The Pyramids of Meroe at Begrawiya — Burial Ground of the Kings of Kush
On the eastern bank of the Nile, about two hundred kilometers north of Khartoum, more than one hundred stone pyramids rise above the desert hills near the village of Begrawiya — the tombs of the kings and queens of the Kingdom of Kush and its great men. The pyramids are distributed across three main cemeteries: northern, southern and western Begrawiya.
The Pyramids of Meroe were built in the late phase of the Kingdom of Kush, between the third century BC and the fourth century AD, and the oldest pyramid attributed with certainty to a ruler is that of Arkamani, who ruled around 280 BC. They are much smaller than the Egyptian pyramids, their height not exceeding thirty meters, but they are steeper, with slope angles ranging between 68 and 81 degrees compared with less than 52 degrees in Egypt, and they were built of local sandstone blocks over a core of rubble fill.
The Kushite pyramids were distinguished by their small funerary temples in front of each pyramid, decorated with elements inspired by Pharaonic Egypt, Greece and Rome, and their entrances faced east to receive the sunrise. UNESCO describes the site as the meeting point of "the Pharaonic and Classical worlds and coastal Africa" — the civilizational meeting point between ancient Egypt, the Mediterranean basin and sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2011 UNESCO inscribed the "Archaeological Sites of the Island of Meroe" — including the royal city at Meroe, Musawwarat es-Sufra and Naqa — on the World Heritage List under four cultural criteria, and considered the pyramids distinctive models of Kushite funerary architecture. The region was called the "Island of Meroe" because an ancient river, long since dried up, used to surround it.
The pyramids have suffered human damage since the nineteenth century, when the Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini cut off the tops of many of them in 1834. In September 2020 floods threatened them for the first time in their history, and since the outbreak of war in April 2023 maintenance work has stopped completely, so sand accumulated inside the funerary temples and salts began to crumble the fragile stones and inscriptions — leaving this great Kushite treasure in real danger.
📚 Sources: 1. UNESCO — nomination file for the "Archaeological Sites of the Island of Meroe," World Heritage List (inscription 2011, cultural criteria ii, iii, iv and v) 2. npj Heritage Science journal (Nature) — scientific study on the pyramids of the Begrawiya archaeological site 3. Associated Press — field report on the war's threat to the Meroe site (August 2026) — Editorial Team