Gebel Barkal and the Sites of the Napatan Region
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How it came to be
In northern Sudan, five sites stretch over more than 60 kilometres along both banks of the Nile: Gebel Barkal, Kurru, Nuri, Sanam and Zuma. Gebel Barkal, a flat-topped sandstone hill about 100 metres high, has been a sacred mountain since the Egyptian New Kingdom around 1500 BC, when Egyptians believed their state god Amun lived there.
In the Napatan (900-270 BC) and Meroitic (270 BC-AD 350) periods of the second kingdom of Kush, temples, palaces and tombs with and without pyramids were built here. The corbel vaults at Kurru influenced Mediterranean building from the 7th century BC.
European explorers drew the temples from the 1820s, and scientific excavation began in 1916. Local people still regard the largest temples as sacred. The sites were inscribed in 2003.
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