Most people are familiar with the ancient Egyptian civilization which arose along the banks of the Nile River.

However, the Egyptians were not the only major civilization that existed on the Nile.

Just south of Egypt was a culture that was very similar yet very different.

Who was Egypt's sometimes enemy, sometimes trade partner, sometimes overlords, and sometimes subjects.

Learn more about the Nubian civilization and the Kingdom of Kush on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. If you think of the Nile River, pyramids, and hieroglyphics, your mind will almost certainly turn to ancient Egypt.

To be sure, Egypt had all of those things, but they weren't the only civilization that shared those cultural traits.

Ancient Egypt extended down to about the modern day Egyptian Sudanese border.

This was the limit of what was known as Upper Egypt. And just to be clear, when I'm referring to Upper and Lower with reference to the Nile,

Upper refers to upstream, which is actually in the south because the Nile flows north.

But why did Egypt stop there? The Nile keeps going and

you'd think that given the constraints of the desert it would be natural for the

Egyptians to just keep extending their influence to the south. The reason has to do with the natural barriers which are in the Nile River.

If you remember back to my episode on the Nile there are a series of rapids in areas where the river becomes very shallow.

These are called the Nile cataracts. The first cataract is just south of the city of Aswan, and the second

cataract is located just south of the current border. It doesn't mean that life in the river below the cataracts was

inhospitable. In fact life along the upper Nile was not that much different than life

in the lower Nile. So it shouldn't be surprising that a very similar civilization arose even further upriver from Egypt, and those people were the Nubians.

Egypt and Nubia were in some ways mirror images of each other.

Egypt had basically a one-dimensional kingdom that hugged the banks of the Nile.

Nubia was a one-dimensional kingdom that hugged the banks of the Nile.

Egypt had pyramids, and Nubia later had pyramids.

Egypt had hieroglyphics, and so did Nubia.

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