In addition to the monograms of Raphael, a prayer to the archangel, written by a King Zacharias, was found inscribed in the ruins near Banganarti.
CREDIT: Bogdan Zurawski
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Zurawski told LiveScience that "Benesec" was a very popular name in 13th- and 14th-century southern France. This particular Benesec had probably traveled some 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) from southern France or northern Spain. The journey took him east across the Mediterranean Sea and far up the Nile into the interior of Africa.
The inscription and a Catalonian playing card found downriver by another team, which may or may not have been left by Benesec, were the only traces found of these visitors from Europe.
Zurawski said Benesec may have been a trader who, along with other Catalonians, received permission from the Mamluk rulers of Egypt to pass through their territory. "The Catalonians were granted trade privileges, trade rights, to exchange goods and to trade with Egypt, and apparently they also came to Nubia," he said.
Krzysztof Grzymski, a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, said at the symposium that evidence of contact between central Sudan and the Mediterranean world goes back to antiquity. At the site of Meroë, which reached its peak around 2,000 years ago, Grzymski said, he studied the sculpture of a head that has Greek traits. "This head is clearly Hellenistic or Hellenized, and yet it certainly was made by local artists from Meroë."
The Harrowing of Hell
The team uncovered numerous works of art at Banganarti, among them the ninth-century painting of "the Harrowing of Hell."
"The masterpiece of lower-church painting, decoration, is this 'Harrowing of Hell'; it is absolutely unusual," said Zurawski. It shows "Jesus Christ just descended to hell to trample Hades, liberating the firstborn, who are shown naked. Also, the common dead are shown naked."
The dead are also shown in anguish. "The common dead [are] screaming, crying with outstretched fingers," said Zurawski. He said that the emotion of the dead, and the depiction of them and the firstborn being naked, were very odd.
