Category: Announcements

Let’s continue our series on the pyramids of the Black Pharaohs at Meroe in the Sudan.

Now that we have seen all these pictures and photographs of pyramids, by Cailliaud, Lepsius, and others, the question arises… is there a list, with a map attached showing the layout of the pyramid field?

In fact I see references to “pyramid XI”; or “N. XI” or even “Beg. N. XI”.   But … nowhere do I see a map.

One reason that I looked at Reisner was to see if he gave a map of the pyramids, with numbers on.  But as far as I could tell, he does not.

Well, I have spent this day looking through the literature, and, finally, I have discovered a map with the numbers on.  Here’s an excerpt of it:

I’ll give the full map at the end, for it is large, and unless you zoom in, you won’t realise that it has the Roman numbers on it.  Nor do all these monuments stand full height; the vile Ferlini demolished some, right down to the ground.

The cryptic numbers become clear.  “Beg.” means Begarawiyah, the modern village nearby, while “N” means the north pyramid field at that location.

The map comes from a 1923 article in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, by G. A. Reisner.^[1]  Plate XIV is a “Plan of the North Cemetery, Begarawiyah”.  In fact it is a map of the pyramid field, showing the pyramid locations, and also the trenches which expose the stairs to the burial chambers, and other fore-buildings.

Here’s Reisner’s map.  You’ll have to click on it, and then zoom and zoom to get the detail; but it is there.

Now for practical reasons that diagram has north at top right.  But this afternoon I was playing with Google Maps on my smartphone.  And I found … that you can see Meroe on Google Maps!  Which is quite remarkable, when you consider that Google won’t allow you to access Google Apps from within Sudan!

Anyway, just for fun, here’s what I saw when I searched for Meroe!

These are days of miracles and wonders. I can testify that, when I began adding content to the web in 1997, just accessing the JEA was a feat attainable by those few who could convince a research library to grant them access to a paper copy. Something like this was unthinkable. We must remind ourselves sometimes how fortunate we are!

And isn’t it a shame that the ordinary people of Sudan itself are cut off from all this, just because of political differences among the mighty of this world?  Nobody benefits from this.  I could wish that Britain, as the colonial power, could do something about this, surely needless, restriction on a former colony.

1. ^[1]G. A. Reisner, “The Meroitic Kingdom of Ethiopia: A Chronological Outline”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, volume 9 (1923), 34-77.  JSTOR link here.↩

The early German archaeologist Karl Lepsius came to Meroe after the treasure-hunter Ferlini had done his worst.  His engraver produced a number of rather charming depictions, which are all online here.  I thought I would include the Meroe pyramid images.

The shattered state of the pyramids is obvious.  Modern German archaeologists have done some repairs with concrete, so thankfully the situation is not as bad as Ferlini left it.

Another:

And

Also a map, but without numbering the pyramids, even though the text does number them!

I’m not an archaeologist, so I’m not that familiar with the literature.  One thing that I have been looking for today, and in vain, is a map of the pyramids, which gives the number for each of them.  For instance I see references to “N11”; but no map to show which this is!  I wonder where these come from?

The pyramids of Meroe, today Gebel Barkal or Mount Barkal, 100 miles north of Khartoum, were vandalised by an Italian, G. Ferlini, ca. 1832.  But between 1819 and 1822, a French explorer named Frederic Cailliaud also visited the area.  His discoveries were published in four normal-sized volumes of text, each around 400 pages, and two large atlas-sized volumes of plates, each of 75 pages,^[1] all under the title Voyage à Méroé au fleuve Blanc fait dans les années 1819 à 1822, Paris (text: 1826-7; plates: 1823).  The volumes of text are online; the volumes of plates, sadly, do not seem to be.*

A few scattered plates can be found online, in variable quality images, and I thought it was worth giving these here.

First, a general view of the pyramid field, as it then was, taken from the north-east:

This photograph, via Wikimedia here, shows part of the same area today.  The three little pyramids in a line at right-angles, in the middle of both images, helps to see what is what:

Next, a view of the north-western group of pyramids, taken from the south-east (via here, which also shows the 4 vols of 2, and the 2 vols bound as 1 of plates):

Interestingly I found a photograph of the same group of pyramids today here:

Next, plate 35, which I have worked over a bit from a poor photograph, and shows a plan of the pyramid field:

And a couple more, also reworked by me, from the same source:

and:

I am unsure, but I think this modern photograph by Olivier Maurice from here may be of one of these pyramids:

I suppose that I shall never see these pyramids, situated as they are in a troubled land; and indeed the same is true of most of us.  But it is deeply interesting to see these drawings, and the modern photographs also.

* UPDATE: a correspondent draws my attention to the fact that the two volumes of the “Atlas” are indeed online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library here and here.

1. ^[1]Information on the volume of plates from the Victoria and Albert catalogue, here; sadly they have not made their copy available online.↩

Few people are aware of the amazing pyramids of Meroe in the Sudan, about a hundred miles north of Khartoum, and easily accessible by a day-trip from the city.  I have not been there myself, sadly.

Sadly they are all badly damaged these days.  They look as if the tops were blown off with gunpowder; which is, in fact, exactly what happened to them, in 1830, at the hands of a rascally Italian treasure hunter named Giuseppe Ferlini.

The Sudan was conquered by a massive Egyptian army, sent up the Nile in 1820.  Ferlini accompanied this army as a physician, but soon struck out on his own behalf.

In 1838 Ferlini published an account of his adventures in Rome, and thanks to the marvels of the internet, it is online.^[1]

I embarked at Cairo on 6 August 1830.  At that time I held the rank of Doctor-Surgeon Major, attached to the first regiment stationed in the valley of Sinnaar, and its dependencies.  I was stationed there for four and a half years, but I only spent ten months in this capital of upper Nubia, i.e. Sinnaar, where the first battalion of my regiment was garrisoned.  On the arrival of Dr Botta, son of the celebrated historian, on 13 May 1832 I went to Kordofan, capital of the western part of Nubia, twelve days from Sinnaar, after crossing the White River, and passing nine days in the deserts.  In 1833 a new corps of doctors and pharmacists was formed under the direction of the Tuscan Dr Landrini.  He sent me to the Fifth Battalion, resident at Khartoum, a city at the extremity of the peninsula of Sinnaar, built by the Turks after the conquest of the country.  It is here that the White River and the Blue River merge to form the Nile, and where resides Crusut Pasha, governor of all the colonies conquered by the Viceroy in the countries that take the name of the Military Sudan.

Since my stays in Greece and Egypt, I had constantly the fixed idea of making some discovery useful to history.  To this effect, I sought to get into the good graces of the governor.  After some months the opportunity arose to ask him for permission to make some excavations in the places where there were ancient monuments.  The pasha was surprised at my request, and did not leave me ignorant of all the perils to which my enterprise would be exposed; he told me that, although he gave me his permission, he would not allow me to work until I promised to pay the workers, and that I ran the risk of losing the fruits of my four years of saving. …

He got slaves together, and joined with an Albanian adventurer calling himself Antoine Stefani.  After some adventures he reaches Meroe.

I left Mr Stefani and went with a hundred men to visit the great pyramids.  A few days later, my friend discovered another habitation as big as the first but there was no luck, just a small terracotta idol.  With this in mind I had demolished the remains of a small pyramid at the foot of the hill.  Coming to the foot of the mountain, I found black stones which seemed to have been carved by man. I sought, with the aid of the pick, to penetrate below the foundations, and found the first step of a stair… I continued to uncover the stair, and reached the ninth and last step.  This led into a small cave, where I only found some bones of camels, horses and some other small skeletons which I took for dogs.  Then I found two types of harness …

During this time, Mr Stefani, who had begun the demolition of another pyramid, in eight hours had only reached the height of the portico; he tried everywhere, this day and for several days after, to find the stair and the caves.  Among the bodies he found one covered by a stone.  We were digging at the side of the head to remove this stone, when a worker, giving a blow with his spade to a round stone, like an ostrich egg, caused a mass of glass objects to come out, of a solid, white and transparent nature. …

And so it goes on, page after page of vandalism and search for saleable items.  He must have been slightly ashamed of his own coarse methods; for he fails to mention gunpowder, at least in any section of the text that I saw.

Of course it is anachronistic to complain, in a way.  Ferlini and his men had no notion of archaeology.  We cannot sensibly complain that they didn’t act as we would have done.  It was, indeed, this useless digging that caused men to devise the science of archaeology.  He had no yardstick for comparison, beyond the volumes of the Description de l’Egypte, which he lacked the resource to duplicate.  The list of objects found, and a few drawings at the end of objects, is no substitute for any kind of proper report.

All the same, one can only curse the man.

1. ^[1]G. Ferlini, Relation historique des fouilles opérées dans la Nubie par le Docteur Ferlini : suivie d’un catalogue des objets qu’il a trouvés dans l’une des 47 pyramides aux environs de l’ancienne ville de Méroé , Rome (1838).  Online at the Bavarian State Library here.↩