Despite more than a century of scholarship, the Christian kingdoms of Nubia, Nobadia, Makuria, and Alwa, which swayed the region of the Middle Nile between the 6th and 15th centuries, still jealously keep most of their secrets to themselves. While „traditional” approaches of archaeology, history, philology, and art history, not infrequently carried out in isolation from one another, are slowly reaching their limits of cognition,
to push forward the understanding of Christian Nubian civilisation more socially oriented studies are required, which will put the results of these „traditional” domains in a new perspective.
One of the fields where such approach can be tested and bring new insights into this past society is the study of names – onomastics. Taking advantage of the recent developments in this discipline, which steer away from classical linguistic and etymological works and focus instead on the meaning and functioning of personal names in society, Grzegorz Ochała tries to mine the extensive collection of anthroponyms used by the Nubians to see what they can tell us about the people who can no longer speak for themselves.
In his #Thursday Colloquium he will focus on the challenges posed by linguistic and formal characteristics of the studied material, ways of talking them, and their bearing on prospective results of the study.
This event is addressed to HIAS Fellows and Tandem Partners.
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Image Information
Image: A word-cloud with all kinds of names used in Nubia, created by Grzegorz Ochała