RECENT PROGRESS IN THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE KINGDOM OF MEROE

Summary of the Discussion

László Török

One of the five main topics discussed in 1971 at the First Meroitic Conference was historical chronology. Summarizing the results of the discussion, Professor Hintze paid the following tribute to Reisner’s chronology of the royal burials ^[1]: Even if almost all the dates given by Reisner in his absolute chronology will have to be modified, by years or even decades, as research in this field progresses, his main guiding lines and the main framework elaborated by him will, in principle, endure. Reisner’s optimism with regard to his “chronological outline” still proves fully justified today.

Indeed, at the same conference Professor Hintze himself modified a number of the fixed chronological points suggested by Reisner, and Steffen Wenig ^[2] eliminated Reisner’s First and Second Meroitic Collateral Dynasties of Napata, invalidating thus one of his most significant historical constructions. Both Hintze and Wenig continued, however, to use the speculative regnal years which Reisner assigned to every single Nubian ruler who is known by name and burial, in spite of the fact that, except for the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty kings, we have no evidence whatsoever for regnal dates. What we have in terms of absolute chronology is a handful of fairly broad synchronisms. The first to argue against the use of speculative regnal years was Inge Hofmann, who revised the Meroitic half of Reisner’s chronology in her 1978 book published under the title “Beiträge zur meroitischen Chronologie” ^[3]. As a result of Hofmann’s powerful arguments, several students of Nubian history realized that Reisner’s year dates are a-historical and thus completely untenable. Speculative regnal dates continue nevertheless to appear in scholarly works, and, as a regrettable consequence, they are quoted bona fide by wide circles of ancient historians.

Meroitic Chronology was once again among the topics at the fourth Meroitic conference in 1980. This time the discussion started from a main paper on the archaeological evidence from the excavations conducted by Peter Shinnie and Rebecca Bradley at Meroe City. In her main paper Bradley also has touched upon some of the historical theories put forward in connection with Reisner’s cemetery- and ruler chronology, such as the theory of the correlated change of royal cemetery and royal capital. According to Bradley ^[4], the question has continued to be when and why shifts of capital occurred, not whether they occurred... the debate has raged on without the nature, function, or functional components of the capital in question ever having been defined.

Bradley’s criticism of the clichés distilled from Reisner’s historical outline had a mixed reception: many participants of the conference found it sacrilegous. Other participants spoke deliberately in plural about the “capitals of the kingdom” ^[5]. Fortified by Bradley’s results at Meroe City, in the course of the next decades I made several attempts at placing the problem of the capitals in the context of the available textual and archaeological evidence, in order to form an idea of the structure of the Meroitic state. Though it would seem that the evidence is convincing for many of my colleagues, several students of Nubian history maintain nevertheless the supposition that the “capital” or the “centre” of the kingdom was “transferred” from Napata to Meroe City in the early 6th century BC as a consequence of Psamtik II’s campaign, or some time in the early Ptolemaic age as a consequence of Ptolemy II’s Nubian campaign around 274 BC ^[6].

With Rebecca Bradley’s paper, and with a series of papers on Meroitic architecture, the 1980 conference shifted the attention from the revision of Reisner’s royal chronology to other chronologies. At the next conference organised in 1984 in Rome, a number of chronological studies was presented in the special context of the connections between Kush and the external world. Particular attention was paid to object chronologies. After Inge Hofmann’s 1978 list of imported glass and metal vessels from Meroitic royal burials ^[7], a more comprehensive catalogue of datable import objects was presented in one of the conference’s main papers. The catalogue demonstrated the possibilities inherent in the study of the Egyptian and Mediterranean context of Meroitic material culture. In the wake of Steffen Wenig’s analyses of Meroitic vase painting, published in the late 1970s ^[8], the 1980s also witnessed the unfolding study of the style and chronology of Meroitic decorated pottery. The publication of Professor Adams’ monumental handbook of Nubian pottery in 1986 provided a typological basis for all future ceramicological studies. At the same time, the publication of 2nd and 1st century BC assemblages from Amir Abdallah ^[9], Qustul and Ballana ^[10] and other sites, and the revision of the native and imported finds from the cemeteries of Faras and Karanog ^[11] presented a new perspective of the genesis of Meroitic fine wares. The suggestions made in the 1980s about the origins and chronology of Meroitic vase painting were confirmed by subsequent archaeological work ^[12] and became part of a new picture of Lower Nubia’s history. With the knowledge of the material from Garstang’s excavations at Meroe City ^[13], I was pleased to learn about the Meroitic pottery workshop discovered at Musawwarat ^[14] and then to read David Edwards’ words ^[15]: ...if the “classic” Lower Nubian assemblages differ markedly from material found in the    Meroe region, it is also becoming evident that earlier Lower Nubian assemblages of the   late first millennium BC have much more in common with types found further south, and indeed some may be imported from the south.

I was the more pleased that this sentence appeared in a seriation study which fully supported the chronology of Meroitic vase painting as it was suggested by Bruce Williams and myself—even if David Edwards would not admit it.

To-day, our round table follows the path pointed out by the chronological papers of the conferences in 1980 and 1984. Royal chronology and the chronology of the royal burials is completely omitted. Historical chronology appeared only in the context of the political transformation of the late Meroitic state in the paper of Professor Zach. Professor Zach suggested a new interpetation of the date concerning Meroe’s “end”. While Meroe as a “tributary vassal kingdom”—a hypothesis which was already put forward by Stanley Burstein ^[16] may still require further arguments, I gladly recognise in Professor Zach’s paper a support to a hypothesis I have put forward in the Fontes. I suggested there ^[17] that the collapse of the Meroitic kingdom was, at least partly, brought about not only by Noba and Aksumite aggression but also by a cultural and political imbalance caused by the increasing presence of superficially acculturated or unacculturated Noba in Meroe. Initially these may even have been encouraged to settle as vassals or federates on Meroitic territory.

It is interesting to note here that Ezana’s Greek inscription from Geza Agumaï records the settling and resettling of vassal tribes in fourth century Aksum ^[18].  Concerning chronology proper, papers were presented at our round table about pottery, the visual arts, architecture, and paleography. Pottery, visual arts and architecture are used as independent dating evidence in other regions of the ancient world. Unfortunately, Meroe is a different case. Due to special features of Meroitic culture on the one hand, and to the failure of earlier generations of archaeologists, to provide chronological bench-marks, on the other, we have first to establish the relative and the absolute chronology of these types of evidence if we wish to employ them as dating evidence.

This dilemma is clearly formulated in the papers of Professors Adams and Yellin, Dr Lohwasser and Dr Sievertsen. Professor Adams points out that the dating of Meroitic pottery wares is not merely an art-historical issue, for it is connected with the much larger problem of dating the Meroitic occupation, or reoccupation of Lower Nubia

With the promise, that he will deal with the issue in his lecture tomorrow afternoon, Professor Adams indicates nevertheless his view by adding that none of the sites exhibiting the pottery discussed by him can be securely dated before the first century AD. Here, as also in other papers of Professor Adams, I miss a more detailed response on the alternative datings suggested in the past two decades, be they made “purely” on an art-historical basis or in the wider context of the archaeological evidence from the royal cemeteries, Meroe City, Faras, Karanog and other sites and of the textual evidence relating to the Meroitic presence in Lower Nubia^[19]. 

The evidence of visual arts was discussed by Professor Yellin and Dr Lohwasser. Both of them presented methodological considerations as well as case studies for the intricate interrelationship between the iconography, style and date of certain genres and certain individual monuments. Professor Yellin drew the outlines for two important and fruitful investigations, viz., the study of archaising in Meroitic art and the study of the iconography of the offering tables. The first problem was also touched upon by Dr Lohwasser, who discussed in some detail the case of Montuemhat’s portraits. There are at least two great periods of archaising in Meroitic art, too, which may deserve scholarly attention. The first occurred after the emergence of the Meroitic dynasty in the third century BC. I refer to the rich iconographical evidence from Musawwarat es-Sufra. The second period is similarly a period of innovation-with-archaising, namely, the decades of, and around the reign of Natakamani and Amanitore.

Dr Lohwasser also addressed the basic issue of the various levels of contextuality in the analysis of monuments of visual arts. She presented a fascinating discussion of the dichotomy of Hekanefer’s representations as it was determined by his different political/cultural identities in Egypt and in Nubia. Dr Lohwasser also made acute observations on the dichotomy of royal representations in temples of “Egyptian” and “Meroitic” deities and, what I found very fascinating, on the coordination of body proportions and the shape of the relief field. The dichotomy of body proportions according to the associated deities still remains puzzling for me, because the deities whose cult was taken over from Egypt became part of the Meroitic pantheon and were worshipped in their cult temples as gods and goddesses in Kush, just as any other Nubian deity.

Professor Yellin also addressed the problem of the borrowing of iconographical types from other regions. She quoted the nude dancer represented on one of the three enigmatic faience cylinders from building M 200-221 at Meroe City ^[20], suggesting that it was modelled, alongside with the dancing Pan represented on the same cylinder, on paintings of Apulian Red Figure vases. The figures on this particular cylinder, viz., the nude dancer with another male figure, Pan, and two dancing female figures doubtless show the influence of Classical iconographical and stylistic models. The identification of these models may not disregard the context of the cylinders, however. On the second cylinder we see rams and lions associated with Egyptian/Meroitic divine symbols. One of the lions is trampling a serpent, repeating the type of the lion god Mahes as it is known from the Isis temple at Philae. On the third cylinder three winged goddesses: Mut, Anuket and Satet were represented in an Egyptian or Meroitic style. Independently from the style of the individual representations, uninscribed Egyptian- or Meroitic-type inscription fields occur on both the cylinder with the Classical figures and the cylinder with the goddesses, indicating what is anyhow quite evident, that the cylinders repeat the composition and iconography of temple columns. It seems completely unlikely that a figure from a fourth century BC Apulian vase would have found its way into such an iconographical context which may be better explained on the basis of its connections with late (?) Ptolemaic art in general and the cult milieu of Philae in particular.

The study of the architecture of Meroe City which Dr Sievertsen carried out partly in the company of Dr Hinkel ^[21] has greatly promoted our knowledge of the urban development of the southern royal residence. The graphic periodisation of Garstang’s plans is of course much more successful than my verbal discourse on Meroe City’s settlement history was. If anybody, I can fully understand the frustration one feels when working with Garstang’s evidence and we can only agree with Dr Sievertsen’s conclusion that key points in the area investigated by Garstang should be re-excavated. Garstang’s documents give good clues as to where one may hope to find undisturbed early features.

I close this overview with Dr Rilly’s paper on Meroitic palaeography as a tool for chronology. However modestly Dr Rilly may formulate the prospects and limits of his work, it is obvious that he has presented Meroitic studies with a splendid tool which may prove more effective than any other dating evidence, provided that it is employed patiently at the analysis of a sufficiently great number of object assemblages which also include inscribed items. The palaeographical tables published by Griffith, Hintze and Hofmann were based on a limited number of inscriptions. Rilly’s table is based on the analysis of 71 inscriptions, but what is equally important, in its background there is his profound knowledge of all aspects of the Meroitic texts and it rests on the methodological foundations laid down by Professor Leclant and his colleagues in the Repertoire project.

I am certainly not competent to go into the details of Rilly’s paper. Let me praise it here not as a professional study which promises to elevate Meroitic paleography on the level of Greek or Latin palaeography, but rather as a study on Meroitic culture. I mention only one example. The observations made by Professor Yellin and Dr Lohwasser on archaising are splendidly complemented by Rilly’s observation that “ancient Meroitic texts were regularly read by the new generations”. This means that the functions of Meroitic literacy were more complex than we usually tend to believe and it also seems to support the hypothesis that, as to its intellectual functions, Meroitic literacy was a direct descendant of the Egyptian-language literature of the Napatan period.