🇬🇧 Damboya

The Damboya archaeological site, identified in 1975 and surveyed in 2002 by Patrice Lenoble and Vincent Rondot, is located 270 km north of Khartoum, near Shendi, close to the el-Hassa concession (1.7 km) of which it is a component. The Musée du Louvre, which incorporated the concession into its Department of Egyptian Antiquities in 2019, recently renewed its partnership with the NCAM through an agreement. Marc Maillot, the mission’s current director, had expressed the wish to open an archaeological dig at Damboya, as part of his duties as director of the SFDAS (French Section of the Sudan Antiquities Authority). A scientific cooperation agreement has therefore been signed between the Musée du Louvre and the SFDAS, so that the Damboya excavation can begin in 2020 under the aegis of the SFDAS.

The Damboya site has long held great potential for providing information. The results obtained from the magnetometric survey carried out in 2008 on the central part of the site were promising for an in-depth study of the urban settlements on the banks of the Nile in central Sudan, in conjunction with one of the major sites of the Meroitic period, el-Hassa. This partial survey covered an area of 2.35 hectares, itself divided into 8 square modules measuring 50 m on each side, a rectangle measuring 40 m by 50 m and a square measuring 40 m on each side. This prospecting area yielded two buildings. The first, located on the largest hill on the site, measures at least 80 m by 60 m and appears to have several internal subdivisions of large modules (from a minimum of 10 m to a maximum of 20 m on each side). To the south of this central hill, a small building measuring 18 m by 20 m was clearly visible. It also had small-module internal partitions. Other magnetic anomalies are visible over the rest of the covered area but are not rectilinear and may have been created by tracks.

These results enabled the SFDAS archaeological team to select the most promising sectors for a long-term study of the Damboya settlement, after a final two-day on-site survey.

The archaeological team is made up of the following members: Marc Maillot, director of the SFDAS, in charge of sector A and head of the mission; Romain David, SFDAS researcher, ceramologist; Gabrielle Choimet, doctoral student at Sorbonne Universités, in charge of sectors B, C, D and E; Coralie Prenat, SFDAS international volunteer; Emma Maines, anthropologist, Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne and Musée de l’Homme, in charge of the medieval necropolis; Giorgio Nogara, archaeologist, Université Lille 3 and associate member of the SFDAS; Sébastien Poudroux, topographer; Wafa Sharif Dawod Hussein, student at Nileein University, ceramologist.

Four sectors were opened up, three of which (B, C, D) show only residual remains and virgin soil very close to the surface, at around 40 cm. The two major sectors, A and E, on the other hand, are very rich, and were chosen because of their position framing the main hill of the site, which itself is far too large for the resources and time available to the SFDAS for its five-year archaeological plan.

• The Archaeological site of Damboya in the Shendi Reach. First season. (PDF – 7.9 Mo)
• The Meroitic settlement at Damboya. Preliminary results. (PDF – 8.3 Mo)
• The Archaeological site of Damboya in the Shendi Reach. Second season. (PDF – 12.8 Mo)
• The Archaeological site of Damboya in the Shendi Reach. Third season. (PDF – 8.5 Mo)
• Building E at Damboya, the third and final season. (PDF – 11.8 Mo)