SUDAN'S KUSH CIVILIZATION GRADUALLY YIELDING ITS SECRETS

A team of French, British, and American archaeologists are working to uncover a northern Sudanese civilization, which once controlled the Egyptian pharaoh’s throne. At the same time, the Louvre is working on an upcoming exhibition on a dynasty that ruled the civilization, called Kush, for a millennium. The ancient Kushite capital of Meroe is purported to hold mysteries to rival ancient Egypt, including pyramids and stelae inscribed in an undeciphered language.

The pyramids have been excavated, but there is much left to uncover in regards to the Kushite culture. "We have a chronology, but it's not very precise," said the deputy director antiquities. Claude Rilly, an expert in the ancient Meroitic language, adds, "We know about 50 words in Meroitic, but we need about a thousand of them to understand a language. So we have an enormous amount of work to do.” Rilly also says there are many untouched sites to explore in Sudan, including sites about which we know nothing at all.

The lack of tourism among the Kushite ruins also adds to their appeal, especially for the archaeologists currently working on the site. "There is a magic beauty about these sites that is heightened by the privilege of being able to admire them alone, with the pyramids, the dunes and the sun," said Guillemette Andreu, head of antiquities at Paris' Louvre museum. "It really sets them apart from the Egyptian pyramids, whose beauty is slightly overshadowed by the tourist crowds."

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