Sanam

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Mount Barkal and its surroundings
Plan of the Temple of Sanam
Taharqa Temple from the southeast

Sanam is an archaeological site in Sudan . It is located on the eastern bank of the Nile, about five kilometers as the crow flies south of Mount Barkal in the center of today's town of Merowe .

meaning

Extensive ruins were found here, including a temple of Amun , which was probably built by Taharqa . The temple is almost identical in plan and size to temples of the same ruler, which he had built in Kawa and Tabo . There was also a palace here, which has not yet been excavated. There are remains of other buildings and a large cemetery with 1550 graves, which is more characterized by simple burials. This is located in an extensive, cordoned-off area north of the temple, which extends to the access road to the Nile Bridge, which was completed in 2007.

It is believed that these ruins were the remains of the residential town of Napata , as the sacred character of Napata forced them to keep the secular and the population therefore lived in Sanam. At Mount Barkal, on the other hand, are the large temples and palaces of Napata.

Excavations took place here from 1912 to 1913 by Francis Llewellyn Griffith , but apart from two preliminary reports, they have never been published.

The ruins and temples have been on the UNESCO list of world cultural heritage since 2003, along with other buildings in the region .

See also

literature

  • Timothy Kendall: Sanam. In: Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 , pp. 690-91.
  • Angelika Lohwasser : A Phoenician bronze bowl from Sudan. In: Egypt and Levant. 12, 2002, ISSN  1015-5104 , pp. 221-234, online .
  • Angelika Lohwasser: cycle time and landfill. A Phoenician bronze bowl in the Aksumite Empire. In: Egypt and Levant. 14, 2004, pp. 121-124, online .
  • Angelika Lohwasser: Dangers lurk everywhere. To the animal motifs on an amulet from Sanam. In: The ancient Sudan. 13, 2002, ISSN  0945-9502 , pp. 47-58, online (PDF; 662 kB) .
  • Angelika Lohwasser: The Kushite Cemetery of Sanam. A Non-royal Burial Ground of the Nubian Capital, c. 800-600 BC. Golden House, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-906137-16-8 .
  • Piotr O. Scholz: Nubia. Mysterious gold country of the Egyptians. Theiss, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-8062-1885-4 , p. 132.
  • Bernhard Streck: Sudan. Stone graves and living cultures on the Nile. DuMont, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-7701-1232-6 , p. 81 ( cultural travel guide in the series DuMont documents ).

Web links

Coordinates: 18 ° 29 ′ 0.4 ″  N , 31 ° 49 ′ 8.9 ″  E