Napata

Napata was an ancient city of Kush on the Nile at the fourth cataract, in what is now northern Sudan, at the site of the modern town of Karima. Founded by the Egyptians under Thutmose III in the fifteenth century BC after the conquest of Kush, it grew around the sandstone butte of Jebel Barkal, the cult home of the god Amun, and served as the southernmost permanent settlement of the New Kingdom of Egypt. Later it became the capital of the Kingdom of Kush and for a time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt. It was sacked by the Egyptians in 593 BC, and again by the Romans in 23 BC, yet it remained the kingdom's chief religious centre even after the royal capital moved to Meroe. The name also labels the Napatan period of Kushite history.