Sedeinga 2012. a Season of Unexpected Discoveries Claude Rilly, Francigny Vincent
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Sedeinga 2012. A Season of Unexpected Discoveries Claude Rilly, Francigny Vincent To cite this version: Claude Rilly, Francigny Vincent. Sedeinga 2012. A Season of Unexpected Discoveries. Sudan & Nubia, Sudan Archaeological Research Society, British Museum, 2013, pp.61-65. halshs-02539243 HAL Id: halshs-02539243 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02539243 Submitted on 15 Apr 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. SUDAN & NUBIA The Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin No. 17 2013 ASWAN 1st cataract Egypt RED SEA W a d i el- A lla qi 2nd cataract Batn el-Hajar W a d i Akasha G a b g Sedeinga a b Jebel Dosha a Tinare Jawgul 3rd cataract ABU HAMED e Sudan il N El-Ga’ab Kawa Basin Sudan Military KAREIMA 4th cataract Fifth Railway Cataract el-Kurru Dangeil Usli Berber ED-DEBBA ATBARA ar Gala ow i H Wad Abu Ahmed es-Sour A tb el-Metemma a r m a k a li e d M d l- a e adi q W u 6th cataract M i d a W OMDURMAN KHARTOUM KASSALA B lu e Eritrea N i le MODERN TOWNS Ancient sites WAD MEDANI Atbara/Setiet W h it e N i GEDAREF le Aba Island KOSTI SENNAR N Ethiopia South 0 250 km Sudan S UDAN & NUBIA The Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin No. 17 2013 Contents Dangeil 2012: Sacred Ram – Avatar of the God Amun 70 Julie Anderson and Salah Mohamed Ahmed Reports Dangeil, A Preliminary Report on the Petrography 78 Lithic Material from the Late Neolithic Site of 2 Meredith Brand es-Sour, Central Sudan A Third Season of Rescue Excavations in the Meroitic 90 Azhari Mustafa Sadig Cemetery at Berber, October 2012: Preliminary Report ‘Pharaonic’ Sites in the Batn el-Hajar – the 8 Mahmoud Suliman Bashir ‘Archaeological Survey of Sudanese Nubia’ Revisited. Jawgul – A Village Between Towers 101 David N. Edwards and A. J. Mills Mariusz Drzewiecki and Piotr Maliński A Note on the Akasha Rock-Inscriptions [21-S-29] 17 The Archaeology of the Medieval and Post-Medieval 109 Vivian Davies Fortress at Tinare in the Northern El-Mahas Creating a Virtual Reconstruction of the Seti I 18 Abdelrahaman Ibrahim Saeed Ali Inscription at Jebel Dosha Upper Atbara Setiet Dam Archaeological Salvage 113 Susie Green Project (ASDASP), the Rescue Excavation Results Archaeobotanical Investigations at the Gala Abu on the Western Bank of the Atbara: Preliminary Report Ahmed Fortress in Lower Wadi Howar, Northern Murtada Bushara Mohamed, Mohammed Saad Abdalah, Sudan Sami Elamien Mohammed and Zaki aldien Mahmoud The Site and the Findings 24 Archaeological, Ethnographical and Ecological 124 Friederike Jesse Project of El-Ga’ab Basin in Western Dongola: A Report on the Second Season 2010 Phytoliths on Grinding Stones and 28 Yahia Fadl Tahir Wood Charcoal Analysis Barbara Eichhorn Surveys at the Fifth Cataract and on the Sudan Military 131 Railway and excavations at Kawa, 2012-13 The Fruit and Seed Remains 33 Derek A. Welsby Stefanie Kahlheber Archaeological Survey in El-Metemma area 137 New Excavations at El-Kurru: Beyond the Napatan Nada Babiker Mohammed Ibrahim Royal Cemetery Archaeological Survey of Aba Island: 142 Introduction 42 Preliminary Report Geoff Emberling and Rachael J. Dann Ahmed Hussein Abdel Rahman Adam Investigating Settlement at El-Kurru 43 From Nubia to Arizona – and back; or, Reisner 149 Geoff Emberling comes Home Geophysical Prospection in the Archaeological 48 William Y. Adams Settlement of El-Kurru Mohamed Abdelwahab Mohamed-Ali Miscellaneous Coring and Soundings in the El-Kurru Settlement 50 Obituary 154 Tim Boaz Bruun Skuldbøl Michel Azim Five-sided Corinthian Capitals in the Mortuary 54 Brigitte Gratian Temple at El-Kurru Review 154 Jack Cheng Giovanni R. Ruffini 2012.Medieval Nubia. A Social Geophysical Survey at the El-Kurru cemetery 56 and Economic History Ed Blinkhorn William Y. Adams Sedeinga 2012: A Season of Unexpected Discoveries 61 Front cover: The descendary of Tomb IV T 1 near Sedeinga Claude Rilly and Vincent Francigny under excavation (© V. Francigny / SEDAU). The Latest Explorations at Usli, Northern Province 66 Miroslav Bárta, Lenka Suková and Vladimír Brůna 1 Sudan & Nubia is a peer-reviewed journal SUDAN & NUBIA and Museums was informed shortly after and delegated two Sedeinga 2012: A Season of experts for a preliminary assessment, which confirmed that it was a large tomb, comprising two funerary chambers, and Unexpected Discoveries was completely empty. Six months after the discovery, we Claude Rilly and Vincent Francigny have noted that modern plunderers, likely workmen from the road construction, had in fact raked the soil of the hill Sedeinga is located on the west bank of the Nile, in Suda- to the bed-rock with a bulldozer in the hope of finding nese Nubia, 160km north of Dongola. The archaeological other tombs around the descendary. An excavator had even site, halfway between the modern villages of Qubbat Selim been brought to the top of the hill and its mechanical arm and Nilwa, is marked by the ruins of an Egyptian temple used to empty the sand from the bottom of the descendary, dedicated to Queen Tiyi, Amenhotep III’s Great Royal Wife, destroying almost the entire lintel, and leaving on the façade, and a huge Napatan-Meroitic cemetery extending west of the above the entrance, the mark of its claws. All this vandal- temple. The necropolis is divided into three Sectors (I, II, ism was however, in vain, as the grave seems to have been 4 III), separated by two wadis. Further west, a fourth cemetery completely isolated. (Sector West), located on a low hill, contains the pyramids of The tomb was dug on the east slope of a 5m high hill, the local elite, which were excavated in the 1960s. located precisely west of the axis of the temple of Tiyi. De- The 2012 campaign, the fourth under the new direction,1 spite recent destruction due to the road workmen, the top of took place from 23rd November to 22nd December. The main the hill does not seem to have supported any superstructure, purpose of the 4-year plan, presented in 2008-2009, was to whether of brick or of stone. It seems moreover that the understand the chronology of the burials and the development ground was not even been prepared for a pyramid, which of the Meroitic necropolis in the central part of Sector II, an might indicate that the grave was never finished. However, area where the team of Mrs Berger-El Naggar had unearthed the recent destruction on the top of the hill renders this last two perpendicular rows of Kushite pyramids in the 1990s. point uncertain. The descendary was very finely cut in the The previous campaigns had completed the clearing of the rock, as deep as 7m for the tomb entrance (Front Cover), and interior of this ‘L’-shaped ensemble,2 surrounding areas east was likely over 10m in length. Unfortunately, most of it is now and north, and as far as the limits of a first funerary cluster buried under the asphalt road, and only a few steps could be (Cluster 1). It soon revealed that the southern part of this unearthed during the excavation. The tomb consists of two group was actually a second funerary cluster (Cluster 2), whose chambers plus a niche that corresponds to the entrance of boundaries were closely intermingled with the first. Since the a third unfinished chamber. Modern robbers in search of a resumption of the excavations in 2009, 35 pyramids and about hidden ‘treasure room’ have partly destroyed the original lay- 50 associated tombs were discovered, and the northern limit out and dug a hole in the passageway to the third room. The (wadi) and eastern limit (sand quarry) of the funerary clusters first room is approximately 2.1m high, 5.4m long and 5.8m were cleared.3 The 2012 campaign focused on two spots: Sector II, con- tinuing the work of previous excavations, and a new area, which we named ‘Sector IV’, containing so far only one large tomb (IV T 1) and located 1.5km west of the necropolis. This second excavation was not planned, but was a salvage opera- tion. In June 2012, during the construction of the asphalt road that will soon connect Dongola to the Egyptian border on the left bank, bulldozers cut into a deep descendary on the east side of a hill. The National Corporation for Antiquities 1 The mission consisted of Claude Rilly (director and epigraphist), Vin- cent Francigny (field director), Agathe Chen (anthropologist), Vincent Colard (archaeologist), Hélène Delattre (archaeologist), Romain David Plate 1. First room of the tomb IV T 1, with pillars and door (ceramologist), Sandra Porez (draughtswoman) and Zerroug Bakri to the second room ( © V. Francigny / SEDAU). (NCAM inspector). We worked with 24 workmen placed under the supervision of our rais Abdelrahman Fadl, also guardian of the site. wide. In plan it is square with rounded corners and contains We extend our thanks to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the four massive pillars (Plate 1). The second chamber is smaller Unit UMR 8167 (University of Paris-Sorbonne, Institute of Egyptol- ogy) and to the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (3.3m long and 5m wide) but just as high as the first one.