Augustus’ imperial campaigns were memorialized throughout the empire in his Res Gestae. The scene described is of a single, crushing Roman victory over Lower Nubia. Some scholars, such as László Török (2009) and Solange Ashby (2020), have aptly taken issue with the validity of Augustus’s claims; however, there remains a prejudice in the historiography that favors Roman and textual sources. In this study, the author highlights archaeological evidence from three Nubian sites in the invaded region mentioned in Roman sources—Talmis, Qasr Ibrim, and Meroë—in order to provide a novel and more nuanced interpretation of interactions at the frontier than Roman authors provide. It is concluded that the Roman Egyptian-Nubian frontier during the time of Augustus was not singular; in fact, the border was dynamic—at times characterized by hostile militaristic tensions, at other times by peaceful exchange. The author further asserts that, despite Augustus’s imperial claims of territorial control, the Roman Egyptian-Nubian border is instead better understood as a cultural “Third Space.”
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