Numibia

Background

“Unlike their ancient history, which has been thoroughly studied, little has been recorded in English about the social and economic aspects of the existing Nubian tribes. This, perhaps, is partly because the countless ancient Egyptian remains in the locality are more attractive to the visitors than the cultural life of the inhabitants. The famous travellers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mentioned only random details which they came across in passing through Nubia”.

The life of the Nubians living from Aswan to the Second Cataract from the beginning of the past century is linked to the building of the two Aswan Dams, which caused the flooding of their traditional environment and opened a new chapter in their history, a chapter which we are still writing.

“The land of Egyptian Nubia which was first inundated by the water of the Aswan Dam, was inhabited by three major ethnic groups: from north, the Kanzi, who speak Nubian; the Arab, who as the name suggests, speak Arabic, and the Fadjga who lived in the southern district and also speak Nubian.
This land was composed of 42 administrative areas called nahiyat, each one containing several villages. The Kanzi area was composed of 20 nahiyat, the Arab of 5, the Fadjga of 17. All the villages were located on both banks of the Nile.
The agricultural land was formed by small areas of artificial mud isolated from each other, stretching along the valley for more than 300 Km. All the area covered a surface of about 32,000 acres. The land was regularly cultivated using the sagiya or waterwheel and the shaduf as in Egypt.

The economy of Nubia was based mainly on agriculture. The cultivation of date palms was very intensive. There were in Nubia about 4,000,000 palm trees of different species. The export of dates was the most important income before the construction of the First Aswan Dam. The building of the Dam as we know caused a lot of changes and allowed the cultivation only for four months in the year in most of the areas. Cereals were grown during the summer and for consumption during the winter. Vegetables were cultivated instead, in a small amount

At the end of 1912 after the construction of the first Aswan Dam, the Nubians asked the Government to develop projects aimed to improve the agriculture and to save it from the inundation. Therefore from 1913 to 1924 the authorities carried out several surveys throughout the Nubian area to find a solution. At the beginning of 1931 several projects were developed, consisting of irrigation projects or the construction of walls to protect the land from inundation.”

The peculiar character of the Nubian culture was not immediately affected by the building of the first Dam. W. B. Emery, director of the second major Archaeological Survey of Nubia in the years 1930-40, reported that “Nubia remains as it always has been, a barren highway between the fertile lands of Egypt and Sudan and …. (as) tourist steamers pass up and down the Nile between Shellal and Halfa, life in this ancient country continues unchanged with a steady adherence to old customs and traditions long since forgotten in the north”.

Architecture

The folk heritage of the contemporary Nubians is various and rich since it has been produced by several groups of people which make up the Nubian population.

“A miracle in architecture passed all but unnoticed until the time had come for it to disappear. This happened in Nubia in 1933, when the Aswan Dam was elevated for the second time and all the villages of Nubia were to be submerged.
The Egyptian government had allotted the relatively trivial sum of LE 750.000 as an indemnity to the Nubians for the 35.000 houses which were to be destroyed. It was only natural that the Nubians resented and were reluctant to accept this indemnity, and, in consequence, they started negotiating with the government. Finally the Nubians accepted the government’s offer with reluctance and started building just one year before their houses were to be submerged. In no more than twelve months, they rebuilt their houses. No two houses were the same, each was more beautiful than the last; each village created its own character. Construction in the villages went ahead unimpeded. All were built at the same time at normal cost price. This happened because the Nubians, being remotely situated and living in isolated villages, had always depended on their own resources to build their houses. They had no contractors, engineers or architects to help them. If they managed, it was mainly because they had retained a technique for roofing in mud brick, using vaults and domes, which had been passed down to them from their forefathers… ”

“The homes in Nubia which made up the nugu (village) extended 320 Km along the Nile at irregular intervals in a staggered line more or less parallel to the river”…

“The threshold was highly decorated. It symbolized the heritage of the household and was the chief feature of ornamentation, which might be carried from the doorway on throughout the whole house. Usually the designs were inspired by nature”…
“The main entrance led into an open courtyard or haush, with rooms adjoining the exterior walls on one or more of its sides”…
“Some living rooms had a high wall-to-wall opening above the door or would be completely open on to the courtyard. In front of these rooms there was a flat roofed space known as the khayma (literally “tent”), covered with palm stems and branches… it was a covered sitting area along the open courtyard”…
“The guest room or mandara usually had separate entrances, allowing the guest freedom of movement, while sustaining the privacy of the inner family quarters. The mandara was considered an important part of the house, as was hospitality, which continues to be an important obligation to Nubians”…
“In the South were the Nile was wider and alluvional mud was plentiful, a method know as the galos or tuf technique of construction prevailed. The walls were made of mud, mud brick (adobe) or stone, and were a dira’a (half an arm’s length) thick”…
“They constructed their roofs by using split palm trunks and acacia wood beams”…
“The women and the children of the household plastered and decorated the interior and the exterior of their homes with bright, bold and colorful designs representing man-made objects such as cars, airplanes, trains, and ships, or sometimes depicted the owner’s pilgrimage to the holy city of Makka”.

Jewelry

“Among the crafts which characterized the Modern Nubian culture, the most important is jewelry. Necklaces, earrings, anklets, nose rings, pendants, rings, made mainly of gold and silver, sometimes inlaid with semi precious stones, had several shapes according to the material and also to the person to whom they were destined.
The wedding party was an important occasion to wear these jewels. They played an important role in the Nubian marriage tradition. The donation of the colt to the bride was a moment of big feast known as the fadgab. Jewelry was a way for most women of keeping capital and of showing their status.
The marriage among the Nubians is one of the important moments during which the deepest personal emotions and traditions of the people are expressed (songs, dances, music, dresses, jewelry, drawings). It was often arranged also to combine for example, shares in land, palm tress, cows, etc. To this event many people and family members coming from distant villages were invited.

Music

Nubian music consisted in the beginning of a kind of poem, shar, composed using only five musical notes (Pentatonic rythm) and inspired from the war sounds of the Pharahos during the Ancient and Middle Kingdoms. The most used instruments were the tar, a kind of drum, the tambour, the daraboukka and the qirba, similar to a bagpipe. An important occasion for singing and dancing was, as said, the wedding party, which was accompanied by a background of music, ululation, clapping, drums, etc. (Nubian wedding) Many dances were also performed during the seasons of sowing and harvest with the auspices of prosperity and plentiful crops. The music and songs of the modern Nubians have been very commercialized. They use the old Nubian melody with Arabic words (Rasha, “Hadada” (lullaby), Sudaniyat, 1997).

Language

The Nubians also have their own language. The old Nubian characterized by a writing system, was a unique language used in all the area, as many manuscripts found in many different places of Nubia testify. It uses the Coptic alphabet with the addition of other letters to write the typical Nubian sounds. The oldest manuscripts in old Nubian go back to the beginning of the Christian period in Nubia (middle of the 6th century). With the appearance of Islam in Nubia (about 13th century) Arabic became the dominant language. However Nubian continued to be used until today. The modern language is formed by many dialects (Fadiga, Kenzi, Sikut, Mahas, Dongolawi), which derive from the old one. Since they do not respect a fixed model of writing, everyone tries to create his own model in such a way that sometimes the writer himself cannot read it again especially after a long time!”. Today many Nubians and foreign scholars are interested in the study of the Nubian language. This interest in its maintenance is very important for the Nubians since the language is the most important instrument to perpetuate the memory of a culture.”

Perspectives

“This is the last chapter of the history of this population inside their own country. Today 50,000 Egyptian Nubians are resettled at Komombo and Esna north of Aswan. While also many Sudanese Nubians were moved to Khasm el-Girba on the Atbara River with the building of the High Dam. What about their future? Of course the nostalgia (mostly for the old generation) for their country is enormous. The Egyptian Government is trying to support projects for the creation of settlements in the lake area with the participation of both government agencies and international funding programs. But what to say about the people for whom the hope of creating a new life in the country of their forefather is far, and who are destined anyway to constitute a minority in the new countries? “… in the mosaic of Middle Eastern life, many groups of people have retained their individuality and vitality for generations while living close to other groups distinct from themselves. I believe a Nubian society is likely to persist, for, until the still long distant day arrives when individual achievement and social mobility are the major factors in personal survival and success, bonds of kinship and group allegiance will remain relevant. Rather then indulge in romantic nostalgia for what is indisputably gone, we who care about the fate of this people must take pleasure in the fact that they are so well equipped by experience and circumstance to make the adjustments necessary for their survival. We can only hope that their attachment to what is culturally unique in their own heritage will find new expressions among future generations…”

The A-Group, an indigenous Nubian culture, emerged in Lower Nubia c. 3500 BC, during the Predynastic period in Egypt, and it reached its climax about the time of the Egyptian unification, c.3000 BC. George A. Reisner introduced the term “A-Group” in his chronological model of the Nubian cultures (1910). A-Group remains, mainly cemeteries, have been found between Kubaniya, 10 km (6 miles) to the north of Aswan, and Saras East in Bam el-Hagar, 30 km (20 miles) to the south of the Second Cataract. The rocky tract at Semna and Kumna may have constituted the southern border of this culture.

The most important archaeological source material related to the Nubian A-Group came from about seventy-five village cemeteries. Many graves had rich and varied funeral offerings that consisted of a whole array of indigenous and imported pottery types, including Nubian bowls and dishes with rippled surfaces, delicate thin-walled vessels with red-painted geometric patterns, and Egyptian bowls and wine jars. Among the other finds there were ivory bracelets, stone beads and amulets, mollusc shells from the Red Sea, copper tools, quartzite palettes, mortars and grinders, and female pottery figurines.

The general characteristics of the A-Group culture can be summarised as follows. The population, estimated at less than 20 000, lived in small communities along the flood plain. Structural remains of houses have been found only occasionally, most notably stone foundations and Afia, near Korosko. Animal husbandry, primarily cattle raising, formed the basis of their economy. They also practiced agriculture, growing cereal grains and leguminous plants. Fishing, hunting and food gathering were probably complementary parts of their subsistence. On the whole, the material remains of the A-Group display a blending of Egyptian and Sudanese designs and influences. The distribution of the funerary remains indicates a social inequality that became strongly emphasized towards the end of the period.

The control of trade and exchange in Nubia might have become the decisive factor in the development of the A-Group’s socio-economic and political structure. The leaders of the A-Group communities probably played an important intermediary role among the fast-developing Egyptian economy, the communities in Upper Nubia and those in surrounding regions, furnishing raw materials of various kinds, including ivory, hardwoods, precious stones, and gold, perhaps also cattle. There are three chronological phases of the A-Group. These are characterized as follows.

1. The Early A-Group inhabited the northern part of Lower Nubia and was contemporary with the latter part of Egypt’s Amratian, culture and early Gerzian. The richest cemetery was located at Khor Bahan. This phase was also coexistent with a Sudanese Neolithic culture called the Abkan, which dominated the region at the Second Cataract in Batn el-Hagar. The true relationship between the Egyptian Predynastic culture and the Early A-Group is not yet fully understood.

2. The Middle A-Group was contemporary with Egypt’s middle Gerzian and is considered to be a formative phase of the A-Group proper. The communities in Lower Nubia and the northern part of Batn el-Hagar developed a uniform culture, characterized by lively contacts with Egypt but also with Upper Nubia. There was a clear and unbroken continuation as regards traditions and social development between Middle A-Group and the subsequent Terminal phase.

3. The Terminal A-Group was coexistent with Egypt’s unification stage (end of Gerzian) and the initial part of the First Dynasty. Cultural and economic exchange along the Nubian part of the Nile valley was intensified during this period of prosperity and population growth.
The most affluent area was located in the southernmost part of Lower Nubia, displaying an impressive number of rich cemeteries with a strong social presence of women in both the village cemeteries and in many of the elite cemeteries. An advanced chiefdom that controlled at least the southern part of Lower Nubia may have been formed during the Terminal A-Group, perhaps the result of a consolidation process parallel to that of Egypt. The center was at Qustul near the present Sudanese- Egyptian border, where the Chicago Oriental Institute has excavated an elite cemetery with funerary offerings of outstanding quality. The complete breakdown of the A-Group culture came abruptly when the Egyptian kings of the First Dynasty took full control of the southern trade and the flow of raw materials. The population may have become nomadic, leaving few material remains behind. Between the reign of Djer of the First Dynasty (c.2900 BC) and the Fifth Dynasty (c.2374 BC) there are very few traces of indigenous Nubian settlements or graves. An Egyptian settlement, was found at Buhen opposite Wadi Halfa, dating to the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties.

It is entirely appropriate to note that when the international salvage efforts began, there was virtually no information available on the prehistoric development anywhere in Nubia, and even in Egypt little was known concerning prehistoric materials beyond a few scattered and rolled pieces found in ancient deposits along the Nile. From this limited evidence, archaeologists had concluded that the Nile Valley, both Nubia and Egypt, has been a culturally conservative cul-de-sac where the technological and typological attributes of the Middle Paleolithic survived relatively unchanged until near the end of the Pleistocene. The lithic industries of Late Paleolithic age along the Nile Valley were believed to be limited to a few simple tool types, usually made on flakes, and with a high frequency of the Levallois technology which elsewhere is characteristic of the Middle Paleolithic. Those diagnostic elements of the Late Paleolithic -the blade technology and the associated complex of tools emphasizing end-scrapers, burins, and backed pieces -were believed to be absent. These simple flake industries were seen as persisting long after com pound tools, indicated by the presence of geometric microliths, had appeared in Europe and southwest Asia.
At a still later date, the role of the Nile Valley in the origin and development of food production was also discounted as it became fashionable to regard the upland areas around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as the probable center for the origins of agriculture.
Perhaps the major result of the Nubia prehistoric campaign was to lay to rest these concepts of Nilotic cultural conservatism. The Nubian work not only disclosed the presence of numerous rich prehistoric living sites ranging in age from Early Paleolithic to the beginning of written records, but these sites yielded convincing evidence that they had been occupied by groups whose lithic technology and typology were fully as complex and as progressive as those from other parts of the world.
There is no evidence that these early efforts to use grain for food resulted in a corresponding primary development of food production, but they were an important first step which may ultimately have led to the crucial achievement of food production, either along the Nile or elsewhere in the Near East.
The Combined Prehistoric Expedition surveyed and located several hundred prehistoric sites within the assigned concession areas, and of these, 102 sites were excavated and studied systematically. These range from Early Paleolithic to Neolithic. The final reports on these studies have been published in several volumes (Wendorf, 1965 and 1968; Marks, 1970). The Prehistoric sites in Nubia have been grouped into five broad cultural stages, and within each stage several distinct lithic industries were defined. The stages may be summarized as follows:

Nubian Early Stone Age:
The sites of this stage are typologically and technologically within the range of the Acheulean complex and share many resemblances with the Middle and Late Acheulean from further south, especially Klor Abu Anga near Khartoum, Sudan. No living sites of this group are known, only quarries and workshops. Ferrocrete sandstone was preferred for tool production, although quartz was also important in some sites. Bifaces were the most common tools, while cleavers, trihedral forms, and para-Levallois flakes are rare. Levallois technology appears during the middle phase of this stage and becomes increasingly important thereafter. Nubian Early Stone Age sites occur only in the Older Pediments. None are known to occur within the silts of the river.

Nubian Middle Stone Age: This stage is generally equivalent to the Middle Paleolithic elsewhere. It contains four distinct industries the Nubian Mousterian, Denticulate Mousterian and the Nubian Middle Paleolithic and the Khormusan. The latter has affinities with the Sangoan-Lupemban of central and west Africa; the first two are more similar to the Mousterian complexes of the Near East and Europe. The first three of these industries share the following features: a nearly complete absence of handaxes (these are replaced by biface foliates or flake tools); a strong preference for ferrocrete sandstone for tools; and a frequent use of Levallois technology (although this varies among the three industries of this stage). Sites of these three industries occur only in the Older Pediments. The Khormusan sites occur imbedded in the oldest Nile silts known in the part of the Valley and are believed to date between 65,000 and 55,000 years old. Khormusan sites record a diverse food economy.
They contain an abundance of fish remains as well as numerous bones of wild cattle, gazelle and hartebeest. In addition to the typical wide, flat Levallois flakes, the Khormusan sites contain numerous burins (a kind of engraving tool), scrapers and perforators.

Nubian Upper Stone Age:
Three distinct industries are also included in this stage: the Khormusan, the Gemian, and the Sebilian. Each of these industries is markedly different from the others, but as a group they share an emphasis on medium-sized flakes for the manufacture of tools; the biface foliates of the preceding stage are gone, and there are no true geometric, microlithic, or backed microblade tools characteristic of later stage. Except for the Sebilian, which differs sharply from all other known lithic assemblages in Nubia, sites of this stage yield increasing frequencies of artifacts made on Nile pebbles, while burins, endscrapers, and retouched points occur commonly in one or the other industries. The Sebilian retains the emphasis on ferrocrete sandstone preferred during the earlier stages, and the tools of this industry emphasized various kinds of truncations. These differences have led to the suggestion that the Sebilians were an outside, non-Nilotic group who briefly intruded into the area. In some respects they have close affiliations to some of the industries known farther south in central Africa -especially the Tshitolian.

Nubian Final Stone Age:
This stage contains four distinct industries: the Halfan, the Qadan, the Arkinian, and the Shamarkian. All of these industries share a tendency for the retouched tools to be microlithic, suggesting extensive use of composite tools. They also all make frequent use of microblades and bladelets in the manufacture of finished tools, and Nile chert pebbles were used almost exclusively as raw material for these tools. The Nile and its resources, especially fish, become increasingly important, and it is during this stage that the first use of ground grain occurs. There is an overlap in time between the Nubian Final Stone Age and the preceeding Nubian Upper Stone Age. The earliest Nubian Final Stone Age sites (the Halfan) occur in situ in Nile silts and have radiocarbon dates of around 17,000 B.G., while the Nubian Upper Stone Age probably begins before 20,000 B.G., but survives as a technological stage represented by the Sebilian, as late as 9,000 B.G.

Nubian Ceramic Age:
This stage includes at least three distinct lithic industries in Nubia. Pottery, the diagnostic feature of this stage, first appears in the final phase of the Shamarkian industry, and is also present in two distinct and seemingly contemporary groups named the Abkan and Khartum Variant. Both the Shamarkian and Abkan ceramics appear to be stimulated by Egyptian sources; however, the Khartum Variant pottery clearly is similar to that of Shaheinab in central Sudan. All three industries share an emphasis on large flake tools, and the Abkan and Shamarkian sites are dramatically larger than those known previously in Nubia. This change of settlement size may indicate the appearance in Nubia of a new economic resource -possibly cultivation.

The area now called Nubia extends along the Nile from the South of Aswan to the town of Dabba, near the Fourth cataract, linking Egypt – i.e. the northern part of the Nile valley – to the Sudan in the South. The name Nubia is first mentioned in Strabo’s Geographica; the Greek author is believed to have visited Egypt c. 29 BC.

The etymology of the name Nubia is uncertain, but some researchers believe it is derived from the Ancient Egyptian nbu, meaning gold, referring to the gold mines for which Nubia was famous. The name does not appear in Ancient Egyptian texts. They refer to Nubia generally as Ta-Seti, meaning “Land of the Bow”, a clear reference to the weapon favoured by the Nubians.

When the Nubia Museum was created, it was decided to make a place not only for the display of antiquities but also a Regional Training Center in conservation and museology to preserve the region’s priceless cultural heritage and also to create links for further cooperation in the field of research, collection, exhibition exchanges, etc., with other Arabic and African countries through the support of international institutions.

The courses are addressed to people who work already in the field of the preservation of Cultural Heritage and who need to improve their skills in their field. The courses are intensive with a maximum duration of one month.

In the first years of the activity of the Center the trainers will be assisted by international and regional consultants. In the next two years it is foreseen that the senior members of the Nubia Museum staff will serve as trainers for the courses dispensed at the Regional Training Center.

The main topics of the courses will be:

documentation of collections (accessioning objects, assigning catalogue numbers, defining and initiating computer records, management protocols, etc.);

care of collections: preventive conservation, security, professional ethics.

The training center also aims at the provision of professional museum training and research facilities by the Nubia Museum personnel using the most advanced equipment and professing the most current information.

The activity of the Center started in 2001 with the training of the senior members of the museum staff, carried out by an international staff of consultants.

Nubia can be considered the most ‘excavated’ corner of the world. After almost a century of excavations, we now have enormous documentation about the area. These documents are scattered around the world, given the international character of the Salvage Campaign.

In 2001, Unesco once more drew the attention of international institutions to Nubia: a recommendation was voted to establish at the Nubia Museum a Documentation centre on Nubia studies for which Unesco is trying to collect as many publications as possible as well as gather copies of documentation (photos, drawings, reports, articles, etc). Moreover we would also like to try to make an inventory of the existing documentation scattered throughout the world.

The portrayal of Nubia as a culture and a land in the form of documentation will represent and compensate, at least in part, those who have lost their land. Besides, the Documentation Centre will be an important reference point for everyone interested in studying Nubia and its people.

To this day, many of the important documents (maps, drawings, field reports, photographs, etc.) relating to Nubia and which were located in several institutions in Egypt have been collected. By the beginning of the year 2004, we hope that all documentation relating to Nubia in Egypt will be gathered together.

Some foreign institutions outside of Egypt, such as the Museum of Leiden (Netherlands), have already given copies of their archival documentation.

Please help us to create the Documentation centre’s collection by sending us lists of documents based in your institution, and if possible copies of these documents. We can also come to you and make copies.

Copyright will belong to the institution of provenance.

By the beginning of 2005, the documentation relating to Nubia coming from Egyptian and foreign institutions based in Egypt will be available to researchers.

For any further information, please contact:
Maria Costanza De Simone
Nubia DCA (Documentation Center Aswan)
E-mail: nubiadca@internetegypt.com

The library aims to acquire and preserve publications and documentation concerning Nubian cultural heritage and the museum collections and to make the material available to researchers and interested public.

The library consists in a lobby, a general reading area and an electronic reading area.

It possesses more than 2000 volumes (206 of them in Arabic) concerning a wide variety of subjects including: Art, History, Archaeology, Public relations, Conservation, Education, Museology, Exhibition design, Museum Management, and reference books (dictionaries, atlases, …). Most of these publications concern Nubia, but also Egypt, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world.
Various reports, dissertations, periodicals and CD-ROMs, complete this ever-growing collection.

Librarians:
Mrs Rasha Fawzi
Mrs Zeinab Abass