Sabagura

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Sabagura , also Saba Gūra, Sabaqura; was a fortified city founded in the 6th century AD in Lower Nubia in southern Egypt . The ruins of two churches and other buildings from Christian times were completely submerged in the dammed Lake Nasser in the 1960s .

location

Sabagura was on the right, eastern bank of the Nile, about 100 kilometers as the crow flies south of Aswan and 20 kilometers north of the confluence of Wadi Allaqi in the Nile Valley. An old caravan route ran through this wadi to the east towards the Red Sea . Most of the ancient sites were on the western side of the river. Directly across from Sabagura was Gerf Hussein and a few kilometers downriver Dendur .

Research history

Between 1907 and 1911, surveys sponsored by Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston were conducted at numerous sub-sububian locations, including Sabagura . Further investigations, supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were initiated by the Egyptian Antiquities Authority from 1928 to 1934. The manager for the work in Sabagura was Ugo Monneret de Villard. The most extensive excavations were carried out in 1960 by a team from the University of Milan led by Arturo Stenico . This happened under the sponsorship of the Egypt Exploration Society as part of the UNESCO rescue operation shortly before the flooding by Lake Nasser. A year earlier they had excavated Iḫmindi , a similar fortified city 40 kilometers south on the western side of the Nile. Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann and Peter Grossmann from the German Archaeological Institute visited the place in early 1964 on a short trip.

Cityscape

The city wall formed an elongated rectangle that ran up a hill at a right angle to the east from the short side directly on the Nile. The east side, which is almost 40 meters higher, was 40 meters narrower than the 68-meter city wall on the river. Their length was almost 150 meters. The city area within the wall was 7,900 square meters, the entire city extended over 23,600 square meters along the Nile. The earliest buildings inside are from the second half of the 6th century. The city had two entrances that faced each other in the middle of the two long sides. Between them, the relatively narrow main road, only 1.5 to 2 meters wide in places, crossed the residential areas in a straight line in a north-south direction and parallel to the slope. In addition, there was a ring system typical of Nubia with an outer road that ran along the outer walls at a constant distance. On the course of the ring roads leading up steeply to the east, no processing of the subsoil was found, presumably shallows in the rock floor were filled with earth. The buildings were very dense and the entire structure was village-like.

The houses were mostly small and consisted of two to three rooms covered by Nubian barrel vaults . In a square room there was a staircase to the often existing upper floor. The residential buildings with their barrel vaults leaned inwards along the surrounding walls. Nubian buildings either consisted entirely of adobe bricks , for the manufacture of which Nile mud was air-dried, or the lower wall areas were made of rubble stones and plastered with clay. The Italian excavators could not find any remains of church buildings in the interior, there should have been churches in the early days that were later built over. Two church ruins had been preserved in the outer city area.

city ​​wall

On the long sides of the enclosing wall there were rectangular tower porches at irregular intervals between 25 and 45 meters (arrow shooting range) and round towers at the four corners. The top two round towers were preserved along with most of the quarry stone walls that were once several meters high; similar towers on the river can be assumed. The top was wide enough for a battlement . The city ​​wall of Faras , built in the Kushitic period, was slightly sloping on the outside, as were the walls from the later Christian period of Kalabsha , Iḫmindi and Sabagura. Only in Sabagura did the city wall have strut-like reinforcements. The entrances were protected by angled gate porches and were entered from the river side. The route was therefore opposite at the two gates. On the north side, the newcomer stepped through the gate in a right turn, which corresponds to the ancient principle that the attacker holding his shield in his left hand has to advance with the unprotected right side. The two city gates of Faras were designed accordingly. On the south side, the faster route towards the river was obviously the more important criterion. It is unclear whether the gateways were once closed with a vault at the top. That would have been a disadvantage for the defense. Angled gate entrances have existed in Nubia since the time of the X Group (from the 4th century, forerunners of the Christian empires), in the Middle East they are unknown on fortresses, in other regions of North Africa they are rare.

Arturo Stenico described the unfavorable steep slope of the place as a kind of bad planning at the "green table". Their strategic advantage, however, was that without the occupation of the hill, enemies would have had the opportunity to bombard the city from above. Halabiya on the Euphrates has a similarly planned urban complex . The fortified city, which was built there under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century, ends with the tip of a triangle on a hilltop. In Nubia there was another such settlement in the little south of Dilağer. The city fortifications probably served to protect the local population from nomadic attacks and less to secure the trade route through the Wadi Allaqi, because the place was too far from the starting point of the wadi.

South church

The church, located outside the walled settlement, was completely exposed in 1960 by the team from the University of Milan. The floor plan corresponded to a village church in Nubia, except that the typical rectangular building here was almost square with about 13 meters by almost 12 meters outside. Minus the ancillary rooms on the west side and the altar wall in the east, the nave was significantly wider than it was long. In the northwestern adjoining room, stairs led to the roof. The two entrances faced each other in the western part of the north and south sides. The imprecisely crafted semicircular apse in the east was flanked by two side chambers, which were connected by a narrow passage behind the apse. Such a corridor 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 door openings of the side chambers had no stop posts and were arranged symmetrically directly next to the apse opening. Except for a high-lying window in the south wall of the southern apse-side room, the outer walls were windowless.

Four square pillars made of coarse sandstone supported the roof shapes, which presumably consisted of barrel vaults over the central nave and the side aisles . Transverse barrels lay over the side rooms of the apse, while the apse was covered by a semi-dome. Where there was plenty of quarry stone, it was cheaper than making clay bricks. The outer walls of the poor church were made of stone up to a height of over two meters, only mud bricks were used around the only window, with which more precise openings can be made.

Arturo Stenico said that the church was built at the same time as the first houses, i.e. in the 6th or 7th century. William Y. Adams dated the middle of the 8th to the middle of the 9th century, while Peter Grossman believes the beginning of the 9th century to be likely due to the lack of a central dome.

North Church

In 1938 Ugo Monneret de Villard published the first floor plan and reconstruction drawings of the church located outside next to the north gate. In 1960 Arturo Stenico uncovered the church, which is around 15 meters long and 9 meters wide. With these proportions, even after subtracting the western and eastern side rooms, there was still an elongated central nave. The apse was imprecisely rectangular, behind it the walkway was missing. Otherwise the spatial plan corresponded to the north church. The apse was slightly elevated due to the rocky slope rising to the east. Each long side probably had four high arched windows, the three apse rooms each received light through a slit window in the east wall. In the upper areas of the other walls there should have been further slotted windows. Wall openings of this type were generally installed in houses and rural churches at half the width of the adobe brick and usually in pairs. Round arches over windows consisted of radially placed normal-sized bricks. The middle parts of the north and south walls were still upright during the excavation. The entire building was made of quarry stone up to the supports of the vaults and plastered with clay, only around the windows clay bricks were used for the purpose of a better fit.

Both ancillary apse rooms were covered lengthways by barrel vaults; over the apse, trumpet-shaped bricks led over into a semi-dome. The three naves were covered by parallel barrel vaults in the longitudinal direction. Since the wall supports were all of the same height, the middle vault protruded slightly over the others due to the slightly larger width of the central nave. The church is believed to have been built in the 9th century.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Derek A. Welsby : Settlement in Nubia in the Medieval Period. ( MS Word ; 207 kB)
  2. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. Berlin 1988, pp. 64-67, 92.
  3. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. Berlin 1988, pp. 57-62, 90.
  4. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. Berlin 1988, pp. 8-11.
  5. ^ FW Deichmann, P. Grossmann: Nubische Forschungen. Berlin 1988, pp. 11-14.