Banganarti — the Nubian Pilgrimage Centre and the Church of the Archangel Raphael on the Nile
Banganarti lies on the eastern bank of the Nile, about ten kilometres south of the ruins of Old Dongola, capital of the Christian Kingdom of Makuria. Its name in the local Nubian language means "Island of the Locusts". The settlement arose at this site probably in the sixth century AD, and continued for more than a thousand years, reaching the peak of its prosperity between the eighth and fourteenth centuries, surrounded by a fortification wall enclosing its religious centre.
The site entered the circle of wide scientific research only recently: the joint Polish mission to the Middle Nile surveyed it in 1998, and began its regular excavations there in 2001 under the leadership of archaeologist Bogdan Żurawski, in cooperation between the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw and the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums. The excavations revealed two churches, one built over the ruins of the other, in the heart of the archaeological mound at the site.
The Lower Church is the older, its construction dating back to the sixth and seventh centuries AD. The Upper Church was built on its ruins around the middle of the eleventh century AD, and was dedicated to the Archangel Raphael, whom the Nubians of the Middle Ages regarded as a protector of human health and a refuge for healing through faith, so his church became a destination for pilgrims from distant regions, in the manner of the shrines of the angels known in the Byzantine world.
The plan of the Upper Church is unusual: a central dome carried on four massive piers, surrounded by many small chapels. Its walls were decorated with coloured wall paintings that accumulated between the late twelfth century and the early fourteenth century, most notably a series of portraits in the seven eastern chapels showing a king of Makuria under the protection of an angel, surrounded by the apostles, alongside images of angels and saints and the Virgin Mary and Child.
The most precious thing Banganarti left was written on the walls: researcher Adam Łajtar documented 967 inscriptions in the Upper Church alone, and estimates that the original number far exceeded that. Pilgrims wrote these inscriptions in Greek and Old Nubian, recording in them their names, their homelands, their professions and short prayers addressed mostly to the Archangel Raphael. These visitors came from across the Kingdom of Makuria, from Nuri in the south to Faras in the north, and there was even an inscription in Catalan-Provençal by a visitor named Benesik who came from southern France, rare evidence of how far the shrine's fame extended.
The Upper Church remained in use until at least the second half of the fourteenth century, and perhaps until the beginning of the fifteenth. Today the site of Banganarti, with its inscriptions and paintings, offers a unique archive of religious and social life in late Christian Nubia: it was written not by kings or historians, but by hundreds of ordinary visitors who immortalised their names on the walls of a church on the bank of the Nile.
📚 Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List — Banganarti file; Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw — Banganarti Project page; Adam Łajtar, "Wall Inscriptions in the Upper Church at Banganarti", Journal of Juristic Papyrology, and his study "A Late Christian Pilgrimage Centre in Nubia" (Peeters, 2020) — Editorial Team
