WARSAW, POLAND—A team from the Center of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw is excavating the Church of Raphael, part of a royal complex of buildings at the site of Dongola, the capital of Makuria—a medieval kingdom located in what is now northern Sudan. The church’s pulpit was made with hieroglyph-inscribed granite blocks repurposed from a pharaonic temple. Images of archangels, angels, priests, saints, and officials of the Nubian kingdom were painted on smooth lime wall plaster with expensive pigments. Each person depicted in the paintings was also identified and described. One of the inscriptions records a meeting at the church attended by the bishops of Makuria, the archbishop of Dongola, and the king. “The church was founded by King Joannes. Until now we did not know much about him. The inscription proves that he was an important person in the hierarchy of the church and had considerable political influence,” archaeologist Wlodzimierz Godlewski said in a Science & Scholarship in Poland report. For more, go to "Miniature Pyramids of Sudan."
