The Hamadab Stela is a colossal sandstone stela found at

Hamadab Hamadab is an ancient city of ruins located in Sudan. It appears to have been abandoned 4th century AD. The name is borrowed from the nearby village of al Dumat Hamadab, as the ancient name of the city is initially unknown. The ruins lie about so ...

just south of the ancient site of

Meroë Meroë (; also spelled ''Meroe''; Meroitic: or ; ar, مرواه, translit=Meruwah and ar, مروي, translit=Meruwi, label=none; grc, Μερόη, translit=Meróē) was an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east ...

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

. Now kept at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, the significance of the

stela 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 ...

resides in the fact that it is inscribed with one of the longest known texts in the Meroitic script.British Museum Highlights
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Discovery

The stela was found by the British archaeologist

John Garstang John Garstang (5 May 1876 – 12 September 1956) was a British archaeologist of the Ancient Near East, especially Egypt, Sudan, Anatolia and the southern Levant. He was the younger brother of Professor Walter Garstang, FRS, a marine biol ...

in 1914 at the site of

, which is located a few kilometres south of

, the capital of the ancient

Kingdom of Kush The Kingdom of Kush (; Egyptian language, Egyptian: 𓎡𓄿𓈙𓈉 ''kꜣš'', Akkadian language, Assyrian: ''Kûsi'', in LXX grc, Κυς and Κυσι ; cop, ''Ecōš''; he, כּוּשׁ ''Kūš'') was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, ce ...

. One of a pair, the excavators discovered the stelae either side of the main doorway into a small

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...

. As part of the division of finds, the stela to the left of the doorway was given to the

, while the other was left

in situ ''In situ'' (; often not italicized in English) is a Latin phrase that translates literally to "on site" or "in position." It can mean "locally", "on site", "on the premises", or "in place" to describe where an event takes place and is used in ...

Description

The stela is in good condition, although part of the top is missing. The upper part includes a

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

showing the

Kushite The Kingdom of Kush (; Egyptian: 𓎡𓄿𓈙𓈉 ''kꜣš'', Assyrian: ''Kûsi'', in LXX grc, Κυς and Κυσι ; cop, ''Ecōš''; he, כּוּשׁ ''Kūš'') was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in what i ...

rulers Queen

Amanirenas Queen Amanirenas (also spelled Amanirena), described by Strabo as being blind in one eye, was queen of the Kingdom of Kush from c. 40 BC to c. 10 BC. Her full title was ''Amnirense qore li kdwe li'' ("Ameniras, qore and kandake"). Meroitic, the in ...

and Prince Akinidad facing various

Egyptian deities Ancient Egyptian deities are the gods and goddesses worshipped in ancient Egypt. The beliefs and rituals surrounding these gods formed the core of ancient Egyptian religion, which emerged sometime in prehistory. Deities represented natural fo ...

including

Amun Amun (; also ''Amon'', ''Ammon'', ''Amen''; egy, jmn, reconstructed as (Old Egyptian and early Middle Egyptian) → (later Middle Egyptian) → (Late Egyptian), cop, Ⲁⲙⲟⲩⲛ, Amoun) romanized: ʾmn) was a major ancient Egyptian ...

and

Mut Mut, also known as Maut and Mout, was a mother goddess worshipped in ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush in present-day North Sudan. In Meroitic, her name was pronounced mata): 𐦨𐦴. Her name means ''mother'' in the ancient Egyptian la ...

. Below this royal scene is a relief depicting bound

prisoners A prisoner (also known as an inmate or detainee) is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison. ...

. A 42-line inscription in Meroitic cursive script is engraved beneath this.

Meroitic script

Meroitic was the principal language of the Kingdom of Kush. Poorly understood by modern scholars, it remains untranslatable, although most letters of the

Meroitic alphabet The Meroitic script consists of two alphasyllabic scripts developed to write the Meroitic language at the beginning of the Meroitic Period (3rd century BC) of the Kingdom of Kush. The two scripts are Meroitic Cursive, derived from Demotic Egyp ...

are now known (even though the meaning of most words remain obscure). In this

inscription Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

, the names of the two monarchs Amanirenas and Akinidad are clearly discernible. It has been proposed that the Hamabad Stela may commemorate a Kushite raid on

Roman Egypt , conventional_long_name = Roman Egypt , common_name = Egypt , subdivision = Province , nation = the Roman Empire , era = Late antiquity , capital = Alexandria , title_leader = Praefectus Augustalis , image_map = Roman E ...

in 24 BC. One outcome of these raids could have been the looting of the

Meroë Head The Meroë Head, or Head of Augustus from Meroë, is a larger-than-life-size bronze head depicting the first Roman emperor, Augustus, that was found in the ancient Nubian site of Meroë in modern Sudan in 1910. Long admired for its striking appea ...

from a city in

Lower Egypt Lower Egypt ( ar, مصر السفلى '; ) is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, ...

Gallery

Image:Hamadab Stela (1).JPG, Detail of inscription

References

{{reflist

Discovery

Description

Meroitic script

Gallery

References

Further reading