posted 27 January 2005 10:07 PM            

At 168 kilometers long, Lake Nasser stands as the largest man-made body of water in the world. It was created by an engineering marvel, the Aswan High Dam. Its towering ramparts stopped the yearly flooding of the Nile which had plagued (and blessed) Lower Egypt for millennia.

The lake created a nearly limitless reservoir of water for the desert-locked country, and in the process, submerged the ancient culture and civilization of Nubia, Black Egypt, below its waves.

Both historic and modern Nubia began above the waterfalls of the Nile's first cataract, just south of the citadel of Aswan. Fifty-two villages with a population numbering in the hundreds of thousands thrived there until the 1960's. Today, one struggling village, with just a few hundred residents, remains.

It sits on a cliffside just below the High Dam. Its people live in their traditional, brightly colored domed concrete and rock houses. They have kept their language alive after a fashion and support their families by selling Nubian knickknacks to the throngs of tourists who arrive each day to capture a snapshot of a civilization on the brink.

Nubia was once proud evidence that Black Africa had achieved a cultural sophistication in ancient times that rivaled any Caucasian or Asian civilization. Farming and towns began there over 13,000 years ago. They fought and influenced the Egyptians for 20 centuries. (Among the funerary relics of King Tut in the Egyptian Museum is a footstool recounting the warrior talents of the Pharaoh over his greatest enemies, the black people to the South.)

Nubia even ruled Egypt for 150 years, providing its 24th and 25th Dynasties, answering those critics who contend that black Africans did not play a role in the greatest of ancient civilizations.

Then as Egypt fell to the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Arabs, Nubia maintained its independence for several more centuries. Its capital was considered a center of learning and culture in the modern world. Today, all of those artifacts are underwater - beside the submerged villages.

President Nasser wanted his dam at any cost. The U.S. initially refused loan guarantees and aid noting the cultural and ecological damage it would do to Upper Egypt and Sudan. As history remembers, Nasser seized the Suez Canal to finance his project, and following the 1956 War, turned to the Soviets for his turbines and engineering expertise. His engineers constructed the Aswan High Dam so quickly that little planning was made to save the archeological remnants in Nubia.

Some of this disregard for the antiquities of Egypt becomes less surprising when one learns that the average Egyptian school child will have less than two months of education in the history of his country before 1805 throughout his entire school career. As a contrast, the average American spends at least a minimum of three months studying the pyramids and the cradles of civilization before the fifth grade.

Nevertheless, an outcry emerged from Egypt's domestic and foreign-born archeological community. Under pressure, Nasser made a public appeal to U.N.E.S.C.O. to save some of Egypt's most beautiful temples above Aswan. The world community, including the United States, responded with an engineering feat nearly on par with the construction of the ancient pyramids.

The most famous example stands on a plateau some hundred meters higher than its original position on the upper Nile. The court architect of Pharaoh Ramses II carved Abu Simbel out of the solid rock on one of the mountains flanking the river. Its four statues of the king covering the entrance way are over 50 feet tall and honed from the rock face. The temple's Heliostyle hall, its archive rooms, and its Holy of Holies, are chiseled from the center of the mountain. The Pharaoh intended that no Nubian, in fact no human being ever, could destroy, deface, or displace his eternal temple to Amun-Re and its sister chapel honoring Ramses' wife Nefertari.

U.N.E.S.C.O. literally moved the mountain. And, they did it in less than four years, beating the rising tides of what would become Lake Nasser by only a few weeks. Working with the Egypt-based Arab contractors, the team literally sawed the mountain apart piece by piece into millions of stones and reconstructed it to such precision that today one cannot even detect the lines at which the steel cut the rock. Using an interior dome structure, the mountain was made to look exactly as it had in its previous location. It is the only place in all of Egypt, possibly all the world, where a tourist stands in greater awe than at the Great Pyramid.

In all, 17 of the 25 temples in Nubia were saved - the Egyptian temples, that is. Of the Nubian funerary chambers, antiquities, and mud-brick remains of their great cities, not one hour of effort was devoted to their preservation. Egyptians today justify the decision in a variety of ways.

Archeologists argue that the ancient Nubians were Egyptians, and the preservation of the Pharonic Temples preserved the civilization above the first cataract. Politicians say that the really valuable artifacts, including the Pyramidal Tombs of the 24th Dynasty, are in modern Sudan further south. What was destroyed was irrelevant. And despite the relative racial acceptance of modern Egyptian society, some of the less educated continue to argue that those with black skin could not be Egyptians anyway.

This ambivalence extended to the 52 aforementioned villages. Some of the residents refused to leave even as the Nile waters rose. For millennia, they argued, the towns had been their homes. Complicating the matter, Nubians had a cultural taboo forbidding intermarriage with Egyptians. Their dialect and society set them apart. Government troops forced them from their homes at gunpoint.

For the last several decades, the Nubian remnants generally have suspected that the High Dam constituted a plot to destroy their civilization. Their population is scattered across Upper Egypt from Aswan to Kom Ombo to Luxor, and while their elders have made massive efforts to preserve the Nubian dialect and keep marriage exclusive, modernity has often defeated them.

Today, Nubians are generally better schooled and earn higher wages, yet even those realities are tinged with regret.

As one guide named Abibi put it, "Things are better...young people work on the cruise ships, and make more money than ever before...the older people [though] see their culture slip away."

Until recently, generous international contributions, notably from African-Americans, helped Nubians achieve higher education and economic opportunities. But since September 11th, the monies have dried up, leaving many Nubians in a desperate financial situation.

The political impact of Lake Nasser is felt in Egypt, but has caused bloodshed in Sudan - and the United States. Losing their cultural roots caused most of the Nubian population in Sudan to flee south. The exodus spawned a radical form of Islam that brought about a civil war against Christians and animists of such brutality that the international community has repeatedly complained about the atrocities. The Islamic fundamentalists who seized power effectively in the name of the displaced Nubians and their Sudanese cousins welcomed a former Mujahdeen organizer to train his troops and mass produce his weaponry in their country. His name was Osama bin Laden.

Launching cruise missiles into his supposed chemical weapons plants in Sudan during the Clinton Administration allegedly triggered the Al-Qaeda leader's plot to hijack the now infamous airliners and all that has come since.

As for Nubia, both ancient and modern, the flood waters did their work. Lake Nasser washed everything away.

Christopher Tidmore conducted a four-week survey of Egypt for The Louisiana Weekly. This is the second in a four-part series.

Next Week: The Child Weaver of Sakara

posted 27 January 2005 10:17 PM            

quote:

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Archeologists argue that the ancient Nubians were Egyptians, and the preservation of the Pharonic Temples preserved the civilization above the first cataract.[ Politicians say that the really valuable artifacts, including the Pyramidal Tombs of the 24th Dynasty, are in modern Sudan further south. What was destroyed was irrelevant. And despite the relative racial acceptance of modern Egyptian society, some of the less educated continue to argue that those with black skin could not be Egyptians anyway.

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posted 28 January 2005 11:36 AM            

ALOT MORE THINGS ARE BEING FOUND AND WILL BE FOUND,AND FOR LATER PERIODS IT SEEMS THE ARTICLE IS MAINLY TALKING ABOUT UPPER NUBIA IN MEDIEVAL TIMES BUT LET'S NOT FORGET THAT SOUTHERN NUBIA WAS FURTHER SOUTH AND WAS A CENTER OF LEARNING AS WELL,SO NUBIA IN MEDIEVAL TIMES WAS NOT A UNITED REGION LIKE THAT ARTICLE WAS TRYING TO SAY,BUT IT WAS MORE UNITED LATER AGAIN IN MODERN TIMES BEFORE THE BRITISH INVADERS SO THAT PART WAS RIGHT,BUT OVERALL IT IS A GOOD ARTICLE.

BY THE WAY NUBIAN CITIES WERE MADE UP OF DIFFERENT THINGS,NOT JUST MUDBRICK,BUT THEY WERE MADE UP OF STONE,RUBBLE,BRICK AND MUDBRICK,SO IT DEPENDS ON WHICH CITY IT WAS AND REGION IN NUBIA AND WHAT PART OF THE CITY.

posted 28 January 2005 04:26 PM            

One important site that was submerged with the Aswan dam was a site called Qustal that contained the incense burner and tomb 33. This tomb provided evidence that Nubia might have founded the early dyanastic Egypt instead of vise-versa.

The sociological content of the article I don't necessarily agree with. Racism in modern Egypt is a complex issue that very few scholars understand. Egyptians have negative streotypes not only about the Nubians but of the Sai'idi people of being stupid and backward. Most of these streotypes about the Sai'idi and Nubians came from early Egyptian film. They presented the Sai'idi as stupid,and the Nubians as passive people that were bafoons.

What most don't know is a huge percentage of the elite in Egypt comprise of Circassian[Mamluks], and Turks from the pre-Nasserite era. This is mainly where these racist streotypes about Nubians and other Africans come from. Combine racism in the Arab world with modern racism of British colonialization and you have the currect situlation in Egypt. As multi-ethnic as modern Egypt is with a variety of colors, racism still lingers. As it does in Brazil and other multi-ethnic communities.

posted 02 February 2005 03:29 PM            

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Subject: Do we have any hope in stopping kajbar dam???
Name: Abuseif
Date Posted: Aug 20, 03 - 6:46 AM
Message: i was wondering about the reality of the situation of the second dam planned to be built in the heart of Nubia. do we actually have any hope in stopping its construction, or has it already started? Are we going to end up like all the other tribes and peoples of the world who were hit by similar disasters? - except of course, we would be the only ones hit twice.
If you have any information please tell me.
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Re: Do we have any hope in stopping kajbar dam??? by Suad Ibrahim Ahmed · Jul 30, 04 - 1:28 PM

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Subject: Re: Do we have any hope in stopping kajbar dam???
Message: YES most certainly we will stop Kajbar. The Nubian Alliance has mobilised all in the 33 villages threatened with submergence by the dam to revive their village committees and stand against the principle of building any new dam on Nubian land ever again.
The people in the area refused to allow any official to work in the area.. so after nine years no detailed studies were completed.
However, having said that, the Kajbar project has not been officially scrapped yet and its cars and personnel are still spending millions against its budget, so the looming danger is still present despite the fact that it is doomed to failure. We must be continuosly vigilant.. and we shall overcome
best regards..SIA

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