Terminology: Chronological Attribution

At the moment only a fraction of the Musawwarat graffiti have been assigned a date, reflecting the early state of research. A comprehensive chronological framework for the Musawwarat graffiti will be one of the eventual outcomes of the Musawwarat Graffiti Project. Due to the difficulty of more precise dating at this point in time, the graffiti have been assigned to broad archaeological periods. It needs to be kept in mind, however, that some motifs remained current across time and spanned more that one archaeological period:

Meroitic (c. 300BC-AD350)

Post-Meroitic (c. AD350-550)

Medieval Christian (c. AD550-1500)

Post-Medieval Islamic (c. AD1500-1820)

Recent (c. AD1820-c.1950)

Modern (ca. AD1950-now)

Text: Cornelia Kleinitz (2014)