sudan: the haboob in the middle of the night
just in case you have forgotten, we are camping out amidst the ancient pyramids of meroe. and by 'camping' i mean we have camp beds on the desert sands - no tent or anything else. what kind of mysterious creatures might snack on us? will the haboob get us? what, in fact, IS the haboob?
but before we get to that part of the story, a quick lesson on pyramidology. of course when people think of the pyramids, what comes to mind is the great pyramids of egypt. and they truly are great - i havent seen them personally - but the figures speak for themselves. the oldest dates from more than 2000BCE and are among the largest structures in the world. not back then, but today. it covers 123 acres! egypt hosts 118 pyramids (everyone has a slightly different counting method, so number may vary).
what sometimes we forget is that the ancient egyptian world power was not bounded by the current borders of the country egypt. it in fact extended southwards along the nile and often northwards as well into the middle east. sometimes the empire was ruled from the north, and sometimes from the south. from around 800 BCE - 200CE egypt was ruled by the napata/meroe kingdom in the south, ruled sometimes from napata, sometimes from meroe...which, 3000 years later, was where we were.
back to the future, momentarily: albert and patricia above moved from canada and now live in sudan - fun to be with, spiritual minded and have the slight craziness necessary for truly great adventures such as camping in the desert. they are also both amazing cooks which is a highly important quality for camping buddies.
remember egypt's 118 pyramids? the site here at meroe alone has more than 200 pyramids!
in the 700's BCE a king of nubia (the southern kingdom, which by the way was also called nubia, cush or ethiopia - remember the areas may not actual refer to the same places bearing those names today) named piye conquered egypt and started the 25th dynasty - a period of relative prosperity for egypt. his son was named tirharkah. If that name sounds familiar, its because you have read it in the bible - 2 ki 19:8-10. he marched up into isreal and temporarily distracted sennacherib while he was trying to attack hezekiah.
as time progressed, of course, persia became the world power. as they conquered the world the showed up in meroe. in fact, meroe was named after the persian king cambyses II, son of cyrus the great, after his sister. (this is according to josephus, i have not been able to confirm this since other sources say that he conquered egypt but was repelled by cush.)
if it wasn't cambyses, then definitely it was conquered within was a few years later by ahasuerus' (xerxes I) time cush was under persian rule because when mordecai and esther were in the persia, esther 1:1 says that ahasuerus ruled over '127 provinces, from india to ethiopia [cush]'. and it is even possible that there were jews living there, since later on the ethiopian eunuch was from this area, and he was evidently a proselyte.
moving forward a few thousand years (though not quite enough to find out if the haboob got us), we come to wanton actions of one italian known as giuseppe ferlini. in 1834, he left the army to try his hand at treasure hunting, determined “return home penniless, or carrying unprecedented treasures.” sadly, one of the first pyramids he destroyed contained great treasures, and so he systematically destroyed the rest using dynamite...didnt find much in the other pyramids though!
someone has tried to repair them - it didnt occur to him to use stone that was at least similar in color to the original. ANYWAY, as you can see i really got carried away getting into all that history. the main point of this story was the mysterious and scary haboob. yes indeed it did come - at 3 in the morning. it started with a really strong wind. then...the haboob. it is actually a really intense dust storm. the dust is fine and goes everywhere. it gets in everything and is so much that it blotted out the stars. on the plus side, it is the desert, so it was quite nice and warm and we simply covered our heads and went back to sleep.
can you see the musa shaped less dusty outline?
we absolutely loved this experience. it was faith-strengthening to see a little bit of history connected with the bible, and without the huge tourist hordes in some other more well known locations. camping in the desert was a wonderful experience as was experiencing a haboob. sleeping under the stars is something i have wanted to do for ages. can you spot our campsite in this pic? early in the morning a few sudanese kids rode nonchalantly through on donkeys. i was trying to imagine how it would have looked like 3000 years ago when it was the capital of one of the powers of the world, bustling with industry and pomp and ceremony, people rushing back and forth with important business afoot. must have been a sight to behold.
sadly all too soon it was over and we had to catch our 4x4 back home. here he is waiting for us:
