Black pharaohs once ruled Egypt from here. In the eighth century BC the kings of Kush, a kingdom on the Nile in what is now Sudan, marched north and conquered Egypt, founding the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, and for about a century they governed from Memphis and Thebes while keeping their homeland capital at Napata, beneath a flat-topped sacred mountain called Jebel Barkal. Sanam, on the Nile near Merowe, was part of that landscape, a place with a temple of Amun built by Taharqa, one of the greatest of the Kushite kings, and a large cemetery that held burials of the kings' families and officials over many generations. The area, with Jebel Barkal and the royal tombs at Nuri and El-Kurru, was listed by UNESCO in 2003 as Gebel Barkal and the Sites of the Napatan Region.
The setting is the great bend of the Nile, where the river swings through the Nubian desert in a long loop, with a green ribbon of date palms and fields on each bank and endless sand and black rock beyond. The fourth cataract, a series of rapids, lies upstream, and the Merowe Dam, completed in 2009, now holds back a large lake. Merowe is the nearest town, with a modest population and basic services, and Karima is a short way away. Villages are mud-brick, with painted doors, and life follows the river.
Riding in Sudan has long been an adventure, with desert roads, heat of forty-five degrees in summer, sandstorms and distances where fuel can be hard to find. At present, though, the situation is very different. Since April 2023, fighting between rival military forces has devastated large parts of the country, and travel for visitors is neither safe nor practical. The history is there, and will wait.
If one day conditions improve, the best season would be winter, from November to February, when the days are warm and nights cool. The river is the main attraction, with sunsets over the dunes and the sound of water wheels.
For now, this is a place to read about, and to hope for.