Karanog ( Meroitic: ''Nalote'') was a

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 ...

town in

Lower Nubia Lower Nubia is the northernmost part of Nubia, roughly contiguous with the modern Lake Nasser, which submerged the historical region in the 1960s with the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Many ancient Lower Nubian monuments, and all its modern p ...

on the west bank of the

Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin language, Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered ...

(near

Qasr Ibrim Qasr Ibrim ( ar, قصر ابريم; Meroitic: ''Pedeme''; Old Nubian: ''Silimi''; Coptic: ⲡⲣⲓⲙ ''Prim''; Latin: ''Primis'') is an archaeological site in Lower Nubia, located in the modern country of Egypt. The site has a long history o ...

). It was probably a provincial capital under its own (governor) in the second and third centuries AD. It was excavated between 1907 and 1910 by

David Randall-MacIver David Randall-MacIver FBA (31 October 1873 – 30 April 1945) was a United Kingdom, British-born archaeologist, who later became an United States, American citizen. He is most famous for his excavations at Great Zimbabwe which provided the first so ...

and

Leonard Woolley Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his Excavation (archaeology), excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavat ...

of the

University of Pennsylvania Museum The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...

Richard Lobban Richard A. Lobban, Jr., husband of Dr. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, is an anthropologist and early pioneer in social network modeling, archaeologist, Egyptologist, Sudanist, foreign policy expert, human rights activist, mentor, father, and beekeeper. ...

, ''Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia'' (Scarecrow Press, 2004), pp. 215–16. Karanog was occupied throughout the Meroitic period from the third century BC. By the second century AD, it was of strategic significance on Kush's northern frontier with Rome, facing Egyptian

Maharraqa Temple of Al-Maharraqa is an ancient Egyptian Temple dedicated to Isis and Serapis. It was originally located in al-Maharraqa ( ar, المحرقة, DMG: Al-Maḥarraqa, Greek: Hierasykaminos), Lower Nubia, approximately south of Aswan on the south ...

. The original provincial capital had been at

Faras Faras (formerly grc, Παχώρας, ''Pakhôras''; la, Pachoras; Old Nubian: Ⲡⲁⲭⲱⲣⲁⲥ, ''Pakhoras'') was a major city in Lower Nubia. The site of the city, on the border between modern Egypt and Sudan at Wadi Halfa Salient, was f ...

, but it was transferred downstream as the Roman presence in the south of Egypt, the

Dodecaschoenus The Triakontaschoinos ( el, Τριακοντάσχοινος, "Land of the Thirty '' Schoinoi''"), Latinized as Triacontaschoenus, was a geographical and administrative term used in the Greco-Roman world for the part of Lower Nubia between the Fi ...

, weakened. The town was at least partially walled. The houses of the rich and powerful, as well as the castle–palace complexes of the s, have been excavated. The latter reached a size of . The homes of commoners, being of

mud brick A mudbrick or mud-brick is an air-dried brick, made of a mixture of loam, mud, sand and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. Mudbricks are known from 9000 BCE, though since 4000 BCE, bricks have also been fi ...

construction, have not been preserved. The cemetery at Karanog also served the nearby towns of Akin and Shimale. The distribution of

grave goods Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a ...

shows a high level of

social stratification Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...

, although the cemetery was extensively plundered over the years. Some of the less plundered graves contain luxury items, including jewellery; bronze utensils, bowls and lamps; glass beads; iron arrowheads; cotton and linen textiles; carpentry tools; ebony- and ivory-inlaid wooden objects; painted ceramics and even

faience Faience or faïence (; ) is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major ad ...

. Karanog also contained no less than 100 objects—offering altars to

Hotep Hotep (; also rendered ''hetep'') is an Egyptian word that roughly translates as "to be satisfied, at peace". The word also refers to an "offering" ritually presented to a deity or a dead person, hence "be pleased, be gracious, be at peace". ...

and

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 ...

e—bearing inscriptions in

Meroitic cursive 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 ...

. One stela containing both Meroitic and

Egyptian demotic Demotic (from grc, δημοτικός ''dēmotikós'', 'popular') is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta, and the stage of the Egyptian language written in this script, following Late Egypti ...

may be the only case of the latter found south of Egypt. Karanog remained occupied even after the fall of Kush, when it came under the so-called

X-Group culture The X-Group Culture was an ancient civilization that existed from ca. 300 CE to ca. 600 CE. It was centered in Nubia stretching from the Dodekaschoinos in the north to Delgo, Sudan, Delgo in the south. George A. Reisner coined the term ''X-Group Cu ...

. With the arrival of the

Nubians Nubians () (Nobiin: ''Nobī,'' ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of c ...

, it disappears from the archaeological record. Today, its remains lie under

Lake Nasser Lake Nasser ( ar, بحيرة ناصر ', ) is a vast reservoir in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Before construction, Sudan was against the building of Lake Nasser because it would encro ...

References

Further reading