Nubia

Nubian man with a camel in Upper Egypt. Nubians are an ethnic minority group in Egypt. Present-day Nubia is a region of southern Egypt and northern Sudan which includes the Nile valley between Aswan and Khartoum and the Nubian desert to the east. Much of Nubia was drowned by the waters of Lake Nasser, formed by the building of dams at Aswan.

Pottery jars from the tomb of the Nubian queen Nefertari, wife of Ramses II of Egypt (19th dynasty) (Egyptian Museum, Turin, Italy). Nefertari is heralded as the queen who wed for peace. For centuries, Nubia and Egypt had been at war, and the marriage brought the fighting to an end. Ramses II had the temples at Abu Simbel built in her honour.

Former African country now divided between Egypt and Sudan; it gives its name to the Nubian Desert south of Lake Nasser. Ancient Egypt, which was briefly ruled by Nubian kings in the 8th–7th centuries BC, knew the north as Wawat and the south as Kush, with the dividing line roughly at Dongola. Egyptian building work in the area included temples at Abu Simbel, Philae, and a defensive chain of forts that established the lines of development of medieval fortification. Nubia's capital about 600 BC–AD 350 was Meroe, near Khartoum. About AD 250–550 most of Nubia was occupied by the X-group people, of whom little is known; their royal mound tombs (mistaken by earlier investigations for natural mounds created by wind erosion) were excavated in the 1930s by W B Emery, and many horses and attendants were found to have been slaughtered to accompany the richly jewelled dead.