Because he was the last king buried at Nuri, his pyramid was built on the worst piece of real estate in the lowest elevations of the royal necropolis. An unusual hybrid of Egyptologist and underwater archaeologist (as well as an associate professor in the dendrochronology laboratory at the University of Arizona), Creasman saw a rare opportunity to explore the watery tombs that Reisner was unable to tackle a century ago.įunded in part by a grant from the National Geographic Society, Creasman zeroed in on the pyramid of Nastasen, a minor pharaoh who ruled Kush from 335 B.C.

Pearce Paul Creasman first visited Nuri in 2018. Besides, northern Sudan-ancient Nubia-had plenty of other stunning sites to keep archaeologists busy for years to come. Many of its tombs were likely underwater, and no one had ever before attempted underwater archaeology in Sudan. In the decades that followed, Nuri seemed too big and challenging a site to tackle. Then, in 1922, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb shifted the public’s attention to the Valley of the Kings, nearly 500 miles up the Nile in Luxor. The Harvard archaeologist had offhandedly-and inaccurately-dismissed the Kushite kings as racially inferior and their accomplishments as an inheritance of older Egyptian traditions. Reisner never published the results of his work (an associate cobbled what little was documented into a report published in 1955), and for almost a century Nuri was ignored. His field notes show that many of the tombs he encountered were already inundated with groundwater percolating from the nearby Nile, making traditional dirt excavation unsafe or impossible.

Reisner’s team also mapped Nuri’s funerary monuments, which include more than 80 royal Kushite burials-roughly a quarter of which are topped with their sandstone pyramids. George Reisner, a Harvard Egyptologist, visited Nuri a century ago to excavate the burial chambers beneath Taharqa’s massive pyramid.įor more information and updates on archaeology at Nuri, visit the official expedition website at. rallied his troops to the northern edges of his empire to defend Jerusalem from the Assyrians, earning him a mention in the Old Testament. The largest and oldest pyramid at Nuri belongs to its most famous resident: the pharaoh Taharqa, a Kushite king who in the seventh century B.C.

Pharaohs with most treasures untouched