A life-sized carving in Sudan may be the face of a Kushite king

A petroglyph at Miseeda, in northern Sudan, is large enough to stand beside a grown person, and a team of archaeologists now thinks it may show an ancient Kushite king. The carving is life-sized, cut into a granite hill near the Third Nile Cataract, and was later enclosed by a church. Its subject is still a proposal rather than an established fact, and its date has not been pinned down.

Joanna A. Ciesielska of the University of Warsaw and eight co-authors set out the case in the journal Antiquity, in a paper published in late September 2026. Archaeology Magazine reported it on September 29.

The carving and the church built around it

Archaeology Magazine’s summary of the work states that the life-sized petroglyph “may depict an ancient Kushite ruler.” The verb carries the weight of the whole story. The researchers compare the figure with a carving of the Meroitic king Sherkarer at Gebel Qeili, and on that parallel they suggest the Miseeda image may have marked a border area, much as the Gebel Qeili relief signalled royal authority at the edge of a kingdom.

The setting makes the image unusual. A church was raised around the carving in the seventh century A.D., so the rock face ended up inside a Christian building. The University of Warsaw’s project page for Miseeda describes an isolated church that “conceals a rock drawing from the Kushite period,” and places that period between the seventh century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. By that account the petroglyph predates the conversion of the region by roughly three centuries.

Ciesielska’s team and the paper in Antiquity

The open-access paper, titled “Miseeda: between kingdoms, through epochs”, lists Ciesielska first among nine authors, including Dobrochna Zielińska, who leads the Warsaw excavation at the site. Its abstract frames the project as a reconstruction of the Mahas region’s history, built from archaeological survey and ethnographic work, and it describes the church built around an ancient petroglyph as the centre of that story. The king is one strand of a larger regional account, not the paper’s sole subject, and the authors present the site as a boundary zone between kingdoms whose rulers changed while the rock stayed put across several religious eras.

The fieldwork behind the paper was broad. As summarized in coverage of the study, the team combined field surveys, rock-art research, local oral history and spatial mapping across nearly 300 archaeological sites in the region. Occupation at Miseeda runs from Mesolithic settlement, roughly 12,000 to 8,200 years ago, through the Christian centuries between the sixth and fifteenth, and nearby communities still link the place to sacred stories, ritual offerings, spirits and gold. That living tradition is part of the evidence the authors weigh, because a carving that local people kept revering for generations may help explain why a church was placed directly over it.

The hill around the church holds more than the central figure. Archaeology Magazine lists a lion, a possible rhinoceros, an elephant, crosses and ships from the Christian period, plus undated human figures and animal carvings attributed to the Kerma period, roughly 2500 to 1500 B.C. Putting a Kerma-era layer, a Kushite-era layer and a Christian layer on one hill is what lets the team treat Miseeda as a place that kept its meaning across millennia.

A Kerma or Meroitic date still undecided

The carving’s age is the limiting factor. Archaeology Magazine reports that both the identity of the possible ruler and the age of the petroglyph remain unconfirmed pending more research. A date in the Kerma period would place the figure well before the Kingdom of Kush emerged around 1000 B.C., and a Meroitic date would put it after the capital moved to Meroë around 300 B.C. Either answer changes which ruler, if any, could be meant, and a Kerma attribution would remove the Meroitic comparison from the argument altogether, since Sherkarer reigned many centuries later.

The wording matters for a second reason. Sherkarer is a named king whose image at Gebel Qeili is well known, so comparing a new carving with it is a reasonable way to test an idea. A resemblance of style or pose, however, is a hypothesis about the figure and not an inscription naming the man. Nothing in the reported material says a name or title has been read beside the Miseeda figure.

If the Kerma attribution were to win out, the figure would belong to the Kerma culture that preceded Kush, and the language of “a Kushite king” would need to change. The paper’s own caution is the accurate frame: a life-sized figure, a plausible royal comparison, and an open dating question that the Warsaw team has said further work must settle.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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