A post-Meroitic era Nubian royal crown from Ballana Tomb 118 by John Campana

The X-Group Culture (ca.

300 __NOTOC__ Year 300 ( CCC) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Constantius and Valerius (or, less frequently, year 1053 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 300 ...

- 600 AD) was an ancient

Nubia Nubia (, Nobiin language, Nobiin: , ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the confluence of the Blue Nile, Blue and White Nile, White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), and the Cataracts of the Nile, first cataract ...

n civilization that existed in

Lower Nubia Lower Nubia (also called Wawat) 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, ...

. Cemetery excavations revealed that the civilization stretched from the

Dodekaschoinos The Triakontaschoinos (, "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 First and Second Cataracts of the Nile ...

in the north to Delgo in the south.

Excavations

George A. Reisner coined the term ''X-Group Culture'' for lack of a more exact historical definition. This anonymous type of terminology has been replaced by the term Ballana culture due to the increase of knowledge and new findings in

Qustul Qustul () is an archaeological cemetery located on the eastern bank of the Nile in Lower Nubia, just opposite of Ballana near the Sudan frontier. The site has archaeological records from the A-Group culture, the New Kingdom of Egypt and the X ...

and Ballana as proposed by Bruce Trigger.Bruce Trigger, History and Settlement in Lower Nubia. New Haven: Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1965. According to

Egyptologists This is a partial list of Egyptologists. An Egyptologist is any archaeologist, historian, linguist, or art historian who specializes in Egyptology, the scientific study of Ancient Egypt and its antiquities. Demotists are Egyptologists who speciali ...

Keith Seele and Bruce Williams, the burials of X-Group are evidence of an evolution from the earlier Meroitic graves to those at Ballana, which were principally Nubian in origin along with the majority of the items found within them. In one royal tomb, a queen was discovered, accompanied by seventeen human sacrifices. Another royal tomb contained a body of a man who was likely a king, offerings of food and drinks, and his personal items, such as a crown, board game and weapons.

Gallery

File:Saddle, Nubia, Qustul, Cemetery L, Noubadian, X-Group culture, c. 375 AD, described as the world's oldest known saddle to use a frame - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC08071.JPG, Saddle with frame, File:Sandals, Qustul, Nubia, Cemetery Q, Area QC, tomb 49, Early X-Group, 370-410 AD, leather - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC08069.JPG, Sandals from Qustul, File:Nubian pottery, Lower Nubia, Prague Kinsky, 141813.jpg, Pottery from X-Group burial, Wadi Qitna and Kalabsha South

References

{{Reflist History of Nubia