BETWEEN MEROE AND KARIMA: THE SHAIGIYA TRIBE

The map of the trip across Sudan and Egypt

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa, and is commonly regarded as the longest river in the world.

The Nile, which is 6,853 km long, is an international river as its drainage basin covers eleven countries, namely, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan and Egypt. In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan.

The trip along the Nile River is exciting. Tina Picotes is enjoying the sights with Claire. Joseph de Ca'th Lon is taking some photos of the Nubian pyramids in Meroë and The Grandma is studying a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 5).

More information: Collocation and fixed expressions-2

Meroë is an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east of the Kabushiya station near Shendi, Sudan, approximately 200 km north-east of Khartoum. Near the site are a group of villages called Bagrawiyah. This city was the capital of the Kingdom of Kush for several centuries. The Kushitic Kingdom of Meroë gave its name to the Island of Meroë, which was the modern region of Butana, a region bounded by the Nile, from the Atbarah River to Khartoum, the Atbarah and the Blue Nile.

The city of Meroë was on the edge of Butana and there were two other Meroitic cities in Butana: Musawwarat es-Sufra and Naqa. The first of these sites was given the name Meroë by the Persian king, Cambyses, in honor of his sister who was called by that name.

Crossing a Nubian village along the Nile River

The city had originally borne the ancient appellation Saba, named after the country's original founder. The eponym Saba, or Seba, is named for one of the sons of Cush.

The presence of numerous Meroitic sites within the western Butana region and on the border of Butana proper is significant to the settlement of the core of the developed region. The orientation of these settlements exhibit the exercise of state power over subsistence production.

The Kingdom of Kush which housed the city of Meroë represents one of a series of early states located within the middle Nile. It is one of the earliest and most impressive states found south of the Sahara.

More information: The New York Times

Looking at the specificity of the surrounding early states within the middle Nile, one's understanding of Meroë in combination with the historical developments of other historic states may be enhanced through looking at the development of power relation characteristics within other Nile Valley states.

The site of the city of Meroë is marked by more than two hundred pyramids in three groups, of which many are in ruins. They have the distinctive size and proportions of Nubian pyramids.

The Grandma in Mut Temple, Jebel Barkal

Karima is a town in Northern State in Sudan some 400 km from Khartoum on a loop of the Nile. The hill of Jebel Barkal is near Karima. Beside it are the ruins of Napata, a city-state of ancient Nubia on the west bank of the Nile River, including the temple of Amun.

The Shaigiya tribe lived around Karima and Korti, but suffered for their support of the British against the Mahdi. The land around Karima is a center for cultivation of Barakawi dates.

Jebel Barkal or Gebel Barkal is a very small mountain located some 400 km north of Khartoum, in Karima town in Northern State in Sudan, on a large bend of the Nile River, in the region called Nubia.

The mountain is 98 m tall, has a flat top, and apparently was used as a landmark by the traders in the important route between central Africa, Arabia, and Egypt, as the point where it was easier to cross the great river. In 2003, the mountain, together with the historical city of Napata, which sits at its feet, were named World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

More information: The Huffington Post

Around 1450 BCE, the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III extended his empire to that region and considered Jebel Barkal its southern limit. There, he campaigned near the city of Napata that, about 300 years later, became the capital of the independent kingdom of Kush. The 25th Dynasty Nubian king Piye later greatly enlarged the New Kingdom Temple of Amun in this city and erected his Year 20 Victory stela within it.

The ruins around Jebel Barkal include at least 13 temples and 3 palaces, that were for the first time described by European explorers in the 1820s. In 1862 five inscriptions from the Third Intermediate Period were recovered by an Egyptian officer and transported to the Cairo Museum, but not until 1916 were scientific archeological excavations performed by a joint expedition of Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston under the direction of George Reisner. 

Joseph de Ca'th Lon at Jebel Barkal, Sudan

From the 1970s, explorations continued by a team from the University of Rome La Sapienza, under the direction of Sergio Donadoni, that was joined by another team from the Boston Museum, in the 1980s, under the direction of Timothy Kendall. 

The larger temples, such as the Temple of Amun, are even today considered sacred to the local population. The Temple of Amun is an archaeological site at Jebel Barkal in Northern State, Sudan. It is situated about 400 kilometres north of Khartoum near Karima. The temple stands near a large bend of the Nile River, in the region that was called Nubia in ancient times.

More information: Open Edition

The Temple of Amun, one of the larger temples at Jebel Barkal, is considered sacred to the local population. Not only was the Amun temple a main centre of what at one time was considered to be an almost universal religion, but, along with the other archaeological sites at Jebel Barkal, it was representative of the revival of Egyptian religious values.

Up to the middle of the 19th century, the temple was subjected to vandalism, destruction, and indiscriminate plundering, before it came under state protection.

Shaigiya woman, northern Sudan

Construction of the temple occurred in the 13th century BC. The temple's foundation probably occurred during the reign of Thutmose III, while the temple was shaped during his reign and that of Ramses II. Especially at the time of the Napatan empire, the temple was of great importance for the Kushite kingdom. 

The Nubian king Piye and subsequent Nubian pharaohs expanded Barkal's Amun temple complex, creating a southern rival to the northern Amun temple at Thebes. Although early Meroe rulers had their own capital, government officials took a coronation journey to the Amun Temple of Jebel Barkal. Here, the king went into the Holy of Holies, where he was confirmed as king by a divine oracle. In the years 25/24 BC, the Romans invaded Nubia during a campaign against the Kushites led by Gaius Petronius. 

He destroyed the temple and took Jebel Barkal from one of the Kandakes; however, the Romans were unable to make permanent gains and withdrew after razing Napata to the ground. The last large-scale construction works were by the Kushite king Natakamani, who restored some of the Roman destruction, enlarged the temple complex, and renovated the first pylon and other parts of the temple.

More information: Ancient History

We have always been taught that navigation 

is the result of civilization, 

but modern archeology has demonstrated 

very clearly that this is not so. 

Thor Heyerdahl

ANCIENT NUBIA, ENJOY TRAVELLING ACROSS THE NILE

Tina Picotes at Blue Nile Sailing Club, Khartoum

Claire Fontaine, Tina Picotes, Joseph de Ca'th Lon and The Grandma have just arrived to Khartoum, the capital and largest city of Sudan. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile, flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile, flowing west from Ethiopia.

The location where the two Niles meet is known as al-Mogran, The Confluence. The main Nile continues to flow towards Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. After a flight from Barcelona to Cairo and a second one from Cairo to Khartoum, they have finally arrived to their destination.

Here, in Khartoum, they're going to start a cruise across the Nile to emulate the novel Death on the Nile written by Agatha Christie in 1937. The book features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The action takes place in Egypt, mostly on the Nile River.

For every friend, this trip has a special motive. Joseph de Ca'th Lon is an expert in Archaeology and Mathematics visiting Nubia and Egypt is a dream for him. Tina Picotes loves travelling and Nubia and Egypt offer her lots of emotions and incredible places to discover. Claire Fontaine is a great expert in design and Ancient Cultures are always a fantastic source of inspiration and The Grandma loves languages and she's excited with the possibility of descifring old Egyptian hieroglyphs and Nubian writings.

The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice (Vocabulary 4) manual while they have been waiting their private boat to sail along the Nile river.

More information: Collocation and fixed expressions-1 I & II

Nubia is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between Aswan in southern Egypt and Khartoum in central Sudan. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, with a history that can be traced from at least 2500 BC onward, Kerma culture, and was home to several empires, most prominently the kingdom of Kush, which for a while even ruled over Egypt.

Old map of Nubian lands

Its collapse in the 4th century AD after more than 1000 years of existence was precipitated by an invasion by Ethiopia's Kingdom of Aksum and saw the rise of three Christian kingdoms, Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia, the last two again lasting 1000 years.

Their eventual decline initiated not only the partition of Nubia into the northern half conquered by the Ottomans and the southern half by the Sennar sultanate in the 16th century, but also a rapid Islamization and partial Arabization of the Nubian people. Nubia was again united under the Khedivate of Egypt in the 19th century. Today, Nubia is split between Egypt and Sudan.

The name Nubia is derived from that of the Noba people, nomads who settled the area in the 4th century CE following the collapse of the kingdom of Meroë.

The Noba spoke a Nilo-Saharan language, ancestral to Old Nubian. Old Nubian was mostly used in religious texts dating from the 8th and 15th centuries. Before the 4th century, and throughout classical antiquity, Nubia was known as Kush, or, in Classical Greek usage, included under the name Ethiopia (Aithiopia).

More information: Live Science

Historically, the people of Nubia spoke at least two varieties of the Nubian language group, a subfamily that includes Nobiin, the descendant of Old Nubian, Kenuzi-Dongola, Midob and several related varieties in the northern part of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan.

Until at least 1970, the Birgid language was spoken north of Nyala in Darfur, but is now extinct. However, linguistic evidence indicates that the languages spoken in the ancient Kerma Culture, present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan in Nubia, belonged to the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon at Nubian Pyramids

Nubia was divided into two major regions: Upper and Lower Nubia, so called because of their location in the Nile river valley, the lower being further downstream than the upper. 

Lower Nubia lay between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile river, spreading into modern southern Egypt and northern Sudan, while Upper Nubia extended between the Second and Sixth Cataracts, in modern central Sudan.

With the end of colonialism and the establishment of the Republic of Egypt (1953), and the secession of the Republic of Sudan from unity with Egypt (1956), Nubia was divided between Egypt and Sudan.

More information: Ancient Origins

During the early-1970s, many Egyptian and Sudanese Nubians were forcibly resettled to make room for Lake Nasser after the construction of the dams at Aswan. Nubian villages can now be found north of Aswan on the west bank of the Nile and on Elephantine Island; and many Nubians now live in large cities, such as Cairo.

The trip has started in Lake Nasser, a vast reservoir in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Before construction, Sudan was against the building of Lake Nasser because it would encroach on land in the North, where the Nubian people lived. They would have to be resettled. In the end Sudan's land near the area of Lake Nasser was mostly flooded by the lake.

The Grandma & Claire Fontaine at Nubian Ruins

They have visited the Nubian Pyramids that were built by the rulers of the ancient Kushite kingdoms.

The area of the Nile valley known as Nubia, which lies within present day Sudan, was home to three Kushite kingdoms during antiquity. The first had its capital at Kerma (2600–1520 BC). The second was centered on Napata (1000–300 BC). Finally, the last kingdom was centered on Meroë (300 BC–AD 300). They are built of granite and sandstone.

Kerma was Nubia's first centralized state with its own indigenous forms of architecture and burial customs. The last two kingdoms, Napata and Meroë, were heavily influenced by ancient Egypt culturally, economically, politically, and militarily. The Kushite kingdoms in turn competed strongly with Egypt economically and militarily. 

In 744 BC, the Kushite king Piankhi overthrew the 24th Dynasty and united the entire Nile valley from the delta to the city of Napata under his rule. Piankhi and his descendants ruled as the pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Napatan control of Egypt ended after being conquered by Assyria in 656 BC. The Nubian pyramids are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

More information: Undark

Act like a man, think like a king.

Nubian Proverb