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<< Text Pages >> Abu Erteila - Ancient Temple in Sudan

Submitted by bat400 on Friday, 21 February 2014  Page Views: 3232

Multi-periodSite Name: Abu Erteila
Country: Sudan
NOTE: This site is 243.493 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Ancient Temple
Nearest Town: Khartoum  Nearest Village: Kabushiya
Latitude: 16.860000N  Longitude: 33.750000E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 1 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 3

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Ancient Temple in Republic of the Sudan.
All that remains of this Meroitic Period (fourth century BC) temple complex are are six foot high koms (mounds.) Long buried in the sediments of the Wadi el-Hawad, ground-penetrating radar revealed the walls of a small temple.

Finds have included decorative architechural fragments, painted ceramics, and livestock bones in a large kitchen.

Licensed by the Sudanese National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums, an international team has been excavating the mounds. In addition to the finds from the Meroitic, there are also intrusive Christain 4th C CE burials among many of the mounds.

Note: Team of Archaeologists Discover Lost 4th C BCE Temple in Sudan
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Rhode Island Prof; Team of Archaeologists Discover Lost Temple in Sudan by bat400 on Friday, 21 February 2014
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Each year, for the past four years, Lobban and two other archaeologists, Eleonora Kormysheva, from the Oriental Institute in Moscow, and Eugenio Fantusati, from the University of Rome, have taken this journey to Abu Erteila to unearth a Sudanese (Nubian) temple.

Lobban, professor emeritus of anthropology at Rhode Island College and one of only half a dozen experts in the world on Sudan history, ethnography, linguistics and archaeology, heard there might be promising “koms” (Arabic for “mounds”) of archaeological interest in Abu Erteila in the eastern Butana desert. He left for Sudan in 2008.

The koms, he said, were about six feet high. Broken pottery that dated back to the Meroitic Period (fourth century BC) and to the early Christian era (fourth century AD) was found scattered about the koms. Ground-penetrating radar detected underground features that proved to be walls. They did an analysis of the orientation of the walls that were angled toward the sun, and realized beneath the surface was a solar temple. “Temples were built for royalty,” Lobban said. “Based on this temple’s size, it appears that the temple belonged to a local prince. Larger temples were built for the ruling king and queen. This temple was smaller,” and would have been used, as one would a local church.

In January 2009 the international team began their dig. Lobban would do much of the actual excavation, while archaeology students from Italy, Russia and America would also come to help. “Based on the radar reading, we knew we would not find the temple intact,” said Lobban. “We knew most of the original walls had been dismantled for reasons we don’t know.” However, they did unearth portions of the walls that enclosed eight rooms. In each room he found diverse painted pottery. He also found six cooking pots sitting on a pile of charcoal. “We determined that the northeast side of the temple had been used for the mass production of food. When the local people came to the temple on a daily or weekly basis to worship they were also given food.”

Grinders and the bones of butchered animals, such as sheep, goats, camels and cattle, were found where they had been left next to the kitchen. As the excavation continued, Lobban found adult skeletons identified as Sudanese. The koms had been used as a burial site.

“You see, most of the walls of the temple had been broken down and the temple buried six feet high. The people may have remembered that this was once a sacred place – a Howsh al-Kufar (the abode of nonbelievers) – and decided to bury their dead there on the kom.”
Based on carbon dating, the team discovered that the bodies dated back to early Christian times – the ninth or 10th century – when the Meroitic Empire had ended and the Christian era had begun, brought to the Sudan from Ethiopia and Egypt.

In 2011 the team opened a new 15 x 15 foot square on a kom, and there they had their most dramatic find to date. They unearthed columns from the temple inscribed with hieroglyphic writing and carved with images of deities, such as the image of the Nile god Hapy.

Other columns, he said, were carved with “the protective combination of ‘nekhbet’ (vulture) and ‘wedjat’ (cobra),” which Lobban said is unique to Nile valley royalty.
Among legible inscriptions, he found reference to “neb-tawi,” meaning “Lord of Two Lands,” a title reserved exclusively for royalty and nobility. “This title meant that they still considered themselves not only kings of Meroe, but of all Egypt,” he said.

The team also found a lintel used to decorate the top of a window or an entryway. It was made of sandstone and carved with a solar disc and a wing. The lintel was virtually identical to those found in other Meroitic solar temples dedicated to the sun god Amun. Based on all of these findings, his team was able to confirm, at last, that they were at the site of an ancient Meroitic temple that had not been otherwise k

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