Two top Italian archaeologists will join the international efforts to save ancient artifacts from being submerged by a dam project in Sudan, Italian news agency ANSA reported Wednesday.

Twin brothers Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni, experts on Sudan's ancient history, have been called up to join the efforts coordinated by the British Museum of London and the National Corporation for Antiquities of Khartoum.

The two 69-year-old Italians are perhaps most famous for their 1989 discovery of the ancient Egyptian "city of gold", Berenice Panchrysos, which is in today's Sudan.

The Merowe hydro-electric dam on the Nile River, Africa's largest hydropower project, is being built in the heart of Nubia, a region that stretches across southern Egypt and northern Sudan.

The project is scheduled to be finished on the Nile's fourth cataract in September 2008, and archaeologists are trying to rescue treasures in the region around the dam before it turns into a huge reservoir.

Nubia was an independent kingdom in ancient times and is believed to have served as a trade corridor between Egypt and tropical Africa in 4,000 B.C.

Inhabitants in the region, where Paleolithic remains such as cave etchings of animals and hunting have been found, can be traced to some 200,000 years ago.

Source: Xinhua