Hundreds of historic tombs and temples vanished in the precious metal fever
The gold seekers are bulldozing Sudan’s past
In remote locations, hundreds of historic tombs and temples have disappeared due to the search for precious metals. Archives
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When a team of Sudanese archaeologists entered the desert of Sudan last month, reaching the archaeological site of Jabal Maragha, they thought they had lost their way because the site had disappeared.
But the truth is that gold seekers destroyed the 2,000-year-old site by using gigantic mechanisms that roared loudly at the site 270 kilometers north of Khartoum.
"Their only goal of digging here is to get gold," said Sudanese archaeologist Habbab Idris Ahmed, still in shock. "They did a crazy job and to buy time, they used heavy bulldozers." Habab Idris worked on the site in 1999 with a mission from the Boston University Museum, USA.
Adding to the shock of the team when they searched for the source of the roar that cracked the silence of the Bayoud Desert, they saw two digging mechanisms and five men working on them, after they had finished digging a hole 17 meters deep and 20 meters wide.
On the ground, they saw the tracks of cars and deeper wheels of larger trucks, which moved the excavation equipment as well as the filling.
Almost nothing remains of the site that dates back to the era of the Kingdom of Meroe, which lasted for 700 years from 350 BC to 350 AD, and was a small settlement or checkpoint to secure the kingdom's borders.
Hatem Al-Nur, Director of the General Authority for Antiquities and Museums, said: “The digging took place under a frenzy of wealth and searching for treasures, and because the land is made of Nubian sandstone and covered with a layer of rust, the metal detector they use makes a sound because the stone contains iron, so they think there is gold and so on. They keep digging. ”
Release
In addition to the "wound" they had opened in the land of the historical site, they took the ancient cylindrical rocks in which the pillars of the place were constructed and placed them on top of each other to make them into pillars and placed a roof over them and turned it into a room for cooking and eating.
But the shock did not stop there. When the "gold thieves" were taken to the police station, it was only a few hours before they were released.
"They should have been locked up in prison and their vehicles confiscated," said Mahmoud al-Tayeb, professor of archeology at the University of Warsaw and a former expert in the Sudan Antiquities Authority. this is the law". They were released without charge, and they even managed to recover the drilling tools.
Al-Tayyib added, "The real criminal is the employer." But it seems that he has relations with higher bodies ».
Sudanese archaeologists warn that this incident is not the only one, but rather part of an organized effort to loot archaeological sites.
Among the hundreds of graves dating back to different periods on the island of Sai, which lies within the course of the Nile River and is 12 kilometers long, a large number of them, especially those dating back to the Pharaonic era, were excavated and destroyed or destroyed. It is believed that the gold hunters are behind this.
In remote locations, hundreds of historic tombs and temples have disappeared due to the search for precious metals.
Sudan is ranked third among gold producers in Africa, behind South Africa and Ghana. Its total revenues from the precious metal last year amounted to 1.22 billion dollars (about 1.3 billion euros), according to the central bank.
Fictional stories about gold
In the past, people were searching for gold in the city of Omdurman on the west bank of the Nile, after the Blue and White rivers meet and form the Nile.
"At an earlier time, we used to see people using small sieves, such as those used in homes, to sift flour flour, to sift river mud in search of gold atoms that they found very small quantities of," Mahmoud Al-Tayeb said, recalling his childhood memories in Omdurman.
And later in the late 1990s, people used to watch archaeologists and researchers use reagents for scientific research purposes and dig, and because they were not used to the culture of scientific research, they thought that they were digging for gold.
"Whenever we started digging somewhere, people would come and ask us if we had found gold," he said. And if the archaeological sites represent in the folklore sites where gold was buried, it is because of the fairy stories that people tell among them.
Not a priority
Archeologists believe that the number of pyramids built during different historical periods in Sudan is more than those built in Egypt, but most of them are not discovered.
UNESCO classifies the archaeological site of Meroe Island, 200 km from Mount Maragha, on the World Heritage List.
What poses a danger to the Sudanese heritage is that local officials encourage the unemployed to try their luck in finding lost treasures, while investors use heavy machinery to search for them.
Archaeologists: There are more pyramids in Sudan than in Egypt, but most of them are not discovered.