Qualla: El-Kurru https://qualla.com/el-kurru en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/el-kurru-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: El-Kurru https://qualla.com/el-kurru El-Kurru: Introduction https://qualla.com/el-kurru/ Photo credit Tangopaso, Public domain. Before there were pyramids at El-Kurru, there were mounds of rubble piled over rock-cut pits - the oldest royal graves, the father of Piye among them, buried under circular cairns of gravel and stone. Then, gradually, the tombs grew walls. Then chapels. Then, over the course of a few generations, the Kushite kings began building steep-sided pyramids over their dead. By the time Piye's descendants ruled Egypt as its 25th Dynasty, they would be laid to rest here, at the desert edge of the Nile, under monuments patterned after the pharaohs they had conquered but smaller, steeper, unmistakably their own.

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Image: Tangopaso | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/el-kurru-wp/seq8-el-kurru-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full El-Kurru: From Tumulus to Pyramid https://qualla.com/el-kurru/ Photo credit Bertramz, CC BY 3.0. The earliest burials at El-Kurru - Tumuli 1 through 6, and tomb Ku.19 - look nothing like pyramids. They are Nubian-style tumuli: a pit cut into the bedrock, the body placed inside, then a circular mound of rubble heaped over the top. Tumulus 1, dated to 860-840 BC, may be the gr...

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Image: Bertramz | CC BY 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/el-kurru-wp/seq8-el-kurru-from-tumulus-to-pyramid.mp3 0:06 2 full El-Kurru: The Black Pharaohs' First Home https://qualla.com/el-kurru/ Photo credit Retlaw Snellac, Public domain. The last king of Egypt's 25th Dynasty, Tantamani, was buried at El-Kurru around 650 BC. The burial chamber of his tomb still holds one of the finest surviving examples of Kushite royal painting - a vaulted room with painted figures watching the king into the afterlife. His was th...

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Image: Retlaw Snellac | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/el-kurru-wp/seq8-el-kurru-the-black-pharaohs-first-home.mp3 0:06 3 full El-Kurru: Reisner's Map, Rewritten https://qualla.com/el-kurru/ Photo credit Bertramz, CC BY 3.0. George Reisner excavated El-Kurru in 1918 and 1919, and after his death his assistant Dows Dunham saw the work through - publishing the excavation report in 1950, a quarter century later. Reisner's chronology placed the cemetery's start at 860 BC. Later scholars, including Timoth...

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Image: Bertramz | CC BY 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/el-kurru-wp/seq8-el-kurru-reisners-map-rewritten.mp3 0:06 4 full El-Kurru: The Cemetery That Started a Dynasty https://qualla.com/el-kurru/ Photo credit Udimu, CC BY-SA 3.0. El-Kurru sits on the east bank of the Nile near the modern town of Karima, about 400 kilometers north of Khartoum, within sight of the sacred mountain Jebel Barkal. From the air the pyramids are small - nothing like the colossal tombs at Giza - but they cluster in a tight group a...

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Image: Udimu | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/el-kurru-wp/seq8-el-kurru-the-cemetery-that-started-a-dynasty.mp3 0:06 5 full