Deep in the far south of Egypt, close to the border with Sudan, four giant figures sit carved into a cliff of golden sandstone, each of them a portrait of

In the deserts of Sudan, along the banks of the Nile far south of Egypt, rise scores of steep, narrow pyramids, the burial places of the kings and queens of

Sudan holds more pyramids than Egypt. Meet the kingdom of Kush, its warrior queens, the Black Pharaohs who once ruled Egypt, and the steep desert pyramids of Meroë.

Upstream of Egypt, between the granite cataracts of the middle Nile, lives a people whose kingdoms once conquered the pharaohs and whose villages now lie partly under a lake bearing

Far south of the pharaohs, on the banks of the Nile in Sudan, rose one of Africa’s earliest great cities, a Nubian capital powerful enough to rival Egypt itself, crowned