Napata

Remains of Taharqo’s temple at Sanam, viewed from the southeast in December 2008, before the 2018–2020 excavations discussed here. This is a view of the temple, not the excavated workshop. Photograph: Bertramz. Source · CC BY-SA 3.0. Resized and recompressed without cropping or colour changes. A royal object can conceal the work that made it possible. A small glazed figure placed in a tomb seems to belong to the world of kings and ritual. Its manufacture belongs to another world: materials gathered and ground, mixtures prepared, moulds filled and fires tended. At Sanam, in northern Sudan, archaeology is bringing those worlds back together. ...

Jebel Barkal, photographed in 2005. A historical photograph of the mountain, not a reconstruction of ancient river channels or a record of present conditions. Photograph: LassiHU. Source · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and recompressed without cropping or colour changes. The temples and pyramids around Jebel Barkal make power visible. The ground beneath them holds a quieter record: the work of water, sand and silt over thousands of years. Reading those layers changes the question we ask about Napata. Alongside who ruled here, and which gods they honoured, we can ask what made this particular place suitable for people to keep returning, building and living. ...