Faras (formerly Ancient Greek: Παχώρας, Pakhôras; Latin: Pachoras; Old Nubian: Ⲡⲁⲭⲱⲣⲁⲥ, Pakhoras) was a major city in Lower Nubia. The site of the city, on the border between modern Egypt and Sudan at Wadi Halfa Salient, was flooded by Lake Nasser in the 1960s and is now permanently underwater. Before this flooding, extensive archaeological work was conducted by a Polish archaeological team led by professor Kazimierz Michałowski.
In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing, and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be conducted over a few weeks to several years.
Excavation involves the recovery of several types of data from a site. This data includes artifacts (portable objects made or modified by humans), features (non-portable modifications to the site itself such as post molds, burials, and hearths), ecofacts (evidence of human activity through organic remains such as animal bones, pollen, or charcoal), and archaeological context (relationships among the other types of data).
Soba is an archaeological site and former town in what is now central Sudan. Three kingdoms existed in medieval Nubia: Nobadia with the capital in Faras, Makuria with the capital in Dongola, and Alodia (Alwa) with the capital in Soba. The latter used to be the capital of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Alodia from the sixth century until around 1500. E. A. Wallis Budge identified it with a group of ruins on the Blue Nile 19 kilometres (12 mi) from Khartoum, where there are remains of a Meroitic temple that had been converted into a Christian church.
In the 10th century Ibn Selim el-Aswani described the city as large and wealthy, with " fine buildings and extensive feelings " . Built mainly of red brick, the abandoned city was plundered for building material when Khartoum was founded in 1821. Since the 1990s, development from the growth of suburbs in Greater Khartoum has continued to pose a threat to the ruins.
Faras Cathedral was a cathedral in the Lower Nubian city of Faras. It was the original seat of the Diocese of Faras.
Nobadian rulers controlling the Nile Valley from the first to the third cataracts converted to Christianity around 548 AD influenced by missionaries sent from Constantinople by the Empress Theodora. The first cathedral was erected in the 7th century, when the city was still known as Pachoras, and likely stood at the exact site where Polish archaeologists taking part in the Nubia Campaign discovered the subsequent 8th-century cathedral. The site was excavated by Polish archaeologists under Kazimierz Michałowski between 1960 and 1964.