Queen Amanirenas
The Black Lady Who (Allegedly) Opened a Can of Whup-Ass on the Roman Empire
Part 1
Beau Albrecht
3,898 words
Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Behold! In the days of yore, there arose in Cush a most noble lady, Amanirenas named, and she was a mighty Queen.[1] Two millennia later, renewed buzz is effervescing about the East African potentate. One item was pipelined to my start page feed, thanks to whichever munchkin is entrusted with the Firefox transmission belt. What’s up with that — slow news day, huh? It’s called “The One-Eyed African Queen Who Defeated the Roman Empire,” authored by Adhiambo Edith Magak of Narratively. The illustration makes the most of it, depicting Her Majesty with a stern expression and a pirate eyepatch. The lede is quite telling:
Cocky male monarchs underestimated Queen Amanirenas for her gender, her race, and her disability. Each time, they did so at their own peril.
Ooh, how sassy! (This reminded me of the story about when Sammy Davis, Jr. was asked while golfing what his handicap was. He replied something like, “I’m a one-eyed black Jew.”) Moreover, she was rather butch, or what kids these days call “gender non-conforming.” Is it just me, or does the dry Newspeak term lack the Amazonian panache of the original word? Be that is it may, that’s four intersectionality points right out of the gate! Diversity is, of course, an excellent qualification for a mighty conqueror. If only Napoléon had been genderqueer, he would’ve licked the Russkies!
Historical background
Cush was a Nilotic nation approximately within the boundaries of modern Sudan. Heavy cultural influence from their Egyptian northern neighbors left them considerably better off than sub-Saharan peoples further south: Egyptian-style linens rather than grass skirts, stone buildings with borrowed architecture, etc. Still, it wasn’t always peaceful coexistence. Egypt, during an unusually militant phase of their history, took over its neighbors. Much later, Cush conquered Egypt and ruled it for half a century. Some genetic confusion occurred over the centuries. The near-white Egyptians became somewhat less so, and things just weren’t the same. After Alexander the Great’s time, the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled until 30 BC.
Following the star-crossed Cleopatra/Marc Antony matchup, Egypt was incorporated into the Roman Empire. The Cushites, observing that the gateway to Egypt was very lightly guarded, conducted a sneak attack on the southern border in 25 BC, sacking three cities at present-day Aswan. Perhaps they mistook Rome for a paper tiger, and wished to rule Egypt as they had in the past. The Romans quickly struck back, driving deep into enemy territory and destroying a principal city. After a counterattack failed to drive the Romans back to Egypt, the Cushites made a renewed peace overture, which led to a mutually-agreeable diplomatic settlement.
And so it came to pass that a couple of years ago — about 2,044 years after the fact — renewed buzz began surfacing about this footnote in ancient history, and Queen Amanirenas of Cush in particular. Some articles are relatively closer to the truth (mostly just spinning the story), and others are more fanciful (lying repeatedly), but all seek to reverse the outcome of the war long after the fact. It’s not a mere scholarly reinterpretation; it crosses the line into dishonesty. The woke narrative tells us that the Roman Empire surrendered and Cush triumphed. That certainly would’ve been a surprise to any of the participants in that long-ago conflict! If you can’t imagine why cultural Marxists want to retcon ancient history, then it’s back to the junior varsity league for you.
As we well remember, the George Fentanyl tantrum unleashed a deluge of anti-white bile, which only lately has been settling down to the usual virulence. Accompanying this was much statue vandalism, inflammatory pronouncements by the usual suspects, and all that. Orwellian rewriting of history was an annoying sideshow throughout. This is hardly anything new, of course; long ago, critical theory corrupted the humanities, and pinko professors such as Howard Zinn and other activists pretending to be historians busily fiddled with the past. Countless victims of the modern educational system now mistake Leftist hogwash for real history.
Afrocentrism has been one of these dishonest pursuits for quite a while. Part of it involves reimagining Caucasoid peoples of North Africa as blacks. (Notably, this includes modern illustrations of Pharaoh Ramesses II looking typically Congoid. In fact, he had slightly wavy red hair and a hooked nose, hardly unusual for ancient Egyptians.) Another effort is to ballyhoo black inventions, making it seem as if they’re a race of unrecognized geniuses. In general, Afrocentrism greatly overstates black accomplishments at the expense of truth. The boastful nonsense only went this far because it’s useful to the long-standing anti-white propaganda campaign, as well as the usual difficulties in contradicting thin-skinned blacks.
We Wuz Kangz, the distaff version
At some point after the Long Hot Summer of Floyd, the Queen Amanirenas story made a tiny blip on the radar, even if it was mostly lost in the shuffle. To take one example, the website Afrika Is Woke has a real humdinger from 2022: “Amanirenas: The Nubian Queen Who Defeated Rome.”
Queen Amanirenas is the Nubian Queen of Kush who defeated Rome and is the reason the Romans never conquered Kush. . . .
After the Roman Empire conquered Egypt in 30 BC, Rome attempted to Tax the Nubians in Egypt and to invade Kush under Queen Amanirenas in order to make it a vassal State paying Tribute to the Roman Empire.
Other than that:
Faced with the risk of a dwindling and weakened Army in the harsh desert terrain, the Roman Empire decided it was better to make a strategic withdrawal to avoid a risky climatic defeat in a final battle with Queen Amanirenas’ forces.
The Romans accepted defeated [sic] by Queen Amanirenas by signing a Peace Treaty with Kush which secured Kushite borders and revoked Roman Taxation.
A colorful detail in the narrative from Narratively describes how Cushite emissaries reached Caesar Augustus in Greece, offered a gift of golden arrows, and promptly tooled Rome’s top dog:
“If you want peace, they are a token of her warmth and friendship. If you want war, you will need them.”
For an African queen to give such an ultimatum to the most powerful man in the world would have been considered a serious insult.
He received the bundle of arrows from the envoys and promptly signed a peace treaty.
In truth, this was not so much a treaty as it was a surrender. Augustus submitted to all of the demands made by Queen Amanirenas, including that the Romans withdraw from all Kushite territories they had occupied and pledge that they would never again seek to collect taxes or tributes from her kingdom.
The bundle of arrows story is an interesting detail, though probably legend. Even a write-up by Afrøpean says that this much is “of questionable authenticity.”
What did the ancients say about the Cushite border war with Roman Egypt?
Politically-charged puff pieces set off my bullshit detectors. Where does fact end and spin begin? It’s helpful to consult the original sources. Consider the New Age yarns about Atlantis. The only ancient account is a single yarn by Plato, which could’ve been a thought experiment, and thus as fictional as Ruritania. The extensive corpus of crystal weenie Atlantis-wank accreted around this one paragraph.
What modern history lacks in quality, ancient history lacks in quantity. The primary sources on this obscure kerfuffle are a bit thin, which is hardly unusual for antiquity. Also, the area’s war correspondence isn’t always the best. One early example is a hieroglyphic inscription cataloguing victories against their neighbors, including a claim that the Israelites had been wasted and “their seed was not” — presumably meaning that their tribe was extinguished, rather than boasting of torched granaries. The Red Sea Pedestrians certainly aren’t the only people prone to wild exaggeration! After Egypt’s lackeys were reportedly ausgelöscht by their Pharaonic masters, their descendants are as snug as bugs on a rug nowadays.
The Cushite side of the story might be inscribed on the Hamadab Stela, but nobody can read it. Scholars have a pretty good idea of how their alphabet works, given that it was adapted from their northern neighbors. (I could be a wag and irreverently call it “reformed Egyptian.”) Their language, however, remains a mystery. It’s not entirely certain that the inscription really is about all this.
Cassius Dio had a bit to say on the subject:
[T]he Ethiopians, who dwell beyond Egypt, advanced as far as the city called Elephantine, with Candace as their leader, ravaging everything they encountered. At Elephantine, however, learning that Gaius Petronius, the governor of Egypt, was approaching, they hastily retreated before he arrived, hoping to make good their escape. But being overtaken on the road, they were defeated and thus drew him after them into their own country. There, too, he fought successfully with them, and took Napata, their capital, among other cities. This place was razed to the ground, and a garrison left at another point; for Petronius, finding himself unable either to advance farther, on account of the sand and the heat, or advantageously to remain where he was with his entire army, withdrew, taking the greater part of it with him. Thereupon the Ethiopians attacked the garrisons, but he again proceeded against them, rescued his own men, and compelled Candace to make terms with him.
This lacks the Afro-triumphalist spin of contemporary takes. In brief, the Cushites initiated an unprovoked border raid and wrecked the place. They cut and run as soon as they found out the Romans were coming. Then the Cushites got a good paddling throughout the war, and were forced to the negotiating table.
Queen Amanirenas here is referred to as Candace. It’s basically a job description, much like Pharaoh or Caesar — in this case, it’s the Cushite word for Queen. It’s nice to know that blacks used to come up with nice-sounding names, unlike the inventive monikers they’ve been inflicting on their kids since the 1960s. (Surely Candace Owens is happy about it.) Also, “Ethiopians” doesn’t refer here to a single country as it does today. Rather, it was a catch-all term in Greek for Africans south of the Sahara.
The best available source comes from the end of Book 17 of Strabo’s Geographica. The author was a good friend of Aelius Gallus, the Prefect of Egypt, when this kerfuffle began, so he surely got the inside skinny. Section 53 notes that Egypt was generally peaceful, and therefore lightly protected along its southern border:
[T]he country is sufficiently guarded by the Romans with only three cohorts, and even these are not complete; and when the Aethiopians dared to make an attack upon them, they imperilled their own country.
The border defense basically amounted to three battalions on a skeleton crew footing, deployed at Syenê (neighboring Elephantine, now Aswan) to hold up the fort. Even so, the raid turned out to be a rash move that could’ve led to Cush’s downfall — which rather differs from contemporary woke interpretations suggesting that the Roman Empire got pwn3d.
Nemo me impune lacessit — Latin for “Fuck around and find out,” kinda sorta
After that Section 54 describes the entire event, corroborating the account by Cassius Dio and giving further details. Often the woke narrative states — or at least suggests — that the Romans had initiated force. This was not so. Rather, the Cushites took advantage of a very thinly-guarded border and pulled a Pearl Harbor:
But the Aethiopians, emboldened by the fact that a part of the Roman force in Aegypt had been drawn away with Aelius Gallus when he was carrying on war against the Arabians, attacked the Thebaïs and the garrison of the three cohorts at Syenê, and by an unexpected onset took Syenê and Elephantinê and Philae, and enslaved the inhabitants, and also pulled down the statues of Caesar.
Then the Romans appointed a new Prefect of Egypt who went on the warpath with a punitive expedition:
But Petronius, setting out with less than ten thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry against thirty thousand men, first forced them to flee back to Pselchis, an Aethiopian city, and sent ambassadors to demand what they had taken, as also to ask the reasons why they had begun war; and when they said that they had been wronged by the Nomarchs, he replied that these were not rulers of the country, but Caesar; and when they had requested three days for deliberation, but did nothing they should have done, he made an attack and forced them to come forth to battle; and he quickly turned them to flight, since they were badly marshalled and badly armed; for they had large oblong shields, and those too made of raw ox-hide, and as weapons some had only axes, others pikes, and others swords.
Although outnumbered about three to one, the Romans drove back the enemy forces and staged a counter-invasion. The Cushites asked for a ceasefire and got it, but time ran out. (The language suggests a lack of seriousness given their situation. Apparently there was indecision, dithering, or even pugnacious horsing around. Either way, no acceptable proposal emerged.) It was a woeful missed opportunity to spare themselves from further loss of life and devastation.
The way the Cushites themselves described it, their gripe wasn’t with Rome, but rather with some of Egypt’s provincial governors. Unfortunately, Strabo didn’t describe their stated grievance with the Nomarchs. The casus belli inspiring the sneak attack on Syenê remains a bit iffy. Territorial aggrandizement is one possibility; the Cushites had overrun Egypt a few centuries prior, and perhaps saw an opportune moment for another land grab while defenses were stretched to the thinnest. Another factor, or at least a contributing one, might have been discontent over tribute levied on Cush. By some accounts, this was perhaps a continuation of policies begun under Egypt’s previous Ptolemaic dynasty; if so, it was just business as usual.
The woke narrative favors the tribute explanation, which may actually be correct given that some serious scholars support it. For some reason, this doesn’t contradict the wokesters portraying the Romans as initiating hostilities, while claiming that the Cushites dindu nuffin — conveniently disregarding the sneak attack. If the Cushites really felt so strongly about it, they could’ve just stopped handing over their lunch money. They also could’ve finessed it: “The check is in the mail, Guido, I swear!” It’s possible that the Romans would’ve let it slide without a serious reaction. On the other hand, a treacherous sneak attack absolutely would start a war.
Note that tribute arrangements were quite common throughout much of history. They certainly weren’t an exclusively Roman practice. (Protection rackets nevertheless remain a venerable tradition in southern Italy and New York City.) In recent times, tribute has come to be called “war reparations,” or on an individual level, “income taxes.” The oddest instance of Dane Geld in history was when Jimmy Carter started paying both the Israelis and the Egyptians not to fight each other, even though America wasn’t part of their war. That annually siphons billions out of the public treasury to this day. Sweet!
The wokesters also sometimes praise the Cushites for “defeating” the Romans despite a disadvantage in weaponry. Strabo mentioned that they were badly armed, though it seems this wasn’t exactly a matter of muskets versus AK‑47s. The description of their arms is interesting. For one thing, their type of shield remained perennially popular in parts of Africa, even among the faraway Zulus. It’s even a design element on the flags of Kenya and Swaziland. The lightweight oblong shields covered in rawhide surely had an obvious advantage against a particular common Roman infantry tactic. The legionaries often threw heavy darts, which stuck deep in the typical barbarian-style wooden bucklers, weighing them down further until they were useless. The East African surfboard-shaped shields can’t be weighed down like that, since they provide cover even when resting on the bottom point, and darts easily could be shaken loose from the rawhide.
Now some were driven together into the city, others fled into the desert, and others found refuge on a neighbouring island, having waded into the channel, for on account of the current the crocodiles were not numerous there. Among these fugitive were the generals of Queen Candacê, who was ruler of the Aethiopians in my time — a masculine sort of woman, and blind in one eye. These, one and all, he captured alive, having sailed after them in both rafts and ships, and he sent them forthwith down to Alexandria; and he also attacked Pselchis and captured it; and if the multitude of those who fell in the battle be added to the number of the captives, those who escaped must have been altogether few in number.
Now it’s getting downright grim — heinous, even. The Cushites cut and run, but few escaped. Even their generals got rounded up after surviving being crocodile bait. The Roman forces weren’t suffering heavy attrition, but the Cushites were. So who was getting spanked?
From Pselchis he went to Premnis, a fortified city, after passing through the sand-dunes, where the army of Cambyses was overwhelmed when a wind-storm struck them; and having made an attack, he took the fortress at the first onset. After this he set out for Napata. This was the royal residence of Candacê; and her son was there, and she herself was residing at a place near by. But though she sent ambassadors to treat for friendship and offered to give back the captives and the statues brought from Syenê, Petronius attacked and captured Napata too, from which her son had fled, and razed it to the ground; and having enslaved its inhabitants, he turned back again with the booty, having decided that the regions farther on would be hard to traverse.
Petronius was in such a confident position that he spurned a peace offer. (Perhaps he was also offended that they’d wasted his time during the earlier ceasefire.) Legio XXII Deiotariana and Legio III Cyrenacia were on the march. The Romans took over the former capital of Cush. He pulled a Gaza on one of their top two cities, likely as retaliation for the wrecking job done at Egypt’s border. It’s almost painful to read; ancient warfare was a bitch (not that the modern variety is a piece of cake).
He decided to press no further — not because of insufficient troop strength, but because of the desert conditions Cassius Dio described. If not for that, Meroë, their capital at the time, would’ve been the next target. Given typical Roman marching speed, the route with the shortest distance across the parched Nubian Desert would have taken two weeks to cross. That was impractical, as noted, and similar conditions had swallowed up a Persian army in times past. Complicating matters, they were heavily loaded down with plunder and captives.
But he fortified Premnis better, threw in a garrison and food for four hundred men for two years, and set out for Alexandria. As for the captives, he sold some of them as booty, and sent one thousand to Caesar, who had recently returned from Cantabria; and the others died of diseases. Meantime Candacê marched against the garrison with many thousands of men, but Petronius set out to its assistance and arrived at the fortress first . . .
Petronius headed back to the forward operating base and made preparations for the long haul. After venturing to the northernmost region of Egypt to unload the spoils of war, he returned in time to head off a large-scale Cushite counterattack led by Candace. Hey — it’s getting late in the story, and the Roman punitive expedition hasn’t been spanked so far. Wait, when did that happen again? The wokesters assured me that Brown Sugah Candi whupped dem honkies!
[A]nd when he had made the place thoroughly secure by sundry devices, ambassadors came, but he bade them go to Caesar; and when they asserted that they did not know who Caesar was or where they should have to go to find him, he gave them escorts; and they went to Samos, since Caesar was there and intended to proceed to Syria from there, after despatching Tiberius to Armenia. And when the ambassadors had obtained everything they pled for, he even remitted the tributes which he had imposed.
Petronius continued to shore up fortifications for the long haul. He was in no immediate danger after winning yet another battle – presumably, that included all the reserves that Candace could mobilize and throw at him. When the Cushites made another peace offer, he referred them to the Emperor and granted them safe passage. They were certainly serious after repeatedly being spanked; for one thing, the destruction of Napata was a grievous blow and more than sufficient payback for the raid on Egypt. Simply put, it was time to move on.
The guides brought the Cushites to Caesar Augustus, and it looked as if it would be one of the infrequent times in history when diplomats would actually earn their paychecks. The specifics are open to interpretation. Some of the wokesters claim that the emissaries boldly presented their demands via a barely-veiled threat. But since they weren’t told to take a hike and return after adjusting their attitudes, this suggests another possibility.
Rather than haughtiness, perhaps instead they were contrite and softened the Emperor’s heart with tales of woe. (Negroes are talented at lamentation. They also have a knack for ingratiation, when it benefits them.) If indeed that’s how the meeting went, they had little need to exaggerate, given all the devastation. They worked out a peace treaty on mutually agreeable terms. It doesn’t specify what the emissaries requested, or what was requested of Cush in return, but both sides came away happy about the deal. So that’s the “surrender” that the woke narrative hoots and hollers about.
For lagniappe, Big Gus even kindly returns their lunch money. The wokesters also gloat about this one considerably. Strabo describes it as an additional afterthought, beyond what the Cushite emissaries had requested. This means it was the Emperor’s idea; he merely surprised them with a dab of extra frosting on the cake for the sake of canny diplomacy. If anything — contrary to what the woke narrative says — it’s further evidence (as if any more were necessary) that the Romans weren’t under duress due to the military situation. Caesar Augustus wouldn’t have voluntarily sweetened the deal after the fact if he’d just been coerced into a vae victis peace treaty.
A couple of woke accounts — one probably paraphrasing the other — oddly stipulate that it was the Egyptian Governor who imposed the tribute, not the Roman Oberboss. Still, they speculate that Big Gus put him up to it. (They don’t explain why the Emperor of all people would need to hide behind a subordinate for a routine foreign policy matter.) If we’re to assume this speculation is correct, then this means that by cancelling the tribute, Caesar Augustus wasn’t reversing course on anything he had done officially; it would be the same if the tribute had been business as usual since the Ptolemaic dynasty. That would leave less to hoot about, of course.
Note
[1] Bonus points to anyone who can figure out which two classic literature openers I riffed on here. More bonus points for whoever knows where the creatively-captioned papyri came from.
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6 comments
“More bonus points for whoever knows where the creatively-captioned papyri came from.”
Okay, since nobody else has bitten, the papyrus is the “Hypocephalus of Sheshonq” or Facsimile 2 from The Book of Abraham.
No longer extant ─ see Isaiah 29:11-12 KJV ─ papyri like this were believed to have been lost in 1871 when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow knocked over a coal oil lantern in Chicago.
However, some other fragments of papyri have since been located in metropolitan museums from time to time and published. The authentication and provenance remains controversial, however.
🙂
As Bill said to Monica, “Congratulations – you win a cigar!”
The other two will appear later, also creatively captioned 🙂
So Augustus canceled their tribute— perhaps he simply didn’t want any more to do with them?
We do know that the outcome of the war had been orders of magnitude worse for Cush than it had been for Rome. One of their two major cities got levelled, and the Cushite counteroffensive failed. Since presumably they threw the kitchen sink at Petronius but it came to nothing, then that would’ve left the Cushites in a badly weakened condition. So they made a third bid for peace, which was accepted.
As for how the peace talks with the Emperor went, the information from the text sources is rather limited. My take is that refusing the peace offer and continuing to beat up on Cush further would’ve been overkill. It was more profitable to throw them a bone, so that they’d have no further points of contention. Then they’d become a reliable trading partner, which was important since the Nile was then the only easy gateway to trade within the interior of Africa. That was more rational than fighting an endless spit-in-your-eye war the way we do lately.
Rainbow, my point was meant more less in agreement with yours: Augustus said “the less I have to grapple with these monkeys the better”
Indeed; I’m just expounding.
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