The director of the French archaeological unit in Sudan Marc Mayo warned that the archaeological area of "El-Bagrawia", which was once the capital of the Meroitic Kingdom, is threatened by ongoing floods.
On Saturday, the Sudanese authorities declared a state of emergency throughout the country due to the record floods that left nearly 100 people dead and destroyed or damaged more than 100,000 homes, according to the official Sudanese news agency, SUNA.
The Ministry of Water and Irrigation said that the level of the Nile reached 17.62 meters, a level not recorded since the processes of registering the river level began more than a hundred years ago.
According to the French antiquities expert, it was never before that floods reached the royal city of El-Bajrawiya, which is 500 meters from the course of the Nile River, and 200 kilometers north of Khartoum.
The French archaeologist said that Sudanese antiquities inspectors built dams on the site with sand-filled bags and used pumps to draw water and prevent it from destroying this antique. He warned that other archaeological sites are threatened by flooding along the Nile.
The archaeological Bahraoui region includes the cemetery where the famous pyramids of Meroe located as well as the royal city of this central empire that ruled from 350 BC to 350 AD and its lands stretched in the Nile Valley for a distance of 1500 km, from south of Khartoum to the Egyptian borders.
Culture and Information Minister Faisal Salih visited the royal city in Al-Bajrawiya to discuss ways to protect this site, which has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2003.
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