Preparing for the afterlife in the provinces of Meroe Francigny Vincent To cite this version: Francigny Vincent. Preparing for the afterlife in the provinces of Meroe. Sudan & Nubia, Sudan Archaeological Research Society, British Museum, 2012, p. 52-59. halshs-02539145 HAL Id: halshs-02539145 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02539145 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. 16 2012 ASWAN 1st cataract Hisn al-Bab Egypt RED SEA W Afyeh a d i el- A lla qi Gebel Adda 2nd cataract W a d i G Amara West a b g Sedeinga a Sai b a 3rd cataract Tombos ABU HAMED e Sudan il N El-Ga’ab Basin H29 5th cataract KAREIMA 4th cataract Abu Sideir Wadi Abu Dom Napata Dangeil ED-DEBBA ATBARA ar Gala ow i H Wad Abu Ahmed Meroe A tb a r m a k a Qalaat Shanan li e d M d l- a 6th e adi q W u cataract M Jebel Sabaloka i d a W OMDURMAN KHARTOUM KASSALA B lu e Eritrea N i le MODERN TOWNS Ancient sites WAD MEDANI W h it e N i GEDAREF le SENNAR KOSTI N Ethiopia South Azaza 0 250 km Sudan S UDAN & NUBIA The Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin No. 16 2012 Contents The Archaeological, Ethnographical and Ecological 100 Project of El-Ga’ab Basin in Western Dongola The Kirwan Memorial Lecture Reach: A Report on the First Season 2009 Yahia Fadl Tahir Quarrying for the King - the Sources of Stone 2 A Survey in the Western Bayuda: The Wadi Abu Dom 109 for Kushite Royal Monuments Itinerary Project (W.A.D.I.) Abdelrahman Ali Mohamed Angelika Lohwasser Preliminary report on the exploration of 118 Jebel Sabaloka (West Bank), 2009-2012 Reports Lenka Suková and Ladislav Varadzin Qalaat Shanan: a large Neolithic site in Shendi town 8 Rosieres Dam Heightening Archaeological Salvage 132 Ahmed Hamid Nassr Hamd Project. The Excavations at Azaza Site ROSE 5, Preliminary Report Social Complexity Set in Stone? The A-Group 13 Mahmoud Suliman Bashir, Murtada Bushara Site of Afyeh Mohamed and Mohammed Saad Abdalah Alice Stevenson Aeolian sand landforms in parts of the Sudan and 140 The Kerma Ancien cemetery at site H29 in the 20 Nubia. Origins and impacts on past and present Northern Dongola Reach land use Derek A. Welsby R. Neil Munro, Mohammed Abdel Mahmoud Ibrahim, Merymose and others at Tombos 29 Hussien Abuzied and Babiker el-Hassan Vivian Davies Re-assessing the abandonment of Amara West: 37 Miscellaneous the impact of a changing Nile? Neal Spencer, Mark Macklin and Jamie Woodward Obituaries The round structures of Gala Abu Ahmed fortress 44 Svetlana Bersina (1932-2012) 155 in lower Wadi Howar, Sudan Eleonora Kormysheva Michael Flache Michel Baud (1963-2012) 155 Preparing for the afterlife in the provinces of Meroe 52 Vincent Rondot Vincent Francigny Tomas Hägg (1938-2011) 156 Excavations of the French Archaeological Mission 60 Adam Łajtar in Sedeinga, 2011 season Claude Rilly and Vincent Francigny Khidir Abdelkarim Ahmed (1947-2012) 159 Intisar Soghayroun Elzein Meroitic Building Techniques: a few observations 72 from Dangeil Jean Leclant (1920-2011) 160 Julie Anderson, Salah Mohamed Ahmed and Catherine Berger -el Naggar Tracey Sweek Andre Vila (1923-2011) 162 Gebel Adda Cemeteries 3 and 4 (1963-1964) 80 William Y. Adams Reinhard Huber and David N. Edwards The forts of Hisn al-Bab and the First Cataract 88 Frontier from the 5th to 12th centuries AD Front cover: Excavations in progress in the Kerma Ancien Alison L. Gascoigne and Pamela J. Rose cemetery at site H29 in the Northern Dongola Reach (photo D. A. Welsby). Fortresses of Sudan Project. Abu Sideir case study 96 Mariusz Drzewiecki and Tomasz Stępnik Sudan & Nubia is a peer-reviewed journal 1 them in the ground in a ring about their temples, Preparing for the afterlife in and they consider that the oath taken by them is the strongest possible.” the provinces of Meroe (Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, III) Vincent Francigny At the beginning of our era, the same myths remained in Strabo’s description of the Nile Valley. In 2008, at Lille University, I defended a thesis on Meroitic “Some tribes throw the dead into the river; others non-royal funerary practices. Hitherto unpublished, I pre- keep them in the house, enclosed in glass. Some sented an overview of this study at the British Museum bury them around the temples in coffins of baked during the SARS colloquium in 2012, with particular focus clay. They swear an oath by them, which is rever- on funerary architecture and the latest material coming from enced as more sacred than all others”. new Meroitic excavations started at Sai Island (Francigny (Strabo, Geography, XVII, 2, 3) 2009; 2010a; 2010b) and Sedeinga in 2009 (Rilly and Fran- cigny 2010; 2011). To re-discover the truth about Meroitic funerals, we had to await the first descriptions made by 19th century travellers Meroitic Funerary Archaeology on Meroitic architecture, later followed by excavations of the Ancient literature on Meroitic funerals is extremely scarce and first cemeteries in Lower Nubia (Randall-MacIver and Wool- litigious. One of the earliest accounts, during the 5th century ley 1909; Woolley and Randall-MacIver 1910; Griffith 1923; BC, is found in Herodotus’ interview of the two ‘icthyophagi’ Firth 1927; Emery and Kirwan 1935). Since then, hundreds spies sent by Cambyses to Meroe, while ‘the father of history’ of sites have been investigated and led to the development met them in Elephantine, the farthest southerly locality in of an understanding of Meroitic funerary practices relying the Nile Valley he reached. essentially on archaeology. But archaeological records are somewhat limited. First, because they are not always con- “Also, last of all, they were allowed to behold the sistent as they cover more than a century of research, with coffins of the Ethiopians, which are made of crys- constant evolution of methodology and technical approach. tal, after the following fashion: when the dead body Second, because Nubian archaeology relies on what have has been dried, either in the Egyptian, or in some been spared by time in a range of very different environ- other manner, they cover the whole with gypsum, ments, and does not cover equally the whole territory of the and adorn it with painting until it is as like the Kushite kingdom. living man as possible. Then they place the body While the practice of funerary archaeology has been in a crystal pillar, which has been hollowed out to very active during and after the UNESCO campaign in the receive it, crystal being dug up in great abundance northern part of the valley and in the region upstream of the in their country, and of a kind very easy to work. Fourth Cataract surveyed before the construction of a dam, You may see the corpse through the pillar within both areas contrast with the few cemeteries identified or ex- which it lies; and it neither gives out any unpleasant cavated around the capital Meroe, where natural environment odour, nor is it in any respect unseemly; yet there is and history of settlement appear to differ from the regions no part that is not as plainly visible as if the body further north. To the south of Khartoum, a few discoveries were bare. The next of kin keep the crystal pillar that are contemporaneous with the Meroitic period should in their houses for a full year from the time of the also be mentioned, even if they seem to be culturally different. death, and give it the first fruits continually, and However, geographical disparities in archaeological in- honour it with sacrifice. After the year is out they vestigations are not the only reasons why there are certain bear the pillar forth, and set it up near the town.” limits on the documentation at our disposal. The origin of (Herodotus, Histories, III) the population living in the kingdom, its genetic or cultural This description is partly reused around the 2nd century admixture, and the significance of regional traditions in a BC by Agatharchides of Cnidus, as later cited by Diodorus. large territory are among the most relevant questions that “Different also from those of other peoples are the have been long ignored or misunderstood that will always customs they observe with respect to their dead; interfere with archaeological hypotheses. As a result, the for some dispose of them by casting them into the Meroitic religious world remains on a large scale a Terra river, thinking this to be the best burial; others, after Incognita for researchers, with the need for more excavations pouring glass about the bodies, keep them in their and discoveries, especially outside of the Nile Valley. houses, since they feel that the countenances of the dead should not be unknown to their kinsmen Tomb architecture and that those who are united by ties of blood Graves and funerary monuments, both usually completely should not forget their near relations; and some disturbed by robbers and ruined by time, constitute the work- put them in coffins made of baked clay and bury ing base for archaeologists.