Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and transformed again across its lifetime. The further north we went, the more artefacts we
collected: more fragments of petrified wood and coral, small balls of lava that harked back
to the region's violent, volcanic past. Between them - a jumble of different time periods,
all thrown together - lay shards of pottery. 'Three thousand years old,' said Moez as he
picked up, then flung away, a beautifully painted piece of Nubian art. 'Two thousand,' he
said, kicking the remains of a bowl. '
Egyptian
,' he said, with mock disgust.
Then, he paused. 'Ah!
This
is more like it . . .' Bending over, he scooped up a rough
square of pottery, black on one side and dyed red on the other. 'This is from the Deffufas
at Kerma,' he said. 'Five thousand years old.'
Kerma was one of the earliest Sudanese states, emerging almost five thousand years ago.
What Moez was holding was a fragment of that distant, unknowable past. The historian in
me screamed out to touch it.
'This belongs in a museum,' I said, in disbelief.
But Moez simply tossed it back to the sand, where it lay among yet more piles of relics.
'There's loads of it!' He grinned. 'Tell the British Museum they can come and get some if
they want it.'
A short walk upriver lay the site of the ancient city of Kerma itself, millennia older than
Old Dongola. Surrounding the bare ruins lay petrified gazelle bones, Palaeolithic hand
tools made from flint, and yet more mountains of pottery. Moez barely flinched as we
passed it all. At last, north of the ruin, his eyes sought out an old camel track leading into
the dunes, and he beckoned me to follow. There was new light in his eyes, giddy at being
in tour-guide mode once again. 'Let me show you something, Lev. I haven't brought any-
one here - only some scientists who came five years ago . . .'
Along the trail, the desert was pocked with large boulders. According to Moez, these
rocks had once been underwater mountains, eroded over millions of years until they had
gained the appearance of giant, polished marbles. Moez picked his way between the piles
until, over the top of a procession of steep dunes, we stood in the shadow of one boulder
as big as a car.
'Can you make it out?' he asked.
I stared at the sandstone but, at first, could see nothing. Then, gradually, it came alive.
Lines scratched into the surface began to join together and, though I questioned my sanity,
soon I began to pick out the giant picture of an elephant.
'But . . .'
'Wait,' said Moez. 'There's more.'
We walked a circuit through the boulder field. All around were more rock carvings: a
lion, larger than life; an unmistakeable giraffe; horses, antelopes, and stick figures of men
bearing spears.
'Six, maybe seven thousand years old,' said Moez.
