Amanirenas

Amanirenas was a kandake, or queen, of the Kingdom of Kush who resisted Roman expansion into Nubia in the late first century BC. Her campaigns against Roman Egypt made her an important figure in the history of African resistance to imperial power.

Amanirenas is associated with the Kushite war against Roman Egypt after Augustus’s conquest of the Ptolemaic kingdom; Kushite forces attacked Roman-held towns before a settlement left the kingdom of Kush outside direct Roman rule.

In Simon Turney’s Bellatrix, Egypt and Nubia, 25 BCE. Legio XXII moves south as the Kushite kingdom resists Roman control of the Nile frontier under the leadership of Amanirenas. Titus Cervianus remains both soldier and combat medic, responsible for men threatened by heat, disease, inadequate supplies and an enemy at home in the desert. Amanirenas is treated fictionally in Simon Turney’s The Capsarius.