Nearly 20 years ago, archaeologist Julie Anderson discovered a lost temple in the deserts of North Africa.
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Tonight, Dr Anderson will talk about her remarkable discoveries in the Sudanese ruined city of Dangeil, part of the ancient civilization of Kush.
The lecture will take place in Arts Lecture Theatre 1, UNE, from 5.30 to 6.30pm.
“I hope to demonstrate a culture that a lot of people are not very familiar with,” she said. “There's a huge rich cultural heritage in the Sudan, that is just amazing."
Dr Anderson is curator for Ancient Sudan and Egypt at the British Museum.
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Dr Anderson has worked in Sudan and Egypt since 1987. She first became interested in the region’s archaeology in graduate school, when she came across materials from a UNESCO campaign to save the ancient monuments of Nubia from the Aswan High Dam.
“Sudan has often been in the shadow of Egypt,” Dr Anderson said. “It’s easier to work in Egypt, and harder to move in Sudan for reasons of logistics; the climate is hotter; and it’s upstream.
“But everything that you can do in Sudan, you’re finding it for the first time. It’s not just another mastaba or another tomb; it’s the first one – and that’s really exciting from an academic point of view.”
Kush was a cultural melting-pot of Egyptian, Graeco-Roman, and indigenous African influences. At its height in the sixth century BC, it was one of the largest kingdoms of the known world at the time, stretching from south of Khartoum to the borders of Palestine, and conqueror of Egypt.
“The Nile acted as a dynamic conduit from central Africa to the Mediterranean world through history,” Dr Anderson said. “That has made Egypt and Kush partners in trade, and enemies in war, and the border between the kingdoms has been very fluid.”
Since 2000, Dr Anderson has been excavating the first century AD site of Dangeil, a political and cultural centre 350 km north of Khartoum.
She and a colleague in the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums were intrigued by strange mounds at the site.
Many archaeological sites consist of one mound, with a city inside; Dangeil has a whole series of individual mounds four or five metres high.
“We knew the area was rich, but it was a place nobody had ever worked before,” she said.
Dr Anderson and her team started excavations on the central mound – and realised that they were standing on top of a building.
“We had, in fact, revealed one-half of a huge redbrick pylon gate belonging to a previously unknown temple to the [ram-headed supreme] god Amun,” Dr Anderson said.
The temple, built by the first-century queen Amanitore and her consort Natakamani, is one of the best-preserved, complete complexes in Sudan, and the second largest in the country.
Finding the temple was a dream come true for Dr Anderson. As a child, she had read C.W. Ceram's Gods, Graves & Scholars, a classic history of archaeology.
She was inspired by Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, and Schliemann’s unearthing of Troy – "and I wanted to find something like that, as well!"
Dr Anderson originally wanted to be a deep-sea diver, like Jacques Cousteau. “I discovered that I wasn't a very strong swimmer, and that was probably a prerequisite! So I pursued the path of Egyptology and archaeology.”
This is her first visit to Australia.