B.C. 300.About 300 B.C. (?), or perhaps earlier, the frontier of Egypt was then fixed at a point about 80 miles south of Aswan.
B.C. 260.Ark Amen, better known as Ergamenes, who was brought up at the court of Ptolemy II, was a man of some character, for besides building a temple at Dakka he set a new fashion in Priest-Kings by refusing to commit suicide at the request of the priests and by executing those who demanded it.
B.C. 210.In the days of Ptolemy V, Nubia caused trouble to Egypt, and the Egyptian king added the country between Aswan and Napata (?) to his possessions, dividing it into 13 districts.
In later Ptolemaic times the kings of Ethiopia evidently became more negroid, and owned barbaric names; and as time went on, the Kingdom of Meroe seems to have been governed by a series of queens or queen-mothers, bearing the title of Candace. Little is known of this period.
B.C. 30.When Egypt became a Roman province, an embassy from Ethiopia arrived at Philæ, and the king of the country near Khartoum was taken under Roman protection.
B.C. 22.Eight years after, a Queen Candace attacked Aswan and routed the Roman garrison there. She was, however, heavily defeated by the Prefect Petronius, who pursued her as far as Napata (?) and destroyed that town, leaving Roman garrisons there and near to Dongola.
A.D. 200.In the time of Strabo, who visited Egypt during the government of Ælius Gallus, Petronius’s successor, Aswan was again the frontier, the Romans having, as he observes, “confined the province of Egypt within its former limits.” Philæ then belonged “in common to the Egyptians and Ethiopians.” This did not, however, prevent the Cæsars from considering Lower Ethiopia as belonging to them or from adding to the temples already erected there.
The descendants of the priest-kings of Ethiopia seem to have died out about A.D. 200.
Strabo says the Ethiopians above Aswan consisted of the Troglodytæ, Blemmyes, Nubæ, and Megabari. The Megabari and Blemmyes inhabited the Eastern Desert north of Meroe, towards the frontiers of Egypt, and were under the dominion of the Ethiopians.[149] The Ichthyophagi[150] lived on the shore of the Red Sea; the Troglodytæ, from Berenikê southwards, between it and the Nile; and the Nubæ, an “African” nation, were on the left bank, and independent of Ethiopia, which country, he states, did not extend north of Halfa.
A.D. 296.From Procopius we learn that in A.D. 296, in the reign of Diocletian, these Nubæ, or Nobatæ, were brought from the Oasis of El Kharga, and given the country above Aswan, on condition of their protecting Egypt against the incursion of the Blemmyes. This treaty was annually ratified by a religious sacrifice, according to the rites of the ancient Egyptian religion, on the Island of Philæ, in which the Roman garrison took part. There are still the remains of the wall which Diocletian built across the valley near here; and, according to some authorities, not venturing to trust entirely to the Nubians to defend the Egyptian frontier, he agreed to pay a yearly tribute both to the Nubians and the Blemmyes.