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Khartoum (AFP)
Rising waters of the Nile threaten to flood an ancient archaeological site in Sudan, after some of the highest river levels ever recorded, archaeologists said Monday.
Teams have put up sandbag walls and are pumping water to prevent damage to the ruins of Al-Bajrawiya, once a royal city of the two-millennium-old Meroitic empire, said Marc Maillot, head of the French Archaeological Unit in Antiquities. from Sudan. Service.
“The floods have never affected the site before,” Maillot said.
The area includes the famous Pyramids of Meroe, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Farmers on the fertile banks of the Nile, the longest river in the world, depend on its annual floods.
But the water levels have risen much more than usual this year.
“The situation is currently under control, but if the level of the Nile continues to rise, the measures taken may not be sufficient,” Maillot said, adding that the site is generally located about 500 meters (1,650 feet) from the river.
Other ancient sites are also threatened along the Nile, according to Maillot.
Sudanese authorities last week declared a three-month state of national emergency after record floods that have killed at least 99 people.
Officials said they had recorded the highest waters in the Blue Nile, which joins the White Nile in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, since records began more than a century ago.
Faisal Mohamed Saleh, Sudan’s minister of information and culture, visited the site to see the work being done to protect it.
The site, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) northeast of Khartoum, was the capital of an empire that controlled vast tracts of land from 350 BC. Until 350 d. C.
The ancient civilizations of Sudan built more pyramids than the Egyptians, but many are still unexplored.
© 2020 AFP
