Although the last Meroitic monarch known by name was Yesbokheamani (283 – 300 AD), 30 years later the dead rulers were still buried in the Northern cemetery of Meroe. On the other hand, an inscription of an Ethiopian king Aezana, discovered in the city of Axum and dated to c. 350 AD, reports a war with the Noba people and the conquest of Al-Butana. Probably at that time the kingdom of Meroe no longer existed. Whether the hegemony of Meroe collapsed due to an internal crisis, or whether its fall was partly brought about y raiding nomads from the desert, is a question that cannot be decisively answered…
The nomads build tumuli…
The next two centuries, the so-called Post-Meroitic period, is one of the most mysterious and least recognized periods in the history of the Sudan. Monumental architecture and knowledge of writing disappeared altogether, and in the belt between Sennar and the Fourth Cataract there appear earth burial tumuli of the Tanqasi culture, today the only legible remains of the Noba nomad tribes who arrived at this region from the territories of modern Kordofan. An especially large and richly equipped burial ground was discovered in el-Hobagi.
The Blemmyes – a wild headless race
The Meroitic inhabitants of Lower Nubia encountered arrivals using the Nubian language. These included the Nobatae who in 296 were apparently entrusted by Emperor Diocletian with the defense of the southern Egyptian frontier, and the Blemmyes from Eastern Desert, scornfully described by Pliny as “a wild headless race with eyes and ears rising directly from their shoulders”. The latter were particularly devoted to the old Egyptian religion and each year would go on a mass pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Isis on the Island of Philae. The specific civilization that emerged from the fusion of these elements is named the X-Group or Ballana culture.
The nameless kings from Ballana and Qustul
It was in Ballana, and also at nearby Qustul, that the cemeteries of huge tumuli with burials of tribal rulers were found. The dead were equipped with immense splendor – the burial gifts included breathtaking crowns that used the symbolism of ancient Egyptian motifs, and highly precious silver vessels imported from territories of the Roman Empire. The political significance of those nameless kings is highly obscure. Probably we shall never know whether the two Nobatian rulers, Silko and Kharamazeye, mentioned in the inscriptions on the temple walls in Kalabsha, had also been buried in one of the Ballana tumulus graves…
