Gindinarri

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Gindinarri was a settlement during the early Christian period on the Nile in what is now southern Egypt . The remains of an unusual double church were uncovered before the place was completely submerged in the rising Lake Nasser in 1964/65 .

location

Ğindinārri was on the left, western bank of the Nile between the 1st and 2nd cataracts, near Abu Simbel , a few kilometers southwest of the early Christian settlement of Tamit and about 70 kilometers from the Sudanese border town of Wadi Halfa . A little further downstream on the eastern bank of the river stood the small church of Kaw . The church was at the western end of a larger residential area.

Research history

The church was first described in 1932 by Ugo Monneret de Villard, who carried out excavations in Lower Nubia on behalf of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority and with the support of the Italian Foreign Ministry . As part of the UNESCO rescue operation started in 1960 shortly before most of the ancient sites were flooded, Williams Yewdale Adams included Ğindinārri in his categorization of the affected church ruins. In February 1964, Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann , Erich Dinkler , Peter Grossman and other members of the German Archaeological Institute surveyed some details of the church during a short trip through Lower Nubia.

church

The main building of the church corresponded to the usual basic plan of Nubian village churches. In 1964 even larger parts of the outer walls made of mud bricks stood upright up to the approach of the ceiling vault. The three- aisled building formed a rectangle about 13 × 8 meters with the entrances in the western part of the two longitudinal walls. The eastern side rooms were connected by a passage behind the semicircular apse. The entrances to these rooms were offset close to the outer walls, the southern door was a little wider, as with the river church of Kaw. Of the three adjoining rooms along the west wall, the middle room was open to the nave ( naos ). From here you got through doors into the outer western side rooms. A three-flight staircase with quarter platforms led to the roof in the northwestern room. Less the adjoining rooms on both sides, an almost square prayer room remained in the middle, which was divided into nine equally sized segments by four pillars with a square cross-section. The north-western pillar had disappeared; the other three were still upright in the 1960s. Opposite the pillars, pilasters on the longitudinal walls served as templates for belt arches , which, as in the Raphaelskirche in Tamit, formed the ceiling structure in a grid-like manner above the nave. In contrast to Tamit, the projecting wall templates were missing on the altar wall and the western partition walls.

On the longitudinal walls there were wall niches in the middle of the space fields and slotted windows above. In the east wall there was only one slit window in the north side room, another one above a narrow bench lit the south-west side room from the south side and above a niche the middle room from the west side. The flooring consisted of reddish sandstone slabs, the floor of the presbytery was raised by one step. A low walled choir screen (ḥiǧāb) served to separate the altar area reserved for the clergy from the community .

The nine fields of the naos were covered by semi- domes in regular ring layers in the style of the Nubian vaults , accordingly Nubian barrel vaults are assumed to cover the side rooms . The central dome should have been a little higher. The emphasis on the center of the room had its origin in the Byzantine four-pillar construction; In contrast to this, as with the Raphaelskirche in Tamit, the idea of ​​the arms of the cross extending on the four sides was not very pronounced. The dome fields arranged in the grid were derived from the late Egyptian hall churches. As with the south church of Ikhmindi and the river church of Kaw, a relatively rare conical vault formed the ceiling above the apse. William Yewdale Adams dates the church around the 11th century, Peter Grossman, because of the roof architecture, in the 13th century.

At a later time a 4.5 meter wide side chapel (Parakklesion) was added to the north. The entrance was at the same level as the previous entrance on the west of the north side. To the west of this, a partition wall separated off an adjoining room, the main room received a second altar in a round apse to the east. The position of the windows could not be determined during the extension.

At the double church in Tamit, two churches connected on the long side were built after several renovations. If there was a need for an additional chancel, a new church was basically built in Nubia, and the addition of a parakklesion as in Ğindinārri was very rare. The most unusual case for Nubia was two altars in adjacent round apses in the cemetery church of ar-Ramal . The need for an additional chancel resulted from a regulation by Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century, according to which the liturgy should not be performed more than once a day on the same altar. Since the construction of new churches was forbidden in Egypt at the same time, this led, in contrast to Nubia, to the installation of altar apses in the previous adjoining rooms, so that double altars became the rule there in the late phase of church construction.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Yewdale Adams: Architectural Evolution of the Nubian Church, 500-1400 AD In: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. Vol. 4, 1965, p. 128.
  2. ^ Peter Grossmann: Christian Architecture in Egypt (= Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section One: The Near and Middle East. Volume 62). Brill, Leiden u. a. 2002, ISBN 90-04-12128-5 , p. 95.
  3. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. Berlin 1988, p. 32, 158.
  4. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. Berlin 1988, p. 44.
  5. ^ P. Grossmann: Christian architecture in Egypt. Suffering u. a. 2002, p. 97.