Nubia is the region that nowadays covers northern Sudan and southern Egypt, approximately from Khartoum to Aswan. The cultures that flourished in Nubia cover a period of more than 10.000 years. One of these was the Kerma culture, which was an important empire between ca. 2500 BCE and 1504 BCE, when its territory was annexed by Egypt. This northern neighbour colonised Nubia till in the middle of the eighth century BCE the roles were inversed and Nubian rulers took over the power in Egypt. Even when almost a century later they had to withdraw to their indigenous southern homeland, the Nubian empire of Kush (ruled from the capital Napata and later Meroe) managed to survive into the fourth century CE, when it disintegrated under unknown circumstances. When during the rule of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, in the middle of the sixth century, Christian missionaries arrived in Nubia, they encountered three kingdoms: Nobadia in the north, Makuria south of it, and Alwa (Alodia) to the far south. Conversion took place within a short time, and although the Churches of Nobadia and Alwa formally recognised the authority of the patriarch of Alexandria, and not the one of Constantinople, the Byzantine influence in Nubia was undeniable, also after the merger of Nobadia with Makuria in the seventh century, when the Nubian Churches were all under Alexandria.
