Word: nile
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...read "The Nile's Other Kingdom," about recent archaeological finds of ancient Nubia in northern Sudan, with a schoolboy's interest [ARCHAEOLOGY, Sept. 15]. For the past 20 years, I have read anything I could find on ancient Nile Valley civilizations. The statement that "Nubia, not Egypt, may have been the first true African civilization" says it all. The suggestion that Nubia's black civilization may predate Egypt's civilization by some 3,000 years must be taken seriously by Egyptologists...
Aviation maps list Duar, a sprawling agglomeration of African huts, as Dwil Keil--the "lone house." In retrospect, the description sounds ominously prophetic. Located in south Sudan's western Upper Nile region, Duar found itself at the epicenter of a deadly epidemic--one of the least publicized to hit Africa in recent decades--that raged through the late 1980s and the 1990s. Of Duar's more than 1,000 original inhabitants, only four were left alive. The epidemic also took the lives of more than 100,000 people in the surrounding region...
Although the epidemic in Sudan involved a known disease, it was complicated by the fact that for a long time no one knew the outbreak was occurring. The western Upper Nile is one of the world's most remote areas. It has almost no roads, and the Nuer ethnic group that populates it is extremely isolated. To make matters worse, the Islamic fundamentalist-influenced government in Khartoum was engaged in a civil war with the people of the south, where Christianity and traditional African religions prevail. Displacement caused by the war and famines had further weakened the population...
...next big epidemic in Sudan will probably be sleeping sickness. The African trypanosome parasite that causes it is a distant cousin of the kala-azar protozoan. Infection rates in some villages in Western Equatoria, just south of the western Upper Nile, are already running at 20%. Experts question whether the disease can be treated without hospitalization--an option that, because of the large numbers infected, is out of the question. It is the kind of impossible field-medical problem that is tailor-made for Jill Seaman, and she has already indicated that she would like to get involved...
...years ago, Bonnet excavated a funerary temple in Kerma that powerfully illustrates Nubia's synthesis of frontier influences. On one interior wall he found Egyptian motifs, including Nile fishing boats, bullfights and an enormous crocodile. Another wall was covered with rows of giraffes and hippopotamuses--African wildlife rarely seen in ancient Egypt...