Wad ben Naga
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Location of Wad ben Naga in Sudan |
Wad ben Naga (also Wad ban Naga , Wad ban Naqa , Abou Naga , Benaga ) is the name of a ruin site in what is now Sudan . The place is about 80 km upstream from Meroe , on the eastern side of the Nile , near the road about 40 km southwest of Shendi and should not be confused with the Naqa ruins .
The site has so far been little explored, and ruins of an Isis temple, which could still be seen in the 19th century, have now been destroyed. It was probably built by Natakamani . A boat stand, found at this location and sent to Berlin by Richard Lepsius in 1844 , helped Francis Llewellyn Griffith to decipher the Meroitic script (but not the language). Meroitic script and Egyptian hieroglyphics appear here together. Wad ban Naqa is primarily known as the location of a palace from the period 15–0 BC. Known around which there were other buildings. The palace made of mostly unfired adobe bricks was excavated from 1959 to 1960. It is approximately 61 meters square. The plan mainly shows a number of long rooms and corridors that were probably used as magazines. The actual living rooms were probably on the upper floor. An inscription found here indicates that Amanishakheto built this palace.
There are also foundations of several temples on the site. In the north and south of the Meroitic urban area, there are larger cemeteries with several tumulus graves, which probably date to the post-Meroitic period. To the south of the palace there is a round building of unknown function, the walls of which are up to 3 m high.
Due to the rather seldom use of stone as a building material, the local access to the Nile was mostly used for the manufacture of mud bricks. Since most of the buildings were built from mostly unfired adobe bricks and then plastered, the general state of preservation can be classified as very poor compared to other known Meroitic sites such as Naga or Mousavwarat es-Sufra, since heavy rain showers that occur annually dissolve the brick structures. A comparison with photographs of the palace shows a loss of large-scale wall structures since its excavation. The situation is similar with the round building, which was also open to the weather without any conservation measures.
A Czech team of archaeologists from the Prague National Museum has been digging in Wad Ben Naga since 2009.
literature
- František Vacek , Jiřina Dašková , Pavel Onderka : Why was the ancient city of Wad Ben Naga, Sudan, built of bricks? Geological evidence . In: Journal of the National Museum (Prague) . tape 182 , 2013, ISSN 1802-6842 , p. 29-34 .
- Steffen Wenig : The Meroitic Queen Amanitore. Boat stand from Wad Ban Naqa (Sudan), around 20 a. Z., No. 7261 . In: New Museum Studies . tape 20 , no. 2 , 1977, ISSN 0028-3282 , pp. 62 .
- László Török : The temple of Apedemak in Naqua . In: The image of the ordered world in ancient Nubian art. The construction of the Kushite mind, 800 BC-300 AD . Brill, Leiden et al. 2002, ISBN 90-04-12306-7 , pp. 226 f .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Picture of the boat stand
- ↑ Vacek, Dašková, Onderka
Web links
Coordinates: 16 ° 30 ′ 40 ″ N , 33 ° 6 ′ 44 ″ E