Ancient wall painting in the Nubian pyramids depicting a Giant carrying two elephants

If you drive north from Khartoum along a narrow desert road toward the ancient city of Meros, a breathtaking view emerges beyond the mirage: dozens of steep pyramids piercing the horizon. No matter how many times you visit, there is an amazing sense of discovery.

In Meros itself, once the capital of the Kingdom of Kush, the road divides the city. To the east is the royal cemetery, filled with about 50 sandstone and red brick pyramids of varying heights; The legacy of the European robbers of the 19th century has been broken by many. To the west is the royal city, which includes the ruins of a palace, a temple and a royal bath. 

Each structure has a distinctive architecture that draws on evidence of global ties to the local, Egyptian and Greco-Roman decorative tastes—Mero.

A Brief History of the “Land of Kush”

The first settlers in North Sudan date back to 300,000 years ago. It is home to the oldest sub-Saharan African state, the Kingdom of Kush (around 2500–1500 BC). This culture produced some of the most beautiful pottery in the Nile Valley, including the Karma Beaker.

Sudan was reputed for its rich natural resources especially gold, ebony and ivory. Many items in the British Museum collection are made of these materials. 

Ancient Egyptians were drawn south in search of these resources during the Old Kingdom (about 2686–2181 BC), which often led to conflict as Egyptian and Sudanese rulers sought to control trade.

Kush was the most powerful kingdom in the Nile Valley around 1700 BC. The conflict between Egypt and Kush culminated in the conquest of Kush by Thutmose I (1504–1492 BC). In the west and south, Neolithic cultures persisted as both regions were out of reach of the Egyptian rulers.

Peculiar murals of the city of Meros and the giant carrying elephants

The city of Meros is marked by over two hundred pyramids, many of which are in ruins. They have the typical shape and proportions of the Nubian pyramids.

The site of Meros was brought to the knowledge of Europeans in 1821 by the French mineralogist Frédéric Callioud (1787–1869). The most interesting objects were the reliefs and paintings on the walls of the chambers of the tombs. One of the pictures depicts a giant proportion carrying two elephants.

His features are not Nubian but Caucasian and his hair is light-coloured. Will this mural be evidence of the existence of a race of red-haired six-fingered demons in ancient times?

In the distant past, did demons really roam the Nile Valley?

In 79 AD, the Roman historian Josephus Flavius ​​wrote that the last race of Egyptian giants lived during the reign of King Joshua in the 79th century BC. He further wrote that they had huge bodies, and their faces were so different from those of ordinary humans that it was wonderful to see them, and it was scary to hear their loud voice which was like the roar of a lion.

In addition, many wall paintings from ancient Egypt depict the builders of the pyramids as “giant people” ranging in size from 5 to 6 meters tall. According to experts, these giants were capable of lifting 4 to 5 tons of blocks separately. 

Some of those ancient murals showed giant kings ruling ancient Egypt, while some depicted comparatively small-sized servants under giants.

In 1988, Gregor Spori, a Swiss entrepreneur and a passionate admirer of ancient Egyptian history, met a gang of robbers of ancient burials through one of the private suppliers in Egypt. 

The meeting took place in a small house in Bir Hooker, a hundred kilometres northeast of Cairo, where Spori saw a giant mummified finger wrapped in rags.

The finger was very dry and light. According to Spori, the incredible creature to which he belonged must have been at least 5 meters (about 16.48 feet) in height. To prove authenticity, a Tomb Raider showed a photo of an X-ray of a mummified finger taken in the 1960s.

First Human Traces Buried in an Ancient Gold Mine in Eastern Sahara

In an ancient gold mine in the Eastern Sahara, some of the earliest evidence of human existence going back 1.8 million years have been unearthed. Archaeologists from the University of Wroclaw discovered a cache of artefacts from the African variety of Homo erectus, the ancestor of humans (Homo sapiens), around 70 kilometres east of Atbara.

Included among the hundreds of artefacts were massive, almond-shaped cleavers resembling fists, weighing several kilograms, and with chipped edges on both sides forming a pointed tip at the junction.

“In the eastern part of Sudan, in the Eastern Desert, like in many places in the Sahara, a gold rush broke out. People were looking for this valuable ore in makeshift, open-cast mines. While exposing subsequent layers, miners came across several-hundred-thousand-year-old tools.”

By examining layers of soil and sand above the objects using the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) method the archaeologists were able to determine the age of the tools. 

Research project leader Professor Mirosław Masojć from the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Wrocław said: “It turned out that they were about 390,000 years old.

This means that the layers below are certainly older. Based on the workmanship, I believe that the tools may be over 700,000 years old, perhaps even a million years old, like their counterparts discovered further in the south of Africa.”

Previously, Professor Masojć’s team previously had discovered hand axes and other tools, but never ones that were technologically so close to those from equatorial Africa, or that old. 

It is now thought that in the place where the artefacts were discovered, there used to be a workshop where tools were made because both finished ‘products, as well as flakes formed during their production, have been preserved.

Masojć added that these are the oldest known human creations with such a well-confirmed chronology from Egypt and Sudan. He said: “Ancient tools are found in deserts, but never before have they come from layers that would allow to safely determine their age.”

So far, researchers have found nearly 200 sites where Palaeolithic stone products have been preserved. Some of them are in mines (these are located about 350 km north of Khartoum).

They find all sorts of tools used by both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. The age of the tools varies greatly, from over half a million to 60,000 years.

Masojć said it cannot be ruled out that there are even older artefacts in the deeper parts of the mines, but added that accessing them is currently difficult.

He said: “The last research season took place at the end of 2019 when the political situation was very tense, and ultimately there was a coup in Sudan and the long-standing regime was overthrown.

The work was very difficult in terms of logistics: there were fuel shortages, we had to avoid protests, people were dying.”

Researchers from Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Germany and the US were involved in the project financed by the National Science Centre. The research results have just been published in the prestigious journal Plos One

Dozens of ancient pyramids found at a single site in Sudan

At least 35 small pyramids, along with graves, have been discovered clustered closely together at a site called Sedeinga in Sudan. Discovered between 2009 and 2012, researchers are surprised at how densely the pyramids are concentrated.

In one field season alone, in 2011, the research team discovered 13 pyramids packed into roughly 5,381 square feet (500 square meters), or slightly larger than an NBA basketball court. They date back around 2,000 years to a time when a kingdom named Kush flourished in Sudan. Kush shared a border with Egypt and, later on, the Roman Empire.

The desire of the kingdom’s people to build pyramids was apparently influenced by Egyptian funerary architecture.

At Sedeinga, researchers say, pyramid building continued for centuries. “The density of the pyramids is huge,” said researcher Vincent Francigny, a research associate with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in an interview with LiveScience.

“Because it lasted for hundreds of years they built more, more, more pyramids and after centuries they started to fill all the spaces that were still available in the necropolis.”

The biggest pyramids they discovered are about 22 feet (7 meters) wide at their base with the smallest example, likely constructed for the burial of a child, being only 30 inches (750 millimetres) long.

The tops of the pyramids are not attached, as the passage of time and the presence of a camel caravan route resulted in damage to the monuments. Francigny said that the tops would have been decorated with a capstone depicting either a bird or a lotus flower on top of a solar orb.

The building continued until, eventually, they ran out of room to build pyramids. “They reached a point where it was so filled with people and graves that they had to reuse the oldest one,” Francigny said.

Francigny is excavation director of the French Archaeological Mission to Sedeinga, the team that made the discoveries. He and team leader Claude Rilly published an article detailing the results of their 2011 field season in the most recent edition of the journal Sudan and Nubia.

The inner-circle

Among the discoveries were several pyramids designed with an inner cupola (circular structure) connected to the pyramid corners through cross-braces. Rilly and Francigny noted in their paper that the pyramid design resembles a “French Formal Garden.”

Only one pyramid, outside of Sedeinga, is known to have been constructed this way, and it’s a mystery why the people of Sedeinga were fond of the design. It “did not add either to the solidity or to the external aspect [appearance] of the monument,” Rilly and Francigny write.

A discovery made in 2012 may provide a clue, Francigny said in the interview. “What we found this year is very intriguing,” he said.

“A grave of a child and it was covered by only a kind of circle, almost complete, of brick.” It’s possible, he said, that when pyramid building came into fashion at Sedeinga it was combined with a local circle-building tradition called tumulus construction, resulting in pyramids with circles within them.

An offering for grandma?

The graves beside the pyramids had largely been plundered, possibly in antiquity, by the time archaeologists excavated them. Researchers did find skeletal remains and, in some cases, artefacts. 

One of the most interesting new finds was an offering table found by the remains of a pyramid. . It appears to depict the goddess Isis and the jackal-headed god Anubis and includes an inscription, written in Meroitic language, dedicated to a woman named “Aba-la,” which may be a nickname for “grandmother,” Rilly writes.

It reads in translation:

Oh, Isis! Oh Osiris!

It is Aba-la.

Make her drink plentiful water;

Make her eat plentiful bread;

Make her be served a good meal.

The offering table with the inscription was a final send-off for a woman, possibly a grandmother, given a pyramid burial nearly 2,000 years ago.