The Pyramids of Meroë

On the east bank of the Nile in modern Sudan, the necropolises around the ancient city of Meroë contain nearly 200 pyramids built between roughly 300 BCE and 350 CE as tombs for the rulers of the Kingdom of Kush, a civilisation that at its height controlled territory from the Mediterranean to the heart of Africa and, in the 8th century BCE, conquered and ruled Egypt itself as its 25th Dynasty. The Meroitic pyramids are smaller and far steeper than their Egyptian counterparts — typically 6 to 30 metres tall with sides inclined at 60–70 degrees — and are topped with small offering chapels decorated with reliefs of the king or queen before Egyptian and Kushite gods, written in the still only partially deciphered Meroitic script.

For centuries the site drew little outside attention until 1834, when the Italian explorer and former circus performer Giuseppe Ferlini, acting on rumours of buried treasure, systematically demolished the tops of around 40 pyramids with dynamite and pickaxes. In one of them he reportedly found a cache of gold jewellery belonging to the Kushite queen Amanishakheto — a find so unexpected that, when Ferlini tried to sell the items in Europe, several museums initially refused to believe African artisans capable of producing work of such quality and declined to purchase them, delaying recognition of the find's significance for decades. The decapitated pyramids Ferlini left behind remain visible at the site today, a physical record of one of the more destructive episodes of 19th-century treasure-hunting archaeology.