Naqa

Listen first. Out here, the loudest sound is often the wind. It moves over gravel and low thorn scrub, and it carries the faint creak of a pulley and the low complaint of a camel. The ground underfoot is hard and pale, scattered with dark stones. The light is enormous. Ahead of you, sandstone walls rise out of the open plain, and they glow a warm brown against a sky that almost never holds a cloud.

This is Naqa, in Sudan's River Nile State. The site sits in the Butana, the dry grassland plain east of the Nile, at some distance from the river itself. That distance is the first surprise. Most ancient cities along the Nile hug the water. Naqa does not. Its builders chose the edge of the desert, and they made it work. That choice tells you a great deal about the people who lived here, and about how they understood water.

Those people belonged to the Kingdom of Kush, an African state that rose south of Egypt and, for a time, even ruled Egypt itself. The phase you see here is called Meroitic, named after the royal city of Meroë, which lies to the north and east of here. Kushite rulers adopted many Egyptian forms, such as temples, pylons, and gods. But they mixed them with their own gods, their own language, and their own taste. Naqa is one of the clearest places to see that mixture in stone.

Today Naqa forms part of a World Heritage listing, together with Meroë and the nearby site of Musawwarat es-Sufra. The listing recognises these three places as the heart of the Kushite kingdom in its later centuries. Archaeologists believe Naqa was a major town and religious centre, though much of the ancient settlement still lies under the surface. What stands above ground are mostly temples. And the one most people walk to first is the Lion Temple.

The Lion Temple is dedicated to Apedemak, a war god with the head of a lion. He was a Kushite god, not an Egyptian one. You will not find him in the temples of Luxor or Karnak. The temple was built around the first century of the common era by King Natakamani and Queen Amanitore. These two rulers appear again and again across Kushite sites, and they seem to have been prolific builders. Here, their faces are still on the walls.

Stand in front of the entrance gate, the pylon. On each side, the king and the queen are carved in the act of striking their enemies. This is an old royal image, borrowed from Egypt. But look closely at the queen. She is not a small figure standing behind her husband. She is as large as he is, broad and powerful, and she holds her weapon with the same force. Kushite royal women held real authority. The title for a queen or queen mother was "kandake". It later passed into Greek and Latin as Candace.

Now walk to the side wall. Here you can find a strange and beautiful figure. It has the body of a snake rising from a lotus flower, with the head of a lion. This is another form of Apedemak. Then go around to the back of the temple. There the god appears with three lion heads and four arms. Many visitors leave before they reach the rear wall. It is worth the extra minute. The carving there has no close parallel in Egyptian art.

A few steps away stands a small, elegant building that visitors often call the Roman Kiosk. It is a second surprise. Its arched windows and column details look Greek or Roman. Its doorway and decorations look Egyptian. And its context is entirely Kushite. Scholars still discuss exactly what it was used for. What is clear is that Naqa sat on networks of trade and ideas that reached far beyond the Nile valley. Those connections can be seen in this one modest structure.

Further along, you reach the Temple of Amun. Amun was the great god of Egyptian Thebes, and the Kushites honoured him deeply. An avenue of ram statues leads toward the temple. The ram was Amun's sacred animal. Some of the rams are weathered, and some are broken, but the line of them still guides your walk. Inside, stone columns and fragments of carved decoration have been studied and partly restored by modern excavation teams.

That modern work matters to what you see. A German archaeological mission linked to the Munich museum of Egyptian art began long-term work here in the 1990s. The team has excavated, recorded, and conserved several buildings. Their work has added much to what we know of the site. Even so, many questions remain open. Kushite people wrote in their own Meroitic script. Scholars can read the sounds of its letters, but they still understand only a part of the language itself.

Now think again about water. There is no river beside you. So how did a town and its temples survive here? The answer lies in rainwater. The people of the Butana dug large basins, called hafirs, to catch the short rains and store them through the dry months. Traces of this system survive around the site. And the practice did not disappear. Look toward the wells near the ruins. Local herders often bring camels, goats, and donkeys here to drink. It is one of the oldest scenes you could witness in this landscape.

A few practical thoughts. The site is open ground, with very little shade. The sun is fierce from late morning onward, and the stone reflects the heat back at you. Early morning and late afternoon give softer light on the carvings, and the reliefs show their depth far better when the sun is low. Bring plenty of water and a hat. Travel conditions in Sudan have been seriously affected by conflict in recent years, so check current safety advice and go with a trusted local guide.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment near the Lion Temple. Look at the lion heads, worn by nearly two thousand years of wind and sand. Look at the queen on the pylon, still raising her arm. Then turn and look at the herders by the wells, and at the open Butana around you. Notice how quiet it is. The town that once stood here is mostly under your feet. As you walk away, listen again to the wind. It is the same wind that moved across these walls when they were new.