In Meroe itself, once the capital of the Kingdom of Kush, the road divides the city. As you approach the royal cemetery on foot, climbing large, rippled dunes, Meroe’s pyramids, lined neatly in rows, rise as high as 100 feet toward the sky. It dates to the third century B.C., and includes columns, gardens, ramps and courtyards. In the early 20th century, the Harvard Egyptologist George Reisner, on viewing the ruins of the Nubian settlement of Kerma, declared the site an Egyptian outpost. Text by Isma'il Kushkush; Photographs by Matt Stirn
Piye recorded his victory in a 159-line inscription in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphics on a stele of dark gray granite preserved today in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Video, 00:02:27Why this black drive-in cinema is a big hit. And they formed their very own ideas, their own architecture and arts,” says Arnulf Schlüter, of the State Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich.The pyramids in Meroe, which was named a Unesco World Heritage site in 2011, are undoubtedly the most striking feature here.

It wasn’t until mid-century that sustained excavation and archaeology revealed the truth: Kerma, which dated to as early as 3000 B.C., was the first capital of a powerful indigenous kingdom that expanded to encompass the land between the first cataract of the Nile in the north and the fourth cataract in the south. To the west is the royal city, which includes the ruins of a palace, a temple and a royal bath.

Geoff Emberling, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan who has excavated at El-Kurru and Jebel Barkal, told me that one explanation focusing on Kushite ritual is that Taharqa situated his tomb so that “the sun rose over the pyramid at the moment when the Nile flooding is supposed to have arrived.” But there are other explanations. Video, 00:02:45'I refuse to let a British slaver take my name away' Video, 00:03:23'I refuse to let a British slaver take my name away'Growing up in the world's largest refugee camp. Archaeologists still debate why he moved the royal cemetery. Many Sudanese today are quick to point out that the number of standing ancient pyramids in the country—more than 200—exceeds the number of those in Egypt.

“It’s like opening a fairytale book,” a friend once said to me.This article is a selection from the September 2020 issue of Smithsonian magazineI first learned of Sudan’s extraordinary pyramids as a boy, in the British historian Basil Davidson’s 1984 documentary seriesThe land south of Egypt, beyond the first cataract of the Nile, was known to the ancient world by many names: Ta-Seti, or Land of the Bow, so named because the inhabitants were expert archers; Ta-Nehesi, or Land of Copper; Ethiopia, or Land of Burnt Faces, from the Greek; Nubia, possibly derived from an ancient Egyptian word for gold, which was plentiful; and Kush, the kingdom that dominated the region between roughly 2500 B.C. Defeating a coalition of Egyptian princes, Piye established Egypt’s 25th Dynasty, whose kings are commonly known as the Black Pharaohs. Each structure has distinctive architecture that draws on local, Egyptian and Greco-Roman decorative tastes—evidence of Meroe’s global connections.Off the highway, men wearing Sudanese jalabiyas and turbans ride camels across the desert sands. The kingdom rivaled and at times overtook Egypt. Nastasen’s watery tomb is located at the ancient site of Nuri, which sprawls across more than 170 acres of sand near the east bank of the Nile River in northern Sudan… “They took on influences from outside—Egyptian influences, Greco-Roman influences, but also influences from Africa.

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Historians give different explanations for this, including climate change-driven drought and famine and the rise of a rival civilization in the east, Aksum, in modern-day Ethiopia.For years, Kush’s history and contributions to world civilization were largely ignored.

Beginning in the sixth century B.C., when Napata was repeatedly threatened by attack from Egyptians, Persians and Romans, the kings of Kush gradually moved their capital south to Meroe. Piye, Napata’s third king, known more commonly in Sudan as Piankhi, marched north with an army that included horsemen and skilled archers and naval forces that sailed north on the Nile. Edmund Barry Gaither, an American educator and director of Boston’s Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, says that “Nubia gave black people their own place at the table, even if it did not banish racist detractors.” The French archaeologist Claude Rilly put it to me this way: “Just as Europeans look at ancient Greece symbolically as their father or mother, Africans can look at Kush as their great ancestor.”Today, many do. As Egypt retreated, its empire weakening, a new dynasty of Kushite kings rose in the city of Napata, about 120 miles southeast of Kerma, and asserted itself as the rightful inheritor and protector of ancient Egyptian religion.

“At its height, the Kingdom of Kush was a dominant regional power,” says Zeinab Badawi, a distinguished British-Sudanese journalist whose documentary series “The History of Africa” aired on the BBC earlier this year. Many Sudanese today are quick to point out that the number of standing ancient pyramids in the country—more than 200—exceeds the number of those in Egypt.Across from the pyramids is the royal city, with surrounding grounds that are still covered in slag, evidence of the city’s large iron-smelting industry and a source of its economic power.

If you drive north from Khartoum along a narrow desert road toward the ancient city of Meroe, a breathtaking view emerges from beyond the mirage: dozens of steep pyramids piercing the horizon.

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