312 Tlie Antiquities of the Sudan.

Heru-Sa-At«f and Nastasenen clearly betray the native origin of their authors; they were written in hieroglyjihics by priests who aimed in vain at reproducing the old classical idiom of Thebes. Their last editor very aptly compares them to attempts of a Dongolawi to write Koranic Arabic.

3. .l/f/Y»(7(>.With the conquests of Alexander and his successors and the spread of the Roman Empire, Ethiopia was brought into touch with a wider system than any it had yet seen, and this Greco-Roman period coincides with the development of a complex original style, in which the African character seems to find its first articulate expression. Exact dates for the numerous monuments in this style cannot be given ; some may go back before the time of Alexander, some of the most elaborate certainly fall late in the Roman period. The architectural forms of the latter show the gradual supersession of Egyptian conventions by European designs and construction, while the rich attire of the rulers portrayed bears witness not less to their barbaric taste than to the wealth which radiated under the Par Romitna even beyond the limits of the empire. In this mingling of East and West these works should be compared with those of other schools that arose under the shadow of the Roman Empire, such as the Palmyrene school in Syria and the Greco-Roman Buddhist school in the north-west of India.

The most characteristic works of this school are to be found in the Berber province. The pyramids (Bagarawiya) and the avenue of rams and the pylon-fronted temples (Nagaa and Wadi El Sufra) point back to Egyptian prototypes, but side by side with these we see temples where the pylons have given way to columns fluted and spaced in the fa.shion of a Roman peristyle shrine, and one small building which has even been described as a Christian basilica !

The Meroitic Pantheon is equally mixed : we pass from the Amnion of Thebes to the Amnion of Napata. and from him to a strange Ethiopian Serapis and a still stranger local or Indian lion-headed god.

The subjects are mostly, like those in Egypt, scenes of adoration or offerings of spoils of victory, but the persons sculptured are Egyptian neither in typ3 nor costume. The best-known of these is the fat Queen " Candace," whose very fleshly charms are set ofi by masses of jewellery, heavy necklaces, armlets, bracelets, sandals, and clinging feather-like garments. Her consorts and attendants are only less richly bedizened with jewels and rare stuffs, embroidered with crosses, crescents, " and other delights." Other panels represent water goddesses and hunting scenes with wild beasts (lions, elephants, etc.), led in captivity by men and genii. The small objects found on these sites (now mostly at Munich and Berlin) give the same impression of barbaric wealth, and the relatively numerous bells show that the Ethiopian of those days was as fond of noise as his black successor.

Unfortunately the inscriptions which accompany these buildings cannot be deciphered. As we saw above, Egyptian was a foreign language to the people of Napita in the sixth century. On the Meroitic monuments not only is the language foreign, but new phonetic values have been given to the old hieroglyphic signs, which makes even transliteration impossible until more bilingual inscriptions turn up.* And these hieroglyphics persist until superseded by a script based on Egyptian demotic or perhaps some Arabian alphabet, which is equally unintelligible. 4. Cli rial inn. — The Christian antiquities have fared still worse at the hands of explorers than the earlier ones ; the traveller notes " ruins of a Coptic convent " and hurries on to something more congenial. Lepsius collected a few inscriptions, and these have been supplemented from time to time ; a few things have been found at Soba and rough sketches published of one or two churches.

The most interesting building known to the writer is the church at Old Dongola, a building in two storeys of burnt bricks, subsequently encased in a thick shell of sun-dried bricks. The ground plan of this is believed to be unique : it looks like an adaptation to Christian ends of old Egyptian structural motives. This building and the ruin-heaps into which many other churches — still called Kanisas by the natives — have been reduced, show that all the lessons of construction learnt under the Roman Empire were not forgotten under the rule of the Christian kings. The pottery of this period was, so far as one can judge from fragments still lying on the surface, more finely levigated, better baked, and more variously decorated than in earlier or later days.

Inscriptions in three languages have been found. At Soba, and perhaps at Oeteina (White Nile), Christian inscriptions occur in an unknown language, but in the Greek alphabet eked out by five additional letters; from the Dongola province and from Northern Nubia come inscriptions in Greek and in Coptic. Some of these are dated in the eighth and ninth centuries a.d., and the formulae used in them are similar to those found in Egypt.

The list of ancient sites, etc., appended does not pretend to be complete. Those who wish for further information are referred to the following authorities, which may be supplemented from the bibliography ; but they must remember that the study of these antiquities is still in its infancy.

* Two cartouclies <in an altui' ])ie»eived in 15eilin eiiablc uh to recogiii.so eif;lit signs.