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Pylon of the Nubian Lion
Temple at Naga
by DR. STUART TYSON SMITH
Pylon of the Nubian Lion Temple at Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E.
(photo: TrackHD, CC BY 3.0)
Two 36-foot-high 5gures stand tall, their muscular arms raised
with weapons in hand, each gripping the hair of bound enemy
prisoners. The prisoners kneel in submission before the
standing 5gures, perpetually awaiting the impending blows.
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Lions, smaller in scale, but equally vicious, dwell between the
legs of the standing 5gures and attack the kneeling victims. A
falcon and a vulture soar above the two standing 5gures,
witnessing and approving of the scenes below. Who are these
warrior-like individuals and why are they shown in the midst of
this violent action? Why was this image made? Who would
have seen this image and what would it have meant to those
viewers?
Print showing details of the pylon of the Lion Temple at Naga,
Sudan, from Ricahrd Lepsius, Aethiopen. Naga [Naqa]. Tempel
a. Vorderseite des Pylons., (Berlin: Nicolaische Buchhandlung,
1849–56) (The New York Public Library)
The Lion Temple in the Royal City of Naga
On the left side of this relief is King Natakamani and on the
right is his wife, Queen Amanitore, both rulers of the ancient
kingdom of Nubia, also known as Kush. Nubia lay south of
Egypt and shared much in common with ancient Egyptian art
and culture yet was also distinctive and unique in many ways.
For example, the Nubians, or Kushites, adopted a variety of
Egyptian gods but also worshiped their own distinctive deities
or blended the two together.
Kushite visual conventions of royalty and power were similar
to those used in Egypt, but speci5cally conformed to Kushite
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gender
norms.
This image
of a
Nubian
royal
couple
comes
from a
pylon of a
temple,
called the
Lion
Temple,
Map showing Naga and Meroë in ancient Nubia
(underlying map © Google)
commissioned by King Natakamani and Queen Amanitore in
the royal city of Naga in the 1st century C.E., and dedicated to
the lion-headed god, Apedemak.
Three depictions of Apedemak. Left: as a lion-headed human;
center: as a 5erce lion between the legs of the king; and right:
as a lion-headed cobra, Pylon of the Nubian Lion Temple at
Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E. (photo: Stuart Tyson Smith, CC BY-SA
4.0)
Apedemak was an exclusively Nubian deity and a god of war,
often depicted carrying a bow and leading bound prisoners.
He was typically represented as a lion-headed human, but also
appears as a 5erce lion (as seen on the pylon mauling
prisoners at the feet of Natakamani and Amanitore) or as a
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lion-headed cobra. All three forms of Apedemak are depicted
on the Lion Temple.
Map of the ancient city of Naga, Sudan (underlying map ©
Google)
Several other temples remain scattered around the Lion
Temple in Naga today. Archaeological evidence (modest
oherings found in a small shrine between the Lion Temple
and other religious shrines) suggests that it was a place where
the broader public came to worship. The rich red tones of the
Nubian sandstone lend the monument an air of elegance
today, but as with Egyptian monuments, the entire temple
would have been brightly painted. One can imagine the
colorful temple as a vibrant backdrop to religious festivals in
Naga that included throngs of people—farmers, herders,
merchants, ojcials, and priests.
Founded around 250 B.C.E., Naga was an ancient city and royal
residence located south of the Kushite capital at Meroë. This
important religious, economic, and political center was placed
at the foot of a mountain about 30 miles from the Nile in an
area of grasslands fed by seasonal rain, a rich region for both
pastoralism and farming. It was also a trade destination for
caravans headed east, most likely to Ethiopia and the Red
Sea.
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King Natakamani (left) and on Queen Amanitore (right) in the
act of smiting, details from the Pylon of the Nubian Lion
Temple at Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E. (photo: Stuart Tyson
Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Royal Couple that Smites Together, Rules
Together
The scene on the
pylon of the Lion
Temple in Naga
projects an image of
husband and wife
reigning as equals, a
common feature of
Nubian governance
and distinct from
Egyptian practices.
Nubian queens
could, and often
did, rule
independently as
Candaces. Only a
handful of Egyptian
queens wielded this
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One side of the Palette of King
Narmer, c. 3000–2920 B.C.E.,
Predynastic Egypt, greywacke (slate),
from Hierakonpolis, 2′ 1″ high
(Egyptian Museum, Cairo)
kind of authority,
including
Hatshepsut who
was a Egyptian
female ruler who
completely assumed pharaonic power and was malepresenting in certain contexts to legitimate her rule. This was
not an issue in Nubia, where queens could be femalepresenting and still wield the same authority as kings.
On the Lion Temple’s pylon, the pose with one arm raised
holding a weapon and the other clutching the hair of enemies
(known as smiting) symbolizes the royal couple’s role in
defeating chaos and restoring order to the universe. The same
basic motif also appears in royal Egyptian works, including the
Narmer palette, which predates the Lion Temple by three
thousand years. However, unlike in Egyptian art, here the
Nubian king and queen participate as equal forces in restoring
order to the cosmos. Representations of the smiting motif on
Egyptian pylons inevitably have symmetrical images on either
side, but only of male kings.
An ohering scene from the Aton temple behind Karnak, Egypt
showing Queen Nefertiti diminutive and walking next to the
Pharaoh Akhenaten, c. 1350 B.C.E. (Luxor Museum, Egypt;
photo: Stuart Tyson Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Additionally, images of Egyptian royalty reinforced male
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dominance through representations in temples and on stelae
by placing queens behind the king and on a smaller scale with
a focus on their supporting role in rituals. [1] This can be seen
in a stela depicting the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and his
wife, Nefertiti, performing religious oherings. While Queen
Nefertiti does sometimes act on her own in ritual scenes,
more commonly in public contexts like this she is depicted
behind and smaller than her husband. We see this in an
ohering scene from an Egyptian temple dedicated to the god
Aton.
Pylon of the Nubian Lion Temple at Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E.
(photo: Stuart Tyson Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Returning to
the Lion
Temple, King
Natakamani
and Queen
Amanitore
face each
other,
standing at
the same
height, each
actively
slaying their
enemies. The
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Queen Amanitore wearing a Kushite cap,
detail of Pylon of the Nubian Lion Temple at
Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E. (photo: Stuart
Tyson Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Egyptian gods
Horus (shown
as a falcon),
and Nekhbet
(shown as a
vulture), both associated with royalty, hover protectively over
the couple while Apedemak the lion god accompanies both
rulers. Further signi5ers of equality between husband and wife
include the use of a Kushite cap crown for both the king and
queen, double lion-headed uraei on their foreheads (the lions
again refer to Apedemak), as well as distinctively Kushite
jewelry, feathered garments, and weapons for each ruler.
While portrayed as an equal to her husband, the queen retains
a distinctly female body with wider hips and breasts, in
contrast to the Egyptian ruler Hatshepsut who sometimes was
represented as male to fully assume royal power.
King Natakamani and Queen Amanitore face and worship the
lion-headed form of Apedemak and other male gods from the
southern side of the Lion Temple, Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E.
(photo: Stuart Tyson Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Images of the Nubian king and queen continue around the
exterior of the Lion Temple and maintain the distinctively
Kushite balance of feminine and masculine royal power
throughout the decorative program. On the southern side for
example, the king, queen, and their son, the Crown Prince
Arikankharer, worship before a mix of Egyptian and Nubian
male deities, including Apedemak, Horus, and Amun-Re.
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Queen Amanitore, King Natakamani, and their heir face and
worship Isis and other goddesses from the northern side
(detail) of the Lion Temple, Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E. (photo:
Karla Kroeper/Naga Project)
On the northern side, the king, queen, and their heir stand
before another group of Egyptian and Nubian goddesses,
including Isis (Horus’s mother), Mut (Amun’s consort), and the
cow goddess Hathor.
Queen Amanitore (left) and King Natakamani (right) ranking
the three-headed, four-armed rendering of Apedemak (center)
from the back of the Lion Temple, Naga, Sudan, c. 1–20 C.E.
(photo: Stuart Tyson Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The back of the temple also reinforces the message of equality
between the king and queen in the eyes of the gods. Here the
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queen (to the south—our left) and king (to the north—our
right) are balanced between a unique three-headed, fourarmed Apedemak, who faces the king, queen, and viewer.
Showing Apedemak with three heads is likely a clever Nubian
innovation designed to balance the 5gures of king and queen
equally between the god and the worshiping public.
Jointly commissioned by the king and queen, the Lion Temple’s
exterior imagery illustrates the tradition of gender equality in
Kushite rule. Together, the royal couple also commissioned
other buildings in Naga as well as throughout the Kushite
kingdom, including a palace and pyramids for themselves.
Together these construction projects served to reinforce and
legitimize their authority as rulers and mirrored practices of
Egyptian pharaohs to the north.
Egypt and Nubia in Scholarship Today
As an analysis of the Lion Temple in Naga demonstrates,
Nubia and Egypt had a long history of interaction through
trade, religion, and a shared visual language. However, war
also brought these two ancient African societies into direct
contact. In 1500 B.C.E., Egypt conquered all of Nubia through
the fourth cataract of the Nile, but by 747 B.C.E. Nubian kings
ruled as Pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty. These Kushite
kings are commonly referred to as the “Black Pharaohs” in
both scholarly and popular publications, though this suggests
that the ancient Egyptians were neither Black nor African
themselves. Despite direct connections and commonalities,
why has Nubia received considerably less scholarly and public
attention?
Traditionally, Nubia has been classi5ed as African and its
people Black, while ancient Egypt has long been separated
from its African context and its people not thought of as Black.
This construct consciously or unconsciously draws on racist
ideas developed through early American Egyptology and
anthropology, particularly in the 1854 book Types of Mankind,
which established the basis for “scienti5c” racism in the United
States. The authors, including a pro-slavery advocate, realized
that their hierarchical racial classi5cation placing Black people
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as inherently inferior could not stand if Egypt and Nubia were
both acknowledged as Black African civilizations, so they and
later scholars went to great lengths to separate Egypt from
Africa and from Nubia, a legacy that sadly lives on today.
However, as the Lion Temple in Naga clearly displays, ancient
Nubia and Egypt were intricately connected religiously,
politically, economically, and artistically. The history and
culture of one cannot be separated from the other. In
analyzing the images of royal power present on the pylon of
the Lion Temple in Naga, we see how Nubian rulers asserted
their own speci5c customs of royal gender equality while
utilizing visual conventions of power common to the entire
Nile River region.
Notes:
[1] In a rare exception, Queen Nefertiti does appear in a
smiting scene on a booth in the representation of a
ceremonial barge dedicated to her.
Additional resources
For more about the ongoing excavations and conservation at
Naga, see the Naga Project.
Solange Ashby, “Priestess, Queen, Goddess: The Divine
Feminine in the Kingdom of Kush,” in The Routledge Companion
to Black Women’s Cultural Histories edited by Janell Hobson
(London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 23–34.
Kara Cooney, The Woman who would be King (New York: Crown,
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2014).
Kara Cooney, When women ruled the world: six queens of
Egypt (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2018).
Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or
Reality (1st ed. Westport, Conn.: L. Hill, 1974).
Frederick Douglass, The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically
Considered: An Address before the Literary Societies of Western
Reserve College, at Commencement, July 12, 1854 (Rochester
[N.Y.]: Lee, Mann & Co., Daily American Ojce, 1854).
W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part
Which Africa Has Played in World History (New York: Viking
Press, 1947).
Karla Kroeper, “Rediscovery of the Kushite Site—Naga, 15
Years of Excavation (1995–2010). Surprises and Innovations,”
in Sudan and Nubia vol. 15 (2011): pp. 90–104.
Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, Types of Mankind, or,
Ethnological Researches: Based Upon the Ancient Monuments,
Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon Their
Natural, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History /
Illustrated by Selections from the Inedited Papers of Samuel
George Morton, and by Additional Contributions from L. Agassiz,
W. Usher, and H. S. Patterson; by J. C. Nott and Geo. R. Gliddon
(7th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1855).
László Török, Adoption and Adaptation: The Sense of Culture
Transfer between Ancient Nubia and Egypt (Budapest: Ízisz
Foundation, 2011).
Scott Trafton, Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century American
Egyptomania (New Americanists. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2004).
Stuart Tyson Smith, ““Backwater Puritans”? Racism,
Egyptological stereotypes, and cosmopolitan society at Kushite
Tombos” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections vol. 35
(2022): pp. 190–217.
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Cite this page as: Dr. Stuart Tyson Smith, "Pylon of
the Nubian Lion Temple at Naga," in Smarthistory,
February 8, 2023, accessed August 27, 2023,
https://smarthistory.org/pylon-nubian-liontemple-naga-2/.
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