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Taharqa in hieroglyphs: the Kushite pharaoh's name and where it stands

25 October 2026

Taharqa's name is written with four alphabet signs: a loaf t, a reed shelter h, a mouth r and a hill q, read thrq, "Taharqa". It is not an Egyptian name. Scribes spelled out the sounds of a name from Kush, the kingdom south of Egypt in today's Sudan.

He ruled Egypt and Kush together from about 690 to 664 BC, in the 25th Dynasty, and built from Memphis to the Fourth Cataract. The Bible calls him Tirhakah. His cartouche stands on a column at Karnak, on a whole shrine in Oxford and on more than a thousand shabti figures from his pyramid.

Four alphabet signs spell Taharqa

The loaf (X1) is t. The reed shelter (O4), a simple hut seen from the side, is h. The mouth (D21) is r. The sandy hill slope (N29) is q, a k said deep in the throat. Vowels are not written, so modern spellings differ: Taharqa, Taharka, Taharqo.

Kushite names were written in Egyptian signs because the kings of Kush used Egyptian as their language of state. Their temples, titles and gods were Egyptian, above all Amun, whose great temple stood at Jebel Barkal in Kush.

Bread loaf Reed shelter Mouth Sandy hill

Write Taharqa in a cartouche

His throne name honoured a god of Memphis

His second cartouche, the throne name, reads Khunefertemre. It is built on Nefertum, the young lotus god of Memphis, with the sun disc of Ra at the top. Taharqa was crowned at Memphis. On a stela from Kawa he says: "I received the crown in Memphis after the Falcon flew to heaven", meaning after the king before him died.

That king was Shabaka, or Shebitku: the order of the Kushite kings is still argued. Taharqa may have been a son of Piye, the Kushite who first conquered Egypt, though his own texts avoid naming his predecessor.

Sun Cartouche

One column of his kiosk still stands at Karnak

In the first court of Karnak, Taharqa built a great kiosk of ten papyrus columns, in two rows of five joined by low screen walls. One column still stands, about 21 metres high, the first thing many visitors see after the pylon. What the kiosk was for is unclear. Some scholars link it to a yearly rite in which Amun's statue was brought out into the sun. Taharqa also added a colonnade at the temple of Montu, north of the main temple.

After a campaign into Kush in 592 BC, the 26th Dynasty king Psamtik II had the names and royal emblems of the Kushite kings hacked out of their statues and reliefs in Egypt. Look for cartouches with the four signs gone and a rough hollow in their place.

Read Karnak

The Assyrians drove him back to Kush

Assyria was the great power of the day. In 674 BC, Babylonian records say, Taharqa beat back an invasion. In 671 BC the Assyrian king Esarhaddon took Memphis and captured members of Taharqa's family. Taharqa escaped south and retook Memphis two years later. Ashurbanipal then marched as far as Thebes.

The Bible remembers an earlier clash. In 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37, "Tirhakah king of Kush" marches against Sennacherib, the Assyrian besieging Jerusalem in 701 BC. Most scholars identify him with Taharqa, though he was not yet king then.

His pyramid at Nuri is the largest in Kush

Taharqa did not go back to the royal cemetery at El-Kurru. He built a new one at Nuri, near Jebel Barkal, under a pyramid about 52 metres square, the largest in Kush. Over 1,070 shabti figures were buried with him, servants for the afterlife, many inscribed with his name and a chapter of the Book of the Dead. They are now spread across museums. One of granite is in the Museu Egipci in Barcelona.

In Oxford, the Ashmolean Museum shows a whole sandstone shrine he built for Amun at Kawa, in Nubia, its walls carved with Taharqa before the gods.

See his shrine in Oxford

Questions

Was Taharqa a Black pharaoh?

He was a king of Kush, in today's Sudan, and his statues show him as a Kushite. The 25th Dynasty is often called the dynasty of the Black pharaohs.

Is Taharqa in the Bible?

Yes, as Tirhakah, king of Kush, in 2 Kings 19:9 and Isaiah 37:9, where he marches against the Assyrian king Sennacherib.

Where is Taharqa buried?

Under his pyramid at Nuri, in northern Sudan. It is the largest of the Nubian pyramids, and his burial chamber is cut into the rock below.

Glossary

alphabet sign: A hieroglyph that stands for one consonant, such as the horned viper for f. Egyptian has about 25 of them, used beside signs for two or three sounds.
cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
dynasty: A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
papyrus: A writing sheet made from strips of the papyrus reed laid in two crossing layers and pressed. Sheets were glued into long rolls.
pylon: The huge gateway of a temple: two sloping towers with a door between them, carved with scenes of the king.
pyramid: A royal tomb with four sloping sides meeting at a point, built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest.
relief: A carving on a flat surface. In raised relief the background is cut away. In sunk relief the figures are cut into the stone.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
shabti: A small figure placed in a tomb to do farm work in the afterlife for the person buried there.
stela: An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
throne name: The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.

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Taharqa c. 690–664 BC