Land of the "black pharaohs"

The Nubian Desert on the Sudanese-Egyptian border has innumerable archaeologic sites that have been inadequately explored, and which are more interesting because they are remote from current developments, unlike the Sphinx and pyramids at the Gaza plateau which are in an urban setting:

At the end of March, the Louvre will host its first exhibition on the Meroe dynasty, the last in a line of “black pharaohs” that ruled Kush for more than 1,000 years until the kingdom's demise in 350 AD.

Meroe had three cemeteries containing more than 100 pyramids that are smaller than their Egyptian counterparts. The largest are 30 metres (98 feet) high and the angles are steep, some close to 70 degrees...

Sudan is full of untouched sites, explains Rilly.

“There is an unimaginable number of them to excavate. In some cases, we know that there's something there but we simply don't have enough teams to do the work.” ”And then there are sites that are completely ignored, about which we know nothing,” she adds...

Swiss archaeologist Mattieu Honeggar recently discovered a site at Wadi Al-Arab, in a corner of the desert area of north Sudan that was inhabited nearly 10,000 years ago, many millennia before the “black pharaohs,” and could allow a better understanding of man's transition to a sedentary lifestyle.

Something to do in my next lifetime...