KUSHITE RELIGION. Kush was the name given in ancient times to the area of northeast Africa lying just to the south of Egypt. It is the Aethiopia of Herodotus and other classical writers, and it corresponds in a general way to the Nubia of today. Its peoples were and are African in race and language, but since very early times their culture has been strongly influenced by that of their northern neighbors.

The northern part of Kush was under direct Egyptian control during the New Kingdom (c. 1580–1000 BCE). Egyptians did not settle in the country in large numbers, but they oversaw the building of temples, towns, and fortresses and the inauguration of the typical pharaonic system of administration and of worship. When the colonial overlords departed, around 1000 BCE, they had laid the basis for an Egyptianized successor-state that was to emerge a little later as the...