A flat-topped mesa 104 metres high standing beside the Nile 400 km north of Khartoum, and sacred for something like three thousand years running. The Kerma culture venerated it first. Thutmose III took it around 1450 BC and Egyptian pharaohs built temples at its foot. After 800 BC it was a capital of the Kingdom of Kush, and Kushite kings including Piye and Taharqa kept building: at least thirteen temples over more than fifteen centuries, the main one to Amun of Napata, a local ram-headed form of the god of Thebes, and the Temple of Mut with carved chambers still in good condition. It stayed important through the Meroitic period after 270 BC and on into medieval Christian Nubia. UNESCO listed it in 2003. There is a museum on site. Next to Karima, Northern State.
Karima, Sudan
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