16.5111°N, 33.1122°E.
Meroitic settlement on the east bank of the Nile in central Sudan, roughly 130 kilometres northeast of modern Khartoum, built primarily of mud-brick with carved sandstone elements at the principal entrances. Wad Ban Naqa was an important Meroitic-era town that served as the river port for the inland temple complexes of Naqa and Musawwarat es-Sufra during the period from the first century BCE through the third century CE. Its principal monument is a substantial palace attributed to Queen Amanishakheto, the same Kushite ruler whose pyramid at Meroe was famously dynamited by the Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini in 1834 in search of buried gold. The palace was excavated by the Sudanese archaeologist Thabit Hassan Thabit during the 1958–1960 seasons and has been re-investigated by the Berlin Egyptian Museum mission continuously since 2010. The site also includes a small Amun temple and a bath complex with hydraulic features highly unusual for Meroitic architecture.
A queen's palace stood on the river, and most of her gold went to a private collection in nineteenth-century Italy.