Jebel Barkal conservation

Greetings from the Barkal  conservation team!  

This year, we have been excited to start hands-on conservation work in B700, a temple dedicated to Osiris-Dedwen, a Nubian form of the Egyptian god of the underworld. The inner parts of the temple—the sanctuary and adjoining courtyard—were constructed by the Napatan king Atlanersa (ca. 653–640 BCE), while the outer courtyard and portico were added by his son, Senkamanisken (ca. 640–620 BCE).

Last winter, during the 2022 season, the focus was on overall documentation of this temple. While the temple has suffered damage over the past 2,000+ years, we have been able to compare its 2022 and 2023 appearance to how it looked more than 100 years ago, when it was excavated by the archaeologist George Reisner. Amazingly, its condition has changed relatively little—but Reisner did not leave the temple in good condition.

A portable hoist for lifting and moving heavy blocks is visible in the foreground. At left, Elmontaser and an assistant,
Akram, clean around the base of a column. At right, Sefian and David discuss the future alignment of column drums.

This season our goal is to stabilize the walls in the sanctuary and courtyards, individually document all the fallen blocks and column drums in those rooms and, where possible, reset them. Some of the original floor is preserved in all three rooms, yet the current sand “floor” level varies dramatically, as many areas were deeply dug by Reisner. To make the temple more accessible and legible to visitors, we plan to fill in these deeply dug areas to level the floors and to organize the fallen blocks.

Conservation builder Sefian Mutwakil stabilizes an undercut area of the sanctuary wall with bricks and lime mortar.

Our work in B700 will take more than one season to complete, yet in two weeks we have already made a good start. Our onsite conservation team this year is made up of conservators Suzanne Davis and ElMontaser Dafalla Elmoubark, conservation architect David Flory, and conservation builder Sefian Mutwakil. We are assisted onsite by several archaeologists, including El-Hassan Ahmed Mohamed, Sami Elamin, and Pawel Wolf. We very grateful to the United States Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation for the support to undertake this important work.

–Suzanne Davis, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan

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