Pyramids of Meroë

DesertsNehir Nili Eyaleti,Sudan

At least 147 steep sandstone pyramids of the Kingdom of Kush in Sudan, most missing their tops — blown off by a treasure hunter in 1834.

September·Quiet month

Jul–Sep

Sudan's brief rains arrive — the cloudiest skies of the year, August overcast more than half the time, and the site's only measurable rainfall. The sandstone cracks in the wet; still around 38°C and standing, the season shuts nothing but the light is dull.

Year-round The pyramids, their chapels and reliefs stand the same in every month; only the heat, the dust and the light change.

The Pyramids of Meroë are the royal cemetery of Kush, and at least 147 of them stand in three groups on low desert hills beside the Nile. They are sharp rather than massive: 10 to 30 metres tall, sandstone, pitched at close to 70 degrees, so from a dune crest the northern group lines up like a row of steep tents. Sudan altogether holds more pyramids than Egypt does. Each carries a small chapel on its east face, carved with the dead ruler's passage into the afterlife. Many of those rulers were women, the kandakes, and one of them, Amanirenas, fought Rome to a peace without tribute. Stand among them at first light and the sandstone warms to honey, the steep faces throw long shadows down the dunes, and the loudest thing is the wind. Most of them are missing their tops, and the desert did not take them. In 1834 an Italian treasure hunter, Giuseppe Ferlini, took them apart from the summit down, using explosives to speed the work. He wrecked more than forty before he found what he was after: gold in the tomb of the kandake Amanishakheto. Her pyramid is now a hollow of drifting sand. The kingdom that built all this ruled the middle Nile from Meroë between roughly 300 BCE and the fourth century CE, and UNESCO listed the site in 2011. Sudan's civil war, which began in April 2023, has ended tourism here. The fighting is far away and the pyramids stand unharmed. But where buses once unloaded two hundred people on a busy day, the site director said in 2026 that he had shown visitors around about four times in three years.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Foreign governments advise against all travel to Sudan — the war has closed the country to tourism, and the guides, drivers and camel owners who once worked this site have lost the trade.
Sunrise beats sunset here — daytime dust hazes the afternoon sky, and the haboob dust walls that sweep the Butana usually arrive late in the day, when the light should be at its best.
The northern cemetery is the one in every photograph — some forty royal pyramids crowd a single low ridge, while the southern and western groups are older, lower and largely ruined.
Someone to read the chapels changes the visit — the reliefs on the east faces are the point of the place, and without a guide the cemetery is rows of anonymous stone.

Things to do

1
Cross the dunes to the pyramids at first light
Walk in over the sand before the heat arrives, when the sandstone warms to honey and every steep face throws its shadow down the dune behind it. From a crest on the approach the whole northern cemetery lines up at once, one sharp silhouette behind another.
2
Ride in on a camel from Tarabil village
The last stretch of open sand has long been crossed on camelback, on animals brought out by the neighbouring village of Tarabil, whose living depended on this site. From the saddle the pyramids stay flat shapes on the horizon, and their real height only lands once you are standing under them.
3
Measure yourself against a 70-degree wall
Step to the base of one of the larger pyramids and the wall goes up almost in your face — nothing like the long slope of Giza. Up close you can read the sandstone: block edges rounded by windblown sand, and the raw scar where a treasure hunter's crowbar took the top off.
4
Read the reliefs in an offering chapel
Each pyramid has a small chapel against its eastern face, its walls carved with the dead ruler being led into the afterlife, alongside Meroitic script that scholars still cannot fully read. In low morning light the shallow carving suddenly sharpens and the figures step out of the stone.

Watch

Nearby

270 km

Jebel Barkal

Northern State,Sudan