 Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take you for a short cross up the Nile River beyond the frontiers of Roman Empire into the region which is called Apernubia. Louder. Louder? Okay. Apernubia is today part of northern and central Sudan and most of the permanent modern and historical settlement are organized around the fertile Nile River valley. In the past, in the first millennium BC, this region was part of the Kushite Empire, which was fighting with the Romans in the first century BC around Aswan and in the southern part of the Roman Empire. And they were the last kings who were buried under the pyramids. This long tradition was ended in the middle of the 4th century AD with the last Kushite king to be buried under one of the pyramids in one of the cemeteries in Meroe. Researchers are currently debating why the Kushite Empire collapsed but we know from written sources that from 4th to 6th century AD new kingdoms were organized in the former territory of the Kushite Empire. And in Apernubia we have Makuria in the north, one of the Nubian kingdoms with the capital in Dongola and Alwa or Alodia in the south of the capital in Soba. The first kings at the beginning of the Nubian kingdoms they started to introduce fortifications for a massive scale. Before the Kushites were also using fortified sites but not in that kind of quantity. Medieval rulers of Nubia create plenty of that kind of sites in the entire middle nine valley and that kind of sites have been inhabited for many centuries even after the end of medieval period and until the end of 19th century. In this paper and in my current project I'm focusing on the beginnings of this phenomenon of the fortifications in the middle nine valley. In the large group of fortifications which were built at the beginnings and there is a smaller group of ten sites you can see plants and satellite images of all of them and they cover approximately 550 kilometers of the nine valley. Some of them have been mapped and most of them have been surveyed only a few have been partly excavated however researchers suggested that they have been built by early kings of Nubian kingdoms especially the kings residing in Soba. However there were few researchers who suggested earlier date of these sites they suggested that they were built by last kings of Kushite to protect the last center of the Kushite Imperium and the last territories of the Kushites organized around it. In my current project I'm focusing on the southern most sites those three regular forts which are not far from the confluence of the white and blue nines. We are aiming to obtain new information on the subject and our aims are to answer questions who and when built the chain of these regular forts. The forts that we are investigating are not far from the largest urban centers of modern Sudan and that's why they are in constant threat. You can see the example of the destruction down to one of the forts. Here you have the remains of the fort and it was recently cut by this approximately 10 meter wide channel. For the first glance I think that you notice that the Nubian forts are quite similar to Roman fortifications. We don't have to look far for examples in Egyptian eastern desert you can find plenty of Roman fortifications especially small and medium sized forts. Here are some of the examples. They were placed there to safeguard the trade roads, the mining sites and the harbors on the Red Sea coast. When we look at the bigger picture the red dots are the Nubian forts. This is the place where the southernmost port of Roman Empire is located and just few kilometers south we have Wadi Kalalat the name of the Wadi comes from two forts that are located in that area. They have been surveyed and excavated in 1990s by a team directed by Steven Seidbotan who suggested the date 1st, 2nd and 3rd century for the larger fort and the 2nd fort should be according to the excavators a bit younger from 3rd and 4th century. The distance between those forts and Nubian forts is approximately 530 kilometers and when we look and when we try to compare dimensions of those forts and layouts this is the larger fort in Wadi Kalalat this is the largest of the Nubian forts in Hosshel Cap already mentioned so you can see that the Nubian fort is a bit bigger than the Roman forts however there is similarities in proportion of the curtain walls in next months I will try to compare it in more detail but I'm waiting for the original documentations from excavations in the Roman forts but I think that is interesting subject to follow. The second similarity between the Nubian and Roman forts is the use of space inside of the fort inside of the fort in case of Nubian forts when excavated researchers came across a chain of chambers built against the inner faces of the walls in January this year we found that kind of chain of chambers using geophysical methods in Hosshel Cap fort is visible here in the south part of the site and also fragmentary in the northern part we made a trench in one of the places and recorded a matwick structure confirming our hypothesis there are also some differences between Roman and Nubian forts and the first of all is the use of vertical machinery technique in the construction of Nubian forts you can see in the faces of the walls the stones are put in the upright position it's not comparable to Roman opus picatum or heritage pattern it's a bit different technique I hope that you see the difference and I never saw vertical machinery in Roman fortifications if you have seen any examples please do let me know but Kushite architecture especially the large walls by Kushites have that kind of machinery technique in use so it seems that this might be quite indigenous a local way of constructing large enclosures when it comes to chronology only few sites have been excavated in part and only from three we have a combination of analysis of small finds and C14 dates and the first of them is Micae Cero which was excavated by German team from Jukhumboldt University they provided seven dates ranging from 4th to 7th century AD but most of the C14 samples gave dates from 5th to 6th century small finds give a bit wider time span from the 2nd to 6th century the research by us Hozier Kapp provided pottery mostly from later periods from 16th to 19th century only few sherds were from 7th to 9th century and we collected some of the samples and three samples from the lowest occupation levels gave us 5th to 7th century of the dates dating the occupation the last occupation phase was dated by this sample it can be somewhere around 19th century the second fort which was excavated by us in this year is Abunaphisa it's not far from Hozier Kapp and C14 dates from the lowest levels gave us the dates from 5th to 7th century small finds from Abunaphisa are very particular most of the pottery that we recorded is late from 16th to 19th century only these small beads were indicated and confirmed the chronology indicated by C14 dates the last of our forts was previously researched by OGS Krowfort in 1950s and he made a survey there and indicated very early chronology of this site he stated that he found some Meroitic pottery on the site Meroitic is more or less similar with the construction of the forts by Romans in the Eastern desert however in 1970s a team from University of Hartum made some excavations and stated that the fort should be dated from the 4th and even from the 5th century onwards during this season we made a brief survey and recorded Meroitic, Post-Meroitic, Christian, Funch and modern pottery we didn't record any Meroitic pottery actually on any site we didn't record any Meroitic pottery so it seems that the forts are a bit younger more younger than the Roman forts built in the Eastern desert so to conclude there are some similarities and differences between the Roman and Nubian forts in case of similarities we can say that they have a similar layout and size and most probably function and in terms of differences the construction technique especially the vertical masonry which appears to be local construction technique and chronology the Nubian forts seems to be younger than the Roman forts so for the end I would like to share with you my conclusions that it's very interesting to think about the knowledge that the people who were asked to build the Nubian forts had to have because from one site they had a local perspective and knowledge of local construction techniques and from the other site they had knowledge about foreign fortifications the Roman forts so my question is how common was that kind of knowledge in that time was it a single person who designed those forts or a group which was combined from local experts and foreign experts and with this question I would like to thank you for your attention