Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Ancient Egypt. Search for:. Nubia and Ancient Egypt. Learning Objectives Describe the Nubian kingdoms, emphasizing their relationship with Egypt. Key Terms pharaohs : A ruler in ancient Egypt. Licenses and Attributions. The Meroitic language is still not understood well enough to read more than words and phrases, but much documentation on Meroitic Nubia can be found in the art and literature of Greece and Rome, whose empires touched on the borders of Nubia after BC.
The origin of the name Nubia is obscure. Some have linked it to nwb, the ancient Egyptian word for gold. Others connect it with the term Noubades, the Greek name for people who moved into northern Nubia sometime in the 4th century AD. For much of antiquity, the region south of the 1st cataract of the Nile was called Kush. The name is known from ancient Egyptian, classical, and biblical texts.
Whether it reflects an indigenous term is not known. Christian religious books were translated into the Nubian language. The Nubians also wrote down their laws, letters and other documents. These writings are a precious record of this culture and language.
It is also believed that because of this early conversion to Christianity, the Nubians were among the first people to spread the faith in Europe.
Before converting to Christianity, the Nubian religion was similar to that practised in Egypt. For example, they also believed in war gods like the one below. The Nubian rulers grew weaker as time passed and in the 15th century the kingdom finally dissolved. The Arabs took over the region bringing with them their own culture.
However, in some areas of southern Egypt and northern Sudan the Nubian people kept their culture and traditions until the present day. An example of Nubian writing and the lion headed war god Image source. Map showing the location of Swahili civilization in Africa.
This civilisation existed from around A. Swahili civilisation came about through the mixing of the original local people with foreigners with whom they traded, especially the Arabs. They were called this because they lived in the coastal towns, which made it easy for them to trade with the Arabs who came across the ocean in boats to trade.
Unlike the Egyptians and Nubians, the Swahili people did not build a single kingdom or empire to rule all the Swahili people and coastal towns. These coastal towns or city-states were independent from each other and they sometimes competed for control of trade. The Swahili people also traded with other African kingdoms like Mapungubwe in southern Africa. A traveller's handbook, the Periplus, written by a Roman traveller between 40 and 70 A. D, gives some picture of what Swahili people and their lives were like.
It describes the ports that were visited, the goods traded and what the coastal traders were like. The Periplus was written to show the people of Rome that there were many trading opportunities with East Africa. This information was useful for writing the history of the Swahili people before Islamic scholars put together their records on the Swahili people.
Trade with the Arabs and the immigration of Arab people to the East coast influenced the area. Stone-wall buildings can be found that follow Arabic Asian designs.
These are different from the buildings found further inland. These buildings combined African and Arabic building styles. They used Islam and the new Swahili language to unite the people and create a new culture unique to the East coast of Africa. Like the Egyptians and Nubian heritages, the Swahili people also wrote down their history. As a result, we are able to learn the history of the Swahili from these writings. But this approach ignores the emergence further south on the Nile of the kingdom known to the Egyptians as Kush, in the region called Nubia - the area now covered by southern Egypt and Northern Sudan.
The relationship between Egypt and Kush was a complex one, which changed depending on the political and economic climate of the time. The relationship between Egypt and upper Nubia was completely different from time to time and period to period. If the Egyptian king's power is widespread it catches everything under its control and Nubia comes under Egyptian authority, but if it is weak, then upper Nubia is ruled by itself. Kerma was an advanced society and archaeological evidence shows that ceramics were being produced by 8, BC - earlier than in Egypt.
By about BC, the town had grown into a town of 10, people with a complex hierarchical society. Egypt could not ignore its southern neighbour although its interest was predominantly economic. Nubia was rich with minerals such as stones needed for the building of temples and tombs, and gold, needed for jewelry.
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