PIANKHY

Pharaoh Piye (also known as Pianky), Kashta's successor , continued to exercise power over Egyptian affairs. His troops occupied much of Upper Egypt. A stele in Gebel Barkal suggests that the Egyptians Piye to intervene in Egypt probably to counter the power of Tefnakhte, a local dynast in Lower Egypt. Piye is not portrayed as a conqueror of Egypt but as a protector of its ancient religion. After his victory, he spared Tefnakhte and gradually withdrew Kushite power from Egypt . "Piye was an important builder . He refurbished and enlarged the old Egyptian temple of Amen at Gebel Barkal. Considered the single most important religious building in Kush, he extended it towards the Nile. He raised a substantial hypostyle hall entered through an enormous pylon. The building was 500 feet long and about 135 feet wide...He built a palace next to this temple. Since neither Kasta nor Piye 's invasions of Egypt resulted in destruction nor looting, Dr. Welsby feels that this 'suggests they were motivated more by piety than territorial ambition.' Professor Hansberry, the pioneering African American historian, was also of this opinion: ◦ "'[I]n almost every instance where we are able to get a glimpse of the Ethiopian [ie Kushite ] sovereigns, great warriors though they were, we find them free of those rapacious and piratic habits that have so often sullied the otherwise brilliant careers of so many monarchs of other nations....[I]n [Piye's] triumphant march through Egypt, we are told that before he would attack a city he would first offer it the most favorable terms of peace to avoid fighting , for it was his desire that harm should come to no one, that 'not even a babe might have cause to cry'...[When] he left Egypt to return to Ethiopia 'he did not leave behind a land filled with the slain and ruins of towns which he had burned ,' nor were there 'fields blackened with the ashes of the crops which he had set on fire.' The spirit of tolerance and forbearance was also evident on the part of... Shabaka; the same statesmanlike qualities are expressed in the Ethiopian king Taharka...Here were representatives of Homer's 'blameless' and Hesiod's 'high -souled Ethiopians.'" P. 204-205, "The Later History of the Nile Valley," WHEN WE RULED (2006) by Robin Walker