Buried treasure
Russell Chamberlin
Sudan: Ancient Treasures British Museum, until 9 Janualy 2005
Despite its proximity to the familiar culture of Egypt. Sudan, the largest country in Africa and the link between the Mediterranean world and central Africa, is one of the most mysterious. The southern two thirds of the country are archaeologically terra incognita, and even the northern third is only now yielding its secrets.
Currently, there are 30 archaeological missions at work in Sudan. The British Museum, continuing that practical corn pact with scholarship which backed Sir Austen Henry Layard's epochal discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon in the 1840s, is also involved. The two Museum curators who organised this exhibition and acted as editors of the prestigious catalogue are also working archaeologists who have done their time in the Sudanese desert. The exhibition could be regarded as the last faint echo of the British Empire, for it celebrates the founding of Khartoum Museum by the Anglo–Egyptian condominium in 1904, in which the British Museum was also involved. The impetus given by the need to house artefacts inundated by the rising waters of Lake Nasser led to the foundation of the Sudan National Museum in 1971. All the objects in the exhibition, most of which are recent discoveries, come from the Museum.
In the past, archaeologists working in Sudan were Egyptologists who regarded Sudan as an adjunct. It has now emerged as a discipline in its own right, a fact demonstrated by the British Museum itself changing the name of the relevant department from Department of Egyptian Antiquities to Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan.
The exhibition is arranged chronologically, with sections on special themes. The section devoted to pottery is particularly thought-provoking for it goes back 10,000 years. One would have expected the artefacts to have been crude, heavy pots. Instead, they are delicate in form and subtle in colour, with designs persisting for thousands of years. Contemplating these exquisite objects, some witty, like the ostrich-shaped vessel (235)*, some elegant, like the calciform beaker (240), one begins to reconsider the accepted convention that mankind started at the bottom and has been progressing upwards ever since. Similar expertise is to be found among the stoneworkers. Two objects which at first glance seem to be models of bottles reveal themselves on inspection to be female figures, the human form reduced to a few subtle but unmistakably feminine curves (272:273).
The timespan is awesome, from the Palaeolithic period to the 19th century. Within that context the Egyptians are seen as johnny-come-latelies, arriving 'only' about 3000 BC. The cultures follow each other pell-mell: Palaeolithic, Neolithic, pre-Kerma, Kerma, Egyptian, Kushite, Hellenic, Roman, Christian, Islamic. The landscape, too, changes cataclysmically over the millennia from lush green areas teeming with wildlife and domesticated cattle to the harsh and arid desert of today.
Archaeologically, perhaps the most significant object on display is an insignificant pebble, a couple of inches long and with traces of red and yellow colouring (9). Did this colouring come about incidentally as a result of using the pebble to grind pig ment? Or was it a deliberate attempt at decoration? If the latter, that pebble puts back the earliest evidence of artistic expression by about 130,000 years.
The exhibition is the core of a larger, permanent exhibition drawing on the British Museum's vast collection. A booklet, Sudan: past and present, contains a plan of the Museum, identifying the rooms in which Sudan-related artefacts are to be found, together with a timetable of associated events.
In tracking down these artefacts in the permanent collection one becomes aware of the enormous size of this great institution and the incredible richness of its collections, the trail sometimes leading into rooms which are not of immediate relevance. You would expect to find the extraordinary bronze head of Augustus with its staring eyes in Room 70 — 'Rome: city and Empire'. The Romans got everywhere. The head was plundered by Kushites, and buried in the royal city of Meroe. But what relevance to Sudan had room 47 — 'Europe in the 19th century'? There is a case of medallions there, one of them being a white metal medal commemorating General Charles Gordon, 'Gordon of Khartoum' (complete with tarbush), governor-general of the Sudan, killed at Khartoum in 1885. It was, indeed, during the relief expedition that British soldiers began casually to excavate in the desert to pass the time.
The cases containing relevant material are identified by the calligraphic representation of the word Bismillah (In the name of God') created in the shape of an elegant ostrich by the Sudanese artist Hassan Musa, There are other works by contemporary Sudanese artists in the Reading Room and in Room 34, the John Addis Islamic Gallery.
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