Meroitic civic architecture as a chronological reference in Sudan archaeology

Uwe Sievertsen

@Pharaoh

Published in 

Egypt

 · 15 Dec 2023

Up to the present day, the findings in the Royal City of Meroe represent the largest published corpus of upper class civic architecture in Kush. Thus, when it comes to discuss civic architecture as a chronological reference in Sudan Archaeology, the Royal City necessarily plays a central role. For quite a long time, however, the results of John Garstang’s excavations in the Royal City, 1909-1914, have been widely ignored by researchers. The reason was that because of methodological shortcomings in the field, the outcome of the Liverpool Expedition was in many ways problematic^[1].Only during the last years, things have changed and the Royal City again became a focus of scholarly attention. In 1997 Lázló Török has published an in-depth analysis of the early works in Meroe on the basis of extant source materials in museums and archives^[2]. His book now serves as an important supplement to the rather short preliminary reports in the Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology. In a research project carried out recently in co-operation with Friedrich Hinkel, the author also treated Garstang’s excavation in the Royal City in some detail ^[3]. Finally, since 2000/01 new field investigations on a larger scale have taken place in and around the Royal City ^[4]. They revive Peter Shinnie’s former joint Canadian-Sudanese Mission to Meroe ^[5]. Krzysztof Grzymski and Ali Osman Salih will report on the results in a separate conference paper.

It is obvious, that the new investigations of the Canadian-Sudanese Expedition, which incorporate the almost untouched southern part of the Royal City, will not only complement but also correct Garstang’s results in many respects. Still, a review of the enormous legacy of the Liverpool Expedition is useful, as it allows for the comprehension of the findings of the present-day works in the Royal City in a more profound way.

A main difficulty of the old excavations centres on the stratigraphy of the Royal City which was not studied by Garstang with sufficient accuracy^[6]. Today our main source for the stratigraphical sequence is a plan drawn by the expedition’s architect Walter S. George. It distinguishes the architecture of the northern Royal City according to building periods (Fig. 2). Further clues for the reconstruction of the stratigraphy are given by various chronological tables in the preliminary reports ^[7]. The tables are important especially for findings concerning the central Royal City which do not appear in George’s plan. Of course, we have to be very careful and scrupulous in using these source materials, as they are not free of contradictions and always bear the danger of circular reasoning ^[8].

George’s plan includes the architecture of all five building periods distinguished by the excavators in the area of the Royal City. In absolute terms these building periods, designated Early Meroitic, Middle Meroitic I and II and Late Meroitic I and II, cover a time span from about 650 BC to 350/450 AD. However, one has to take into account that the absolute dates given by Garstang vary considerably within the preliminary reports and are fraught with problems even bigger than in the case of the relative dates. Essentially, the absolute dates are based on a few inscriptions with royal names and a number of small finds, as well as architectural elements showing influences from Egypt, Greece or Rome. Often it is not clear whether these objects came from floor contexts or represent filling material^[9]. Indeed, the reliability of Garstang’s absolute dates is very limited ^[10].

In the course of the Royal City research project carried out in Berlin the stratigraphical and chronological assessments of the Liverpool Expedition have been replaced by a new interpretation of the results of the excavations based on an in-depth study of the sources as well as observations made on the spot. Instead of five, we now count nine building periods of the Royal City^[11]. Moreover, the findings have been transferred from George’s overview plan into a set of separate plans, each showing the architecture of only one building period.

In the following, I will describe some crucial aspects of the development of civic architecture in the Royal City according to the new sequence of building periods^[12]. I will, however, restrict myself to the later building periods of the Royal City, as the findings of the lower levels are still more fragmentary and puzzling than those of the upper ones. Whenever it is appropiate in view of our current issue, I will also refer to architectural parallels at other places in Kush.

Of special interest are the remains of Building Period IV. To a certain degree, they overlap with Garstang’s building period Middle Meroitic II^[13]. In Period IV an ambitious building programme lead to a new design of the Royal City. It is conceivable that the beginning of this far-reaching remodelling coincided with the shift of the Kushite royal cemetery from Napata to Meroe in the early 3^rd century BC, although we cannot prove this chronological concurrence with certainty.

Apparently particularly the northern part of the Royal City has taken a shape in Building Period IV that should characterise it for quite a long time. This may also testify to the technical quality of the buildings of that age. Characteristic of this is a rather sophisticated adobe architecture provided with outer wall coverings of burnt bricks and lime plaster as a protection against the weather^[14].

Several huge and thick-walled complexes in the north-eastern area of the Royal City labelled MER 995, MER 996 and MER 998 possibly can be viewed as magazines. Both MER 996 and MER 998 show central courtyards surrounded by pillared corridors and rows of narrow storage rooms^[15]. Concerning the rather incompletely documented building MER 995 mainly the barrel-vaulted lower floor ceilings are worth mentioning^[16].

With regard to form and function closely comparable to buildings MER 996 and MER 998 in the Royal City is the adobe complex FAR 15 in Faras West ^[17]. It is dated around the turn of the Christian era. Once again the layout of the building consists of a big courtyard surrounded by pillared corridors and clusters of magazine-like rooms. Because of the isolated location of FAR 15 on the fringes of the desert, it has been argued that the building probably not only had storage functions but also served as a caravanserai ^[18]. Structural parallels of a more general kind to the buildings in Meroe can also be observed at the Nubian site of Meinarti and at Sanam Abu Dom. In Meinarti, the Late Meroitic building XLIII dating around 200 AD represents a complex of magazine rooms arranged on both sides of a central corridor and furnished with vaulted substructures ^[19]. A similar arrangement of storage units along a central corridor can be observed at the huge so-called Treasury SAD 300 of Sanam Abu Dom ^[20]. Yet, the Treasury, which covers an enormous area of 500 x 100 cubits, dates back to the 25^th dynasty and the earlier Napatan period.

To my mind, the broad chronological range of these architectural parallels indicates that it is still too early to assign certain types of Meroitic magazine buildings to narrowly restricted time horizons solely on the basis of a few selected formal criteria. It seems more advisable to await further securely dated evidence from the many ongoing excavations in the Sudan.

Further buildings of Period IV are located to the west of the broad street starting from the northern gate MER 920. As oftentimes in Meroe, only the substructure of the big complex MER 990 has survived. Its chambers, as far as they actually have been used, must have been made accessible from the upper floor by means of hatches and ladders. In view of numerous parallels in Meroitic architecture, these chambers undoubtedly have served as storage areas. By contrast, the lost wings of the upper floor probably were intended for residential or administrative purposes. The rooms once were arranged around a big inner courtyard comparable to those of MER 996 and MER 998. However, in the case of MER 990, we lack any indications of pillared corridors.

On the whole, in the northern part of the Royal City the buildings of Period IV were adjusted quite strictly to the orientation of the Enclosure Wall MER 290. This clearly illustrates a preconceived way of urban planning. Of course one might surmise that hand in hand with the reorganisation of the northern part of the Royal City, a similar change should have taken place in its centre as well. Since the royal palaces were located in the centre, it evidently formed the focal point of the Royal City. However, up to the present, the stratigraphical correlation of the findings in the northern and central Royal City causes particularly serious problems^[21]. This is due to two facts. Firstly, the architectural findings in the central Royal City were still more incoherent than those in the northern area. Secondly, in the absence of any direct stratigraphical link, the excavators never tried to produce an overview plan illustrating the building periods of the central Royal City as was done by George’s plan of the northern city area. Because of that lack, the few architectural remains in the palatial areas of MER 294 and MER 295, which possibly belong to Building Period IV, hardly permit for any sound conclusion to be made concerning the structure and appearance of the central Royal City at that time ^[22].

In Building Period V many buildings of the preceding building period seem to have still been in use. Slowly, however, ‚organic growth‘ began to supersede the clear urban concept of Period IV. Thus, the eastern lane leading from gate MER 925 past MER 995 to the centre of the Royal City seems to have lost its formerly straight axis^[23]. Moreover, new building complexes come into being between the areas of MER 998 and MER 292. Other than in Building Period IV, the wall orientation of these buildings approaches the wall orientation of the buildings to the west of the broad street starting at gate MER 920.

In the central part of the Royal City, at about this time, the first architectural stage of the so-called Royal Baths can be discerned in areas MER 95, MER 194 and MER 195^[24]. A narrow lane leads from the northern city area to this vast complex, which represents one of the most impressive testimonies of an increasing Mediterranean influence on the art and architecture of the Meroitic Empire. Especially revealing are the sculptural decorations of the Royal Baths ^[25], presently being re-studied by Simone Wolf ^[26]. Irrespective of their exact function, which is still under debate ^[27], the Royal Baths can be viewed as a further architectural upgrading of the palace sector of the Royal City.

Several big building projects in the central part of the Royal City can be assigned to Building Period VI. They display the unbroken power of the Meroitic royal dynasty. Firstly, extensive reconstruction works in the area of the Royal Baths can be dated with great probability to this period. In the course of these architectural alterations the various components of the Royal Baths dating to Building Period V seem to have been turned into one homogeneous building complex provided with covered walks and a great portal in the north^[28].

Secondly, also the royal palaces in the areas MER 294 and MER 295 have been replaced in Period VI by new buildings with enlarged dimensions of about 100 x 100 cubits^[29]. More clearly than their rather incompletely preserved predecessors, they demonstrate that the royal palaces unambiguously figured as the focal points of the Royal City not only by means of their central location but also by their sheer size. Still, the inner organisation of the palaces remains obscure because Garstang observed mainly wall remnants of the respective ground floors, whereas the upper floors with their residential and official wings are nearly completely unrecorded. One can only assume that formerly great stairways leading to the upper stories of MER 294 and MER 295 lay in the centres of the north-eastern palace façades. The main entrances of the palaces then would have been directed towards the broad street starting at gate MER 920 and to the eastern road.

With their square ground-plans and huge size, the palaces MER 294 and MER 295 show close correspondence to the royal palaces of Amanishakheto (10-1 BC) in Wad Ban Naqa and Natakamani (1-20 AD)^[30] at Gebel Barkal^[31]. Palace WBN 100 displays adobe walls with brick-covered façades and measures about 120 x 120 cubits ^[32]. The assignment to Amanishakheto is based on a fragmentary inscription with a cartouche of the Queen. The 61 ground floor chambers of the complex predominantly comprise narrow magazine rooms, accessible either by entrances at ground level or from above. A long ramp in the south-east led to the upper storey. Of the actual palace rooms on the first floor, the excavators Jean Vercoutter and Thabit Hassan Thabit could recover only a few fallen capitals and column drums, as well as some fragments of stuccoed wall friezes coated with gold leaf.

The palace BAR 1500 at Gebel Barkal has been excavated by Italian archaeologists, first under the direction of Sergio Donadoni and afterwards of Alessandro Roccati^[33]. Because of the discovery of a stone inscription in Meroitic cursive, the building can be dated to the time of Natakamani. Just as with WBN 100, the size of the palace amounts to about 120 x 120 cubits and the walls are built in adobe technique with an exterior covering of burnt bricks. Since the results of the work of the Italian mission at Gebel Barkal will be the subject of two separate conference papers, I will not comment on the architecture of BAR 1500 in any detail here. Only the lavish wall decoration consisting of brick pilasters, coloured plaster and gold leaf coverings will be pointed out as it appears also in connection with WBN 100. Comparable decoration thus can probably be assumed for the great royal palaces of Meroe. Of special chronological significance are miscellaneous glazed pottery tiles from BAR 1500, as very close counterparts exist in the Royal Baths of Meroe ^[34].

The similar palaces of the Royal City in Wad ban Naqa and Gebel Barkal both date approximately to the beginning of the Christian Era and I think that, with a relatively high degree of probability, Building Period VI can also be assigned to that epoch, which has also witnessed a lot of royal building activities in other parts of Kush^[35]. The tiles found in the Royal Baths may further corroborate the proposed date at the end of the 1^st century BC and the beginning of the 1^st century AD.

With MER 950 we again observe in Building Period VII the construction of a building complex of special importance. For the new building, the wall stumps of a predecessor have been reused. A great staircase at the south-eastern front leads up to the completely destroyed upper storey. The main access to MER 950, as well as to the adjacent courtyard MER 959, has been emphasised against the surrounding buildings by an ‚Avenue of approach‘ starting at the northern gate MER 920. The round brick enclosures of the avenue once probably contained trees or bushes^[36].

A very rough clue for the date of MER 950 and Period VII might be given by coins from vestibule MER 955 belonging to the time of the Roman emperor Claudius (41-54 AD)^[37]. The prominent location of MER 950 at the end of an imposing alley, the large entrance stairway of the building and a lavish decoration of the courtyard MER 959 with green faїences certainly speak in favour of an interpretation of MER 950 as a royal palace. At the same time, the size of MER 950 amounting to only 38 x 28,5 m already ranks noticeably behind the size of the palaces MER 294 and MER 295 of Building Period VI.

As for the almost total blockade of the broad street leading to the centre of the Royal City by the courtyard MER 959, that could indeed point to the slowly declining importance at the time when MER 950 was built of the palatial sector with complexes MER 294 and MER 295. This goes with the fact, that in the central part of the Royal City at present no greater building activity can be pointed out for the time of Building Period VII^[38]. Contrary to that, in the northern area of the Royal City besides MER 950, several smaller courtyard buildings in plain adobe technique have also been constructed, among them the adjoining houses A (MER 916) and B (MER 98/912). Both houses are of moderate size and show walls of ordinary strength. Because of their structural simplicity and the lack of any embellishment it is improbable that these houses once served as the residences of high-ranking members of the royal family. Rather the former occupants should be searched among the members of a non-royal class of Meroitic officials.

As far as we can tell, the appearance of these unpretentious residential buildings constitutes a new element in the urban scenery of the Royal City. So it seems that important changes in the character of the city, which evidently call for an explanation, have occurred during Period VII^[39] . One could imagine that the administrative elites of the Meroitic Empire, who demonstrably gained more and more influence in the later days of Meroitic history, had begun to slowly drive the royal family out of the Royal City. In any case, we may assume that these people now could establish themselves in the Royal City in a more powerful way than before.

In Building Period VIII, this development, in the course of which the Royal City seems to have lost its older main function as a residence of Meroitic royalty, seems to have continued. Finally, in Building Period IX, the character of the architecture changes radically. Discernibly, the area of the Royal City becomes an ordinary component of the residential quarters of Meroe. The Enclosure Wall MER 290 falls into disuse and its stone materials have been partly removed. Apart from a few exceptions, the architecture of this phase consists of flimsy residential buildings. In several cases building materials from older constructions have been reused^[40]. A general building plan does not exist anymore and the old network of streets and lanes disappears completely. Some of the newly built complexes seem to have been provided with spacious pens and look almost rural. Perhaps they already date to a period when urban life in Meroe had largely come to an end. However, in their majority the houses of Building Period IX should probably belong to the Meroitic and not to the Post-Meroitic Period ^[41].

In conclusion, we have to say regarding the relative and especially the absolute chronology of the civic architecture in the Royal City, that many problems still remain unsolved. Moreover, as numerous architectural findings have to be classified as vague not only in their chronological assignment, but also in their structural character, it is also difficult to find firm architectural parallels at other sites in the Sudan. Because of these problems, one has to concede, that at present, the civic architecture makes only limited contributions to the clarification of Meroitic chronology.

Against this background, it goes without saying that our reinterpretation of the stratigraphy of the Royal City can also by no means represent a final solution to the difficulties connected with Garstang’s excavations. To a certain degree, the newly established sequence of building periods can even be viewed as a series of well-founded assumptions and hypotheses destined to be tested by future fieldwork. I actually think that the evaluation of Garstang’s work in the Royal City of Meroe today has reached a stage that makes new excavations indispensable. The resumption of field research in the city area of Meroe under the direction of Krzysztof Grzymski and Ali Osman Salih is therefore very welcome. In the long run, only these new excavations can offer definite clarity concerning the stratigraphy and dating of the architectural contexts. Badly needed is first of all a framework of absolute levels. If possible, it would be likewise very helpful to establish a direct stratigraphical connection between the new soundings and the old excavations of Garstang. Besides, quite a few of the puzzling ground-plans produced by the early excavators might also become more intelligible in the course of the re-launched fieldwork.

With regard to the ongoing work in Meroe, but also at other archaeological sites such as Gebel Barkal, Naqa^[42] and Hamadab ^[43], I am optimistic that the current quite modest contribution of civic architecture to the study of the chronology of the Meroitic Empire will increase considerably in the near future. Hopefully these contributions will go beyond the treatment of local sequences such as Meroe’s, which are at the moment rather involuntarily the focus of attention. It will then be possible to discuss also supra-regional developments in Meroitic civic architecture in much more detail than is feasible now.

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• Zach, M. H., 2001 , Gedanken zur kdke Amanitore, in: C.-B. Arnst – I. Hafemann – A. Lohwasser (eds.), Begegnungen. Antike Kulturen im Niltal. Festgabe für Erika Endesfelder, Karl-Heinz Priese, Walter Friedrich Reineke, Steffen Wenig von Schülern und Mitarbeitern, Leipzig, 509-520.

Notes

1. Cf. Garstang 1910, 1911/12, 1912/13, 1914-16; Sayce 1911/12; Garstang – George 1913/14; Phythian-Adams 1914-16.
2. Török 1997.
3. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002; Sievertsen 2003.
4. Grzymski – Anderson 2001, 22 ff.; Grzymski 2003; Grzymski - Salih 2004.
5. Shinnie – Bradley 1980; Shinnie – Anderson 2004.
6. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 7-13, 51 f.
7. Cf. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 143 f. for a synopsis of these tables.
8. Cf. in this connection also the rather pessimistic view of the preconditions for a reconstruction of the stratigraphy of the Royal City expressed by Török 1997, 4-9, 15.
9. Cf. also Edwards 1999, 98.
10. As for the pottery assemblages associated with the architecture of the Royal City and their chronological relevance cf. for the moment Török 1997, 281-287 and Edwards 1999, 98 f.
11. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 8-31, fig. IX.19-36.
12. In detail cf. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 33-52.
13. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, fig. IX.13.
14. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 55-58.
15. Garstang – George 1913/14, 21 and Török 1997, 37, 219, 224, 228 assume an influence on the ground-plans of these buildings by Hellenistic architecture.
16. Garstang – George 1913/14, 12, pl. III.2.
17. Griffith 1926, 21-24, pl. XIII; Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 75, fig. IX.63.
18. Cf. Trigger 1965, 129 f.
19. Adams 2000, 2-5, 9, 30, 33, 36, 40, 64, fig. 3 top left, 7, 8, tab. 1, 4, pl. 4.
20. Griffith 1922, 75 f., 115-124, pl. L; Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 74 f., fig. IX.71.
21. Cf. in this connection also Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 24 f. with n. 147.
22. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, fig. IX.26.
23. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, fig. IX.27.
24. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 79-85, fig. IX.40.
25. Török 1997, 77-91, pl. 16 ff.
26. S. Wolf 2000, 555 f.; eadem 2001, 620 f.
27. Cf. Török 1997, 66-77; Edwards 1999, 96.
28. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 85-88, fig. IX.41.
29. Cf. now also Grzymski 2003, 51-53, pl. XXIII.
30. The rendering of the regnal years follows Welsby 1996, 207-209, but cf. also Török 1997, 25 with n. 99, 120.
31. For the points of comparison cf. in detail Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 67-71, fig. IX.67-70, IX.75. Further formal parallels possibly can be drawn to various monumental building complexes in Dokki Gel (Kerma) and Naqa, but for these we still have to await more precise information on their architectural contexts. Cf. for the time being Bonnet – Salah 1999, 253 f., fig. 2, pl. 1, 4 and Knudstad – Frey 1998, 193, fig. 1 (Buildings 1100 and 3600).
32. Vercoutter 1962, 263 ff., fig. 8.
33. Donadoni 1994, 54-59; Roccati 1997, 12-18; Fitzenreiter – Seiler – Gerullat 1999, 129, text fig. 17; Vincentelli 2001, 71-75, fig. 1.
34. Cf. Donadoni 1994, 56 f., Török 1997, 58 f., 75 f., 84 f., fig. 70, pl. 28, 30, 32, 33, 51, pointing also to evidence from other areas of the Royal City, and Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 68.
35. Cf. Török 1997a, 461 f. and 2002, 226 f.; Zach 2001, 509-511.
36. Here one may compare the pits in court 117 of the Great Enclosure at Musawwarat es-Sufra. Cf. Wenig – Wolf 1998, 25-27, fig. 2, plan 2, 3 and 1998a, 41-43, fig. 3, 4.
37. Cf. Phythian-Adams 1914/16, 13; Török 1997, 213.
38. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, fig. IX.32.
39. A few fragmentary walls possibly belonging to predecessors of the courtyard houses of Period VII indicate that the earliest evidence for the development in question may even date already to Building Period VI. Cf. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 44, fig. IX.29.
40. Hinkel – Sievertsen 2002, 64.
41. For the latest archaeological contexts observed so far in Meroe and their relevance to the ‚end of Meroe‘ problem cf. Shinnie – Bradley 1980, 159 f.; Bradley 1984, 210 f.; Török 1997, 39 f.; idem 1997a, 480-482; idem 1999, 133 ff.; Welsby 2002, 16, 28, 113; Grzymski 2003, 20, 33-43; Shinnie – Anderson 2004, 110, 128-131.
42. Wildung 1997/98, 111, 116 f.; Weferling 1998, 191 f., fig. 1; Knudstad – Frey 1998, 193-202, fig. 1, 2; Wildung 1999, 74-79, fig. 80; Kroeper – Wildung 2002, 135, 139 f., fig. 3; Grimal – Adly 2004, 145.
43. P. Wolf 2002, 92, 95-102; idem 2002a, 105-110, fig. 1; Grimal – Adly 2004, 138 f.