Qualla: Zuma, Sudan https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan 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/zuma-sudan-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Zuma, Sudan https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan Zuma, Sudan: Introduction https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan/ Photo credit Karl Richard Lepsius, Public domain. For most of the twentieth century, travelers who bumped along the right bank of the Nile south of Jebel Barkal would pass a cluster of curious earthen mounds and hear them called the El-Zuma Pyramids. The name has stuck in local memory for a century. It is not accurate. The twenty-nine mounds of el-Zuma are tumuli, not pyramids - stone-covered hills over underground burial chambers, built in the transitional centuries between the fall of the Kushite kingdom at Meroe and the rise of Christian Nubia. Karl Richard Lepsius drew a plan of them in the 1840s. For almost 160 years afterward, no one excavated.

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Image: Karl Richard Lepsius | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/zuma-sudan-wp/seq8-zuma-sudan-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Zuma, Sudan: The Napatan Region https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan/ Photo credit Karl Richard Lepsius, Public domain. El-Zuma lies about ten kilometers south of El-Kurru, in the heart of what archaeologists call the Napatan Region - a stretch of Nile bend where the old Kushite kings of Kush built capitals, pyramids, and temples for more than a thousand years. About twenty-five miles upstream sta...

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Image: Karl Richard Lepsius | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/zuma-sudan-wp/seq8-zuma-sudan-the-napatan-region.mp3 0:06 2 full Zuma, Sudan: Three Kinds of Mound https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan/ Photo credit Karl Richard Lepsius, Public domain. The 29 surface mounds at Zuma fall into three distinct types, and the difference tells you something about the social order they memorialize. Type I tumuli are the largest - diameters of twenty-five meters or more, six meters tall, completely covered in stones. Type II mounds are...

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Image: Karl Richard Lepsius | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/zuma-sudan-wp/seq8-zuma-sudan-three-kinds-of-mound.mp3 0:06 3 full Zuma, Sudan: Tumuli 6 and 7 https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan/ Photo credit Karl Richard Lepsius, Public domain. The most elaborate burials lie at the highest point of the site, where two tumuli - numbered 6 and 7 in the archaeological record - have tunnels divided by rows of pillars, as if the architects wanted a subterranean colonnade for the dead. These were not ordinary graves. Whoever ...

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Image: Karl Richard Lepsius | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/zuma-sudan-wp/seq8-zuma-sudan-tumuli-6-and-7.mp3 0:06 4 full Zuma, Sudan: The Polish Team https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan/ Photo credit Karl Richard Lepsius, Public domain. Systematic excavation finally began in December 2004 when a Polish-Sudanese team led by Mahmoud el-Tayeb of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw opened the site as part of the Early Makuria Research Project. They have been returning ever sinc...

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Image: Karl Richard Lepsius | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/zuma-sudan-wp/seq8-zuma-sudan-the-polish-team.mp3 0:06 5 full Zuma, Sudan: What It Means https://qualla.com/zuma-sudan/ Photo credit Karl Richard Lepsius, Public domain. The 20 hectares of Zuma were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003, part of a broader listing for the Napatan Region that includes Jebel Barkal, El-Kurru, Nuri, and Sanam. Zuma sits in the current of a longer story - the movement of authority along the Middle Nile, fr...

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Image: Karl Richard Lepsius | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/e/q/8/zuma-sudan-wp/seq8-zuma-sudan-what-it-means.mp3 0:06 6 full