The Elephant Man and the Lion God

"There is an elephant and a sheep." Rasheed vaguely waved in the direction of the temple entrance. We looked closely but the only animal we could see was a ram, the symbol of Amun. "I can't see an elephant. Where is it?" asked Keith. "There. You can see its trunk and its eyes" replied Rasheed pointing at a statue. "I don't think so. That's not a trunk, it's a man's leg." Keith corrected him, and not for the first time. The headless statue was in classic Egyptian pose (left leg forward), and although a little eroded it was clearly human.

Rasheed must have had elephants on the brain while we were exploring the ruins of the Great Enclosure at Mussawarat Es-Sufra. It had been a Meroitic training centre for working elephants. By one of the three temples in the enclosure there was a quarter size statue of one, although its head clearly looked like an elephant, not a man's knee.

There were elephants too at the Lion Temple, about a kilometre away. They shared pride of place on the back wall along with... you've guessed it, some lions. No mean feat given the temple was dedicated to the lion-headed god, Apedemak. Built around 230BC, it has been superbly restored. Its most outstanding feature was the entrance pylon with the huge carvings of King Arnekhamani (and his queen mirrored on the opposite side) making offerings to the gods.

The guardian escorted us around the temple, pointing out the various gods and kings, so we didn't have to rely on Rasheed's guesses. In Egypt, his hand would have been out for "baksheesh" at the end. But that's another lovely thing about Sudan, he didn't expect a tip.

From there, we drove 35km to the similar site of Naqa. It also has a Lion Temple, albeit a lot younger (from the 1st century AD) and another fine carving of the king and queen on the entrance pylon, this time hacking off the heads of Meroe's enemies while a lion, underneath, eats them. Lovely.

Naqa

Both sites are miles away from the Nile so we wondered how they got water? The answer was outside Naqa's Lion Temple. The arid region is brought to life by a 75m deep well, still worked today by a couple of pulleys, leather buckets and two pairs of donkeys. We watched them raising the water for a while until a close encounter with a pair of donkeys gave us the clear message we were in the way.

Naqa has the ruins of a Temple of Amun, a short walk from the well. On the way, Rasheed explained what we would see. "A hole, a cot and a sanction." "That's a hall, a court and a sanctuary" Keith translated for Jan. There were also lots of granite rams (being an Amun temple) and even some winged gods that looked like angels, but no, this time no carved or imaginary elephants or lions.