New Light on Ancient Napata:
Urban Center of the Empire of Kush
Saturday, September 13, 2025, at 1pm (eastern US time) on Zoom
Embedded Files
Jebel Barkal, with Napatan and Meroitic pyramids | photo by Gregory Tucker
The topic
Napata is the ancient name of a city at the base of a rocky outcrop known today as Jebel Barkal. Located on the Nile River in what is now northern Sudan, Napata grew up around the Temple of Amun that was originally built after the Egyptian conquest of the New Kingdom (ca. 1425 BCE). The temple complex was expanded during the Napatan period (ca. 750-270 BCE) and Meroitic period (270 BCE – 300 CE).
The site was visited by 19th-century travelers and researchers, who documented the standing remains, and it was first excavated by George Reisner in 1916-20. Napata has traditionally been thought of as a religious center, partly because of the undoubted importance of the Amun Temple, but also partly because of the history of research at the site.
A new joint project of the University of Michigan and the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums of Sudan began in 2018 with an aim of understanding how Napata functioned as a city beyond the official district. This talk will summarize what we have learned since then about the city plan, elite houses, commercial districts, local environments, and food systems (both agriculture and herding).
Email us at arce.dc.news at gmail dot com for a link to register for this event.
Our events typically last an hour—50 minutes for the lecture, 10 minutes for Q+A.
Alert: We do not allow recording or imaging of our presentations in any way.
The speaker
Dr. Geoff Emberling is an archaeologist and museum curator who has worked on the ancient cultures of the Middle East and Northeast Africa. His research has focused on ancient cities, empires, and social identities, and in recent years has increasingly sought to engage with local communities and collaborate with local professional colleagues.
After a PhD dissertation on ethnicity in early Mesopotamia and fieldwork at the early city at Tell Brak in northeastern Syria, he began fieldwork in Sudan in 2007—initially in a salvage project at the 4th Cataract of the Nile, and at the Kushite royal pyramid cemetery at el-Kurru. He began a project at the Kushite urban center of Napata (also known as Jebel Barkal) in 2018, and has worked since then to understand the settlement as a functioning city. He is currently a Research Scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse