Remains of the two millenia-old site of Jabal Maragha that was ravaged by gold hunters are scattered on the sand in the desert
Illegal gold diggers have destroyed a 2,000-year-old archaeological site in Sudan in the eastern region of the Sahara desert, official say.
The Jabal Maragha site, which dates from the Meroitic period between 350 BC and 350 AD, is said to have either been a small settlement or a checkpoint.
Officials from Sudan's antiquities and museums department said when they visited the site, some 270km (170 miles) north of the capital Khartoum, last month they found two mechanical diggers and five men at work.
They had excavated a vast trench about 17 metres (55 feet) deep, and 20 metres long.
"They had only one goal in digging here - to find gold... they did something crazy; to save time, they used heavy machinery," a shocked archaeologist Habab Idriss Ahmed, who has worked at the historic location since 1999, told the AFP news agency.
Comentarios