Meroƫ, Sudan

 

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The towering monuments of ancient Egypt still pull visitors by the millions, but a brand-new capital city is going up outside Cairo.

Meanwhile, another collection of ancient ruins waits lies farther down the Nile, waiting to tell the fascinating story of the Black Pharaohs of Sudan.

 

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The Nile River tells a story of ancient Egypt. Visitors still flock to the Giza pyramids, the Great Sphinx, Abu Simbel, Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, the Egyptian Museum.

But just outside its vast and sprawling ancient capital, Cairo, a whole new capital city is rising out of the desert, being built from scratch, in much the same way that Brazil erected its ultra-modern planned capital, Brasilia, n the middle of the Amazon.

And further north, where the Nile Delta meets the Mediterranean, the port city of Alexandria is home to one of the world’s grand libraries and one of Africa’s architectural marvels, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

To the south of Egypt, the Nile has another, less well-known story to tell. It’s the story of the ancient civilizations of Kush, whose warriors conquered Egypt and produced its Black pharaohs.

You probably know about Tutankhamen. Do you know about Tarharqa? His story, and that of the other Black pharaohs, is told in the ancient temples and pyramids of Meroƫ and Jebel Barkal in what is now Sudan.