[3] Following cultural exchanges in ancient and medieval times, a few hundred Greeks – mostly military officers and traders – settled in the six decades after the 1820 Egyptian-Turkish conquest of what became modern Sudan.

[6] The first recorded contact took place in 593 BC: graffiti at Abu Simbel reveal that large numbers of Greek mercenaries served under Psamtik II in his invasion of what is now Sudan.

[7] Vice versa, ancient Nubia also had an influence on Greek culture from those early times onwards, as it was well known by scholars throughout the Hellenic world, where several of the classical writers mentioned it.

[9] A new era of Greek-Nubian relations began in 332 BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and soon dispatched reconnaissance expeditions into Nubia, possibly to find the sources of the Nile.

[9][11][12] Eratosthenes (circa 276–194 BC), the Greek geographer and librarian at Alexandria, sketched "with fair accuracy" the course of the Nile as far south as what is now Khartoum, based on the accounts of various travellers.

[8] Pliny listed a number of Greeks who had travelled to Meroë and sometimes beyond: Dalion, Aristocreon, Bion, Basilis, and Simonides the Younger, who apparently lived at Meroe for five years.

Half a millennium later, Hellenic influence became all the stronger, when Byzantium reached out to Nubia,[22] which consisted of the three kingdoms of Nobadia ("Migit" in Nubian language), Makuria (Dotawo) and Alwa.

[28] When the Turkish-Egyptian forces of the Ottoman Khedive Mohamed Ali conquered the Funj kingdom in 1821, the invading army reportedly included Greek mercenaries of Arvanite origin.

[29] Ali himself is reported to have taken some of his Greek business partners to Sudan, for instance in 1838 a certain Michalis Tossitsas on a mission in search of gold mines, as well as his personal physician Spiros Laskaris Bey.

[30] More Greeks followed in subsequent years from Egypt, not only as military officers and soldiers, but also as interpreters, some of whom guided expeditions further southward, as well as medical doctors and pharmacists,[2] who opened several drug stores.

[6] A Greek trader reportedly played a key role in this crucial event as a guide of this ill-fated expedition, led by William Hicks Pasha, and was later suspected of misleading it on purpose.

Likewise, when an Anglo-Egyptian army under Herbert Kitchener's command began moving up the Nile in 1896 to defeat the Mahdists, Greek traders followed the expedition to provide those forces with supplies, especially food and drinking water for the workers involved in the construction of the railway network, thus literally paving the way for the British-led re-conquest.

Beyond the places, where Greeks had already settled before the Mahdiya, the newcomers also gradually moved to the most remote corners of the country,[2] like En Nahud in Western Kordofan, Talodi in the Nuba Mountains[65] and Deim Zubeir in Bahr El Ghazal.

Konstantinos "Kostas" Mourikis set up a store in this city on the White Nile, where pilgrims from West Africa to Mecca and Southern trade routes crossed,[6] soon after he had arrived in Sudan in 1899 along with his brother.

When Sudan obtained sovereignty from the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium on 1 January 1956, the Greek settlers in the country were issued Sudanese nationality certificates and generally continued to thrive in the first few years of independence.

[33] Makris puts the estimate at 7,000 in the 1950s[4] Tsakos concludes that during the first one and a half decades after independence«the Greeks were the main (foreign) agents supporting the transition of the Sudanese society from 'former' to 'new' times.

"[84] Stefanides also designed a lasting landmark symbol of the Greek influence on shaping the immediate post-independence era: the Aboulela Commercial Building, which was opened in 1956 just opposite the Republican Palace and "exhibits the characteristics that came to define modern architecture in Sudan".

[61] Yet, a few years later, they themselves came under pressure: after an Anyanya assault on Wau in early 1964, the military regime of Ibrahim Abboud reportedly "announced that foreign traders would only be allowed to reside in provincial or district capitals in the South, where they could be kept under surveillance, and not in villages.

[88] In fact, an internal Anyanya paper claimed that "Greek merchants of Tambura helped by providing supplies" to a rebel camp in the Central African Republic.

[33] Another hard hit for the Greek community was the introduction of the draconian "September Laws" as an interpretation of Sharia by Nimeiry in 1983, who ordered all alcoholic beverages in Khartoum spectacularly dumped into the Blue Nile overnight.

A framed letter from the Band Aid founder Bob Geldof on the wall of the hotel's office gives evidence of his appreciation ("Love + Thanks") for the support by the Pagoulatos family and their staff.

[98] On 15 May 1988, the Acropole was shocked by tragedy, when a terrorist commando of the Abu Nidal group bombed the restaurant, killing a British couple with their two children, another Briton, and two Sudanese workers, and leaving many injured behind.

Following the 1989 coup d'état of General Omar al-Bashir, who was backed by Islamist forces under Hassan Al Turabi, and due to the long-term crisis of the economy, the number dropped to around 500 in 1992 and to about 300 in 1996.

[92]With the economic boom of Sudan after the beginning of the oil production in 1999 and particularly after the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), some Sudan-born Greeks returned to the country – especially to the northern part – for employment and business activities.

The community has some highly prominent members: General Gregory Vasili Dimitry, whose father Vassilis was assassinated in 1967 by the Sudanese army for his support of the Anyanya rebels (see above), was appointed as the commissioner of Gogrial East in 2005.

[92] In 2010, the arguably internationally most prominent Greek from Sudan passed away: actor and theatre director Andréas Voutsinas, who is best known for his roles in Mel Brooks and Luc Besson films, as well as for his coaching of Jane Fonda.

[110] When Trump issued a travel ban just one week after his inauguration in January 2017, global press outlets accused Priebus of hypocrisy, since his own mother's country of birth was included in the list.

Throughout the decades, it proved resilient against global competitors of soft drinks in the countrywide market[117] and was sold in 1999 by its Greek-Sudanese owners to the Haggar Holding Company, one of the biggest trading corporations of Sudan.

The Orthodox Metropolitan of Nubia and all of Sudan, Bishop Savvas Cheimonettos, and 15 others - Greeks, Ethiopians, Sudanese and Russians, amongst them three small children - remained locked inside the church building for days.

Two members of the Pagoulatos-family, who has owned the business since 1952, were holed up in the hotel building with four guests and three staff for ten days,[128][129] until they managed to escape for evacuation by the French Armed Forces.