Hillat al-Arab
Coordinates: 18 ° 30 ′ 33.6 " N , 31 ° 48 ′ 30.8" E
Hillat al-Arab (also Hillat el-Arab ) is a village in what is now Sudan , about three kilometers south of Mount Barkal . An Italian- Sudanese expedition discovered a cemetery here, dating from around 1200 to 750 BC. Dated. This site is of particular importance as very few remains from Nubia are known from this period . Many tombs date back to shortly before the beginning of the Kush Empire .
The Hillat al-Arab complex consists of around twenty graves carved into the rock, each of which consisted of several rooms and was intended for various dead people. Grave 7 was found largely untouched because the ceiling of the main chamber had collapsed in ancient times. It is apparently the burial place of a local, wealthy upper class.
The burial chamber of grave 1 was even painted in a rather primitive style. Most of the additions were vessels and jewelry. The pottery from the oldest tombs is largely Egyptian . At that time the area was under Egyptian rule, although it is believed that this rule was rather loose. The area around Mount Barkal formed the southern border of the Egyptian Empire. In the years that followed, there was still a strong Egyptian influence. Many vessels and jewelry were apparently imported directly from Egypt, although the area was hardly under his rule. Grave 19 was of particular interest as it had been used for centuries. The lowest layers come from the Egyptian New Kingdom , the uppermost, later burials contained objects and above all ceramics, which are already very similar to the Kushitic.
literature
- Irene Vincentelli Liverani: Scavi nella necropoli di Hillat el Arab . L'ERMA di Brettschneider, Roma 1997, ISBN 88-8265-002-2 , p. 319-322 . (Italian, text excerpt as digitized version)
- Irene Vincentelli, with contributions by Abdel Rahman: Hillat el-Arab: the joint Sudanese-Italian expedition in the Napatan Region, Sudan . Archaeopress, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-1-84171-785-2 .