The world’s oldest known geological map is a nine-foot-long papyrus from the Egyptian village of Deir el-Medina, home to the New Kingdom craftsmen who worked in the Valley of the Kings.

But starting in the eighth century B.C., Nubian pharaohs from a Kushite kingdom, now in northern Sudan, ruled Egypt. For more than a hundred years, they revived and adapted ancient Egyptian ...

Adorned with tall, slender pyramids, the wealthy Nile city of Meroë was the seat of power of Kush, an ancient kingdom and rival to Egypt. Kushite culture blended Egyptian customs into its own ...