changes, favoured warfare between two kingdoms and peoples very different environmentally and in cultural and political orientation. Evidence for this warfare across the Butana and in the 'Island of Meroe' (between the Atbara and the Nile) is contained in Aksumite inscriptions of the first half of the fourth century ad. Two of these and probably a third, a recent chance discovery, commemorate Aksumite invasions of the Meroitic heartland; invasions largely instrumental, it would seem, in bringing about the end of a long line of Meroitic rulers and the disintegration of an already decaying kingdom. These invasions and subsequent Aksumite pressures may have been a principal factor in the economic decline of the Nile valley upstream of the Third Cataract from the mid-fourth century onwards. These pressures may also have been a factor in a northward shift of power-centre (accompanied by a revival of Meroitic royal traditions) at about that time, from the Island of Meroe to the First-Second Cataract region adjoining Egypt.