Sudan’s world heritage sites at Gebel Barkal and at Naptan Region Gebel comprise of five archaeological sites: Gebel Barkal, Kurru, Nuri, Sanam and Zuma, on both sides of the Nile which is considered as a part of Nubia. The sites, according to scholars, represent the ‘Napatan (900 – 270 BC) and Meroitic (270 BC – 350 AD) cultures of the second kingdom of Kush’ and …’since antiquity the hill of Gebel Barkal has been strongly associated with religious traditions and local folklore’. .

The inscriptions of the rock-cut Mut Temple, the Kuru paintings, and the worship of the State God Amon by King Taharqa, with which the heritage sites are connected, collectively speaks of the antiquity in historical settings of the landscape itself.

In the language of Unesco, ‘the pyramids, palaces, temples, burial chambers and funerary chapels of Gebel Barkal and the Sites of the Napatan Region and their related relief, writings and painted scenes on walls represent a masterpiece of creative genius demonstrating the artistic, social, political and religious values of a human group for more than 2000 years’.

The names involved in this site identify it with migrants coming from different regions of the ‘inhabited world’ but under one Pharaohic King Taharqa.

The Egyptians’ belief marks their State God Amon’s Temple at the City of Sun which is also called Temple of God Ra or Rabi. Today, the mountain is locally named Gebel Wad el-Karsani;

Gebel identifies Ezion-Gebel of the Bible whose other name is Anaasra. This name pinpoints an ancient group of people to whom the Quran calls ‘Helpers’. The name when splits gives two names: Gebel and Ezion; the latter is exactly the same as Zion from which the name Zuma has been derived; if Zuma would be seen through Yama or Jama, then also the site makes its historic relationship with ancient Jerusalem which is neighbourly to Ezion Geber near Rachel’ Tomb and Seir. The entire geographical setting puts the deified Kuru region at the forefront which was known to Ptolemy as Ottotokorrah and Indian puranas knew them as Uttara Kuru which includes the Temple of Ra or the Sun, and the region describes its position at the centre of the earth called Nubi or Naba or Napatan. The latter is significantly identifies the ‘nabatala’ means the ‘Nine Storied’.

Identifying the region’s history with Nile River and with Cush kingdom widens the historic belt of its inhabitants that puts whole of the ‘inhabited world’ in one single geographical pocket. Nile River is a confused term for historians. It marks the Nile River of Indian puranas and the name refers to ‘Blue Lotus’. This is its real identity that and it is as same as Ophir means ‘Utpal’ or the ‘Blue Lotus’ which Ulysses visited on his return journey from Troy to Ithica. Cush’s kingdom includes six places including the ancient Babylon and Sana or Sanam which is neighbourly to Sideon or Sidon same as Sada Nagar from which the name of the present Sudan has been derived. Barkal and Taharqa are identified with ancient Bakula and Tihula or Tahia; el Karsani finds its origin in Kushan name of a dynasty like the Nuri which refers to Narain Ser same as Caspian Sea. Its root is in ‘nauri’ means the ‘boatman’.

Temple Mut relates its geographical standing through Jerusalem, whose God Yama is the God of Death or Hebrew Myt or Mrutyu(Odiay language) means Death. Tantric Goddess Matangi is also identified with this Temple. Mut sometimes is identified with ancient Mathura or the Women’s Country or the Fair Haven of the Bible.

Bakala also refers to a type of cloth made out of a tree’s bark; the monks who wore this cloth were known as Bariahs. Deborah was using this cloth for which reason she was a ‘Bariah’.

Migrants who reached the present Sudan are identified with the region of ancient Sideon which was then situated on the bank of the Caspian Sea.