Sudan is the largest country in Africa covering over 2.5 million square kilometres. For millennia it has been the zone of contact between Central Africa and the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern worlds. Yet Sudan is the forgotten civilisation of the Nile, long eclipsed by its better known neighbour, Egypt. This exhibition, focussing on recent archaeological discoveries, will highlight the extremely rich and diverse cultures which flourished in the country, which made it not only Egypt's rival, but even at times its ruler.
All of the objects in the exhibition have been loaned from the National Museum in Khartoum which houses one of the finest collections of antiquities from the Nile Valley. Many of these treasures will go on public display for the first time outside the Sudan and most are recent discoveries. Sudan boasts sites of great archaeological interest, Kerma is the site of a major urban centre, the earliest known by several millennia in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Kushite sites at Jebel Barkal, Meroe and Naqa, dating from the 8th century BC into the 4th century AD, feature impressive monuments, temples, palaces and even pyramids - there are more pyramids in Sudan than there are in Egypt.
The exhibition will display some of the finest Sudanese objects produced during all phases of human settlement from the Palaeolithic through to the Islamic period
(from 200,000 years ago to AD 1885). Key objects include large stone sculptures - massive lions devouring bound prisoners and statues of Egyptian gods - beautiful gold statues of Kushite kings, exquisite gold jewellery, inscriptions in Egyptian, Meroitic, Greek and Arabic, and superb pottery. Maps, plans and photographs will help to set the objects in their archaeological and environmental context. The objects on display will reveal the many different aspects of Sudanese history, from the worldly power of the Kerma kings - accompanied to their death by 400 human sacrifices - to the humble graves of Christian rulers; from the grandiose temples built by the Egyptian Pharaohs to the churches and mosques of later periods.
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