Everyone thinks Egypt when they hear "pyramids." But Sudan has nearly twice as many — between 200 and 255 compared to Egypt's 138.
They were built by the Kingdom of Kush, a Nubian civilisation that thrived along the Nile from about 1070 BC to 350 AD. The Kushites even ruled Egypt as its 25th Dynasty for nearly a century. They took the pyramid idea home and kept building for another thousand years.
About 200 of Sudan's pyramids are clustered at Meroë, an ancient city that was clearly a major metropolis. The pyramids are steeper, narrower, and shorter than Egypt's — averaging 6-30 metres tall versus Egypt's 138-metre giants. The tombs sit underneath, not inside.
So why has almost nobody heard of them? Civil war, mostly. Sudan has been in conflict for much of the past 70 years. Egypt's pyramids receive 9 million visitors annually. Sudan's get about 15,000.
In the 1830s, an Italian treasure hunter named Giuseppe Ferlini destroyed more than 40 pyramids at Meroë looking for gold. Many still have flattened tops where he ripped them open. The treasures he found sit in museums in Munich and Berlin.