Today the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of Saint John the Baptist. It is quite fitting for the liturgical calendar, since yesterday the Orthodox Greeks were celebrating the Epiphany during the Baptism of Christ in the river Jordan by Saint John.
It is not easy to define the moment in the calendar that Christians in medieval Nubia would be celebrating the Baptism of Jesus, but we know that they did, since there has been found one mural with this iconographic theme on the east wall of Room 41 of the Northwest Annex to the monastery on Kom H in Old Dongola (see Martens-Czarnecka, The Wall Paintings from the Monastery on Kom H inDongola, Warsaw 2011, pp. 147-150).
Otherwise, there are three representations of the Baptist in Nubia that attracted the attention of my dear friend Dobrochna Zielińska: one from the Petros Cathedral at Faras, one from Sonqi Tino, and…
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