El-Kurru — the First Royal Necropolis of the Kushites and the Beginning of the Pyramids of Napata
El-Kurru lies in northern Sudan on the River Nile, about twenty kilometres from Jebel Barkal, according to UNESCO documentation. It was the first of the royal necropolises of the kings of the Kingdom of Kush in its Napatan era, and it was used for burial from the late ninth century BC to the seventh century BC, that is, in the phase that preceded and accompanied its kings' rule over Egypt.
El-Kurru preserves a rare sequence in the development of royal burial. The archaeologist George Reisner identified its oldest burials as circular mounds of earth and stone in the traditional Nubian style; the burials then developed into mounds surrounded by walls, then into small rectangular mastabas, and finally into pyramids in the Egyptian style rising above burial chambers carved into the rock, with separate areas designated for the burials of kings and the burials of queens, according to the International El-Kurru Archaeological Project.
Four of the kings of Kush who ruled Egypt as kings of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty were buried at El-Kurru: Piankhy, also known as Piye, Shabaka, Shebitku and Tanutamani. As for Taharqa, the son of Piankhy, he founded a new royal necropolis at Nuri and was buried there. Among the most prominent burials of El-Kurru are the tomb of Tanutamani and the tomb of his mother, Queen Qalhata, two of the most beautifully preserved Kushite royal tombs, for their walls bear coloured paintings of the deceased's journey in the afterlife. Burials of royal horses were also found at the site, buried standing and adorned with ornaments of gold and silver.
The tombs of El-Kurru are technically distinguished by their corbelled stone vaults. UNESCO notes that these vaults represented a new building technique that influenced the architecture of the Mediterranean from the seventh century BC onwards. The necropolis documents not only the form of the Kushite royal tomb, but also an architectural and artistic transition between the local Nubian traditions and the styles of Pharaonic Egypt, without either of them dissolving into the other.
Reisner excavated El-Kurru in systematic excavations in 1918 and 1919 within the expedition of Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and his successor Dows Dunham published the results of the excavation in 1950 in the volume "The Royal Cemeteries of Kush: El-Kurru". Fieldwork returned to the site in 2013 with the International El-Kurru Archaeological Project, led by researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Dongola, in cooperation with the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums. UNESCO inscribed El-Kurru in 2003 within the site "Gebel Barkal and the Sites of the Napatan Region" on the World Heritage List, together with Jebel Barkal, Nuri, Sanam and Zuma.
📚 Sources: UNESCO; World Heritage Centre — file "Gebel Barkal and the Sites of the Napatan Region" No. 1073 and the accompanying evaluation of the International Council on Monuments and Sites; International El-Kurru Archaeological Project and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan — pages on the history of the site and the history of excavation; Dows Dunham, "The Royal Cemeteries of Kush — Part One: El-Kurru", Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1950 — Editorial Team
