Henry Bishop-Wright (University of Cardiff): ‘Meroe: a Hellenistic kingdom in Sudan (?)’
Ruling the ancient territory of Nubia (approximately, present-day Sudan), Meroe was the dominant kingdom of northeast Africa south of Egypt c. 300 BC – AD 300. For six centuries, it held hegemony over the middle Nile and mediated contact between sub-Saharan Africa, Ptolemaic-Roman Egypt, and the Mediterranean world. Its position at the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia resulted in socio-economic connections that manifested in its material culture, architecture, and religion. However, approaches to Meroe remain dominated by Egyptological or ‘Nubia-centric’ methodologies and it has scarcely entered current debates on ancient connectivity and globalisation. By examining the evidence for social, economic and material connectivity, this paper attempts to reframe Meroe as ‘a Kingdom of the connected Hellenistic world’, constituting a hitherto unexplored epistemological shift into Hellenistic studies.
The Graeco-Aegyptiaca lectures are organized by the UCL Department of Greek and Latin, London and the Palladion, Budapest. The series started in January 2022 with papers given monthly by established scholars in the field of ancient Egyptian and Greek cultural relations.
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