Pyramids of Sudan

Cambodia ruins-a temple off the
very beaten Angkor Wat path

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist.  It wasn’t an Indiana Jones thing—I didn’t find out who he was until much later (no TV + living overseas = late knowledge of basic pop-culture). I actually decided on that career path after finding out about the Rosetta Stone, hoping to find a similar stone someday to help me decipher Linear A or something else interesting. The idea of wandering around crumbling ruins  or swimming through an underwater shipwreck was always attractive to me too, though I blame the latter on the Little Mermaid (pop-culture that happened just before we moved to Indonesia).

Even though I’m not an archaeologist, I have managed to visit some pretty cool ruinous places in my life, highlights include the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza, Petra, the Valley of the Kings, Baalbek, Borobudur, the Acropolis, Palmyra, Prambanan, Angkor Wat…I could keep going, but I think I’ve made my point: it’s not fair how much cool stuff I’ve gotten to see in my lifetime and WHY haven’t I been to South America yet to see all the cool stuff there?

So I wrote about the wedding in Atbara and driving by the Meroe Pyramids on my way there.  Since we were already running late then, I knew we would probably not be stopping, but I thought if I mentioned once or twice or five million times that I wanted to stop there on the way back, that maybe someone would realize that it was important to me and make that happen. It was really important to me to make sure that it happened on this trip—not just because I am an impatient person who doesn’t like to wait for fun things, but because the thing about Sudan is that when a foreigner wants to travel outside of Khartoum, he or she must obtain official permission to do so.  This takes paperwork and sitting in a government office waiting for answers that may or may not come within a few days. For example, I’m still waiting for my permission to go to West Darfur, and we applied a month ago. So if I want to do any outside-Khartoum-tourist-fun, I either need to make someone in my office go through all that pain, or I need to make the most of outside excursions whenever I can. Which, clearly, I did. Really it was UN-selfish of me to push extra fun into a weekend when I was trying to get by on 2 hours of sleep, just to save my colleagues some paperwork. I truly care.

Anyway, back to the pyramids--I had known about the pyramids in Sudan for a while now, and I’ve known since I got here that I wanted to see at least some of them (there are a lot more that I haven’t been to visit yet). If I can ever get the necessary travel permission again there are some more cool Sudanese ruins in a place called Jabal Barkal, about 400km north of Khartoum with MORE pyramids and a few palaces too. I’m scheming about how to get there, but I think I’ll need some allies, and frankly, people here aren’t too interested in them, even the Nubians, descendants of those who actually built these places thousands of years ago when most other civilizations still did not know how to be awesome. It’s kind of similar to when my fourth grade teacher asked the 8 kids in our tiny international school, which of us had ever been to Niagara Falls, and the British kid was the only one who raised his hand. Still, we had an excuse for being slacker American tourists—we didn’t live there.  Of course, neither did the British kid… I guess it is human nature to take tourist destinations in one’s own country for granted.

We left Atbara a little bit before 6am. It’s still dark in Sudan (South Sudan too) at 6am, which really bugs me because I like to be an early morning outside runner, but in places that don’t have streetlights and do have large crater-sized potholes, that can be dangerous. It was recently pointed out to me by someone who thinks about those kinds of things that this phenomenon is because we are on the western end of the East Africa Time Zone, aka GMT + 3:00. I don’t think like that because it is hard enough for me to remember what time zone I’m actually in, and to be required to think about my east/west orientation within that time zone is too much for me to worry about. In spite of my displeasure with places that do not share the perfect sun conditions of equatorial Indonesia (sun coming up at 5:30am, down by 6:30pm, always, every day, without fail, don’t need a watch because you can see the position of sun and you have a cell phone anyway), it turned out well for us because at about 7:30 we pulled up at the edge of the road by the pyramids with the sun just peaking up over their pointy tops.

Tourist sign

We debated a bit about driving up to the entrance or walking, knowing that it was farther away than it looked, but worried about our little car getting stuck in the sand. We decided to risk it, since the important government official who had come with us to the wedding thought it would be OK. I also used him as an excuse as to why I jumped the small fence built on the edge of the property in hopes that this would become an income-generating tourist destination without any qualms—there was an abandoned ticket booth and everything. Modern and ancient ruins side by side! The reality is that I would have jumped that fence with or without his permission, but I do think it is good to have these important people on my side. We all jumped the fence and then I ran around like a maniac, trying to see everything as fast as possible before my sleepy companions got fed up with me and left. There was still so much that I missed…I only climbed up to the top of about 2 pyramids and I didn’t get out to some more crumbly ones a bit farther away from the main complex, but I covered a lot of ground.

Here are some of the better photos, not taken while I was jumping off a pyramid:

Don't know why the green dot is there--probably left-over alien technology

Tomb drawings

Our government official looked really authentic in front of the pyramids

Hey! A Nubian at the pyramids--Patris is the BEST! Even
though he did get a speeding ticket on the way home for
trying to make up for lost time at the Pyramids. Sorry!

Taken from the top! Climbing is fun...

These multi-lingual cave inscriptions prove that ancient Nubians
were also friends with Chinese and Arab graffiti artists. And seriously,
WHY ARE PEOPLE SUCH JERKS ABOUT RESPECTING HISTORY?

I didn't get all the way out to those pyramids
since everyone else was already back in the car

They look cool from every angle--so does the sand

Entrepreneurial camel owners tried to con me into paying for a ride.
I resisted because I'm too cool for tourism cliches. and because I'm cheap.

Proof I was there! Keep in mind--2 hours of sleep.

My souvenir pyramid that Paul bought me, since he is a nice guy
who can't resist giving cute kids money.
Said cute kids madethese out of sand, so they claimed.
I didn't see a "Made in China" sticker anywhere.

Here's the alphabet!

And I would like to mention, that Wikipedia, source of all knowledge, gives some information on Meroe, the town, the people, the pyramids here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meroë. Apparently, it was a pretty big deal at one time. They were famous for their iron-skills and they had their own written language, and they had some fun beating up on (and being beat on by) the Egyptians and the Romans. And it seems like the King of Meroe shared his power only with his mother, which totally makes sense. I bet she was badass...or he was a Mama’s boy…either way, I’m sure Candace and I would have been best friends. We could have had pyramids right next to each other for some after-life fun.  At least she and the rest of the pyramids inspired me to sign up to take “Nubian Art and Archaeology, “ free online class from Emory University. I wonder if anyone else taking that class will be living in Sudan? Actually, I wonder if I will be…I might be back in the south by then, trying to find an internet connection to get online for that class…Well, if I miss any assignments, I’ll just throw in some original photos from Meroe and kill it anyway.

Heading home...