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PRIVATTRAVEL Long gone and virtually forgotten, the Kingdom of Kush left behind some of the most st riking archeological treasures in the world karkadé, a juice made from hibiscus blossom. Th is dialogue between African and Middle Eastern cultures is nothing new: Sudan’s history has long been entwined with that of Egypt. Th eir alliances, rivalries and cultural ties stretch back to antiquity, and the time when Sudan, then known as the Kingdom of Kush, was a superpower, a military and economic rival to the emperors in Rome and the pharaohs of Egypt (indeed, Kushite kings ruled Egypt for a century, before being routed by the Assyrians). Long gone and virtually forgotten, this kingdom left behind some of the most striking archeological treasures in the world – including more pyramids than Egypt – which lie in the desert unheralded and largely unvisited by tourists. It was this Sudan I had come to see. I headed north out of Khartoum with a guide and a 4x4, and we were soon in the immensity of the Nubian Desert. Since the south seceded in 2011, Sudan may only be half the country it used to be, but the distances are still vast. We drove for 300 miles through an empty landscape baking under the desert sun, great waves of sand blowing across the road in the ferocious wind, the horizon broken occasionally by a huddle of squat mud houses, or the occasional train of ghostly pale Sudanese camels. After several hours of this yellow and brown world, the horizon to the right fi lled with a mirage-like strip of dark green, which came closer as our path converged once more with the Nile. We left the road and drove towards groves of date palms and suddenly, like Oz after Kansas, we entered a new world of colour: a lush, benign place with villages of people, and fi elds of sorghum grass being worked by emaciated-looking cattle. On a small hill on the east bank of the Nile, we came to a phalanx of mud-brick coned tombs, 50ft tall. Behind them were the ruins of Old Dongola, once a medieval boomtown and capital of the Christian kingdom of Makuria from the seventh century until 1323, when Islam arrived and converted the Coptic churches to mosques. Today it is slowly returning to dust, a collection of crumbling walls and marble columns sticking carcass-like out of the sand. Th e ground was strewn with bleached sheep bones and clay pots, many intact, some of which may have been up to a millennium old. Th at night we camped in the desert, driving away from the road for 15 miles, across golden dunes and then a barren rocky landscape that resembled images of the moon. Next to the Nile’s Th ird Cataract, we stopped to see Paleolithic drawings carved into the soft sandstone – exquisite hunting scenes, anywhere up to 40,000 years old, with Lowryesque fi gures chasing giraff es, lions and tigers – evidence that the Nubian Desert wasn’t always so barren. We climbed a high hill to a ruined Ottoman fort to look down on the Nile, a muddy ribbon with a green ruffl e, cutting its way through one of the most unforgiving Seventy-Four landscapes on earth. Th is was the erstwhile superhighway of those seeking riches, adventure and blood: the pharaohs, Romans and slave traders; Gordon, Kitchener and Burton. Th e Th ird Cataract was as far north as we would go. From here we doubled back, driving south for the next week and clinging to the river’s serpentine course. In Tombos, we saw 14thcentury BC stellae carved with hieroglyphics and pharaonic granite statuary, lying lonely in the sand. We journeyed on to the market town of Kerma, the seat of the fi rst Kingdom of Kush, where we climbed the ruins of one of two giant deff ufas (a Nubian word meaning ‘mud-brick building’); dating from 1500BC, they are possibly the oldest man-made structures in sub-Saharan Africa. In Karima, alongside the hulks of the now redundant Victorian Nile steamer fl eet, gently rotting on the banks, we ate a lunch of fuul,
PHOTOS©DONMCCULLIN/CONTACTPRESSIMAGES Sudan’s salty staple of bean stew, and wafer-thin kisra bread made from sorgham, washed down with baobab juice. In a back room, a group of Nubian men drank strong Sudanese gingerinfused coff ee and puff ed furiously on hookah pipes, the fug eddying under an old, clattering fan. We scrambled up Jebel Barkal (Holy Mountain in Arabic), a giant sandstone mesa that the Egyptians and Kushites thought resembled a pharaonic crown, thus indicating that the god Amun must dwell within. From the top, we could look down on the ruins of a temple to Amun to the south and a row of steep-sided pyramid tombs of third-century BC Napatan kings to the west, while countless kites wheeled overhead. Th at night, in the shadow of Jebel Barkal, we gave the tents a miss and slept at the Nubian Resthouse in Karima, one of Sudan’s few luxury hotels, with a courtyard fi lled with oleander and bougainvillea, around which Somali bee-eaters and African hoopoe birds fl itted. Th e next day we drove 250 miles across the Bayuda Desert. Eventually, Sudan’s greatest treasures came into view: the pyramids of the royal city of Meroe. Th is was another of the ancient capitals of the Kushite kingdom, dating back to the eighth century BC. Its surviving monuments stand alone, high on a sandy ridge; at 90ft high, they are far smaller than their Egyptian counterparts and now resemble a row of broken teeth, thanks to their decapitation by Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini in 1834. It’s the sheer scale of the site – in total, there are 100 pyramids, in various states of decay – that makes Meroe so spectacular. With not a tout in sight, we walked in the desert among the silent, ancient tombs. We wandered into the low funerary chapels that adorn each pyramid, their Seventy-Five Opposite: a Bedouin stops at Meroe in front of one of the twin-pyloned funerary chapels that adorn each pyramid. Above: Nubian men smoke hookah pipes at a cafe in Karima
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