From brief limelight to obscurity

Al-Ahram Weekly

Technology and archaeology are at odds again. The Meroe High Dam, otherwise known as the Multi-Purpose Hydro Project or Hamdab Dam, is well underway -- and the archaeological remains of the ancient African kingdom of Meroe which developed along the upper reaches of the Nile is destined to oblivion.

The purpose of the dam being constructed close to the Fourth Cataract, about 200 kilometres north of Khartoum, is to generate electricity. It is the largest hydropower project currently under construction in Africa. With a length of some nine kilometres, and a crest height of up to 67 kilometres it is reminiscent of the High Dam at Aswan constructed in the 1960s. It too is designed with a concrete-faced rock-fill barrage on each river bank, the left river channel with a clay core, and the right with a live water section. Once completed, its 200-kilometre long reservoir, with a capacity to produce 1,250 megawatts of power, will displace 50,000 people and inundate countless archaeological sites including Meroe in the African kingdom of Kush, sub-Saharan Africa's earliest urban civilisation.

Meroe, which is situated at a strategic location in the region known as Butana, enjoyed stability when Kushites moved the centre of their government there from the old capital of Napata (Nuri) -- which gradually declined but nevertheless retained its sacred status. The new capital grew and flourished contemporaneously with the Persian rule of Egypt, the later Egyptian dynasties, and the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, which is to say for nine centuries. The Meroitic Kingdom controlled trade routes -- east to the Red Sea, west to Kordofan and Darfur, north to Egypt, and south to central Africa -- and its sphere of influence spread even as far north as the island of Philae within sight of Aswan. Traders found markets for their ivory, gold, ebony and live animals, and the names of its kings have been documented by historians, even down to the approximate lengths of their reigns.