Last year, I wrote about the building that may be a “mortuary temple”—a temple devoted to the cult of a dead king. At the end of the season last year, we filled in what we had excavated, and covered up two doorways to underground rooms cut into the rock. These rooms are interesting and mysterious,…
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We’re digging a royal pyramid burial this year! There’s nothing that can prepare you for the feeling of digging something this big. This particular pyramid is one of the largest in Sudan. It must have been built by a powerful king, but we don’t know which one—it might even be a king that we know…
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The people in El Kurru belong to the Shaigiya tribe. They trace their ancestry back to an ancestor (Shaig) who lived several centuries ago. They are mentioned in European travelers accounts of the 19th century, when they sometimes raided caravans. In times before Shaig, people in this area were likely speakers of Nubian languages,…
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We arrived in the village of El Kurru on Friday, slept without blankets due to an oversight, and started excavation the next day in our 3 areas: pyramid, temple, and city wall. We have hired about 40 local men to help us, and that number will increase in the weeks to come. Our…
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I tried something I’ve never done as an archaeologist: I went running while in the field. It was glorious and strange. I got up in the dark and started just as the morning star faded. I was almost completely alone the first morning: nobody out of their houses, no cars on the road, not even…
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Everyone I talk to about our excavation asks whether it’s safe to be in Sudan. There’s sometimes a veiled look as people suggest that we should “stay safe”, and I’m sure what some are really thinking is that we’re just crazy to be going to a place that many people know only for its wars…
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It turns out to take about 30 hours to get from my house in Ann Arbor, Michigan to the Acropole Hotel in Khartoum. My colleague Carola Stearns and I flew together to Frankfurt, waited 7 hours, then flew to Cairo (where we met another member of our team, Martin Uildriks. We waited 5 hours…
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We are in the final preparations to return to the archaeological site of El Kurru in northern Sudan for a second field season. We have obtained our permissions from the governments of Sudan and the United States, raised funds, gathered an international group of about 25 archaeologists, and purchased and packed all our trowels, notebooks,…
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