A Monday morning at the end of October last year, the last Sudan revolution collapsed at times.

As soon as two and a half years had passed since April 2019 in which three decades of Islamist dictatorship of Omar Al-Bashir came to an end.The Civic-Military Sovereign Council of the Nation moved away from the legacy of the alleged war criminal and 30 years of repression, genocide, international sanctions and the secession of South Sudan.

But by midday of October 25, 2021, weeks before the scheduled transfer of power to civilians, a new rudder diverted the course of the African nation.The president of the Sovereign Council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, dissolved the Government and decreed the house arrest of the Civil Prime Minister.(The prime minister has resigned, leaving the country without civil leadership).He spoke of a state of emergency, but the Sudanese understood that it was a coup d'etat and hundreds of thousands threw themselves into the streets of the capital, Jartum, and the rest of the country.

As it could not be otherwise in a regime change of the 21st century, everything was lived in real time from social networks, and I attended it from the other end of the world without looking away from the laptop's screen.He was attentive to Sudan from before the revolution, covering the work of the National Geographic Society fellows who worked at the archaeological sites of Northern Sudan.My first article on the ground I prepared it in the last and paranoid months of the Bashir regime, a time marked by food and fuel shortage, restrictions on Internet access and the proliferation of military control stalls.Our expedition team had discreetly designed an escape route to the border with Egypt in case Sudan plunged into chaos.

When the Bashir government fell in the spring of 2019, the images that ran like gunpowder caught attention: a sea of young people peacefully challenging the regime, demanding a different world.A scene highlighted: a young woman dressed in the traditional Sudanese white suit, standing on a car, pointed to the twilight and chanted with the crowd: "My grandfather is Taharqa, my grandmother is a Kandaka!".

I was speechless.That was not a slogan in favor of a political group or a social movement.The protesters identified as descendants of the former Kushita Tahaqa and Kushitas Madres and Queens, known as Kandakas.Those royal ancestors governed from the north of Sudan the destinations of a great empire that once covered from the current Jardum to the Coasts of the Mediterranean.

Kush's empire - also called Nubia - was undoubtedly fabulous, but had been reduced to a pair of page notes in the history books of Ancient Egypt.Even in Sudan himself, few students schooling during the Bashir regime learned something about the remote Kush.How was it explained then that the legacy of an ancient kingdom, little known even in archaeological circles, and we no longer say among the footnessos on foot, suddenly materialized in a slogan chanted by the protesters in the streets of Jartum?

When I traveled to Sudan again in January 2020 to explore these issues, the post -revolutionary capital oozed energy.In Jartum, where only one year before women could be whipped in public for dressing pants, Sudanese youth danced at music festivals and crowded coffee shops.The public roads and the underground steps of the city were decorated with portraits of modern martyrs - some of the approximately 250 protesters killed in the course and after the revolution - and with murals of ancestral kings and deities Kushitas.

The unique location of Sudan at the intersection of Africa and the Middle East, and at the confluence of three great tributaries of the Nile, made this land the perfect location for powerful ancient kingdoms, and has made it a territory coveted by more recent empires.In the Modern Age it was under Ottoman-Egipcio domain, and then passed to the British-Eggipcias hands until 1956, when the Republic of Sudan declared its independence.Today its heterogeneous population includes more than 500 ethnic groups that speak more than 400 languages and is characterized by having a high percentage of young people: around 40% are less than 15 years old.

Because of its size, Sudan is the third largest country in Africa, and the third Arab nation in the world.(The place name comes from the Arabic bilād al-sūdān, which means "land of black people").Since he became independent, Sudan has always been governed by an Arabophone political elite.

Before the 2019 Revolution, having an Islamist government and belonging to the Arab League explained that the Bashir regime was interestedas another chapter of the historiography of the Middle East.Kushitas vestiges such as Yébel Barkal and El-Kurru were publicized as rapid exotic getaways for Western tourists visited by the ruins of Abu Simbel, just on the other side of the Egyptian border.

Yébel Barkal, the one who was a spiritual center of the Kushita kingdom, is a colossal 30 -story high -ran.About 2.700 years, King Taharqa enrolled his name at the top of this sacred mountain, plating her as a golden and triumphal message to her enemies.When ascending to the summit only vestiges of registration are glimpsed.At the foot of the massif resists the ruins of the great temple of Amun, originally erected by the Egyptians who colonized Kush in the 16th century to.C.Throughout the five centuries that the Egyptian domain of Kush lasted, the temple of Amun was rebuilt and remodeled by the great names of the pharaohs of the New Kingdom: Ajnatón, Tutankhamun, Ramses El Grande.The assimilation was the order of the day, and during that time the Kushitas elites were formed in Egyptian schools and temples.

The remains of the ammon temple that visitors admire today, however, date from an era after the collapse of the New Kingdom and the decline of Egyptian hegemony over Kush.In the seventh century to.C., Yébel Barkal had become the center of Napata, the capital Kushita from which a series of local leaders consolidated power and turned the shots for their old colonizers.

Piye, Tahaqa's father, ascended to the Kushita throne in 750 to.C.He gathered his hosts and with them marched in the north direction, towards a weakened Egypt, taking temples and conquering populations until he took the high and bass Egypt.With a territory that extended from the current jartum to the Mediterranean, Kush was for a brief period the most vast empire that the region controlled.For just over a century, their kings, Shabaka, Shabataka, Taharqa and Tantamani (or Tanutamón) embodied the XXV Egyptian dynasty, called black pharaohs.

At his triumphant return from Egypt, Piye returned to Yébel Barkal and expanded the temple of Amun to an unprecedented scale, decorating it with scenes of the Kushita conquest of those who were their colonizers.Today, the story of that conquest - with its warm plot of Kushitas wars.The few scenes that survived the passage of the millennia were excavated and documented archaeologically in the 1980s.When determining that they were too fragile to be permanently exposed to the elements, most of them were buried again.

Why have we heard so little of Kush?To begin with, because the oldest historiographic chronicles about the Kushitas are the work of the Egyptians, who tried.

That speech was accepted without major exam by the first European archaeologists who arrived in Sudan in the 19th century.After burning in the remains of Kushitas temples and pyramids, they affirmed that those magnificent ruins were nothing but mere imitations of the Egyptian monuments.

This concept of the African kingdom was underpinned by the racism of most western scholars."The native black race never developed either commerce or industry worth mentioning, and owed its cultural position to Egyptian immigrants and imported Egyptian civilization," George Reisner, archaeologist at the Harvard University that carried out the first scientific excavations ofKush's real temples and tombs at the beginning of the 20th century.

For Sudanese archaeologist Sami Elamin, Reisner was as a bungling in the method as arbitrary in interpretation.In 2014 ELAMIN and a team of archaeologists signed a mound of land extracted from the excavation of Reisner at the base of Yébel Barkal."We find countless objects," says Elamin -.Even deities statuettes ».

Elamin grew up in a village a few kilometers from the neighboring site of El-Kurru, where Piye and other kings and Kandakas Kushitas were buried.As a child, his grandfather took him to El-Kurru and explained that those ruins were "the tombs of our grandparents".That experience inspired Elamin to study archeology in Jartum and make a postgraduate degree in Europe.Today he has been excating for several years at Yébel Barkal and other deposits.

Currently, he and a team of Sudanese and American archaeologists are trying to locate the homes and workshops of the ancient Kushitas who during millennia kept that spiritual capital alive.Yébel Barkal has been converted into a fashionable destination among the Sudanese, who on the holidays upload the plateau and have lunch to the shadow that projects on the desert.Before visitors barely look at the ruins surrounding the magnificent rock outcrop, explains Elamin.But that is changing."Now they ask about vestiges and history and civilization to which they belonged," he says.

Elamin and his colleagues are delighted to talk with their compatriots and show this chapter of history to an avid generation of knowledge.As Sudanese archaeologists, they affirm, they have the opportunity and responsibility of gathering their fellow citizens and showing them the achievements of other generations, for distant that they are.

How to have an emotionally Healthy divorce https: // t.CO/Z3SHE6BBU7 https: // t.CO/OKFFUL3CTH

— Morris Law Firm Thu Jan 19 17:08:27 +0000 2017

See more information on the map "Between two worlds"

Built shortly before the country became independent in 1956 and inaugurated 15 years later, the National Museum of Sudan is a cavernous and poorly illuminated space, without air conditioning that protects the pieces from the implacable heat and powder of Jardtum.Most objects are displayed in outdated glass and wood showcases, with yellowish tags written by machine.But it's full of treasures.A granite statue from Yébel Barkal, a Taharqa at an enlarged scale, dominates the entrance, and huge sculptures of the Kushitas rulers flank the gallery of the ground floor.

On the back of the corner of where Taharqa mounts, one of the most famous pieces in the country is exposed: a brilliant bronze bust by César Augusto.It is believed that it was the war trophy of a Queen Kushita, the Amanirenos Nuerd, who fought against the Romans in Egypt around the year 25 to.C.The museum label obvia specify that the bust is a copy.The original, stolen by the colonial forces shortly after his finding in 1910, is in the British Museum.

At the gates of the museum I meet with Nazar Jahin, tourist guide and member of Artina ("Our Art"), a group of students organized during the 2019 protests to provide support to the battered Sudanese cultural institutions."The story did not care about the story," he tells me.A good part of that disinterest was a consequence of the rigid interpretation of the Islam of the previous cabinet."If even the Minister of Tourism said the statues were prohibited," Jahin recalls, shaking his head.

But the future is drawn promising, adds.The Italy and UNESCO embassy committed funds in 2018 to reform the museum (a project currently postponed by the pandemic), and from the revolution there are more Sudanese who visit the museum and places like Yébel Barkal and the former capital of Meroe.

"This is very important," says Jahin. ".The first step is that the Sudanese know their history.If you know it, you can protect it ».

I then raise a delicate issue: how do ethnic groups live in Sudan areas that never be part of the Kushita Empire - Tribus de los Montes Nuba, for example, or Darfur - when they are asked to identify with an ancient ancient storythat they feel alien?The Bashir regime has the infamous reputation of having encouraged ethnic and religious differences to prevent such a diverse country from joining the Arabizing political elite of Jardtum.Jahin frowns and meditates."Good question.The truth is that we have a lot of work ahead ».

Like many young people from his country, Jahin denies that "Arab" is a Sudanese identity."If someone tells me" my roots sink into Saudi Arabia "or something of the style, I do not believe it," says Roundly. ".I think our roots are the same or very similar […].In general, we are Sudanese.That's enough".

The image of the revolutionary kandaka dressed in white in the midst of the protesters, pointing to the sky in its invocation of kushitas kings and queens, has been immortalized in the form of street art throughout Jardtum and in the entire world.But when I see myself with Alaa Salah in early 2020, on my second trip to Sudan, I find it unrecognizable with her purple handkerchief and dark clothes, sitting on the busy terrace of a cafeteria on the banks of the blue Nile.

At 23, Salah became one of the faces of the Sudanese revolution, which catapulted this engineering student invited to speak before the UN Security Council about the role of women in the new Sudan.He tells me that at school they barely taught him anything about the history of the old Kush, so he had to discover it on his own.A few years before he had gone to see the pyramids of Meroe, and returned obnubilada: "We have many pyramids, even more than Egypt!".

When the protesters who occupied the streets of Jardtum, they started to chant "my grandfather is Tahaqa, my grandmother is a kandaka," Salah explains, they intended to proudly soft the resistance and bravery of the ancestral kings.In this way they felt that they also belonged to that millenary civilization of strong and brave leaders, especially in the case of women, who played a crucial role in the protests.

"Whenever you see a young woman fighting in the street in Sudan, be sure that she is a brave one who does not regret anything," he explains. ".He is strong, a warrior, like the Kandakas ».

However, in the almost three years after the fall of Bashir, the role of women has been more and more relegated.This is what most worried Salah when we talked, guarantee the security of current Kandakas and their proper representation in any eventual transition government.From the interview, the coup d'etat - which, with the threat of reimplanting a repressive regime, acquires counterrevolution dyes - has further committed the situation of Sudanese women.

On my last Friday in Jartum I crossed the white Nile to visit the city of Omdurman, where a cemetery surrounded by bustling streets houses the tomb of Hamed al-Nil, Sheikh Sufi of the nineteenth century.Around 70% of Sudanese are identified with Sufism, a mystical expression of Islam.The Sufi (or Tariqas) orders of the country usually perform a marked influence on internal policy, and the suffering that joined from Omdurman to the 2019 protests helped to overthrow the regime.

Every Friday, when the sun fell, hundreds of followers of the Tariqa Qadiriyya gather in the cemetery to carry out the DHIKR.Men with green and red tunic hit their drums at slow and accompanied rhythm;The crowd looks at them and swings.The drum gains speed and then the dances and songs begin.Ilaha Illa Allah."There is no more God than Allah," repeats the crowd, wrapped in clouds of incense and dust.When the DHIKR concludes with a climax of dances and songs, people dispersed, some obeying the call to prayer that arrives from the mosque, others traveling the cemetery between the graves.

There are several recent tombs, adorned with the colors of the Sudanese flag.They rest some of the protesters killed during the revolution, students who proclaimed in the streets that they were also kings and kandakas.When observing how some students presented their respects before one of them, the fragility that the new Sudan projected, as if it were a millenary vessel of incalculable value that was unearthed with the greatest care, caught my attention.Now the coup d'etat has wrapped in greater uncertainty if possible to a nation and an avid generation of democracy and stability.

Almost all the magnificent palaces and temples of Kush disappeared a long time ago, looted and engulfed by the sand.But many monuments to the dead are still there: the pyramids of the kings and the kandakas that set up guard in the desert, the tombs of the sheikhs and tombstones of the university protesters that fill the urban cemeteries.They are the ones who resist while the regimes fall and reborn, saying whoever wishes to listen to: for this we have fought.We were also here.

----

Kristin Romey is the National Geographic Archeology editor.Photographer Nichole Sobecki signed the images of the report "Report: Kenya", published in November 2020.

This article belongs to February 2022 of the National Geographic magazine.