The Sudan National Museum in Khartoum has become the scene of a unique event, as it witnessed an unprecedented royal procession of the Kushite king Tahraqa, the fifth king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, who, along with his father Baankhi, is the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Kush, one of the oldest civilizations of ancient history.
Sudanese in various parts of the world were able to watch King Tahraqa wandering inside the museum, to the middle of the new royal court, where an official ceremony took place on Saturday to move the statue of the legendary King Tahraqa, erected at the entrance to the museum to its new location inside the museum, for the fourth time in 3,000 years.
Previous times witnessed the movement of the huge royal statue from the archaeological Jabal Barkal to Meroe, until it finally settled in the Sudan National Museum at the end of the sixties of the twentieth century, and remained in its location at the entrance to the museum for more than half a century.
The director of science and culture programs at UNESCO’s Khartoum office, Abdul Qader Abdeen, said in an interview with the news site )Ultra Sudan( on Saturday, that the UNESCO Organization for Culture and Science is supervising the process of transferring the statue inside the National Museum, and pointed out that such an event “sheds light on the very rich Sudanese antiquities.”
Taharqa is the fifth and most famous king of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, as his father Baankhi founded the dynasty after the conquest of Pharaonic Egypt, to rule large areas of the territory of the contemporary states of Sudan and Egypt.
On the process of protecting antiquities in Sudan, Abdeen expressed concern about the presence of natural factors that may damage antiquities, especially in Nuri area of the northern state, where there are fears of rising groundwater levels.
The Nuri area in the northern state is located on the eastern bank of the Nile River, close to the royal pyramids of the Kushite kings, about (336) kilometers north of the capital, Khartoum, and (15) kilometers from the “Sanam Village”, an important archaeological site in Sudan.
The city is also ten kilometers from Jabal Barkal, and all these monuments belong to the city of Nabta, the first capital of the Kingdom of Kush, and the area is considered a royal burial ground for all Kushite kings until the year 330 BC, and Pyramid No. (1) The Pyramid of King Taharqa is the oldest pyramid among a group of (61) pyramids.
Abdeen said UNESCO is launching a project to preserve all archaeological sites in Sudan, such as Jebel Dair and Jebel Barkal, and work to officially register them.
Abdeen also spoke about UNESCO’s encouragement of social tourism, and said that there are not necessarily five-star hotels in archaeological areas, and communities located near archaeological sites can receive visitors to archaeological sites.
He continued: “We look forward to communities being the ones who protect archaeological sites knowing their importance, because some build houses from stones brought from archaeological sites.”
