Nubia Attractions

The Blemmyes, in alliance with the Nubians, continued their incursions into Upper Egypt; but in A.D. 451 they were defeated by Marcian, who concluded a peace treaty with them. A century earlier, about A.D. 350, the Abyssinian kings of Aksum had conquered the Upper Nile Valley and put an end to the kingdom of Meroe.

Christianity reached Philae in the fourth C. and from there extended into Nubia, the Egyptian temples being converted into churches. In A.D. 640 the Upper Nile Valley fell into the hands of the Arabs together with the rest of Egypt. Caliph Omar's great general Amr advanced as far as Dongola and levied tribute on the Nubians, but the Arabs did not establish permanent control over the territory. In 1173 Saladin's brother Shamsel-Dola captured the Fortress of Qasr lbrim and plundered the church treasury. Christianity yielded to Islam only gradually, and a Christian kingdom was able to maintain itself at Soba on the Blue Nile into medieval times.

Little is known about the Islamic principalities which were established at El-Derr, Dongola, Sennar and elsewhere in Nubia. In 1821 the whole of Nubia was conquered by Ismail Pasha and incorporated in the Egyptian kingdom of his father Mohammed Ali, and since then Lower Nubia has shared the destinies of Egypt.

The construction of the first Aswan Dam (1898-1912) led to the flooding of large areas of the Nile Valley in Lower Nubia and to a considerable reduction in the amount of land available for cultivation. Many villages had to be evacuated and their inhabitants resettled on higher ground. Thereafter such major monuments as the temples of Philae and Kalabsha were partly under water for most of the year. The building of the High Dam (Sadd el-Ali), however, meant that the last remaining habitable areas in Lower Nubia as well as much of Upper Nubia were doomed to disappear beneath the rising water. The whole population of some 80,000 people were moved to new homes, mostly in the area around Kom Ombo which is now known as New Nubia (El-Nuba el-Gedida). It is planned to resettle them on the shores of Lake Nasser.

The building of the High Dam also threatened the tombs, rock temples, forts and other major monuments in the Nubian part of the Nile Valley; and accordingly a rescue operation was launched under the aegis of Unesco in order to save for posterity at least the most important of these remains of the past. They were removed from their original sites either in one piece where this was practicable or sawn into blocks of convenient size where it was not and re-built on new sites at a safe height above the water.

In gratitude for the international help, both financial and technical, which made the operation possible the Egyptian Government presented a number of small temples and other monuments to various foreign museums, where they were re-built and put on display.

The Temple of Kalabsha, the Kertassi Kiosk, the Rock Temple of Beit el-Wali and the Rock Stela of Qasr lbrim were re-built at New Kalabsha, a short distance south of the west end of the High Dam; the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae was moved to the neighboring island of Agilka; at New Sebwa, above the drowned Wadi el-Sebwa, are the rock temples of Wadi el-Sebwa, Dakka and El-Maharraqa and the reliefs from the memorial niches of Qasr lbrim; the temples of Amada and El-Derr, and the Rock Tomb of Pennut formerly at Aniba are at New Amada, to the north of the drowned site of Amada; and the two rock temples of Abu Simbel now stand at New Abu Simbel, above their original site.

Of the monuments presented to other countries in gratitude for their help the Temple of Debod (second C. B.C.), dedicated to Amun and Isis, is now in the Parque de la Montafia in Madrid; the southern temple from Tafa (whose northern neighbor disappeared at the end of the 19th C.) is in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leyden; the Temple of Dandur (dedicated by Augustus to the local deities Pediese and Pahor) is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and Tuthmosis lll's rock chapel from Ellesiya is in the Museo Egizio in Turin.

The Temple of Gerf Husain and innumerable cemeteries, rock tombs, cult niches, chapels, remains of houses, forts and Coptic churches with frescos could not be saved and were engulfed in the waters of Lake Nasser.