Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (18.2006(2008))

MtoM - MEROWE SHERIQ, TANQASI, ZUMA

SUDAN

on a rectangular plan and changed into
a tower when an outer wall of stone was
added to the original enclosure. The
distance between the western face of the
gate and the standing corner tower is 42 m.
The original south gate was built of
sandstone blocks in the outer part and mud
brick and stone blocks in the inner part
{.Fig. 3}· Blocks from the Napatan temple
are in evidence in the wall structure here as
well. The outer gate wall was 3.20 m thick
and now rises to a height of 5 m. The gate
was entered from the east and had a bent-
axis approach. It measures, on the outside,
14.70 m in length and 7.50 m in width.
Close parallels have been noted in northern
Nubia, at Faras, Ihmindi, Sheikh Daoud,
Sabagura and Kalabsha.
In the second building phase, a wall of
undressed sandstone blocks was added in
front of the earlier fortifications, reaching
a width of 1.50-1.70 m at the base and nar-
rowing to 0.90 m at a height of 7.70 m
{Fig. 4]■ Structurally, this outer curtain at
Merowe Sheriq resembles the fortifications
at Swueqi East (Wiewiora 2005) and Redab
(Paner 2005), both in the Fourth Cataract
region. Assuming K. Pluskota's ceramic
dating of the stone fortifications at Swueqi
East and Redab to the 6th century at the
latest is correct (2005), then the original set
of walls from Merowe Sheriq should be
considered as earlier; a date in the 5th
century is suggested provisionally at this
point. Testing inside the southern gate
unfortunately brought no dating material to
verify this view. Surface pottery finds from
a survey of the MSh.l and MSh.2 sites
yielded nothing earlier than the 6th century
(see below, contribution by E. Drabot-
Klimaszewska in this volume). On the other
hand, a piece of ceramics observed in the
wall structure of an analogous fortification
at Bakhit (Zurawski 2003: 369-373),

15 km north of Merowe Sheriq on the left
bank of the Nile, which the team visited in
2006, can be dated to the second half of the
5 th century based on parallels from the
burial chambers of tumuli excavated in el-
Zuma (red-slipped wheel-made bowls with
a groove below the rim, see El-Tayeb
2007b). The walls of the Bakhit fort were
evidently not constructed in one phase only,
and the southern curtain west of the gate
demonstrates an analogous technique with
the lower part built of irregular stone blocks
bonded in mud mortar and the upper part of
mud brick. As for the west and north
fortifications, they appear to have parallels
in walls built entirely of broken stone in the
Fourth Cataract region.
FORTIFIED SETTLEMENT
(MSH.2)
Scattered among the modern village houses
immediately north of the fort remains are
modest relics of a settlement, which was
also fortified {Fig. 6], Surface pottery finds
represent the entire chronological horizon of
the Kingdom of Makuria, from the 6th
through the 14th century. The original
structures were either completely dis-
mantled or incorporated into later
buildings. A fragment of the wall has
survived, c. 63 m long. It was 3-50 m wide
and built of blocks of broken stone bonded
in mud mortar in the lower part and mud
brick (40 x 20 x 9 cm) in the upper part. No
towers are in evidence on the ground, but
the evident break in the preserved stretch of
the fortification suggest the existence of
some such structure. Wall structure and
a missing stone curtain on the outside
indicates the contemporaneity of this wall
with the original fortifications from the
MSh.l site.
A rock-cut shaft 7.00-7.80 m in
diameter, almost completely filled at pre-

467