Culture & Customs

Nubians are an ethnolinguistic group indigenous to present-day Sudan and southern Egypt who originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization. Nubian people have an ancient history predating dynastic Egypt. They speak the Nubian languages, which belong to the Nilo-Saharan language familyThe descendants of the ancient Nubians still inhabit the general area of what was ancient Nubia. Today, they live in what is called the former Old Nubia, which is mainly in modern Egypt. Nubians have been resettled in large numbers (an estimated 50,000 people) away from southern Egypt since the 1960s, when the Aswan High Dam was built on the Nile, flooding ancestral lands.