Author: Włodzimierz Godlewski | Pages: 119–125
Abstract
A deposit of objects discarded from the palace on the citadel in Old Dongola (Sudan) was found in the 2008 season in a pit cut in the rocky ground of an open space that existed between the Palace of king Ioannes and the western citadel defenses. This irregular area may have been a courtyard, later architecturally adapted. The pit had been clearly used as a dump for broken objects, consisting mainly of pottery, both tableware and wine amphorae, the latter being in the main part imported from Egypt. At the pit bottom, broken into ten pieces were fragments of a tub of considerable size (H. 0.58m; L. 1.05m; W. 0.76m), cut in a single sandstone block. What makes this tub unique is its carved decoration in high relief, turning almost into full sculpture. The composition on the front wall was antithetic representing two rams on decorative bases, opposite each other, flanking a central lion’s head, depicted frontally. The flanking rams were shown in full, with their heads practically sculpted in the round. The rounded wall of the tub preserved on the left side was adorned with two plaited panels in low-relief. The context of the finding, setting for the date when the object had been broken and discarded, yielded sherds of pottery from the end of the Sixth and from the Seventh century AD. The tub is then an earlier work, executed perhaps in the end of the Sixth century as a part of the furnishing for the palace of Ioannes or earlier, in the first half of the Sixth century, for Building B.IV of unidentified function, which was destroyed even as the palace of Ioannes has being built.