Taharqa

Taharqa was pharaoh of Egypt and king of Kush, ruling from 690 to 664 BCE at the height of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty — the line of Nubian kings from the land of Kush, in what is now Sudan, who wore the double crown of Egypt. He was a son of the great king Piye.

His reign was an age of restoration and splendor. From his capitals at Memphis, Thebes, and Napata he rebuilt and adorned the temples of two lands, adding to Karnak and raising new sanctuaries at Kawa and Jebel Barkal; at Nuri he built the largest of the Nubian pyramids.

He held the frontier against the rising power of Assyria, defeating the army of Esarhaddon in 674 BCE before Assyria’s return drove him at last from the Egyptian north. He is remembered too in the Hebrew scriptures as Tirhakah, the Kushite king of Hezekiah’s day.

He died in 664 BCE and was buried beneath his pyramid at Nuri. Honored among the Great Ones of every civilization; kept here so the memory is never lost.