Marking and making the Meroitic world”

In a case study this paper investigates a specific group of ‘geometric’ motifs that are found as petroglyphs on natural rock surfaces and as graffiti in architectural contexts. Similar motifs are also encountered on pottery and other vessels, on jewellery and possibly in body decoration. In some of these contexts the motifs can be well-dated to the later Meroitic and early post- Meroitic periods, i.e. the last century BC and the first five centuries AD in what is today northern Sudan. Initially known only from pottery and other
objects, these motifs had long been thought to be related to the (high-status) funerary realm and they were interpreted as ‘property marks’. Recent finds of such marks in hitherto unknown contexts, i.e. on rock surfaces in the open landscape, question this interpretation. Some suggestions now see these motifs as some kind of identity marker due to their apparent close link to the later Meroitic realm and their formal allusion to elements of state religion and symbols of power. Other evaluations of motif content, techniques of manufacture and placement have suggested instead that such marks may have belonged to the magico-religious realm, and that they could have been made and used in a variety of contexts. This presentation attempts to bring together a diverse body of material and investigate practises with which people of the past marked and made their world.