Silence "Golden Earth"
The modern life of Kerma, as, however, and other cities located in the Nile Valley of Sudan, with a typical ladder for local places, a picturesque baza carrier, having a scoping of dark-skinned people, half-decrees and old people in snow-white Chams, Oslov, camels and trucks – a special charm Majestic ruins give, around which, actually, the Sudanese cities are cushed. Houses surrounding these ruins can be both old and new, but all modern buildings look, rather, as an addition to the majestic scenery formed in thousands of years of cultural surplus. Pharaohs of Egypt, Romans, the rulers of black Nubia – "Gold countries", Christian hermits and Sultan Senarsky – all invested their felling, eyelids by the century creating a unique monument of human civilization – the civilization of the upper Nile. However, as nor sadly, today there has been a threat of destruction.
The Government of Sudan ends the construction of a large power plant at the fourth threshold of the Nile, which threatens to flood not only the only fertile in the Sudan of the Earth along the Great River, but also the remains of architectural complexes that do not have analogues in the world. At one time, during the construction of the Asuan dam, the public protests, supported by UNESCO, helped save part of the cultural heritage of ancient Egypt. The current attempts of the Sudanese to achieve such support for the rescue of the part of their national heritage have not led to anything. Although for the appeal of the Sudan people to conduct archaeological studies capable of determining which historical monuments will be in the flood zone, many scientists responded. And it turned out that the coming losses can be a genuine tragedy for this country. "Can we judge what is more important – the dam, which will supply electricity to the entire northern part of Sudan, or the preservation of historical heritage, without which the country will lose historical roots?" – It is not tired to ask the question of the Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonn, the first called to support the efforts of Sudan historians at a conference held in Paris back in 2001. So why would the Sudan Government not build a power plant while maintaining the treasures of the Nile Valley in integrity? The answer to the offensive is simple – because this requires serious investments. But in order to build a large dam through the Great River, you do not need special costs: in excess and sand, sandstone, and water. It so happened that the Water Nile, freely rolled to the north, became the threat of the death of the Nile Civilization. Now, when some villages in the flooding zone are completely broken by bulldozers, and their inhabitants are resettled in new villages on, alas, fruitless land, it’s late to talk about this threat as a hypothetical. She is more than real. And as if on purpose, it was recently fantastic monuments of ancient civilizations, recently fiction monuments of ancient civilizations, re-opening the world to the treasures of Nubia.
Lost in the sands
The history of this country has captured the appearance of the first kingdoms in the south of Sahara about 3,000 years before the start of our era, the conquest of these lands of the Egyptians during the XVIII dynasty and the education of independent kingdoms Kush and Mero in 750 BC. NS. "Sudan is a more natural and mysterious way than Egypt is associated with the legendary River Nile", – wrote French Olivier Rollin in the novel "Meroe". Inaccessible for a crowd of tourists who did not affect industrialization and not destroyed by industrial waste, the north of Sudan to this day remains the land, almost untouched. The trouble is that with all its exclusivity in the historical and archaeological relationship, this country has been studied little due to the scarce of funds allocated on excavations. Only enthusiasts like Charles Bonn smiles at luck: Most recently, in January 2003, he led by the Swiss expedition in Kerma, found five statues representing the portraits of the pharaohs of the XXV dynasty. 69-year-old Charles Bonn – an unrivaled connoisseur of his business – works in North Sudan for over 40 years. Once he opened the world a lost civilization of Kerma, founded 3000 years before the beginning of the Christian era. For the fortress walls, buildings from bricks, palaces, workshops and the temple plot, over which rumped up "Defaufa" – construction from an unreleased brick, resembling the Egyptian temple.
From the sands of the desert rose complex architectural forms; The grand royal tombs opened in the form of huge mounds crowned with hundreds of buildings (decorations from bovine skulls) and filled with the remains of slaves brought to sacrifice; Numerous funeral chambers, art objects and utensils found in the burials of necropolis, allowed to fill the absence of written evidence to recreate the cultural topography of the kingdom. Nubia (OT "Nubu" – "gold") was well known to the Egyptians. Already in 3000 BC. NS. Jer, the third pharaoh of the I dynasty, made a trip to the south – to the legendary golden specks and an ivory. But only a half thousand years old Tahmamos I from the XVIII dynasty managed to conquer and take Kerma – his titles were knocked out on the local rocks, in Tombos, for the second year of his reign. The heirs of Tutamos I went even further – crossed the deserts and reached the Donong River Basin. They took hostages of the Kushsky Tsarevich and taken into the hair. Princes received an education at the court of pharaohs, after which they were sent to their homeland as Egyptian emissaries. So the colonization began, which gradually put the end of the original culture of Kerma.
Country and its inhabitants adapted to the Egyptian lifestyle. Temples, sanctuary and fortified cities rose throughout the valley of the Nile Rights to Jebel-Barcalka, the legendary sanctuary of God Amon. The great names of Tortmamoids – from Amenhotep III to Ehnaton – indicate the significance of this period. A few kilometers from Kerma Charles Bonn began an excavation of the temple, erected by Ehnaton – Pharaonenetics, which was gathering to transform the entire religion of ancient Egypt. In Egypt, there was no longer a single building erected on the command of this king. "We first see the temple of a new religion dedicated to the Unified Divine, which Ehnathon introduced", – explained Bonn. At the end of the period of the new kingdom of the Egyptians left the Sudanese part of Nubia. These lands came to decline and lost all importance up to 747 BC. NS., while "Justice land Kush", As the conquerors called, he did not plan on the Egyptian throne of his dynasty: King Kusha – PI (Pianhi) – conquered Egypt, becoming the first pharaoh of the Ethiopian dynasty. Its origin is still unclear. Scientists are lost in guessing, as after a few centuries, the colonization, the Kush kings were able to defeat Egypt and establish their power over it, albeit not for long. In 663, after the plunder of Five by Assyrians, Pharaoh Takhark left the throne, preferred to him a secluded life in the south.
Since then, the kingdom has been forever sliced from Egypt with wide stripes of hot sands, which gave its inhabitants the opportunity to reware and their African roots, and their long-standing Nubian traditions. Although the Egyptian custom of construction Pyramids remained – Pianhi erected a pyramid in Necropolis El Cur, Takharka – on the other of the bank of the Nile, in Nuri, who became a state necropolide. Now the royal group of pyramids is seriously threatened by the highway, which will be literally 200 meters from the monuments. This road is necessary to ensure that heavy equipment can get to the place of construction of the dam. Irene Livenia, working in Sudan since 1976 and is very attached to this country, with bitterness states: "Yes, now the cars here became more, and phones appeared, but besides this, almost nothing has changed here. As for the dam, this is not just a huge problem for these places, it is a genuine tragedy for those people who will have to move to new places". On the way to the fourth threshold you can see how caterpillar tractors demolish the Nubian village of Hamdab. Old nubice, all in white, watching a catastrophe, sit on the threshold of their homes.
Christian mark
Another tireless researcher of these places with deep knowledge in the history of Christianity, Pole Stefan Yakobelsky made a striking discovery. In the Donongola, the former capital of the Christian Nubian kingdom, located on the banks of the Nile, he discovered the monastery buried under the sand tons, which was dated to the VII century. The miracle is similar to the degree of preservation of Byzantine frescoes, adorning the walls of some of its premises. Arriving in Sudan back in 1964, Yakobelsky since the excavations of Dongola, the old discovered the remains of 14 churches and several monasteries.
Riddles SEDEINGI
Of all the Egyptian temples built in Sudan, the siberian temple erected by the pharaoh Amenhotep III in 500 more than kilometers from Aswan. In the early 1960s, Jacques Well, Jacques Well, who was engaged in deciphering images knocked out on Nubian sandstone. At the bases of columns – names with names placed on top of busts of people with related hands having characteristic African features. "It seems that it is some kind of list of obsession with magical forces, "Catherine’s researcher Catherine Berge-El Nagar, the supervisor of the French expedition in Sedenge, located 15 kilometers from Sulba. – I continue to excavations that were started here in 1963, and I want to complete the work regarding this huge necropolis". At one time, the attention of archaeologists attracted a low hill surrounding a small temple built in honor of Queen Tia, Amenhotep III wives. In ancient times, Segeing settlement was the center of the Border Province. However, archaeologists did not find traces of the city. Pyramids, most of which were crowned with an unheated brick, – that’s what happened in the eyes first. At one time there was from 600 to 700 pyramids. "The biggest problem is a question of the dating of the pyramids, "explains Catherine, – those few inscriptions that we found are written on a Merbean, not a decryption". Unfortunately, those found tombs were pretty looted by marauders, and this is a big loss, since the presence of a whole collection of rare VAZ in one of them testifies to the existence of the exchange between the Kushita Africa and Rome in the middle of the III century. By the way, thanks to this, the necropolus was also clear that the practice of human sacrifice, which disappeared during the period of Egyptian colonization, resumed in recent years the era of Meroe.
Mystery of the desert
Meroyan language, on which the few letters found in the local places are inscribed, is indeed decipher. In 1911, the Englishman Giffit suggested that he was able to decipher these writers, but since then the scientist in this matter could not move forward. It is true that today the French professor Claude Rally could cope with the decoding of Mer Being texts. This connoisseur of ancient languages believes that "Murgean language, language "Etruscov Africa", – One of the biggest mysteries that went to us from antiquity civilizations". How and when they originated in the desert interfluve the White and Blue Nile Nubian kingdoms and why died – the secret remains. At one time, the Government of Sudan allowed to work on its territory a considerable number of foreign expeditions. Now this once closed country, realizing which invaluable monuments are hidden under the sands of her desert, is becoming more and more open and, unfortunately, extremely needing the help of the global scientific community. "Kerma’s kingdoms, attack and merges flourished the whole millennium, – says Jacques. – despite the obvious influence of Egyptian culture, it was a completely independent civilization – Nubian". And although this fact is now obvious to researchers, so far, not a single word shedding the light on the mystery of this ancient civilization, people did not open. Well, the great desert remains silent, impassively watching the construction of the dam ..
