Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-65tv2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-06T06:15:43.082Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mancala at the pyramids of Meroe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Alex de Voogt
Alex de Voogt*
Affiliation:
American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY 10024-5192, USA (Email: adevoogt@amnh.org)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Game-boards carved on monuments offer an intriguing opportunity to track a certain mindset in time and space. In an earlier Antiquity article, the author showed us that mancala boards were carved on the Roman plinths at Palmyra by Arab soldiers. Here he takes us into Sudan, finding new mancala boards on the first-millennium pyramids at Meroe. With adroit detective work, he shows that these too are probably owed to military visitors, this time a group of nineteenth-century Turkish soldiers of the Ottoman empire—perhaps those assigned to help Giuseppe Ferlini to blow up and pillage the tombs.

Keywords

MeroeOttoman empiregamesmancalapyramids

Information

Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 334 , December 2012 , pp. 1155 - 1166
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Azim, M. 1975. Quatre campagnes de fouilles sur la Forteresse de Saï, 1970-1973 1ère partie: l'installation pharaonique. Études sur l'Égypte et le Soudan anciens. Cahier de Recherches de l'Institut de Papyrologie et d'Égyptologie de Lille 3: 91–125.Google Scholar
Bjørkelo, A.J. 2003. Prelude to the Mahdiyya: peasants and traders in the Shendi region, 1821-1885. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cailliaud, F. 1823. Voyage à Méroé et au Fleuve Blanc, au-delà du Fâzoql dans le midi du royaume de Sennâr, à Syouah et dans cinq autres oasis fait dans les années 1819, 1821, et 1822. Paris: Imprimerie Royale.Google Scholar
Chapman, S. & Dunham, D.. 1952. The royal cemeteries of Kush. Volume 3. Decorated chapels of the Meroitic pyramids at Meroë and Barkal. Boston (MA): Boston Museum of Fine Arts.Google Scholar
Coquery-Vidrovitch, C. 2009. Africa and the Africans in the nineteenth century: a turbulent history. Armonk (NY): M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Davies, R. 1925. Some Arab games and puzzles. Sudan Notes and Records 8: 137-52.Google Scholar
Depaulis, T. 2001. Jeux de parcours du monde arabo-musulman (Afrique du Nord et Proche-Orient). Journal of Board Game Studies 4: 53–76.Google Scholar
Hinkel, F.W. 1986. Reconstruction work at the royal cemetery at Meroe, in Krause, M. (ed.) Nubische Studien: Tagungsakten der 5. Internationalen Konferenz der International Society for Nubian Studies, Heidelberg, 22.-25. September 1982: 99–108. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern.Google Scholar
Hinkel, F.W. & Yellin, J.W.. Forthcoming. The necropolises of Kush I.1, 2. Meroe. The Southern Royal Cemetery. Berlin: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.Google Scholar
Mulvin, L. & Sidebotham, S.E.. 2004. Roman game boards from Abu Sha'ar (Red Sea coast, Egypt). Antiquity 78: 602-17.Google Scholar
Salam Sidahmed, A. & Sidahmed, A.. 2005. Sudan. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sayyid-Marsot, A.L. 1984. Egypt in the reign of Muhammad Ali. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schädler, U. 1998. Mancala in Roman Asia Minor. Journal of Board Games Studies 1: 10–25.Google Scholar
Trigger, B.G. 1969. The myth of Meroe and the African Iron Age. African Historical Studies 2(1): 33–50.Google Scholar
De Voogt, A.J. 2010. Mancala players in Palmyra. Antiquity 84: 1055-66.Google Scholar
De Voogt, A.J. In press. Game boards and game pieces in the Kingdom of Kush: tokens of cultural contact and influence, in Zach, M. (ed.) Beiträge zur Sudanforschung. The Kushite world. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference for Meroitic Studies, Vienna, 1-4 September 2008. Vienna: Institut für Afrikanistik, Abteilung Sudanforschung.Google Scholar
Welsby, D.A. 1998. The Kingdom of Kush: the Napatan and Meroitic empires. Princeton (NJ): Markus Wiener.Google Scholar