Sudan National Musem

I went to the National Museum of Sudan today. It was great because Christine, the history teacher knows all about the ancient Egyptian and Sudanese histories so she was our own personal docent.

There were quite a lot of artifacts outside. A whole temple for the Queen Hatsheptsut and Thutmose III. These temples are thousands of years old from 300 to 1500 BC!! Old ...and unfortunately out in the elements. Sand storms...haboobs...heat...you name it.
So the lime stone is slowly deteriorating.

It was still really amazing to see these artifacts. There was also an area inside that had more artifacts..sarcophagus, coffins, canopic jars, statues.

Interesting things I learned:
That the Sudanese reliefs were carved into stone...where as the Egyptians ones were carved out (negative space). Some of walls had both kinds of carvings indicating that they were carved out over time and by different groups of people.

Also many of the Sudanese depecitonsof women were more traditionally built..realistically built women..with bigger hips, thighs....real curves. It was nice to see that as well.

They also had a section about Christianity and piecies from the temples that were in Fara...a place now underwater because of flooding in the 1970's. The paintings of Mary and Jesus looked a little like the Ethiopian depections..yet for some reason their skin was not depicted as brown..but white.

All in all it was a great time and I really hope that in the future the artifacts are preserved. There was quite a lot of recnet graffiti and even a fungus growing on the walls that still had paint on them.

(yes the lion statue is eating a person..head first! eating a prisoner apparently!)
(in the picture of the painted wall..i am standing in front of Queen Hatsheptsut)