Word: nubia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...centuries, scholars have wondered what ever became of Pachoras, the lost capital of the medieval Christian kingdom of Nobatia in the cliffbound reaches of the Nile above the First Cataract. Nobatia flourished between the 7th and the 14th centuries in what the Egyptians once called Nubia, but it ultimately fell before Arab invaders. Arab documents referred to Pachoras, but no trace of it remained. The question took on a new urgency with the impending construction of the Aswan Dam, which threatened to submerge the area...
From Khartoum to Aswan, the Nile runs through bleak desert. This is Nubia, the land of the Cush, of the mud-building Fung people, of temples and heat, where the Nile hurriedly bears its load of diluted loam over transverse ribs of crystalline rock, granite and diorite-the Six Cataracts. Below the Second Cataract, it skids through a 100-mile chute, the Batn el Hagar (Belly of Stones), studded with gleaming black islets. Then below Aswan it enters the Egypt of antiquity. Here the neolithic men of North Africa gathered as the grassy Saharan plains dried up into desert following...
...slowly fills, Lake Nasser will obliterate the last traces of one of his tory's richest archaeological deposits. Bone-dry Nubia, the "land of gold," over which black men and white bat tled for 50 centuries, will be drowned. Though the Nubians themselves once ruled all Egypt (750-656 B.C.), they were frequently the victims of invaders. The Pharaoh Snefru 4,600 years ago reported "Nubia hacked to pieces: 7,000 men and women, 200,000 cattle and sheep led away." Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks and British followed, leaving hundreds of monuments, temples, fortresses, churches and works...
Drowning the Past. As the dam deadline approached, two dozen archaeological teams from 14 countries swarmed over the land searching for last-minute finds. At least 23 of Nubia's major historical sites have been or will be res cued from the waters-some of them simply by being cut up and carted away. A West German engineering firm won a UNESCO contract to save the Upper River's most famous temple: the sandstone statuary and columns carved 3,000 years ago on the order of Pharaoh Ramses II at Abu Simbel, 180 miles above Aswan...
...movies, television, schools and clinics. As the Nubians file aboard the paddle steamer headed for Kom Ombo -loaded down with palm fiber beds, carved wooden chests, magical amulets, goats and sheep-they try to exorcise their grief of leave-taking by singing. One song runs: "The Nile is drowning Nubia and we must forget the past. The river brings life and the river brings. death...