Kushite Internationalism and Iron Age "Phoenician" Style (900-600 BCE)

The second kingdom of Kush was deeply engaged with the Mediterranean world, but is typically seen as a consumer, rather than active participant, in larger phenomena like the Iron Age international style, which appears on portable high value objects in decorative motifs associated with both royal and private contexts in Sudanese Nubia. Feldman argues that the conflict between Egypt and Assyria resulting in Egyptian alliances in the Levant in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE may have triggered an aesthetic shift to the more “Egyptianizing” trend of the “Phoenician” style shared widely across the region, which feature complex representations of animals and human/animal hybrids. However, the kings of Egypt at this time were Kushite, not Egyptian, so the influence may have had a more southerly origin than is usually acknowledged. A review of older evidence from sites like the royal cemetery at el-Kurru combined with objects from recent archaeological work at Tombos in northern Sudan provides a robust corpus very early portable objects from this period that engage with, and given their early date may have influenced the motifs and techniques found in the greater Levant and Aegean. This evidence places ancient Kushites at the center of the fluid cultural and stylistic entanglements that characterize the “Phoenician” style, not as passive consumers but actively engaged with their Levantine and Aegean counterparts in intersecting international spheres of practice extending deep into Africa.