Aswan is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate.
Dedun was a Nubian god worshipped during ancient times in ancient Egypt and Sudan and attested as early as 2400 BC. There is much uncertainty about his original nature, especially since he was depicted as a lion, a role which usually was assigned to the son of another deity. Nothing is known of the earlier Nubian mythology from which this deity arose, however. The earliest known information in Egyptian writings about Dedun indicates that he already had become a god of incense by the time of the writings. Since at this historical point, incense was an extremely expensive luxury commodity and Nubia was the source of much of it, he was quite an important deity. The wealth that the trade in incense delivered to Nubia led to his being identified by them as the god of prosperity, and of wealth in particular.
Nubians are an ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization. In the southern valley of Egypt, Nubians differ culturally and ethnically from other Egyptians, although they intermarried with members of other ethnic groups, especially Arabs. They speak Nubian languages as a mother tongue, part of the Northern Eastern Sudanic languages, and Arabic as a second language.
Abu Simbel is a historic site comprising two massive rock-cut temples in the village of Abu Simbel, Aswan Governorate, Upper Egypt, near the border with Sudan. It is situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser, about 230 km (140 mi) southwest of Aswan. The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, during the 19th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses II. They serve as a lasting monument to the king Ramesses II. His wife Nefertari and children can be seen in smaller figures by his feet, considered to be of lesser importance and were not given the same position of scale. This commemorates his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Their huge external rock relief figures have become iconic.
Elephantine is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological sites on the island were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 along with other examples of Upper Egyptian architecture, as part of the "Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae".
Makuria was a Nubian kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. Makuria originally covered the area along the Nile River from the Third Cataract to somewhere south of Abu Hamad as well as parts of northern Kordofan. Its capital was Dongola, and the kingdom is sometimes known by the name of its capital.
Lower Nubia is the northernmost part of Nubia, roughly contiguous with the modern Lake Nasser, which submerged the historical region in the 1960s with the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Many ancient Lower Nubian monuments, and all its modern population, were relocated as part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia; Qasr Ibrim is the only major archaeological site which was neither relocated nor submerged. The intensive archaeological work conducted prior to the flooding means that the history of the area is much better known than that of Upper Nubia.
The C-Group culture is an archaeological culture found in Lower Nubia, which dates from ca. 2400 BCE to ca. 1550 BCE. It was named by George A. Reisner. With no central site and no written evidence about what these people called themselves, Reisner assigned the culture a letter. The C-Group arose after Reisner's A-Group and B-Group cultures, and around the time the Old Kingdom was ending in Ancient Egypt.
Qasr Ibrim is an archaeological site in Lower Nubia, located in the modern country of Egypt. The site has a long history of occupation, ranging from as early as the eighth century BC to AD 1813, and was an economic, political, and religious center. Originally it was a major city perched on a cliff above the Nile, but the flooding of Lake Nasser after the construction of the Aswan High Dam – with the related International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia – transformed it into an island and flooded its outskirts. Qasr Ibrim is the only major archaeological site in Lower Nubia to have survived the Aswan Dam floods. Both prior to and after the floods, it has remained a major site for archaeological investigations.
The A-Group culture was an ancient culture that flourished between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile in Nubia. It lasted from c. 3800 BC to c. 3100 BC.
The National Museum of Sudan or Sudan National Museum, abbreviated SNM, is a two-story building, constructed in 1955 and established as national museum in 1971.
The region of Semna is 15 miles south of Wadi Halfa and is situated where rocks cross the Nile narrowing its flow—the Semna Cataract.
Uronarti, a Nubian word meaning "Island of the King", is an island in the Nile just south of the Second Cataract in the north of Sudan. The primary importance of the island lies in the massive ancient fortress that still stands on its northern end. This fortress is one of a number constructed along the Nile in Lower Nubia during the Middle Kingdom, primarily by the rulers Senusret I and Senusret III.
Nubia is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, or more strictly, Al Dabbah. 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, whose heirs ruled most of Nubia for the next 400 years. Nubia was home to several empires, most prominently the Kingdom of Kush, which conquered Egypt in the eighth century BC during the reign of Piye and ruled the country as its 25th Dynasty.
The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in what is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
Tombos or Tumbus is an archaeological site in northern Sudan, including Tombos island and the nearby riverbank area. Tombos is located at the Third Cataract of the Nile and on the northern margin of the Dongola Reach, not far from Kerma. The occupation of Tombos, revealed by archaeological work, began in mid-18th Dynasty of Egypt and continued through the 25th Dynasty. In the New Kingdom period, a large range of pharaonic and private royal inscriptions from 18th Dynasty and elite tombs in Egyptian style indicates Tombos was an important node of Egyptian colonial control. In the New Kingdom, Tombos witnessed the blending and entanglement of Egyptian and Nubian traditions.
Mirgissa was a settlement in Northern state, Sudan. Situated at the 2nd cataract in Wadi Halfa, it contained one of the largest fortresses in Nubia. In the time of Thutmose II, 250 to 450 people inhabited the area. The first European explorer was English geologist Sir Henry George Lyons in 1892, and was excavated without Sudanese permission, by the French Egyptologist Jean Vercoutter from 1962 to 1969. In addition to the fort, excavations uncovered the remains of two cities, one of which was fortified, a northern enclosure, two cemeteries, a boat slide, and a port. Construction of the Aswan High Dam caused the disappearance of Mirgissa, which now lies under the waters of Lake Nubia.
Hans-Åke Nordström (1933-2022) was a Swedish archaeologist and professor at Uppsala University. His work has included excavations in parts of Nubia, submerged since the construction of the Aswan Dam, and the development of the Vienna System for classifying Egyptian pottery.
Gebel Ramlah is a region in the Western Desert of southern Egypt that was occupied throughout the African Pastoral Neolithic. Archaeological research has focused primarily on individual burial sites and six pastoral cemeteries, including the earliest known infant cemetery in the world. The Gebel Ramlah cemeteries were active during the Final Neolithic in the fifth millennium BC. Ongoing excavation has uncovered over 200 human burials and elaborate grave goods. Research studies have been done on the pottery, mollusk shells, archaeobotanical remains, and skeletal remains found throughout the sites.
Gebel Adda was a mountain and archaeological site on the right bank of the Nubian Nile in what is now southern Egypt. The settlement on its crest was continuously inhabited from the late Meroitic period to the Ottoman period, when it was abandoned by the late 18th century. It reached its greatest prominence in the 14th and 15th centuries, when it seemed to have been the capital of late kingdom of Makuria. The site was superficially excavated by the American Research Center in Egypt just before being flooded by Lake Nasser in the 1960s, with much of the remaining excavated material, now stored in the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, remaining unpublished. Unearthed were Meroitic inscriptions, Old Nubian documents, a large amount of leatherwork, two palatial structures and several churches, some of them with their paintings still intact. The nearby ancient Egyptian rock temple of Horemheb, also known as temple of Abu Oda, was rescued and relocated.
