The Sudan Handbook

62 the sudan handbook

complex defences. Within the timber and earthwork ramparts are many

circular timber huts, rectilinear structures and storage pits. The town

predates the development of urbanism elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa

by several millennia. Presumably built on the banks of a channel of the

Nile, the town may have been abandoned as the river channel shifted

further to the west.

Around  2500     bce another urban centre developed four kilometres to

the west. This town became the metropolis of what was known to the

Egyptians as the Kingdom of Kush. Like its predecessor it had elaborate

defences, an important religious quarter at its heart and innumerable

domestic buildings, administrative and industrial complexes. The rulers

of Kush rapidly assumed control of the Nile Valley from the upstream

end of the Fourth Cataract at Mograt Island to the island of Sai. The

material culture of this kingdom, known by the name of its type site,

Kerma, is distinctive. It is typified by extremely fine handmade pottery,

amongst the best ever made in the Nile Valley, black-topped red ware

with a metallic sheen on the black interior and, in case of Kerma Ancien

pottery, finely decorated below the rim.

The kingdom of Kush was a major trading partner of ancient Egypt,

situated athwart the land route that linked Egypt and the Mediterranean

world with central Africa. Its trading networks were extensive and may

have included areas far to the south east near Kassala on what is now

the Eritrean border, perhaps one of the regions known to the Egyptians

as Punt. The trade items passing through Kerma – ivory, animal skins,

hard woods, gold and slaves among them – brought great wealth to the

town and this is displayed in the royal tombs. The main cemetery, on the

site of the pre-Kerma settlement, covers an area of nearly  90   hectares. It

is estimated to contain between 30,000 to 40,000 burials. One, perhaps

of a king of the middle period of the Kerma kingdom is a grave 11.7

metres in diameter and  2    metres deep, covered by a mound    25   metres

across; on the south side there is a crescent of over   4000     cattle skulls.

The tombs of the later Kerma kings were even more impressive. Buried

under mounds up to  90   metres in diameter they were accompanied

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors to^ their^ deaths^ by^ as^ many^ as^400 sacrificed^ humans,^ amongst^ whom^

(www.riftvalley.net).