MEROE, the southern capital of the Ethiopian kings of Napata, 700-300 B.C., becoming eventually the sole capital of the Meroitic kingdom which lasted till about A.D. 350; now an exten sive field of ruins, found on the east bank of the Nile near Kabushia railway station in the Egyptian Sudan, lat. 15° 3o' N. The whole site was surveyed by Lepsius in 1844. A quarter of a mile from the river is an enclosure containing royal palaces and other important buildings, reaching back to Aspaluta, c. 590 B.C., in the lower levels. Here was found a bronze head of Augustus now in the British Museum, and many remnants of building and sculpture of Netekaman, c. A.D. I oo, who built a temple of Ammon outside, backed against the east face of the enclosure. Baths were attached to the later palaces. Northwards from the en closure was a little temple of Isis (temp. Akinirar, etc.) ; east wards was another, rather earlier, of the lion god Apiremak with stelae down to Taqeriramane, A.D. 25o, and a kilometre beyond a larger temple of the sun (?), containing a monument of Aspa luta but mostly built by Teriteqas, Candace and Akinirar, a trio of c. 30 B.C. All the above temples face the east; but southwards about was a shrine facing westwards, with great stelae at the entrance of Candace and Akinirar containing a reference to Augustus. The nearest necropolis eastwards is Meroitic at the
north end, post-Meroitic towards the south end, the latter part with burials on wooden beds and remarkable pottery. Our knowl edge up to this point is due to Garstang's excavations, the more distant cemeteries and the pyramids were completely excavated by Reisner in 1921-23. On the hills about 2m. away are two groups of pyramids. In the southern group were buried three kings of the early part of the 3rd century B.C. surrounded by various tombs of the 8th to the 3rd century; the northern group was almost entirely royal with pyramids of 3o later kings and queens, the earliest being that of Ergamenes in the early part of the 3rd century B.C. Westwards of these and about im. from the city was a great cemetery of nobles and others of the Ethio pian and Meroitic periods. A fragment of the Greek inscription of a heathen invader from Axum was picked up by Sayce, and an Axumite graffito exists in one of the pyramid shrines.
See J. Garstang, Meroe (19II), and reports in "Annals of Archae ology and Anthropology," vols. iii.-vii. (Liverpool, 1910-14) ; G. A. Reisner, articles in "Boston Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin" xx., xxi., xxiii., and "The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology," vol. ix.