THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR NUBIAN STUDIES

Mr Nuraddin Abdulmannan

Secretary General

Rescue Nubia Committee USA Chapter

23/12/08

Dear Nuraddin

On behalf of the International Society for Nubian Studies I would like to assure you and your colleagues that we are doing everything in our power to draw attention to the archaeological heritage of the Sudan which will be lost by the dams currently being considered for construction. The Board of the Society has written a letter to the Director-General of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, Mr. Hassan Hussein Idriss, expressing our concerns regarding the projected dams in particular those at Dal and Kajbar. This letter has been passed on to the Dams Implementation Unit and the other stakeholders. Working closely with the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums we shall continue to stress the importance of the heritage of this region both to the local people, to Sudan and at an international level. So much of ancient and modern Nubia and has already been inundated by the Aswan Dams and that at the Fourth Cataract that further destruction of its archaeological heritage is highly undesirable. Our concerns for the archaeology are just one of many aspects of the dams’ construction which can, and should, be raised in opposition to the large-scale flooding of the Nile Valley. We hope that the cumulative weight of arguments against the dams will cause the Sudan Government to reconsider its views on these extremely expensive and destructive projects. We are in direct contact with the Dams Implementation Unit and through those channels hope that our voice will be heard by the decision makers in time to be given due weight in the decision-making process. Should efforts to abort these dam projects fail we will do our utmost to assist the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums in the rescue projects whilst being painfully aware that these would be a very poor alternative to the maintenance of the status quo in Northern Sudan.

Yours sincerely Derek A. Welsby

President D. A. Welsby, c/o Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, The British Museum, London, WC1B 3DG, tel. (0)20 7323 8500, fax. (0)207 323 8303, e-mail dwelsby@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk