Nubia and the unparalleled hospitality of its people!

Western Deffufa

Partially reconstructed floor plan of royal building
around the deffufa 

Soon after El-Kurru, I left Karima for Dongola and from there got a minibus towards the town of Kerma. Although technically the land of Nubia extends from Aswan in Egypt to Meroe in Sudan, today the best place to experience their culture was in the region north of Dongola which has a high concentration of the Nubian people. This was as far north I was going in Sudan before looping back to Khartoum.

Sun set with date palm silhouette 

Baking Sudanese bread

The term Nubia/Nubian was very confusing for a traveler like me because unlike a historian or an archaeologist it was tough to understand what exactly was Nubia and who were these people. It was further complicated by the similar sounding but completely distinct Nuba people who live in the Nuba Mountains south of Khartoum.

I baked them some Indian bread

Prominent Nubian places along the Nile in Sudan

Wikipedia has extensive detail about the Nubian people and their culture and was a great source for my reading and which ultimately gave me a lot of clarity in my understanding of Nubia vis-à-vis Sudan. I tend to think, rather simplistically, that Nubians are a group of people who have evolved from the Stone Age Neolithic people (around 5000 BC) who inhabited the Sahara when it had a milder climate and the land was more savanna than desert. As earth’s climate changed they settled on the banks of the Nile and eventually became the indigenous people of the Kingdom of Kerma (around 2500 BC) which was a contemporary of the Old Egyptian Kingdom of the early pharaohs who built the pyramids at Giza.

Making mud bricks for restoration of the site at Dukki-Gel



A Nubian Kid

Excavated pottery

Excavation site at Dukki Gel

After Egyptian occupation they evolved into the Egyptian influenced Kushites (around 1000 BC) who in turn adopted Christianity after the conquest by an Ethiopian king from Axum and were called as the Kingdom of Mankourie (around 300 AD to 1000 AD). Today they are called as Nubians and have adopted Islam (since around 1500 AD) as their religion but still have a distinct Nubian language and customs different from the rest of Sudan. In a nutshell, they are one of the oldest and less understood civilizations of the world.

The driver dropped me off at the Western Deffufa just before the town of Kerma. The deffufa was an amazing Nubian mud brick building dating from 2500 BC which likely served as the religious and political seat for the civilization of Kerma. Surrounding the deffufa were several graves and royal structures. The earthen tone of the deffufa was a nice contrast to the green of the palm trees, blue of the sky and red of the setting sun.

Dukki Gel

I still had to find a place to stay for the night but the chief curator of the museum beside the deffufa kindly offer me a stay at a Nubian house reserved for their guests. The house was exclusively made of mud brick just like all the structures around Kerma and had a small courtyard encased within a boundary wall. He gave me his phone number and asked me to call him if I ran into any trouble.

The less glorious part of archaeology



Date palm fields lined all along the Nile

 I dropped my backpack and decided to walk around the village and most people who saw me said “faddal” which I initially though was a form of greeting but later learnt that it actually meant “welcome” or “come in”. The Nubian people are known to be extremely hospitable and I would experience it first hand over the next day or so.

Riding through the streets of
Kerma on a donkey cart



Nubian woman with distinctive scars
(three vertical on each cheek)


The first place I got invited was a small bakery where I tried my hand at baking bread and then packing them in sets of eight in each plastic bag to be sold the following morning. Having picked up a little Arabic from my travels in Egypt and Sudan I was able to hold a basic conversation with them.

Next stop was at the village souq where I was invited to have dinner by another generous Nubian. Having ful with me was Hamed who was a baker specializing in Sudanese desserts. Following the dinner he invited me to his small bakery where I tasted some delicious kunafa and he packed various others sweets for me for breakfast the next morning when it was time for me to leave. From one act of kindness to another I was blown away by the hospitality of the people. The next day would have even more surprises.


The bride's father and host for the wedding celebration

The delicious Nubian food that was served to us!

Early the next morning, I rode with the chief curator to the archaeological site of Dukki Gel where I was introduced to Charles Bonnet who I must admit I didn't know about. Apparently he is one of the preeminent experts when it comes to the ancient civilizations of Sudan with his most significant contribution being the discovery of several statues of Sudan's "black pharaohs”. It was interesting listening to him explain the site of Dukki Gel that he’s currently excavating and to see him in action was quite fascinating as well because where I saw rubble he could see patterns of underlying structures. I guess that’s why here is what he is and I am not.

Perhaps the people who go unnoticed in archaeology are the ones who dig the soil and carry the rubble, basket at a time. At lunchtime a bunch of kids working at the site invited me to share in their meals. Not wanting to eat up their fill I make sure to just taste the food but they kept insisting me to have more.
I am no expert but there were several mounds of cast away fragments of pottery that I walked on just illustrating the amount of archaeological wealth that is still being unearthed in Dukki Gel and the surrounding areas.

Mud brick houses on the island of Artigesh



Field of Ful (fava beans)



Door of a Nubian house



Painted mud brick Nubian house

As I walked from Dukki Gel towards Kerma I was invited by several Nubians to their houses for either water or tea and on one occasion was asked to hop on a donkey cart so they could drop me off at Kerma.

Just when I thought the hospitality of these fantastic people could not be topped I was invited to a wedding feast at a village called Kabry Narty. The wedding had wrapped up that morning and in the evening there was a small gathering of folks from nearby villages for a feast. Fortunately among the invitees was a professor of English which helped greatly with my conversation with the host and his son Hamza. The hosts were the family of the bride while the groom was a Nubian working in Saudi Arabia. It seems as though working in Saudi Arabia is a massive positive for a Nubian to be able to find a good bride. It’s like an Indian having a green card to the US…or at least that’s what it used to be a few years ago.

After a sumptuous meal I was dropped off back to the village where I was staying. From there I took a ferry to cross the Nile onto the island of Artigesh with picturesque fields of ful (fava beans) lined with date palm and behind the thicket of the palm were beautifully painted mud brick houses with narrow alleyways.

As the sun began to set, I sat on the bank of the Nile to soak in the moment of my last evening in Nubia. Behind me were farmers tending their green fields while a solitary sailboat ferried people back and forth across the Nile with the somewhat pleasant background sound of a water pump irrigating the land with the life giving waters of this mighty river. Nowhere through my journey in Egypt and Sudan did the Nile look more beautiful than that evening.