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 5th and 6th 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).
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 productions 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 1s* 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,
Figure 10.5 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. Reprinted by permission of Routledge
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 (see Figure 10.5). 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 Friedrich Hinkel (now Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo) has been doing systematic studies of the Meroe pyramids (and rulers buried in them), which has included preservation, restoration, and recording the architectural plans, reliefs, and inscriptions. Although Shinnie’s excavations on the North Mound at Meroe have 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 earliest remains excavated by Shinnie at Meroe date to the 10th century bc. They consist of circular timber houses, above which are mud-brick houses from a later occupation. Inscriptions on stones from the earliest Amen temple, which was probably associated with a palace complex, date to the 7th century bc. At the time the temple was probably 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 meters 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 m 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 m), 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 1s* 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 1s* 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, made possible because of the silting up in the first centuries bc and ad of the Nile channel between the royal enclosure and the rest of the city. 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 1984-85 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 1s* 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 (hafir) was built to the southeast of the Sun Temple. A badly damaged
Figure 10.6 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. © The Trustees of the British Museum
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 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
Figure 10.7 Reconstruction of several Meroe pyramids by Friedrich W. Hinkel. Source: K. A. Bard (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge, 1999, p. 509. Drawing by F. W. Hinkel. Reprinted by permission of Routledge
Associated with (non-royal) Meroitic burials is the ba-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 (see Figure 10.6). 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 (1921-23), 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 350-60, 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 (see Figure 10.7). The Meroe royal pyramids were steep-sided,
With a core of 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 harim women. By ca. ad 100 the royal pyramids were being made less substantially with cores of brick and rubble.
Hinkel has 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 which is Isis.
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.
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.
CHAPTER
The Study of Ancient Egypt
Egyptian civilization arose over 5,000 years ago. It is one of the earliest civilizations - and one for which we have much information, not only of material remains but also of texts. Spanning over 3,000 years, ancient Egyptian civilization can be studied in terms of the processes of evolution and long-range development of an early civilization. Ancient Egypt can also be analyzed in comparative studies of early civilizations, such as Bruce Trigger’s admirable work Understanding Early Civilizations (2003).
For prehistorians Egypt provides a rich body of evidence, beginning with its long sequence, from the Lower Paleolithic to the introduction and adoption of agriculture in the Neolithic. The Predynastic Period is studied both as the continuation of that sequence and in terms of the rise of complex society and the origins of a pristine state.
Although settlement evidence is generally not well preserved, ancient Egypt was an urban society, and the processes of urbanization can also be studied there. It is not merely a coincidence that the largest city in Africa today, Cairo, is in the same region in northern Egypt as was the earliest capital of Memphis, founded some 5,000 years ago.
Ancient Egypt provides rich data on the socio-political and economic organization of an early state and on changes in this through three millennia. Pharaonic Egypt was a highly stratified society, as is apparent in both the textual and archaeological evidence. It was the earliest large territorial state, and, unlike most early states, it was a stable one, in existence for over 800 years, from Dynasty 0 to the end of the Old Kingdom. Its political organization, with the strong institution of kingship, can be studied in different periods, from the earliest state to Egypt’s empire in the New Kingdom, as well as later in the 1s* millennium bc. Control of the New Kingdom empire was very different in southwest Asia than in Nubia, and different forms of colonialism can be examined. Both the archaeological and textual evidence provide information about different ethnic groups with whom the Egyptians came in contact and of whom members settled in Egypt, and how these groups interacted with Egyptians and reacted to Egyptian culture.
The agricultural system that developed in Neolithic and Predynastic Egypt, which later provided the economic base of the pharaonic state - with huge surpluses - can be studied in terms of the very successful adaptation of farming and eventually irrigation agriculture within the floodplain ecology of the lower Nile Valley. Destruction of the natural habitats of a number of wild animals and plants is not something that has happened only in modern times: this occurred in Egypt as farming spread throughout the Valley and Delta. Environmental studies are relevant for this ongoing process in Egypt - over the course of 7,000+ years. How the ancient Egyptians and the state responded (or did not respond) to environmental change, especially increasing aridity, is also a factor that should be of interest to ecologists and environmentalists today.
Warfare as an explanation (or non-explanation) for socio-political change can be examined in the different periods of pharaonic history. The technology, organization, and logistics of ancient warfare can all be studied from the Egyptian evidence.
For some ancient Egyptian technology, such as quarrying and mining, there is much information. Quarry sites are plentiful in the desert regions and the end products of stone quarrying are visible. But there is also representational evidence of stone masonry and other crafts as well as the finds of real tools used in these activities.
Although the wheel was known in Egypt as early as the 3rd millennium bc, wheeled vehicles were not used to transport large stones until Roman times. Why some technology did not change throughout the Dynastic period should be of great interest to us in the modern world, where the pace of technological change is extraordinarily rapid.
From early times the Egyptians developed impressive boat-building technology and had knowledge of navigation. Paintings, reliefs, and models of boats exist, as well as real boats and parts of boats which have been excavated. There are also texts about sea-faring expeditions. Long-distance trade and exchange is evident from Predynastic times onward, and in Dynastic times we know that state expeditions were conducted both overland and by sea. There is textual information about the organization and control of this trade - and the wide-ranging foreign contacts that it represents.
Ancient Egypt was a literate society, and the invention of writing there was a very important development. Although the hieroglyphic writing system is one of great visual appeal, it may seem cumbersome to us who use the Latin/Roman alphabet today. But the ancient Egyptian writing system was a highly adaptive one that evolved though the millennia. In its latest form it was written in the Coptic alphabet, which is still in use.
Despite the problems posed by the limited range of texts that have survived and the biases in them, writing greatly expands our knowledge of this early civilization. The archaeological evidence cannot be understood alone. For archaeologists, texts are of great importance - for the (often specific) historical context in which evidence is excavated as well as for more culture-specific information.
From the ancient texts we have works of literature, and writing was used to record what could be termed history, law, natural history, science, and medicine. Ideology is in evidence not only in the temples, statues, and reliefs of the gods, but also in texts that illuminate ancient Egyptian beliefs, including the role of the king and the state in religion. The impressive royal monuments in Egypt provide evidence of the nature of Egyptian kingship, as do the texts that are found on these monuments. Texts also give insight into the processes of legitimization of Egyptian kingship, an institution which controlled vast resources, both human and material.
Throughout Egypt, from the Great Pyramid at Giza to the much simpler graves of workers, there is much evidence of the great importance of afterlife beliefs in this civilization. There is also a large body of mortuary texts spanning nearly three millennia which give very detailed information about the wide range of ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife.
The Giza pyramids, and now the excavated evidence of the pyramid town there, represent the great capability of the ancient Egyptian state to plan and complete complex state work projects on an enormous scale. Pharaonic Egypt became very skillful at the organization of its bureaucracy - and the extraction of dues and taxes which supported the state.
Although it might be expected that the Giza pyramids were built by slave labor, which was common in the ancient world, we know from Egyptian texts that slavery did not develop in Egypt until the Middle Kingdom, and then only on a small scale. Social relations in this stratified society can be studied through both archaeological and textual evidence.
Egypt was a moneyless society until the later 1st millennium bc, but there is much information about the economy. The control of wealth and resources, and the economic base of the state, can be studied from archaeological and textual evidence. The role of elites, and control of resources by centralized versus local institutions (both provincial administration and cult temples), can be examined in the economy, as well as the relations of labor. Who controlled what, and how this operated - and changed through time - can all be investigated.
Egyptian civilization did not collapse with the end of periods of centralized control - or throughout the periods of foreign rule, of the Persians, Ptolemies, and Romans. The cults of the gods, mortuary beliefs, the idea of ancient Egyptian kingship, and what John Baines and Norman Yoffee have called “high culture” were fundamental in the continuity of this early civilization, and are worth examining in their cultural, historical, and ideological contexts - as well as in comparative studies of early civilizations.
Roman Egypt, which was still pharaonic in much of its culture, was one of the regions where Christianity first spread. It is within this cultural context that the sects and communities of early Christianity in Egypt need to be understood, which may also provide insights into how the new religion developed in different forms in other parts of the Roman world.
Pharaonic Egypt has fascinated people of different cultures who have visited the country in ancient times as well as in recent centuries. Traveling exhibitions of Egyptian art, especially selections from Tutankhamen’s tomb, attract huge crowds of viewers, and Egyptian collections in major museums in the West are very popular. The great beauty and distinctiveness of Egyptian art and the impressiveness of its monumental architecture are readily understood by people today, but how such works functioned in ancient Egyptian culture - and how they can be understood in this context - are issues that I have tried to address in this book. For those who simply want to be better informed about ancient Egypt, and not misled by the fantastical claims that are often made about this early civilization, I hope that this book is useful.
World History
