Review: [Untitled]

Reviewed Work(s):
Studies in Old Nubian by Gerald M. Browne
J. D. Ray

The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 77. (1991), pp. 235-236.

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 REVIEWS

language, which this reviewer has remarked upon elsewhere, becomes especially noticeable. There
is presumably a cultural explanation for this.
The texts in the present volume were found during the 1963-4 season within the ruined
Cathedral of St Mary the Virgin at Ibrim. All of them are fragmentary, and handwriting, as well as
content, show that they come from a series of disparate volumes. It is therefore obvious that much
has been lost. Three texts are from the Psalter (two of these contain the appropriate Greek text
interspersed), six come from the New Testament, one contains part of an encomium on the
Archangel Raphael, and one comprises part of a similar work on the Archangel Michael. One text
(no. 7) contains extracts from Pauline Epistles, with dates in the month of Mesore when they are to
be recited (comparison with the practices of other Churches might be interesting here). All the
fragments are presented with a translation and the appropriate Greek or Coptic originals. In some
cases it is not clear, without a detailed reading of the notes at the end of the volume, whether the
translation offered is based on the Greek, or is an attempt to render the Nubian; but this vagueness
is a justifiable reflection of our inadequate knowledge of the early stages of the language. The
plates are clear and, with a possible exception, easy to use; anyone who has experienced field and
photographic conditions in the Nile valley will know the achievement that this represents.
Commentary is admirably brief and to the point, but in one case (no. I I ) is to be supplemented by
the remarks of B. Rostkowska in the forthcoming Proceedings of the Third Annual Congress of Coptic
Studies (Warsaw).
The field of Old, or Medieval, Nubian is a small one, though a language which was able to
occupy the attention of authorities such as F. L1. Griffith is not to be underestimated. The present
volume is an invaluable contribution to this challenging subject, and one which may well help to
attract more interest to it. The authors have earned our sincere gratitude for breaking new ground
in this difficult terrain, and it is profoundly to be hoped that they will continue their collaborations,
which have begun so well.

Studies in Old Nubian. By GERALD M . BKOWNE. Beitrage

zur Sudanforschung, Beiheft 3. 239 X 169
mm. Pp. 62. Vienna, Institut fiir Afrikanistik, I 988. Price OS 350.

The study of Old Nubian is linked with the names of Zyhlarz, Griffith, Stricker, and Hintze, but
recently the subject has languished to a certain extent. However, over the last twenty years the
Egypt Exploration Society's discoveries at Qasr Ibrim have greatly added to the available material,
and have also produced the scholar to deal with it. G. M. Browne has already produced an account
of the Old Nubian verbal system, in a series of articles in the Bulletin of the American Society of
Papyrologists and elsewhere (these are listed in the useful bibliography of the present volume).
These articles are clearly intended to supersede Zyhlarz, whose work is not rated highly by
Browne, and there is no doubt that they will do so. The book under review is a continuation, and in
a sense a simplification, of the author's previous work on the subject. As such, it is an invaluable
contribution to our knowledge of this poorly-understood field.
Old Nubian is still not well attested (Browne estimates that the total corpus would probably not
exceed I O O printed pages). Nevertheless, many of the surviving texts are biblical or theological,
and it is often possible to know what a particular sentence ought to mean, even if it remains
questionable how it means it. An interesting feature in this respect is the noticeable lack of loan-
words in the language (the Greek words for 'angel' and 'sea' are readily explicable). This is in
marked contrast with contemporary Coptic, and deserves comment. The comparison with Coptic
also raises another question. Browne follows the isolationist methods of Polotsky, especially those
used in the latter's Grundlagen des koptischen Satxbaus. This is no doubt admirable, but one
wonders, when the surviving corpus of Old Nubian is so limited, whether we can afford the luxury
of being austere in this way. Old Nubian is presumably the ancestor, or one of the ancestors, of the
modern dialects of the language, and it should in theory (!) be possible to reconstruct missing
forms, and to describe phonetic changes over the past millennium-a period which, in linguistic
 REVIEWS

terms, is not great. Considerable success has been achieved by such methods in the reconstruction
of early Chinese, and it is arguable that there is good diachronic work to be done in Nubian as
well. It is to be hoped that the author, who is the outstanding authority in this field, will go on to
write the grammar of this remarkable language which he alone is capable of giving us. He should
surely feel encouraged to do so.

Al-Fustat Its foundation and early urban development. By WLADYSLAW

B. KUBIAK. 224 X 145 mm. Pp.
186, 5 sketch plans. Cairo, American University in Cairo Press, 1987. ISBN 977 424 168 I .
Price not stated.

The present work derives from a Habilitationsschrift submitted to the University of Warsaw and
published in 1982. The author, a distinguished historian of early Islam and with considerable
archaeological experience in Egypt, both at Fustat and at Kom al-Dikk in Alexandria, would have
been in an excellent position to review and reconcile the historical and archaeological evidence.
That his work is less this essential synoptic work than an elegant contribution to the history of the
first century of Arab settlement in Egypt is a commentary upon the work and publication of
excavation by archaeologists in Egypt. Admittedly, his survey of the physical topography of the
site shows the virtual impossibility of now distinguishing what is man-made and what natural, after
centuries of quarrying and dung-digging, low cost housing projects and rubbish dumping; but in
almost 2 0 0 years of digging in Egypt, much, notably the complex on the plateau to the south
generally known as Istabl 'Antar, has only been surveyed in the past year or two.
'Ali Bahgat's excavations at Fustat (c. 1912-24), though highly productive of archaeological
material, were certainly inadequate, and no convincing structural chronology can be constructed
on the basis of his published work. His successors, however, have really not fared better; most
seriously the work at the Mosque of 'Amr in the early 1970s supervised by 'Abd al-Rahman 'Abd-
al-Tawwab prior to its radical restoration, which should have been of vital importance for the pre-
'Abbasid state of the building, remains unpublished. And although later seasons of work on the
ARCE concession have brought to light Byzantine material relevant to the Umayyad period in
Egypt, otherwise barely documented in material remains, they are far from sufficient to draw an
urban map of Fustat for the period 64 I -750. Here there is an obvious pioblem in relating micro-
investigations to the broad generalisations of chroniclers, numismatists or economic and social
historians like Goitein working on the Geniza documents; but the long neglect, of which Professor
Kubiak complains, of late Roman, Coptic and medieval levels in excavations of urban sites in
Egypt, which has only recently been somewhat made good, has deprived us of an essential context
in which the Fustat finds need to be interpreted.
W e may therefore wonder whether we shall ever have an archaeological history of early Islamic
Fustat to complement the written sources, and Professor Kubiak has wisely based himself in the
historians. He concentrates on Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (805-71) whose Futtih Misr, he argues
convincingly, derives from a reliable oral tradition and can thus be used to correct the inaccuracies
and distortions introduced into Ibn Duqmiq and Maqrizi (for example, on the changes in the
course of the Nile), who have so often been regarded as the undisputed sources for the history of
early Muslim Egypt. His critical review of the sources explains the reasons for the choice of the
site, and gives a picture of the settlers, the assignation of land holdings, demographic growth, and
the evolution of quarters, and the appearance of public buildings, principally under the governor
'Abd al-'Aziz c. 690, the brother of the Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik, whom he credits with the
transformation of the settlement into a metropolis. An interesting conclusion is that, in marked
contrast to urban foundations elsewhere in early Islam, there seems to have been no d i r al-imira
until al-'Askar and that the mosque of 'Amr, initially at least, could not have been built as a
congregational mosque. Its central position, he argues, doubtless explains its choice as a j2mi' in the
late seventh or early eighth century, although by then unlimited space for expansion was no longer