Now kept at the British Museum, the significance of the stela resides in the fact that it is inscribed with one of the longest known texts in the Meroitic script.

[1][2] The stela was found by the British archaeologist John Garstang in 1914 at the site of Hamadab, which is located a few kilometres south of Meroë, the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush.

One of a pair, the excavators discovered the stelae either side of the main doorway into a small temple.

It has been proposed that the Hamabad Stela may commemorate a Kushite raid on Roman Egypt in 24 BC.

One outcome of these raids could have been the looting of the Meroë Head from a city in Lower Egypt.