Naqa
Interesting facts
- Some fifty more temples, palaces and administrative buildings still lie unexcavated under rubble mounds at Naqa, along with a necropolis of hundreds of graves.
- In 1999 excavators in the Amun temple's inner sanctuary found a further statue of Natakamani and a stela of Queen Amanishakheto bearing still-undeciphered Meroitic hieroglyphs.
- Naqa flourished from about 200 BC to AD 250 as a secondary royal residence of the kings of Meroë and the southernmost city of their realm.
- The first Europeans known to reach the ruins were Linant de Bellefonds and Frédéric Cailliaud in 1822.
- Temple 200, raised by King Amanikhareqerem in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, has yielded about 1,200 decorated blocks recorded by the excavators.
- When the Hathor chapel was restored, badly damaged blocks and capitals were replaced with copies milled from 3D scans of the originals.
- A statue of Isis found at Naqa is now on display in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.
- The Berlin Egyptian Museum led excavations from 1995 to 2012, after which the project passed to the State Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich.
Why it is worth it
Far out on the Butana plain, where the wadis of the semi-desert meet some 50 km east of the Nile, the sandstone temples of Naqa stand almost alone in the landscape. Known in the Meroitic language as Tolakate, Naqa was one of the major centres of the Kingdom of Meroë, the African state that flourished south of Egypt for centuries and acted as a bridge between the Mediterranean world and inner Africa. Its position, a donkey or camel journey from the river, made it a natural trading post on routes leading east, and the extent of its ruins makes it one of the largest ancient sites in Sudan.
The best-known building is the Temple of Apedemak, the lion-headed warrior god of Kush, regarded as a classic work of Kushite architecture. Its gateway shows King Natakamani and Queen Amanitore striking down captives with lions at their feet. Along the side walls Apedemak appears in company with Amun and Horus, and on the rear wall he is shown at his largest — three-headed and four-armed, receiving offerings from the royal pair — while elsewhere he emerges as a lion-headed serpent from a lotus flower. A few steps away stands the small building known as the Roman kiosk, a striking blend of traditions: an Egyptian doorway crowned with a frieze of cobras, but walls with Corinthian-style capitals and arched windows. Recent research suggests it was dedicated to the goddess Hathor.
Natakamani also founded the Temple of Amun, about 100 metres long and laid out in Egyptian fashion, approached through an avenue of stone rams like those at Jebel Barkal and Karnak and leading to a columned hall and inner sanctuary. At the foot of the Jebel Naqa cliffs, the temple known as Naqa 500, built by Shanakdakhete around 135 BC, is the oldest structure on the site and bears the oldest known texts in Meroitic hieroglyphs. Lepsius copied inscriptions here in 1843, and German and Polish teams have excavated Naqa since 1995. In 2011 the site was inscribed, together with Meroë and Musawwarat es-Sufra, on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Archaeological Sites of the Island of Meroe.
Getting there
Naqa lies in the Butana region of Sudan, about 50 km from the town of Shendi on the Nile and roughly 170 km northeast of Khartoum. The nearest airport is Khartoum International Airport (KRT), about 108 km away in a straight line.
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From the encyclopaedia
Naqa or Naga'a is a ruined ancient city of the Kushite Kingdom of Meroë in modern-day Sudan. The ancient city lies about 170 km north-east of Khartoum, and about 50 km east of the Nile River. Here smaller wadis meet the Wadi Awateib coming from the center of the Butana plateau region, and further north at Wad ban Naqa from where it joins the Nile. Naqa was only a camel or donkey's journey from the Nile, and could serve as a trading station on the way to the east; thus it had strategic importance.
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