Tamit

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Tamit was a settlement during the early Christian period on the Nile in what is now southern Egypt . The remains of eight church buildings were uncovered before the place was completely submerged in the rising Lake Nasser in 1964/65 .

location

Tamit was on the left, western bank of the Nile between the 1st and 2nd cataracts, a few kilometers northeast of Abu Simbel , about 70 kilometers from the Sudanese border town of Wadi Halfa and halfway between the ancient cities of Qustul and Qasr Ibrim . Opposite stood the small church of Kaw on the eastern bank of the river .

Research history

In the early 1930s, Ugo Monneret de Villard (1881–1954) carried out excavations on behalf of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority and with the support of the Italian Foreign Ministry. As part of the UNESCO rescue operation started in 1960 shortly before most of the ancient sites in Lower Nubia were flooded , a team from the University of Rome under the direction of Sergio Donadoni examined the Tamit and Sabagura settlements . Under time pressure, they succeeded in removing some of the sand from individual buildings and recording the entire site in a map. During the work from August 26 to September 16, 1964, they discovered two more previously unknown churches. In February 1964 Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann , Erich Dinkler , Peter Grossman and other members of the German Archaeological Institute surveyed the larger churches during a short trip through Lower Nubia.

In 1965, William Yewdale Adams categorized the Nubian temples according to style characteristics in time periods. He referred to the fully developed style 3b from 800 to 1250 as the Tamit type .

Cityscape

Tamit was one of the typical sub-Nubian small towns that experienced an economic heyday with Christianization from the 6th century and was Islamized around the 15th century. The houses, mainly made of mud bricks , had two to three long rectangular small rooms that were covered by barrel vaults . In some houses a straight or three-flight staircase in a corner room led to an upper floor. The irregular townscape with closely spaced houses and footpaths in between seems to have developed gradually without a plan. Many of the dead-end streets were probably only created later with more densely built-up areas. Possibly there was a free space in the center of the village. The churches were on the edges of the housing estate. The place should not have had more than 200 to 400 inhabitants during the heyday.

Ugo Monneret de Villard mentions a Christian mausoleum in the north cemetery of Tamit, which was covered as a tetrapylon with a full circular dome . In the four corner pillars made of adobe bricks , horizontally laid corner bridges (simple trumpets ) connected the square substructure to the edge of the dome. The building is similar to the tomb of Bishop Petros in Faras on the north side of the church on the south slope.

Double church

The double church in the east of the village had called Ugo Monneret de Villard falsely as "gruppo delle tre chiese contiguë" (contiguous three churches), actually was in the middle of the exposed overall plant's oldest building, which was later expanded to the south. The oldest small church of the early village church type appears to have had three naves . The course of the wall of the original central nave was still recognizable during the later renovations. The reconstruction drawing is based on a 15.5 × 11 meter building that was covered by three barrel vaults in the longitudinal direction. At a later time, the north aisle was demolished and replaced by a complete three-aisled church in accordance with the typical Nubian building plan. Together with the asymmetrical southern expansion, there were two church buildings connected on the long side.

The north church was about 16 meters long and almost 10 meters wide. In the east of the rectangular building was the central, semicircular altar niche, which is called Haikal in the Coptic Church . On both sides of this apse there were two adjoining rooms ( pastophoria , corresponding to the diakonicon on one side and the prothesis on the other, mostly on the south side), which were entered through symmetrically arranged doors from the side aisles and connected to one another via a narrow corridor behind the apse . The door to the south side room was a little wider. The prayer room ( naos ) can be characterized by two central pairs of pillars arranged in a square similar to the south church of Ikhmindi as a four -pillar construction . The area in front of the west wall was divided by three roughly equal rooms. From the middle room, which was open to the naos, doors led to the side rooms. In the south-western room, the southern outer wall of which was strongly sloping towards the corner, there was a three-flight staircase with two quarter landings that led around a pillar to the roof. Above the four pillars was a central mud brick dome in the style of a Nubian vault ; the other parts of the room were covered lengthways by barrel vaults. In the 1930s there was still the transition zone from the square to the round dome, in 1964 only the four pillars stood. The central nave was in line with the altar niche and was slightly wider than the side aisles.

When the south church was rebuilt, the east wall at the apse was lengthened to the south (to a total of around ten meters) more than in the west, so that an oblique aisle resulted. There was no passage behind the apse, it was not possible to clearly determine whether the older building had a passage. In the atypical building plan, there was a staircase to the roof at the location of the southern side apse. The churches were connected by two door openings on the common wall. The western area was domed, the central nave that had remained from the old church was covered with a barrel vault.

A synthronon , a priest's bench for the clergy, was built into the altar niches of both churches . So it would have been possible for a bishop to officiate in the churches. However, there is no evidence of a bishopric. No pottery was found during the excavations that could have been dated. The oldest Christian pottery on site comes from the middle of the 8th or 9th century. The original church building is likely to be the oldest church in Tamit and is dated to this time by Grossmann. The age of the north church is given as the 11th century; the 11th to 13th centuries are considered for the converted south church. Double churches were very rare in Nubia. The cemetery church of ar-Ramal had two apsidial altar rooms next to each other and the church of Gindinarri had a chapel built on the north side.

Raphaelskirche

The Raphaelskirche on the western edge of the village was recently overbuilt by an Islamic saint grave, which is why it is also called the Church of the Sheikh . The tomb, which was located directly above the central nave, had prevented Monneret de Villard from uncovering in the 1930s. In September 1964, Edda Bresciani found a monogram with the name of the Archangel Raphael (ΡΑΘΑΗΛ) on the arch of the northern entrance door . Before that, the Italian mission had to at least partially excavate the ruins that had been sent in, of which Grossmann had seen almost nothing in February. They removed the upper layers of sand and only reached the floor in a few places.

Here, heavily faded wall paintings from a later phase came to light, which are now in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. They are important for the question of the extent to which the Christian cross was venerated in Nubia. In one of the side rooms of the apse the apparition of God ( theophany ) was found represented as a trinity with a gemed cross . This motif occurs a total of seven times in Nubia: five further images come from Faras and one from Abdallah Nirqi, each from the adjoining rooms. Around the year 1000 the depiction of the Trinity in Nubia lost its meaning, and the cross, which had become precious, was shown larger in the following period. It now appears in the altar niche without the older depiction of God.

The floor plan followed the usual scheme of Nubian village churches. The four central pillars of the nave were walled up irregularly with a cross-shaped cross-section. Similar to the church of Kaw, the pillars were connected to each other and to the outer walls like a rectangular grid by belt arches . There were nine fields, of which the middle ones were a little wider. On the basis of the still existing arches, it emerged that the central circular dome must have been significantly higher than the flat hanging domes over the surrounding fields. From the roof shapes it can be deduced that at that time the idea of ​​a central room with lateral cross arms existed. The domes are a good example of the standing ring-layer structure common in Nubia. The two eastern side rooms were covered by transverse barrel vaults.

Behind the semicircular altar niche, a narrow passage connected the two square side rooms. Of the three adjoining rooms to the west, the stairs may have been in the northern room. The door to the stairwell was later bricked up. In the upper part of the long walls there were larger arched windows in the middle of the fields; the southwestern side room had a pair of slotted windows in the west wall.

The entire building was almost entirely made of mud bricks made with Nile mud. The only stones were two lintels over the eastern adjoining rooms and wedge stone arches over the north and south entrance doors. These round arches lacked appropriate supports, and they also had gaping butt joints. It can therefore be concluded that they were entirely taken over from an older stone building. Because of the domed ceiling, the church cannot have been built before the 11th century, Peter Grossmann believes the 12th or 13th century is likely.

Nave church

The three-aisled basilica was vaulted in the rear part of the raised central nave by a flat hanging dome. This domed room, which is rare in Nubia, may have been taken over by Egypt. The shape can only be found on the church on the citadel of Faras and served as a model for the north church of Qasr Ibrim . With an inner diameter of 3.3 meters, the strongly emphasized central dome had the largest span of all churches in Lower Nubia, followed by the monastery church of ar-Ramal with 3.1 meters. The domed church of Kulb with a diameter of 7.3 meters is a special case.

The semicircular apse was covered by a conical shape of a barrel vault, which occurred occasionally and is also found on the south church of Ikhmindi. The diameter of the curvature was smaller at the rear end and increased with the rising semicircle in the direction of the church interior.

More church buildings

The central church is also called the cemetery church because of its function . It had the usual connecting passage behind the apse. A door arch formed in layers of rings (clay bricks along the circular line) was preserved, although this arch shape is significantly less stable than a radial arch.

Strangely enough, the two entrances from the nave to the ancillary apse rooms were missing in the Archangel church . Parts of the clay plaster showed remnants of painting. In general, only a few frescoes have survived in the rural churches. They were probably intended as devotional or votive pictures .

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann , Peter Grossmann : Nubic research. German Archaeological Institute, Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-7861-1512-5 , plates 50–53.
  • Sergio Donadoni et al .: Tamit 1964. Missione Archeologica dell'Università "La Sapienza" di Roma in Egitto. In: Serie archeologica. No. 14, Istituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente della Università degli Studi di Roma, Rome 1967.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Yewdale Adams: Architectural Evolution of the Nubian Church, 500-1400 AD In: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. Vol. 4, 1965, pp. 87-139; P. 87 at JSTOR
  2. ^ Derek A. Welsby : Settlement in Nubia in the Medieval Period. (DOC file; 203 kB)
  3. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, p. 172; cites William Yewdale Adams: Nubia Corridor to Africa. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1977, p. 488.
  4. ^ Peter Grossmann: Christian Architecture in Egypt (= Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section One: The Near and Middle East. Volume 62). Suffering u. a. 2002, ISBN 90-04-12128-5 , p. 328.
  5. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, p. 5.
  6. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, pp. 33-38.
  7. ↑ Theresia Hainthaler, Alois Grillmeier: Jesus the Christ in the faith of the church. English edition: Christ in Christian Tradition. Vol. 2: From the Council of Chalcedony (451) to Gregory the Great (590-604) / translated by OC Dean. Mowbray, London 1996, ISBN 0-264-66018-8 , p. 286
  8. ^ Peter Grossmann: Christian architecture in Egypt. Suffering u. a. 2002, p. 89.
  9. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, p. 107.
  10. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, pp. 38-42, 154.
  11. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, pp. 25, 157 f.
  12. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, pp. 56, 146.
  13. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Peter Grossmann: Nubian research. Berlin 1988, pp. 56, 177.

Coordinates: 22 ° 24 '  N , 31 ° 42'  E