Dungur (or Dungur 'Addi Kilte) is the ruins of a substantial mansion in
Aksum
Axum, or Aksum (pronounced: ), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015).
It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire, a naval and trading power that ruled the whole region ...
,
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
, the former capital city of the
Kingdom of Aksum
The Kingdom of Aksum ( gez, መንግሥተ አክሱም, ), also known as the Kingdom of Axum or the Aksumite Empire, was a kingdom centered in Northeast Africa and South Arabia from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. Based primarily in wh ...
. The ruins are in the western part of Aksum, across the road from the
Gudit
Gudit ( gez, ጉዲት) is the Classical Ethiopic name for a personage also known as Yodit in Tigray, and Amharic, but also Isato in Amharic and Ga'wa in Ţilţal. The personage behind these various alternative names is portrayed as a power ...
stelae
A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...
field.
Dungur is known locally and popularly as the Palace of the
Queen of Sheba
The Queen of Sheba ( he, מַלְכַּת שְׁבָא, Malkaṯ Šəḇāʾ; ar, ملكة سبأ, Malikat Sabaʾ; gez, ንግሥተ ሳባ, Nəgśətä Saba) is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she bring ...
(i.e. the Palace of ''Makeda'' in Ethiopia).
Description
The remains of the mansion and its associated building are limited to the lowest levels and the podium, covering about 3,250 square meters. During its prime, a double staircase led into the entrance of the complex, which opened into one of the courtyards surrounding the central structure.
[Munro-Hay, ''Ethiopia, the unknown land: a cultural and historical guide'' (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), p. 289]
In the associated buildings a number of stone piers were recovered, "presumably for supporting wooden columns or floors", and brickwork which might be evidence of a
hypocaust
A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm th ...
. However, the purpose of these buildings is unclear. Munro-Hay notes, "The 'rooms' with stone piers have no doorways, and the piers presumably supported floors, but occasional divisions on the same level do have doorways, implying that not all the lower level was merely a podium for a higher floor level. Possibly some rooms were entered from within by ladders."
Archaeology
S. Puglisi performed the first archaeological excavation in this area, excavating a 3 x 5 meter
sondage A sondage is an archaeological process to clarify stratigraphic sequences during preliminary investigations of the terrain prior to an archaeological dig. In a narrower sense it is a "deep trial trench for inspecting stratigraphy". with the intent of revealing its
stratification
Stratification may refer to:
Mathematics
* Stratification (mathematics), any consistent assignment of numbers to predicate symbols
* Data stratification in statistics
Earth sciences
* Stable and unstable stratification
* Stratification, or st ...
. The next excavations in this area were conducted in 1966–1968 by Francis Anfray, who uncovered a dwelling 250 meters west of Puglisi's trench that he described as a "
château
A château (; plural: châteaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking regions.
Nowaday ...
", inhabited by one of the city's elite. Based on the evidence from these excavations, Butzer dated Anfray's dwelling to the seventh century; he pointed out that the masonry was similar to the base of
St Mary of Zion
The Church of Our Lady, Mary of Zion is an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church which is claimed to contain the Ark of the Covenant.
The church is located in the town of Axum, Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia, near the grounds of Axum#Main sit ...
church (which is part of the original structure that dated from Axumite times), while the floor plan was similar to the layout of the central block of the
Ta'akha Maryam palace.
[Stuart Munro-Hay, ''Excavations at Aksum: An account of research at the ancient Ethiopian capital directed in 1972-74 by the late Dr ]Neville Chittick
Dr. Neville H. Chittick (September 18, 1924 – July 27, 1984) was a British scholar and Archaeology, archaeologist. He specialized in the historic cultures of Northeast Africa, and also devoted various works to the Swahili Coast.
Biography
Chit ...
'' (London: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1989), p. 30
References
{{coord, 14, 7, 36, N, 38, 42, 24, E, type:landmark_region:ET, display=title
Aksumite Empire
Axum (city)
Archaeological sites in Ethiopia
Sheba
Architecture in Ethiopia
Archaeological sites of Eastern Africa