ABSTRACT
IN connexion with the Ptolemaic Period a short account of the revival of th e power of the Nubian kingdom must be given. We have already seen that the temple at Dakkeh, built by Arq-Amen (Ergamenes), was added to by Ptolemy IV., and it seems that either in his time or that of his predecessor much of th e country between th e First and Second Cataracts reverted to the Egyptian kingdom, from which it had been separated since the time of Ta-nut-Amen, some 400 years before. Ptolemy H. must have asserted some claim to suzerainty over the Nubian kingdom, and this view is supported by the fact that he received the young Nubian prince Arq-Amen, the Ergamenes of Diodorus (iii. 6), at his court, for the purpose of being educated after the mariner of the Greeks. Until this time tlre Nubian kingdom seems to have been isolated from Egypt, although the descendants of Ta-nut-Amen continued to arrogate to themselves the titles of " king of the South and North," and "son of the Sun," thus claiming the legal right to rule over the whole of the Nile Valley from the Eastern Sudan to the
Mediterranean Sea. The Sattes, however, took no notice of their claim, and in Nubia the Egyptian royal titles gradually came to be nothing but mere formulae, which its kings themselves scarcely understood. Their
capital remained at Napata, Nepiia, about 450 miles from Wadi Halfa, for a long time, but they finally founded a new capital at Meroe, the ancient Bgyptian Maroauat, , the modern Bakrawiyeh, which lies about forty miles south of the river Atbara.
