Is it true that there are more pyramids in Sudan than in Egypt?
If you’re thinking of super-sized royal funerary monuments, then yes: perhaps 180 or more such pyramids were built in Sudan, compared with about half that number in Egypt. However, pyramids surviving in both countries are diverse in size and form.
The word ‘pyramid’ tends to conjure up images of the vast monuments that still loom over Cairo, especially the 147metre-high Great Pyramid built at Giza for the pharaoh Khufu in the 26th century BC. Pyramids continued to be elements of royal burial and memorial complexes in Egypt until around 1550 BC, when rulers began instead to be buried in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes (now Luxor).
It was another 800 years before kings and queens were again interred in pyramids, a practice that then continued for another millennium. These monuments’ creators ruled Kushite kingdoms in what’s now Sudan and, for a time, Egypt. Their pyramids were comparatively small, most less than 30 metres high, with steep, often stepped sides, built in dense ‘pyramidscapes’ together with others for members of their households. The largest cluster is at Meroë, some 130 miles north-east of Khartoum.
These cemeteries are reminiscent of those of Egyptian elites after 1550 BC, when high-ranking individuals incorporated pyramids into monumental tombs. Some poorer families marked simpler burial places with miniature pyramids. If you include these, the figures explode. Instead of comparing numbers in modern countries, though, it’s more interesting to wonder what significance pyramids had for different people, and how and why those meanings changed.
Elizabeth Frood, associate professor of Egyptology, University of Oxford