Fascinating Excavations in Tombos, Nile River Valley, Sudan

MessageToEagle.com – Archaeologists conducting excavations in Tombos, Sudan, try to answer questions about the Egyptian and Nubian cultures from thousands of years ago.

Michele Buzon, an associate professor of anthropology, is excavating Nubian burial sites dated 1500-1050 BCE in the Nile River Valley and focus on a time starting about 1500 BCE, when Egyptians colonized the area to gain access to trade routes on the Nile River.

Tombos in an archaeological site in Northern Sudan. The village of Tombos was located at the third cataract of the Nile, not far from Kerma near the present Karmah.

An important granite quarry was located here in the Pharaonic era. Its stone was used mostly to build statues and buildings between the river delta and the southern regions of the kingdom. A statue to the Pharaoh Taharqa, abandoned for over 2700 years, contains inscriptions. About 3000 years ago, there were pyramids dedicated to ten noble Egyptians.

“What is known about this time often comes from Egyptian history, and we think they integrated more than Egyptian texts convey,” said Buzon, a bioarchaeologist.

“By excavating the burial tombs we’ll investigate if there was intermarriage and how they interacted in general as well as if Egyptians absorbed Nubian culture.

Artifacts, burial structure and even burial positions will provide some clues.”

Buzon (in collaboration with Stuart Tyson Smith, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Santa Barbara) is excavating at Tombos, in the Nubian Desert in the far north of Sudan, through late February, and she will be excavating Tombos pyramids, which have remnants of the superstructure with shafts underneath.

In 2000, Smith led an archaeological expedition to Tombos in Sudanese Nubia.

Smith and his team uncovered the 3500 year old pyramid tomb of an ancient Egyptian colonial administrator named Siamun and his wife Wernu, along with the remains of contemporary burials of middle class Egyptians or Egyptianized Nubians.

The mummified colonists were equipped with coffins, Ushabti figurines, scarabs, amulets and earrings of ivory, faience, glass, jasper and carnelian, ebony tubes and applicators for kohl eye-paint, an ebony boomerang for bird hunting, and numerous pots for food offerings, including two extremely rare Mycenean jars.

Evidence from burials excavations at Tombos sheds light on the Kush-Egypt relations.

Tombos seems to indicate that the Egyptians were well assimilated into their surrounding Nubian culture. Tombos is the only recognizable Egyptian colonial site in Sudan beside Kawa.

Archeological excavations there were highly valuable for shedding light on the nature and degree of interaction between the Egyptians and the local Nubians. However, since Nubian and Egyptian cultures have always been closely intertwined, it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to distinguish between Egyptian and Nubian burials.

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