A strong resemblance to Luxor Temple has led some scholars to suggest that both complexes were built by the same architect. Temple of Soleb was built by Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III during a period when Egypt’s reign encompassed ancient Nubia. “It’s like opening a fairytale book,” a friend once said to me. As you approach the royal cemetery on foot, climbing large, rippled dunes, Meroe’s pyramids, lined neatly in rows, rise as high as 100 feet toward the sky. Although the area is largely free of the trappings of modern tourism, a few local merchants on straw mats in the sand sell small clay replicas of the pyramids.

Off the highway, men wearing Sudanese jalabiyas and turbans ride camels across the desert sands. Each structure has distinctive architecture that draws on local, Egyptian and Greco-Roman decorative tastes-evidence of Meroe’s global connections. To the west is the royal city, which includes the ruins of a palace, a temple and a royal bath. To the east is the royal cemetery, packed with close to 50 sandstone and red brick pyramids of varying heights many have broken tops, the legacy of 19th-century European looters. In Meroe itself, once the capital of the Kingdom of Kush, the road divides the city. No matter how many times you may visit, there is an awed sense of discovery. If you drive north from Khartoum along a narrow desert road toward the ancient city of Meroe, a breathtaking view emerges from beyond the mirage: dozens of steep pyramids piercing the horizon.

Egypt legacies