Introduction

Nubia is located in Northeast Africa within the political boundaries of modern Sudan.

Three terms were used in ancient sources to refer to the land of ancient Nubians; these are Ethiopia, Kush, Nubia, and recently Sudan. Click here for more on each name.

Nubians are the ancestors of modern Northern Sudanese people. According to the Biblical Table of Nations, the Nubians/ Kushites are the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, and according to the system of linguistic classification (which is increasingly less used by modern historians) the modern Nubian language is classified to be within the Nilo-Saharan, or Afro-Asiatic, languages of North Africa. On the other hand, the ancient Nubian language (also known as Meroitic) is classified to be within the Indo-European language family. Whatever the case may be, more research is needed in order to understand the historian and linguistic connections that existed between Nubia and the regions in Asia where the Indo-European languages are spoken.

Ancient Nubians practiced agriculture along the Nile valley, building one of the very early world civilizations. On the eastern and western deserts of the Nile certain Nubian groups adopted nomadic lifestyles together with subsistent agriculture. There are those closely related to the Nubians who lived in Eastern Sudan. They were known to ancient Egyptians as the "Medjay-Nubians", to the Romans as the "Blemmies", and later to the Arabs as the "Beja". Nubian nomads also lived and herded in the western deserts of Sudan, side by side, with the "Libyans". After the Arab invasion into Nubia in the third century CE, many Arabs settled and intermarried with the local population. As most of the immigrants were men, and since Arabs follow a matrilineal tradition (i.e., the children take the identity of their fathers), most Sudanese today define themselves as Arabs.

However, some minorities did not intermarry with the Arabs and preserved their Nubian identity. This resulted in an ethnic division of Arab identity and Nubian identity. Intermarriages with other foreigners took place at different times and in other parts of Sudan, which caused the Nubian identity to wither greatly. For example, in Western Sudan, few of the Nubian nomads, who inhabited those regions since ancient times, had intermixed with West- African immigrants from the Sub-Sahara, as well as with Arab settlers.

Today, the language and culture of the bulk of Sudanese people is obviously an Arabic one. Yet, the physical features of today Sudanese proved to be mainly of a Nubian heritage. The Anthropological studies of mummies from Nubia and the sharp and clear colored drawings of people found inside Nubian burials that go back as far as 3000 years, prove that these ancient Nubians looked typically like the modern people of Northern Sudan.