Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (18.2006(2008))

BANGANARTI

SUDAN

BANGANARTI 2006: THE INSCRIPTIONS

Adam Laj tar

The work of the 2006 season carried out by
the Polish expedition on the site of
Banganarti brought to light 25 wall
inscriptions. Of these inscriptions, 15 were
recorded on the walls of the Upper Church

and the remaining 10 on the walls of the
Lower Church.
The Lower Church yielded also two
fragments of funerary stelae made of local
marble and inscribed in Greek.

THE UPPER CHURCH

The discovery of wall inscriptions in the
Upper Church was rather unexpected as the
excavations of this building had been
completed in 2004, following which
a corpus of inscriptions from it had been
closed at 954 items. Reporting on the 2004
season, I had expressed the opinion —
a prophetic one as it turned out this season
— that further inscriptions, if any, could
occur in places where the building had
undergone remodeling and replastering in
the course of its use (Lajtar 2005: 309).
One of the present objectives was to
study the western part of the LJpper Church
and the area adjoining it on the outside
where a huge mud-brick structure, the so-
called Western Building, is located. The
original, presumably 11th century plan of
the Church called for porticos to form an
external passage around the building on the
north, south and west. On the latter side,
this portico consisted of six different,
symmetrically paired supports, a double

column flanking the entrance, a single free-
standing column and a single column
abutting the corner wall (see reconstruction
drawing of this facade above, in Fig. 3 on
p. 387). At least three stages of rebuilding
have been observed in this portico: first
a massive reinforcing of the double columns
in the center and the flanking single
columns, then blockages constructed
between these pillars and the Western
Building, which is likely to have been
constructed at this time, and finally,
blocking of the spaces between the supports
of the portico to create a dark corridor
running along the length of the west wall of
the church. This third stage of portico
modification was probably part of the latest
rebuilding of the Upper Church, which
should be dated to or perhaps shortly after
AD 1280.1
During the 2006 season the blockages
between the supports of the portico and
partly also the blockages between the

1 For the date, see Lajtar 2005: 311. It is grounded in a calculation of chronological indications from the inscription of
a certain Teeita appearing on the first layer of plaster coating the east wall of Room 19.

396