Born: Unknown, Sudan (assumed)
Died: Unknown
Country most active: Sudan
Also known as: NA
This biography was originally published in the World History Encyclopedia and was written by Joshua J. Mark. It is shared in line with the Encyclopedia’s policies under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Amantitere (r. c. 25-c. 41 CE) is the queen most often identified as the Candace in Acts 8:27. It has been suggested that she may have been Jewish only based on the passage in the Bible in which her eunuch, encountered by the apostle Philip, is reading the Book of Isaiah. There is no evidence in Meroe itself which supports the existence of a Jewish community but such communities did exist throughout Kush in small numbers. The biblical passage has also been cited to prove that Amantitere ruled alone since it states her eunuch had “great authority” and was in charge of her treasury but those statements hardly prove an autonomous queen any more than the eunuch’s reading of Isaiah argues for her Judaism. Nothing is known of her reign but physical evidence from the period shows a high degree of affluence.