In modern Sudan, on the east bank of the Nile, are the ruins of Old Dongola, an ancient thriving city in medieval Nubia. 900 years ago, Old Dongola was the capital of the Christian kingdom of Mukurra (Makuria), which lived in good-neighborly relations with its northern neighbors who professed Islam.
In 1993, archaeologists from the Polish mission during excavations of a Christian monastery in Staraya Dongol discovered 14 burials belonging to men over the age of forty. Several crypts examined by scientists were part of a burial complex built in the XII century.
Inside each of the crypts were several natural mummies, some of which were wrapped in poorly preserved textiles. Nevertheless, it was possible to determine that the men were dressed in linen clothes of a simple cut, and some of them had crosses on their bodies.
One of the mummies, according to scientists, belongs to Archbishop George, probably the most authoritative religious figure in the kingdom. His epitaph was found nearby and says that he died in 1113 AD at the age of 82.
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The greatest interest of the researchers was aroused by the southernmost crypt, on the walls of which numerous inscriptions in the Greek and Said dialect of the Coptic language were found, applied in black ink on a thin layer of whitewash. There are no analogues of such a large number of texts in one crypt in Nubia.
Each wall contains a passage in Greek from the Gospels of Luke, John, Mark and Matthew, which consists of the first and last phrases, which, apparently, symbolically denotes the complete Gospel text. Other texts have been identified by scholars as magic spells and fragments from the apocryphal Gospels, possibly of a Gnostic nature. All these inscriptions probably served as protection from evil forces "not only of the tomb, but first of all those who were inside it during the most dangerous period between the moment of death and their appearance before God's throne."
After the last burial, the entrance to the crypt was closed by masonry of red bricks bound with mortar. In 2009, the crypt was reopened, cleared of burials, and the inscriptions were copied and carefully studied. It turned out that the author of the inscriptions in the Greek and Coptic languages was a certain John, who created a well-thought-out program for their placement in the crypt. John himself described his program for decorating the crypt as φυλακτήριον - a magic amulet with a spell.