Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: GEBEL ADDA (EGYPTIAN NUBIA)Gebel Adda was an important settlement located on the east Nile bank, some dozens of kilometres north of the second cataract.It was inhabited from at least the beginning of the Common Era until modern times, with its heyday being in the Christian period (6th-15th centuries), especially towards the end of it.During those late-Christian times, the site, known as Atwa in internal Nubian sources and Daw in external Arabic ones, apparently performed the functions of a capital for the Christian Nubian Kingdom of Makuria.Excavated by the mission of the American Research Center in Egypt within the frame of the so-called Nubian Campaign of the 1960s, Gebel Adda is now lost under the waters of the Nubian Lake.Except for some preliminary reports, the results of the excavations were never published, while the artifacts discovered were dispersed all over the world 1 .The most important objects remained in Egypt and are housed in the Egyptian, Coptic, and Islamic Museums in Cairo, and in the Nubia Museum in Aswan.The majority of the finds, however, alongside the documentation of the dig, ended up in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and a small selection of objects was allotted to the National Geographic Society in Washington DC.In 2007, A. Łajtar was invited by the Royal Ontario Museum to study and publish the Christian textual material from Gebel Adda in the museum's collection.He was able to identify 57 inscribed objects in stone, ceramic, wood, textile, parchment, and paper 2 , featuring texts in the three principal languages of Christian Nubian literacy, namely Greek, Sahidic Coptic and Old Nubian 3 .They represent a variety of textual categories, in-1 N. B.
Source: Analecta Bollandiana
Authors: Adam Łajtar, Efthymios Rizos
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3043806419