Tag Archive
Evidence of Bilharzia in Nubian mummies
Analysis of mummies from Nubia, a former kingdom that was located in present-day Sudan, reveals how age-old irrigation techniques may have boosted the plague of schistosomiasis (bilharzia), a water-borne parasitic disease that infects an estimated 200 million people today. About 25 percent of mummies in the study dated to about 1,500 years ago were found... »
Ancient Nubian antibiotic beer secret revealed
Image by VC Geist via Flickr Chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Sudanese Nubians who lived nearly 2000 years ago shows they were ingesting the antibiotic tetracycline on a regular basis, likely from a special brew of beer. The find is the strongest yet that antibiotics were previously discovered by humans before Alexander Fleming... »
Meroe: Ancient conquerors of Egypt
At the end of March, the Louvre will host its first exhibition on the Meroe dynasty, the last in a line of ‘black pharaohs’ that ruled Kush for more than 1,000 years until the kingdom’s demise in 350 AD. Meroe lies around 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Sudan’s capital Khartoum and was the last... »
Massive Taharqa statue discovered deep in Sudan
About a week back Heritage Key published a story about the discovery of a massive, one ton, statue of Taharqa that was found deep in Sudan. Taharqa was a pharaoh of the 25th dynasty of Egypt and came to power ca. 690 BC. The pharaohs of this dynasty were from Nubia – a territory located... »
Nubian treasures at the Clay Center
Image via Wikipedia “Lost Kingdoms of the Nile” at the Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia features more than 200 objects on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The exhibit, which continues through April, made only one other stop on this tour — at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta. A colorful... »
The heritage of Lower Nubia
Image via Wikipedia The history and culture of Lower Nubia was always inextricably intertwined with Egypt’s. Yet, the relationship was never clearly defined. Lower Nubia was culturally contiguous with Egypt proper, but it was never fully incorporated into the “Two Lands”. Why Lower Nubia continued to be designated as something of a Wild West by the... »
UNESCO celebrates Nubian salvage at Aswan
Fifty years on from the earnest appeal sent out from Egypt and Sudan for an international salvage campaign for the Nubian monuments, UNESCO will be celebrating this important anniversary with the conference: ‘Lower Nubia: Revisiting memories of the past, envisaging perspectives for the future’ to be held on March 21-24. With the construction of the... »
The Winter Vault
Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us in The Winter Vault a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives. In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu... »
Development plan along Lake Nasser unfair to Egyptian Nubians
Image via Wikipedia Nubians, now numbering about 3 million of Egypt’s 73 million people, have been leaving their stretch of the Nile valley for more than a century — some because of poverty, some because of efforts to tame the river’s annual floods. The first dam near Aswan was built in 1902; subsequent ones obliterated... »
Nubia: Hidden beauty
Image by ShortShot via Flickr Throughout history, Nubians have managed to keep their traditions and lifestyles relatively uninflected by outside influences. Although many Nubian villages had to be resettled elsewhere, some fortunate settlements have stayed put in their original locations. Such is the case in the area west of Sihail. Due to its privileged location, for... »
