The Kandake — Warrior Queens of Kush

When Augustus Caesar dispatched Roman legions to pacify the frontier of Roman Egypt, they encountered an army led by the Kandake — the Meroitic word for queen, which Romans misread as a personal name and remembered as Candace. She had one eye, lost in battle. She led her army herself. The Romans and the Kandake negotiated a treaty that was unusually favorable to Nubia — a remarkable outcome for a negotiation with the most powerful empire on earth. The Kandakes of Meroe were not ceremonial queens. They built pyramids. They issued coins. They led armies. The tradition of the warrior queen in Nubian culture produced women rulers of extraordinary capability for centuries.

These signs carry the arrow quiver, the Meroitic crown, the elephant, and the one-eyed queen who made Rome negotiate as an equal.