Qualla: Sabu-Jaddi

Sabu-Jaddi: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clemens Schmillen, CC BY-SA 4.0. On a sandstone cliff above the Nile, 600 kilometers north of Khartoum, an unknown Nubian artist pecked the outline of a hippopotamus. Another carved a giraffe being chased by dogs. Another drew elephants, both ears showing, deeply gouged into rock that had baked in the sun for a very long time. None of these animals live here anymore. The climate that fed them is gone. But the drawings - more than 1,600 of them, covering the cliffs between the villages of Sabu and Jaddi - remain as a kind of bulletin board posted by six thousand years of Nubians, each generation adding its own creatures, its own boats, its own symbols that nobody today can quite read.

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Image: Clemens Schmillen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sabu-Jaddi: A Gallery Above the Third Cataract

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clemens Schmillen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sabu-Jaddi sits at the downstream end of the Third Cataract region, on the east bank of the Nile. The rock drawings spread across rugged sandstone cliffs along a bend of the river and continue into the narrow wadi Jaddi that cuts inland. The oldest drawings date from the early Ho...

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Image: Clemens Schmillen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sabu-Jaddi: The Boats

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Map created from DEMIS Mapserver, which are public domain. Koba-chan, CC BY-SA 3.0. On flat sandstone slabs along the right bank of the wadi, somebody carved boats. Dozens of them, in groups, each one steered with oars. Two types emerge from the crowd: curved-bottom boats, and flat-bottomed boats with upright stern and bow. On some, a small figure stands on the ...

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Image: Map created from DEMIS Mapserver, which are public domain. Koba-chan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sabu-Jaddi: A Site Under Pressure

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clemens Schmillen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sabu-Jaddi was added to the World Monuments Watch List in 2016 because of plans for the Kajbar Power Station, a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Nile that would flood parts of the site. The dam has been controversial for years - local Nubian communities have resisted it hard, co...

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Image: Clemens Schmillen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sabu-Jaddi: Six Thousand Years of Hands

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clemens Schmillen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most moving thing about Sabu-Jaddi is how long it kept being used. Early Holocene artists drew the wild animals of the Green Sahara. Later, as the climate dried, new artists added cattle. Later still, camels. Some of the symbols might be tribal marks. Some might be camel bran...

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Image: Clemens Schmillen | CC BY-SA 4.0