Soleb is an ancient town in

Nubia Nubia (, Nobiin language, Nobiin: , ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the confluence of the Blue Nile, Blue and White Nile, White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), and the Cataracts of the Nile, first cataract ...

, in present-day

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

. The site is located north of the third cataract of the Nile, on the western side of the Nile. It was discovered and described by

Karl Richard Lepsius Karl Richard Lepsius (; 23 December 181010 July 1884) was a German people, Prussian Egyptology, Egyptologist, Linguistics, linguist and modern archaeology, modern archaeologist. He is widely known for his opus magnum ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten ...

in 1844. The temple was built during the reign of

Amenhotep III Amenhotep III ( , ; "Amun is satisfied"), also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amenhotep the Great and Hellenization, Hellenized as Amenophis III, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty. According to d ...

and dedicated to

Amun Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. His oracle in Siwa Oasis, located in Western Egypt near the Libyan Desert, r ...

, but after

Akhenaten Akhenaten (pronounced ), also spelled Akhenaton or Echnaton ( ''ʾŪḫə-nə-yātəy'', , meaning 'Effective for the Aten'), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh reigning or 1351–1334 BC, the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eig ...

assumed power, it was rededicated to

Aten Aten, also Aton, Atonu, or Itn (, reconstructed ) was the focus of Atenism, the religious system formally established in ancient Egypt by the late Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten. Exact dating for the Eighteenth Dynasty is contested, thou ...

Necropolis

Soleb is also the location of a vast

necropolis A necropolis (: necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'' (). The term usually implies a separate burial site at a distan ...

with small tomb chapels decorated with

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

s. The earliest royal tombs date to the

18th dynasty The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XVIII, alternatively 18th Dynasty or Dynasty 18) is classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. The Eighteenth Dynasty ...

, whereas some belong to the Ramesside and Meroitic periods.

Amarna Period

During the Amarna Period (Mid 18th Dynasty), several pharaohs attended to Soleb, such as

Tutankhamun Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen, (; ), was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Born Tutankhaten, he instituted the restoration of the traditional polytheistic form of an ...

, and Ay.

Amenhotep III

A large

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

made of

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

was founded here by Amenhotep III. It is the southernmost temple currently known to have been built by this pharaoh. The temple was consecrated to the deity Amun Re and to the pharaoh depicted deified with ram-horns. The architect may have been

Amenhotep, son of Hapu Amenhotep, son of Hapu (transcribed ''jmn-ḥtp zꜣ ḥꜣp.w''; early-mid 14th century BC) was an ancient Egyptian architect, a priest, a Reporter (Ancient Egypt), herald, a scribe, and a public official, who held a number of offices under Am ...

. At

Sedeinga The Sedeinga pyramids are a group of at least 80 small pyramids near Sedeinga, Sudan, built ca. 1 BCE. They were discovered between 2009 and 2012 and date to the time of the Kingdom of Kush, an ancient kingdom in Nubia. They range in size from a ...

, a companion temple was built by Amenhotep III to

Queen Tiye Tiye (c. 1398 BC – 1338 BC, also spelled Tye, Taia, Tiy and Tiyi) was the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, mother of pharaoh Akhenaten and grandmother of pharaoh Tutankhamun; her parents were Yuya and Thuya. In 2010, ...

as a manifestation of the

Eye of Ra The Eye of Ra or Eye of Re, usually depicted as sun disk or right ''wedjat''-eye (paired with the Eye of Horus, left ''wedjat''-eye), is an entity in ancient Egyptian mythology that functions as an extension of the sun god Ra's power, equate ...

. The so-called

Prudhoe Lions The Prudhoe Lions, or Soleb Lions, are a pair of Ancient Egyptian red granite monumental sculptures dating from the 18th Dynasty, . They are now presented in the British Museum. The lions originally stood as guardian figures at the Temple of Sole ...

originally stood as guardian figures at this temple inscribed with the name of Amenhotep III. They depict a lioness, as symbols of

Sekhmet In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet ( or Sachmis , from ; ) is a warrior goddess as well as goddess of medicine. Sekhmet is also a solar deity, sometimes given the epithet "the Eye of Ra, eye of Ra". She is often associated with the goddesses Hatho ...

, a major deity who protected the pharaohs.

Akhenaten

During the reign of Akhenaten, he initially is shown worshipping his father and Amen at the temple. But later, he re-dedicates the temple to Aten.

Tutankhamen

During the reign of Tutankhamen, the religious reforms of his father (Akhenaten) were reversed and re-dedicated the temple to Amen-Ra. He finished the second granite lion and inscribed his name on the Prudhoe Lions.

Ay

During the reign of Ay, he also inscribed his name on the Prudhoe Lions.

List of imprisoned peoples

Major Felix in 1829 realized an expedition of the site and recognized the inscriptions of prisoners on visible columns commemorated the victories of Amenhotep III. Jude Flurry argues that these prisoner lists may be an exaggeration or a lie about Egyptian victories, but they do show who the Egyptians' enemies were. However, sector IV of the hypostyle hall was in ruins, demolished and partially covered by sand, and was discovered centuries later. In the 1957-1963 excavation expedition led by Michela Schiff Giorgini, other parts of the temple, including the remaining inscriptions of the prisoners, were reconstructed with the identified pieces. On the columns of the hypostyle hall, there is a list of the peoples that the Egyptians had conquered. A total of three lists are preserved with the names of foreign places and surviving people. Each list depicts the figure of a prisoner soldier with his arms tied, and with his shield. On each shield there is an inscription describing to which town and place the soldier belongs. Solebinscription

;Lists #tꜣ šꜣsw Trbr #tꜣ šꜣsw Yhwꜣ #tꜣ šꜣsw Smt # (''destroyed'') ;Column N4 #Btꜥn/f? ..# (''destroyed'') Amarawestinscription

;Lists of Amarah-West (50 km north of Soleb) #tꜣ šꜣsw Sꜥrr #tꜣ šꜣsw Rbn #tꜣ šꜣsw Pyspys #tꜣ šꜣsw Smt #tꜣ šꜣsw Yhwꜣ #tꜣ šꜣsw rbr

''tꜣ šꜣsw Yhwꜣ''

The transcription of one of the conquered people is 'tꜣ šꜣsw Yhwꜣ', translated as "land of the Shasu, those of Yhwꜣ", or "land of the nomads of Yhwꜣ". Thomas Schneider vocalizes the word as ''Yahwa'', though other vocalizations, such as ''Yehua'', have been proposed. Fleming reports that this ''Yhwꜣ'' was located in Palestine and Syria. According to Kennedy, exactly what the name ''Yhwꜣ'' refers to has been "a matter of debate", but he concludes that it "logically follows" that the Shasu of could be identified with the

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

, given the similarity of the term with the name of the Israelite god

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

. Shalomi Hen, while noting the scholarly discourse around the subject, considers the evidence too scanty to allow such an identification.

Gallery

File:Lepsius-Projekt tw 1-2-117.jpg, Plan of the site by Lepsius File:Lepsius-Projekt tw 1-2-116.jpg, View of the temple's ruins in the 19th century File:F. Frith - The Temple of Soleb, Ethiopia.jpg, View of the temple's colonnades in the 19th century

References

Sources

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