Pilgrimage to Sudan - Archaeology Magazine

Pilgrimage to Sudan

Miracles of Banganarti

At the site of Banganarti in Sudan (ancient Nubia), archaeologist Bogdan Żurawski and his team are shown just hours after the discovery in 2001 of a mural painting hidden for centuries under the Sahara. The image depicts a ruler of the Kingdom of Makuria. To the king's left, the hand of the Archangel Raphael is visible.
(Courtesy Jacek Poremba)

Sometime in the fourteenth century A.D., a traveler named Benesec journeyed from either southern France or northern Spain across the Mediterranean, through Egypt, and then up the Nile far into Africa's desert interior, a trip of more than 2,500 miles. His destination was Banganarti, the most important pilgrimage site in the medieval Christian Kingdom of Makuria. Benesec may have traveled to Banganarti ("Island of the Locust" in the local language) to be healed of some ailment, or he may have been on a trading mission. Perhaps he shared in one of the sanctuary's curative rituals. These included drinking holy water and drilling holes in the unpainted walls to obtain holy dust, which was mixed with water and taken as a medication. He may have engaged in the practice of incubation, which involved sleeping inside the church of the site's patron saint. Whether Benesec was cured or not is unknown, but an inscription he scratched onto the wall survives as a record of his journey. Written in the Latin alphabet, the inscription reads, "When Benesec came to pay homage to Raphael," and is one of almost a thousand mementoes left by the pilgrims who came to Banganarti over a period of 600 years. In the mid-fourteenth century the church collapsed and the sanctuary was abandoned to be covered by the drifting sands of the Sahara for almost seven centuries.

In 2001 a team of archaeologists from the University of Warsaw's Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, led by Bogdan Żurawski of the Polish Academy of Sciences, came to Banganarti in the land of ancient Nubia (now part of Sudan) to begin excavating a huge kom (artificial mound) covering a church. Known locally as the kom el-kenissa ("mound of the church"), the kom had been created by centuries of discarding debris around the building and the accumulation of sand on top of it. The consecration of this church had been mentioned in The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, the major historical work of the Coptic Church, but its history was not the reason Żurawski and the archaeological mission from the University of Warsaw were there. They came because the site was increasingly threatened by aggressive palm planting surrounding the kom.

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Jarrett A. Lobell is executive editor 

Enviado desde el iPhone de Carlos Lozano