Napata
| Napata in hieroglyphics | ||||
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Nepet npt |
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Location of Napata in Sudan |
Napata is the ancient name of a city in Upper Nubia , in northern Sudan , about 400 km north of today's capital Khartoum .
founding
Napata was born around 1450 BC. Chr. By the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III. founded when he expanded his empire into this region. He regarded the mountain Barkal , which belongs to the city , as the southern border of the New Kingdom . Other pharaohs of the New Kingdom, such as B. Ramses II are also attested here and have built here. In the 25th Dynasty , further temple extensions were carried out here, with these being concentrated on the main temple known as the B 500. Around 1000 BC A principality was established with Napata in the center. From around 750, Napata was the capital of the independent kingdom of Kush . The construction work continued under Aspelta and Anlamani . Napata and the local temples on the Barkal remained the religious center of the country. At the turn of the ages, Natakamani finally developed further construction activities here.
The ruins
The area of the city of Napata includes ruins in several places:
- The holy mountain Barkal was already under Thutmose III. revered.
- On the east side of the mountain lie the ruins of a temple area with the Temple of Amun from Mount Barkal as the largest Egyptian temple in Nubia. Its origin goes back to Thutmose III. back. The Speos of the neighboring Temple of Mut is very well preserved.
- The pyramids of Mount Barkal on the western side of the Barkal were partly built at a time when the capital of the Kushitic Empire had already moved to Meroe .
- Another temple of Amun was five kilometers south of the Barkal on the other side of the Nile in Sanam . This is where the residential town of Napata was likely to have been.
- The pyramids of al-Kurru , ten kilometers south on the western side of the Nile, can also be counted as part of the city of Napata .
The field of ruins at Jebel Barkal includes at least 13 temples and three palaces. These were found by European explorers in 1820. The largest temples, like those of the god Amun , are still seen as sacred by the local population.
Excavations
The temples were excavated in 1916–1920 mainly by George A. Reisner . Only part of his results have been published. Italian excavations are currently taking place here.
The pyramids of Mount Barkal and the temple of Amun there, the Sanam excavation sites, the pyramids of al-Kurru and of Nuri, as well as the cemetery in Zuma received UNESCO World Heritage status in 2003 .
See also
literature
- Napata. In: Hans Bonnet: Lexicon of the Egyptian religious history. 3rd unchanged edition. Nikol, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-937872-08-6 , p. 505f.
- Angelika Lohwasser : Aspects of Napatan society: archaeological inventory and funerary practice in the cemetery of Sanam (= memoranda of the general academy, Austrian Academy of Sciences. No. 67). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-370-01700-3-7 .
- Rudolf Fischer: The black pharaohs. A thousand years of art from the first high culture within Africa. License issue. Pawlak, Herrsching 1986, ISBN 3-88199-303-7 , pp. 153-158.
- Napata. In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto : Small Lexicon of Egyptology. 4th revised edition. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04027-0 , p. 198.
Web links
Coordinates: 18 ° 32 ′ 0 ″ N , 31 ° 49 ′ 0 ″ E