Aksum · Tigray · the palace of the Queen of Sheba
Dun
gur
West of Aksum stands the plan of a great house: fifty six metres square, over forty rooms in four clusters, four courtyards, and a block of seven rooms raised on a podium at its heart. Nothing on it stands above about a metre. Walk through what did.
- Complex
- 56 × 56 m
- Rooms
- over 40
- Excavated
- 1966–68
Photographed in 1909 · demolished 1919–20
Enter the reconstruction
A church that no longer exists, rebuilt from a two-hour survey and four photographs.Photograph: unknown photographer, 1909 · Wikimedia Commons · public domain
What is actually there
Photographs of Dungur today
The excavated remains, photographed between 2012 and 2018. Everything the model claims below waist height is in these pictures; everything above them is inference.The whole plan on the ground
Everything the model is built on is in this one picture: the ring of rooms, the courtyards, the raised block in the middle, and the fact that none of it stands more than about a metre.
- Credit
- O. Mustafin
- Licence
- CC0 1.0
Every photograph is credited with its licence and source, and shown uncropped and unretouched.
Measurements
What Anfray measured
Francis Anfray dug the building out between 1966 and 1968 and published these figures. Everything else in the model, the heights above all, is inference from them.- The complex
- 56 × 56 m
- Measured by Anfray
- Ground covered
- 3,250 m²
- More than three thousand square metres
- Rooms
- over 40
- In 4 clusters, round 4 courtyards
- Walls
- 1.2 to 1.5 m
- Large granite blocks in mud mortar
- Outer wall
- 5 m
- High, with a tower at each corner
- The centre
- 7 rooms
- On a podium, up 7 steps from three sides
Where this comes from
Sources
- 01Anfray 1972
Francis Anfray, L'archéologie d'Axoum en 1972 (Paideuma 18, 1972), pp. 60–78, with the plan of Dungur at plate I. The excavation ran from 1966 to 1968.
Used for: the plan of the complex and its four courtyards · 56 by 56 metres, and an area above three thousand square metres · more than forty rooms in four clusters · the central block of seven rooms and its seven stepped stairs · wall heights of five metres outside and three metres round the centre · the pottery, the amphorae and the coins of Armah - 02Krencker 1913Open source
Daniel Krencker, Ältere Denkmäler Nordabessiniens (Deutsche Aksum-Expedition, Band II; Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1913), pp. 107–121, on the Aksumite palaces and their alternation of tower and wall.
Used for: the stepped plan of Aksumite elite buildings · Dungur measured at about 56 metres square in large granite stones with mud mortar · the comparison with Ta'akha Maryam, Enda Mika'el and Enda Semon - 03Aksumite Era Architecture: PalacesOpen source
Habesha History, “Aksumite Era Architecture: Part 1, Palaces”, which sets out Anfray's figures for Dungur alongside the other excavated Aksumite palaces.
Used for: the figures used throughout this model · the comparison with the other palaces - 04Photographs of the siteOpen source
Openly licensed photographs of the excavated remains on Wikimedia Commons, chiefly by Sailko (CC BY 3.0) and A. Savin (Free Art License 1.3).
Used for: the coursed granite wall fabric and its dressed quoins · the monumental staircase and the smaller stairs · the paved floors, the drainage channels and the round column base · the oven in the kitchen and the basin in the bathroom
Built the same way