Which country has the most pyramids?

Say the word pyramid and almost everyone pictures the same thing: Giza, camels, golden sand and the Great Pyramid towering over Cairo’s suburbs. Egypt owns the image. But if you went counting, you would need to head south up the Nile into another country altogether, where steep, slender pyramids stand in rows across the desert.

The short answer

Sudan has the most pyramids. Estimates of Sudan’s total run from about 200 to 255, depending on how ruined structures are counted. Egypt’s total is around 138 by one widely quoted count. Sudan’s are much smaller, but there are far more of them.

The real story

The pyramids were built by the Kingdom of Kush, a powerful African civilisation in ancient Nubia along the Nile. For centuries Kush was shaped by Egypt, and around 730 BC its king Piye turned the tables, conquering Egypt and founding its 25th Dynasty. These rulers are sometimes called the Black Pharaohs. They admired old Egyptian traditions, including building pyramids, an idea Egypt itself had long since given up.

Kushite pyramid building began roughly 500 years after Egypt had stopped. Royal cemeteries grew up at El-Kurru, Nuri and Jebel Barkal, and later at Meroë, which became the capital. Meroë alone holds around 200 pyramids, and the tradition continued until around AD 350.

The largest Nubian pyramid belongs to King Taharqa, one of the 25th Dynasty pharaohs, at Nuri. That royal cemetery alone holds the tombs of 21 kings and 52 queens and princes. After each funeral, the entrance to the burial chamber was filled in to seal it.

They look quite different from the ones at Giza. Kushite pyramids typically stand 6 to 30 metres tall, with small bases and steep sides of around 70 degrees. Egyptian pyramids are much broader, with slopes of roughly 40 to 50 degrees. In Sudan, the burial chamber usually sits underneath the pyramid instead of inside it.

Sadly, many have been damaged. In the 1830s an Italian treasure hunter, Giuseppe Ferlini, knocked the tops off dozens of pyramids at Meroë looking for gold, which is why many still look flat-topped today. The Meroë sites are now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why people get it wrong

Egypt’s pyramids are among the most famous buildings on the planet, and the biggest Egyptian pyramids dwarf anything in Sudan. Size and fame stick in the memory far better than numbers.

Sudan’s pyramids, by contrast, see far fewer tourists and rarely appear in films or textbooks. So the question "who has the most?" gets mixed up with "who has the biggest and best known?", and Egypt wins a contest it is not actually entered in.

“Egypt built them bigger, Sudan built more of them. I’d call that a draw, but nobody asked the shoe.”