Dying for a Drink on the Meroitic Frontier: Imported Objects in Funerary Assemblages at Faras, Sudanese Nubia

This paper examines the use of imported objects in funerary assemblages at the Meroitic cemetery of Faras in Sudanese Nubia (north Sudan). Excavated at the beginning of the 20th century by Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862-1934), Faras was situated on the frontier between the Kingdom of Meroë (c.300 BCE – 350 CE) and Ptolemaic-Roman Egypt. Its location granted it access to wide-ranging commercial networks and imported objects were frequently utilised as grave goods. Drawing upon the author’s PhD research, this paper offers a nuanced assessment of how imports were selected and used in funerary practice at Faras. It disputes the traditional idea that the Meroitic frontier functioned as an acculturated buffer of the classical world and demonstrates that, despite centuries of material contact with Egypt, the people of Faras maintained a distinctly Meroitic identity expressed through local mortuary tradition.