Archaeology in the past several decades has established that Makurian Nubia, the kingdom which flourished between the seventh and fourteenth centuries in Nubia (modern Sudan), was one of medieval Africa's most important cultural centers. Of the many images recovered after the salvage campaigns in the region during the 1960s, the visionary cross and the Four Living Creatures from the Christian apocalyptic tradition loom large. This talk examines the aesthetic adaptation and spatial deployment of these visionary phenomena at the sites of Abdallah Nirqi, Old Dongola, Faras, and Wadi es-Sebua. The consistent patronage of fiery, apocalyptic forms reveals much about the value of painting as an amuletic medium. Furthermore, what I term the "visionary mode" opens onto several other, site-specific phenomena in Nubia including painting within Pharaonic structures as well as the active import and copying of mystical writings from Egypt.

 

Cosponsored by History of Art and the Society for the Humanities