They believed that the essence of a deity could inhabit an image of that deity, or, in the case of mere mortals, part of that deceased human being’s soul could inhabit a statue inscribed for that particular person. Without a nose, the statue-spirit ceases to breathe, so that the vandal is effectively “killing” it.

The Kingdom of Kush or Kush (/kʊʃ, kʌʃ/) was an ancient African kingdom situated on the confluences of the Blue Nile, White Nile and River Atbara in what is now the Republic of Sudan.

Kush was a part of Nubia, loosely described as the region between the Cataracts of the Nile. The Kingdom of Kush is probably the most famous civilization to emerge from Nubia. Three Kushite kingdoms dominated Nubia for more than 3,000 years, with capitals in Kerma, Napata, and Meroë.

Egyptians are the people originating from the country of Egypt. Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, a small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean and enclosed by desert both to the east and to the west.

Egyptian male faces tend to have lips that are more prominent, malar regions, periocular regions, and larger bridge of the nose as compared with average white Houstonian male faces. Egyptian males, however, have a more sloping forehead and a less prominent tip of the nose and chin.

In the 8th century BCE, he noted, Kushite rulers were crowned as Kings of Egypt, ruling a combined Nubian and Egyptian kingdom as pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty. Those Kushite kings are commonly referred to as the “Black Pharaohs” in both scholarly and popular publications.

For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world.

Africa