Kaw Church

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The Church of Kaw was one of the best preserved churches in Lower Nubia in what is now southern Egypt . The small building, presumably from the 13th century, in the classic Nubian architectural style in an early Christian settlement was lost when the Lake Nasser was flooded in the 1960s.

location

Kaw was on the right, eastern bank of the Nile between the 1st and 2nd cataracts, about 75 kilometers northeast of Wadi Halfa and halfway between the ancient cities of Qustul and Qasr Ibrim . Opposite, on the western side of the Nile, several church ruins have been uncovered in the larger Tamit settlement . A few kilometers upstream, also on the western side, in Gindinarri stood a very similar church building, except for an additional chapel. Kaw Church was on a north-sloping hillside right on the river bank.

Design

The floor plan of the church on the river is a classic example of a Nubian village church. Geoffrey S. Mileham described this floor plan as the normal type of Nubian churches after an expedition at the beginning of the 20th century. The rectangle, which was not precisely measured, was about 14 meters long, 8.5 meters on the east wall and 9.5 meters wide on the west wall. The two entrances in the long walls faced each other at the west end of the central three- aisled church space. Behind the semicircular altar niche ( apse , central sacred area of ​​the Coptic Church : Haikal ) on the east side, a narrow corridor connected the two side apse-side rooms, each of which could be entered through a door from the nave ( naos ). Such a connecting passage is typical for Nubia. It was rarely found in churches in the Middle East. A comparable example is the small remains of the early Byzantine basilica of Hosn Niha in Lebanon. The entrance to the southern side room was wider and lay on the outer wall, while the northern entrance was shifted towards the center.

Along the west wall there was also a subdivision into three rooms of almost the same size, with the middle room open to the naos and from here the side rooms could be entered. In the south-western side room a three-flight staircase with two quarter landings led around a pillar to the roof. There were no more stairs. Minus the side rooms, the naos was almost square. This was divided into nine fields by four central pillars. Each field was weakly illuminated through slit windows set high in the outer walls. Three slotted windows arranged in pairs illuminated the side rooms from the narrow sides. Further pairs of slotted windows connected the north-west side room with the naos and were arranged above the doors of the east side apse rooms. Ugo Monneret de Villard, who performed in the 1930s with the support of the Italian Foreign Ministry in Lower Nubia excavations found remains of a lower, the choir delimiting wall (ḥiǧāb) . None of this was left in the 1960s.

Up to a height of 2.4 meters, the walls were made of small and medium-sized chunks of sandstone, irregularly and with no particular consideration for horizontal joints. The upper stone slabs formed the horizontal line for the vaulted ceiling. In the case of Nubian buildings, this support emerged as a line dividing the interior space through a recess in the vault. The further brickwork of the outer walls up to the height of the slotted windows was carried out with clay bricks . This created a wall wreath on the long sides, which optically created a straight structure and practically protected the base of the vault from wind erosion. Since rain rarely falls in this region, the buildings only had to be smoothed with a clay plaster that was as thick as possible to protect them against sand winds. In general, adobe bricks were used to design the window openings in Nubia, since broken stones could not be used to create sufficiently precise edges.

The nine fields of the Naos were covered by adobe domes in the Nubian vault style made of horizontal ring layers. They rested on a rectangular system of belt arches that stretched between the pillars and the nearest walls. The pillars, built from rubble stones, had square cross-sections. In the 1960s, all the outer walls were still almost everywhere room-high, as were the belt arches, which were made in radial layers. The outer domes were designed with a flat arch, while the central dome was significantly raised by a cylindrical wall attachment ( tambour ), which is unusual in Nubia . Except for the church of Kulb with the largest central dome in Lower Nubia, the substructure interposed under the central dome consisted of a square wall edge on which the "hanging domes" were built directly. The corner supports of the central dome were formed by simple pendants . Their total height can only be estimated by comparing them with similar churches, such as the north church of Qasr Ibrim . The adjoining rooms on both sides were closed off at the top by simple longitudinal barrel vaults .

According to William Yewdale Adams (1965), the church belongs to the building phase 800–1250 AD. Peter Grossmann compares it with Egyptian hall churches and cautiously dates it to the 13th century.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Geoffrey S. Mileham: Churches in Lower Nubia (= Eckley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia. Vol. 2). University Museum, Philadelphia PA 1910, pp. 10–13, online at Archive.org (PDF; 3.8 MB) .
  2. ↑ Missing in the earlier floor plan by Geoffrey S. Mileham: Churches in Lower Nubia (= Eckley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia. Vol. 2). University Museum, Philadelphia PA 1910, pp. 10–13, here p. 11: “Plan of Church near Abu Simbel ”, online at Archive.org (PDF; 3.8 MB) .
  3. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. 1988, p. 156.