Ancient Sudan demystified

Tension with Sudan over pipeline fees, and border disputes prompted South Sudan to shut down oil production, with a loss of revenue for both countries. While South Sudan is rich in oil resources, Sudan can lay claim to the best-known archaeological sites, which continue to attract intrepid researchers, travellers and archaeologists from all over the world.
At a meeting of the Prehistory Society last week, the German Ambassador to Zimba-bwe, Hans Gnodtke, gave an illustrated talk entitled ‘Recent Activities of German Sudan Archaeology: Recreating the Royal City of Naqa’.
Ambassador Gnodtke, who studied archaeology before graduating from Heidelberg Law School, was stationed in Khartoum, Sudan from 2003-2005. This gave him the opportunity to explore ancient kingdoms and some of the world’s oldest civilisations. These included the prosperous empire of Kerma, an advanced black African state, established as the middleman between sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, supplying Egypt with tropical animals, gold, slaves and semi-precious stones.
 “It’s not easy to travel around Sudan’, said Gnodtke, “but foreign tourists are welcomed’. The ambassador suggested that tourists should take an organised tour, or travel in groups of three to four 4×4 vehicles. A GPS navigation device would be useful.”
About 200 km north of Khartoum is the ruined ancient city of Naqa, in Meroe, the last capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush, also known as Nubia. The Meroe dynasty was the last in a line of Black Pharaohs that ruled Kush for 1,000 years until the kingdom’s demise in 350AD. Naqa was a bridge between the Mediterranean world and Africa, and the first recording of this site was made in 1843 by a famous Prussian expedition directed by Richard Lepsius. Professor Dietrich Wildung, director of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, has, with a group of Polish archaeologists, been excavating and restoring the site of Naqa since 1995.
Restoration without reconstruction has been his philosophy, and he would like the Sudanese government to preserve the unique environment of Naqa, and protect it from commercial tourism. He envisions an open-air museum in the middle of the desert, free of tacky commercialism.
The Lion Temple at Naqa, built by King Natakamani in honour of the widely worshipped local deity Apedemak, is particularly interesting to art historians. Natakamani was passionate about the arts, and the front of the temple depicts the king and his wife, Queen Amanitore on either side of the entrance.
 Although Egyptian civilisation affected the art and architecture of the area, Kushite style is largely African, and the wide-hipped Queen Amanitore’s features are distinctively African. Interestingly, the fact that the images of the king and queen are the same size, suggest that they may have shared power and played equal roles. Not far from the Lion Temple is what has been called the Roman Kiosk, a building combining Roman, Egyptian and Kushite architecture. While the pyramids in Sudan are smaller than those in Egypt, they are more numerous and said to be better preserved.Although the water supply system in this hot and arid ancient kingdom was sophisticated, climate change was probably the main reason for its decline.
Concluding his interesting presentation, Gnodtke speculated that migration from Sudan to the southern part of Africa might have provided the impetus for the creation of Great Zimbabwe, another mysterious city that will continue to fascinate archaeologists and visitors for many years to come.