K. From Unity to Fragmentation: The Post-Meroitic Period. 300-600 AD

1. The End of Mero‘

By the late third century AD, the Meroitic state was over a thousand years old. It had outlived the ancient empires and had even survived long enough to grow old with Rome. While remaining the last bastion of ancient Egyptian traditions and religion, it would pass from view during the next century in a series of events that are poorly understood. Certainly, in its later stages, the official art, the architecture, and the outward trappings of the state took on the appearance of decadence and impoverishment. One reason for Mero‘'s decline may have been her loss of control of the profitable trade routes to the Red Sea as a result of the increase in power and prestige of Axum, a newly emerging state in what is now central Ethiopia. Another may have been the depletion of Mero‘'s natural resources and the degradation of her environment by overgrazing and deforestation. Another may have been Mero‘'s growing vulnerability to attacks by desert nomads, who had by now learned to breed and ride the camel, which allowed them to launch sudden attacks from the deserts and to retreat back into the desert just as quickly. In any event, by the mid-fourth century, the ancient state of Kush seems to flicker out. The last royal pyramid was built; monumental art and architecture disappeared from the landscape; and literacy ceased.

2. The Rise of Axum and the "Noba"

The only text possibly shedding light on the end of Mero‘ is an inscription, written in the Ge'ez language for the newly Christianized King Ezana of Axum. It seems to describe an Axumite invasion of the old heartland of the "Kasu" (i.e. Kush) about the mid- or late fourth century AD. At that time, according to the text, this land was occupied by a people called the "Noba," who lived in "grass houses and brick towns." The text makes no mention of a sitting Kushite king who was heir to a venerable tradition.

From about 350 to 540 AD, the political history of Nubia is obscure. While archaeological material is abundant, historical sources are few and confusing. The territory of the old Meroitic empire seems to have fragmented into a number of small separate principalities whose centers can only be guessed at by the presence, here and there, of important cemeteries of large mound graves. The objects and wealth contained within many of them reveal that their owners carried on some of the royal Meroitic traditions as well as the worship of the Egyptian and Meroitic gods. Whether the rulers buried in these tombs were merely local figureheads and owed allegiance to other more powerful kings, or whether they themselves controlled territories of great extent, cannot be determined. Not a single grave of this type yet excavated has contained a ruler's name, and only the rarest tomb contains a scrap of writing. The tomb type and some of the funerary customs they reflect, however, suggest a return to certain ancient Nubian customs reminiscent of those of the Kerma culture, two thousand years earlier.

3. The Mounds of El-Hobagi, Tangasi, and Zuma

In the Meroitic heartland, between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, the old city of Mero‘ ceased to be used as a capital and royal cemetery. Many large mound tombs of the later fourth century AD, however, have recently been identified and excavated by the French Unit attached to the Sudan Antiquities Service, under the direction of Patrice Lenoble. These tombs, located at a site called el-Hobagi, about 40 miles upriver from Mero‘ and on the opposite (west) bank, were part of a cluster of large earth tumuli, in which the largest was about 130 ft. (40 m) in diam.and about 12 to 16 ft. (4 to 5 m) high and was surrounded by rough walls. Although the exterior appearance of the tombs had little in common with the traditional Kushite royal pyramids, the internal burial customs and funeral offerings were heavily influenced by the Meroitic and include, too, a number of purely Meroitic and late Roman imported objects, confirming the 4th century date. The deceased, presumed by the excavator in each case to be a king, was buried in a pit lying on a bed surrounded by huge numbers of food and beer jars and a variety of weapons: large spears, pole axes, swords, and multiple quivers containing hundreds of arrows. Apart from Roman imported bronze and glass vessels, and even medallions with portraits of Roman emperors of the period, they also contained bronze vessels with Merotic motifs, one even bearing a Meroitic hieroglyphic inscription containing the Meroitic word for "king" - qore. Accompanying the deceased were also sacrificed pet dogs, horses, camels, donkeys, and oxen. The excavator has argued that such tombs show the continuity of the Meroitic state rather than its fragmentation, but one may argue equally well that these are tombs of post-Meroitic rulers utilizing some of the trappings of Meroitic royalty in order simply to look royal in the Meroitic tradition.

Further northwest, 150 mi (250 km) across the Bayuda Desert, other "power centers" may have existed along the Nile from the Fourth Cataract to Dongola. Here there are numerous districts where more large tumuli can be seen, but few of the tombs have been excavated. Two of the largest groups, at Tangasi and Zuma (in the vicinity of ancient Napata), have suggested the centers of possible other kingdoms on opposite sides of the Nile that became independent from Mero‘. This political/cultural context is known as the "Tangasi Culture." Despite the presence of very large burial mounds here, excavators Peter Shinnie at Tangasi and George A. Reisner at Zuma discovered, with great labor to themselves, that the burials were of the poorest sort, leading one to speculate whether the owners were indeed "royal" at all. It is unclear whether such graves suggest regionally powerful dynasties or merely locally important chiefs.

4. The Blemmyes, Nobadae, and the Royal Tombs at Ballana and Qustul

From the fourth to the sixth centuries AD, both Upper and Lower Nubia were increasingly harried by desert nomads, who had mastered the art of warfare utilizing the fast camel. From Roman texts we hear of two such groups: the Blemmyes and the Nobadae. These were peoples who suddenly came to wield considerable power in Lower Nubia when the centralized authority of Meroe collapsed. The Blemmyes, who destabilized northern Lower Nubia, eventually caused the Romans to pull back their frontier to Aswan in 297 AD. In southern Lower Nubia, the Nobadae seized power in this prosperous, formerly Meroitic area.

Identified with the Nobadae is the culture known variously as the "X-Group" (coined by Reisner in 1907) or, more recently, the "Ballana Culture." This phase overlies the Meroitic remains of Lower Nubia but precedes the Christian. Here, monumental architecture dies out; there is no further building in dressed stone; the use of writing disappears; and, in general, culture declines. Nevertheless Roman trade goods dramatically increase; iron tools and weapons become common, as do carved woodwork and brightly colored cotton textiles. Judging by their tomb material, the kings of the Nobadae retained the Meroitic concept of "divine monarchy" as well as certain Meroitic royal insignia. They continued to worship the old Egyptian gods, as did the Blemmyes, and fought the Christianized Romans whenever they threatened to close down the Temple of Isis at Philae.

The most extraordinary monuments of the Post-Meroitic "Ballana Culture" are its royal tombs, which were discovered between 1931 and 1934 by W.B. Emery and L. Kirwan of the Second Archaeological Survey of (Egyptian) Nubia. Although now flooded and lost to the Aswan High Dam, the tombs lay on opposite banks of the Nile at Ballana and Qustul, near Abu Simbel; 180 were excavated of which about 40 were thought to have belonged to kings or members of the royal families. These certainly were the largest and richest archaeological finds ever made in Nubia. The tombs were large mounds - so large they were taken at first to be natural features. The largest was about 250 ft. (76 m) in diameter and about 40 ft. (12 m) high. Initially the tombs were built by clearing the ground and sinking a large pit in the hard alluvium. Here a series of connecting brick chambers were built with vaulted roofs. When the king died, one room was heaped with food and drink offerings in storage jars; another was filled with his tools and weapons; another room was reserved for a queen and her servants, who were all sacrificed, perhaps by poisoning. The king was laid in a chamber nearest the entrance, placed on a canopied bier, surrounded with precious vessels for his immediate use and other luxury items, and dressed in his royal regalia, including, on his head, a bejeweled silver crown.

At his feet were a sacrificed servant and an ox. After the tomb was sealed up, the passageway leading to the entrance was filled with slaughtered animals: fully caparisoned horses, camels, donkeys, and dogs with their collars and leashes, including their grooms and possibly soldiers. The larger tombs contained up to seventeen human sacrifices. Many of the objects were imports from Byzantine Egypt; some contained Christian motifs; other preserved Egyptian and Hellenistic iconography. The spectacular silver crowns of these Nubian lords were all adorned with Meroitic and Egyptian royal and divine insignia.

The only Nobadian king actually known by name is a King Silko, who in the 6th century AD claimed in a Greek inscription incised on the walls of Kalabsha temple to have conquered the Blemmyes. He is depicted on horseback like a Roman general with scaled corselet; but a winged Victory crowns him with a crown of just the sort found in the Ballana tombs.