Source: Encyclopedia of Selected Peaceful Societies
The Nubians
Location
Before the Aswan High Dam was finished in the early 1960s in southern Egypt, about 50,000 people lived in Old Nubia, along both sides of the Nile River south of Aswan. After the completion of the dam, the Egyptian government moved the Nubian people to new communities near Kom Ombo, New Nubia, north of the dam.
Economy
In order to irrigate the fields and farm the land above the Nile in Old Nubia, the people built large water wheels to haul water up from the river. These water wheels were relatively complex and expensive to build, so the Nubian families built them cooperatively and shared the water resources they provided. The shared maintenance and operation of these devices, combined with the fact that they could only provide so much water per day, helped discourage subdivisions of the shares of water and of the farm fields they watered. These economic facts brought about by the water wheel technology prompted the Nubians to maintain a social system of cooperative partnerships based on stable, more or less equitable, divisions of land. This helped minimize disparities in wealth.
Beliefs that Foster Peacefulness
Nubians themselves take considerable pride in their peaceful society, or what they think of as one. They think of their society as balad el aman, a land of peacefulness and security. One of their beliefs that helps build their peacefulness is that they do not blame their misfortunes on malevolent individuals, such as witches, so they are able to avoid that source of rancor. Instead, they feel that some people happen to have an evil eye, and those individuals with the evil eye inadvertently cause problems for others through accidental glances. Disputes are thus avoided by not personalizing or blaming others for disasters and problems.
Avoiding and Resolving Conflict
The Nubians place a high value on resolving village disputes right within the community. When minor disputes arise, such as a fight between two unrelated children that brings the mothers and their kin out onto the street to support their own, neutral bystanders will normally rush in to end the conflict. When more serious conflicts threaten, third parties who may be respected by both parties to a dispute will intervene. Serious conflicts are discussed after the Friday prayers in the mosque by the men of the congregation. Networks of reciprocal relationships that bind people to others outside their own families also help militate against factional conflicts.
Gender Relations
In the traditional Nubian village, men depended on women for their maintenance of the family and the home, while women depended on men for money and support. The nearly equal status of men and women was bolstered by the fact that women often had their own sources of earnings. This helped women achieve nearly the same power as men. In new Nubia, while men and women are still seen to be nearly equal, men do have more access to wage labor in the Aswan area than women have, so the balance of equality may shift in time and women may become marginalized.
Raising Children
Babies are loved and cared for by everyone, and as they grow they are socialized and instructed by the entire village. Traditionally, girls were only educated in the home, but increasingly, in New Nubia, parents are encouraging their daughters as well as their sons to attend and excel in school. However, girls are raised to do housework, and while boys have chores around the house—and farming chores if the family has farmland—they tend to be waited on by the females of the family. Social Practices. After the Nubian people were resettled by the Egyptian government north of the Aswan Dam in 1963, the sudden availability of modern conveniences such as pumped water and transportation gave them more leisure time. This created opportunities for expanding their social interactions and unifying their new communities. However, social problems such as drinking and gambling also increased. Family relationships and ceremonial patterns changed after the move because communities were arranged very differently in New Nubia. The compactness of the new communities compared to Old Nubia, and the presence of transportation, allows people to attend ceremonies more easily, which has prompted the Nubians to modify the social aspects of their traditional ceremonies to fit the new circumstances.
Cooperation and Competition
Nubians are careful about entering into new reciprocal relationships since they would then be obligated to repay them. Many farming relationships therefore exist only on a cash basis. In spite of this, everyone has a network of ties: people respond to others with assistance when needed because of illness, because a job is too large for one person, or due to other circumstances. All of these connections are reciprocal. Other acts of kindness, and gifts for the elderly, fall within the purview of traditional Muslim charity.
Social Control
Nubians don't reveal serious problems to outsiders, particularly to authorities such as the Egyptian police, since their best chance for survival as a village is to be ignored by the authorities. A safety valve that has released tensions has been the fact that many men could go off to a big city, usually Cairo, to work and find release for their energies, free of the traditional, conservative restrictions of the village environment.
But How Much Violence Do They Really Experience? Robert Fernea, who spent time studying Nubian society in the 1960s, before the people were resettled to New Nubia, feels their beliefs in the peacefulness of their society were not exaggerated. “The villages we lived in and visited seem to lack any form of violence,” he wrote more recently. He has re-visited his Nubian friends in New Nubia several times over the years since the Aswan High Dam was completed, and he feels that the Nubians are still a “peaceful people,” though their social conditions are much different now than they were 40 years earlier.
End Source Material
A Jewel in African Culture
The Land of NubiaToday the ancient land of Nubia is divided between the countries of Egypt and the Republic of the Sudan. Nubia began at the First Cataract on the Nile, Ancient Egyptians used several names for Nubia through their history:
Ta-Seti (Land of the Bow) * Wawat * Southern Lands *Kush
During the Graeco-Roman Period it was part of Ethiopia ('Land of Burnt Faces').
Nubia was an important neighbour to Egypt as early as the 1st Dynasty (both AHA and Djer attacked villages in Nubia), Egypt could trade for ivory, gold, ebony, ostrich feathers and eggs, leopard skins, copper, amethyst, carnelian, feldspar, oils, gum resins, cattle, dogs and many wild animals.
Egypt was to invade Nubia many times to take advantage of her natural resources - in the Middle Kingdom, Egyptian fortresses lined the Nile as mines and quarries were opened, and caravan routes brought the rich bounty of Nubia to Egypt.
During the New Kingdom, Nubia was divided up into an Upper and Lower Nubia - each was governed by a Viceroy;
Lower Nubia - called Wawat -(as far south as Semna) was controlled at Aniba
Upper Nubia was governed at Amara West.
However, Egypt was never fully in control of Nubia, the power of Egypt waxed and waned over the years - in the start of the Late Kingdom Nubians themselves invaded Egypt and for a a brief time in history, were Pharaohs of a truly unified Egypt (25th Dynasty).
Key to Map of Nubia:
1 - Dakka
C-Group Site (C-Group people first appeared in Nubia at the time of the 6th Dynasty of Egypt)
2 - Quban
Fortress and base for mining operations (mines included the gold mines at Wadi el-Allaqi and Wadi Gabgaba, the copper mines at Abu Segal and diorite quarries in the desert west of Toshka) - time of Sesostris I (12th Dynasty)
3 - Wadi es-Sebua
Fortified C-Group settlement
4 - Sayala
Includes the grave of a chief (?) from an A-Group Settlement.
5 - Aniba
C-Group site (also includes an important cemetery dating to the period)
6 - Toshka
Diorite quarries
7 - Faras
A site occupied throughout the ancient period, it contains an A and C-Group cemetery, it was an important administrative centre of Egypt in Nubia in the 18th Dynasty (also in the Late Period)
8 - Qustul
A-Group cemetery, also burials of Kings dating to the early Christian era.
9 - Buhen
Middle Kingdom fortress site (although the site did originally flourish in the 4th and 5th Dynasties), copper was also smelted here, the site was re-used by rulers of the New Kingdom
10 - Wadi Halfa
Considered a strategic position by the ancient Egyptians. Inscriptions here date to the Nubian campaigns of Sesostris I. Another stela dates to the 19th Dynasty which celebrates the building of a temple to Horus. In many eras of ancient Egypt, Wadi Halfa marked Egypt's southern border.
11 - Mirgissa
A fortress in the Middle Kingdom, used as a port for the transport of goods from Nubia to Egypt.
12 - Batn el-Hagar
Called 'Belly of Stones' by the local inhabitants, a desolate region of Nubia which extends for more than 100 miles - the river is filled with rapids which is matched by wasteland on the shore - a natural defence for the region.
13 - Semna
Frontier of Egyptian control under Sesostris I and Sesotris III
14 - Amara West
Town, walled with a stone temple - for a time the residence for the Viceroy of Kush.
15 - Sai
Island on the Nile, an important Kushite settlement, as such this was garrisoned by Egyptian troops during the reign of Tuthmosis I.
16 - Sedeinga
Amenhotep III built 'an impressive temple' here in honour of his Chief Queen Tiye.
17 - Soleb
Amenhotep III built a temple here solely for the worship of himself - a pair of red granite lions stood by the temple (these now reside in the British Museum), inscriptions on the lions link Amenhotep III as the father of Tutankhamun.
18 - Sesebi
Walled town, with stone temple - also used for the residence of the Viceroy of Kush
19 - Kerma
Large and important site - Centre of Kushite Power - one of the earliest settlements in tropical Africa. Evidence has been found of the first activity of the site in the 4th millennium BC, graves date to 2,400BC and then had constant development for the next 1,000 years. The town had a large religious structure / temple as its focal point (in 1750-1600BC this also had workshops and other religious buildings within the temples quarter). Mud brick walls and dry ditches protected the town. Craftsmen skilled in metal working, woodworking, ceramics, Jewellery etc were housed at Kerma. Tuthmosis I attacked and sacked the town - the outer defences were demolished by him (it is thought to stop Kerma becoming a focal point for Nubian uprising against the Egyptians).
20 - Napata
Frontier settlement, built by Tuthmosis III - this marked the entry point for goods entering Egypt from the rest of Africa at this point in time. In the 8th Century BC a new and powerful Kushite kingdom emerged in the region of Napata, this was to go on to become the greatest civilisation of Nubia. The first period of this development took place in the Napata Period (it would then continue to become the Merotic Period following a break-away from Egyptian culture). This Kushite Kingdom would gain in power and whose descendants would eventually become pharaohs of Egypt (25th Dynasty). Rulers of Kush were buried in pyramids at Nuri, close to Napata.
21 - Gebel Barkal
'Flat Topped Mountain'. The most important religious centre in Nubia during the New Kingdom - called 'Holy Mountain' by the Egyptians. It became the Nubian centre for the cult of Amun, many temples were built at the base of the mountain.
22 - Kurgus
Furthest point that Tuthmosis I reached in his campaigns into Nubia
23 - Meroe
The chief city of Nubia in the 6th century BC (although it was used as a royal residence as early as the 8th century BC), the rulers of Nubia were buried here in steeply sided pyramids. From the beginning of the 3rd Century BC there was a gradual shift away from the pharaonic influence of Egypt, it was then that the royal burials became to be placed at Meroe than at the cemetaries close to Napata. The town of Meroe has only been partly excavated, but a great temple to Amun has been found which had an avenue of rams. In the 8th century BC a new and powerful Kushite Kingdom emerged in Napata, this was to become the greatest civilisation of ancient Nubia - the Kingdom of Meroe (the Merotic Period) - it was to exist for over a thousand years (although the major events were to take place in the first half - the Napata Period).
24 - Wad Ban Naga
Important trade centre
25 - Musawwarat es-Sufra
The site of the 'Great Enclosure' - an area which included temples and a complete arrangement of courts, rooms and passages. Decoration includes sculptures of elephants - it is thought that this 'Great Enclosure' may have been a place for pilgrimage and / or a royal residence.
26 - Naga
Location of temples.
27 - Kadero
Important early site in Nubia - as early as 4,000BC there is evidence of the domestication of cattle and cultivation of cereal crops as well as hunting and gathering.
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