16.9117°N, 33.6919°E.
Meroitic-period town on the east bank of the Nile in central Sudan, located roughly 5 kilometres south of the royal city of Meroe and built primarily of mud-brick on a regular planned street layout. Hamadab was occupied from the late first millennium BCE through the third century CE and represents one of the few non-royal urban sites of the entire Meroitic kingdom to have been investigated in any systematic detail. Excavations begun in 2001 by Pawel Wolf for the German Archaeological Institute have revealed a planned grid of multi-room houses, craft workshops, and a small Amun temple at the town centre, alongside two important Meroitic stelae of Queen Amanirenas — the same Kushite sovereign who clashed directly with the Roman legions of Gaius Petronius around 24 BCE. Heavy iron-smelting slag heaps surround the site on multiple sides, providing direct evidence of large-scale ferrous metallurgy across many centuries of operation.
A queen who fought Augustus' generals signed her victory in stone next to a workshop town that smelted its own iron.