The surprising country with more pyramids than Egypt – but no tourists

The wooden door of the tomb is pulled back, and the underworld reaches up to drag us into its dark grip. Holding a low-intensity torch, my guide Hatim El Nour goes first, the meagre beam identifying rough “stairs” in the soil whose edges have been eaten away by the millennia. We choose our footsteps carefully, the air noticeably cooler as we descend into the burial chamber – where nothing, and nobody, awaits us. Not even the dead.

King Tanutamun – the seventh-century BC monarch who once resided in pyramid K16 of the El Kurru necropolis – is long gone, his sarcophagus vanished. His only presence now is on the walls, in the elegant paintings which depict his achievements. There he is, recreated by a masterful artist, being helped into the afterlife by gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon. Hatim traces them with the torch – Isis, the mother goddess; Anubis, the jackal, the guardian of the departed; Thoth, the baboon, the god of wisdom. Together they convey Tanutamun towards the powerful figure of Osiris, who weighs and measures his soul. “The verdict is a good one,” Hatim says, turning to the mural on the other wall, where the king is seen moving back towards the exit, on into the “next world”.

To glimpse these Egyptian deities, portrayed so clearly in the grave of a man who died in 653BC, is an utter privilege – but, without context, also misleading. For El Kurru lies not in Egypt, but in Sudan – 275 miles north of the capital Khartoum, and a full 1,100 miles south of Cairo. Strange? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Because the realm of the pharaohs reached far south of what is now delineated as Egypt – along the Nile, past what is now the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser, and a considerable distance across the modern border. Here, in Sudan, the Ancient Egyptians left behind a wealth of temples and pyramids – but, 27 centuries on, precious few tourists.

That one word, “Sudan”, is the reason for the low traveller numbers at sites that, in a country with a less hair-raising image, would be a blur of coach parties and queues. This nation has a reputation for trouble which may even stretch back to the Egyptian invasion of its territory by Mentuhotep II in the 21st century BC – but which certainly colours its last 200 years: Ottoman annexation in 1821; coming under the thumb of colonial Britain in 1882; independence in 1956 and a subsequent slump into civil war that eventually sparked the birth of a separate state, South Sudan, in 2011; a dabbling in violence in the Nineties that saw the United States decry it as a sponsor of terrorism, to the point where bombs were dropped on Khartoum. Even this year, there have been widespread protests which, in April, led to the toppling of president Omar al-Bashir - a man who had sat at top of Sudanese politics since 1989, and was widely condemned as a dictator. Tourists? It’s amazing there are any at all.

But the reality, as is often the way, is more pleasant than you might expect. Hatim and I continue 15 miles north-east, from El Kurru, along the leafy corridor daubed onto this aridity by the Nile, to the town of Karima. Around us, all is motion – cattle, conversation and a cavalcade of tuk-tuks in the market square; a contrasting silence beyond at the railway station, built by "civilising" Victorian hands, but bereft of trains for a decade now. It adds up to a North African everydayness which helps explain why – in contrast to some areas of Egypt – the Foreign and Commonwealth Office considers much of Sudan safe to visit. Over coffee – strong, thick, aromatic, brewed on a charcoal burner in a rudimentary "café", and served in tiny glasses – Hatim dissects the intricacies of the heritage that has brought me here. As a historian and PhD-level expert in ancient Sudan, as well as a guide, he baulks at the word "Nubian" – the term often used to denote the Sudanese who tussled with the warlords of Luxor and Giza. This relates, he says, to a people who would not appear until around 300AD. He talks instead of the Kingdom of Kush, which took shape in the Bayuda Desert around 2500BC. Its fortunes waxed and waned according to Egypt’s strength, weathering Mentuhotep II’s incursion (in 2032BC) and striking back in the eighth century BC - when the mighty King Kashta strode north with intent, and the Kushite kings became the pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty, ruling both “countries” between 760BC and 656BC. These men were no footnotes. They were warriors and empire builders, and they left their imprint across this dusty landscape.

El Kurru was just one of the Kushite royal necropolises. It was in use between 795BC and 315BC – but posterity has not been kind to it. Archaeological study has still to fill all the gaps in the timeline: there is no consensus on who was buried in K1, the biggest of the site’s 22 pyramids (which is currently under excavation). And many of its tombs were pared back to rubble by military magpies in the 19th century. On the outskirts of Karima, Hatim shows me Al Teraif – an agricultural village in the Nile greenbelt that would be unremarkable but for its Ottoman fort. This once-colossal stronghold is also now a ruin, and in the crumbling of its walls, the thievery from which it was born is laid bare. There, in its flanks, are slabs of Kushite masonry, adorned with carvings of kings, queens and gods.

Staring back at Karima from the opposite bank of the Nile, Nuri has fared better. In use from 664BC to 310BC, it superseded El Kurru as royal graveyard – thanks to the status of the men and women who were committed to eternity here. It has 73 pyramids, most of them intact – but the keystone is the earliest, built for King Taharqa, a titan of the 25th Dynasty who wanted his tomb to be a new headline statement befitting his pomp as a ruler of Egypt. Around him grew a Valley of the Kings, a Westminster Abbey – and again, I have it to myself. Aside from Hatim and me, there is nobody here but for a farmer who wanders by as the sun is setting. He and Hatim stand talking as I snap away with my camera, Hatim explaining our interest, our new friend half baffled and half amused by the presence of this westerner in his backyard, scurrying around taking photos in the fading light. 

I am particularly agog at the pyramid of King Aspelta, a structure of symmetrical perfection, and there are jovial observations on the number of photographs I am taking. It dawns on me that, for this elderly Sudanese gentleman, the note of fascination is not the ancient joys he has ambled past every day since childhood – but that anyone would come from very far to see them.

We return to Karima and the comforts of the Nubian Rest House, an Italian-run boutique property of 10 rooms, which overlooks the glue that held this region together. I wake before sunrise to climb it – Jebel Barkal, a sandstone monolith that, although just 322ft tall and simple to ascend, was regarded as sacred by the rulers who held sway here.

Once I reach the summit, I can appreciate why. On the south-east side of the butte, gazing towards the coming sun, is a column of rock. At this elevation, its resemblance to a rearing cobra – a symbol of Egyptian royal strength – is obvious. So is the outline of the Temple of Amun, which was constructed around 1400BC, directly below this serpentine pinnacle - probably in an attempt to harness its potent imagery. Its creator, the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmosis III, crafted a sprawling miracle of lion statues and sturdy (though now tumbled) pillars - which was heavily expanded by Taharqa around 680BC. Near the sanctuary, a wall of hieroglyphics reveals the skill of the Egyptian craftsmen who first toiled here – and the lesser abilities of the Kushites who "added" to their work in later centuries, their etchings like children's approximations of high art.

Metres away, the fertile tranche of mud provided by the Nile is extra evidence as to why ancient leaders would have built here. We follow it upstream, cheating by forging south-east through the unforgiving Bayuda sandscape, clipping off the curve of one of the river’s loops, to the railway town of Atbara – then flitting down to the endgame for the kings of Kush, to the wonder among wonders – the pyramids at Meroë. 

Here is the motherlode of Kushite heritage. It was used from the ninth century BC to the fourth century AD - but especially from 300BC onwards, in an era of diminished circumstances, when the 25th Dynasty had fallen, the new players of Assyria (modern-day Iran and Iraq) and (later) Rome had wrested control of Egypt, and safety was to be found further south.

Some 177 pyramids stand here, the majority in the Northern Cemetery, in various states of preservation and glory. They could easily have been lost. One notable destroyer was Giuseppe Ferlini, an Italian medic and amateur treasure-hunter who, accompanying Ottoman forces in 1834, decapitated several structures in a lust for gold. Even now, the devastation he wrought on the first-century BC tomb of Queen Amanishakheto is visually shocking, a cultural rape of brute ignorance which left much of the brickwork spilt over the dunes. Thankfully, he did not desecrate the whole area. Adjacent, the tomb of Naherka (built in 140BC) is a proud survivor, its “H-shaped” entrance – so distinctive of the Meroë pyramids – opening on to a funerary chapel where fine etchings of Isis and Osiris greet the dead king. Above both, the stark outline of Jebel Barkal is visible on the wall.

Two doorways along, the final fate of the Kushite kingdom is embodied in the pyramid of Queen Amanirenas. A Sudanese Boadicea, she took the fight back to Egypt – and to the Romans who were now in charge – in 27BC. She met with partial success in a war that lasted five years, and was concluded by a favourable treaty, negotiated with Emperor Augustus. This was, though, the last defiance of a civilisation that would fade in the next 300 years, condemned to irrelevance by a new world order on the Mediterranean. 

I take my leave too, to Meroë Tented Camp, a luxury retreat a mile away. Here, I take a seat on the veranda, and gaze back across the rocky landscape at the pyramids - which sink gradually into the gloaming as the day ends. Would the Kushites be pleased with the song that these scattered tombs still sing of their former greatness? Surely so. Even if, for now, so few tourists are listening.

How to get there

Cox & Kings (0203 642 0861; coxandkings.co.uk) is offering an 11-day Treasures of Ancient Nubia trip through Sudan which visits the pyramids at El Kurru, Nuri and Meroë, as well as Khartoum. 

Prices start at £3,295 per person for a group tour, or £4,995 per person for a private journey – including high-end accommodation, international flights, chauffeured internal travel and guides. Ethiopian Airlines (0800 016 3449; ethiopianairlines.com) flies to Khartoum daily from London Heathrow, via Addis Ababa.