The Roots of Nubian Christianity: A Transitional Culture in Late Antique Africa

Salim Faraji - Claremont Graduate University

Traditionally in Nubian Christian scholarship there are three major competing interpretations on the conversion and transformation of ancient Nubia to Christianity and the subsequent Byzantine encounter with Nubian courtly culture during the fourth to the sixth centuries c.e. There are historical sources that support the influence of Coptic Folk and official Monophysite Christian traditions in ancient Nubia as evidenced in Coptic hagiographical literature and the sixth century ecclesiastical history of John of Ephesus. The historical evidence also supports the direct influence of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity (Melkite) on Nubian Christianity as recorded in the extant literature of John of Biclarum. A third perspective though not an ecclesiastical history defending or propagating a particular theological agenda is the Greek Axumite stela of the newly converted Ethiopian Christian King Ezana describing his military conquest of Upper Nubia thereby implying the encroachment of Christiantiy in the southern regions of ancient Nubia.

Despite the standard rendition of the Christianization of ancient Nubia provdided for us by the "sectarian histories" of John of Ephesus and John of Biclarum, archaeological evidence supports that Christianity began to enter ancient Nubia as early as the second half of the fifth century c.e. during the reign of the Nubian Ballana Culture Monarchy. A significant indicator of a possible Nubian "conversion" to Christianity prior to the the Byzantine imperial missions of Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora in the early sixth century is the famous but controversial Silko Inscription and representation. The Silko Inscription is preserved on the west wall of the forecourt of the Temple of Mandulis at Kalabsha in Lower Nubia. Nubiologists date the inscription from the fifth century c.e. The language of the inscription is in Greek and is laudatory proclamation of how the Nubian King Silko conquered the surrounding Nubian tribes. The most striking statement of the inscription is Silko's proclamation "God gave me the victory." The paper seeks to address the questions, Did the Silko Inscription possess any significance for the conversion and transformation of ancient Nubia to Christianity? Did the Nubian King Silko provide the entryway for Christianity to advance into Lower Nubia? What was Silko's relationship with Constantinople and the Byzantine court? Did he legitimize diplomatic relations between Byzantium and Nubian nobility. Silko may have been the first and last "Christian Pharaoh" and thereby functioned as transitional figure in late Antique Africa in the same way as Constantine had done in the Roman empire one and a half centuries before.