Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt – but few tourists have set eyes on them. With its infrastructure in some disarray, this war-torn country has little opportunity to welcome visitors in great numbers, but the peaceful north is ripe for discovery. Go now, says Paul Clammer, and you’ll encounter fascinating customs, incredible hospitality, and, deep in ancient Nubia, the thrill of having a vast archaeological site all to yourself.
 The pyramids lay chocolate brown along the sandy ridge, like a row of broken teeth. Foolishly I’d started out late and the sun was already climbing high, stealing the shadows and scorching the few parched bushes trying to make a life in the desert. But I’d made it to Meroe, resting place of the rulers of the kingdom of Kush, Sudan’s ancient monarchs.
These pyramids are quite unlike those in Egypt. They’re smaller and steep sided, covered with baked brick. Each one has a small chapel on the eastern face.
Long overshadowed by the splendours of Egypt, the kingdom of Kush was nonetheless an illustrious civilisation, ruling the Nile from near modern Khartoum to Aswan and dealing with the pharaohs, and later the Romans, as equals. At one time Kush burst from its borders to rule Egypt itself, even conquering Palestine and Libya. The kingdom was long-lived too, and its pyramid builders continued their work from the third century BC into the fourth century AD.
Most of Meroe’s pyramids look as if they have been bitten off at the top, thanks to Guiseppe Ferlini, an Italian treasure hunter who tried to pull them down two hundred years ago in a quest for gold. He was one of the first European visitors, and precious few appeared to be following. I was standing at the heart of one of the ancient world’s great cultures, but aside from the gatekeeper at the site entrance, I was the only person there.
There wasn’t a tout or hawker in sight. No one to offer me a camel ride, no one asking for baksheesh. It was me, fifty pyramids and the desert, a feeling that was simultaneously magnificent and humbling.
After exploring the site as much as I could (were those more ruined pyramids on that distant rise?), I started to walk towards the highway and ran, unexpectedly, into a carload of tourists. Domestic, rather than international, they were day-trippers from Khartoum. They had driven up for a picnic, a short trip made possible on Sudan’s best tarmac highway, built for a Chinese oil refinery by (so it was rumoured) Osama Bin Laden during his stay in Sudan in the mid-1990s.
There being no proper track from the highway to the pyramids, the tourists’ car had quickly become bogged in the sand. When I offered to help push, they insisted on sharing their picnic first, dishing out cheese pastries and cold drinks under a makeshift shade. The obligations of hospitality over, we put our shoulders into it, swallowing sand thrown up by the spinning wheels and cheering as the car pulled itself free.
As they made for the pyramids, I carried on to the highway and stuck out my arm. Hitching is the norm in much of Sudan, and although there wasn’t much traffic it didn’t take long for a vehicle to stop and pick me up. Still, even a short wait was enough to drive home the necessity of carrying a bottle of water.
The heat reflecting off the tarmac was immense. I was staying at the nearby town of Shendi in a lokanda, the simplest of Sudanese hostels, where guests pull their rope beds into the central courtyard to sleep in the fresh night air. Opposite my lokanda the railway station sat, locked and silent, waiting for the weekly train from Khartoum which rattles through the desert to Wadi Halfa, carrying passengers to the ferry across Lake Nasser to Egypt.
Shendi’s humble appearance belies its history. Two hundred years ago it was the largest town in Sudan, with one of Africa’s greatest markets. It sat on the convergence of two great trading routes – the Nile corridor and the east-west passage across the continent linking the Sahel to Arabia. The market here sold goods from as far afield as Venice and India, but Shendi grew richest from the slave trade. When, in the 1820s, the invading Egyptians captured the town, Shendi’s rulers didn’t take kindly to the intrusion. They invited the head of the Egyptian army to dinner and then torched the building while he ate, killing all inside. As a result, the town was razed and Sudan’s centre of power moved to Khartoum. Shendi never quite recovered, and today it has the lazy air of a provincial backwater.
The next morning I was up early to find transport to take me to Naqa, another site from ancient Meroe. In the growing light, Shendi’s traders were setting up their stalls, and I took a quick snack of zalabia – a type of sugary doughnut – and a long glass of hot milk flavoured with cloves.
I was eating early as I wanted to reach Naqa before the burning heat of the day, but breakfast on the hoof is a most un-Sudanese way to behave. In Sudan, breakfast is by far the most important meal of the day, taken in the middle of the morning. Breakfast is ful, a mash of stewed fava beans, served with a dash of oil and spice, and scooped from a communal bowl with a piece of bread. The best ful is mixed with salad, and has falafel and salty cheese crumbled into it – more than enough to keep you going late into the day.
As the breakfast hour approaches, offices close and work grinds to a halt. Once, in Khartoum, I was kept waiting for a visa extension while the clerk stopped for breakfast, but it was no problem as I was invited to join in, with breakfast followed by a glass of scalding black tea and conversation. Only then did we all remember what we were originally there for, and business resumed with its forms signed and stamped in triplicate. Such is the Sudanese way of doing things.
To reach Naqa I hired a boksi, one of the ubiquitous Toyota pick-ups which hold life in northern Sudan together. As always the ride was fast and furious, bumping off road, losing and then finding the tracks to another of Kush’s hidden jewels. The Sudanese appear to be in no rush to promote their tourist sites, which are generally unsigned and hard to find. Each trip is a leap into the unexpected, but each one brings the rewarding feeling that you might truly be breaking new ground.
Naqa is a collection of temples, the most splendid of all being the Lion Temple, decidated to Apedemak, Kush’s lion-headed god of war. At first glance, the design looks Egyptian, but the temple soon reveals another heritage. The entrance is flanked by relief carvings of a king and queen holding triumphant sway over their vanquished enemies. The queen is wide-hipped and distinctly African-looking. Elsewhere, the lion god appears with the body of a snake, rising from a lotus flower. Opposite the temple stands a small ‘kiosk’, with Roman-style arches and Persian-influenced carvings.
Finds from Naqa now grace the British Museum, as well as the National Museum in Khartoum, but Kush is still little known to the larger world. Early archaeologists once dismissed it as a debased culture of Egyptian colonists, unwilling to recognise its strength and dynamism. It’s astounding that this remarkable African civilisation has been so hidden from the world for so long.
Naqa is also a watering hole for the Bishariyin nomads. I sat and watched as donkeys strained to pull waterskins from a deep well, which the men sloshed into troughs, while goats, cows and camels fought for a drink. The nomads appeared oblivious both to me and to the ancient temples forming the backdrop for their herds.
As the sun reached its zenith I reluctantly turned away. The boksi stumbled back to Shendi, Arabic music slithering out of the stereo into the desert. The driver promised to take me to a place that sold good watermelon juice when we got there. Perhaps it wasn’t too late for breakfast.
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