Who Were The Black Pharaohs Of Kush? | Mystery Of The African Pharaohs | Odyssey

up the river nile to a realm that's existed since the dawn of time [Music] a place ruled by pharaohs black pharaohs but they weren't egyptian this is a forgotten african civilization which like the egyptians to the north built temples and pyramids that would last 5 000 years so my journey takes me a thousand miles up the nile deep into a desert where temperatures soar to 120 degrees and here i come face to face with the black pharaohs of africa [Music] hello i'm david adams and this is the sudan i'm about two and a half days sailing south of the egyptian border into what they call the hidden quarter it's the least traveled part of the great river nile from here to khartoum sudan's desert capital there's a thousand miles of temples tombs and fortresses of a culture that once ruled all egypt herself as the crow flies my journey is only 330 miles but by river round the great s bend of the nile it's triple that distance nearer 1600 kilometers but first a little history nearly three thousand years ago in the eighth century bc shabbaka king of nubia conquered egypt [Music] his dynasty was to rule the egyptian empire for over a century the 25th nubian dynasty [Applause] and chebaka was black he and his descendants built temples and pyramids and an empire that stretched from khartoum to alexandria [Music] it was a civilization that was to span 5 000 years [Music] so to go back to the roots of this ancient african empire i'm sailing up the nile in the most traditional of ways my crew is nubian direct descendants of those who fought for the black pharaohs and i'm sailing on a faluca a boat little changed in 3000 years ideally suited to what's a very user-friendly river and what makes the nile really navigable is that the flow goes one way towards egypt and alexandria and the north wind goes the other towards cartoon so boats like this can navigate up and down the nile at will the nile is sudan's lifeline sixty percent of its waters rise in the ethiopian highlands and flood down the blue nile to bring nourishment to its fertile banks [Music] but it's a very thin lifeline a green strip extending only as far as the nile waters can reach barely a mile from its banks are the scorching sands of the nubian desert [Music] today the nubians of sudan live in mud villages much as they've done for centuries and i never knew mud could be made so colorful these walls have become a canvas on which to paint vivid geometric patterns [Music] again i'm going back in time these villagers ancestors would have once lived under the rule of the black pharaohs provided they paid their tribute and worshipped the ancient god almond ra the pharaohs would have been benevolent if they defaulted they would have incurred the pharaoh's wrath today the villagers are islamic and in true islamic style they extend a welcome to all strangers really are incredible these buildings you'd think you were in mexico with all the painted adobe houses there instead of right in the middle of the sudan school starts early in the sudan at 7 a.m and as westerners seldom pass this way the school teacher grabs his opportunity he wants me to tell his students about my home country australia sydney sydney yeah that's where i come from sydney that one uh-huh do they know this one yes this is the uh okay the big ears okay okay like that and a very big tail yeah they know this one what's this one kangaroo they are matches you know this one boxes yeah yeah kangaroo kangaroo i wonder what would happen if i asked western children to name an animal in the sudan i'd be even more amazed if they knew where it was it was very good but i must be on my way goodbye thank you ciao it all seems so calm and peaceful here but just across the river is an old fort it stands as a stark reminder of rival imperial ambitions that have so often disrupted the peace of this great river [Music] and here's another monument a temple built by an egyptian warrior armand hotep iii great great grandfather of tutankhamun [Music] it was built 4 000 years ago and it predates king solomon babylon and the temples of classical greece [Music] it was from temples like these that the black pharaohs drew their inspiration and founded their ancient african civilization [Music] walking amongst these columns and fallen masonry you can't help but admire the workmanship they're thousands of years old yet it seems they were carved yesterday [Music] and where are the tourists if this were a temple in egypt it would be crawling with them but i seem to have it all to myself in amman hotep's day this was an imperial outpost marking what was to him the ends of the earth behind was egypt the known world beyond was black africa and the nubian province of cush and i've also reached a natural barrier the third cataract one of a series of impassable rapids that hinder all nile travelers my faluca can go no further and as if to rub in the point on the cliff high above the cataract there is an old inscription warning of danger ahead this was the original border between ancient egypt and the nubian province of cush tomorrow i joined the trail of another warrior whose imperial ambition ran headlong into that of another would-be african pharaoh i'm about to enter the land of cush [Music] the following day sunrise is obliterated by a desert storm minute grains of sand and dust get in your eyes and up your nostrils [Music] sandstorms like this are commonplace in the sudan and most of north africa and they don't make a photographer's life any easier [Music] i'm on the nile on my way to dongala where i hope to catch an old steam ferry in it i hope to travel to karima round the great s bend of the nile i'm on another for luca dwarfed by this mighty river and it was past this very spot nearly three thousand years ago that the black pharaohs launched their invasion north now wind the clock forward to just over a century ago and we find that history repeats itself in 1896 a conquering army also sailed past this very spot but this one was heading south in the 1800s a man was born near here who believed he was sent by god he was a sort of islamic messiah known as the mahdi he too had visions of a black african empire this time an islamic one today his followers still whip themselves into a frenzy in his memory they're called dervishers 120 years ago a dervish army launched a holy war to end british colonial rule they killed the british commander general gordon at khartoum it was 10 years before his death would be avenged and when vengeance came it came in the form of this man lord kitchener later to become one of britain's most outstanding generals kitchener was determined to destroy the dervish army and to get at them he used the river nile the next morning we arrive in dongle and it was near dongla in 1896 that kitchener's army first came under fire from the dervish forces he quickly defeated them with superior firepower are these uh the ferry boats do they say for carimo well there's my nile ferry thanks to irrigation and droughts upstream the river level is low the result is that these once magnificent old boats have been left to rust in the mud so my plan to travel under steam like lord kitchener won't work [Music] it's a riverboat graveyard this is all that's left of a riverboat culture that grew up along the nile it was based on british imperial power but it was romantic just the same imagine what it would have been like living on these river boats for days on end really like agatha christie and death on the nile first class passengers would have been reclining in these lovely little cabins drinking their gin and tonics while the sudanese all road down below still about 500 miles down to khartoum and it would be quite a long trip but at a boat like this in those days would have been wonderfully luxurious [Music] the battle of dongla was kitchener's first success dongle is famous for its markers stacked with produce from the nile today as in 1896 there's enough food to feed an army and it's in these markets that i meet ramadan ramadan is also bound for karima he tells me there's only one way to get there quickly but it means abandoning the river and going by bus so how long does the bus take to get to korea uh two days yeah yeah there is a desert and many sand and yeah but karima is very beautiful also yeah that's the good news the bad news is that the bus doesn't leave until the day after tomorrow so it's two days waiting there's not many buses in this country the sudanese are a nation of tea drinkers so we discuss travel plans over a glass of sweet minted tea is there much to see around dongle dongle is also famous for its cooking perhaps i can relax and enjoy some sudanese cuisine but ramadan suggests another form of cooking you may think that being buried 30 kilometers out in the desert is some sort of sudanese torture actually it's something that a lot of people travel a long way to do because this sand has incredible properties and anybody with rheumatism who gets buried here for an hour or two walks away with almost no pain well for me because i don't have rheumatism this is actually like a hot sauna well probably in an hour or two i'll just be nicely baked but it actually is very pleasant i think i think i'll be cooked like a turkey it reminds me of an ancient venereal custom of the black pharaohs when a pharaoh died he expected all his wives courteous guards and palace staff to be buried with him alive it's getting hot very hot soon i'll be mummified like a pharaoh they put a cover over me as the sun rises higher and higher in the desert sky and by now i seem to have acquired quite an audience but i can't let them watch me cook forever we must get back to dongla we've got a bus to catch it's a 200-mile journey which means a 12-day camel ride with a caravan i'm very glad we've got a place on this bus there's no room inside which means we have to sit up on the roof not to worry up here it's a dress circle view african desert buses are very colorful and i don't mean just their design and you've got to love that horn to keep the dust out of my mouth and the sun of my head ramadan insists i wear an emma a form of sudanese turban that's great [Music] as we hurtle deeper into the desert my mind goes back to kitchener's army just over a century ago 25 000 men marching through this desert i'm glad i was born in the age of motorized transport two days later dusty and tired we arrive in the town of karima and before we say our goodbyes ramadan helps me to find a hotel so this is the only guest house in town yes this is fun okay thank you okay it was great having such a knowledgeable guy thank you thank you [Music] and as i drift off to sleep my mind goes back to nubia and that ancient african empire i'm about to enter a land of pyramids and temples built by the black pharaohs thousands of years ago this was the place from where they set out to dominate much of the known world it was also the place where the kings became gods at first sight karim is just another north african desert town on the banks of the river nile but it was once an imperial city that used to rule the sudan and egypt far beyond towering over karima is jabel bakal at its foot temples and burial grounds dating back to the days of the black [Music] pharaohs this was their sacred mountain it was from here that they drew their royal power and it was from here nearly 3 000 years ago that they launched their conquest of egypt and beyond in ancient times this was the center of a belief system that linked gods and kings it was here they believed heaven and earth were joined well this is the seat of the gods this is where almond ra the great god of the cush and the egyptians was worshiped and from this pinnacle there was a huge plaque of gold that shone out into the desert and declared to everybody that this was the center of ahmadra and the worship of their great god and why wouldn't they think this place was sacred it was the highest point in their firmament from here they could survey their capital much of their kingdom and its life-giving artery the river nile [Music] deep inside the mountain is a secret [Music] labyrinth [Music] on the walls are inscriptions that have survived nearly three millennia their colors perfectly preserved in the dry desert air even the most powerful of the black pharaohs feared this place for here lived the god kings where monarchs prayed and hoped to become gods themselves it was their belief in almond ra that inspired their holy war to conquer egypt [Music] but now their gods have fallen their temples are no longer sacred and their kings are long forgotten [Music] back in town there's an event on a wedding and weddings are the ultimate in sudanese hospitality the whole town celebrates i'm in town so automatically i'm expected to attend it would be rude not to [Applause] [Music] this is the bridegroom and if he's looking a little bit apprehensive there may be a good reason why most marriages in the sudan are arranged so it's quite possible he's never even set eyes on his future wife until today central to every marriage is the contract normally drawn up after months and months of wrangling so today's the day when the contract is supposed to be signed and the dow repaid well the signings almost finished and after that all the men are going to move out of here and join the women for what is only referred to as a festival the problem is i can't find the groom the celebrant says a prayer and suddenly there's the sound of gunfire a shot is supposed to signal the end of prayers and then there's another shot for the signing of the contract that's if this guy can get his gun to work and i wish he'd stop pointing the damn thing in my direction i half wonder if this is the origin of the phrase shotgun wedding but events have overtaken him they found the bridegroom but he's about to leave [Music] [Applause] it looks like it's all over before it really began something about a family tiff the drummer ran out the families have divided the rooms in one vehicle the ride's in another and they're disappearing apparently it happens all the time in sudanese weddings [Applause] [Music] and it's time i was leaving too i still want to visit the pyramids of the ancient kingdom of cush to do that i must go further up the nile and head into the desert fortunately lord kitchener's army left behind a transport system to get there kareema station looks as if it were built for an english country town but there's not much english spoken here so for me buying this ticket is a bit of a lottery i'm not really sure where i've actually bought the ticket to uh got a bid port sudan it was very cheap it's only about ten dollars so if i get to uh khartoum it'll be a very cost effective journey the line goes from karima up the nile valley then hopefully south to khartoum on the way i'll stop near marowi but for the moment i just need to get on this train the first thing to realize about trains in sudan is that they're very crowded i thought i'd got here early but obviously not quite early enough the second thing to learn about them is that they leave on time at least this one does [Music] as we leave karima we travel through the thin green line the narrow ribbon of fertility that owes its existence to the nile [Music] then as if to rub home the point quite suddenly we're in the open desert next stop well i'm not too sure about that but i'm told we're heading in the general direction of cartoon [Music] traveling on these trains i think it's a lot like india they're absolutely packed but it works kind of the same way as the villagers everybody shares their food and even though it's a really long trip and i don't speak much arabic it's not a bad way to travel really [Music] that's if you don't mind sitting on the floor but i'm too tired to worry soon the lurching motion sends me to sleep as we head out across a sandy sea of nothingness [Music] but as i was to find out getting on the train is the easy bit as i approach the ancient pyramids of the black pharaohs getting off turns out to be a leap into the unknown [Music] when the british empire held sway over this part of africa one of its lasting legacies was the rail system it left behind this is the sudan section of what imperialists like lord kitchener hope would one day become the great cape town to cairo railway [Music] i've now done some 500 miles of my journey as i head towards cartoon and i'm hoping to get off this train near the ancient pyramids of marowin [Music] but i see no station and this train shows no sign of stopping or even slowing it really only leaves me one option i don't think that was the smartest move in the world jumping on frames i don't recommend i don't know if i've actually broken my collar bone but i've certainly given a hell of a jar so we'll just see what happens but i wouldn't recommend jumping off trains [Music] as the train disappears into a mirage i head into the shimmering desert with a rather bruised shoulder on the horizon my destination pyramids of merowee nothing better illustrates the power of the river nile than this wilderness i'm well beyond its irrigating reach in a wasteland ruled only by sun and wind but even out here you're never entirely alone though i wasn't expecting this hey good day how are you doing good man i never expect to see anybody out here well let's see the first uh travel that i see north of khartoum oh really yeah where you headed well i'm heading north to uh balihofa i tried to get ferry there across lake nasa going to egypt why don't we just come from that way i've just actually come down on the nile yeah so where have you been i mean it looks like you've gone around the world yeah it's it's actually around the world trip started in 1995 from germany that's where i'm heading now i'm on my way home so how long do you get home i don't know it will probably another six months so he heads north and i continue south they call these the forgotten pyramids because of a western obsession with egypt the sudan is not on the tourist trail so these pyramids are rarely seen by westerners and yet there are more pyramids here in the sudan than there are in egypt and out here in the middle of nowhere i guess this is the closest i'll get to hiring a taxi yes want to get a camel it's okay [Music] in ancient egyptian terms these pyramids are relatively new a mere 2400 years old [Music] but in terms of western discovery they're even newer they weren't seen at all by outsiders until the middle of the 19th century [Music] they've never been properly excavated but they were built by the black pharaohs they're smaller and steeper than the better known egyptian pyramids and like them they've been vandalized by tomb raiders [Music] they tell me that 19 kings are buried here along with 53 queens countless slaves attendants dogs horses and other animals and buried with them was gold and precious stones [Music] i guess you'd have to say that this would rate as one of the wonders of the world and it would be more wonderful if all the tops of these pyramids were intact but what happened in 1836 or so is an italian treasure hunter came down here and blew the tops off them all trying to find some gold and he found gold in one but by the time he'd pulled it out all the local people were so angry that he had to flee for his life maybe they didn't get him to just stand in a place like this is truly awesome these monuments stand as testimony to a black african civilization that predated julius caesar christianity and alexander the great but its inspiration came from much earlier 4000 bc from the very dawn of civilization itself its culture became its own its carving its hieroglyphics its architectural style and after the 25th dynasty it was to last another thousand years only to be eclipsed by the arrival of islam in 650 a.d but as i gaze at these ruined walls i see graffiti of a more recent age the scratchings of adventurers and europeans once more i'm on the trail of kitchener's army as he marched relentlessly on cartoon almost a century ago he built a military railway to supply his troops this is part of that line there's an old sudanese saying if you see a train catch it they also say that if you hail a passing train it will stop for you and while this isn't exactly a train it'll do but it's going a lot faster than it looks i think they're trying to tell me that they can't stop if i want to lift i'll have to jump a great way to cruise into el cadab here i'm told there's a real nile steamer that can take me up to cartoon it's taken me nearly three weeks to get this far it took lord kitchener two years and it was from here that he prepared for the final showdown [Applause] at last i get my chance to ride an old sudanese nile ferry and what a wonderful way to travel down africa's longest river in 1898 it's how lord kitchener would have entered the city and it's how i entered the city a century later back in 1898 a boat like this would have been bristling with guns kitchener used a flotilla of them to bombard cartoon and these guys forebears would have been on the receiving end pawns in a great political game beyond their control i've now completed nearly a thousand miles of my nile travels in the wake of kitchener's army and now i'm near journey's end i want to make a small detour to witness a very special event but first my taxi driver has to fight his way through khartoum's chaotic traffic [Music] it's grand final day for a wrestling contest and as with all grand finals the rival teams need their cheer squads [Applause] these are the legendary nuba wrestlers not to be confused with nubians these proud fighters come from the nuba mountains south of cartoon and this is their traditional sport the wrestlers cover themselves with ochre and it's on [Music] the rules are simple make your challenge then try to throw your opponent on the ground it's an endless cycle of challenge wrestle throw while the cheer squads show no sign of losing voice while the sudan's strict islamic code officially disapproves of wrestling it was this fighting spirit which the mahdi drew on when he tried to forge his north african islamic empire and it was this fighting spirit that took the british by surprise over a century ago the final showdown came at the battle of oman this is where the dervish army dug in and here they waited for the british and egyptian troops to arrive and when they did it was a massacre a medieval dervish army against kitchener's modern war machine can you imagine what it would have been like manning these defenses for months and months on end while this enormous army advanced from the north and then when it did arrive and kitchener sailed his boat out the nile and fired the first shot on the marty's tomb it was hardly britain's finest hour for 48 british dead 25 000 modest lay dead or dying on this battlefield [Music] the battle of omdaman was a slaughter spears and daggers were no match for the british artillery it was at on-demand that a new weapon would come into its own the machine gun [Music] so [Music] so today perhaps it's not surprising that the sudanese like the black pharaohs before them would wish to control their own destiny just as the islamic messiah the mahdi had tried to do over a century ago every friday at sundown the descendants of the dervish army come together this was how they prepared for battle today it's how they make contact with god and as the word dervish means poor man that's how they turn out some even wearing clothes made from rags [Music] [Applause] for them this is a transport of the soul taking them beyond their ordinary lives and giving them a glimpse of the life in the hereafter [Music] [Applause] [Music] and as they fall into a trance from the ecstasy of the dance i wonder if they're drawing on an earlier tradition one day they believe another messiah another mahdi will be sent by god so why such an obsession with their self-determination maybe they look back to a time long ago when under the mysterious black pharaohs the sudan briefly ruled an empire which became the envy of the known world or maybe after thousands of years of turmoil they're sick of being pushed around [Music] two [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] as i head back down the river of life i realized there's one reason for all of this one cause of all their sorrows and joys and i'm sailing on it it's the river nile [Music] so i'll leave you with the words of a young british army officer who fought at the battle of omdamon his name was winston churchill and he wrote of the nile it is the life of this land through which it flows without the river none would have started without it none would have continued without it none would have ever returned [Music] they say that if you drink from the nile you'll return one day i shall return on another of my journeys to the ends of the earth [Music] you

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 1,418,134

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, ancient egypt, pharaohs, sudan, ancient africa, kingdom of kush, kush, black pharoahs, sun god, sudanese empire, khartoum

Id: VI1CE1uv-uA

Length: 49min 54sec (2994 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021