Kulubnarti church

The Kulubnarti church is located on the island of Kulubnarti, village of Kulb, in Northern Sudan. The island is situated between the 2nd and 3rd cataracts of the Nile, about 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Wadi Halfa, in the Batn-El-Hajar region.

"Adams believes that christianity 'probably lasted until the end of the fifteenth century on Kulubnarti island... but the churches both there and in other fortified christian sites in the same area seem to date to the fourteenth century at the latest."

Ecclesiastical History Society (1975)^[1]

History

Somers Clarke published a sketch in 1912 of the island's church, its walls made of mud bricks. In 1964, Peter Grossmann discovered its vault and placed it upright. In the 1930s, the unusual central structure was recognized by Clarke and Ugo Monneret de Villard as being unique. The anthropologists William Yewdale Adams and Peter Grossmann date the church to the 13th or 14th century, Adams having dated pottery finds in the church to that period, and Grossman concurring with the dating on the basis of stylistic comparisons.^[2] Greek, Coptic, and Old Nubian language graffito^[3] was incised within the church.^[4] The church paintings, described by Adams in his 1994 book, were moved to the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum.^[5]

Architecture

The small building has an almost square 7 by 6 metres (23 ft × 20 ft) central area. The floor plan, roughly analogous to common village churches of Nubia, was simplified as a whole. The rectangular area of about 14 by 8.5 metres (46 ft × 28 ft) is unique. Unlike most churches, the building had Nubian features in the middle of the long sides but also contained rectangular niches. There was a U-shaped altar area. Behind the apse, to the east, there was a vestibule, in addition to two symmetrically arranged rooms, each with a door. The entire building consisted of mud bricks with a single layer of rough stones at ground level.^[2]

There are two long walls with arches, just over 6 feet (1.8 m) in height at the peak. On the east wall, there is a rectangular, bifurcated chancel with lateral side rooms, which were entered from the aisles. In the west wall, there were three pairs of slit windows and a division into three nearly equal-sized rooms. The corners of the west wall were separated from other rooms. The two rectangular brick masonry pillars and wall corners of the western side rooms linked arches. Another slit opening connected the northwestern side room with the naos.^[2]

There are two central pillars in the middle apse. The nave, after deduction of the side rooms, was nearly twice as wide as long and apparently windowless. A horizontal, cylindrical attachment was found on spherical pendentives. On the inside of the south wall, remains of paint are visible, with fragmentary inscriptions elsewhere, and incised graffito in three languages. In the niches of the north and south sides, and in the east wall, there were paired slit windows towards the top. Remains of wall paintings were found in the southeast corner. In the 1960s, the central part of the north wall and the southern half of the apse were made upright to the base of the vault; the western outer wall had completely collapsed.^[2]

In the southern room, a double flight of stairs led to two platformed areas around a pillar by the roof. One section of the roof probably had window openings: there was a square wall segment, and then a central round dome. The dome towered far above the longitude of the three adjacent barrel-vaulted rooms. The shape of the roof could be reconstructed from the visible vault approaches that were available at almost every wall. The naos bulged with an inner diameter of 7.3 metres (24 ft), and held the largest circular dome of Nubia. The design of a Nubian vault manufactured dome was a structure of eight equal arches, built upon a central square area. This corresponds to the principle of the Middle Byzantine building style of eight columns. This design was used by a few churches on the Greek islands and the church of Deir El Quseir, a few kilometers south of Cairo, however, no other church in Nubia used the supporting structure of the dome found at the Kulb church. It is also the only known church in Nubia with a raised central dome tambour. The only known church which compared with this one at Kulb was a traditional church in a poor condition in the courtyard of the temple in Bait al-Wali, dated to the 8th century, and part of the 1960s UNESCO rescue operation due to the Aswan dam.^[2]

References

1. Ecclesiastical History Society (1975). Studies in church history. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. p. 27. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
2. Deichmann, Friedrich Wilhelm; Grossmann, Peter; Feld, Otto (1988). Nubische Forschungen. Gebr. Mann. pp. 45, 47, 50–53, 156. ISBN 978-3-7861-1512-0. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
3. Łajtar, Adam (2003). Catalogue of the Greek Inscriptions in the Sudan National Museum at Khartoum (I. Khartoum Greek). Peeters Publishers. pp. 43–. ISBN 978-90-429-1252-6. Retrieved 11 August 2012.
4. Dinkler, Erich (1970). Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens in christlicher Zeit (in German and English). A. Bongers. pp. 141, 149. ISBN 978-3-7647-0216-8. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
5. Immerzeel, Mat; Vliet, Jacques Van Der (2004). Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Leiden, August 27-September 2, 2000. Peeters Publishers. pp. 1046–. ISBN 978-90-429-1409-4. Retrieved 11 August 2012.