Horse Burial Complex

18.4180°N, 31.7655°E.

The Horse Burial Complex at El-Kurru, in modern Northern State, Sudan, adjacent to the early royal pyramids of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. Construction phase approximately 750–650 BCE under the founding Kushite kings Piye, Shabaka, Shebitqo, and Tantamani. The site contains four pits, each containing the skeletal remains of four horses — sixteen animals in total — buried standing upright in the harness of their chariot teams, with bronze and silver tack including bridles, plumes, and crescent-shaped pectorals preserved in situ. Excavated by George Reisner in 1919. The horses are unusually large — roughly 14 hands at the withers, comparable to modern light cavalry mounts — and were buried at the deaths of their respective royal masters, whose pyramids stand immediately adjacent. The Kushites were celebrated horse breeders throughout the ancient Mediterranean world; Assyrian texts of the same period record the importation of Kushite horses by Sennacherib for his royal stables.

A burial complex of sixteen royal chariot horses interred standing in their harness at the deaths of four Black pharaohs, in a kingdom whose horses were known and bought across the entire Near East.