Discover more about Nubia

Nubia, the Nile Valley between the first cataract of the Nile in the North (today's Aswan in Egypt) and the sixth cataract in today's Sudan has been inhabited since hundreds of thousands of years. It is there that the first human civilization arose; agriculture, domestication of animals, the first permanent human settlements, the gradual sophistication of tools and instruments, pottery, art, mechanics, medicine, even the precursors of writing all developed in this region.

Nubians were used to live at the border of the Nile river, that provided them with clean water, with fish, provided transport on ships, deposed fertile silt for their agriculture and mud for construction, and facilitated the growth of palm and fruit trees that gave Nubians the materials they needed for their daily life. Nubians lived a simple but happy life, cherishing and protecting the nature that gave them an independent livelihood.

Since the beginning of the last century however, under British occupation, the development and industrialization of Egypt urged it to construct successive dams on the Nile, at Aswan, to regulate the floods and produce electricity. In four successive increases of the dam's height Nubian villages were drowned under the waters of the reservoir and than Lake Nasser, displacing up to 100'000 Nubian families and causing 300'000 square kilometers of Nubian land to disappear. These old photos are the more a very dear memory to Nubians who were born there, and also an archive for young Nubians to better imagine the life of their ancestors. They are also a great inspiration for Nubian Artists, Painters, Poets and Writers.

Nubians were displaced to settlements in the desert, far from the Nile river or Lake Nasser, and not only lost their beautiful lands but also their way of life. What Nubians now nostalgically call "Old Nubia" are the memories of the villages, homes, communities, beautiful landscapes and peaceful happiness they are now longing for. While some of the most magnificent Nubian historic sites were displaced to higher grounds, Nubians still await their constitutionally granted right to return to the waterfronts of the Nile or Lake Nasser.