Map 3. The Dongola-Napata Reach. CHAPTER THREE

THE INVENTION OF TRADITION IN THE DONGOLA-NAPATA REACH

III.1. Gebel Barkal and Napata: Between Ritual and Governance

Gebel Barkal’s preeminence as the cultic center of the Double Kingdom’s Kushite half remains a point of justified consensus in Nubian Studies. It was there that the most extensive complex of Kushite temples was constructed and renovated across the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.1 It was there as well that Pi(ankh)y’s Sandstone Stela and Great Triumphal Stela presented the earliest surviving articulations of the Double Kingdom as a political form.2 Immediately downstream lay the dynastic cemetery at el-Kurru, and, at the same remove upstream on the opposite bank, its eventual replacement at Nuri.3 Across the river from Gebel Barkal, the locale of Taqat would later be described by Nastasen as “the garden from which Alara sprouted”—possibly revealing, in oblique fashion, the hometown of the dynasty’s progenitor.4 Whatever the origin(s) and residence(s) of the Kushite kings, it is clear that the region enclosed by Gebel Barkal, el-Kurru, Nuri, and Taqat was under their authority well before the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty’s expansion into Egypt. It should further stand to reason, then, that the strategies used to govern that area would have been central to the political experience of the Kushite dynasty—and thus, a formative element in their subsequent political outlook. Despite the apparent promise of such a deduction, the evidence currently available from this region imposes considerable limitations upon historical research, as shown most clearly in the distinction between Gebel Barkal and Napata. Inscriptions from the many temples at the foot of Gebel Barkal make frequent reference to the toponym of Npt, including the claim inherent in Pi(ankh)y’s titulary that he was crowned there: K¡-nḫt ḪꜤ-m-Npt, “Strong Bull, Appearing in Napata.”5 Given the unrivaled centrality of Gebel Barkal within the sacred landscape of Kush, such a claim should refer to his coronation in the Great Temple of Amun (B 500) at Gebel Barkal, thereby implying that Napata lay somewhere in the shadow (perhaps even literally) of the mountain. However, in the present state of our knowledge, Napata is only a shadow: archaeological terra incognita. Even if one of the town walls described in the preceding chapter at Gebel Barkal and el-Kurru does represent the bulwark of ancient Napata, the fact remains that the settlements enclosed by those walls have only just begun to be excavated in recent years.6 The cemetery at Sanam which may have served the populace of Napata (or that of Taqat?7) would seem to offer evidence of more immediate use, for it has recently been published in full and analyzed in exemplary detail by Lohwasser.8 Through study of Griffith’s unpublished records, Lohwasser has identi- fied at Sanam a “middle-class cemetery” of urbanites with considerable internal hierarchy, ranging from

1 PM VII, 208ff., 212, 215ff., 220ff.; Dunham, Barkal Temples, 10-12, 41-61, 77-81, plans I, III-V; Kendall, Gebel Barkal Epigraphic Survey; id., “Monument of Taharqa on Gebel Barkal.” See also in the broader Dongola region Pi(ankh)y’s “Letti obelisk”: Khartoum SNM 00462 in Hinkel and Mohamed, Catalogue of the Objects in the Sudan National Museum, 25. 2 Khartoum SNM 1851 in Reisner, “Inscribed Monuments from Gebel Barkal (Part 1),” Taf. V; Cairo JE 48862, 47086-47089 in Grimal, La stèle triomphale de Pi(cankh)y, pls. I-IV. For the view that the Sandstone Stela refers to Pi(ankh)y’s rule in Egypt, see most recently Török, “From chiefdom to ‘segmentary state,’” 162. 3 Dunham, El Kurru; id., Nuri. 4 See Berlin ÄMP 2268, ll. 8-12, in Schäfer, Die aethiopische Königsinschrift des Berliner Museums, Taf. II; and collation by Peust, Das Napatanische, 34-35 §3.3; cf. discussion in Ch. II.2.2 nn. 105, 107 above. 5 Khartoum SNM 1851, l. 25, in Reisner, “Inscribed Monuments from Gebel Barkal (Part 1),” 90, Taf. V. 6 Kendall, “Origin of the Napatan State,” 48-49, 114 fig. 17; id., “Napatan Temples.” As noted in Ch. II.2.2 n. 90 above, excava­ tions were re-opened in the settlement areas of el-Kurru during the early months of 2013 by the University of Michigan Nubian Expedition under the direction of Geoff Emberling. 7 For the proposition that Taqat was Sanam Abu Dom, see Priese, “Napatan Period,” 77, and Ch. II.2.2 n. 105 above. 8 Lohwasser, Aspekte der napatanischen Gesellschaft; and more briefly ead., Kushite Cemetery of Sanam. For the initial but cur­ sory publication by Griffith, see his “Oxford Excavations in Nubia XVIII-XXV.” See also the cemetery of Hillat el-Arab in Vincentelli, Hillat El-Arab.