Amara West — a Pharaonic City on a Nile Island in the Heart of Kush
Between the Second and Third Cataracts in northern Sudan, on the western bank of the Nile today, lie the remains of Amara West. The city was not originally on the bank: it was founded on a small island adjoining the northern bank of the river, then the small northern branch of the Nile dried up, so that all of its ruins came to be on the western bank, according to research by the British Museum project that has been working at the site since 2008.
The city was founded around 1300 BC in the reign of King Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty, to be a new administrative centre for governing Kush, that is, Upper Nubia. Its foundation in his reign is indicated by the stamp of his cartouches on bricks of the city wall. In its beginnings the city was walled within an area of about 108 metres by 108 metres, and inside its wall it included a temple of sandstone, official stores and houses, according to studies by the project.
The temple was built and decorated for the most part in the reign of Ramesses II, the son of Seti I, then later kings added inscriptions and scenes to it, among them Merneptah, Ramesses III and Ramesses IX. The inscription of the sixth year of the reign of Ramesses IX, around 1120 BC, is considered the latest known Pharaonic royal inscription in Upper Nubia. The largest of the city's administrative buildings is a building that researchers have identified as the residence of the Deputy of Kush, the official who came after the Viceroy in administering the province, and in the building were found lintels and door jambs inscribed with the names of those who held this title.
Amara West does not tell a story of administration only, but a story of living together. The excavations begun by the Egypt Exploration Society in the seasons of 1938–1939 and then 1948–1950, and resumed by the British Museum since 2008 under the leadership of Neal Spencer, revealed adjoining houses, workshops and stores, and two large cemeteries containing tombs with domes and pyramidal chapels. In one of the two cemeteries, Deputies of Kush themselves were buried, among them Paser, who lived in the reign of Ramesses III — which refutes an old idea that the Egyptian elite were always returned to Egypt to be buried there.
Residence in the city continued throughout the Ramesside period, from about 1294 to 1069 BC, and burial in its cemeteries continued for another two centuries until the eighth century BC, that is, after Pharaonic control itself had disappeared. The project's studies link the city's eventual abandonment to a documented environmental change: the branch of the Nile beside it began to dry up one generation after its foundation, the encroachment of sand intensified and farming and life became difficult, and signs of strain appeared on the skeletons of the later inhabitants. Thus ended a city built to last, not by a recorded battle, but by a river that changed its course.
📚 Sources: Spencer, Stevens and Binder, Amara West: Living in Egyptian Nubia, The British Museum, London 2014; Binder, Spencer and Miehe, Cemetery D at Amara West: The Ramesside Period and its Aftermath, in British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Issue 16, 2011 — Editorial Team
