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27-607: The Jebel Barkal Museum is an archaeological site museum located on the eastern side of the archaeological area of Jebel Barkal at Karima in the Northern State of Sudan . The three gallery rooms of the museum display artefacts and pottery findings from excavations conducted in the Jebel Barkal area, among them one of the royal Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt statues found by George A. Reisner in 1916. Jebel Barkal The earliest occupation of Jebel Barkal

54-717: A daughter, also called Mary. In 1889, Reisner was head football coach at Purdue University , coaching for one season and compiling a record of 2–1. Reisner began his studies at Harvard University in 1885. There he gained a B.A. degree in 1889, followed by a M.A. in 1891 and a Ph.D in Semitic Languages in 1893. With the support of his advisor, assyriologist David Gordon Lyon , he became a traveling fellow and started postdoctoral work in Berlin for three years. In Germany, Reisner studied hieroglyphics with Kurt Sethe and turned towards Egyptology as his main field. Reisner

81-489: Is now known to have been a palace. George Reisner George Andrew Reisner Jr. (November 5, 1867 – June 6, 1942) was an American archeologist of Ancient Egypt , Nubia and Palestine . Reisner was born on November 5, 1867, in Indianapolis . His parents were George Andrew Reisner Sr. and Mary Elizabeth Mason. His father's parents were of German descent. He married Mary Putnam Bronson, with whom he had

108-497: Is to be) king. It is I who grants kingship to whomever I will. Jebel Barkal served as a royal cemetery during the Meroitic Kingdom . The earliest burials date back to the 3rd century BC. Napata’s urban remains have not yet been significantly excavated, but rubble heaps indicate that the area was probably home to major settlement in antiquity. There are no traces of a pre-Egyptian settlement, though this may change as more

135-442: Is uncovered at the site. The earliest buildings found at Napata date from the middle of the eighteenth Dynasty . The first archaeologist to work at the site was George A. Reisner who worked there from 1916-1920 and excavated a number of buildings. His first excavation at Napata was a large Meroitic structure (Named “B 100”) that dated to the first century CE. At first, Reisner assumed this to be an “administrative building”, though it

162-648: The Cairo Museum , but not until 1916 were scientific archeological excavations performed by a joint expedition of Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston under the direction of George Reisner . From the 1970s, explorations continued by a team from the University of Rome La Sapienza , under the direction of Sergio Donadoni , that was joined by another team from the Boston Museum, in

189-589: The New Kingdom of Egypt . The Egyptians built a complex of temples at the site, centered on a temple to Amun of Napata—a local, ram-headed form of the main god of the Egyptian capital city of Thebes, Egypt . In the last years of the New Kingdom and after its collapse in 1169 BC, there was little construction at Jebel Barkal. Apart from the temples, no trace of this Egyptian settlement has yet been found at

216-498: The 1980s, under the direction of Timothy Kendall. The larger temples, such as the Temple of Amun , are even today considered sacred to the local population. The carved wall painted chambers of the Temple of Mut are well preserved. Temple B700, built by Atlanersa and decorated by Senkamanisken , is now largely destroyed. It received the sacred bark of Amun from the nearby B500 on certain cultic occasions, and may have served during

243-525: The 25th dynasty of Egypt were buried. The chronology of the tombs that he developed and the interpretations that followed have been more recently disregarded as erroneous. Reisner found the skull of a Nubian female (who he thought was a king) which is in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard . Reisner believed that Kerma was originally the base of an Egyptian governor and that these Egyptian rulers evolved into

270-853: The Western cemetery in Giza was granted by Gaston Maspero , director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service . The area was divided into three sections, and chosen by lot. The southern section was given to the Italians under Ernesto Schiaparelli , the northern strip to the Germans under Ludwig Borchardt , and the middle section to Andrew Reisner. He met Queen Marie of Romania in Giza. During this first expedition, Reisner gathered and catalogued approximately 17.000 objects. In 1907, Reisner

297-494: The coronation of the kings of the early Napatan period, in the mid 7th century BC. The Temple was decorated by Senkamanisken , where he is shown clubbing enemies. The hieroglyphic inscription on the Temple described the role of the god Amun in selecting Sekamanisken as king: I said of you [while you were still] in your mother's womb that you were to be ruler of Kemet ["Black Land", probably meaning Egypt and Kush]. I knew you in

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324-512: The first time by a series of European explorers beginning in the 1820s. Their drawings and descriptions, particularly those of Frédéric Cailliaud (1821), Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds (1821), and Karl Richard Lepsius (1844), record significant architectural details that have since disappeared. In 1862 five inscriptions from the Third Intermediate Period were recovered by an Egyptian officer and transported to

351-561: The importance of recording every discovery in order to provide comprehensive interpretations of a site, taking into account the debris and minor artifacts. In this sense, he distanced himself from the work of previous excavators, whose approaches were more similar to those of treasure hunters. Reisner advanced a theory of stratigraphy in an appendix of his manual Archaeological Fieldwork in Egypt: A Method of Historical Research, published posthumously. Reisner's views on Nubia were conditioned by

378-585: The independent monarchs of Kerma. He also created a list of Egyptian viceroys of Kush . He found the tomb of Queen Hetepheres I , the mother of King Khufu (Cheops in Greek ) who built the Great Pyramid at Giza . During this time he also explored mastabas . Arthur Merton (London Times) remarked in 1936 in the aftermath of the Abuwtiyuw discovery that Reisner "enjoys an unrivalled position not only as

405-613: The location of Kushite royal burials was moved to Meroë, inaugurating the Meroitic period of the Kingdom of Kush . Jebel Barkal continued to be an important city of Kush during the Meroitic period. A sequence of palaces were built, most notably by King Natakamani , new temples were built and older temples were renovated. During the 1st century BC - 1st century AD, eight royal pyramid burials were built at Jebel Barkal (rather than at Meroë), for reasons that are not clear, but perhaps reflecting

432-411: The mid-7th century BC, they continued to rule Kush with Jebel Barkal and the city of Meroë as the most important urban centers of Kush. Jebel Barkal's palaces and temples continued to be renovated from the 7th-early 3rd centuries BC. Most of the royal pyramid burials of the kings and queens of Kush during this time were built at the site of Nuri , 9 km to the northeast of Jebel Barkal. In 270 BCE,

459-752: The outstanding figure in present-day Egyptology , but also as a man whose soundness of judgement and extensive general knowledge are widely conceded." Although Reisner was not the first to acknowledge the importance of stratigraphy in archaeological excavations, he was one of the first archaeologists to apply it during his excavations in Egypt and develop the methodological principles. Previously, only Flinders Petrie had paid some serious attention to this technique in his book Methods and Aims in Archaeology. Reisner took care on identifying different stratigraphic deposits and removing them layer by layer. He insisted on

486-431: The prominence of one or more families from the city. After the collapse of Kush during the 4th century AD, Jebel Barkal continued to be occupied in the medieval (Christian) period of Nubia, as attested by architectural remains, burials, and burial inscriptions. The ruins around Jebel Barkal include at least 13 temples that were built, renovated, and expanded over a period of over 1,500 years. The temples were described for

513-551: The semen, while you were in the egg, that you were to be lord. I made you receive the Great Crown, which Re caused to appear on the first good occasion. [Inasmuch as] a father makes his son excellent, it is I who decreed kingship to you. [So] who shall share it with you? For I am the Lord of Heaven. As I give to Re, [so] he gives to his children, from gods to men. It is I who gives you the royal charter.... No other [can] decree (who

540-591: The site. Jebel Barkal was the capital city of the Kingdom of Kush as it returned to power in the years after 800 BCE as the Dynasty of Napata. The Kushite kings who conquered and ruled over Egypt as the 25th Dynasty , including Kashta , Piankhy (or Piye ), and Taharqa , all built, renovated, and expanded monumental structures at the site. After the Kushites were driven out by the Assyrian conquest of Egypt in

567-568: The team leading the diggings there, Sir Wellcome . From 1919 to 1921, Reisner excavated the sites of Jebel Barkal (The Holy Mountain), el-Kurru and Meroe in Nubia . Upon his studies at Jebel Barkal, in he found the Nubian kings were not buried in the pyramids but outside of them. His studies in the Pyramid field of el-Kurru led him to reconsider the role of this royal cemetery, where kings of

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594-569: The term "group B" has fallen into disuse). After a decade in Egypt, Reisner headed the Harvard excavation of Samaria , first in 1908 and Gottlieb Schumacher , and for a second time in 1910, when he discovered written documents testifying the presence of an Egyptian population in 8th century BCE Palestina. In 1910, he was appointed Curator of Egyptian Art at Boston Museum of Fine Arts and in 1911 Resiner and his family traveled back to America, where he reassumed teaching at Harvard. In 1913, Reisner

621-423: The theoretical ideas of his own time, many of which were based on racist considerations about the progress and decline of cultures. From his perspective, the subsequent stages of Nubia civilization were the result of the influx of external peoples that migrated into the country. He deemed the local black populations incapable of the artistic or architectural achievements he faced during his excavations. He postulated

648-716: Was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914 and the American Philosophical Society in 1940. On his return from Germany in 1899, Reisner organized his first archaeological expedition to Egypt (1899-1905), funded by philanthropist Phoebe Hearst . In subsequent seasons, he excavated the Middle Kingdom sites of Deir el-Ballas and El-Ahaiwah, where he developed an archaeological methodology that characterized his work from that moment on. In 1902, permission to excavate

675-534: Was hired by the British occupation government in Egypt to conduct an emergency survey in northern Nubia in response to potential damage of archaeological sites during the construction of the Aswan Low Dam . There, he developed a still-in-use chronology that divided the earliest history of Ancient Nubia according to four successive cultural groups that he named Group A, Group B, Group C, and Group X (although

702-412: Was tasked with training the young archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford in excavation techniques, Crawford was later to warmly recall that Reisner was "an excavator of the first rank". Soon after, he organized the joint expedition Harvard-Boston. Between 1913 and 1916 excavations were conducted in the ancient site of Kerma (Nubia). He also excavated two cemeteries at Jebel Moya , encouraged by the director of

729-570: Was that of the Kerma culture , which was also known as Kush, but this occupation is so far known only from scattered potsherds. Around 1450 BCE, the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III conquered Barkal and built a fortified settlement (Egyptian menenu ) there as the southern limit of the Egyptian empire. The city and region around it came to be called Napata , and the Egyptian occupation of Jebel Barkal extended through most of

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