Alara

Alara is the earliest ruler of the royal line of Kush whose name has come down to us. Kush was the Nile land south of Egypt, stretching from the first cataract to the sixth and also known as Nubia; the royal cemetery of his line at el-Kurru lies in what is now northern Sudan. It is the Bible's Cush, known as Ethiopia (Aithiopia) in Greco-Roman sources, and Bible translations have usually rendered the name "Ethiopia", meaning this land, not modern Ethiopia. Later kings of his line, who ruled Egypt as its Twenty-fifth Dynasty, portrayed Alara as the founder of their dynasty, but Alara himself ruled in Kush, not Egypt. One of those kings, Tirhakah, appears in the Bible's account of Hezekiah of Judah (2 Kings 19:9; Isaiah 37:9).

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Cush in Scripture

Scripture does not name Alara, but it speaks of his land. In the table of nations, Cush is a son of Ham, listed with Mizraim (Egypt), Put and Canaan (Genesis 10:6). Isaiah 18 pronounces woe on "the land of whirring wings, along the rivers of Cush," which sends couriers "in papyrus vessels on the waters," and foresees gifts brought to the LORD at Mount Zion from a people "tall and smooth-skinned" and "widely feared" (Isaiah 18:1-2, 7). Marta Høyland Lavik, in a 2019 article in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, suggests that the chapter "might indirectly refer to the Kushite control over Egypt." Lavik reads its envoys as "one delegation from Kush and one from Judah," seeking an alliance that "YHWH will stop." Before a commander sent by Sargon II of Assyria captured Ashdod in 711 BC, the LORD had Isaiah walk "naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and omen against Egypt and Cush" (Isaiah 20:1-3). The king of Assyria would lead away "the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush," and "Those who made Cush their hope and Egypt their boast will be dismayed and ashamed" (Isaiah 20:4-5). Ashdod's fugitive ruler, Iamani, fled to "the border of Egypt and the territory of Meluḫḫa (Kush)," but the king of Kush sent him to Sargon II in chains. Nahum recalls that "Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength" for Thebes, yet she "went into captivity" (Nahum 3:8-10). Thebes had fallen to the Assyrian army of Ashurbanipal (669-631 BC), which plundered it, though Kushite rule in Egypt did not end at once. Psalm 68 and Zephaniah 3 look ahead to a day when "Cush will stretch out her hands to God" and worshipers from "beyond the rivers of Cush" bring the LORD an offering (Psalms 68:31; Zephaniah 3:10).

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Tirhakah, Hezekiah and Sennacherib

In 701 BC, the fourteenth year of Hezekiah (716-687 BC), Sennacherib king of Assyria (705-681 BC) attacked and captured the fortified cities of Judah (2 Kings 18:13). While Sennacherib threatened Judah, he was warned that "Tirhakah king of Cush" had set out to fight against him, and he sent messengers again to Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:9; Isaiah 37:9). This Tirhakah is the Nubian ruler of Egypt whose own inscriptions call him Taharqo. In two of those inscriptions, Kawa IV and VI, Taharqo names Alara as the brother of his grandmother. Both stood in the first court of Amun's temple at Kawa, on the east bank of the Nile across from Dongola, a temple Taharqo restored, naming his ancestor Alara among his reasons.

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Alara in the Inscriptions

Alara is known from inscriptions that later members of his line set up. His name first appears on the funerary stela of Queen Tabiry, his daughter and wife of Piye, from grave Ku.53 at el-Kurru; carved during Piye's reign, it writes Alara's name in a royal cartouche and calls Tabiry "the great king's-wife, daughter of Alara." The Kawa inscriptions give Alara the title "Chieftain," his actual rank as head of a tribal state, yet they too write his name in a royal cartouche. They recall that Alara commended his sister, Taharqo's grandmother, to Amun, praying "look upon my sister for me" so that her descendants would be accepted as rightful rulers, and Taharqo credits his own kingship to the god's word to Alara. Abbas Mohammed-Ali, in a 2016 report on the University of Dongola's investigations at el-Kurru, places Alara in the early eighth century BC, the last of the early chiefs of a native family who were making themselves rulers of the region. Mohammed-Ali's report records the suggestion that a chiefdom around Kurru probably arose at the dawn of the first millennium BC, and finds that the names of the chiefs before Alara have not been recovered, more likely for lack of literacy than through the loss of inscribed objects.

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Napata, Jebel Barkal and Amun

During Egypt's New Kingdom, Kush was governed from Amara West from the reign of Seti I (1291-1279 BC). As Egypt's New Kingdom hold on the region faded, Kush broke away from Egyptian control, and the rise of the kingdom of Kush began. Its religious capital was Napata, beside Jebel Barkal, the sacred mountain of Amun, where the Kushite kings enlarged the temple of Amun built under Egypt's New Kingdom. Timothy Kendall, in a historical overview for the Jebel Barkal Archaeological Project, calls Alara the first of his line said to have put his trust in Amun, and writes: "Almost certainly it was he who began restoration of the temples at Jebel Barkal."

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From Alara to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty

Alara was in all probability succeeded by Kashta. Mohammed-Ali's report calls Kashta Alara's brother and the first of the line to reach Thebes in Egypt. The relationship is not attested directly, however, and other studies present it as a supposition or a possibility. Piye, Kashta's successor, conquered Egypt, and his Great Triumphal Stela from the Amun temple at Napata records the campaign against Tefnakht of the western Delta and his allies. Kush went on to rule Egypt "for the better part of a century," in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Kushite royal inscriptions still recalled Alara as the founder of the dynasty in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

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El-Kurru, the Royal Cemetery

El-Kurru is a village on the outskirts of the modern town of Merowe, about 9 miles (15 km) south of Jebel Barkal, in the Napata region downstream of the fourth cataract. Its cemetery, the earliest of the royal cemeteries tied to the capital at Napata, holds the tombs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty kings and their ancestors. George A. Reisner, who headed a joint expedition of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Harvard University, first excavated the cemetery in 1918 and 1919. Tombs Ku.20, 21 and 23 were once taken to be the tombs of Alara, of one of his wives and of a wife of Kashta. Ku.21 and 23 are so ruined that they are hard to place in the cemetery's sequence of tombs, and which tomb was Alara's remains uncertain. Mohammed-Ali's report adds: "No name was recovered from any of these mastabas." Piye was buried under one of el-Kurru's pyramids, which rise at about 55 to 60 degrees, like the later pyramids at Nuri. In 2013 the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan began new fieldwork at el-Kurru, a project directed by Geoff Emberling.