Nubia is the term commonly used by scholars to refer to the land located south of Ancient Egypt, from the city of Elephantine down to modern-day Khartoum. Nubia has been one of the earliest humanly inhabited lands in the world. Its history is tied to that of Egypt, from which it became independent in the 10th century BC. The rich gold deposits in Nubia made the latter the target of Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and later Arabs. Research on Nubia has allowed scholars to find several of its references.
Ancient Egyptians referred to Nubia as several different names. The aforementioned Nubia is derived from the Egyptian word from nub, the Egyptian word for "gold." It is believed that the Nubians were the first people along the Nile to mine for gold, later introducing the mineral to Egyptians and earning their name. [1] [2]
Because Nubians were very skilled archers, Egyptians also called Nubia and the southernmost region of Egypt (near Elephantine) by the moniker Ta-Seti, meaning "Law of the Bow." [1] Accordingly, the Nubian inhabitants were named Iuntiu-setiu, which translates to "Bowmen." [3] Ta-Nehesy and Ta-Nehasyu were also used by both Nubians and Egyptians as another word for Nubia, with Nubians being named Nehesy at times. [2] [4]
It has also been argued by historians that Ta-Netjer (meaning "God's Land") [3] and Punt refer to a region in Upper Nubia near Medja. [2] [5]
Greeks occupied Egypt from the Ptolemaic Period (332-30BC), they called the land south of Egypt, Aethiopia . [6] [7] Romans adopted that name for Nubia when they came and defeated the Ptolemaic Dynasty.[ citation needed ]
Arabs conquered Egypt in 641AD, and were planning to attack Bilad al-Sudan, or The Land of the Blacks. That was the name Arabs used to refer to Nubia. [8] That name was still used in 1820, when Mohammed Ali Pasha or Mehmet Ali became the viceroy of Egypt. When The English came and conquered the area, they adopted the name Sudan from the Arab term to refer to that area.[ citation needed ]
Aswan is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate.
Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan speaking 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.
Lake Nasser is a vast reservoir in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It was created by the construction of the Aswan High Dam and is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Before its creation, the project faced opposition from Sudan as it would encroach on land in the northern part of the country, where many Nubian people lived who would have to be resettled. In the end Sudan's land near the area of Lake Nasser was mostly flooded by the lake. The lake has become an important economic resource in Egypt, improving agriculture and touting robust fishing and tourism industries.
Elephantine is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological digs on the island became a World Heritage Site in 1979, along with other examples of Upper Egyptian architecture, as part of the "Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae".
Medjay was a demonym used in various ways throughout ancient Egyptian history to refer initially to a nomadic group from Nubia and later as a generic term for desert-ranger police. They were sometimes confused with the Pan-Grave Culture.
The Twelfth Dynasty of ancient Egypt is a series of rulers reigning from 1991–1802 BC, at what is often considered to be the apex of the Middle Kingdom. The dynasty periodically expanded its territory from the Nile delta and valley South beyond the second cataract and East into Canaan.
Wādī Ḥalfā is a city in the Northern state of Sudan on the shores of Lake Nubia near the border with Egypt. It is the terminus of a rail line from Khartoum and the point where goods are transferred from rail to ferries going down the lake. As of 2007, the city had a population of 15,725. The city is located amidst numerous ancient Nubian antiquities and was the focus of much archaeological work by teams seeking to save artifacts from the flooding caused by the completion of the Aswan Dam.
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.
The C-Group culture is an archaeological culture found in Lower Nubia, which dates from c. 2400 BCE to c. 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.
The Ja'alin, Ja'aliya, Ja'aliyin or Ja'al are a tribal confederation and an Arab or Arabised Nubian tribe in Sudan. The Ja'alin constitute a large portion of the Sudanese Arabs and are one of the three prominent Sudanese Arab tribes in northern Sudan - the others being the Shaigiya and Danagla. They trace their origin to Ibrahim Ja'al, an Abbasid noble, whose clan originally hailed from the Hejaz in the Arabian Peninsula and married into the local Nubian population. Ja'al was a descendant of al-Abbas, an uncle of Muhammad. The Ja'alin formerly occupied the country on both banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Abu Hamad. According to a source, the tribe allegedly once spoke a now extinct dialect of Nubian as late as the nineteenth century. Many Sudanese politicians have come from the Ja'alin tribal coalition.
Articles related to Modern Egypt include:
Kandake, kadake or kentake, often Latinised as Candace, was the Meroitic term for the sister of the king of Kush who, due to the matrilineal succession, would bear the next heir, making her a queen mother. She had her own court, probably acted as a landholder and held a prominent secular role as regent. Contemporary Greek and Roman sources treated it, incorrectly, as a name. The name Candace is derived from the way the word is used in the New Testament.
Ancient Aethiopia, (Greek: Αἰθιοπία, romanized: Aithiopía; first appears as a geographical term in classical documents in reference to the upper Nile region of Sudan, areas south of the Sahara, and certain areas in Asia. Its earliest mention is in the works of Homer: twice in the Iliad, and three times in the Odyssey. The Greek historian Herodotus uses the appellation to refer to such parts of sub-Saharan Africa as were then part of the known world.
Nubia is a region along the Nile river encompassing the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, and the area between the first cataract of the Nile 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.
African Greeks, or Greeks in Africa, are the Greek people in the continent of Africa. Greek communities have existed in Africa since antiquity.
Ta-Seti was the first nome of Upper Egypt, one of 42 nomoi in Ancient Egypt. Ta-Seti marked the border area towards Nubia, and the name was also used to refer to Nubia itself.
Sebiumeker was a major supreme god of procreation and fertility in Nubian mythology who was primarily worshipped in Meroe, Kush, in present-day Sudan. He is sometimes thought of as a guardian of gateways as his statues are sometimes found near doorways. He has many similarities with Atum, but has Nubian characteristics, and is also considered the god of agriculture.
Nubia is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile as well as the confluence of the blue and white Niles or, more strictly, Al Dabbah. Nubia was the seat of several civilizations of ancient Africa, including the Kerma culture, the kingdom of Kush, Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia.
Kushite religion is the traditional belief system and pantheon of deities associated with the Ancient Nubians, who founded the Kingdom of Kush in the land of Nubia in present-day Sudan.