This Kushite prince, who had his own interests in halting Assyrian expansion, likely caught the aggressors by surprise as they prepared their siege of Jerusalem.Īubin offers a thrilling military history and a stirring political analysis of the ancient world. The commander of the Kushite expeditionary force was Taharqa (or as the Bible calls him Tirhakah). Of Egypt’s 31 dynasties, this, the 25th Dynasty, is the only one that all scholars agree, was black. 350, Kushites held sway over Egypt from 712 B.C. A monarchy that existed for more than 1000 years, from 900 B.C. Kush, also known as Nubia, was located in what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan.

While the Bible attributes the Assyrian retreat to an angel and secular commentators cite pestilence, Aubin, in a meticulously documented work, demonstrates that an alliance with the African nation of Kush bolstered Jerusalem’s defences. Henry Aubin, in a major feat of scholarship, determines that Jerusalem was aided by a Kushite army from Africa which had marched northeast from the Nile valley. when the Babylonians sacked the city, forcing its leadership class into exile. It then prepared an assault on Judah and its capital at Jerusalem.īut in one of those significant events that changes the course of world history, Assyria was repelled. It had already vanquished the kingdom of Israel to the north including the capital at Samaria.

the Assyrian empire was in its ascendancy.

One Brother Shy by Terry Fallis