While Egypt is often associated with pyramids, the country with the most pyramids in Africa is actually Sudan. Ancient Sudan’s great civilizations thrived and erected mighty temples and tombs honoring their gods, kings, queens, and nobles, powered by agriculture.
Their building boom left behind some 255 pyramids-more than twice the number Egypt constructed next door. Yet few Western travelers have seen these hulking sandstone relics.
Location of Sudan in Africa
That’s because Sudan’s tourism industry has been impeded by two civil wars (1956-1972 and 1983-2005) and the battle for independence that led to the creation of South Sudan in 2011. Travel to Sudan is still currently not advised due to ongoing civil unrest related to a 2021 coup.
However, when tensions ease, Sudan offers a singular chance to camp beside crowd-free ancient pyramids and to learn about the mysterious reign of these little-known pharaohs. A guided road trip along the Nile Valley takes you from the splendid temple at Soleb to the UNESCO-recognized Meroë, with the world’s largest cache of pyramids.
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The Kingdom of Kush and the Black Pharaohs
Nubia once stretched south from Aswan, Egypt, to modern-day Khartoum, Sudan. It gave rise to one of Africa’s earliest civilizations, the Kingdom of Kush, whose kings-nicknamed the Black Pharaohs-conquered Egypt in 747 B.C. and ruled the vast territory for nearly a century.
This drama played out on the banks of the world’s longest river, the Nile. Flowing south to north from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean, the legendary waterway was considered the source of life itself because the annual flooding brought fertile soil for farming.
From the capital of Khartoum, it’s a nine-hour drive north to Soleb, Sudan’s best-preserved temple and the southernmost structure built by Amenhotep III, the Egyptian pharaoh who also commissioned the temples at Luxor. The temple of Soleb was built in the 14th century B.C. by Pharaoh Amenhotep III, in present-day Sudan. Visitors can still view its massive columns and splendid relief carvings.
It was once guarded by the Prudhoe Lions, a pair of finely carved red granite beasts inscribed by the boy-king Tutankhamun when he visited. They are now displayed at London’s British Museum. Take a small barge from the village of Wawa to the western bank of the Nile, and you soon see the sandstone columns of Soleb’s main hall. Carved at their bases are images of Assyrians, hands chained behind their backs, whom the Black Pharaohs took as prisoners of war.
Temple of Soleb, Sudan
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A few miles south of Soleb, set back from the tents where locals serve small glasses of tea beside the Nile, is Kerma. Established around 5,500 years ago, this ancient capital grew up around a huge adobe temple called the Western Defuffa. Visitor Nadeem Abduraziq Mohammed walks through the ancient city of Kerma, Sudan, in July 2021. Kerma has been occupied for at least 8,000 to 10,000 years, reaching its peak around 1800 B.C., when it was capital of the Kingdom of Kush.
At its height the city had a population of 10,000; today, its mud brick ruins are inhabited only by nesting swallows. Nearby lies one of the oldest cemeteries in Africa. This area of Sudan has been inhabited since Paleolithic times.
Ancient Cities and Tombs
Just over an hour’s drive south, and slowly being swallowed by sand, is Old Dongola. Founded with a fortress in A.D. 600, it served as the capital of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Makuria and grew to include palaces, houses, and Christian churches. It was a major stop on the Darb al-Arba’in (Forty Days Road) that thousands of camel caravans followed, transporting ivory and slaves between the Sudanese town of Darfur and Egypt.
Best preserved is the Church of the Old Granite Columns, its pale pillars framing a Throne Hall that was converted into a mosque in 1317 and remained in use until 1969. Now it’s open to visitors, along with an adjacent Islamic graveyard with distinctive 17th-century domed tombs known as qubbas.
From there, the Nile loops eastward and you come to El-Kurru, a cemetery used by the royal family of the Kingdom of Kush. Unlike in Egypt, Nubian burial chambers sit below the pyramids, not inside them.
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Adobe tunnels cover the entrances to the chambers, chief among them the tomb of King Tanutamun (who died around 653 B.C.). Uneven shallow steps descend into the darkness until a flashlight click reveals a duo of domed rooms, one leading onto the other. Their white gypsum walls are covered with intricate murals in colors of ocher and yellow.
On the back wall is an arresting scene depicting Tanutamun’s heart being weighed against a feather by Maat, the goddess of truth. Kushites believed this recorded a person’s good and bad deeds and determined if the king’s soul could pass into paradise.
More royal tombs crop up in Nuri, further upstream. Its smaller and steeper 70-plus pyramids are now reduced to 20. The most famous tombs belong to King Taharqa, the Black Pharoah who conquered Egypt, and King Nastasen, which archaeologists have to scuba-dive to reach because of rising ground waters. (See what it’s like to dive underneath a pyramid.) Nuri served as the royal necropolis for the adjacent town of Napata, the first capital of the Kingdom of Kush.
Both the cemetery and the ruins of the settlement lie across the Nile from Jebel Barkal, a 341-foot-tall sandstone mesa. From its summit, you can see the ruins of Nuri, including rows of cracked pillars and pairs of giant stone rams, their eyes and ears worn away by time. The pyramids of Nuri, Sudan, were built between 650 and 300 B.C. The most famous tomb belongs to King Taharqa, the Black Pharaoh who conquered Egypt.
On the western side of Jebel Barkal is a crumbling stone door frame leading to the Temple of Mut, wife of Amun. Spotlights illuminate its fine wall murals chronicling Taharqa’s coronation in white clay, ocher, and deep blue.
Pyramids of Nuri, Sudan
Meroë: The Largest Collection of Pyramids
Finally, the Nile weaves past Meroë (pronounced Mero-way), the Kushite capital until the empire collapsed in A.D. 400 and site of Sudan’s best-preserved pyramids. More than 200 of them spread across the sands. Their granite and sandstone bases are etched with elephant, giraffe, and gazelle designs, proof that this was once fertile grasslands.
“It’s the biggest congregation of pyramids in the world,” reports archaeologist and Meroë site manager, Mahmoud Suliman. “At the time of the 2019 revolution, street signs, advertisements, and paintings all featured their images. It brought people together because the pyramids are so tied to our sense of identity.”
Mentioned in the writings of Herodotus, there’s an air of defiance about these structures that stand firm against the sands trying to swallow them. Indeed, it was an act of resistance that led to their construction in the first place. In the third century B.C., Kushite King Arakamani (Ergamenes) had grown tired of the Meroitic (Meroë-led) kingdom’s power-hungry high priests. So when they sent an order for him to commit suicide, he responded by having them all murdered instead.
The rebellion ushered in a new era of culture: the almighty Egyptian god Amun-Ra was downgraded in favor of the lion god Abedemak, the (still undeciphered) Meroitic script was created, and warrior queens, known as kandakes, ruled the army. Inside the tombs, the carvings of the kings stand taller than the gods. You won’t see that in Egypt. Here, kings controlled everything except death.
It’s a strong message and one that’s inspired a fresh wave of national pride. For just as Ancient Greece informed so much of today’s European culture, so too did Nubia shape Sudan. It is the bedrock that formed the country’s sense of self and identity. Understanding this history suggests a way forward for Sudan.
“These were very popular kings and queens,” says Aya Allam, a Sudanese martial artist based in Khartoum. “They are a reminder that we were once a great nation and could become great once again.”
The ancient necropolis at Meroë contains around 200 pyramids. The Nubian pyramids were constructed by the rulers of the ancient Kushite kingdoms in the region of the Nile Valley known as Nubia, located in present-day northern Sudan. In Nubian culture, the pyramids were integral to burial customs for royalty and other wealthy figures of the Kushite kingdom, with this practice starting as early as the 7th century BC.
The Nubian pyramids were built over a period of a few hundred years to serve as tombs for the kings and queens and wealthy citizens of Napata and Meroë. The four main sites in which these pyramids hold prominence are El-Kurru, Nuri, Jebel Barkal, and Meroe.
The earliest pyramids in El Kurru were constructed in 751 BC, which formed the center of the Empire of Kush during the Napatan period, ca. 850-300 BC. It is recognized as the origin of the tombs belonging to the rulers of Egypt and Nubia's 25th Dynasty, c. 750-664 BC, along with their ancestors. The tradition of building royal Kushite pyramids is believed to have originated from King Piankhy.
Later these pyramids begin to be built 26 kilometers upstream from El-Kurru at the site of Nuri which contains burials from 670-310 BC. The earliest burial at Nuri is accredited to King Taharqo who ruled from 690-664 BC. The oldest and largest pyramid at Nuri-and in all of Nubia-is that of the Napatan king and Twenty-fifth Dynasty pharaoh Taharqa. This necropolis was the burial place of 21 kings and 52 queens and princes including Anlami and Aspelta. The bodies of these kings were placed in huge granite sarcophagi.
The next burial sites appear at Jebel Barkal from late 4th century. This location was an important political and religious centre of the Kingdom of Kush, ancient Napata. The pyramids here are located beside the mountain of Jebel Barkal and consist of 25 pyramids that are split into 2 areas.
Nubian rulers consequently chose to be entombed in the new capital, and a new group of pyramids was built at Meroe. The pyramids at Meroe were built beginning in 270 BC and the construction of these pyramids lasted for over 700 years.
The Nubian pyramids were constructed using a combination of granite and sandstone and are closely arranged in clusters, such that a selection of two pyramids may lie within touching distance of one another. One of the tools used was shadoof counterbalanced lever hoist, of which the central pivot poles were left buried in the center of the pyramid and covered by their respective cap stones. The interior chambers were lined with plaster and decorated with scenes from the life of the deceased.
The tombs inside the pyramids of Nubia were plundered in ancient times. Wall reliefs preserved in the tomb chapels reveal that their royal occupants were mummified, covered with jewellery and laid to rest in wooden mummy cases. A pyramid excavated at Meroë included hundreds of heavy items such as large blocks decorated with rock art and 390 stones that comprised the pyramid.
The physical proportions of Nubian pyramids differ markedly from the Egyptian pyramids: they are built of stepped courses of horizontally positioned stone blocks and range approximately 6-30 metres (20-98 ft) in height, but rise from fairly small foundation footprints, resulting in tall, narrow structures inclined at approximately 70°. Most also have offering temple structures abutting their base with unique Kushite characteristics.
The most striking difference, however, is that while Egyptian pyramids house tombs of rulers within, Nubian pyramids are built on top of the burial chambers. This was a longtime source of confusion to archaeologists until George Reisner discovered that the entryways were filled in and concealed following the ruler's funeral.
In the 1830s Giuseppe Ferlini came to Meroe seeking treasure and raided and demolished a number of pyramids which had been found "in good conditions" by Frédéric Cailliaud just a few years earlier.
Pyramids of Meroë, Sudan
George Reisner, a Harvard archaeologist, investigated the pyramids at Nuri and mapped more than 80 royal Kushite burials in 1916-1919. Reisner started to explore burial chambers but he found they were flooded by the rising water table. During his excavation, a staircase collapsed and killed five of his workers.
The 35 pyramids grouped in five sites discovered in Sudan remain a huge attraction for Sudan’s tourists. Although different in stature and build and created earlier than the famed Egyptian pyramids, Sudan has more ancient pyramids than Egypt.
Nubia’s Napata and Meroë kingdoms were influenced by ancient Egypt. The first three sites are located around Napata in Lower Nubia, near the modern town of Karima. Fourteen pyramids were constructed for their renowned warrior queens.
Later Napatan pyramids were sited at Nuri, the burial place of 21 kings and 52 queens and princes including Anlami and Aspelta. Meroë, the burial site of over forty queens and kings is the most extensive Nubian pyramid site.
In the 1830s Giuseppe Ferlini, an Italian soldier turned treasure hunter, raided and demolished over 40 Meroitic pyramids. Returning home, Ferlini tried to sell the treasure but nobody believed that such high quality jewellery could be made in Africa.
Sudan For Touring | Exploring the Ancient Pyramids and Hidden Beauty of Africa.
| Country | Number of Pyramids |
|---|---|
| Sudan | 220-255 |
| Egypt | Approximately 118 |
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