Sudan - El Hassa

In 2000, the French Section of the Directorate on Antiquities of Sudan (SFDAS), in cooperation with the Sudanese Heritage Department, National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, opened an excavation site in the Meroitic city of El Hassa, on the Right Bank of the Nile, 30 kilometres south of the Méroé Pyramids. From the project’s inception, the excavation was intended as a training site in field documentation techniques open to Sudanese Antiquities inspectors. The Institute of Art of the University of Shendi, meanwhile, joined in the project, by assigning some of its associate professors and lecturers to the excavation site. The SFDAS repeated one of the chapters of its cooperation activity, which oversaw its creation in 1969. It quickly became clear, seeing the breadth and depth of the site to be excavated (21 hectares), as well as to enable a long-lasting figure for the excavation and ensure that the training programme is appropriate and effective, that the undertaking would need an excavation centre-school on-site.

The El-Hassa site was chosen for a number of reasons and in order to respond, through the excavation, to a range of questions.

It appeared necessary that French research become involved once again in Meroitic archaeology at the very edges of the Empire’s capital. Opening up an excavation site in the Shendi region, and thus on the Island of Méroé, is a return to sites such as the excavation of the imperial palace of Wed ben Naqa, by Jean Vercoutter and Thabit Hassan Thabit, or the dig of the two post-Meroitic princely tumuli, in El Hobagi, by Patrice Lenoble and Mahmoud el-Sheikh el-Tayeb.

Whereas we are primarily familiar with the major urban sites, such as the capital, Méroé, and the outposts in the middle of the Sahel (Musawwarat es-Sufra and Naqa), a whole network of “cities” still seen as secondary, built mainly on the eastern bank of the Nile, form what appear to be, to the best of current knowledge, imperial establishments at the outskirts of the capital. For instance, el-Hassa is one of the only three known Meroitic sites that, like Méroé, have bloomery iron slag spreading zones, testifying to the existence of iron ore transformation workshops and forges. The other two sites are Domat Hammadab and el-Muweis. That the establishments are grouped indicates that there was industry closely overseen by the royal powers, and that most of the production was intended for arms.

About the monuments from the Meroitic religion, little is yet known, for lack, initially, for an adequate understanding of the archaeology of temples. Once again, on the Island of Méroé, the same sites - Méroé, Musawwarat and Naqa - yield the most information. Digs at the temple of El-Hassa give a greater understanding of why this is, for, at the turn of the era, new temples were built to the god Amon, who had been imported from Egypt long before and eventually became indigenous with the centuries. The building’s degree of destruction makes it possible to engage in in-depth analysis of the building techniques and methods implemented to build a Meroitic cultural monument: foundation techniques, brick moulding, rough-casting and wall decoration.

Mission members (alphabetical order)
Abdel Moneim (lecturer, University of Shendi)
Ahmed el-Amin Ahmed (Antiquities Officer)
Ali El-Mehrani (Antiquities Officer)
Et-Taher Adam En-Nour (Antiquities Officer)
Habab Idriss (Antiquities Officer)
Ina’am Abdel Rahman (Antiquities Officer)
Jacques Beilin (IGN topographer)
Laurent Delgado (IGN topographer)
Mohamed Farouk (Antiquities Officer)
Nada Babiker Mohamed (lecturer, University of Shendi)
Nagla Abdine Mohamed (Antiquities Officer)
Noha Abdel Hafez (lecturer, University of Shendi)
René-Pierre Dissaux (archaeologist, drawing artist)
Vincent Francigny (doctoral student, SFDAS resident researcher)
Coralie Gradel (doctoral student, SFDAS fellow)
Christine Heuraux (archaeologist, document librarian)
Giorgio Renato Nogara (archaeologist, academic head of excavation school)
Yassine Mohamed Saïd (topographer)

Name of mission leader: Vincent Rondot, former scientific member of the French Institute of Eastern Archaeology in Cairo, CNRS researcher, Director of the French Section of the Sudan Directorate on Antiquities in Sudan

Institutional partners:
National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (Khartoum)
Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres (Paris)
HALMA-IPEL UMR 8164 du CNRS (Lille)
LLACAN CNRS (Paris)
Charles-de-Gaulle University -Lille 3 (Lille)
Department of Archaeozoology of the University of Geneva (Geneva)
Lafarge Research Laboratories (Paris)
IRSID (Nancy)
VALECTRA Laboratories (EDF)
National Geographic Institute