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In this intervju a Nubian woman (now living in USA) gives her view of her peoples history. She tells many interesting details of Nubian life in antiquity and in todays world.
She comes originally from the village of Abu Simbel and she says that her family´s roots go all the way back to queen Nefertari.
Funny when she talked with some African Americans and said she is Nubian they told her they were Nubians too. But when she asked what part of Nubia they came from or what family they belonged to they could of course not answer. So she soon realized when they said Nubian they meant something else then what she meant. For them it was more a sort of generic name for black.
Interesting to hear her perspective on Nubian culture, and American culture.
She is married to a white American. They met in Egypt.
quote: Mona Sherif Nelson is from Egypt - now living in California - and of Nubian origin. The Nubians are an ethno-linguistic group of people indigenous to the region which is today southern Egypt and norhern Sudan. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley. They trace their roots back to the ancient Nubian Kingdom (also called the Kingdom of Kush) one of the earliest and most important of civilizations. Mona has started "The Nubian Foundation – for Preserving a Cultural Heritage"
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^ LOL Yes it's unfortunate the term 'Nubian' has become synonymous with black. But at least African Americans are more consistent with their views. For decades Europeans have distinguished Nubians as 'black' while the Egyptians as not yet studies time and time again have shown Nubians to be the people closest related to ancient Egyptians besides modern Egyptians which is why some Euros have begun to white-wash them as well.
Anyway, modern Nubian culture is distinct from Baladi (indigenous Egyptian) culture and it's said its roots go back to the Noba immigration from the Western desert during Roman times which assimilated the indigenous river valley folks and lead to the three Medieval Nubian kingdoms.
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Modern nubian culture has it roots from the noba nubians and ancient kushites and later influences from coptic egypt and later islam.
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^ Modern Nubia comes from the Noba/Nuba peoples who immigrated into the Nile Valley from the Western Desert during the Roman Period and assimilated the indigenous people. The indigenous or ancient Nubian people were named after their land Nubia which was coined by the Romans themselves and theoretically comes from the Egyptian word Nubet meaning golden place because Nubia is a gold rich land. I knot it can be pretty confusing because all the words starting with 'Nub'. But before the Nuba immigration there was no actual group whose ethnonym was "Nubian".
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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This was a very interesting video but I disagee about Nubians in modern Egypt being proud for being displaced from their ancestral lands. This has always been a point of contention between Nubians and the Egyptian state.
quote: After the relocation to new Nubia, new schools were built that teach Arabic, but not the Nubian language. Other upper Egyptians have also moved to new Nubia, integrating both cultures through coexistence and intermarriage.
Most Nubians who were born following the relocation speak little to no Nubian. Many of the younger generation have abandoned the traditional dress for jeans and shirt. They are unfamiliar with aspects of their Nubian heritage, preoccupied with fitting in with the rest of the Egyptian society.
Older Nubians complain the most of the change on the people. They say that their struggle to survive their difficult life has tainted their former kindness and morals.
Not to mention that the existence of "Nubians" as a distinct minority group in Egypt were denied for a long time in the Egyptian constitution.
That said, there was no "ancient Nubia" as there was no term "nubia" for Southerners in Mdu Ntr or any other language from the ancient Nile in the dynastic era. The only terms similar to this was "Nubt" the ancient town of Set which was called the "golden city" and often Set was called "Set the Nubti (Nubian - of the town Nubt)".
Nobody knows what language the ancient people depicted to the South of KMT spoke and the modern "Nubian" language originated 2500 years ago.
quote: Old Nubian had its source in the languages of the Noba nomads who occupied the Nile between the first and third cataracts of the Nile and the Makurian nomads who occupied the land between the third and fourth cataracts following the collapse of Meroë sometime in the 4th century. The Makurians were a separate tribe who eventually conquered or inherited the lands of the Noba: they established a Byzantine-influenced state called Makuria which administered the Noba lands separately as the eparchy of Nobatia. Nobatia was converted to the Miaphysite Christianity by Julian of Halicarnassus and Longinus, and thereafter received its bishops from the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.[1]
Prior to that, there was Meroitic, which is associated with Kush in the later eras but there is no concrete proposal on what languages were spoken between Aswan and the 6th cataract during the dynastic era. Most suggest that it was some form of Cushitic or NiloSaharan.
quote: The linguistic affiliation of the Kerma culture is currently unknown, and membership to both the Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic language families has been proposed.
According to Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst (2000), linguistic evidence indicates that the Kerma peoples spoke Afroasiatic languages of the Cushitic branch.[19][20] They propose that the Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key pastoralism related loanwords that are of proto-Highland East Cushitic origin, including the terms for sheep/goatskin, hen/cock, livestock enclosure, butter and milk. They argue that this in turn suggests that the Kerma population — which, along with the C-Group Culture, inhabited the Nile Valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers — spoke Afroasiatic languages.[19]
Claude Rilly (2010, 2016) on the other hand, suggests that the Kerma peoples spoke Nilo-Saharan languages of the Eastern Sudanic branch, possibly ancestral to the later Meroitic language, which he also suggests was Nilo-Saharan.[21][22] Rilly also criticizes proposals (by Behrens and Bechaus-Gerst) of significant early Afro-Asiatic influence on Nobiin, and considers evidence of substratal influence on Nobiin from an earlier now extinct Eastern Sudanic language to be stronger.[23]
Julien Cooper (2017) also suggests that Nilo-Saharan languages of the Eastern Sudanic branch were spoken by the people of Kerma, as well as those further south along the Nile, to the west, and those of Saï (an island to the north of Kerma), but that Afro-Asiatic (most likely Cushitic) languages were spoken by other peoples in Lower Nubia (such as the Medjay and the C-Group culture) living in Nubian regions north of Saï toward Egypt and those southeast of the Nile in Punt in the Eastern dessert. Based partly on an analysis of the phonology of place names and personal names from the relevant regions preserved in ancient texts, he argues that the terms from "Kush" and "Irem" (ancient names for Kerma and the region south of it respectively) in Egyptian texts display traits typical of Eastern Sudanic languages, while those from further north (in Lower Nubia) and east are more typical of the Afro-Asiatic family, noting: "The Irem-list also provides a similar inventory to Kush, placing this firmly in an Eastern Sudanic zone. These Irem/Kush-lists are distinctive from the Wawat-, Medjay-, Punt-, and Wetenet-lists, which provide sounds typical to Afroasiatic languages."
So applying all the relatively modern term "Nubian" to the ancient population makes no sense. That said, obviously populations with similar features to the modern populations of Sudan are found in the ancient art.
Also recall that there are other populations in the Nile that are associated with Nubians but are not called Nubians. Such as the Beja, who are the best example of the ancient populations of the Red Sea coast, where they still reside, who were called Medjay. The Beja language is an Afro Asiatic language of the Cushitic Branch associated with languages in the horn. And this brings up an important distinction between the cultures of the Red Sea coast and the Nile proper. I would argue the Beja and some of the ancient Southern populations retained a link to the horn via the Red Sea and as such are the basis of the stories of Punt from the ancient Dynastic era.
quote: Beja (Bidhaawyeet or Tubdhaawi) is an Afroasiatic language of the Cushitic branch spoken on the western coast of the Red Sea by the Beja people. Its speakers number around one to two million individuals, and inhabit parts of Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea.
Again, all Africans aren't the same and just like there is no one "African" language or culture, there is no single "Nubian" identity going back to prehistory. There are plenty different languages and cultures in Sudan, which is common in most of Africa reflecting the antiquity of Africa itself and this is the problem with the concept of "Nubia", especially as a synonym for 'black Africans'.
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Kola Boof is another American lady of Nile Valley descent. She's half Egyptian by her father and half Nubian by her mother and was born and raised in Sudan and is known in America as a poetess and writer.
She has an interesting backstory that as a young teen she was kidnapped by the Muslim Brotherhood and forced to be a concubine to Osama Bin Laden, and how the experience left her changed. She explains this in her autobiography.
She is considered controversial for some of her political views and she is known in black Hollywood circles as a home-wrecker and "crazy ho", but I think it has a lot of that has to do with what happened to her a youth.
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