Wall Paintings from the Cathedral of Faras
More than sixty wall paintings removed from the buried cathedral of Faras in Nubia before the site was flooded by Lake Nasser. They are the chief physical remains of the church of Nobadia; the museum’s account of them is cited for the history of the site.
Faras, the ancient Pachoras, was excavated by a Polish team during the international campaign to rescue the monuments of Nubia before the Aswan High Dam flooded the valley. The museum that now holds the paintings describes Faras as a large urban centre of the medieval kingdom of Nobadia, says that a first cathedral was built in the seventh century and that the cathedral the excavators found was of the eighth, and dates the paintings from the eighth to the fourteenth century.
The paintings are later than the events told in the Conversion of the Nubian Kingdoms and are not evidence for them. The museum’s page is cited in this wiki for the place and its remains. Its statement that the rulers of Nobadia became Christian “around 548” is the museum’s summary of the written sources.
Cited in
- about AD 543 to AD 580, estimated date