Ikhmindi

Coordinates: 23 ° 1 '12.4 "  N , 32 ° 38' 15.6"  E

Ikhmindi​

Egypt

Ikhmindi , also Iḫmindi; was a fortified city founded in the 6th century AD on the Nile in what is now southern Egypt . Until the flooding by Lake Nasser in the 1960s, the place was one of the best preserved early Christian settlements in Lower Nubia .

location

Ikhmindi was located north of the ancient settlement area of Sayala on the left, the west bank of the Nile about 120 kilometers in a straight line south of Aswan and about 40 kilometers south of Sabagura , a fortress city of comparable size. A few kilometers downstream, Wadi Allaqi flowed into the Nile Valley from the east. Here an old caravan route branched off towards the Red Sea , the city itself was not on a caravan route. In Ptolemaic times , the border between Egypt and Nubia ran roughly at Ikhmindi. After the Roman prefect Petronius 23 BC. BC had taken the fortified Qasr Ibrim further south and stationed a garrison for two years, the Romans withdrew to the old border and kept al-Maharaqqa a few kilometers north of Ikhmindi as a border town of the province of Egypt .

Research history

Ludwig Borchardt made the first sketches in 1900 ; E. Somers Clarke published his archaeological research in 1912. From 1928 to 1934 the Egyptian Antiquities Authority arranged excavations in Lower Nubia with the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The head of the work was Ugo Monneret de Villard. The most extensive excavations were carried out in 1958/59 by a team from the University of Milan led by Sergio Donadoni and Arturo Stenico . They made a detailed overall plan of the settlement. This happened under the sponsorship of the Egypt Exploration Society as part of the UNESCO rescue operation shortly before the flooding by Lake Nasser. Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann and Peter Grossmann from the German Archaeological Institute visited the place in early 1964 on a short trip.

Cityscape

The foundation of the settlement can be limited to the second half of the 6th century, as it is mentioned in a Greek foundation inscription from this time. At the beginning of the 1960s, large parts of the fortress wall measuring approximately 120 × 120 meters and the ruins of numerous residential buildings were still preserved from the almost square walled city complex. The purpose of the fortification, according to the inscription, is "to protect people and animals". This is the main function that the fortifications of Sabagura, Kalabsha and Sheik Daud may have had. For the local population, it was about repelling raids by nomads and not about securing a trade route. Only the city wall of Faras came from the Kushite period , while the other places were also expanded and fortified in the course of the 6th century. However , it cannot be inferred from this that the cities were organized as a superordinate state organization, as existed in the Byzantine Empire .

The place was conveniently located on a low hill, steeply sloping towards the Nile, which formed a narrow peninsula between the Nile and a dead branch, so that it was only accessible from the north. The eastern part of the city wall and a 20 to 30 meter wide strip of the settlement behind it had crashed in a landslide. It is considered certain that, like on the other sides, the city wall was secured by square corner towers on the east side. In the north and south there were gate porches, the entrances to the east. As in Sabagura, the path led into the city at right angles, as there in Ikhmindi the outside of the wall was slightly sloping. However, the additional stiffening by buttress walls was missing. The entire wall consisted of rubble stones, only to create a level battlement on the top of the wall, clay bricks were used. The battlements were protected by a parapet 75 centimeters thick. Two towers on the west wall, one on the north and one on the south wall in addition to the gates of the defense. Their distance between 30 and 40 meters corresponded to the range of an arrow shot.

Insofar as the location of the streets in the interior could be determined, there was a street grid between the dense buildings that was not kept very regularly and was basically planned. A ring road parallel to the surrounding wall was typical for Nubian settlements. The straight, north-south running main street was interrupted in its central area by the central church, which was probably built before the planning of the streets and which now formed the city center. Further streets opened up differently sized city districts (insulae). The arrangement of the houses suggests a later, unplanned, gradual merging. The streets were all narrow and unpaved. Apparently after the houses were completed, the narrow street space in between was covered in some places by a Nubian barrel vault . The supports for the vaults were missing on many of the house walls and had to be created using walls that were added later. Such a roof did not exist in other places. They were installed mostly at the instigation of the respective house residents, which would explain some of the irregularities in the execution.

The houses built next to each other consisted of two to three small, long rectangular rooms. They were mostly made of rubble stone in the base zone and mud bricks in the upper wall parts and vaulted ceilings. Some houses had two phases of construction. The oldest buildings had such thin walls that they could only have been covered with a flat roof made of palm trunks. In order to be able to add a vault for a later renovation, a support first had to be created by reinforcing the walls. In some buildings, straight or two-flight stairs led to an upper floor, which in some cases was added later. With the exception of a few fishermen's huts on the banks of the Nile, all residential buildings were within the city walls.

Central church

The central church, completely exposed by the Italians in 1958/59, lay on a slightly elevated rock slab on the main axis between the two city gates. The apse , located within a roughly 14 × 10 meter rectangle, was rebuilt several times. In the oldest adobe building, the central apse protruded as an obtuse-angled rectangle over the east wall. Later, when the outer walls were completely rebuilt from sandstone, the two side rooms were extended to a straight east wall, and the apse was given a semicircular wall shell on the inside. The two entrances were typically in the western area of ​​the north and south sides. On the west wall of the nave ( naos ) a roughly square side room was separated in each corner, in the southern room was the staircase to the upper floor. In the early 1930s, Ugo Monneret de Villard found no remains of these fixtures or any of the alleged central pillars . In contrast to other Nubian churches (such as the local south church and that of Sabagura) there was no connecting passage between the adjoining rooms behind the apse. The first phase is dated to the founding time of the place and the beginning Christianization, i.e. in the 6th century. The passage behind the apse was not generally abandoned until the middle of the 8th century. The last phase was the installation of the apse.

South church

The remains of the three-aisled south church were uncovered in the south outside the walled city. The rectangular floor plan of around 12.5 × 9.5 meters followed the usual Nubian division with entrances in the western area of ​​the two long sides, two side rooms on the western wall, the southern one as a staircase, and four rectangular pillars in the middle of the transverse rectangular nave. The eastern side rooms were connected by a corridor behind the semicircular apse. In accordance with the width of the apse, there was a slightly wider central nave compared to the side aisles. The apse round wall was preserved up to the beginning of the vault. Parts of a low wall delimiting the choir (endeniǧāb) were also preserved. The outer walls were made of sandstone up to a height of 1.5 meters, and above of mud bricks. The apse and inner walls were made entirely of adobe. The question of dating is answered differently. Arturo Stenico gives the second half of the 6th century. William Y. Adams (1965) suspects that the building was built between the 7th and 9th centuries, and Peter Grossmann believes that the 9th century is likely due to a central dome over the central pillars. Barrel vaults are assumed to cover the side aisles .

Building inscription from Ikhmindi

In 1958 an undated Greek founding inscription was found in the southern church, in which, in addition to the king Basileus Tokiltoeton and several dignitaries, an exarch (military leader, governor) Joseph von Talmis ( Kalabsha ) is named. This is also mentioned together with Bishop Theodoros of Philae in the inscription commissioned by King Eiparnome either in 559 or 574, which was placed there on the occasion of the rededication of the temple of Dendur into a church. The written announcement marks the beginning of the broad Christianization of Lower Nubia and falls during the period of the first Christian mission to Nubia carried out under the Eastern Roman Emperor Justin II (r. 565-578).

Bishop Theodoros von Philae was largely responsible for the Christianization of Nubia. According to another inscription from Philae , commissioned by him and dated 577, he was still alive that year. The inscription by Ikhmindi must have been made around this time. It must have been brought to the southern church at a later time. Originally it should have been attached to the south gate. A "building" is described that was founded under Basileus Tokiltoeton and the Exarch. The surrounding wall of Ikhmindi is thus dated to the second half of the 6th century. From the interpretation of the numerous Byzantine honorary titles that the ruler had attached to himself and with which other Nubian dignitaries adorned themselves, there is a strong Byzantine influence on the culture. A political influence from Constantinople on the administration does not have to be related to this, the award of the title seems to have been a takeover of the Egyptian bureaucracy.

literature

• Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann , Peter Grossmann : Nubic research. (Series: Archäologische Forschungen Vol. 17) German Archaeological Institute, Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-7861-1512-5 .
• Arturo Stenico: Ikhmindi, una città fortificata medievale della bassa Nubia. In: Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Università degli Studi di Milano. (ACME) Vol. 13/1 (1960), pp. 31-76.

Web links

• Derek A. Welsby : Settlement in Nubia in the Medieval Period. ( MS Word ; 207 kB)
• A Common Trust: The Preservation of the Ancient Monuments of Nubia. UNESCO, 1960

Individual evidence

1. ^ John Whitehorne: The Pagan Cults of Roman Oxyrhynchus. In: Wolfgang Haase, Hildegard Temporini (Hrsg.): Rise and decline of the Roman world . De Gruyter, Berlin / New York, Vol. 1, T. 2, 1995, p. 3057.
2. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, p. 14 f.
3. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, p. 67 f.
4. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, p. 68 f., Plan: Fig. 32.
5. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, p. 71 f.
6. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, pp. 73–81.
7. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, pp. 14-20.
8. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, pp. 20-22.
9. ↑ John Donelly Fage et al. a. (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Africa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1979, Vol. 2, p. 560.
10. ↑ Deichmann, Grossmann, pp. 81–88