarah A. Schrader, Stuart Tyson Smith, Sandra Olsen et al., "Symbolic equids and Kushite state formation: a horse burial at Tombos," Antiquity 92, no. 362 (2018): https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploa... 7. UNESCO World Heritage, "Gebel Barkal and the Sites of the Napatan Region, Sudan" (inscribed 2003), on Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/sto... 8. Learning Sites / Timothy Kendall, "Temple B500, Jebel Barkal": https://learningsites.com/GebelBarkal... #KingdomsOfAfrica #AfricanHistory #TheKnowledgeSeeker — The Knowledge Seeker: stories of the minds and hearts that shaped human cultures. We gathered to know one another and to talk, not to fight.