Elegiacs by Gallus from Qaṣr Ibrîm

Abstract

The hilltop fortress town of Qaṣr Ibrîm is situated in Egyptian Nubia, some 150 miles south of Aswan. Transformed into an island by the rising waters of Lake Nasser, it has been excavated under the aegis of the Egypt Exploration Society since 1963. Until 1976 work was under the direction of Professor J. M. Plumley (University of Cambridge); the 1978 season was led by Professor W. Y. Adams of the University of Kentucky (site director) and R. D. Anderson, honorary secretary of the E.E.S. (administrative director and epigraphist). A site that attracted Egyptian interest at least as early as the New Kingdom and formed part of the district under the special protection of Horus of Mi'am, Qasr Ibrîm was for much of its history a military stronghold, administrative centre, and place of religious pilgrimage. Occupation can be traced for some 3,500 years till the expulsion in 1811 of the ‘Bosnian’ mercenaries stationed at Ibrîm soon after 1517 by the Ottoman Selim I. Ideal conditions of preservation, only now threatened by the lake, have combined with this long history to provide an astonishing wealth of documents from a wide variety of periods.