Today the postwoman delivered to my house the 2021 Sudan Archaeological Research Society (SARS) journal. A beautiful, glossy, large journal, almost an exhibition catalogue! With great enthusiasm I dived into it, and what a wealth of information there is to be had!
Sudan Archaeological Research Society (SARS)
The Sudan Archaeological Research Society, a charity based in the UK, publishes yearly bulletins with bucketsful of interesting information for Sudan aficionados. Membership is already available at around 40 euros a year. For that, you receive this bulletin with information on current Sudanese culture, the colonial era, Christian and Pharaonic periods. Well written, informative, with colourful illustrations, and mostly not to be had elsewhere. Testifying of the rich cultural heritage of the Sudan.
Angareeb beds
All of us who have been to Sudan and who made it outside of western-style hotels will have sat on an angareeb, a bed these days mostly made of iron, with plastic weaved matting. At tea stalls one finds the smaller, ‘banbar’ stools. Traditional houses in Nubia have numerous of such beds, for inhabitants to sleep on at night under the stars, for guests to relax on. Often angareebs are the only items of furniture apart from a cupboard, and also used for storage and exhibition.
Excavations Pharaonic period Sudan
Excavations in Amara-west, a town founded around 1300 BCE, a little upstream of the Dal cataract, revealed 120 parts of angareeb legs, showing that these Nubian beds are indeed age-old. The excavated specimens had a large wooden frame with four legs and string webbing made of plant rope, just like current beds. That makes these beds an almost five millennia presence!
Angareeb carpenters
As the article by Manuela Lehmann however testifies, angareeb-craftmanship may be fast disappearing. The author was able to identify only one carpenter who still made new beds, five others only repaired existing ones. As the interviews and observations in villages along the Nile revealed, quite some Nubian families still prefer the age-old angareeb to the modern iron & plastic one. The traditional wooden angareebs are very light to carry, sturdy and are symbolic of the age-old Nubian culture. The painting ‘Gathering II’ features an angareeb with a typical additional reed matting rolled up over it.
Lehmann, M. (2022). Angareeb bed production in modern Nubia: Documenting a dying craft tradition. Sudan & Nubia, Vol 25, pp. 11-23. London: Sudan Archaeological Research Society