I watched The Kingdom of Kush: Modern Day Egypt/Sudan. I chose this video because I am reading The Red Pencil with one of my reading groups, and that book takes place in Sudan 2004. I think I will share some of this information with that reading group. Kelli also watched this video and wrote beautifully about the arts and culture, so i'll focus my entry on a few other areas from the video. 

The people of Kerma often lived in small independent and separate population groups. They needed to be mobile in order to find good pasture for their livestock. Due to their frequent movement, groups communicated with each other via their own hieroglyphics, separate from those from Egypt. It was interesting to learn that still today historians are not fully able to decipher these hieroglyphics.  

The economic systems relied heavily on being able to transport goods along the Nile, but this was difficult during parts of the year when the Nile was not passable due to its cataracts, which are rock formations in the river. Traders would need to use land routes which were harder and took longer. Trade across the Nile was a critical source of wealth. Iron eventually became the main source of wealth. 

I learned that the army was particularly known for it's skill of horsemanship and that archers would dip arrow heads into poison to make them more deadly, with a goal of being able to shoot them into the eye! 

I found the rituals revolving death to be particularly beautiful. I enjoying learning that bodies were placed on the south side of their graves and that people were often buried with pottery because the pottery would not decay or breakdown over time. I learned that royalty were buried with shabtes, which were small figurines believed to assist the kings in the afterlife.