The present article suggests a hypothetical localization and provides a reconstructed text of a Coptic inscription which was seen by Urbain Bouriant on the road along the east bank of the Nile, halfway between Assuan and Kom Ombo. Bouriant edited this inscription twice in the 1890s, presenting it, together with an Arabic inscription that lay underneath, as a bilingual report on roadwork, and dated it to year 409 of Diocletian, resp. 7[3] Hiğri, i.e., AD 693. This article argues that, on the contrary, the two inscriptions are of different and much later date, and commemorate two distinct (albeit similar) events.
A re-edition of the Bohairic Coptic letter British Library Or. 4720 [31], vo (=P. Lond. Copt. I 590 (2), 11th century) with particular attention to its interest for contemporaneous Coptic monasticism in Naqlun and Kellia. The addressee of the letter is a certain deacon Makari from Nekloni, who is asked to join a party of people engaged in building activity in Talmouna in the north, bringing with him blankets and wine.
“…that the mountain of the holy wilderness may be inhabited…”: Saint John the Baptist in Infancy scenes in the narthex of the Quarry Church of Dayr Abū Ḥinnis
Keywords: Dayr Abū Ḥinnis; John the Baptist; wall painting; Infancy scenes; monasticism
The iconographical program of wall paintings in the Quarry Church of Saint John the Baptist in Dayr Abū Ḥinnis focuses on its patron saint. A frieze of Infancy scenes in the narthex of the church, seemingly centering on the early life of Christ, was thought to be an exception. In this paper, I argue that the unusual beginning of the frieze (Massacre of the Innocents) shows that the guiding element of this series of paintings is the Infancy of Saint John the Baptist. Thus, this frieze, in which generally known images were combined in an original and creative way, fits perfectly in the carefully designed overall iconographical program honoring the titular saint of the church, the model par excellence of monastic life.
Keywords: Constantine from Lycopolis; Coptic hagiography; Great Persecution; pilgrimage sanctuary; cult paraphernalia; consensual slavery; Melitian schism
Texts on the martyrdom of St. Claudius and on his cult center at Pohe in the Lycopolitan nome were published in 1970 but were never studied exhaustively. This interesting Coptic hagiographic dossier, preserved in its entirety in a codex from the early 9th century (also in smaller fragments from the same period), was put together specifically for the purpose of the cult. Two panegyrics written by Constantine, Bishop of Lycopolis, ordained by the patriarch Damianos (578–607) and his curate in Upper Egypt, are of particular interest as a literary product and at the same time testimony of a pilgrimage center in operation. Two other anonymous texts from the same codex (Pierpont Morgan 587, 9th century), which are both much later, supply historians with useful data on Christian beliefs during the Great Persecution.
The presence of a monastic library, possibly connected with a scriptorium, in the complex labeled as D on the upper plateau in the monastery at Nekloni (Naqlun), has been suggested in research, based on finds of texts, as well as other categories of artifacts presented in excavation reports. The paper discusses the collection of wooden artifacts from the complex, emphasizing objects that could have been part of the upper-floor reception rooms envisioned as the place where one would expect to find the monastery library.
Author(s): William Y. Adams / Language(s): English,French,German
/ Publication Year: 0
Keywords: Meroitic Nubia; post-Meroitic Nubia; Christian Nubia; pottery
The author traces the evolution of Nubian decorated pottery from the middle Meroitic (1st century BC/1st century AD) through the terminal Christian (about AD 1500), arguing in favor of four different revolutions, technological and stylistic, which shaped the ruling paradigm. These revolutions are assigned to the Meroitic, post-Meroitic, Classical Christian and Terminal Christian periods.
An ongoing British Museum–Glasgow University conservation project has focused on medieval textiles excavated from Kulubnarti, Sudan. Textile manufacture was an important industry on the site and this is reflected in the artefacts found there. Methods used to conserve the textiles are discussed and the fibres used, notably human hair, identified. The reasons for the use of various fibres and weaving techniques are considered.
Seven LR 5/6 amphora sherds from Polish excavations in the building B.I on the citadel of Dongola published in the present article are thought to represent pottery production from the northwestern part of the Nile Delta. Their principal content was wine in all probability and they all came from 7th century contexts. These particular seven pieces all carried dipinti in black reading: “To the Four + a number”, which apparently indicates that the Church of Four Living Creatures was the recipient of the wine contained in these vessels. Assuming the interpretation is correct, the finds cast light on the organization of Egyptian wine exports to Makuria in the 7th century.
Among the rocks: A first look at medieval Duweishat, from the archive
Author(s): David N. Edwards / Language(s): English,French,German
/ Publication Year: 0
Keywords: Medieval Nubia; Duweishat; Nobadia; landscape; settlement; social archaeology; churches
During the 1960s, the Archaeological Survey of Sudanese Nubia (ASSN) created a systematic record of the archaeology of a whole landscape, now lost, providing a body of data of exceptional value. Drawing on still unpublished data this paper explores the medieval settlement archaeology of the Duweishat region of the central Batn al-Hajar. Evidence is examined for a gradual agricultural colonisation during the first millennium AD as well as the penetration of Christianity into this isolated rural area. How social landscapes may have been organised around churches and cemeteries is also discussed, as well as how such regions may have interacted with (episcopal) centres such as Sai and Faras.
With the purpose of providing insights into the position of the church on Sai Island among the bishoprics of Christian Nubia, the paper contextualizes archaeologically well-known Nubian cathedrals with monolithic granite columns as roof supports (Old Dongola, Faras and Qasr Ibrim), presenting them against the background of historically known bishoprics from medieval Nubia and archaeologically attested episcopal churches. Four granite columns at the locality 8-B-500 on Sai Island, identified with the site of a medieval cathedral, are compared with like roof supports from other Makurian buildings of the kind to show that the church was constructed at the beginning of the 8th century AD and modeled on the Church of Granite Columns from Old Dongola.
Monks and bishops in Old Dongola, and what their costumes can tell us
Author(s): Karel C. Innemée / Language(s): English,French,German
/ Publication Year: 0
Keywords: religious costume; mural painting; Dongola
In past years numerous wall-paintings have come to light in annexes of the monastery of Dongola and in other buildings in and around the citadel. Some of these paintings represent ecclesiastical dignitaries and the costumes in which they are depicted can give us information about their status, the development of religious dress in Makuria, but also about the intertwinement of the episcopal and monastic hierarchies.
Keywords: Christian Nubia; Oriental Christianity; church architecture; Nubian painting; wall inscriptions; Christian liturgy
A well established program can be observed in the decoration of the northern pastophoria of Nubian churches from the 9th/10th century onwards. It consisted of a painted representation of Jesus Christ blessing with his right hand the chalice held in his left and inscriptions in Greek with prayers from the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. The authors argue that this program was a Nubian creation, alluding to the function of the northern pastophorium as a place for storing oblations, keeping liturgical implements and liturgical reserve, and possibly also celebrating the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.
The article is devoted to the Archangel Raphael and his position in Nubian painting, taking into consideration new archaeological discoveries. The cult of the Archangel Raphael seems to be more extensive than it was thought to be before, given the examples from Banganarti and Old Dongola. His special position was a result of his multiple activities, described in the Book of Tobit and the apocryphal texts. He was a guide, healer, God’s intercessor for mankind, demon tamer and so on. In Nubia, he also seemed to be a special patron and protector of kings.
“To date the research on the church architecture in Nubia has consistently failed to differentiate, territorially and historically, between two different Nubian kingdoms” (Godlewski 2006b) and one could add the third, Alodian, kingdom to this. The author’s involvement in a project to publish the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago excavations at the Qasr el-Wizz monastery has generated this study of the early architectural history of the katholikon at Qasr el-Wizz and its development, analyzed in the context of studies on Nubian Christianity. Due to a rampant misuse of terminology referring to the functional parts of churches in Nubian studies, a review of this vocabulary was deemed essential as a background for a presentation of the late George T. Scanlon’s views on the development of this particular church, followed by the present author’s addenda et corrigenda, and a discussion and conclusions for the study of Christian Nubian sacral architecture.
When epigraphy meets art history: On St Phoibammon from Abdallah-n Irqi
Author(s): Grzegorz Ochała / Language(s): English,French,German
/ Publication Year: 0
Keywords: Abdallah-n Irqi; St. Phoibammon; wall inscriptions; Era of Diocletian; stylistic dating of Nubian wall painting
The article offers a new reading of one of the wall inscriptions discovered during Dutch excavations in the central church of Abdallah-n Irqi. According to the new interpretation, the text includes an annual date, a fact that is extremely important for the dating of not only the text itself, but also of the wall painting (mounted St Phoibammon) it accompanies. In more general terms, the inscription has helped to verify methods for the stylistic dating of Nubian murals.
Author(s): Marta Osypińska / Language(s): English,French,German
/ Publication Year: 0
Keywords: medieval Nubia; pig husbandry; archaeozoology; animals in Makuria; economy
Regular archaeozoological research at key sites from the region of Makuria has contributed significant data on animal breeding and meat consumption in this Nubian kingdom. The appearance of the domestic pig, absent earlier from sites in the Middle Nile Valley, was one of the most distinctive features of the Makurian economy. Pig has been demonstrated to be the third most important meat for consumption, likewise in historic Dongola and in Banganarti (after cattle and ovicaprids) in all phases of Nubian history, including sporadic occurrence in contexts dated to the Funj period. The article looks at the origins and importance of the pig as a species in Makurian animal economy and the tentative socio-economic implications of this unique phenomenon in Nubia.
This article proposes speculative reconstructions of the genealogies of the royal families of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Dotawo. It synthesizes the literary, documentary and epigraphic evidence for Nubian kings and their families in the 1100s–1300s. The result is a series of family trees intended to produce a testable model. That model proposes that despite the apparent conflict between various contenders for the throne dynastic succession was the standard operating principle in Dotawo throughout the late medieval period; that peaceful stability was normative; and that a single family dynasty may have ruled Dotawo through the entire span of these several centuries.
Until recently, the list of Nubian towns and territories allegedly conquered by the Mamluks during Baybars’s reign (1260–1277) was known only through late or corrupt versions such as the one preserved in the chronicle of al-Mufaḍḍal b. Abī Faḍā’il (completed before 1358). Recent research by the author in the corpus of Mamluk annals and chronicles allowed the original source to be identified as Ibn Šaddād’s biography of Baybars completed shortly after the sultan’s death in 1277. The present contribution provides a critical edition of this text based on the unique manuscript of this work (Edirne, Selimiye kütüphanesi, 2306) followed by a detailed commentary, which aims at identifying or locating the many place names mentioned in it. The list may also offer new insights into the settlement history of the kingdom of Makuria in the late medieval period.
The ‘bead-side’ story of medieval and post-medieval Nubia: Tentative approach to the bead collection of the Museum of Archaeology University of Stavanger, Norway
Keywords: Beads; pendants; Lower Nubia; medieval; post-medieval; modern
The paper presents a group of beads and pendants from the collection of the Museum of Archaeology University of Stavanger, Norway, derived from excavations carried out by the Scandinavian Joint Expedition to Sudanese Nubia. The finds come from burials at Debeira, Sahaba and Abka, and a church site at Sidi Amir el-Sahaba, and cover a timespan from the Christian period through modernity. A few are currently introduced in terms of the material they were made from and most are paralleled by bead finds from other Nubian sites, but some types remain unidentified. Despite not being well dated or properly provenanced in many cases at this time, they are presented here in order to ‘thread’ them into the Nubian bead story from medieval and post-medieval times.
Author(s): Adam Łukaszewicz / Language(s): English,French,German
/ Publication Year: 0
Keywords: Ptolemaic Egypt; Roman history; Cleopatra VII; Meroitic Kingdom; women rulers in antiquity
The author discusses the circumstances of Cleopatra VII taking power as the sole ruler of Egypt in 49/48 BC. The queen was forced out of Alexandria by her brother and co-regent Ptolemy XIII. When she reappeared in Egypt, it was from Palestine. The author considers the possibility that she traveled from Alexandria through the Thebaid, the Meroitic Kingdom and Arabia to Palestine, where she expected to obtain financial support necessary for recruiting mercenaries. She need not have modeled her political activity on that of the Meroitic kandake, but personal contacts between the two queens are plausible. The author suggests that a woman’s head represented on the cover of a box containing a mirror, found at Faras in Nubia, may be a portrait of Cleopatra.
Please note that there is a planned full infrastructure maintenance and database upgrade of the CEEOL repository.
The search is temporarily unavailable.
We apologize in advance for the inconvenience and thank you for your kind understanding.
There are validation problems in the fields. Please check the fields again and enter the correct data. (The fields with a red outline are required. The fields with correct data are with a green outline and "" symbol, fields with incorrect data are with a red outline and "" symbol. Pointing at the question mark "" placed at the end of fields displays additional information for the correct way of completing.)
