About a week back Heritage Key published a story about the discovery of a massive, one ton, statue of Taharqa that was found deep in Sudan.

Taharqa was a pharaoh of the 25th dynasty of Egypt and came to power ca. 690 BC. The pharaohs of this dynasty were from Nubia – a territory located in modern day Sudan and southern Egypt. When Taharqa came to power, he controlled an empire stretching from Sudan to the Levant.

The Nubian pharaohs tried to incorporate Egyptian culture into their own. They built pyramids in Sudan – even though pyramid building in Egypt hadn’t been practiced in nearly 800 years.

Taharqa’s rule was a high water mark for the 25th dynasty. By the end of his reign a conflict with the Assyrians had forced him to retreat south, back into Nubia – where he died in 664 BC.

Egypt became an Assyrian vassal – eventually gaining independence during the 26th dynasty. Taharqa’s successors were never able to retake Egypt.

In addition to Taharqa’s statue, those of two of his successors – Senkamanisken and Aspelta – were found alongside. These two rulers controlled territory in Sudan, but not Egypt.

No other statue of a pharaoh has been found further south than Taharqa’s.

Excerpted from an article by Owen Jarus for Heritage Key

“Lost Kingdoms of the Nile” at the Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia features more than 200 objects on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The exhibit, which continues through April, made only one other stop on this tour — at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta.

A colorful sarcophagus dominates one room, while the accessories of burial add to the display. There’s an alabaster vessel that held the deceased’s organs, a replica of an ivory inlaid bed on which the deceased would have been carried, shawabtis, or statues, that were buried with the dead to represent the servants they’d need on their journey to the afterlife and gold tips that covered the ends of their fingers and toes. The statues were a big improvement over the actual servants who were buried with earlier rulers in the Kerma Period.

The Clay Center staff constructed a templelike entrance to the exhibit as well as special display cases for the artifacts. Creative services manager Bridgett Turley copied ancient wall paintings and hand-painted them on the exhibit walls.

Staff members developed student and adult programming and activities to showcase and to maximize the exhibit’s impact for visitors.

The Nubians settled in Africa, south of Egypt on the Nile River. Nubia was not professionally excavated until 1913, partially because Nubia is not easily accessible by river. It’s six treacherous sets of rapids upriver from Egypt. Many of the sites were lost or destroyed when the river flooded.

Located in modern-day Sudan, Nubia was the gateway to the African interior. Nubians and Egyptians later traded goods and influence. Egyptians valued Nubian goods such as gold, ivory, ebony and exotic animals. Nubians invented pottery and the concept of kingship. They were skilled goldsmiths.

“Lost Kingdoms of the Nile” features imposing stone statues, intricate gold and silver jewelry, hand mirrors, pottery and stone vases and pitchers, oversized historic photos and a wealth of pieces associated with the afterlife.

Excerpted from an article by Julie Robinson for The Charleston Gazette

Egypt’s top Islamic authority defended women’s rights to wear trousers in public.

In response to a question deemed by the cleric as “strange and weird”, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa  said that trousers covering women’s bodies are permitted, though they should be loose and not see through. He specified that “stretch” pants were in particular unacceptable.

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Last July, Sudan caused a stir when it flogged 10 women for wearing trousers. One woman, Lubna Hussein, contested penalty and was let off with a fine for public indecency in a trial that garnered international attention.

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The problem stems in large part from the absence of multilateral agreements concerning water-sharing. The only agreement that does exist lies at the heart of the dispute — the 1929 accord between Egypt and Britain, then the predominant colonial power in Africa. It gave Cairo veto power over upstream projects that could impede the Nile’s flow levels — as Turkey’s current ambitious dam-building program is cutting off the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates to Syria and Iraq.

Britain claimed it had acted on behalf of its African colonies, but its motivation undoubtedly had a lot to do with maintaining strategic control over the Suez Canal to hold its empire together. A bilateral treaty between Egypt and Sudan in 1959 allocated Egypt 55.5 billion cubic meters of water annually — 87 percent of the Nile’s flow — with Sudan getting 18.5 billion cubic meters.

The other riparian states say this is grossly unfair and demand an equitable water-sharing pact that would allow for much wider irrigation for crop-growing (an increasingly vital issue because of global food shortages) and hydraulic power projects.

Egypt argues that the upstream countries have far greater rainfall than Egypt — which has hardly any — and other sources of water than the Nile.

The river provides 87 percent of Egypt’s water resources. An Egyptian government report in July warned that the country’s water requirements would exceed its resources by 2017.

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Failure by Egypt and Sudan to come up with a common stand during the Nile Council of Ministers’ assembly in Kinshasa, DR Congo, frustrated their attempts to block a new pact to govern the use of River Nile waters. To the disappointment of the two downstream countries, the pact was adopted and will soon be signed and ratified by Nile Basin governments.

This paves the way for establishment of a permanent River-Basin Commission to implement development projects.

Egypt and Sudan had asked for “historical rights and uses” of the river to be recognised through placement of an article in the new pact. But other Nile Basin countries — Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda — had not agreed on this.

The controversial article 14 in the draft pact reads, “Nile Basin states, therefore, in a spirit of co-operation, agree:

a) to work together to ensure that all states achieve and sustain water security,
b) not to significantly affect the water security of any other Nile basin state.”

Egypt and Sudan want part b) of the article to read, “Not to adversely affect the water security “and current uses and rights” of any other Nile basin state.”

The other countries declined this proposal to guarantee a more liberal regime of water use for future economic programmes. These include large irrigation schemes already planned and awaiting implementation in Ethiopia and Tanzania. The two countries plan to draw water from River Nile and its feeders for irrigation. This could affect the amount of water flowing to Sudan and Egypt.

NBI is on an ambitious campaign to secure funds for development projects in the sub region. Some of the investments in East Africa include; a hydro electricity plant at Rusumo Falls for Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi; water management facilities in Malaba for Kenya; water hyacinth control in Kagera region (Uganda) for Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda; and a fisheries improvement project on Lake Albert for Uganda and DRC.

Excerpted from an article by Malingha Doya for The East African

With the construction of the great dam – approved by the Egyptian government in 1958 to allow the country’s economy to be modernized, and built between 1960 and 1964 – 360 kilometres of territory in Egypt and 140 in Sudan were to be irretrievably transformed into a great inland sea. Which is why the Cairo and Khartoum governments resolved to sign an official request for an appeal to UNESCO. So it was that in 1960 the organization turned to its member states and what was later to be called the greatest archaeological salvage operation of all time got underway.

Over 70 separate archaeological missions from 25 countries explored each of the Nubian regions that were due to be flooded, both in Egypt and in Sudan. A good 14 temples and monuments scattered along this stretch of the Nile valley were dismantled stone by stone and completely reconstructed beyond the reach of the waters. Without doubt, the most famous of these operations were those leading to the salvaging of the two temples of Abu Simbel and those of Philae. Five temples – including that of Ellesya, which is today reconstructed in Turin’s Museum of Egypt – were donated to the countries that collaborated in the rescue work.

During the conference at Aswan, which has been organized by Egypt’s and Sudan’s ministries of culture, scholars who took part in the salvage campaign will be presented with an award by UNESCO. Some hitherto unpublished documents relating to the period of salvage work will go on display, and a new campaign for the preservation of the Nubian heritage will be launched.

ANSA

The rams were excavated at El-Hassa, 180km north of Khartoum, on a sacred causeway leading to an ancient temple, said Vincent Rondot, head of the French Section of the Directorate on Antiquities of Sudan.

Key to the discovery three weeks ago is a royal inscription that bears the name of little known king Amanakhareqerem.

Experts can pronounce the text and can read names, but cannot understand the words. Meroitic is a branch of the same linguistic tree as languages spoken in contemporary Sudan and Eritrea, the archaeologist said.

BBC News

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The Meroe High Dam, otherwise known as the Multi-Purpose Hydro Project or Hamdab Dam, is well underway — and the archaeological remains of the ancient African kingdom of Meroe which developed along the upper reaches of the Nile is destined to oblivion.

The purpose of the dam being constructed close to the Fourth Cataract, about 200 kilometres north of Khartoum, is to generate electricity. It is the largest hydropower project currently under construction in Africa. With a length of some nine kilometers, and a crest height of up to 67 kilometers it is reminiscent of the High Dam at Aswan constructed in the 1960s. It too is designed with a concrete-faced rock-fill barrage on each river bank, the left river channel with a clay core, and the right with a live water section. Once completed, its 200-kilometer long reservoir, with a capacity to produce 1,250 megawatts of power, will displace 50,000 people and inundate countless archaeological sites including Meroe in the African kingdom of Kush, sub-Saharan Africa’s earliest urban civilization.

In fact the Fourth Cataract region is rich in archaeology, and it is unfortunate that, unlike the UNESCO project of the 1960s when the High Dam was built at Aswan, Sudanese Nubia has no monuments of the caliber of Abu Simbel to attract world attention to what is being done. The half-dozen Sudanese and foreign missions working in the threatened area have already pin-pointed hundreds of settlements and cemeteries spanning four millennia, and lithic artefacts, rock art, pottery, and even a granite pyramid — the only one so far known in Sudan — have been found, not to mention medieval Christian remains and Islamic cemeteries.

Excerpted from an article by Jill Kamil for Al-Ahram Weekly