Egypt and Kush in Mesopotamian Chronicles. Ägypten und Levante|Ägypten und Levante XXXI 31|

This article focuses on African-Mesopotamian relations in general and on how Egypt and Kush (in today’s Sudan) are represented in Mesopotamian chronicles specifically. Mesopotamian chronicles, which belong to a genre that focuses on historiography, contain references to Egypt and Kush in seven different chronicles dating to the Neo-Babylonian period and the Hellenistic period. The results of the study show that Egypt and Kush are not differentiated in the sources; that the references in question deal with military conflicts; and that Egypt appears both in positive and negative terms, thus standing in contrast to the propagandistic genre of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. Even though Mesopotamian chronicles were primarily a matter for the scholarly elite, these texts provide one piece of the puzzle on how Egypt and Kush were regarded in ancient Mesopotamia