6/1/2023 0 Comments Glimpses sudans forgotten![]() They are very close together, carefully aligned with certain stars. The burial chamber was actually underneath the pyramid, so the Nubian pyramids, rather than being tombs, were really enormous headstones. A 1897 British expedition to Gebel Barkal excavated inside a pyramid, and soon discovered that there was no burial chamber, as would be expected in Egypt. The shadouf, a simple counterweight crane, was set in the middle, and the pyramid went up around it the crane could only reach so far so the base of the pyramid had to be small, mandating steep sides. The Nubian pyramids have a steeper slope, a byproduct of Nubian shadouf-based construction. The Nubian pyramids are smaller, typically less than 100 feet high, where the pyramid of Khufu is a whopping 440 feet tall. After so many years of exchange, the Nubians worshipped Egyptian gods and kept many Egyptian traditions, even as Egypt itself faded as a power. The first Nubian pyramid was built around 700 BC, much later than the great pyramids. Throughout their history, the two societies maintained extensive trade and cultural ties, leading to the Sudan pyramids. After the Egyptian dynasties fell into dissaray, Nubia broke free and became its own empire, even conquering the Egyptians for a time. The Nubians were initially conquered by the Egyptians and for centuries lived under Egyptian administration. The pyramids in Sudan were built over a period of hundreds of years by a civilization known as the Nubians. Far less well-known by either archaeologists or the public than their Egyptian counterparts, these pyramids rise in close-knit clusters at once grand sites like El Kurru, Gebel Barkal, and Meroe. But they aren’t in Egypt-these pyramids are far to the South, in Sudan. Deep in the Saharan desert, huge stone pyramids rise, monuments to ancient kings.
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