Meroë
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Meroë
Meroë (mĕrˈōē), ancient city in N Sudan, on the east bank of the Nile, N of Khartoum. In the mid-6th cent. B.C., Meroë replaced Napata as the central city of the Cushite dynasty (see Cush) and from 530 B.C. until A.D. 350 served as the capital of the dynasty. By the 1st cent. B.C., Meroë was a major center for iron smelting. It is believed that knowledge of iron casting was carried (7th–10th cent.) from the middle Nile to the middle Niger by a great African overland route. Among Meroë's extensive ruins are royal palaces (6th cent. B.C.) and a temple of Amon. Nearby are cemeteries and three groups of pyramids.
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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Meroe
an ancient city in the Sudan, between the fifth and sixth cataracts of the Nile (the ruins of Meroe are 5 km north of present-day Kabushia). Beginning in the second half of the sixth century B.C., it was the capital of Cush (the Meroitic kingdom). A settlement existed on the site of Meroe as early as the Neolithic period. The city’s location near deposits of iron ore and at the intersection of caravan routes aided its rise. Circa 330–340 A.D. Meroe fell to the Axum kingdom. Excavations of the city were led by the British archaeologist J. Garstang from 1909 to 1914. The American scholar George Reisner studied the royal necropolises between 1920 and 1923.
REFERENCE
Katsnel’son, I. S. Napata i Meroe—drevnie tsarstva Sudana. Moscow, 1970.The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.