(ORDO NEWS) — An international team of archaeologists who have been working on the banks of the Nile in Sudan for many years have released data on numerous tombs of the Nubian civilization. The study showed that this culture developed in parallel with Ancient Egypt and borrowed a lot from its neighbor.
An author’s article by one of the leaders of archaeological work, Michel R. Buzon, appeared in The Conversation. He writes that thousands of years ago, the Nubian culture on the territory of modern Sudan actively used underground tombs to bury their dead.
These tombs were excavated in the town of Tombos, located on the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan. By the way, excavations have been going on there for 20 years.
Buzon notes that the tombs were not the same. For example, some of them protrude above the surface in the form of round mounds. In ancient Egypt, this was not practiced, it was probably the original technology of the Nubians.
The mounds from above protected underground tombs, which began to be built at least in 2500 BC. At that time, this region was called the kingdom of Kush, and later it was called Nubia. New finds only confirmed the hypothesis that ancient Kush flourished and successfully competed with Egypt, and sometimes even conquered it.
But it so happened that the attention of researchers over the past two centuries has been riveted to the study of the antiquities of Egypt, and Sudan has remained on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, researchers say that a civilization “parallel” to Ancient Egypt flourished here, the achievements of which, including technical ones, sometimes exceeded those of the ancient Egyptians.
By the way, archaeologists see the mutual cultural influence of the two powerful states of antiquity in their findings. So in Tombos, tombs built in the form of pyramids were discovered.
Perhaps the Nubians simply copied them from the famous pyramids of the pharaohs. But there is another version: in Kush, the pyramids could be built for the dignitaries of Ancient Egypt, which ruled Nubia during the New Kingdom around 1200 BC.
“Tomb structures show us how people tried to publicly represent themselves and their families after death,” Buzon writes. middle-aged we found both a bed and a coffin that combined traditional Nubian and Egyptian customs.
The tomb also contained bronze bowls, a decorated wooden box, a pile of amulets that were considered magical items, and a cache of iron weapons demonstrating the early use of iron in Nubia”.
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