I had wanted to visit the sites linked to the Soleb Lions (also known as the ‘Prudhoe Lions’) at the British Museum ever since childhood. I would hold my grandfather’s hand as we stood and playfully growled at these two realistic-looking red granite lions. The lions had been moved at least once in antiquity – along with six black granite rams – to Gebel Barkal in Sudan by the kings of Kush. They had originally been carved during the reign of Amenhotep III for his Temple of Amun, located between the Second and Third Nile Cataracts at Soleb. Various inscriptions had been added to them during the reigns of Amenhotep IV, Tutankhamun, Ay, and the Meroitic king Amanislo (the Ethiopian king Amonasro in Verdi’s opera Aïda). It is widely believed to be Amanislo (c.260-250 BC) who moved them from Soleb to Gebel Barkal.
There were other items that I had seen from Sudan in museums around the world that had intrigued me in more recent times, including Taharqo’s Shrine in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In the summer of 2022, I visited the excellent Pharaoh of the Two Lands – the African story of the kings of Napata exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, and was struck by the exquisite beauty of the giant 3D-printed replica statues of the Napatan kings that had been found at a place called Dukki Gel. From that moment, I hoped one day to go and see the originals.
Travel plans
During the COVID-19 crisis, Sudan was marked as red (against all travel) by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), so I had to put my plans to travel there on hold. Once travel restrictions began to be lifted, I seized the opportunity to book a bespoke trip for me and my friend Paul, for spring 2023. I will not elaborate on how to obtain the visas and travel permits now that Sudan is once again on the red travel list (like many others, I was horrified by news of the outbreak of fighting five weeks after my trip), but we landed in Khartoum after an uneventful flight from Cairo and were driven to our accommodation – the legendary Acropole Hotel – deep in the heart of downtown Khartoum. It was the end of February, but the temperature was still 36° Celsius at 8pm as we took a short stroll past the Republican Palace, down to the Nile.
Q&A with Vicky Nash – on community archaeology