Qasr Ibrim

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Qasr Ibrim when the water level is high

Qasr Ibrim ( Arabic قصر إبريم, DMG Qaṣr Ibrīm  ' Fort des Ibrim '), also transcribed Kasr Ibrim , is a place of ruins in Lower Nubia in today's Egypt . The site has been around since at least the New Kingdom period around 1500 BC. BC and continuously inhabited until the beginning of the 19th century. The remains of the fortified city on a rocky hill have been preserved as an island in the dammed Lake Nasser .

location

Map of Nubia with the location of Qasr Ibrim

Qasr Ibrim is about halfway between Aswan and the Sudanese border town of Wadi Halfa on the eastern bank of Lake Nasser, which rose from 1964 to a few meters below the fortification wall due to the construction of the Aswan Dam . The remains of ancient buildings in the lower outdoor areas and the surrounding cemeteries have since disappeared. Before the flooding, a rocky knoll, pushed far into the plain, rose about 70 meters above the surface of the Nile . After another rise in the water level in 2000, parts of the outer fortifications are also under water. The place is about 60 kilometers northeast of Abu Simbel and a few kilometers upstream from Amada . A little north across the river were the ruins of Karanog .

history

The in the first half of the 15th century BC. In addition to her building work in Egypt, the ruling Queen Hatshepsut commissioned temples in some places in Lower Nubia and a rock chapel in Qasr Ibrim. The most important viceroy of her successor Thutmose III. (around 1486–1425) named Nehi had a shrine carved out of the rock face below the village and numerous rock inscriptions placed throughout Nubia. Another rock inscription in Qasr Ibrim comes from Amenemope (ruled 996–985) . The remains of an Amun temple from the time of the Kushitic king Taharqa (around 691–664) were found on the top of the hill from the pharaonic buildings .

Since the 25th dynasty , Qasr Ibrim has been a fortified settlement under the name Pedeme , which, together with Meroe and Napata, is one of the sites for inscriptions of Nubian kings. A stele of Queen Amanishakheto (ruled around the turn of the ages) and Prince Akinidad was probably intended as a foundation or donation for the Amun Temple. The stele is in the British Museum in London.

The fortified city complex was probably built by native Nubians in the 2nd century BC. Founded. 23rd v. BC the Roman prefect Petronius stormed the city. He gave it the name Primis and made it part of the Roman province of Aegyptus . According to Roman sources, the Romans advanced further south to Napata. Two years later, the Roman garrison left in the city was able to repel an attack by the Cushites, but had to withdraw after another attack in 20 BC. Retire. The fortified city was occupied by the Blemmyans .

In the first half of the 5th century AD, the noble king Silko drove out the long-standing enemy. The Christian era began for Qasr Ibrim in the following century. The small Taharqa temple on the southern edge of the village was turned into a church in the middle of the 6th century, and another temple ( Isis temple, No. 6) was only destroyed at the end of the same century , so both forms of belief could have been practiced side by side for as long as possible .

West side of Qasr Ibrim

A cathedral was built in the center in the 7th century. Qasr Ibrim received a bishop and, along with Faras, remained an important administrative center until it was conquered by the troops of Turan Shah , the brother of the Muslim Ayyubid ruler Saladin , in 1173. After the Nubian Makurians attacked Aswan a year earlier, Saladin ordered his brother to march against Nubia. In Qasr Ibrim, the Egyptians took possession of supplies, weapons and ammunition, killed the captured 700 pigs and locked the prisoners in the fortress. A graffito written in Coptic on a rock tomb in Aswan reports on the conquest . During the next two years, Turan-Shah had the cathedral converted into a mosque. From Qasr Ibrim the Muslims raided the country. Because of the small amount of booty, they then renounced further conquests and retreated back to Egypt.

The inhabitants remained Christian, as can be seen from text finds, including two writings by Bishop Timotheus in Coptic and Arabic , dated 1372 , which were found in his tomb together with his cross staff.

In 1528 Bosnian mercenaries from the Ottoman Empire conquered the city. The large St. Mary's Cathedral was used as a mosque after renovation. In the fight against Mamluk princes, who had withdrawn behind the city walls, Qasr Ibrim was destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha as commander for Upper Egypt on behalf of his father Muhammad Ali . The city was then abandoned.

Research history

Book page in Old Nubian script from the 9th or 10th century ( British Museum )

Excavations have been under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society since 1959 . The University of Würzburg participated in 1964 in the framework of UNESCO -Rettungsaktion with a project to decipher the found in Qasr Ibrim texts in Meroitic language . A total of 700 Meroitic texts were found on papyrus , wood, leather, clay and stone. Before the area was flooded, it was mainly rescue excavations in the surrounding area; Since the 1970s, efforts have focused on the earlier history of the fortress hill and the preservation of the remains that remained there. Numerous finds of Old Nubian , Greek , Arabic and Ottoman manuscripts have also been made. Small wooden boards with short texts mainly deal with economic issues.

Cityscape

The pyramid tombs built after the Romans withdrew were on the plain on this side of the Nile. The burial ground opposite on the west bank was reserved for the priests of the Amun temple. There were six mud-brick temples that were still used religiously in the first centuries AD. A Roman temple, which was probably built under Petronius, shows through the careful layering of the walls that it was built by craftsmen who came from Egypt. Most of the temples in Nubia, which lay south of the Roman border, were also planned and executed by the Egyptians; in contrast to the Christian buildings that were built by the local population from the 6th or 7th century. Qasr Ibrim and Faras were the only places in which field stones were walled up to a large extent, otherwise it was usual to only layer the lower layers with stones and continue above with dried mud bricks. Temple No. 1 was a sandstone temple from the 4th century. The small temple no. 289 dates from the same period and was possibly converted into a church in the 6th or 7th century. The south church (no. 294) south of the cathedral is dated to the 12th or 13th century, but it could have been preceded by an older building.

Nubian vessel
(British Museum)

A room in Qasr Ibrim and a district in Sayala with a number of "wine bars" provided the clearest indications in Nubia of the apparently considerable consumption of wine imported from Egypt from the early Christian period. On the walls of the restaurant there were relief representations of amphorae and grapes. There is no information about the population at the time of flowering. In general, the Upper Nubian settlements had 200 to 400 inhabitants in Christian times, even in the largest city of Faras there were possibly only a few 1000 people.

Church in the Taharqa Temple

The Taharqa Temple (Temple No. 3) was assembled with two other temples, designated No. 4 and No. 5. As can be seen from sacrificed coins, the temple was venerated until the 5th century. At the beginning or middle of the 6th century, the Taharqa Temple was converted into the first church in town. For this purpose, the Christians built an east-facing apse in one area of ​​the temple and filled the remaining space with rubble. A narthex was built along the west side . In the contents behind the apse there were pottery shards from the time of the X group , which was represented in Qasr Ibrim either up to around 550 or 700 AD. The dating of the church is based on these fragments.

Big church

Ruins of the cathedral

The Great Church from the 7th century, also known as St. Mary's Cathedral, is preserved in remains in the center of the old city. In the five-aisled wide arcade basilica , reused stone blocks from a temple can be seen in the lower area. Its building core is dated to the 7th century. In the Ottoman period it was converted into a mosque.

North Church

Directly on the river and now flooded by the reservoir was a small three-aisled church with some unusual structures for Nubian church buildings. The basic plan was first measured by Ugo Monneret de Villard at the beginning of the 20th century. The main room was divided by two pillars, which formed a slightly wider central nave. The rectangular chancel in the east was flanked by two smaller chambers, the entrances of which were arranged asymmetrically. The northern chamber could only be entered from the chancel, the southern room, however, directly from the side aisle. The usual side rooms were missing on the west side. The slightly angled building was about ten meters long on the north side and nine meters long on the south side, the width was about seven meters. The two entrances on the long sides were on the line of the pillars opposite. The high central dome spanned across arches between the pillars and the altar wall. The corner transitions to the dome were crossed by trumpets made of diagonal brick ring layers. The central dome, which was still preserved in 1960, had windows on all four sides; the other roof structures had collapsed. There were flat semi-domes over the chancel and the western central section, the side aisles were covered by barrel vaults .

All outer walls had a high base made of quarry stone, some of which reached the height of the bulkhead of the side barrel vaults. The outer windows were all quite small and designed with a round arch, pointed arch or as narrow slit windows. In all three altar rooms there was a small wall niche in the east wall.

The dating to the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century is based on the somewhat wider central nave, which refers to influences from Egypt and is only known in this form up to the 13th century.

literature

  • William Yewdale Adams: Qasr Ibrim: An Archaeological Conspectus. In: JM Plumley (Ed.): Nubian Studies. Proceedings. Aris & Phillips, Warminster 1982, ISBN 0-85668-198-9 , pp. 25-33.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann , Peter Grossmann : Nubian research (= archaeological research. Vol. 17). Gebrüder Mann, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-7861-1512-5 .
  • Mark Horton: Africa in Egypt: new evidence from Qasr Ibrim. In: WV Davies: Egypt and Africa. Nubia from prehistory to Islam. British Museum Press, London 1991, ISBN 0-7141-0962-2 , pp. 264-277.
  • Mark Horton: Qasr Ibrim. In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 649-52.
  • Jack Martin Plumley: Qasr Ibrim. Several preliminary reports of excavations in: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. London 1964, 1966, 1970, 1975, ISSN  0075-4234 .
  • László Török : History of Meroe. A contribution about the sources and the state of research. In: Hildegard Temporini (ed.): Political history. (Provinces and fringe peoples: Africa and Egypt) (= rise and fall of the Roman world . Part 2: Principat. Vol. 10: Political history. Half- vol . 1). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1988, ISBN 3-11-008843-6 , pp. 107–341.
  • Derek A. Welsby : The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia. Pagans, Christians and Muslims along the Middle Nile. The British Museum Press, London 2002, ISBN 0-7141-1947-4 .
  • Joachim Willeitner : Nubia. Ancient monuments between Aswan and Khartoum. Hirmer, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7774-7500-9 .

Web links

Commons : Qasr Ibrim  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • The Egypt Exploration Society: Qasr Ibrim study season. At: egyptexplorationsociety.tumblr.com ; last accessed on August 31, 2014.
  • University College London: Qasr Ibrim (Primis). On: digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk from 2003; last accessed on August 31, 2014.
  • Al Ahram Weekly: Sending out to SOS. On: weekly.ahram.org of August 30, 2007, last accessed on August 31, 2014.
  • Adam Łajtar: Varia Nubica III. A liturgical prayer from Qasr Ibrim. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. No. 112, 1996, pp. 140–142 ( full text as PDF file; 43 kB ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ J. Willeitner: Nubia. Ancient monuments between Aswan and Khartoum. Munich 1997, pp. 42 f., 46, 58.
  2. ↑ László Török: History Meroes. A contribution about the sources and the state of research. Berlin et al. 1988, pp. 155-159, 193, 208.
  3. ↑ Derek A. Welsby: The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia. Pagans, Christians and Muslims along the Middle Nile. London 2002, p. 75 f.
  4. ↑ The British Museum: Cross of Timotheos ( Memento of the original from February 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.britishmuseum.org archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On: britishmuseum.org ; last accessed on August 31, 2014.
  5. ^ J. Willeitner: Nubia. Ancient monuments between Aswan and Khartoum. Munich 1997, p. 115.
  6. ↑ Africa Center of the University of Würzburg: Research project on Qasr-Ibrim. On: afrikazentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de ; last accessed on August 31, 2014.
  7. ↑ Derek A. Welsby: The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia. Pagans, Christians and Muslims along the Middle Nile. London 2002, p. 111.
  8. ↑ László Török: History Meroes. A contribution about the sources and the state of research. Berlin et al. 1988, p. 193 f .; FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, pp. 98, 172.
  9. ^ Siegfried G. Richter: Studies on the Christianization of Nubia (= languages ​​and cultures of the Christian Orient. Vol. 11). Reichert, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-89500-311-5 , pp. 160, 180f.
  10. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. Berlin 1988, pp. 22-25.

Coordinates: 22 ° 38 ′ 59 "  N , 31 ° 59 ′ 34"  E