ADDENDUM A LA SESSION III POST- MEROITIC HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Laszló Török

ÉTUDES NUBIENNES Conférence de Genève: Actes du VII^eCongrès international d'études nubiennes 3-8 septembre 1990, Vol. I: 141-143.

 

 

 

 

The post-Meroitic period was discussed at this Conference in three main papers. Mr Lenoble presented us with the results of his recent excava­tions in the Shendi region; Dr Welsby gave a short, but penetrating survey of the history and archaeo­logy of the period as an introduction to his discus­sion of the Christian period, and Professor Desanges gave a critical survey of historical researches in the last thirty years. All of them have a distinct and clear picture of the post-Meroitic period and it is understandable at the present stand of archaeological research that the three pictures have very few in common. The discoveries of Patrice Lenoble demonstrate that our view of political and cultural processes in the South is wrong and must be radically altered. Nevertheless, certain facts remain true, and in the following I shall briefly dis­cuss the data which seem to be pillars upon which further research may rest but which I missed in the papers of my colleagues.

 

The causes of the decline of the Meroitic kingdom are unknown. We have nevertheless informa­tion about three factors which contributed in all probability in a serious manner to it. The first is the crisis of the Roman Empire in the 3rd to 5th centuries. The second factor was closely connected with the first. This is the situation at the Egyptian - Meroitic border. In this area, and through this area in Lower Nubia, too, developments are determined after 298 A.D. - the withdrawal of the Egyptian frontier to Aswan - by the Blemmyan threat which both Egypt and Meroe try to neutralize through alliances with smaller or larger barbarian tribal units. The third factor is the situation in the south. Axumite inscriptions found at Adulis and Meroe City attest that in the course of the 3rd and 4th c. A.D. first the fringes and then the centre of the Meroitic kingdom were attacked by Axum. The well-known inscriptions of King Ezana of Axum indicate that in the period of his campaign - which reached the north-western part of the Butana - the king of Meroe ruled over a small territory around Meroe City, while large parts of the Butana and the Bayuda were under the supremacy of a people called Noba. As Ezana's famous Christian inscription was written in the last hours of the Meroitic kingdom, the dating of Ezana's campaign is rather important. It is suggested by circumstantial evidence that the date in question is around 360. A.D. This dating is supported by independent archaeological evidence, which I have discussed in great detail in a paper pub­lished in 1974 and in my Late Antique Nubia pub­lished in 1988. The Axumite activity may have been the principal cause of the end of the Meroitic king­dom, but it seems also probable that there were internal causes, too. On the basis of the Ezana inscription research traditionally believes that the fall of Meroe was caused by the Noba. Indeed, remarks of Eratosthenes and Pliny indicate that in the course of the period between the 3rd c. B.C. and the 1st c. A.D. Nubian-speaking tribes were moving from western direction towards the centre of the kingdom. It may be imagined that by the 1st-2nd c. A.D. Noba groups were settled within the borders of the kingdom. The presence of these groups may have generated social and cultural processes which led in a manner which we know well from other, contemporary, cases to the disintegration of the Meroitic kingdom. The final result may have been, similarly to countless cases in the western part of the Roman Empire, that a certain political continuity was secured by intermarriages between the old dynasty and the chiefs of the newly settled tribes.

 

The situation in the South will, however, be clar­ified only on the basis of Patrice Lenoble's tumuli and other excavations in the future. In the North we find that in the 370s the activity of the Blemmyans becomes very vivid in the Egyptian-Meroitic front­ier area which indicates a major political change in Lower Nubia, viz., the end of the Meroitic kingdom. The new political system is indicated by the burials at Qustul, which start around 380 A.D. The Qustul burials can be dated to the period between 380 and 420 A.D. and have some features which are highly relevant from the point of view of political history. Firstly, the richest and largest Qustul graves are doubtless burials of the highest­ranking persons in Lower Nubia, yet they are not royal burials. Secondly, the burials display a number of Meroitic features, but could by no means be identi­fied as Meroitic. On the basis of the mortuary religion as it may be reconstructed from these graves I was tempted to believe that Meroitic cults and priests did not exist any more in this period and, furthermore, the persons buried in the Qustul graves were not Meroites. The third important feature of the Qustul graves is that in their inventories abound finds which indicate a foederate relationship between Rome and their owners.

 

On the basis of textual sources, first of all of a remark made by Epiphanius of Salamis, the Blem­myan conquest of the northern half of Lower Nubia, i.e., of the Land of the Twelve Schoenoi, can be dated to around 395 A.D. The presence of the Blemmyes in the Dodekaschoinus is attested by a number of well­known sources. It ended in the year 452 A.D. as a result of Egyptian military and diplomatic efforts which were connected to the activity of the Lower Nubian kings buried at Ballana. The sources relating these events - including the Phonen letter and the Silko inscription are, thanks to their re­interpretation by Professor Hagg, fairly unambiguous. There is, however, one question which seems to escape the attention of the writers on post-Meroitic history. This is the problem of the genesis of the political units between the Butana and the Egyptian frontier. I have stressed in the foregoing that the Qustul cemetery was not a royal cemetery. Important graves at Gemai, Firka, and Kosha and datable to the late 4th c. and the first half of the 5th c. A.D. belong to the same social and cultural complex as the Qustul and Ballana burials and indicate that the Valley between the southern limit of the Blemmyan occupation and the Third Cataract belonged to the same homogeneous political unit. Now it seems highly probable that, despite cultural differences, also the entire area south of the Third Cataract belonged still to the same unit. In other words, the end of the Meroitic dynasty did not mean the territorial disintegration of the kingdom. The first sign of a political-territorial disintegration is the transfer of the cemetery of the Lower Nubian «deputies» to Ballana. At Ballana actual rulers will be buried from about 430 onwards, and some fea­tures of their graves deserve again special attention. Firstly, one of their royal symbols is an ancient Meroitic-type crown, yet the crowns show misunder­stood details of the models and were made by Egyptian craftsmen who were versed only in the manufacture of low-quality metal objetcs. Secondly, though they emphasized a legitimacy that went back politically to the Meroitic rulers in the South, they weren't themselves Meroites and under their reign all remains of Meroitic ideology and institutions seem to have disappeared.

 

It would thus seem that around 420-430 A.D. a kingdom emerged between the Third Cataract and the southern limit of the Blemmyan-occupied Dodekaschoinos. It is indicated by several sources that this new kingdom of Nobatia alternately sought to find a modus vivendi with the Blemmyans and tried to expel them from the Valley. We have both textual and archaeological data attesting joint Nubian-Blemmyan raids in Upper Egypt, and we also know that after the middle of the 5th c., when the Blemmyes were finally expelled, Egypt nevertheless continued to try to secure peace in the border area by concluding shorter- or longer-living alliances both with the Nobadian kingdom and with Blemmyan groups. I refer here only to the Tantani letters which refer to Nubian-Egyptian relations around the middle of the 5th c. A.D., and to the Gebelen dossier which contains the documents of a Blemmyan foederate group settled in the early 6th c. A.D. in Egyptian territory, close to the Nubian border. But events and cultural developments of this period will be discussed in more detail in the papers of Professors Christides and Desanges. Let me con­clude this survey with a remark on the ethnic aspect. The explanation of the genesis of the post-Meroitic cultures in terms of Ethnic Prehistory with major eth­nic changes was convincingly refuted by Adams and Trigger. The extent of ethnic movements was inves­tigated in a series of illuminating studies by Sir Laur­ence Kirwan and now the continuity of ethnic historv from Meroitic to the post-Meroitic is strongly supported by the discoveries and researches of Patrice Lenoble. We may not discard, however, completely the textual and archaeological evidence which speaks for certain ethnic movements and changes during the Late Meroitic and the Post-Meroitic periods both in the South and the North. Although it would be cer­tainly mistaken to interpret the complete disappearance of Meroitic social structure, institutions, and the basic changes in religion and cults as a consequence of a population change, we may nevertheless be mistaken when we disregard the fact that the new societv and the new cultural complex has an obviously tribal character. This, together with the fact that the Meroitic kingdom was the homeland from the very beginnings of different ethnicities - Nubian-speakers and Meroitic-speakers -, and with the data referring to the influx of Nubian-speakers during the last centuries of Meroe to the territory of the Meroitic­speakers indicates rather clearly that the Meroitic­post-Meroitic transition was also connected to ethnic movements and to an ethnic change in the ruling class.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

 

For the historical and archaeological sources of the discussed see:

L. TÖRÖK, Der meroitische Staat 1. Untersuchungen und Urkunden zur Geschichte des Sudan im Altertum, Berlin, 1986; id., Late Antique Nubia. History and Archaeology of the Sou­thern Neighbour of Egypt in the 4th-6th c. A.D., Budapest, 1988.

J. DESANGES, Les relations de l'Empire romain avec l Afrique nilotique et erythreenne, d’Auguste a Probus, in: Aufstieg und Nie­dergang der romischen Welt, II, 10.1 (W. Haase ed.), Berlin-New York, 1988, pp. 3-43.

R.T. UPDEGRAFF, The Blemmyes I: The Rise of the Blemmyes and the Roman Withdrawal from Nubia under Diocletian, in: ibid., pp. 44-97.

L. TÖRÖK, Additional Remarks, in: ibid., pp. 97-106; id.: Geschichte Meroes. Ein Beitrag fiber die Quellenlage und den Forschungsstand, in: ibid., pp. 107-341.

 

Translated into Arabic by Osama Elnur

 

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