Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan 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 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.
Makuria was a medieval Nubian kingdom in what is today northern Sudan and southern Egypt. Its capital was Dongola in the fertile Dongola Reach, and the kingdom is sometimes known by the name of its capital.
Old Nubian is an extinct Nubian language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughout the kingdom of Makuria, including the eparchy of Nobatia. The language is preserved in more than a hundred pages of documents and inscriptions, both of a religious nature, and related to the state and private life, written using adaptation of the Coptic alphabet.
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. According to David Wengrow, the A-Group Nubian polity of the late 4th millenninum BCE is poorly understood since most of the archaeological remains are submerged underneath Lake Nasser.
Nobiin, also known as Halfawi, Mahas, is a Northern Nubian language of the Nilo-Saharan language family. "Nobiin" is the genitive form of Nòòbíí ("Nubian") and literally means "(language) of the Nubians". Another term used is Noban tamen, meaning "the Nubian language".
Dotawo was a Christian kingdom in Lower Nubia in the Middle Ages. It is attested in Old Nubian documents from the 12th to the 15th centuries. It is one of the last attested Christian states to survive in the region.
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.
Nobatia or Nobadia was a late antique kingdom in Lower Nubia. Together with the two other Nubian kingdoms, Makuria and Alodia, it succeeded the kingdom of Kush. After its establishment in around 400, Nobadia gradually expanded by defeating the Blemmyes in the north and incorporating the territory between the second and third Nile cataract in the south. In 543, it converted to Coptic Christianity. It would then be annexed by Makuria, under unknown circumstances, during the 7th century.
The Cologne Mani-Codex is a minute parchment codex, dated on paleographical evidence to the fifth century CE, found near Asyut, Egypt; it contains a Greek text describing the life of Mani, the founder of the religion Manichaeism.
The Septuagint (LXX), the ancient Alexandrian translation of Jewish scriptures into Koine Greek exists in various manuscript versions.
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, also known as the Kushite Empire, or simply Kush, was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in what is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
Phonen was king of Blemmyes, known from a letter which was found in Qasr Ibrim, Lower Nubia, in 1976. The papyrus letter comes perhaps from some royal archive and dates the rule of Phonen to around 450 AD.
Aburni was a king of Nobatia, who ruled around 450 AD as the successor of Silko.
Gerald Michael Browne was professor emeritus of classics at the University of Illinois. He was a founding editor, in 1988, of the Journal of Coptic Studies. The principal biographical study of his life is an article by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei.
Stefan Karol Jakobielski is a Polish historian, archaeologist, philologist, epigraphist. One of the pioneers of nubiology. He participated in archaeological research in Faras, Tell Atrib, Palmyra, Deir el-Bahari and Qasr Ibrim; directed the archaeological works at Old Dongola.
Portions of the Bible were translated into the Sogdian language in the 9th and 10th centuries. All surviving manuscripts are incomplete Christian liturgical texts, intended for reading on Sundays and holy days. It is unknown if a whole translation of any single book of the Bible was made, although the text known as C13 may be a fragment of a complete Gospel of Matthew. All but one text are written in Syriac script; only a few pages of the Book of Psalms written in Sogdian script are extant.
Moses Georgios was ruler of the Nubian kingdom of Makuria. During his reign it is believed that the crown of Alodia was also under the control of Makuria. He is mostly known for his conflict with Saladin.
Timothy was a Nubian monk and bishop. He was the titular bishop of Faras (Pachoras) with his seat in Qasr Ibrim (Phrim) from 1372.
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.