At Napata the Nubian monarchs, one of the greatest
of whom in Ptolemaic times was Ergam-enes, a contemporary of Ptolemy
Philopator, continued to reign. But the first Roman governor of Egypt,
AElius Gallus, destroyed Napata, and the Nubians removed their capital
to Meroe, where the Candaces reigned.
The monuments of this Nubian kingdom, the temples of Jebel Barkal, the
pyramids of Nure close by, the pyramids of Bagarawiya, the temples of
Wadi Ben Naga, Mesawwarat en-Naga, and Mesawwarat es-Sufra ("Mesawwarat"
proper), were originally investigated by Cailliaud and afterwards by
Lepsius. During the last few years they and the pyramids excavated by
Dr. E. A. Wallis-Budge, of the British Museum, for the Sudan government,
have been again explored. As the results of his work are not yet
fully published, it is possible at present only to quote the following
description from Cook's _Handbook for Egypt and the Sudan_ (by Dr.
Budge), p. 6, of work on the pyramids of Jebel Barkal: "the writer
excavated the shafts of one of the pyramids here in 1897, and at the
depth of about twenty-five cubits found a group of three chambers, in
one of which were a number of bones of the sheep which was sacrificed
there about two thousand years ago, and also portions of a broken
amphora which had held Rho-dian wine. A second shaft, which led to the
mummy-chamber, was partly emptied, but at a further depth of twenty
cubits water was found.
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