Transcript

EP31 Kushite Conversations

From Dan Carlin · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 11 min · 11,754 words · 68 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "EP31 Kushite Conversations", an episode of Dan Carlin published January 13, 2025 (1 h 11 min, about 11,754 words). It mentions 18 people, works and ideas, including Ethiopia, Zaynab Badawi, Aaron Solomon, The Kingdom of Kush, Herodotus.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: The Kingdom of Kush, Ethiopia, Herodotus, The 25th Dynasty of Egypt
  2. – 30:00: Herodotus
  3. – 40:00: Ethiopia
  4. – 50:00: Aaron Solomon, Ethiopia, David Livingston, Hila Salassi
  5. – 1:00:00: Ethiopia, Aaron Solomon, Queen of Sheba
  6. – 1:10:00: King Mansa Musa

Notable quotes from "EP31 Kushite Conversations"

  • So let me do a little of that real quickly so that we know what we're discussing the kingdom of kush is a kingdom that's located well it starts in ancient Egyptian times it's a…
    about The Kingdom of Kush · at
  • Could call upon he talks about a contingent from a place he calls Ethiopia which is what the Greeks called the region that's Now sort of Sudan and that encompasses the kushite…
    about Ethiopia · at
  • Right there in front of us staring us right in the face and there should be a movie made about it the 25th dynasty of Egypt's fascinating and that's why I've been into it for…
    about The 25th Dynasty of Egypt · at
  • Award-winning filmmaker journalist broadcaster she is the president of the University of London's School of Oriental and African studies she is the previous chair of the royal…
    about University of London · at
  • Never returned to Egypt so you know they are just very colorful characters taharka also was also a very colorful character he's actually mentioned in the bible as Tara of Ethiopia just means the land of the blacks in ancient.
    about Taharka · at
  • Religions talk to me a little bit about that connection because there's a Solomon connection that goes all the way to the mid 1970s between the people in that region and what was an ancient J you know Israel and Judah right going back.
    about Aaron Solomon · at
  • Operating in the 1800s mostly from countries like Britain you know we all know about the Dr David Livingston and so on they know about the Portuguese Jesuit priests who also…
    about David Livingston · at
  • That King Solomon had an affair which gave rise to menelik their with the Queen of Sheba sorry I to say that again that King Solomon had an affair with the Queen of Sheba she…
    about Queen of Sheba · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Zaynab Badawi — Person · 5 mentions
  • Aaron Solomon — Person · 4 mentions · first at
  • Herodotus — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    The old Kingdom Pharaoh tombs there they are armed with their bows thousands of years later Herodotus describing the great king of Persia's Army and trying to emphasize the…
  • Queen of Sheba — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Piye — Person · 2 mentions
  • Taharka — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • David Livingston — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Hila Salassi — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Official religion of Ethiopia and Eritrea until 1975 when the emperor hila salassi was removed from Power the Ethiopians all believe in their history beginning with the story of King Solomon and the fact.
  • King Mansa Musa — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Tales but with facts and you know if you could indulge me by I just give you one example of that if you look at King Mansa Musa the first Mansa is the title of the king and…
  • Queen Nzinga — Person · 1 mention
  • Wangari Maathai — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

Concepts & topics

Places & events

Full transcript with timestamps

it's Hardcore History so I've been looking for someone to talk with me about the ancient Kingdom of kou for years the good news is I finally found the perfect person to do that and I'm having them on the show today the bad news is this person has actually written a brand new book that encompasses the entire history of Africa basically from the beginning to recent times from top to bottom side to side and I'm going to monopolize the conversation to talk about this one region and this one era so I apologize for all the stuff you're not going to get today that's in the book uh that we could have touched upon but I've been trying for years to get somebody on this show to talk about this little pet issue of mine so I'm afraid not only do I monopolize the conversation on the subject but I dive right into it and don't give background so let me do a little of that real quickly so that we know what we're

discussing the kingdom of kush is a kingdom that's located um well it starts in ancient Egyptian times it's a contemporary it's really the next door neighbor of the ancient Egyptians back to prehistoric times their relationship is as close as close can be you can see um carvings of the troops of some some of these pharaohs from the Old Kingdom that are buried with them and you know Old Kingdom pharaohs you're talking 2300 2400 BCE 2200 BCE really old stuff Old Kingdom right uh but in their tombs you can see kushite soldiers in their armies already and already famous for the weapon that they are known for this is the uh land the kushites or Kush where they're from was often called the land of the bow and in the old Kingdom Pharaoh tombs there they are armed with their bows thousands of years later Herodotus describing the great king of Persia's Army and trying to emphasize the exoticness and the far-flung nature of

his Empire and all the troops that he could call upon he talks about a contingent from a place he calls Ethiopia which is what the Greeks called the region um that's Now sort of Sudan and that encompasses the kushite people and he describes their soldiers similarly says that they are black skinned that they paint their body in war paint from top to bottom I think it was one half red and one half white and that they are carrying their bows that are as long as a man they had a reputation for shooting at the eyes of their opponent and one can imagine that that must have been something that earned you a lot of Kudos with your you know fellow Warriors I mean oh my God he got got the eye right he shot at the guy's eye and he got it I mean that's what you're aiming for and the arrows are supposedly poisonous that's quite a reputation to have from thousands of years ago now I discovered the cushites

because a person who gamed who War gamed at the shop where I War gamed had an army uh that attracted all of our attention it was it was a fascinating Army that on the surface looked like a standard biblical Egyptian Army so chariots a pharaoh uh the soldiers in those traditional ancient Egyptian you know outfits and carrying sickle swords and all that kind of stuff I mean very sort of an iconic Army of ramies or tmos or Alman hotep Nefertiti King Tut the whole thing but this guy had painted most of the soldiers in the Army painted his miniature figurines um with black skin as though they were from Sudan right not looking like Mediterranean Coastal figures at all um I thought Trayvon at the time was trying to make a political statement I was 14 15 whatever I was at the time and U it was normal for people to have some sort of an opinion on the ethnicity of ancient Egyptians and there were people

that were claiming listen this is an African society these are these are black folks and I thought that's what Trayvon was doing but that's not what he was doing he explained to me that this Army represented the army of Egypt's 25th Dynasty the 25th Dynasty is the black pharaoh black African queen dynasty of Egypt and it goes on for several pharaohs I've never understood the arguments we'll have over Cleopatra's ethnicity or you know uh Napoleon shooting the nose off the Sphinx because he doesn't want us to know that um you know that there's an African a subsaharan African history connection to Egypt and I've never understood trying to reach for it in those kinds of situations when it's right there in front of us staring us right in the face and there should be a movie made about it the 25th dynasty of Egypt's fascinating and that's why I've been into it for so long it's a hard subject for an American to study or at

least it has been throughout most of the time I've been interested in it I'll give you an example of what I mean um I've probably been interested in the subject since 81 1981 1982 in there in 1996 I bought a book and remember this is the time period where you kind of have to have the book be in the bookstore when you're there um by archaeologist derck a wsby and the book was called the kingdom of kush and to give you an idea and by the way welby's gone on to add tons of knowledge to what we know about the kushite people since this time period but when this book came out on the back cover it says this the kingdom of kush this book illuminates all that is known about this fascinating people and their history end quote let the record show that when you take out the color plates the bibliography the notes and the index it's about 180 pages of text all that is known and that's 28 years ago well a lot more is known than

was known then um Professor wisby contributed to that but so have a lot of other people now what I like about the author that we're going to talk about this stuff with today is that she goes to to these places on the ground and gets information from the people there that is an intergral part of the story that has been missing from the international narrative I'm sure it hasn't been missing from these countries specifically but she gets their part of the story and I know I've used this metaphor before but uh a lot of people Yours Truly included sort of see um history as a kind of a mosaic and it's the individual tiles that get added to it that make what you're looking at more and more clear and give more Dimensions to it right more perspective a 360 degree view of things um and what this author does by going to these areas talking to the local historians the local curators of the museums uh the oral

storytellers is that she's adding these other tiles that have been missing to a mosaic that's already been missing a lot of tiles for a long time I mean when welsby writing that book in 1996 he can cover the whole thing in 180 pages so not only are we getting a lot more tiles that people like archaeologists are adding we're getting these tiles that authors like Zay AB badawi is adding where she's talking to the people from these places and getting you know their perspective um Zan AB badawi if you've not seen her work on the BBC go to YouTube or somewhere like that and see it it's fantastic um she is a wonderful uh transmitter of this information in this knowledge and this perspective from the region that just adds critical pieces to this story her new book is called an African history of Africa from the dawn of humanity to Independence it is already a number one international bestseller uh it is released uh I think

it's January 14th 2025 so right around the time this is probably going to be released her credentials are as long as my arm uh but besides being an award-winning filmmaker journalist broadcaster uh she is the president of the University of London's School of Oriental and African studies she is the previous chair of the royal African society she's the recipient of the president's medal of the British Academy I mean it just goes on and on and her new book covers the history of Africa from the beginning to just recently top to bottom side to side and I'm going to monopolize as I said her to talk about this Kingdom of kush that so interests me but listen Miss badawi was born in Sudan this is her history from her ancient time period and the Very roots of of the people that were first making history in the land of her birth so who better to talk to about the ancient kushites than the great and talented Zay

abuwi let me start off by asking the most obvious silly question question in the whole world you have a successful career doing other things and all of a sudden you decide to write this book an African history of Africa what prompted you to sort of shift gears and say I really want to get this book out well Dan in a way the book found me um and that is because having enjoyed a long career in broadcasting and making documentary films I embarked on a project to make um 20 45 minute documentary films about the history of Africa AF and I traveled to more than 30 countries in Africa over a period of about seven years and I interviewed dozens and dozens and dozens of historians anthropologists archaeologists and so on and I made the films put them out they're now available on BBC YouTube free of charge and I was very troubled by the fact that so much of what these marvelous African Scholars had told me had metaphorically speaking

hit The Cutting Room floor so I thought you know what I really want to do justice to what they told me I want to ventilate their scholarship and so I thought the only way I could do that was by writing a book because I wanted to Accord them the respect of bringing their Vision their perspectives their scholarship their research to the telling of the history of their own continent and so that's why I written the book and it's a passion a mission for me and I see myself as a kind of conduit a facilitator for these African voices I thought let me use my um you know my International stage as it were to put them center stage and say at last let us hear Africans telling their own story rather than having it being related by Outsiders I thought it was fascinating that some of the people you were able to hear from specifically too and and you get the real sense of what you're missing in sort of the

international debate on this to have those voices not a part of the discussion and a lot of it's connected to you know you you point out which of course DNA and all the historians and the anthropologists have pointed out forever that humankind All Began on that continent is there a sense amongst the people that you spoke to about this who are keeping alive you know what starts off when you go far enough back in history into oral conversations right and oral remembrances are they sort of cognizant are they able to sort of meld the modern-day understanding that all Humanity comes from that continent and somehow fuse it with their understanding of the early oral histories of of of the beginnings as they understand them undoubtedly everybody in Africa knows that there is nobody on Earth today who cannot say that Africa is not their mother continent the science is settled it's accepted all over the world um I

mean there are obviously some people who perhaps find it rather unpalatable that all humans originated from Africa but there we go um and Africans I think do um actually derive a great deal of Pride from the fact that the story of humankind begins in Africa if you're not living in Africa today or of African descent you're an African export whether you've got blonde hair blue eyes there's no escaping that how far it marries back with oral tradition that may be a bit of a stretch down because I mean just a quick you know um snapshot of how we evolved uh modern humans that's Homo sapiens sapiens we were fully formed about 100,000 years ago by about 990,000 years ago we had populated the whole continent of Africa sometime around 60 to 70,000 years ago those first Hardy Pioneers left the continent first went across to the Arabian Peninsula and Asia and Europe and there they encountered other um commins like um Denise Sans or

the neander tals and they bred with them and until these other species were bred into Extinction so to say that Africans today remember that um history about 60,000 years ago when they migrated from the continent would be a bit of a stretch but what is certainly true is that if you are trying to piece together early African history and by that I really mean precolonial history before the Europeans arrived and started writing um about Africa's history oral tradition is very very important and this is what African historians do and which Western historians over often Overlook they look at their own written records They perhaps don't put enough attention on written records which have been given to us by the Arabs for instance the Arabs were in Africa much much earlier than the Europeans from about the 7th century and they you know they had their Chronicles their Travelers and so on you've got other non-western languages

Persian um garati you know so African Scholars tend to look at these other sources but they also rely on oral tradition a great deal to piece together their early history and that's often supported by archaeological evidence if you say that oh Africans didn't always write and record their history therefore they had no history that in my opinion is very shortsighted and that has often been the case and that is why I think Africa's history before the Europeans arrived has been denigrated because they say oh you know they didn't write they don't have any history of course documentary evidence is important but it doesn't mean to say that just because Africans didn't always write that they didn't record their history you just have to get at it in different ways and um that's what I liked about the African historians that I encountered they do you know that they they are aware of how accounts of great deeds and

actions and words of great leaders throughout history have been handed down through the generations um because you know knowledge in Africa is held communally knowledge in the west is held by an individual but in Africa you know knowledge is communal it's you know your great grandmother maybe the custodian of certain tables about your people's um history uh and that's mirrored in countless communities you know across regions and so that's a very important point to make and what the African historians are saying is we're not supplanting what the Western historians have done we're merely supplementing it and saying if you only look at African history through a western prism you will miss something because if you just look at you know Africa through Western value system you won't understand the African mindset you'll miss something so in a sense this diversification of looking at Africa's history in my opinion brings you a

better more rounded um more authentic um understanding of African history well and you bring up the writing part so let's talk about that for a minute because there is a writing part and this is the ulterior motive where I've had you on this program I've wanted to talk about the kushites forever I'm I'm intensely interested in them but because of the writing uh I have the same problem with ancient Egypt if you're trying to dramatize a story you really need sort of narratives from individuals on the ground and the farther back in history you go the less of that stuff you have but the kushites had a written language one of the most exciting things in your book I thought was your pointing out that the archaeology in the region has only scratched the surface of what's out there compared to say what we know about ancient Egypt but there's a lot of reasons for that including War torn regions uh lack of attention

governmental problems uh funding problems and yet some of that's been overcome and they're starting to find out more about uh things like the kushites and the kushites had a written language and I was surprised to find out that that still hasn't been deciphered but what that means is it's out there to be deciphered what do you expect you know I was just thinking if somebody had mentioned artificial intelligence as a wonderful translation tool I mean do you think we're going to get to to sort of get the Rosetta Stone for that at some point you don't think it's shaking your head you don't think so well I mean the Rosetta Stone of course for Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics was very significant but it wasn't the only um code cracker as it were there were other sources but we haven't found something akin to the Rosetta Stone or other um you know information which has allowed us to decipher Egyptian

hieroglyphics sudin the cushite um began writing in their own language from the 2nd Century up until then they used the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and we can sound them partly because of the great work of um a British academic called Francis luellin Griffiths who managed to kind of tell us what the sounds of the meroitic script as it's known that the kushites used from the 2 Century onwards but we don't know what the words mean unfortunately and it's a work in progress we hope that all the um archaeologists who are working in Northern Sudan of course sadly that's had to stop because of the conflict will somehow find um you know a stone that's got ancient Greek ancient Egyptian and the cushite language alongside that will help us decipher the um hieroglyphics that the kushites used but until that happens it's all a bit of a mystery sadly um but we know a great deal about the cushites because they um did write in as I said

ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs but we know the most about the kushites from about the seventh and e8th centuries BCE that's before Common Era or Some people prefer to say BC before Christ and that is because that is when the kings of kush reached the Zenith of their power and conquered Egypt and governed it for the best part of a century and so the ancient Egyptians were busy writing about you know these these Kings these pharaohs who formed their 25th Dynasty who'd come from further south and that's why we know about the kings of kush from that era you know with names like um Panki tah hardco shitu Shabaka and there are these marvelous black granite statues of these Kings and so it's a very evocative period of um ancient African history and they were not only a great afan civilization they were actually a regional superpower because they were Protectors of King Hezekiah of Judah who appealed to them to protect

him against the marauding Assyrians who were really ferocious um warlike uh people in that period of the ancient world the princes of biblos and Phoenicia in modern day Lebanon also looked to the kings of kush to protect them they were really skilled um archers and and very skilled equestrians you know they' ride their horses and they'd have their bow and arrow with the tips that were you know dipped in poison and they had a very you know amazing way of actually firing their Arrow right into the eye of their enemies so that was obviously a great way of um of seeing your enemies off and you know the cushites built a thousand pyramids about 250 of them today preserve some part of their super structure and just by way of reference there areund pyramids in Egypt so a thousand in Sudan much smaller than the ones in Egypt but nevertheless extremely impressive you know they built temples they have Exquisite pottery and

Ceramics in fact some people credit the kushites of being the first people to enamel Pottery Fine Jewelry dyed material you know they really were an extraordinary civilization which in its earliest iteration about 2,500 BCE far predates ancient Greece and Rome you know Rome was just a Backwater in southern Europe at the time so um it is extraordinary for for me that that's the part of the world from which my ancestors hail from northern Sudan and everybody knows about ancient Egypt yet nobody knows about the ancient Northern Sudanese you know the kings and queens of kush but I think as the great Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonet said there will come a time when sudy will be as famous as egyptology because it's a story that's just been Unearthed um but the harsh climate the instability in the country the lack of resources means that you know we haven't really excavated um the exciting um history that just lies

under the sand dunes and elsewhere in Northern Sudan but it's it's it's an amazing history and it's one which really touched me of all the countries I visited of course I would say that because it's the land of my ancestors but I really think that it's a part of world history which should be better known and you know forgive me for going on about this Dan but what I also like about the story of the kingdom of cous is it shows you how kingdoms rise and fall that today you know Sudan may be one of the Le less developed parts of the world but in Times Gone by why it had this you know it was a it was a superpower and also the story of ancient C tells you how history is not something that can just be consigned to the past of course history explains our past but it also informs our present and helps shape our future and I just give you one very small illustration the people of ancient Northern Sudan of kush

considered it an Abomination to eat fish they had all this fish in the River Nile you know an amazing source of protein yet they just wouldn't eat it and to this day the consumption of fish in Northern Sudan is far lower than many other places in the world it is on average one kilogram per person per year compare it to Egypt another land of the Nile where the average consumption is 25 kilograms per person per year and it just shows you how you know history just continues and I saw that in so many ways when I was exploring the culture of the um of the kushites and I also love the fact that the queens of cush also had such a powerful role to place to play in society they could govern alongside their husbands and their sons as co- Regents and there was some like ammani Rance who would actually lead their men into battle she was known as the oneeyed queen because she lost an eye fting fighting the Romans in 30 CE and in fact

they were forced to in the end sign a peace treaty with her in 22 BCE so it's just you know I can understand why you're fascinated by it because it really is you know the stuff of Hollywood where fact is Stranger Than Fiction and I I do wish that um somebody would you know try and popularize this amazing chapter in African history let me suggest you brought up Hollywood let me suggest that the interest is there but it's misplaced if you go on social media and you see the debates that people have over the ethnicity of Cleopatra right the the Macedonian descendant right so a woman of Greek descent and we'll have these arguments over what her skin color should be and it seems almost a grasping attempt to seize a black Egyptian Heritage when I always try to tell people it's there you're just looking in the wrong Direction it's the 25th Dynasty it's not Cleopatra it's it's it's these wonderful

kings that restored the Egyptian religion that that that that threw out the Libyan Dynasty I mean there's a wonderful black pharaoh history you don't have to make it up or try to find it you know hidden it's right there in front of you we're just not looking in the right direction let me back up a minute because we didn't really set it up you have ancient Egypt which emerges from the mids of History like ancient Mesopotamia like China did like India did where the early history is just sort of hidden and then there they are and the kushites are there from the very beginning and we used to call and your book talked me out of this is a better way to put it we used to talk about an area between kush or Kush as you call it and Egypt and we used to call that Nubia and you point out that that's the wrong word for it you label you know where the divisions are based on the the cataracts the rocky areas of the Nile but but the

Nubian Kush areas there from the very beginning the you know prehistory the Egyptians are already dealing with you what would you say the relationship between the Egypt that everyone knows and the the the kushite people's you know what what did Herodotus call them Ethiopians uh which is the wrong term also what would you say their relationship is from the very beginning so I mean you know the kushites emerged from a part of the world which was never part of Egypt and the word Nubia is not something that came into use until much much later around the um first 2 Century um Common Era so there is a tendency to try to talk about the kushites as Nubians of course there were Nubians who you could refer to them as Nubians but much later in their history but a lot of people refer to them as Nubians because there are Nubians today who live in northern Sudan but also who live in southern Egypt and by calling them

Nubians it kind of in a way allows people perhaps in Egypt to say Ah that's when we were governed by our 25th Dynasty who were Nubians to try to imply perhaps that these were people who territorially came from what is known as Southern Egypt so it kind of puts Northern Sudan into the Shadow do you see what I mean so that's one reason why I don't like them being referred to Nubians because these are people who territorially only ever came from a part of the world that is part of Sudan and was never part of Egypt proper they did have similarities with the people of Southern Egypt as they do to this day I we have in my family very strong connections with Southern Egypt ethnically you can't really tell the difference between the northern Sudanese and the southern Egyptians you know very similar kind of um accent when it comes to speaking Arabic and so on um and um historically speaking the relationship

between the cushites and the ancient Egyptians was one that you know ebbed and FL sometimes the ancient Egyptians would clobber the cushites at other times they had you know a fairly good relationship um the two cultures um learned from one another um you know the the ancient Sudanese and the ancient Egyptians worship the same deities um Amon raah was the principal God for both of them um the ancient sudanes the kushites added another one a pedac the lion God but interestingly enough um our moon Ra was believed to reside in jabel Bal which is this mountain which is in Northern Sudan territorially and always was and both the ancient sudanes and ancient Egyptians believed who resided there and when you think about the religious heart of ancient Egypt carak you know the temple at carak the Valley of the Kings in LSA where the um the Pharaohs were buried you know from the New Kingdom onwards

this is very far Southern Egypt a thousand miles away from the Mediterranean coast of Egypt this is much more African Egypt it is not Piro it is not Alexandria you know on the Mediterranean Coast which makes you realize that actually the heart the Beating Heart the religious Center of ancient Egypt was fairly far south in Upper Egypt going towards the border with Northern Sudan Abu simul was practically you know where rameses the great had his statue of that of himself and his wife was practically on the border with Southern sud with Northern Sudan so when it comes to the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians I think it's actually wrong to say ancient Egypt isn't part of Africa ancient Egypt is an African civilization just as the kushites are an African civilization depending on which area you at depending on which Pharaoh you look at in ancient Egypt their ethnicity as it were may vary the first king of

ancient Egypt of the Archaic Period the old Dynasty um Nama you know would look what you might broadly say is more Southern Egyptian because that's where he came from later on you might have um pharaohs who perhaps hailed from more of the Mediterranean coast and right from the start you know Egypt had a Mediterranean Coast where people would mix with with um with southern Europe with Western Asia and so there was a mixture of people so the ethnicities of the Pharaohs would vary over the centuries so I wouldn't say that you know um people need to look to Sudan only Northern Sudan to get an idea of what an African Dynasty look like I think we need to redefine what we mean by African what does an African look like there isn't a standard look of an African so we need to redefine that there isn't a kind of you know standard identic take it off the shelf and this is what an African looks like like everybody every

other continent in the world there's a huge Variety in um appearances where it gets difficult with Cleopatra is that the toies who were the Pharaohs who succeeded Alexander the Great who was from m Macedonia and the toies were Macedonian and the last of the toies was Cleopatra who died in 30 BC when she killed herself and the Romans conquered Egypt um she was of Macedonian ethnicity they would have spoken a ancient Greek amongst themselves and that's where it gets a little bit difficult and that's where people might start getting annoyed when you have um a woman of color like Adele James depicted as Cleopatra and some Egyptians and others get a bit hot under the collar and say no Cleopatra was Macedonian she was not white but that does not mean that other pharaohs and other queens in ancient Egypt were similarly white hatch up suot is depicted you know with a terracotta color um in all the reliefs we have of

her and statues and Buss and so on it's just the Cleopatra um complicates matters um and also the afro Cent of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s African Americans you know um started saying well look we you know want to look to our African Roots um in order to you know bolster our identity and so on and so they look to ancient Egypt to do that and that again is something which annoys um some Egyptians as we've seen from the social media kind of exchanges um and that is for the reasons I've explained but it is also because in 6401 um Common Era the Arabs conquered Egypt and settled there and obviously mixed with the Egyptians and the Egyptians assumed the Arabic language and they also assumed Arab ideology which made them feel that perhaps they were a bit separate from the rest of Africa because they became part of the arabized north of AA Africa so that's another reason why that sometimes

there's a bit of a distance between um Egyptians today and the rest of the continent but I firmly believe that the arabized north of Africa is as much part of the continent's history and is as much part of Africa as any other part of the continent that's something I really got from your book it was a reminder you know you'd mentioned the the sort of interesting ethnicity of Egyptian pharaohs but you see that over and over you see it with the Roman emperors too right I mean by the time you get to the Empire they're coming from all over the place right it's a Cosmopolitan sort of AAL and you reminded me something that again if you just look at a map you should know but it it it escapes you sometimes how narrow the Red Sea is and how close the the eastern African Coast is from a place like Arabia and you were pointing out in your book and again this was history I did not I was unaware of but should have known better that there

would have been cross Red Sea contact between Eastern Africa and Arabia going back to prehistoric times can you talk a little bit about I mean that that's you know we think about Outsiders coming into Africa and influencing Africa we forget that that's going to be a two-way street and that Traders always have stuff that people want from farflung distances talk to me a little about maybe pre-islamic um contacts between Eastern Africa and what we would call Western Asia absolutely so you know at its closest point the Arabian uh Peninsula is only about 17 less than 20 kilometers from the East African Red Sea Coast and that's in modern day Eritrea today so right from the get-go you had um you know an exchange of people between the two and um in around 600 BCE you had people called The seans Who Came From what would be modernday Yemen and they crossed the um the Red Sea and they settled in what would call Ethiopia and

erria today and um you know there was an exchange of ideas and uh belief and you know um between the two peoples in terms of how they um farmed how they um you know executed their animal husbandry um their religion um they worshiped the moon God Maka and um also the saan language influenced the um what we would call the um Gaz language which is the kind of Forerunner as it were of the modern day Amharic and tigrinia that is spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea and the alphabet looks quite similar so you know yes there were Traders some would come some would go back but then there were also these settlers and so um you you know you you see that from the get-go and you see it now in the appearance of the people there there are some who look you know quite arabized in Eritrea and Ethiopia and those links have just existed throughout the centuries and to this day you'll see trade going between the two um you'll see that Arabic is

very widely spoken along that Red Sea Coast um of um East Africa in Eritrea and um you know well Ethiopia doesn't have a Red Sea Coast because Ethiopia is landlocked but Eritrea and Ethiopia of course historically uh the kingdom of axim and so on it was all just um one region but certainly along the red Sea Coast of Eritrea jibuti and so on you know Arabic is spoken very very extensively and that's the point you know people always migrated we tend to think of migration as a kind of more modern phenomenon and people you know saying oh we don't want these irregular migrants you know be it people from you know coming from Mexico into the United States or from the Middle East and Africa into Europe and so on but migration is also is you know is as long as um as history people have always migrated and it's led to a kind of mange let's talk about some of the Glamorous stuff from from a standpoint of of of

the great oral stories where you've got kings and queens and battles and all the the romantic stuff um there are some fantastic kings and queens of of ancient uh Kush and and people who you know when I was growing up and got interested in it they talked about these crusading armies of the ancient kushites who were so religious that they responded negative ly to uh uh the sort of ways of the the Libyan Egyptian Dynasty where the kushites may have seen them as somewhat corrupt and not religious enough talk to me give me some of the romance of these great early kushite kings and queens and what they did so this King Panki who who's the famous one right the the great conqueror yes sometimes known as PA p i ye or Panki and he was in the early 700s BCE and um he because the ancient Egyptians and ancient sudin worship the same deities and so they were aware that the libyans who didn't really respect

ancient Egyptian religion for the most part and they saw that you know the center of carac Thieves the religious heart thieves of ancient Egypt was kind of going to rack and ruin and that the Libyan Pharaohs were not really maintaining the great traditions of ancient Egypt and so panii you know really um considered this you know an absolutely awful thing um that had happened and he was a real kind of very brave um King he had gone in with his um father cter um earlier it was King kter who first of all went in a foray into ancient Egypt but it was panii who carried his father's um deed a little bit further panii sort of strikes you as a little bit of a kind of um he was a bit Pious but not a megalomaniac but he had a great sense of himself you know we know a lot about him because of the panii Steeler which um records you know how he um you a touch of the megalomaniac a bit of the him you know he would say you

know let the chiefs of the Northlands taste the taste of my fingers and um he went into Egypt and um he his men you know would go into the temple and Temple and wash themselves and pray and so on on their bellies and then they'd go in and fight very skilled archers they had a particular way it was called the Mongolian release of actually firing their bow and arrow with their thumb rather than the Mediterranean release which was with the index finger and um Panki made sure that he really finished off the princes the Egyptian princes of the Delta because there were various sort of um princes in local areas who kind of paid allegiance to the central Pharaoh but they had their own Thoms and there was one particular one called te who was pre proving a little bit um obdurate and um was was still managing to avoid defeat by Pan's uh men but um Panki finally got the better of him and um you know these men threw

themselves Prince stanach on their stomachs and said you know okay we we give up um we accept that you are um the Pharaoh and that you are the powerful one you you know they opened their Treasures um in their rooms for him they said to him take our women if you like as your concubines and so on but pan because he was quite P was like no I don't want your women you know keep them let them maintain their modesty he took the the treasure but then he said show me the stables and when he saw that the stable was full of horses that had become so emaciated because of the siege of hermopolis because the the kushite soldiers had encircled um hermopolis and so the people inside obviously you know starving and obviously the horses were practically dying and it said that on the Steeler that um panii became enraged like a panther and said nothing that you've done has angered me as much as allowing these horses to practically

starve to death because the kushites adored their horses and panii especially um you know really just valued his horses to the extent that when he died he was buried with his four horses hes the horses would have been buried alive with him and they were dressed you know with their tails all beautifully brushed and wearing you know silver plumes and decorated um so you know panii I think is a a very very fascinating character because um after he conquered Egypt and so on he just um took all his Beauty back with him and went back to Kush and never returned to uh Egypt so you know they are just very very colorful characters um taharka also um was also a very colorful character he's actually mentioned in the bible as Tara of Ethiopia Ethiopia just means the land of the blacks in ancient Greek so if ever you see a reference to Ethiopia in the Bible or in ancient Greek um writings it doesn't refer to

Ethiopia the country today it really ref refers to the kushites the kingdom of kush um that's how they were referred to and tahara was um again you know an amazing Soldier King and um he fought the Egyptians he fought and he he fought the Assyrians and really had a great deal of success in his encounters with them but was ultimately um defeated by them um so I just think that they are such um colorful characters and they are you know my most famous my most uh popular um figures in ancient um African history although there are many more colorful there are other colorful characters also oh your book is filled with them I I feel like I'm cheating you a little bit by focusing on what I want to focus on when when your book is really a catalog from the beginning almost to the end from the north of the continent to the South to the east you cover the whole thing which is amazing and you do so in such an accessible way

um talk to me a little bit about I mean when I think about these um these kushite Kings you think about them sort of taking over Egypt's normal geopolitical role I mean they're involved they have their base at Gaza they're involved in the in the Levant and as you said they they begin their connections although you know the ancient Egyptians before that even had connections to Judaism to the Bible which will then I mean I was looking at at one point in Eastern Africa you have Judaism Islam and Christianity all sort of in a mange in that area can you talk to me about it I mean it's an interesting role when you think about the biblical connection you know we talked about the connection between the ancient Egyptian religion and the kushites but then we just morph right into monotheism and the ab abrahamic religions talk to me a little bit about that connection because there's a Solomon connection that goes all the way

to the mid 1970s um between the people in that region and what was an ancient J you know Israel and Judah right going back to the ancient biblical times can you talk to me a little about that connection sure and just before I start that you're absolutely right that you know Africa is um a place where the three monotheistic religions actually you know really really thrived and from a very early stage and there are those who actually say um akatan who was the father of tutin kmen who's you know probably the best known of the Pharaoh the great heretic right yeah although yes exactly well tjan kman himself you know was very insignificant just everybody knows about him because of all the the the fabulous um you know Treasures that were found in his tomb but akatan was the great heretic because he you know he he actually rejected the multiple deities of ancient Egyptian uh religion and worship and said actually

we ought to have just one and so some people credit him as being the first monotheist when he died there was much relief at the Royal Court in in Egypt because they thought now we can go back to how we used to worship and so they Delight of that totin kman was this boy King only nine years of age who didn't know any better and so let them just go back to their old ways and that probably is the only significance of tutin kman who died very uh you know young in his late teens but um the um you know the religions of Christianity Judaism and Islam all have strong roots in Africa so Christianity in particular a lot of people think Christianity was brought to Africa with the missionaries is operating in the 1800s mostly from countries like Britain you know we all know about the Dr David Livingston and so on um they know about the Portuguese Jesuit um priests who also went and tried to convert people but actually

Christianity has far older roots in Africa and that's best exemplified by King aana Of axum Who Lived in the 300s Common Era and by about 330 um Common Era or ad as some people say um aana had made Christianity his Kingdom's official religion he was a pagan before that and after Armenia axom was the second Kingdom in the world to assume Christianity as its official religion and axom of course is in Northern Ethiopia also Incorporated parts of Eritrea today and the that was the case that Christianity was the official religion of Ethiopia and Eritrea until 1975 when the emperor hila salassi was removed from Power um the the the Ethiopians all believe in their history um beginning with um the story of King Solomon and um the fact that King Solomon had an affair um which gave rise to um menelik their um with the Queen of Sheba sorry I to say that again that King Solomon had um an affair with the Queen of Sheba she had a son

and the queen of shivba the Ethiopians believe is from Ethiopia she had a son menelik the first who became the first emperor the Solomon um Dynasty and um that continued with some interruptions right until 1975 and so this is all recorded in the books called the kbra neast which were written in the 14th century by probably several authors and it means the glory of the kings in the Amharic relig language and um you know that's that's the that's the story of um of how Ethiopia came into being from for most Ethiopians today there's some question as to whether the Queen of Sheba could actually have coincided with um Solomon because that would have made her um living around the 10th century CE hypothetically speaking and if you go to Ethiopia outside axum um in a place called dungu there's this amazing uh the ruins of an amazing Castel with remnants of a you know huge kitchen and bedrooms and and so on it would have been a very

fine Palace and people would say to you locally that is the home of the queen of Shiva archaeologists would say that it dates to a much much later era and probably was the home of a nobleman but it just shows you how myths sometimes can you know encounter inconvenient truths but we mustn't detract from the fact that people want some kind of you know Legends to help build their identities and to you know create their own histories and we must respect that it's also romantic and exciting and colorful I mean you talk about that wonderful idea that it's possible that there's a tradition that the Ark of the Covenant is in that area in other words taken for safekeeping and they take it to to uh to Africa and away from from the Holy Land because the Assyrians are coming amongst other people right it's a geopolitical nightmare in that area as a Crossroads you want to get things like the Ark of the Covenant to a nice safe place

absolutely you talked about I I I because speaking of color you were talking about one axom king who went into war I wrote it down it quote in a costume of linen and gold adorned with jewels and Beads riding on a golden chariot pulled by four elephants and then sainted I I I love that story can you just tell us a little about that and I realize that's a later period than what we've been dealing with but I get taken over by the romance and the color yeah that was King Caleb who um was um he he was a very devout Christian King and he um went into Southern Yemen um in order to help his fellow Christians because it was said at the time that they were being persecuted by um peoples who followed the Jewish religion so he went in dress exactly as you uh just described and he was a sort of great Christian King he had um support from um the Portuguese uh and he went in and he managed to um save the uh Christians of

Southern Yemen um from from the Jews um it was it was the leader of the Jewish people was new newa iwas you'd have to just check that one the spelling the pronunciation I'm very very sympathetic and um and so and then after he had um you know corrected this this Injustice to the Christians he then went back to his Capital um in in in what would be modern day Ethiopia and some accounts say that he just carried on you know in his reign was a very kind of magnanimous man and other accounts say that actually he retreated and and became a monk and just he spent the rest of his years the next 15 years of his life before he died in a monastery so um you know that is a uh that is a very very interesting story I'll have to find you the dates of King Caleb but um it is it is a bit later as you say for than than isana I won't let you go without dealing with one of the the sort of of hidden parts of history that don't get

enough attention which is this whole subject really but but I mean in your book you point out several times uh the importance of of women well in all societies right 50% of the population but but I mean I remember reading about the kushite women and how how the discussion was that they tended to be portrayed as rather heavy set because it was a sign of of the the wealth and the and the uh uh uh the the the ability of that Empire to support people who who could who could be fat and happy as we used to say uh and yet and yet when in your book you talk about uh the importance of queens and all these talk to me a little about about the African female experience here over the eras yeah you know this idea that African women are kind of downtrodden wretches is really not supported either by history or the present day if you go to any African country you know you'll go to the market and you'll see how it's

dominated by these African women who grow their own food because most food is produced by small farmers in Africa and most small farmers are the women and so any surplus they have they'll go to the market and they'll sell it and that's going to be you know good money for to bring up their children and for themselves and actually what their husbands are doing is almost by the way and that's always been the case that you know African women are are are very strong I mean in some cases they uh the line of succession was matal lineal as you saw with the Asanti people um you know in the case of the kushites Queens um kusai women had a very powerful role to play in society they could rule equally as co- Regents with their husbands or their sons they could be warrior queens um African history is littered with examples of strong female leadership such as Queen and Jinga of the indongo Kingdom which was a vassel

state of the kingdom of Congo so she was born in 1563 and died in 1663 she was a remarkable woman who um fought the Portuguese I like her story because it shows how once the Europeans started encroaching on African land they didn't just take it lying down they resisted Queen in Jinga um after her brother died and killed himself she maneuvered herself into position of becoming the ruling Queen she was always marked out for Greatness by her father the king at the time who thought she was the most able of his children and he would take her to councils with him she was also very effective at wielding the fighting axe um when her brother the king became king he asked her to go to um meet the governor of Luanda which is of course the modern day capital of Angola and their kingdom was about 250 miles away and he said go and tell the governor of Luanda who was Portuguese to stop taking our people as slaves and so

she went dressed in her finery and went with this huge Entourage and when she arrived the governor Luanda sitting on this beautiful chair covered in velvet and Bost in Gold told her to sit on a rug on the floor to show her subordinate status she refused and chose her tallest female attendant told her to go on all fours and sat on her to negotiate with the governor of Luanda you know a marvelous story she outwitted the Portuguese you know at every turn for the best part part of a quarter of a century and died you know in her 80s with her crown on her head she died peacefully you know y a sanir who died in 1921 one who fought the British in a Santi land what would be modernday um Ghana you know there are many examples of strong female leadership because I think in history we take the his in history a bit too seriously his story it's her story and the queens of kush I go back to them because they were known

as candas and in fact the the ancient Greeks Mist mistook that name for the name of a woman Canda they didn't realize it was the title for the queen and that's where we get the modern day um women's name Candice from but the candas the queens of kush when the young women of Sudan Rose against Omar Al bashid you know who' ruled the country with an iron fist for 30 years when he was brought down in 2019 and women were in the Vanguard of those protests they styled themselves as the candas that's what they called themselves reaching back into their history with these strong female you know role Ro models to assert themselves today on the domestic you know political social cultural agenda of Sudan so I think it is very very important and and also ancient Egypt you know women had property enjoyed property rights at a time you know when women in Europe enjoyed those rights at a much much later stage Queen hatchepsut who

ruled in the 14 50s in BCE in ancient Egypt was one of the most effective rulers of the new Kingdom um and you know she really swelled the Royal coffers she embarked on a really prolific building program and perhaps in deference to male iconographic Traditions she was often depicted in busts and statues sporting a beard um and in a kind of male guise um but you know there it is as a woman myself it's wonderful to to know that in history as well as in the modern era we do have these strong um women you know leaders to to reach back to um but I will if I may and I don't know if you want to ask me about this is perhaps to to say that you know I focused in my book very much on characters because I think history is best understood if it's seared into the imagination and that is best done by relating these Great Moments in Africa's history through the personalities it does mean that sometimes the actions of or people can

be overlooked and I do try to include those where I can to tell how society's formed and how you know um ordinary people lived by you know how they planted their crops what they ate and so on but it's just when you rely on oral tradition it is inevitably the deeds and the actions of the great leaders which become extoled um but I I I wanted to you know bust myths about Africa with this book which is why every chapter is pre with something to do with the modern era so if I talk about the transatlantic slave trade I'll talk about the issue of reparations if I talk about the benine kingdom in southern Nigeria I'll talk about the you know restitution whether um African artifacts should be returned or not to try and engage the reader to say look this is why this matters you know and to say look you know this idea that there are those who make history and those who stand on the sidelines of history with the Africans very much

being relegated to the sidelines is not supported by the evidence you have to break down Prejudice not with fairy tales but with facts and you know if you could indulge me by I just give you one example of that if you look at King Mansa Musa the first Mansa is the title of the king and Musa was his name Musa the first of the empire of Marley in West Africa broad part of you know the Sahel which covers West Africa today there was this massive Empire um manam Musa was born in 1280 died in 1332 so he lived a very long time ago and um you know he embarked on a pilgrimage in 1324 to Mecca and he went with a massive Entourage because the Marley Empire was such a wealthy Empire at you know at a time when Europe was beginning to enter a few decades later after his death the Black Death when it's you know the plague which decimated populations in Europe here was this Empire flourishing you know with

gold you know he he had gold literally coming out of his ears and he embarked on this pilgrimage to Mecca with um 60,000 personal uh 60,000 personal servants 12,000 members of his um household 600 personal attendance a 100 camels bearing between 10 to 15 Tons of gold he stopped in Cairo on the way to Mecca and on the way back and he spent so much gold and gave away so much gold that the global price of gold plunged by 25% and did not recover for more than a decade and by some accounts he is the richest individual to have ever lived in the world worth about 435 billion US doar what the story of manam Musa tells you that the actions of this medieval African king were such that they had an impact on the international economy on the price of gold which was of course was the main trading currency as it were then so the idea that Africa was somehow dislocated from the rest of the world is not born

out by just you know the the illustration of this one story and a Catalan cartographer in 1375 several decades after the death of manam Musa when he drew four panels of the world manam Musa was there the third panel such was his significance you know wearing a Golden Crown clad in silk holding a golden staff and a golden orb in the other hand and that just shows you that African history is not something that is just of interest to the you know The Connoisseur or somebody might be interested in Africa it is part of our Global story and it is something which anybody who wants to say that they're educated should know about and it it's not history that starts with the transatlantic slave trade there is an extraordinary history that far predates them they were always there right uh you you took a lot of time to talk with us today I appreciate it congratulations on the book and we will do a lead in where we don't just

introduce you but we'll go into a little because I started right in the middle of this story sort of so we'll do a little overview where I kind of sort of give a framework for what we're talking about here the only thing I want to ask you before I let you go although I think you're last question sort of answers this is there anything that we left out that you would want to make sure that we got in here so I would say that this book is for everyone as I say and I wanted to narrate Africa's history it's Revelator because I'm staggered by the level of ignorance about Africa's history particularly its pre-colonial history even on the continent itself but this is a kind of global phenomenon I want to combat that um that Ignorance by simply narrating the history but more than that I also want to give a history of Hope because I want it to be a celebration of African history there's enough about the

cannibalism the human sacrifices go somewhere else if you want to read about that for one book like mine there are hundreds out there that you can read about that kind of stuff I want to address the balance so to the non-african reader I want to say yes Africa is where it all started where you started hey aren't you interested in how the continent of your birth developed but to those people of African descent who have a closer connection to the continent who may live in Africa or of African descent like the African-Americans I want to say to them you have a history that is history institutions a culture and tradition and beliefs that are worthy of study that are worthy of respect and as the wonderful um wangari maai the Kenyan um environmental activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize said you cannot enslave a mind that knows itself that understands itself that values itself and I think that the telling of History by Africans

themselves and I hope in my book in a relatively accessible way go some way to saying to people of African descent you have got something which you know through which you can hold your head up high and let nobody tell you that you have a history that just begins and ends with you know enslavement and racism and so on there's so much more to your heritage and I wish you to embrace it and if this book in any small way can contribute to that mission then I'll be a very happy writer and a very happy person and more being discovered and uncovered all the time thank you so much for taking the time it's a wonderful book and we'll make sure at least our audience knows about it thank you so much indeed Dan I really enjoyed talking to you and thank you for your very thoughtful questions and thank you for so clearly having read the book and digested it my thanks to zanab badawi for coming on the program today indulging me

focusing on the pet issue I was interested in here uh you'll want to get the rest of the book though there's a ton of great stories there and her approach is well a little hardcore history history is uh in the way she goes about things good stories about interesting figures uh and a sort of a zoom lens that gives you a sense of the length breadth and depth of the history of the African continent it's an African history of Africa from the dawn of humanity to Independence already available in the UK the American Edition I believe it is comes out in mid January 2025

now I don't want to make a big production about the whole thing but I do want to mention that in June of this year uh 2025 this will be 20 years uh since we started podcasting which is um still impossible for me to get my mind around it's strange to me that this is what I've done now for the longest time in terms of a career in my life it's nothing I could have trained for or known about and um you know we're obviously in our normal traditional fashion not taking the kind of Advantage One in a business should probably take advantage of an anniversary like that for promotion and all these kinds of things but the one thing that occurs to me as I think about it is um you I mean there's no ad in this show is there I don't think we have an ad running we didn't have an ad in the last hardc we really don't we make our living from you and uh we have a deal I I I do these things and and you support us for this

um it's just me in terms of the content so it takes some time there may or may not be a mythical producer involved but you know this is it and this operation is funded by the listenership and to be able to do this for 20 years um with you folks buying the old shows and contributing in the several ways that are out there for you to support us uh it's it's it's nothing that anyone ever thought would work that's a good way to phrase it we talked to a lot of experts about the business model over the years and nobody sees this working just want to say that because the people that defied all the odds and all the experts are you and to be doing this for 20 years um I never forget why I'm able to do this and so the main thing that comes into my head when I just meditate on my life and where it is here because of this thing that everyone used to roll their eyes at me when I said what I did for a living back in 2005 and we started

the same month and it wasn't a coincidence that Apple started supporting podcasts on iTunes June slash early July 2005 um when I think about all the shows that were around back then that are gone and you think about all of the shows now and how much the the big corporations and I got nothing against big corporations but how much of a of a giant professional uh Endeavor this all is now compared to how it used to be and here you know we still have this little operation it's still running the way it used to run for all of the downside that that also entails um but I mean we're still here and there's only one reason for that and that's you and that's all I can think about with this uh Milestone that's approaching and so I just wanted to say to all of you uh thank you

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "EP31 Kushite Conversations"?

In order: 0:00 The Kingdom of Kush, Ethiopia, Herodotus, The 25th Dynasty of Egypt; 20:00 Herodotus; 30:00 Ethiopia; 40:00 Aaron Solomon, Ethiopia, David Livingston, Hila Salassi; 50:00 Ethiopia, Aaron Solomon, Queen of Sheba; 1:00:00 King Mansa Musa.

What is mentioned in this Dan Carlin episode?

18 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Ethiopia, Zaynab Badawi, Aaron Solomon, The Kingdom of Kush, Herodotus, Queen of Sheba. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "EP31 Kushite Conversations"?

The episode runs 1 h 11 min; the transcript is about 11,754 words in 68 timestamped sections.

More from Dan Carlin

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.