By Susannah Edelbaum, to Museum Spotlight Europe (October 2023)
A ground-level skylight and a looming stone wall are the sole markers of Munich’s Museum of Egyptian Art, a subtle exterior that belies a vast underground trove of 5000 years of history. Head down the entrance’s wide white stone steps and you’ll find yourself in an unexpected warren of rooms where every aspect of ancient Egypt, from writing to burials to decorative arts, comes alive via 2000 or so of the permanent collection’s 8000 total objects. In addition to a bounty of statues, scrolls, and sarcophagi, notable holdings include the mummified head of a crocodile, the oldest known glass drinking cup in existence, and an unfurled papyrus of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
The basis for this collection is the Bavarian King Ludwig I, a keen antiquities collector who ruled the region from 1825 until his abdication in 1848. Since Ludwig’s era, the nature and spirit of excavating overseas has drastically changed, but today, archaeologists from the Museum of Egyptian Art still spearhead digs in countries like Sudan — the difference is that you’ll see precious little of what they uncover on hand in Germany.
Restorers at work on the pylon of the Temple of Amun. © Naga-Projekt
Instead, down a separate staircase behind the front desk, a special exhibit transports visitors to a current excavation site. Walk through a replica metal detector welcoming you via LED display to Sudan, and enter an immersive space devoted to archaeology from a different angle: the Naga Project, an excavation ongoing 135 kilometers from Khartoum since 1995, when the director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Dietrich Wildung, was invited by the Sudanese antiquities department to partner with them on an excavation site of his choosing.
“You can’t just go as a private person and say, ‘I want to excavate here,’ even if you have the money,” Christian Perzlmeier, who has worked on the Naga Project since 2015 and held the role of field director since 2020, explained (after Dr. Wildung retired in 2013, mission direction shifted from Berlin to Munich, under Sylvia Schoske and then Arnulf Schlüter). “It must be an institution. It’s a concession, so you pay, and then together with Sudanese colleagues and an inspector who checks and controls the site, you are able to work. We’ve had our partnership together for many years, and everyone knows what to do.” Ultimately turning over the findings to Sudan’s antiquities department.
Large-format, 360-degree photographs and a tracker-enabled audio guide bring museum visitors along with Dr. Perzlmeier’s journey, including: excavation, preservation, measuring, and cataloging the two-square-kilometer Kingdom of Meroe city. Visitors will also see the day-to-day tasks associated with a dig, as Dr. Perzlmeier and his team get ready for the day outside their rudimentary field house, while their semi-nomadic local partners water their sheep and goats at Naga’s well.
A plethora of sounds recorded at Naga, including camels, cars, drones, insects, generators, and the hiss of protective silica spray, are the exhibition’s soundtrack to an unparalleled lesson in contemporary excavation. These lessons teach about trucking in water from Shendi, the closest city (to not overuse the well’s groundwater supply), avoiding poisonous snakes (there’s no antidote serum, but no one’s been bitten yet), and completing meticulous measuring and 3D scanning (by moonlight, when temperatures fall and the contrast is better). What visitors learn is as engaging as the treasures uncovered by the field director and his German and Sudanese colleagues. At the end of the exhibit, you’re rewarded with one last treasure: a stele depicting the Meroitic Queen Amanisakheto, on long-term loan from the Museum of Khartoum. Back in the museum’s permanent exhibit, meanwhile, there’s an entire display devoted to Sudanese and Nubian treasure acquired in the 19th century by King Ludwig I.
View into the room “Nubia and ancient Sudan.” © SMÄK, Marianne Franke
Naga’s heyday endured from around 200 BC to 250 AD. Aside from some 19th century British interference (they also dug the site’s well in 1904), the ancient city has remained largely untouched since it was mysteriously destroyed and abandoned almost two thousand years ago. Unlike many ancient ruins in this part of the world, at 35 kilometers away, Naga is relatively far from the Nile, and the stones from the city’s temples were never carted off for use as building materials. Furthermore, “it’s not like other sites which are in these times totally abandoned, and nobody knows what’s going on. This is a spot where people come daily as a meeting point,” due to the well, Perzlmeier states.
With five to six percent of the ancient city excavated thus far, unearthing all of Naga will take more than any one lifetime. And even less than that modest percentage is visible aboveground. “If you see a column fallen perfectly, it’s difficult not to re-erect it. But this is not the aim. It’s documenting it, measuring it, and scanning all the blocks. This is the life of an archaeologist or Egyptologist — we refill it back with sand,” the field director explained.
That’s right — almost thirty years into the project, the researchers have entered 5,000 objects into a database, but on-site, the only standing elements of Naga are the Lion Temple, named for the Meroitic lion-headed god Apedemak, the Temple of Amun, with twelve restored reclining rams lining its approach, and the Hathor Chapel, which marries Corinthian columns and windows with more Pharaonic Egyptian elements, and which, thanks to a wall inscription, researchers were able to date to the 1st century AD.
Hathor Chapel in Naga. © Naga-Projekt
Among the researchers’ many challenges is the Meroitic language, “We can’t read it. Or let’s say, we can read it, but we don’t know what it means, except for some names,” said Perzlmeier about the hieroglyphs they’ve uncovered. “What these texts are telling us, a lot of people are working on worldwide.” Local school classes and the public can visit these standing temples, but otherwise, once documented, the city’s ancient structures are quickly reburied. “Because it’s sandstone, it’s quite smooth, and with the wind and sand blasting, most of the monuments would be gone in a few years. So we refill them, to keep them for later generations,” Perzlmeier said. As for aboveground structures like the Amun Temple, which was technically completed and handed over in a celebratory festival to the Sudanese authorities in 2006, the work never actually stops — “every year you have to look for plants, remove the roots, and apply lime to protect the walls. It’s a never-finished process to excavate something.”
Ram Alley in front of the Amun Temple. © Naga-Projekt
Right now, Naga’s protection is more important than ever. The field director and his German team typically spend October through March at the site with a short break for Christmas, but the political violence that broke out in Sudan last April put in-person work on hold. “I’ve heard from a lot of people that if they have the possibility to get out to the countryside, the supply system, everything, is much better,” than in Khartoum, said Perzlmeier. “Naga itself is of course really far apart, but you never know what happens.” He remains in contact with the site’s inspector, Naima Abdel Raziq, and the Munich museum transfers pay to their in-country colleagues protecting Naga, which is so far undisturbed. While Perzlmeier refers to his inability to get to Sudan as a “luxury problem,” he’s more concerned for the excavation’s semi-nomadic partners, many of whom plan their whereabouts based on upcoming work.
But the field director is hopeful the situation will de-intensify. The consensus in the field of contemporary archaeology is that the best place for unearthed ancient ruins is protected in situ. A proper museum at Naga is the eventual goal, though breaking ground is currently a pipe dream — not due to political violence, but simply a lack of funding.
You can read more about or donate to the Naga Project here.
Cover photo: Workers transporting stone blocks in front of the Lion Temple. © Naga-Projekt
