Mandulis, known by the indigenous name Merul, was a solar and lion-associated god of Lower Nubia whose two great temples stood at Kalabsha (ancient Talmis) and on the island of Philae. He was the foremost deity of the Blemmyes, the desert people of the Red Sea Hills whom scholars identify as the classical ancestors of the Beja, and inscriptions record his worship among them until the temples closed in the sixth century. In the famous Greek text known as the Vision of Mandulis Aion a devotee keeps a night vigil and beholds the god as the rising sun-child and as boundless Time. In Lower Nubia his solar and leonine character drew him into identification with the Meroitic warrior-lion Apedemak, and he shared the sanctuaries of Philae with Isis, whose pilgrims included the last pagan Blemmyes.