Catalogue of the Greek Inscriptions in the Sudan National Museum at Khartoum I. Khartoum, Greek. This item is unavailable.Catalogue of the Greek Inscriptions in the Sudan National Museum at Khartoum I. Khartoum, Greek

The book contains the edition of 123 Greek inscriptions kept in the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum. Two of them were monuments set up by Axumite kings in Meroe City after victorious campaigns carried out against the Meroitic state still before the official conversion of the Kingdom of Axum to Christianity in the middle of the 4th century. The remaining texts, in overwhelming majority epitaphs, are connected to the Nubian Christian culture flourishing between the 1st and the 6th Nile cataract from the 6th until the 14th/15th century. The inscriptions are presented in the geographical order from the north to the south. Each text is reproduced, edited (in many cases for the first time), translated and provided with an extensive commentary. The book opens with an introduction on the language, form and dating of the inscriptions. It is supplemented by ample indices and concordances. The book constitutes an indispensable instrument and material for every student of medieval Nubia. It shall also excite considerable interest among scholars researching Oriental Christianity and Greek epigraphy.

With only the single exception, all the Greek inscriptions kept in the Sudan National Museum at Khartoum are epitaphs, which means that the study of Greek inscriptions in the Museum is primarily the study of Christian Nubian funerary inscriptions. The inscriptions come from the entire territory of the Sudanese Nubia from Faras in the North to Soba in the South; but the main regions for excavations of these artefacts are around the Second Nile Cataract, Old Dongola and its vicinity, the area of Gebel Barak and the area of Abu Hamed. The author expands the catalogue to include a thorough treatise concerning the material and forms of support of the funerary artefacts; the script of the inscriptions themselves; the formulaic language deployed by the Nubians; the formulaic nature of the epitaphs including prayers, and (as far as can be ascertained) the dating system used by some of the inscriptions. The title contains 80 Black and White plates of the Inscriptions under discussion.