Qasr Ibrim is an ancient site in Lower Nubia with evidence of occupation or use from the 18th Dynasty to the 19th century ad. Located on a high stone outcrop on the east bank of the Nile, the site 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 more recent excavations (and conservation) there have been conducted by the Egypt Exploration Society.
The earliest fortifications at Qasr Ibrim, which date to the early first millennium Bc (based on radiocarbon dates), are of mud-brick with an inner core of stones. According to
Mark Horton (University of Bristol), 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 two 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.
Map 10.2 Sites in Nubia and Ethiopia/Eritrea contemporary with the Greco-Roman Period in Egypt.
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 terrasigillata). Qasr Ibrim became an important Meroitic administrative and cult center, and in post-Meroitic (X-Group) times pagan 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.
10.9 Meroe: The Kushite Capital and Royal Cemeteries
Although scholars disagree about when Meroe became the royal seat of the Kushite kingdom, from ca. 300 Bc onward royal pyramids for kings were built to the east of the city. In the north Napata continued to be an important ceremonial and cult center, but Meroe, which is located on the Upper Nile between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, was the capital.
Meroe is in the northernmost region of Sudan which receives annual summer rains, and sorghum was probably the most important cereal crop, with barley also grown farther north. But even in areas of the upper Nile with large flood basins, Meroitic agriculture could not produce huge surpluses as in Egypt, and, according to David Edwards’s studies, the water wheel (saqia) was not introduced into Upper Nubia until early Christian times. To the east of Meroe, the Butana provided extensive grasslands for herding (probably mostly cattle), and the Meroitic state built large water reservoirs (hafirs) at their cult centers in the western Butana.
Meroe is located across the river from the end of the track/road that crosses the Bayuda Desert, a route from Napata that is a much shorter distance than following the Nile around the bend at Abu Hamed. Meroe benefited from long-distance trade (and also probably royal gift-giving/exchange) first with Ptolemaic Egypt, and later with Roman Egypt after conflict with the invading Romans was resolved by a treaty. Exports from the Meroitic kingdom included gold, ivory, and ebony - and probably slaves. Luxury imported craft goods from the Roman world (via Alexandria or produced there) have been found in royal and high-status Meroitic graves: glass; jewelry; Egyptian faience; silver vessels; vessels, lamps, and statues in bronze; wooden containers (such as boxes and pots for eye paint); terra sigillata pottery; and amphoras (which contained wine or olive oil). Such imported prestige goods were probably given to high-status persons through a royal reward system.
Gold jewelry for Meroitic royalty, and decorative pieces and amulets in faience were also manufactured in workshops at Meroe. The city was an important iron-producing center, and large slag heaps have been found there. A fine wheel-made pottery was also made by Meroitic potters, but nothing is known about production centers for this pottery. The ware was often decorated with beautiful floral/leaf designs (of classical inspiration), as well as other symbolic/religious motifs. In the later 1st century bc the ceramic tradition became even more refined with the appearance of a new marl ware with “egg-shell” thin walls. Some of these wares were widely distributed throughout the Meroitic kingdom.
Meroe was a state with complex economic - and, consequently, administrative - activities. Perhaps as a response, one important innovation occurred: texts were written in the Meroitic language, and not in Egyptian, as during Napatan times. The many ostraca that have been found with Meroitic inscriptions indicate considerable literacy. Two scripts were used to write the Meroitic language: cursive and hieroglyphs. The Meroitic “alphabet” used 23 cursive signs taken from Egyptian demotic and their corresponding hieroglyphic signs, which were used on monuments. Although the phonetic values of these signs are known, because they were derived from Egyptian, the language has only been recently identified by French scholar Claude Rilly as a northern branch of the Eastern Sudanic group, and texts remain only partly deciphered.
In the early 20th century excavations at Meroe were conducted by John Garstang (University of Liverpool), who worked in both the city and cemeteries (Figure 10.6). After World War I George Reisner excavated the three royal cemeteries, which were later published by Dows Dunham. Peter Shinnie (University of Calgary) began major excavations at Meroe in 1965, in association with the University of Khartoum. From the 1950s onward
Figure 10.6 Meroe, plan of the city and cemeteries. Source: K. A. Bard (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge, 1999, p. 506. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
Friedrich Hinkel (in later years Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute, cairo) conducted systematic studies of the Meroe pyramids (and rulers buried in them), which included preservation, restoration, and recording the architectural plans, reliefs, and inscriptions. Although Shinnie’s excavations on the North Mound at Meroe revealed an early village, excavations have mostly concentrated on the city’s temples and monumental architecture, and the royal tombs to the east. Much of the rest of the ancient city remains unexcavated.
The most recent excavations at Meroe by a joint expedition of the University of Khartoum and the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada) have uncovered the remains of a palace or administrative center with radiocarbon dates of ca. 900 Bc, in strata beneath a later royal palace. The earliest remains excavated by Shinnie at Meroe also date to the 10th century BC. They consist of a circular timber house, above which are mud-brick houses from a later occupation. Inscriptions on stones from an early Amen temple, which was probably associated with a palace complex, date to the 7th century BC. At the time the temple may have been on an island separated from the rest of the town by a channel in the Nile. In the 3rd century BC a huge trapezoidal wall, 5 meters thick and ca. 400 x 200 meters, was built to enclose the temple-palace complex, the so-called Royal City. Subsequently, a new Amen temple (Temple 260) was built to the east of the royal enclosure.
Garstang’s early excavations in the Royal City were not up to the standards of Petrie’s or Reisner’s work, and there are many problems understanding his records of the architecture there. One of the more striking artifacts which Garstang found in the northern part of the royal enclosure, beneath the threshold of a chapel, is a bronze head of the Roman emperor Augustus. The head was taken by the Meroites during their conflicts with the Romans.
In the later 3rd century BC an unusual new temple (195), which Garstang called the “Royal Baths,” was built in the western part of the royal enclosure. A large pool (almost 3 meters deep) in the temple filled with water during the annual flooding, and Laszlo Torok (Institute of Archaeology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences) has suggested that it was a “Water Sanctuary,” associated with rituals of the New Year, which began at this time. Considerably north of the royal enclosure (ca. 300 meters), Temple 600 was built in the later 2nd century BC. This temple was for the cult of Isis, and it attests to the importance of this deity as far south as Meroe. Although the Water Sanctuary was rebuilt in the 1st century bc, when associated statues of the Meroitic lion-god Apedemak suggest the rising importance of this cult, the temple was finally abandoned in the next century.
A considerable program of temple building took place at Meroe in the 1st century ad, perhaps brought about by prosperity following the end of conflict with the Romans. New pylons were added to the Amen temple, and a set of smaller temples were built to the east of the main temple along a sacred way. To the southeast of the Amen temple a new palace (750) and storeroom complex (740) were also built. Thus the new core area of the city shifted to the east of the earlier royal enclosure.
About 1 kilometer to the east of the city a new temple (250), which Garstang incorrectly identified as the “Sun Temple” mentioned by Herodotus, was investigated in 1984-1985 by Friedrich Hinkel. According to Hinkel, Meroitic royal cartouches, archaeological evidence, and the iconography of reliefs date this temple to the late 1st century BC/early 1st century ad. Built on a platform and entered by stairs, the temple’s sanctuary is a one-room rectangular structure surrounded by a walled ambulatory. Outside the temple was a walled court, elevated about 2 meters and surrounded in the interior by 51 columns. The east wall of the court was designed as a pylon, which was entered via a ramp. on the exterior, the court walls were surrounded by 72 columns. A much larger mud-brick wall, which was faced with fired brick, surrounded the temple complex, with the main entrance on the east side. All of the walls were originally covered with reliefs, including a view of the completed temple on the court’s west wall.
Aligned to the east along the temple’s processional way was an altar with ramps (246), and a columned baldachin (245) enclosed on three sides by screen walls. An enormous water reservoir (kafir) was built to the southeast of the Sun Temple. A badly damaged adjacent square building (255) has sometimes been identified as a palace, although its use remains unknown.
Although the Sun Temple has some Egyptian-influenced elements in its architecture, its design, of a double elevated podium surrounded by columns on the interior and exterior of the walled court, is not that of a typical Egyptian temple, as the Kushites built at Napata. On the south side of the Sun Temple within the brick enclosure is a Roman style house structure (251-253, for the high priest?), with an interior atrium and peristyle of eight columns. According to Torok, plans of earlier elite houses in the northern part of the royal enclosure at Meroe show parallels with Ptolemaic houses in Alexandria. Thus at Meroe there seems to have been emulation of classical architecture in some structures, which reflects both knowledge of and connections with the Greco-Roman world centered in the far north of Egypt at Alexandria.
Four non-royal cemeteries are located to the east of the city of Meroe: the Northern, Western, Middle, and Southern Necropoleis. These burials were covered with mounds, or rings of stone or gravel (the Middle Necropolis). A mortuary artifact that is frequently associated with (non-royal) Meroitic burials is the foa-bird statue, also known from Lower Nubia. The concept of the ba is Egyptian, but the Meroitic statues combine a standing human figure with bird wings in a new type of mortuary artifact. Rectangular stone offering tables with a projecting spout, the basic design of which was derived from Egypt, have also been found with Meroitic burials (Figure 10.7). In the center of the offering table there was a carved depression, around which were incised mortuary scenes of deities, with the offering formula and name of the deceased in cursive Meroitic script.
Like the earlier Kushite royal burials at el-Kurru and Nuri, the royal burials at Meroe were marked with pyramids: in the North, South, and West Cemeteries (abbreviated to Beg N, Beg S, and Beg W after the modern name of the site, Begrawiya). In his excavations of the Meroe pyramids (1921-1923), George Reisner established that the earliest royal cemetery was Beg S, used by the Meroitic branch of the royal family ca. 720-300 Bc. This cemetery contained at least 90 tombs, 24 of which are pyramids, but only two of these belonged to early kings who ruled at Meroe. Beg N became the royal cemetery of Meroitic sovereigns, ca. 270 BC to ad 350-360, with 38 pyramids (and a total of 41 royal tombs). Beg W was the cemetery for members of the royal family, with 82 pyramids, 171 other tombs with superstructures, and many pit burials.
Although not as well constructed, the early royal pyramids at Meroe are similar in design to those at Nuri (Figure 10.8). The Meroe royal pyramids were steep-sided, with a core of
Figure 10.7 Meroitic offering table in sandstone of Qenabelile, with the scene of a goddess on the left and Anubis on the right pouring water on behalf of the deceased. Around the outside is a Meroitic inscription, but only the names of the owner and his parentage can be read. Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Sandstone rubble, filled with stone chips and soil, and encased in masonry blocks. An offering chapel was entered through a pylon on the east side (occasionally with an additional pylon and court). To the east of the pylon was a low wall, which sometimes enclosed the entire complex. Burial chambers were carved in the bedrock beneath the pyramid and entered by stairs. Later pyramids had only one roughly carved burial chamber. According to Hinkel’s investigations, a ruler was buried in sealed underground chambers and then his successor built the pyramid over this tomb. The kings were usually buried with sacrificed servants and harem women. By ca. ad 100 the royal pyramids were being made less substantially with cores of brick and rubble.
Hinkel distinguished 14 different types of pyramids in the three royal cemeteries at Meroe, according to structure, shape, and decoration. The chapels were decorated with mortuary reliefs: the earliest ones have scenes of the king seated on a lion throne behind which is the goddess Isis. Later, members of the royal family are added, along with rows of courtiers and mourners, and scenes from the Book of the Dead. Even later scenes include the (Egyptian) deities Anubis and Nephthys pouring libations of milk onto an offering table with bread, and the dead king giving an offering to Osiris, behind whom is Isis.
Although much more is known about the temples and cemeteries at Meroe than its domestic quarters, 3 kilometers upstream from Meroe at Domat el-Hamadab, where the Wadi el-Hawad enters the Nile Valley, a Meroitic Period town has been excavated by a German-Sudanese expedition beginning in 2001 (Figure 10.9). About 5 hectares in area,
Figure 10.8 Reconstruction of several Meroe pyramids. Source: Drawing by Friedrich W Hinkel. K. A. Bard (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge, 1999, p. 509.
The densely inhabited walled town contained blocks of houses to the north and south of a wide street, which led to a small temple on the east side. The temple had been excavated in 1914 by Garstang, who found two monumental stelae there, of Queen Amanirenas and Prince Akinidad. To the south of the temple the recent excavations have identified a large square building, similar in plan to a Meroitic “palace,” which may have been administrative in function. Probable grain storerooms were located along the northern wall of the town. Less dense habitation was also situated outside the town’s southern wall with evidence of industrial areas to the east and south, for iron smelting and the production of ceramic, faience and glass artifacts. A cemetery was located ca. 500 meters to the south of the extramural deposits.
Royal burials ceased at Meroe by ca. 360. Although the city continued to be occupied until ca. 400, the state and its kingship had already collapsed. If the origins of this kingdom can be pushed back to the 10th/9th centuries Bc, then the Napatan-Meroitic state was a very long-lived kingdom. Although Egyptian cults in Roman Egypt continued to be important, Egypt was no longer ruled by a pharaoh who resided there. But at Meroe pharaonic traditions of kingship and royal mortuary practices continued (somewhat transformed with adapted Kushite elements), as did some pharaonic cults and beliefs - and the state never came under Roman domination.
Figure 10.9 Plan of the Meroitic town at Domat el-Hamadab. Source: Pawel Wolf and Ulrike Nowotnick, “Hamadab, une zone urbaine meroitique,” Dossier d’Archeologie hors serie no. 18: Meroe, un empire sur le Nil aux confins de multiples cultures (March 2010), p. 27.
After the collapse of the Meroitic state, Nubia was controlled by smaller polities, and large tumuli of post-Meroitic rulers have been excavated at several sites along the Middle Nile. These polities remained pagan and continued to worship ancient Egyptian (and Nubian) gods. But as Christianity descended across Egypt, it was only a matter of time before missionaries were sent to Nubia (later 6th century), with Christian kingdoms eventually forming there.
World History
