Arkamani, in its name, is based on a clear position on the intellectual issues presented on the scene. It takes its name from King Arkamani, who in the late third century BC carried out the first radical change in the political concepts of his era. Arkamani challenged the authority of the priests in order to separate religious from political authority. The Kingdom of Kush was suffering from severe weakness due to the control of the clergy over the political life in the country and its events. Kush not only lost hope of regaining its control over Egypt, but also became threatened by the latter after Alexander the Great took control of it. The Kushites abandoned their lands between the first and second cataracts to escape the imminent danger. Arkamani's policy of separating religious and political practices achieved success, and Kush regained its health to stand against the Ptolemies and to reconstruct Lower Nubia, located between the first and second cataracts. Arkamani even contributed to the construction of temples in both Dhaka and Philae in joint work with his Greek counterpart, Ptolemy IV. The strength of the Kushite state, whose rational foundations were laid by Arkamani, was reflected in its ability not only to defend its entity against the sweeping Roman imperial tide, but also in its direct threat to the far southern borders of the Roman Empire, which then became the undisputed master of the world. Isn't it time for us to think about rooting our heritage in a revolutionary Sudanese way with the aim of restoring our glory and building our current Sudan as one great nation for all?
Arkamani, the first founder of the state
Sudanese
Civility
270-260 BC.
According to the story of Didor the Sicilian, the king of the Meroitic kingdom, Arkamani, had declared a revolt against the priests and attacked the Nabataean temple of Amun in Jebel Barkal, where the coronation of the kings of Kush was taking place. Arkamani declared the lion god Abadmak the official god of the Meroitic kingdom. Arkamani had acquired a great deal of Greek education, which led some researchers to say that he traveled to Egypt in pursuit of education. However, the available facts indicate that commercial links between the Kingdom of Meroe and the Mediterranean world flourished, and that many Greek and Egyptian merchants were present in the lands of the Kingdom, in addition to Greek opportunist adventurers seeking fame, as well as many Greek scholars, travelers, and writers. It is known, for example, that the Greek scholar Simonides lived five full years in Meroe and wrote an entire book about Kush and its culture, a book that Pliny benefited from and used as a reference for him in his treatment of the Kingdom of Meroe. Likewise, we do not believe that Arkamani needed to travel to Egypt to seek knowledge. Rather, it is likely that he acquired his knowledge of Greek language, culture, and philosophy in the city of Meroe (Bajrawiya). However, Didor of Sicily did not mention anything in this regard, and if Arkamani had been in Egypt, Didor would not have mentioned such an incident.
The greatness of Arkamani is that he was the first among the kings of Kush to declare a revolution against the religious state and called for the separation of religion from the state, and established the reality of separation between religious and political practices. His revolution against the priests and the destruction of the Nabataean Temple of Amun, the center of their actual authority, was not a revolution against religion as a religion, but it was a revolution to eliminate the claim of the priestly class to monopolize religious and worldly authority, and to monopolize the right to appoint kings and exclude them through the traditions of ritual assassination of kings according to the right they claim to interpret divine revelation.
Thus, Arkamani, after eliminating the Nabti priests of Amun, issued a decree prohibiting the practice of ritual assassination of the king, and abolished the role of the god Amun, the patron of this tradition, as the primary god of the kingdom, and replaced him with the lion god Abadmac as the patron of the state and its authority, thus declaring his rejection of the statements of the mind of return to the remnants of the primitive clan social structure that represented a base for the ideological and political influence of the priestly class.
Arkamani died and his body found its final resting place in his magnificent pyramid (Al-Bajarawiya No. 7), which along with the pyramids of his successors Adikalamani (Al-Bajarawiya No. 9), Queen Shanakdakhiti (Al-Bajarawiya No. 11), Bakrinsana (Al-Bajarawiya No. 13), and Tanidamani (Al-Bajarawiya No. 20) reflect the extent of economic prosperity and artistic and technical development that Achieved by the Kingdom of Meroe.
At the time when the campaign to save the antiquities of Nubia began, and to a large extent when it ended, there was no Sudanese archaeology as an independent branch of knowledge. The archaeologists were working from a research perspective that had been established by George Reisner fifty years before the start of the expedition, a perspective that was established through the subsequent work of Griffiths, Steindorff, Emery and Kirwan, McAdam and others. According to that perspective, the history of ancient Sudan seemed a pale reflection of Egyptian Pharaonic history, in addition to a repetition of rigid and unconnected stages, without any clear transitions. Before archaeologists could possess the current science of Sudanese archeology, it was necessary to focus on establishing a perspective that would achieve the transition from Egypt to Kush as a central point for this science, from stagnation to a dynamic perspective, and from history to culture as a point of primary interest.
Such a dynamic perspective has been put forward by the international group of archaeologists currently working in Sudan alongside their Sudanese archaeological counterparts. The ongoing development projects in Sudan threaten to destroy the cultural heritage of Sudan. There is always, and in practice, a lot at risk in Sudan. Thanks to the appeal sent by the Sudanese Antiquities Service requesting assistance in rescue operations, Sudan became a meeting place for many researchers with different backgrounds and skills, and thus many modern approaches were introduced in the ongoing field work, and the ongoing work in Sudan achieved the highest approved international levels, levels to which adherence was a prerequisite for the work conducted in the period preceding the campaign to rescue the antiquities of Nubia.
The results of all these works and studies were published in English, French, German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Italian without finding their way to Arabic readers, either because of the language barrier, or as a result of the diversity and multiplicity of specialized periodicals in which these researches were published.
Therefore, Arkamani, as an online journal of Sudanese archeology and anthropology in Arabic, was designed to respond to a very specific goal: translating the results of ongoing field research in Sudan carried out by the international and Sudanese group of archaeologists, in addition to theoretical studies and research that depend on the results of ongoing archaeological excavations and exploration.
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