Sudan -Meroe Cemeteries

In June 2011, the Archeological Sites of Meroë were listed by UNESCO as World Heritage site. We stopped off at the site of the Meroë cemeteries on our way north from Khartoum. Way off in the Nubian desert about 200km north of the city sit an amazing group of pyramids near the banks of the Nile in the area commonly known as Nubia. The pyramids are an ancient burial site of the Kingdom of Kush. This Kingdom flourished for 900 hundred years from around 800 B.C. to 280 A.D. and held power over a vast area covering much of the Nile Delta and as far south as Khartoum. Egyptian artisans were used to build the Meroe Pyramids to commemorate dead royalty. The dead were buried in chambers underneath the pyramids. The first of the Meroe Pyramids were built about 800 years after the last Egyptian pyramids were completed. The Meroe pyramids were constructed from large blocks of sandstone. They're angled more steeply than the Egyptian pyramids. At the site, there are tons of pyramids to explore and a camel to hire to take you around the site. There were no other tourists to be seen and only two men working at the entrance gate! It goes without saying that there was no guide available to explain to us the significance of the site. All the above information comes from an article I found online written for "about.com" by Anouk Zijlma. We spent two hours exploring before heading further into the Nubian desert. This could possibly rate as one of the top 10 high outs of the whole trip!