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Twelve - Makurian Visual Culture

Between Byzantium and Africa

from II - Images, Objects, Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2024

By
Włodzimierz Godlewski
Edited by
Elizabeth S. Bolman ,
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson  and
Jack Tannous
Elizabeth S. Bolman
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
Jack Tannous
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Ultimately in the end of the 6th century the Kingdom of Makuria was converted to Christianity and entered into the orbit of strong Byzantine cultural and civilizational influence

A hundred years of Byzantine influence set an indelible stamp on the Christian culture of Makuria, which flourished for close to 700 years, until the turn of the 13th century, as an “African version of Byzantium”. Greek was the official language of the Church as well as administration, strongly impacting Old Nubian, which was commonly written already by the mid 11th century. Byzantine iconography from before the iconoclasm remained the base of a flourishing local art, represented by wall paintings among others, created for an artistically sophisticated Makurian society, at the royal court as well as in the monasteries.

Keywords

liturgyTikrit
Type
Chapter
Information
Worlds of Byzantium
Religion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East
 , pp. 352 - 402
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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