Science Frontiers

ONLINE No. 130: JUL-AUG 2000 Issue Contents



There are More Pyramids in Sudan than All of Egypt

The kingdom of Cush (or Kush) flourished south of Egypt along the Nile from the Eighth Century B.C. to the Fourth Century A.D. Here the rulers of Cush built some 228 pyramids, three times as many as the Pharaohs managed to pile up! We rarely hear or see anything of these strange, steeply pointed structures. They are usually less than 100 feet high and not as impressive and mysterious as those farther north beyond the Aswan Dam.



The Sudanese pyramids are smaller, steeper, and more recent than those to the north in Egypt.

The Cushite kingdom's passion for pyramids was probably acquired in the Eighth Century B.C., when it actually ruled Egypt for a few years until the Assyrians pushed its armies back south in 671 B.C. With them, the Cushites took the pyramid idea, Egyptian art forms, and hieroglyphics. They liked pyramids so well that the Cushite rulers kept on building them until the kingdom's demise in 350 A.D. -- some 2,000 years after the Egyptians had abandoned this form of architecture altogether.

There is nothing in the Cush pyramids that can be called anomalous. It's just so surprising to learn there are so many of them and that they are so neglected in the TV documentaries.

The Cush empire did leave us one enigma: an alphabetical script of 23 symbols that has never been deciphered. P. Wolf, at Berlin's Humboldt University, fears that, "Maybe we will never be able to decipher the language. Every-body is hoping for some sort of Rosetta stone."

(Anonymous; "228 Pyramids -- South of Egypt in Sudan," Legendary Times, 2:3, March-April 2000. Some of the above data come from MSP1-X5 in our next catalog which, if our imagination fails us, will be entitled Ancient Infrastructure II.)

From Science Frontiers #130, JUL-AUG 2000. © 2000 William R. Corliss