OI Armchair Travelers: Sudan, Exploring Ancient Nubia

I had the good fortune in 2018 to lead the first Hawaii trip to Sudan, and it was an incredible experience. A thing that I realized, and we all realized, is it's a great travel experience, and it was a real surprise. First of all, Sudan is not Egypt, and Egypt is not Sudan. So if you've been to Egypt, you have not been to Sudan. They are very, very different countries. So why would you want to go to Sudan? It is a very beautiful country between the natural beauty, such as the sand dunes, the natural formations, the third cataract, so very different sort of landscapes, very barren, some quite lush along the Nile, beautiful man-made structures also here at And of course, the history is absolutely fascinating. Again, it is not Egypt. It has its own very distinctive history, and it's very closely tied to the OI. So there's a lot of wonderful connections between the OI and Sudan. For example, one of these great photographs of Breasted's trip documenting monuments in Sudan, 1905 to 1907. Here's Mrs. Breasted on a camel, and documenting inscriptions at Tombos, a site that we visit on our tour. The Sudanese are extremely hospitable people, very friendly. Again, very different sort of people than Egypt. Not as many tourists there, and you can see the different sort of character of the people. Kids, everybody's very polite, quite quiet, and very welcoming, and curious, and well, and very happy to see you. And there, of course, the markets. There is a ton of stuff. If you're a photographer, it's like there is so much to photograph. It's just great. Well, so the question is Sudan. Most people haven't been there. So how do you get there? What's it like when you get there? What are the hotels like? What's the food like? How do you get around? First of all, you get there, very long airplane flight. Most of the big carriers, like Egypt Air, Royal Jordanian, Turkish Air, Air Ethiopia, fly into Khartoum. And so a lot of people fly in from Cairo, but you can also fly in from Jordan, or from Addis, or other places in Europe. So it's not difficult to get to, it's just, of course, a long flight. But once you get there, what's it like? How are the hotels? For example, this is the hotel that we use in Khartoum. It's called Corinthian, also called Gaddafi's Egg, because it was built by Colonel Gaddafi as part of his sort of pan-African outreach. But as you can see, a spectacular building, very international in style, beautiful big panorama. You can see the windows at the top, that's one of the dining rooms, really lovely rooms. It's completely what you'd expect from a very, very good class, international class hotel. It was built in 1999, and fabulous views from the Corinthian to Omdurman, and to the island, and throughout Khartoum. But once you get out of Khartoum, what goes on? Well, it's pretty nice. For example, this is our hotel in Karima, which is by Jebel Barkal. This is the Karima Guesthouse, the entrance to it. Very, very charming, even very tasteful. The Sudanese have extremely good taste. So you go through the gate, and this hotel is a complex of bungalows. And then on the left, you see the large house, which is the the lounge and the restaurant, and then the individual rooms around the sides. And each room has its own little porch, really very comfortable, very, very stylish, like a little oasis with its big green lawn. Now, when you get even further away, for example, Marraway, it's not sure if it's glamping, but it's certainly not really camping. It's somewhere in between. But again, very stylish. These are some of the large buildings at the Marraway camp. Beautiful indigenous style. Some of the large buildings are the restaurants. And then off from this are these tents, and they're tents for two people, or a single, of course, has their own tent, because you can see they're on a concrete base. So they're like, super luxurious Girl Scout camp tents, large. Each one has a separate private WC, so really very, very nice. And the view is unbelievable. You can sit in your tent, on your bed, looking out over your feet, and this is the view you see of the pyramid field at Marraway. It is just incredible. So how do you get around once you get to Sudan? Well, in Khartoum, we use a standard bus, nothing mysterious, nothing exotic about that. But once we get out of Khartoum, we use four by fours. And our tour agent, the way Matt has set it up, it's very comfortable. They're usually just three passengers per car, so nobody's in back. Very nice. Part of it's off-roads, some of it's on-road. Some of the long journeys throughout Sudan are now on very good roads that were built in just the last few years. But you do have a little bit of fun with the off-road. The drivers are very, very good drivers. Some of them speak some English, very careful, very personable. They add a lot to the trip. Well, how about the food? I already mentioned the restaurant in Khartoum. But in Khartoum, there are some very stylish restaurants. For example, this is one restaurant in Khartoum that we go to, a Lebanese restaurant. But when you're on the road, I really liked, again, the style they have in Sudan. Because, for example, other countries, well, for example, in Egypt, if you have a long trip, you often get a cardboard box with your lunch, and you balance it on your lap, and it's kind of awkward. But the Sudanese have this down to an absolute science. The 4x4s carry long boards and folding chairs. You can see in the middle, there's a fold-out table. So there are two boards that are hinged. They fold down onto pedestals. They carry everything with them. They set it up in a trice. They find a beautiful place under a tree or some beautiful scenic area, and poof, you have an elegant picnic. These guys were brilliant. And so there are big boxes of food that they bring from the hotels. And it just makes a really lovely, as I said, stylish and very safe and lovely interlude. So again, very easy. The logistics in Sudan are, I was surprised, how easy and elegant they are. Okay, so we've gotten through some of the nuts and bolts. I'm going to give you a tour through Sudan, show you what you're going to see. Okay, so here's a map of Sudan and Egypt. At the very bottom is Khartoum, and we will start there. Khartoum is a big city, five and a half million people. It has two parts. It has Khartoum itself, and then Omdurman. Khartoum itself is a very modern city. As you can see, the architecture here, you can even shop at the mall. Here's the Waha Mall, which is really kind of interesting to go and see. Lots available, but seeing the Sudanese shopping, people are very friendly. I struck up some really great conversations with some people. It's an easy city to walk around. It is safe. People are very helpful. It's a great experience. And of course, one of the big attractions of Khartoum is the boat trip to the Consulates of the White, which is near you, and the Blue Nile on the far side. And it's fascinating because the two Niles, they come together right here at the end of this island. They actually have different currents and a slightly different color. And so to sit in a little boat and be in this spot and imagine where you are on a map is absolutely incredible, especially if you do advanced reading about the exploration of the Nile, the search for the sources of the Nile. It's an unforgettable experience. Other big attractions in Khartoum, of course, the National Museum, which is really spectacular. Of course, the Oriental Institute has a very, very good collection of Nubian material, but we have a fairly narrow range of types of objects. Of course, it was almost all excavated by the Oriental Institute. And in Khartoum, you really get a good view of Nubian culture. The galleries are very beautifully arranged. Chronologically, some really beautiful pieces and very famous pieces that you're going to see if you've been looking at books on Nubian history. And good labels in Arabic and in English, so it's very easy to navigate and you can see big photographs. So really very, very well done. In the upper floor is the gallery of these fabulous frescoes from Pharos and Dongola that were excavated by the Polish in the early 60s as part of Nubian salvage. Really spectacular paintings and really unforgettable images. Again, nicely labeled, so you really get a sense of what's there. You can also buy a very nice guidebook that is written. It's got good illustrations and it's a great reference to what you're going to see. Now, a really great thing about this museum is you go out in the yard and there are three museums under shelters. These are three temples, excuse me, in these shelters. The temple of temples from Kuma, Semna, and Buhen. These are 18th dynasty temples, most of the third, and Hatshepsut. And these were relocated during the Nubian salvage project. Beautifully installed, good signage. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating to wander through these and take a look at this beautiful 18th dynasty work, and particularly the one that refers to the middle kingdom and the deification of the Egyptian king and the god dead one. Absolutely fascinating. Now, for those who are interested in 19th century Sudanese history, and you really should be, it's absolutely fascinating. If you don't know about it, you should read about it. There are some very interesting remains of the great battle between the British and the Sudanese. On the left, you have the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmed, who in 1881 proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi, or the chosen one. And his crusade, you might say, was to expel the British who were occupying Sudan at that point. And into this story come a lot of names that are familiar to you, like General Gordon, Chinese Gordon, who fought the Mahdi. And in 1885, there was a battle, the siege of Khartoum. And this took place at the palace of Gordon, which is actually not far from our hotel. And this romanticized picture of the last stand of Chinese Gordon. And this was a big deal in the British Empire, because this was the Sudanese besting the British. And this was a tremendous cause for concern in the British Empire. And so they sent their next great hope, who is another person who I'm sure is familiar to you, who is Lord Kitchener, to retake Khartoum and to put down the Mahdi's revolt. Well, this didn't go so great initially. It's absolutely fascinating. Winston Churchill is dancing through this whole story. He wrote a really great book about, he was a reporter at that point. And he talks about the river wars. And once you're there and you know the places, it is absolutely fascinating to read the account of what was going on between the British Empire and Kitchener. So there was the Battle of Omdurman in 1889, in which Kitchener did defeat, the Mahdi had died in the meantime, but he was replaced by successor, Abdullah ibn Muhammad the Khalifa, who is the successor of the Mahdi. So very, very interesting. And when you're in Omdurman, you can see the remains of this. It's amazing how much is there. For example, the mud fortification walls of Omdurman still stand. And really amazing, this paddlefield gunship, the Bourdines, which was shipped to Sudan. It was built in the UK in Britain, and dismantled and shipped to Cairo, and then went up the Nile for the battles. And here it is. There's actually another one at the Yacht Club in Khartoum. But so interesting to see all of this. Now, another thing I found really quite telling about Sudan is the Mahdi's tomb, or the reconstructed Mahdi's tomb, because the original tomb of the Mahdi was demolished by the British in a fit of pique. But there is a reconstructed tomb of the Mahdi. And I thought, are we going to be able to actually visit this? And we got there, and they said, come on in, visit. They let us come in, walk around. It was extremely interesting. And then across the street is the House of the Khalifa. So this whole interlude is a very, very interesting part of Sudanese history and identity. Okay, so leaving Khartoum, we're going to hit the road. So we get on our four-by-fours, and you can see at the bottom of the map, from Khartoum, our first stop is Naga. And from there, we really get into the heartland of Meroitic Nubia. So Meroitic Nubia is roughly 300 BC to 300 AD. It actually starts a little bit earlier, but the sites that you can see, Naga, Musawart, Asofra, and Meroe, are Meroitic heartland. They're the later period of Nubian history. As a rule, generally, there are a lot of exceptions, but you might say the later material is in the south, and as you go north, as you go downriver, you run into some of the earlier things. Of course, it's mixed in areas. So Naga, Musawart, Asofra, and Meroe itself, of course, the place name for the Meroitic period. Naga is spectacular. Here is a view. This is a place that Breasted visited. We have wonderful documentation of it from his expedition there in, I think it was 1906. The beautiful kiosk, now called the Temple of Hathor, and behind the fabulous Lion Temple. Again, this architecture, you're not going to see any place else. It's this wonderful imaginative combination of classical, indigenous, Meroitic, Egyptian, to make this very harmonious, really beautiful, beautiful architecture. So here's another view of the kiosk, the Temple of Hathor, and then the Lion Temple. This is very, very famous because you can see on the pylon. So again, you see the basic idea is borrowed from the Egyptians with the pylon gateways and the uraei over the doorway. And here you can see on either side, on either pylon, on the left, the king smiting enemies. But what's really great about the Nubians is on the right, you see the queen smiting enemies. And in this culture, the queens are extremely prominent, very, very prominent, very important. We know that a queen was actually put in charge of negotiating a peace treaty with Augustus in the first century AD, so the queens had tremendous power. And a wonderful thing about this temple is you almost have like his side of the temple and her side of the temple, because his side of the temple shows the king and the royal family with gods and her side with the royal family and goddesses. So here's his side of the temple with deities and her side with, excuse me, this is his side with deities and the other was her side of the deities. This temple is extremely famous for the back wall. And you can see on the left, you can see, you can see the snout of a lion. This is epidemic or Piedemac epidemic, the lion headed god of Nubia. And this is a very famous scene because he is shown with three, probably four faces, but he's shown three. And this sparked all sorts of study, people trying to make connections with the Indus Valley. It is now thought this idea of the three faces has to do with sort of the omnipotence and omnipresence of epidemic, that he is looking at everybody. And here he is looking at the queen. And when I show you a line drawing of it, it is, you can see more of the detail. It's really great. So here you can see that drawing. And see, you see the, looks like little arrows or little, yeah, little arrows. They're actually little onc signs that are shooting out of epidemic's nostrils, going into the nostril of the queen and the prince. And so here the king, the god giving the royal family life. And here you can see, although there is some Egyptianizing to it, or Egyptian inspiration, the Nubians have taken this and made it entirely their own, with the clothing, with the proportions, with the iconography. It's absolutely fascinating what they're doing. And then another very famous scene at this temple on the sides of the pylon, with epidemic shown, as you can see the lion head at the top, but with this undulating serpent body coming out of a lotus. So again, brilliant, imaginative, new conceptions of their theology. And then also at Naga, there is the Amun temple, fronted with these wonderful sphinxes, rams with the curly fleece. And then the next site not far away is Musawarah al-Sufra, which is a large site, still a bit of a mystery. The part that's a mystery is called the Great Enclosure. And this is part of it. You can see the elephant statue. This is on the platform of the Great Enclosure. Here's another view of the whole thing. And more elephants. It is a very, very large complex with enclosures and ramps, images of elephants. And the exact function of this enormous structure is still debated. It's early Meroitic. We don't know exactly what the function of it was. There are other temples also at Musawarah. For example, this temple with statues of two gods on the front, and then another lion temple at Musawarah al-Sufra. And many of these temples are like at the Naga temple, a pylon and then a single chamber, or some of them have a triple shrine in the back. And the back of this one, actually, this temple is quite interesting because the interior is decorated. And then the outside, on the back, you see all these lines of elephants, elephants with some sort of fancy trappings on them. So all sorts of interesting stuff going on. And the interior, as I mentioned, is decorated. It has scenes of griffins, other types of animals, processions. It's extremely interesting. Now the back of this temple, it has lots of graffiti, but one that's particularly important for the Oriental Institute is this one, Horst Schliepach, 1906. Horst Schliepach was a photographer for James Henry Brusted when he went to Egypt on his expedition into Sudan. And Schliepach left his name on this temple and also at a temple at Naga. Brusted was not aware of this, but he was told about this and he fired Schliepach because even in 1906, Brusted was very aware, you do not cut your name into monuments. And so this set off a really interesting, as they say, dowsha in Egypt. Brusted fired Schliepach and then Schliepach took all the photography equipment hostage and it went on and on. It was very interesting. But a little bit of OI history there. Then, not too far away from Musawarri is Marraway, one of the great sites. And this is the site in Nubia that you always see the photographs of. Just really, really a gorgeous place. It was really the center of the great age of Sudan, again, 300 BC to about 300 AD. Although it became a royal residence for the family, a royal family from a little earlier, about maybe 590, 600, when the royal family was driven south from their center at Jebel Barkal at Karima, that we'll look at in just a minute. The Egyptians had come down into Egypt on sort of a punitive raid. Maybe, this is all very interesting, it may have to do with the 25th dynasty in Egypt, which was a period of Nubian rule of Egypt. It's thought that Semiticus, the king of the 26th dynasty, may have come down into Karima, Jebel Barkal, on this raid to expunge the memory of these pharaohs who supposedly dishonored Egypt by ruling Egypt. In fact, the 25th dynasty was a period of tremendous achievement in ancient Egypt. So, Semiticus was kind of a sore loser. But very, very interesting. So, Meroe, there is Meroe City, which is a very, very large site that has been excavated most recently by Royal Ontario Museum, Chris Jimski. But what is of interest to most people, the city itself is not terribly well preserved, but the burial sites are, there are three fields of pyramids here at Meroe. And here we see these pyramids, as you can see, are very different from Egyptian pyramids. They are much steeper sided, they are much smaller. Again, something that sets them apart from Egyptian pyramids is that they are of solid construction. Egyptian pyramids, most of them have interior spaces, they have chambers within them. Here in Meroe and in other places in Sudan, the burial chambers are under the pyramid, they're rock cut under the pyramid. And they are entered not from this chapel that you see, they are actually entered from a stairway, which is the entry is some distance from the pyramid. The chapel that you can see here, these are on the east side of the pyramid. And these are decorated with scenes of the owner of the pyramid. So luckily, we have names of many of these pyramids, not all of them. Many of them are kings and queens, members of the royal family, some of them are high officials. And so some of these, some of them are restored, some of them are not so well restored, not so restored. But it is so fascinating, wandering through these pyramid fields, and it's exploring and discovering, going into these chapels and seeing scenes, for example, here's a scene of the king with Isis behind him, and he has a special scepter with a word, year, and you see processions and all sorts of things. So it's, it takes a few minutes to train your eye to figure out what you're seeing in these chapels. But they're full of absolutely fascinating detail. There are three main pyramid fields. There's a west field, which is not very well preserved, is mainly dismantled by the British when they're building the railway. The north field, which is better preserved, is a little later, it's mid third to fourth century AD. And here there are burials of 30 kings and eight queens. Again, chapels on the east, many of these do have names. There are also, in the south group, there are not only pyramid tombs, but there are pit tombs. So there are things in addition, there are burials in addition to the pyramid. Now, at Meroe, one of the most famous of these pyramids is that of a Manasheketo, a Meroitic queen. And from this pyramid came the so-called Fellini treasure, because the Italian Fellini discovered it. But unfortunately, in the course of recovering this cache of jewelry, he did tremendous damage to the pyramids at Meroe. He thought that there were chambers within them, so he demolished the tops of the pyramids, kept on finding nothing in the interior, but he kept on demolishing them. But he did find, eventually, it's a little mysterious where he found this, but this incredible cache of beautiful, beautiful gold jewelry. This is part of what's called a shield ring. It may actually be a headdress ornament, it's a little bit unclear. But again, you can see the Meroitic take on earlier Egyptian iconography. And you see the ram head. Rams are very important in Nubian and Sudanese iconography, because the ram is the symbol of the god Amun. And the Sudanese, from at least 700, if not earlier, adopted Amun as their state god, and he was represented as a ram. And so you see the ram many times in Sudanese iconography. And here, beautiful, a bracelet or an armlet here with the goddess probably moved on it. Spectacular craftsmanship from Meroe. Well, after Meroe, we head off to Karima. We take a ferry across the Nile, a little ferry, which is fun. Lots of different types of vehicles and people on it. So a short ferry ride just across the Nile. And then we set off across the Bayouda Plain, the desert. And you see, of course, what you'd expect to see in the desert. You see flocks. There are wells out in this area. You see herds of camel. There was a large well that we saw that was fascinating. We stopped. Our guide took bags of sugar to some of the people who were there. He said, our guide, who was very, very good, said that these tribes each have a day that they can use the well. So it's very controlled locally about who does what. So they're using a camel here to pull the bucket of water up from the well. It was very, very interesting. So we're crossing from Meroe. We go across the desert. And our destination is Jebel Barkal. And Jebel Barkal is right, it's, you can see El Kourou and Nouri, and there's another spot, which is Jebel Barkal. So it's just south of the fourth cabaret. Now, Jebel Barkal was called the holy city. It was thought to be the birthplace of Amun in Sudan. The Jebel, Jebel means mountain, and this is the Jebel. It was called the pure mountain. It was considered to be the primeval place of creation. And this was the main cult center of the Kushites, the Kushites being the ancient Sudanese. So even when the royal family moved from Jebel Barkal to Meroe, Jebel Barkal continued to be a very, very important cult center. And in fact, there's a lot more archaeology going on there. It was probably more than a cult center. There are more palaces being discovered. And so it was probably more active in the Meroitic period than had been assumed maybe 10 years ago. If you go up the Jebel, you get a view of some of these temples. This is looking down on the left, you see the great Amun temple, the remains of it. This was actually begun in 18th dynasty by Thutmose III. And then after the Egyptians withdrew, it was added on to by the Kushites, by the Sudanese Kushites. And then you can see other temples, another temple to the right. One that's better preserved is just beyond. You can see these cathodic columns like Sistra, and there are columns. This is the temple of Mut at Jebel Barkal. And the main part of the temple, the interior is rock cut. And so when you go in into the temple, this is what you see, these wonderful scenes. And here you see King Taharqa on the right, offering to Amun and Mut and Khonsu, the Theban triad, who of course were adopted by the Egyptians. So very, very beautiful relief. A scene that is absolutely fascinating is there is a picture showing Jebel Barkal, showing the mountain with Amun inside it. So they literally believed that Amun lived, resided inside this mountain. And that pinnacle that I showed you was thought to be the urayas, or the head of the snake, the urayas that was protecting Amun. So absolutely fascinating. Now we're moving on to El Kurru. So Jebel Barkal was the main cult center, and also many temples, as we've mentioned. By the way, University of Michigan under Jeff Emberling is excavating some domestic areas at that time, at that area. There are Italian excavations, a big temple of Natakamani and Amanatari. But so you have the main residential section at Jebel Barkal and then there are two necropolises that serve that area. The earlier one is El Kurru, just to the east of Jebel Barkal. And here we find the burials of many of the kings of Dynasty 25. So Kashta, Pie, great Piankhi, the king who came from Nubia in the 25th dynasty and saved Egypt, reunified the country, one of the great leaders. Shabataka and Shabako and Tangutamani are all buried here in El Kurru. Not many of the pyramid superstructures survive. The tombs had Egyptian style goods and burials on beds. The bed burials are very typical of Sudanese funerary practices. So this is the pyramid I just showed you, which has no name. We don't know what it belongs to. You can actually go down to the descending passageway. And again, in each of the descending passageway would be in the side of the pyramid, but here is at some distance from the pyramid. And you can go down, you walk down this incline. You can't go into the burial chamber itself. But again, this wonderful sense of sort of discovery and mystery. One of the tombs at El Kurru, that of Tangutamani, is available to visit. This is a statue of Tangutamani, one of the 25th dynasty pharaohs. And this is a superstructure that's been built over the tomb to protect it. And the interior is spectacular. It is brightly painted here, a scene of Tangutamani with his characteristic kushite cap crown with the streamers and the urei. And then other scenes from the Book of the Dead, a very interesting kind of take on the Book of the Dead, some adopted directly and others sort of reinterpreted from the Egyptian traditions. So really a very exciting, very beautiful place you can go. As I mentioned, the pyramids are so ruined that you think, well, that's great. You get to see the burial chamber of Tangutamani. But George Reisner, when he excavated El Kurru for the Harvard expedition in 1818, 1819, found spectacular things, which gives you an idea of how rich these burials must have been. This is a very small pendant from El Kurru, from a queen of Piankhi. And two other objects, an offering stand on the right, it's bronze gilt, and then a small beautifully done pendant. Again, all this from El Kurru, and this spectacular collar. So that gives you an idea of how rich these burials originally were. So don't be fooled by the lack of the superstructures, but very, very sophisticated, beautiful material that was being created by the Nubians. And as I mentioned, bed burials during this time were very typical. The Egyptians, of course, buried people in coffins, but the Sudanese buried on beds. And this is a very old tradition. This is a leg from a burial bed, a spectacular piece from El Kurru. Then going on to the second of the necropolis for Jebel Barkal is Nuri. Nuri is a Sudanese word, which means the great god. This is a pyramid field with 73 sandstone pyramids of the royal family. It was founded by Taharqa, this necropolis was founded by Taharqa in 664. It houses the burials of Asphalta, Senkidamiskim, Anlamani, and their queens, and most of the later Cushites. Most of the cemeteries were moved to Meroe after about 315. The Taharqa pyramid, and Taharqa is one of the greatest rulers of ancient Egypt. This gives you an idea of the state of preservation and what these pyramids look like. And here, the pyramid of Taharqa was originally 67 meters tall, now greatly eroded. And you can see again, the angle is quite different at 69 degrees versus the great turn of 51, so it was a much steeper angle. The grave goods from these pyramids again indicate adoption of some Egyptian burial practices. For example, in the tomb of Taharqa were found hundreds and hundreds of these really spectacular shabtis or shabtis in different types of stone. Many of these are in the MFA. I wanted to mention to you that many of these artifacts are currently on exhibit in St. Louis at the St. Louis Art Museum. And the show will be there until I believe August 22, 2021. If you have a chance, go see it because this material is so spectacular. Once the material goes back to Boston, it is going back in storage. So try to go to St. Louis and see this material. An alabasteron from the tomb, a pyramid, a skelta from Nuri. Well, from there, we go across the desert to Kerma. And here again, we're going back in time. So you can see just where it says Jebel Barkal, just above is Kerma. And Kerma is extremely important for Sudanese and Nubian history. It was a period of centralization of the state. Before this time, we seem to have local chieftains. These are the periods, you might know the names A group and C group because we have a lot of this material in the Oriental Institute. But Kerma, from roughly 2200 BC, we see the centralization of the state and the growth of this great center at Kerma. And this is a center that begins to really perturb the Egyptians. The Egyptians don't really like it when the Nubians centralize and have enough power to push back against the Egyptian domination of Nubia. So Kerma is a very fantastic place. It's dominated by two enormous mud brick structures. These are called the fufa. They are essentially solid buildings of millions, millions of mud bricks. There are stairways that go up to the top. It is thought that they are religious in nature. Again, there's not a lot known about them, because at this time, the Kushites are not writing their history. So unfortunately, what we have are the artifacts and the architecture, but no written material. And we have some documents from the Egyptian side, but not enough to really fill us in what's going on from truly from the Nubian side. From the dhufufa, you can look out and you see the plans of the great palace. This was a huge city, Kerma. It's been excavated by the Swiss under Charles Bonnet since the 70s, the late 70s, and he's still active doing spectacular work there. He's done a great book recently with really wonderful reconstructions of many of these buildings. The Egyptians, especially under the Thutmose and Thutmose II and Hatshepsut, came down in this area and built enormous forts to try to solidify Egyptian hold over this area. But then they eventually lost it and went back to it. That was after the main period of Kerma. This was excavated by Reisner again. And when you look at the mud brick structures, they look quite kind of bland, but some of them had these spectacular inlays, these brightly colored faience inlays on them. So there was a lot more visually there than what you can see today. Now when you go to the western part of Kerma, you wander around and you see these interesting lines. You see these kind of compartments and you can see a horizontal area. Here you can see it looks like a road. And I couldn't believe my eyes because this is the remains of these great burial tumuli of the kings of Kerma. I was so astounded that they were so well preserved. And what you see here is a reconstruction of one of these burial tumuli, 80 meters in diameter, enormous structures. So the first thing I showed you were the parallel chambers. The king was buried, or the chief of Kerma, was buried in the middle. You can see sort of the roof structure, the dome structure. He was buried in the middle on an inlaid bed, of course, the tradition in Sudan. But the thing that's really quite amazing of this, and so telling about the strength of these kings, is this tumulus also included the burials of hundreds of retainers who were sacrificed and buried along with the king. So it is astounding that you can still see the remains of these. Let me go back. Here you can see those parallel lines, which are the chambers for the sacrificed retainers placed. And in the burial chamber, Reisner found traces of, this is a reconstruction, of one of these spectacular burial beds. It is a footboard, it's not the headboard, inlaid with wonderful animals. And this is the burial of the rulers of Kerma. The area continued to be in use, is documented very, very well by Charles Bonnet. And there's a beautiful on-site museum built in indigenous, well, local style, really very gorgeous. You can see all the oasis and the palm trees behind. And a real high point of this museum is the group of statues from which is just across the way from where those palm trees were. And this was a group of statues discovered in 2003. These were discovered in a pit here at Kerma at Dukigal, and broken in pieces, and Bonnet and his crew reconstructed them. And this is a coups-de-coups of the Nubian, of the Cushite kings, Taharqa, Tanwidamani, Senkinimiskin, Anlamani, Espelta, spectacular statues. And again, this has been discovered so recently. And the statue, the museum has beautiful displays, giving you a history of the site, and also showing you objects from other parts. You can see, also very interesting, you see the figure in the middle with the ram horns. Looks like he's got sort of curvy hair stuff. Those are the ram horns indicating his assimilation to the god, his association with the god Amun. And you see these kings wear the double ureus, not the single ureus of the Egyptian kings, but the double ureus. Okay, so leaving Kerma, we go further downstream, north, to the third cataract, which is very, very beautiful. Again, such a historic spot, to the site of Tombos. And here again, it's like a little mission of discovery, because here in the quarry, there's a monumental statue that was just left in the quarry. And if we walk around Tombos, you start looking at the rocks, and there are hieroglyphic texts all over, from the Egyptian missions and the forces that were sent down to this area. There's a lot of excavation going on in Tombos right now, especially University of California at Santa Barbara, and also Purdue, Stuart Tyson Smith and his group, who are excavating the city of Tombos. So again, there is so much more that we will know about these areas of Sudan, as we get more of this excavation done. So that is as far as our trip went, but I do want to mention, if you take our ultimate Nile, we go further to the north, including the beautiful temple of Soleb of Amenhotep III, and then really quite audacious, we continue along the Nile, cross into Egypt, and end up at Abu Simbel, which again, is a very important monument for Nubian history, because this was built, of course, by the Egyptian king, Ramses II, as basically a signboard on the eastern frontier of Egypt, warning the Nubians to not mess with the Egyptians, that they could make this sort of temple. And then our program continues by Nile, on Lake Nasser, to Luxor, and then to Cairo. And so we hope you'll consider the ultimate Nile cartoon to Cairo. It's going to be a really, really spectacular trip. So I hope that gives you a little bit of idea of what it's like to travel in Sudan, and why you should go there. There are so many reasons to go there. It's an absolutely fascinating experience. And again, it's a changing landscape with all of the excavation, and a changing body of knowledge, what we know about the history and the culture of ancient Sudan. For over 100 years, the OI has been a leading research center for the study of ancient Middle Eastern civilizations. Join us in uncovering the past and learn about the beginnings of our lives as humans together. Become a member by visiting oi.uchicago.edu slash member.