Latest news with #Taharqa
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- The Guardian
New images reveal extent of looting at Sudan's national museum as rooms stripped of treasures
Videos of Sudan's national museum showing empty rooms, piles of rubble and broken artefacts posted on social media after the Sudanese army recaptured the area from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in recent days show the extent of looting of the country's antiquities. Fears of looting in the museum were first raised in June 2023 and a year later satellite images emerged of trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the building, according to museum officials. But last week, as the RSF were driven out of Khartoum after two years of war, the full extent of the theft became apparent. A video shared by the Sudan Tribune newspaper showed the museum stripped bare, with only a few large statues remaining, including the seven-tonne statue of King Taharqa, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt and Kush (present-day Sudan) from 690 to 664BC. Others showed ransacked rooms and smashed display cabinets. The museum held an estimated 100,000 artefacts from thousands of years of the country's history, including the Nubian kingdom, the Kushite empire and through to the Christian and Islamic eras. It held mummies dating from 2500BC, making them among the oldest and archaeologically most important in the world. Elnzeer Tirab Abaker Haroun, a curator at the Ethnographic Museum in Khartoum, said a specialist team visited the site after the RSF were expelled to assess the damage, which they will be documenting in a report. 'The tragedy was immense,' he said. 'Most of the museum's rare artefacts, as well as its precious gold and precious stones, have been lost.' The theft includes not only items on public display but those held inside a fortified room, including gold, which it is feared have been smuggled out of the country for sale abroad. Unesco, the UN's cultural agency, has previously called on art dealers not to trade, import or export artefacts smuggled out of Sudan. The scale of the damage to the museum and Sudan's heritage has been felt deeply by Sudanese. 'Seeing the Sudan National Museum being looted and destroyed by RSF was one of the most painful crimes … I felt ashamed and angry,' said Hala al-Karib, a prominent Sudanese women's rights activist. As a student, Karib and her friends would walk through the building admiring the artefacts from ancient kingdoms and jokingly posing as if they were themselves the queens depicted. She first started visiting the museum with her father and, when she became a parent herself, took her own daughter there almost weekly. 'It was very personal; we are proud people and continually inspired by our ancient civilisation – it is the heritage we pass on to our children and grandchildren.' Many view it as a tragedy emblematic of the loss the country has suffered since the war started in 2023 during a power struggle between the army commander, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF's leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo Shahenda Suliman, a Sudanese trade unionist, said: 'Whilst the human tragedy of this war outweighs everything for me, there's a symbolism there in seeing emptiness where these grand objects once stood that sort of captures the scale of destruction, loss and emptying of the country that we've seen since the war started. 'There are artefacts that have survived every plague, invasion and occupation for millennia, and predate the birth of Christ, that didn't survive this war.' Dallia Mohamed Abdelmoniem, a former journalist displaced from Khartoum by the war, said the loss of the museum's heritage was especially significant as an appreciation of Sudan's ancient history has become more widespread only recently. She highlighted how the term Kandaka – a title for queens from the ancient kingdom of Kush – was used to describe female activists who participated in the 2018 protest movement that ousted the dictator Omar al-Bashir. 'I don't know how we'll be able to replace these priceless historical artefacts – and if there's a will to do so,' said Abdelmoniem. 'The majority of Sudanese have been adversely affected on so many levels by this war, the restoration and return of items of historical, cultural and ancient significance I fear may not be viewed as a priority.'
National Geographic
07-02-2025
- General
- National Geographic
Nubian kings ruled Egypt for less than 100 years. Their influence lasted centuries.
(Epic engineering rescued colossal ancient Egyptian temples from floodwaters.) In 2003 these statues of Nubian kings were found in pieces, buried in the ceremonial city of Dokki Gel, near Kerma. Now restored, they are on display in the Kerma Museum in Sudan. National Geographic Image Collection During the era known as the Third Intermediate Period (ca 1075–715 B.C.), Egypt's government was in the throes of political chaos and decline. Nubia was left fairly free of pharaonic intervention, and several new, independent Kushite kingdoms flourished. In one of these, near the Fourth Cataract, a dynasty of rulers emerged in the mid-eighth century B.C., this time establishing the kingdom's capital at Napata and a necropolis at nearby El Kurru. The rulers of this Kushite kingdom would eventually govern those who had once controlled them, even becoming pharaohs of Egypt themselves. The Shabaka Stone The Shabaka Stone, attributed to Nubian king Shabaka, is now in the British Museum. British Museum/Scala, Florence This black basalt slab which has greatly enhanced scholars' understanding of Egyptian theology, was inscribed on the orders of the 25th-dynasty Kushite king Shabaka. It contains the only known documented version of the Memphite Theology, a religious text underpinning the Egyptian vision of creation, which describes how the god Ptah created humans. Shabaka is said to have discovered an old papyrus bearing the text and ordered it transcribed onto the stela. The object reflects the eagerness of Kushite kings to convince Egyptians, especially in Memphis, of Nubian respect for Egyptian culture. It was likely later used as a millstone, causing the central hole and radial incisions, and was brought to the British Museum in 1805, where its faint inscriptions were translated almost a century later. Taharqa, the conqueror This new Kushite kingdom was founded by two kings, Alara and Kashta. Kashta's son Piye later pushed the empire's boundaries as far as Elephantine, or present-day Aswan, thereby bringing Lower Egypt under Kushite control. Piye also set his sights on Upper Egypt and, around 727 B.C., launched a military expedition in which he took Hermopolis and sacked Memphis. But Piye returned to Napata without consolidating Kushite dominion over Egypt. That mission would be accomplished by his successors Shabaka (aka Shabaqo) and Shebitku (aka Shabataka). As representatives of a new Egyptian dynasty, the 25th, these Nubian kings moved their capital to Thebes and secured control of the country as far north as the Nile Delta. This statuette depicting the feline goddess Bastet, inscribed with the name of eighth-century B.C. Kushite king Piye, is in the Louvre Museum, Paris. H. Lewandowski/RMN-Grand Palais This statue of Taharqa is now in the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum. Age Fotostock The most renowned pharaoh of the 25th dynasty was undoubtedly Taharqa, brother of Shebitku. Many scholars believe Taharqa is the Kushite king Tirhakah, mentioned in the Bible's Book of Isaiah regarding the invasion that Assyrian king Sennacherib launched against Judah: 'Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the king of Cush, was marching out to fight against him' (2 Kings 19:9). Save $5 on a Nat Geo Digital Subscription Your interests, backed by facts and science—now only $19 SAVE NOW (Rival to Egypt, the Nubian kingdom of Kush exuded power and gold.) Taharqa makes an offering to the falcon god Hemen in this bronze- and gold-leaf statuette from the seventh century B.C. Scala, Florence From Egyptian sources, it appears that under the reign of Shebitku, Taharqa had been charged with supporting the kingdom of Judah against the Assyrians. In the end, Jerusalem did not fall into Assyrian hands, a fact the Bible attributes to the Lord answering Hezekiah's prayers: 'The angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp . . . So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, broke camp and withdrew' (2 Kings 19:35-36). This early seventh-century B.C. head is believed to depict the Kushite pharaoh Shebitku, the third king of the 25th dynasty. It is now in the Nubian Museum in Aswan, Egypt. Album This ram's head, a symbol of Amun, is part of a necklace for a Nubian king, made in the seventh century B.C. Kenneth Garrett Taharqa, the builder Taharqa insisted his claim to power was not only hereditary but also divine. On a stela from the temple of Amun at Kawa, he declares: 'I received the diadem in Memphis after the falcon went up to heaven and my father Amun had ordered for me that every land . . . be placed under my feet.' This alludes to the fact that the pharaoh had succeeded his predecessor after his death. The identity of the king associated with a falcon—in other words, with the god Horus (who is often linked with another falcon-god, Hemen)—isn't specified, but the phrase likely refers to Shebitku, who, according to the same stela, 'loved him [Taharqa] more than all his [other] brothers.' In honor of Amun Gregory Manchess/National Geographic Image Collection This illustration, by artist Gregory Manchess for National Geographic in 2008, re-creates a religious parade led by the pharaoh Taharqa in Jabal Barkal. The procession features the sacred boat with the image of the god Amun on board. It has just set off from the temple of Amun, built at the foot of the sacred mountain Jabal Barkal, whose distinctive pinnacle was seen as having the shape of a rearing uraeus, an upright cobra. Just below the mountain's summit, the king had ordered a panel engraved with a gold-plated inscription bearing his name, to commemorate his victories over enemies from the east and west. The dual uraei on Taharqa's headdress represent the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt) over which he reigns. As high priest of Amun, Taharqa wears a leopard-skin cloak and carries a staff. Behind him walk his wives rattling sistrums. During Taharqa's reign, which lasted almost 26 years, the pharaoh commissioned numerous monuments and religious buildings. In Thebes he added new spaces to the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak, notably a structure called the kiosk of Taharqa in the first courtyard. He had the sanctuary of Amun at Napata rebuilt and constructed a temple to Amun at Kawa in about 680 B.C. In the Kawa sanctuary, a commemorative inscription reads: 'Mark you, my mind is [set] on [re] building the temple-compound of my father, Amun-Re of Kawa, because it is built of brick [only] and covered with earth.' Necropolis of El Kurru Rulers of the Nubian capital Napata were buried at El Kurru, primarily from about 850 to 650 B.C. Pictured here is the largest pyramid at the site, built around 325 B.C., well after the royal necropolis's prime. Eric Lafforgue/Alamy/ACI Taharqa had his burial pyramid built in Nuri, on the opposite bank from the necropolis at El Kurru, where his ancestors lay. What prompted the location change is unclear, but it's likely that the site of the necropolis was linked to Jabal Barkal, the 'Pure Mountain' of Napata, a natural sandstone butte that dominated the Nubian capital. The pinnacle of this mound, reaching a height of almost 250 feet, was said to resemble a rearing cobra, or uraeus, a symbol of royalty. When seen from Jabal Barkal on Egyptian New Year's Day, the sun seemed to rise directly over the pinnacle of the pyramid of Taharqa. Since the holiday coincided with the annual regenerative flooding of the Nile, this linked Taharqa with not only the sun god Re but also Osiris, the god of the afterlife and fertility. (These mighty pyramids were built by one of Africa's earliest civilizations.) Miraculous deeds Taharqa makes an offering to Amun-Re in this seventh-century B.C. relief from the Shrine of Taharqa, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Age Fotostock The Temple of Amun-Re at Kawa,discovered in 1931 in present-day Sudan, contains stelae that celebrate Taharqa's deeds as pharaoh of Egypt. One presents him as a warrior, 'who sends forth his arrow that he may have power over chiefs, who tramples evil under foot in pursuit of his enemies, with belligerence in his strong arm, who slaughters hundreds of thousands, at the sight of whom every face is astonished.' Another relates how Taharqa brought about a miraculous flood through his petition to Amun-Re: 'His Majesty had been praying for an inundation from his father Amun-Re, . . . in order to prevent famine . . . When the time for the rising of the Inundation came, it continued rising greatly each day and it passed many days rising at the rate of one cubit every day . . . the land was (again) Primeval Waters.' Legacy of Taharqa This marble stela, now in the British Museum, depicts the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who drove Taharqa from Egypt. Scala, Florence The death of Taharqa, in 664 B.C., marked the decline of Nubian rule over Egypt. Taharqa had already lost control of Lower Egypt to Ashurbanipal in 667 B.C. Taharqa's successor, his nephew Tanutamani, briefly regained control of Upper Egypt before being defeated once again in 663 B.C. by Ashurbanipal. Tanutamani was forced to return to Nubia, where he remained until his death. After the fall of the 25th dynasty, the new kingdom of Meroë was established in Nubia, tending the flame of Egyptian culture until the fourth century A.D. There, the temple of Naga, where Nubian divinities such as the lion-god Apedemak are represented alongside the Egyptian god Horus, exemplifies the syncretic culture the Kushites fostered and the ways in which Nubia and Egypt are forever linked. Jabal Barkal When the Egyptian pharaohs of the 18th dynasty conquered Nubia, they ordered the construction of several temples dedicated to their state god, Amun. The most important of these was erected at the foot of Jabal Barkal, a mountain the Egyptians viewed as sacred, considering it a home to Amun. After the Egyptian withdrawal from Nubia, the dynasty of Kushite kings that emerged in the eighth century B.C. took over the complex as a way to legitimize their power. Under the Napata kings and later, in the Meroitic period, new temples and palace enclosures were built, as shown in this drawing. Jean-Claude Golvin. Musée départemental Arles antique © Jean-Claude Golvin/Éditions Errance This story appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of National Geographic History magazine.
