Life-Size Rock Carving in Sudan May Show a Kushite King
A life-size figure was carved into a rock in northern Sudan, and centuries later people built a church around it instead of removing it. Now archaeologists think the figure may be a Kushite king.
Joanna A. Ciesielska of the University of Warsaw and her colleagues suggest that a life-sized petroglyph at Miseeda, in northern Sudan, may depict an ancient Kushite ruler. A church went up around the carving in the seventh century A.D., which suggests the spot stayed important to the people of the area long after the carving was made. The University of Warsaw project describes the drawing as coming from the Kushite period, made at least three hundred years before the region converted to Christianity.
A marker at the edge?
The researchers think the petroglyph may have marked a border area, like a similar carving of the Meroitic king Sherkarer at Gebel Qeili. The hill around the ruins of the later church also holds large carvings of a lion, a possible rhinoceros and an elephant. Other carvings show crosses and ships from the Christian period, human figures that nobody has dated, and animals from the Kerma period, about 2500 to 1500 B.C.
What is still unknown
Nobody has confirmed who the ruler might be, and the age of the carving at Miseeda is not settled either. The word “may” matters here. The team calls the figure a possible Kushite king, not a proven one.
The project’s larger goal is to understand why the church was founded there. Its survey has recorded 294 archaeological sites in the area, from prehistory to modern times, including 281 that were not known before.
Sources
Related Articles
