Nubia ( ; Nobiin: Nⲟ̅ⲩ̅ⲃⲁ; ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (near Khartoum in central Sudan) and the First Cataract (south of Aswan in southern Egypt). It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, the Kerma culture, which lasted from around 2500 BC until its conquest by the New Kingdom of Egypt under Pharaoh Thutmose I around 1500 BC. Egyptian heirs subsequently ruled much of Nubia for the next four centuries.
Nubia was home to several empires, most prominently the Kingdom of Kush. This kingdom conquered Egypt in the eighth century BC under Piye, ruling as its 25th Dynasty. From the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, northern Nubia was invaded and annexed by Egypt, then under the rule of the Greeks and later the Romans; this territory was known in the Greco-Roman world as the Dodekaschoinos.
The collapse of Kush in the 4th century AD was preceded by an invasion from the Kingdom of Aksum and followed by the rise of three Christian kingdoms: Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia. Makuria and Alodia endured for roughly a millennium. Their eventual decline precipitated both the partition of Nubia in the 16th century—into a northern half conquered by the Ottoman Empire and a southern half by the Sennar sultanate—and a rapid process of Islamization and partial Arabization of the Nubian people. Nubia was later reunited under the Khedivate of Egypt in the 19th century. Today, the region is divided between Egypt and Sudan.
Ancient Nubians pioneered early antibiotics and established a system of geometrics which served as the basis for initial sunclocks. Nubians also exercised a trigonometric methodology comparable to their Egyptian counterparts.
The interdisciplinary study of ancient Nubia, combining archaeology, history, and philology, is known as Nubiology.
Linguistics
The term "Nubian" has come to be applied to a set of possibly Eastern Sudanic languages which were prominent in what is now the Republic of Sudan, especially in regions along the Nile, during the early modern period. Historically, varieties of the Nubian languages spoken in this area included Nobiin (descended from Old Nubian), Dongolawi, and Kenzi. Other Nubian languages include(d) Midob, spoken mostly in North Darfur, Birgid, a now extinct language once spoken north of Nyala, also in Darfur, and the various Hill Nubian languages spoken in the Nuba mountains region of Sudan.
Though the Nubian languages were historically prominent in the region, they were not the only ones used, and there exists some dispute as to the linguistic identities of various groups once resident in the region. The language of the ancient Kerma culture based in southern and central Nubia (also called Upper Nubia), is uncertain, with some researchers suggesting that it belonged to the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages, though more recent research generally tends to support an Eastern Sudanic (thus, Nilo-Saharan) affiliation. Other peoples of northern Nubia (also called Lower Nubia), such as the C-Group culture and the Blemmyes are thought to have spoken a Cushitic language before the arrival of Eastern Sudanic from Upper Nubia.
Geography
Nubia was divided into three major regions: Upper, Middle, and Lower Nubia, in reference to their locations along the Nile. "Lower" referred to regions downstream (further north) and "upper" to regions upstream (further south). Lower Nubia lay between the First and the Second Cataracts within the current borders of Egypt, Middle Nubia lay between the Second and the Third Cataracts, and Upper Nubia lay south of the Third Cataract.
History Prehistory (before 6000–3500 BC)
Archaeological evidence attests to long histories of fishing-hunting-gathering, and later herding, throughout the Nile Valley.
Affad 23 is an archaeological site located in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach in northern Sudan, which hosts "the well-preserved remains of prehistoric camps (relics of the oldest open-air hut in the world) and diverse hunting and gathering loci some 50,000 years old".
In southern Nubia (near modern Khartoum) from the ninth to the sixth millennia cal BC, Khartoum Mesolithic fisher-hunter-gatherers produced sophisticated pottery.
By 5000 BC, the people who inhabited what is now called Nubia participated in the Neolithic Revolution. The Sahara became drier, and people began to domesticate sheep, goats, and cattle. Saharan rock reliefs depict scenes that have been thought to suggest the presence of a cattle cult, typical of those seen throughout parts of Eastern Africa and the Nile Valley even to this day. Nubian rock art depicts hunters using bows and arrows in the Neolithic period, which is a precursor to Nubian archer culture in later times.
Megaliths discovered at Nabta Playa are early examples of what seems to be one of the world's first astronomical devices, predating Stonehenge by almost 2,000 years.PlanetQuest: The History of Astronomy – Retrieved on 29 August 2007 This complexity as expressed by different levels of authority within the society there likely formed the basis for the structure of both the Neolithic society at Nabta and the Old Kingdom of Egypt.Late Neolithic megalithic structures at Nabta Playa – by Fred Wendorf (1998)
American anthropologist Joseph Vogel wrote that: "The period when sub-Saharan Africa was most influential in Egypt was a time when neither Egypt, as we understand it culturally, nor the Sahara, as we understand it geographically, existed. Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."
British Africanist Basil Davidson outlined that "The ancient Egyptians belonged, that is, not to any specific Egyptian region or Near Eastern heritage but to that wide community of peoples who lived between the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, shared a common "Saharan-Sudanese culture", and drew their reinforcements from the same great source, even though, as time went by, they also absorbed several wanderers from the Near East".
Biological anthropologists Shomarka Keita and A.J. Boyce have stated that the "Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
Archaeological evidence has attested that population settlements occurred in Nubia as early as the Late Pleistocene era and from the 5th millennium BC onwards, whereas there is "no or scanty evidence" of human presence in the Egyptian Nile Valley during these periods, which may be due to problems in site preservation. Several scholars have argued that the African origins of the Egyptian civilization derived from pastoral communities which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese regions of the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BC.
Archaeologist Bruce Williams has advanced the view that Nubian elites participated with the early Egyptian rulers in the development of the pharaonic civilization. Williams also clarified in 1987 that his discovery of the Qutsul incense burner proposed no claim of a Nubian origin or genesis for the pharaonic monarchy, but that excavations had shown Nubian linkages and contributions. He maintained that detailed, archaeological evidence had found cemeteries of tombs situated in Qustul, Nubia, which were described to be vastly wealthier and greater in size than the Abydos tombs of the first dynastic rulers.
Dietrich Wildung (2018) examined Eastern Saharan pottery styles and Sudanese stone sculptures and suggested these artifacts were transmitted across the Nile Valley and influenced the pre-dynastic Egyptian culture in the Neolithic period.
Pre-Kerma; A-Group (3500-3000 BC)
Upper Nubia The poorly known "pre-Kerma" culture existed in Upper (Southern) Nubia on a stretch of fertile farmland just south of the Third Cataract.
Lower Nubia
Around 3500 BC, the second "Nubian" culture, termed the Early A-Group culture, arose in Lower Nubia. A-Group Nubians were semi-nomadic herders and rudimentary agriculturalists who also practised extensive fishing, hunting and gathering. Evidence of agriculture first appeared in the Terminal A-Group period, circa 3200–3000 BC (contemporary with Naqada IIIB). The A-Group culture also traded with the Egyptians and exported gold. This trade is supported archaeologically by large amounts of Egyptian commodities deposited in A-Group graves. The imports consisted of gold objects, copper tools, faience amulets and beads, seals, slate palettes, stone vessels, and a variety of pots. During this time, the Nubians began creating distinctive black-topped, red pottery. The A-Group population have been described as ethnically "very similar" to the pre-dynastic Egyptians in physical characteristics.
A-Group dwellings consisted mostly of reed huts and rock shelters, with most settlements taking the form of temporary settlements or campsites. Afyeh in Lower Nubia is the site of a unique A-group settlement where the remains of houses with stone foundation slabs have also been found.
Around 3100 BC, the A-group transitioned from the Early to Classical phases. "Arguably, royal burials are known only at Qustul and possibly Sayala." During this period, the wealth of A-group kings rivaled Egyptian kings. Royal A-group graves contained gold and richly decorated pottery. Some scholars believe Nubian A-Group rulers and early Egyptian pharaohs used related royal symbols; similarities in A-Group Nubia and Upper Egypt rock art support this position. Scholars from the University of Chicago Oriental Institute excavated at Qustul (near Abu Simbel in Sudan), in 1960–64, and found artifacts which incorporated images associated with Egyptian pharaohs.
Archeologist Bruce Williams studied the artifacts and concluded that "Egypt and Nubia A-Group culture shared the same official culture", "participated in the most complex dynastic developments", and "Nubia and Egypt were both part of the great East African substratum". Williams also wrote that Qustul "could well have been the seat of Egypt's founding dynasty". David O'Connor wrote that the Qustul incense burner provides evidence that the A-group Nubian culture in Qustul marked the "pivotal change" from predynastic to dynastic "Egyptian monumental art". However, "most scholars do not agree with this hypothesis", as more recent finds in Egypt indicate that this iconography originated in Egypt instead of Nubia, and that the Qustul rulers adopted or emulated the symbols of Egyptian pharaohs.
According to David Wengrow, the A-Group polity of the late 4th millenninum BC is poorly understood since most of the archaeological remains are submerged underneath Lake Nasser. Frank Yurco also remarked that depictions of pharonic iconography such as the royal crowns, Horus falcons and victory scenes were concentrated in the Upper Egyptian Naqada culture and A-Group Nubia. He further elaborated that "Egyptian writing arose in Naqadan Upper Egypt and A-Group Nubia, and not in the Delta cultures, where the direct Western Asian contact was made, further vitiates the Mesopotamian-influence argument".
The archaeological cemeteries at Qustul are no longer available for excavations since the flooding of Lake Nasser. The earliest representations of pharaonic iconography have been excavated from Nag el-Hamdulab in Aswan, the extreme southern region of Egypt which borders the Sudan, with an estimated dating range between 3200 and 3100 BC.
Egypt and Nubia