Qasr Ibrim is an ancient site in Lower Nubia with evidence of occupation or use from the 18*h Dynasty to the 19*h century ad. Located on a high stone outcrop on the east bank of the Nile, the site continues to be important archaeologically because it is the only large ancient settlement in Lower Nubia that was not covered by the waters of Lake Nasser after the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Organic remains from all periods have been incredibly well preserved; however, since the late 1990s much more of the site has become waterlogged because of high lake levels.
Beginning in the 1960s Qasr Ibrim was investigated as part of the Nubian Salvage Campaign, including cemetery areas which are now submerged. The most recent excavations (and conservation) there have been conducted by Mark Horton and Pamela Rose, for the Egypt Exploration Society.
The earliest fortifications at Qasr Ibrim, which date to the early 1st millennium bc (based on radiocarbon dates), are of mud-brick with an inner core of stones. According to Horton, this evidence demonstrates that Lower Nubia was not completely abandoned after the New Kingdom, as has been commonly believed. Within these walls, a mud-brick temple was later built by the 25th-Dynasty king Taharqo, whose cartouche has been found on one of the temple’s column drums.
After the 25th Dynasty, monuments and fortifications continued to be built at Qasr Ibrim. In 23 bc the Romans battled for the site during their military campaign against the Meroites, and archaeological survey has located two Roman siege camps on a nearby plateau. Although Roman occupation of Qasr Ibrim was brief (perhaps 2 years), they built a podium and a temple, which is similar to the temple farther downstream at Kalabsha (ancient Talmis). The Kalabsha temple, which is the largest free-standing temple in Egyptian Nubia, was built during the reign of Augustus, over a dismantled late Ptolemaic temple, and was dedicated to the Nubian god Horus-Mandulis, as well as Isis and Osiris. Like the temple complex at Philae, it was dismantled in the 1960s and was then re-erected on higher ground near the High Dam.
Primis is one of the names for Qasr Ibrim known from classical texts. After a treaty was concluded with Rome, locating the Roman border farther north, the site reverted back to the Meroites. A number of abandoned articles have been excavated at Qasr Ibrim attesting to the Romans’ departure, including military artifacts (thousands of stone catapult balls), papyri, clothes, sandals, lamps, coins, and imported Roman pottery (amphoras and a molded ware called terra sigillata). Qasr Ibrim became an important Meroitic administrative and cult center, and in post-Meroitic (X-Group) times pagan
Map 10.2 Sites in Nubia and Ethiopia/Eritrea contemporary with the Greco-Roman Period in Egypt
Religion continued to be practiced there by Nubians, after this was no longer possible in Egypt. One Ibrim temple dates to ca. 400, and pilgrims continued to visit the site, carving their footprints on paving stones - and inscribing their names (in Greek and less frequently in Meroitic). But there is also evidence at Qasr Ibrim of the introduction and gradual acceptance of Christianity in Nubia in the mid - to late 6th century. The Taharqo temple was converted into a church and around ad 600 Meroitic temples were disassembled to build the Cathedral, with Ibrim as the seat of a bishop.
World History
