Archaeologists working in ancient Dongola, Sudan, have found the remains of what may be the largest known church from medieval Nubia. It could have been the seat of an archbishop who ruled the ecclesiastical hierarchy in a 1,000 km stretch along the Nile, between the first and fifth cataracts.
The Archbishop of Dongola supervised the Bishop of Faras, whose cathedral with its famous wall paintings was discovered by Professor Kazimierz Michałowski 60 years ago.
According to Professor Artur Obłuski, leader of the Dongola expedition and director of the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archeology at the University of Warsaw (PCMA UW), this discovery changes not only our knowledge of the city itself, but also the way we reconstruct history. of the Nubian church.
Dongola was the capital of Makuria, one of the three Christian Nubian kingdoms. Archaeologists from the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archeology have been working there since 1964, continuing the research started by Professor K. Michałowski after the success of his work at another Nubian center:Faras, the capital of Nobadia. Since 2018, the work at Dongola has been carried out under the European Research Council (ERC) grant and led by Professor Obłuski.
In 2021, archaeologists cleared the apse wall of the church, along with an adjacent wall and the nearby dome of a large tomb. The structures are located in the very center of the city. The walls of the apse, which was the holiest place in the church, are decorated with paintings depicting two rows of monumental figures.
It is the largest apse discovered so far in Nubia:it has a diameter of 6 meters, and the width of the church to which it belonged is approximately 26 meters.
If our estimates based on known dimensions are confirmed, it is the largest church discovered so far in Nubia says Obłuski, adding that its size is important, but so is the building's location – in the heart of the 200-hectare city, the capital of the combined kingdoms of Nobadia and Makuria .
Just to the east of the apse a large domed building was added. We have a great analogy for this architectural complex:Faras. There, too, the cathedral stood in the center of the citadel, and to the east of it was the vaulted tomb of Joannes, the Bishop of Faras. However, there is a big difference in the scale of the buildings. The dome of the tomb of Joannes is 1.5 meters in diameter, while that of the Dongolese building measures 7.5 meters .
Archaeologists assume that, as in Faras, the great church of Dongola served as a cathedral, next to which a tomb of dignitaries, probably bishops, was erected. The confirmation of this hypothesis will have important consequences for Nubiology. Until now, another church located outside the citadel was considered to be Dongola Cathedral, a building whose characteristics would influence Nubian religious architecture throughout the centuries. If we are right, it was a completely different building that set the trends , says Obłuski.
The newly discovered building is located in the center of the citadel which is surrounded by a wall about 10 meters high and 5 meters thick. Excavations have shown that this was the heart of the entire kingdom in the Makurian period, since all the structures discovered there were of a monumental character:churches, a palace and large villas belonging to the ecclesiastical and state elites. Test trenches dug in the building have given promising results.
The borehole in the apse has a depth of about 9 meters. This means that the eastern part of the building is preserved to the impressive height of a modern three-storey block of flats. And this means that there may be more paintings and inscriptions under our feet, just like in Faras , says the archaeologist.
For this reason, the team members include conservators from the Department of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, who work under the supervision of Professor Krzysztof Chmielewski. His immediate task is to secure the discovered paintings on an ongoing basis and, in the long term, to prepare them for exhibition. Unlike what happens in Faras, they can be left on the walls of the church.
To continue with the excavations, it is necessary to reinforce the weakened and peeling plaster of the walls covered by the pictorial decoration, and then carefully clean the layers of earth, dirt and salt deposits that are especially detrimental to the wall paintings. When a suitable roof is erected over this valuable find, it will be possible to start the final aesthetic conservation of the paintings , explains Professor Chmielewski, adding that this type of salvage conservation requires the involvement of considerable resources, time and skilled specialists.
The next excavation seasons at Dongola are planned for the fall of this year and the winter of 2022.