So in the beginning Sudan is mostly desert.
And desert can look very boring if you don't know what you should look for.
But as soon as you know something about the country you see much more.
It's a fantastic country in terms of archaeological sites.
But, for the logistics, there is very little you can depend on.
Sudan is one of those places where you don't go to unless you can work with somebody who
really knows what he's doing.
And at this very moment I have a research associate in the Museum, who's an expert on
Sudan.
So, in 2011 we got funding from Niarchos to go to Sudan and do an overview of animal representations
for the Meroitic Kingdom.
So, Meroe is an independent kingdom of Nubia located mostly in north of Sudan and a bit
in south of Egypt also.
It's a kingdom that developed during late antiquity, which means that it was contemporaneous
with the Roman and before that the Greek domination on the Mediterranean world, including Egypt.
It has been defined in the past as a corridor between the Mediterranean world and the rest
of the African continent.
And I think it's still a very good definition.
So, during the Niarchos expedition in 2011, we hit the road for about two weeks and two
thousand kilometers.
And we visited about 20 different sites in those two weeks.
We started in Khartoum and from there on, we went north.
Towards the Egyptian border.
All along the Nile, visiting, for us, the most important archaeological sites.
The main reason for our trip was to photograph animal representations.
And the result could be a bestiary.
And a bestiary is an overview of all the animal representations these people were using in
their own visual world.
And then you can compare that.
For instance, it is interesting to find animals that have a different role in the Meroitic
Kingdom from what we find in Egypt.
In Egypt the ram is connected to the image of the god Amun, which is one of the most
important gods in the Egyptian pantheon.
But he's also part of the Meroitic pantheon as one of the main holy figures.
And he's represented exactly in the same ways.
But if I take another animal, such as the frog.
Again, in Egypt you will find a goddess called Hekhet.
And we know it's a fertility goddess.
But in Meroe you have frog images, but you also have statues of frogs.
And I'm not talking about a human representation with the head of a frog, but simply a really
naturalistic frog.
And we know in that case that it is another completely new and original god.
When it comes to Meroe, the archaeology is the main tool that we have at our disposal
to understand the state, the religion, to understand the way people were seeing things,
doing things, because we don't have original sources.
We also took on our expedition a paleontologist—Will Harcourt-Smith—and a paleontologist could
help us with yet another dimension: our general knowledge of animals in antiquity or way before
was lacking.
Anything we would do in Sudan would be new and would add immediately to our understanding
of the region and since it was related to animals and animals was part of our research
there, we thought it was appropriate at least to advance that part of it.
In the short term we were able to write a small but very useful paper on the paleontology.
The opportunity to visit all these places could lead to other things.
So, for instance we saw in a few places games—games carved in rock.
This was not the purpose of our particular expedition, but the expedition gave us access
so that we could document that.
In at least three or four places we were able to identify a few games—nothing to do with
the Meroitic Kingdom.
Much later.
Probably Ottoman.
There were a lot of Ottoman soldiers in that area that were just passing their time and
carving their games in rock, which actually Ottoman soldiers are known for elsewhere.
So, the expedition is very important because it brings very different categories of people
and researchers in the same place.
We know that many sites have still a lot of potential to work and if you don't do a general
survey, such as the Niarchos expedition I'm afraid that in the near future, you won't
be able to gather as much documentation as we do now.
There's one other reason to be thrilled about this expedition, for us in particular.
The United States is a country that has one of the richest collections of the Meroitic
Kingdom.
But there are very few experts left.
So to do an expedition like this actually puts some expertise now together with the
museum collections.
The expedition led to more results than we scheduled.
It led to a lot of things that are very valuable, both for now, but also for future attempts
in that direction.