Kerma
2500 BCE – 1500 BCE
The capital of one of the earliest and most powerful kingdoms of ancient sub-Saharan Africa — a Nubian city on the Nile in what is now Sudan that flourished from roughly 2500 to 1500 BCE, rivaling and at times threatening pharaonic Egypt. Its centrepiece, the Western Deffufa, is a colossal mudbrick temple that remains one of the largest ancient man-made structures in Africa outside Egypt, and its royal tombs contained some of the most spectacular burials ever excavated in the Nile Valley.