Nubian Village

The Nubian villages on the west bank at Aswan and on Elephantine Island are among the most photographed places in Egypt, and for good reason: houses painted in saturated blue, ochre, pink and white, domed roofs, decorated doorways, and lanes too narrow for cars.

What a visit involves

• A motorboat or felucca across from Aswan, usually in the late afternoon
• Walking the lanes; the painted houses and doorways are the draw
• Tea or karkadeh — hibiscus, served hot or cold — in a family house
• Nubian food, which is quite distinct: heavier on spice, with dishes built around dried okra, fava and freshwater fish
• Music and drumming in the evening, and often crocodiles kept in tanks, which some visitors find uncomfortable

Visiting well

These are people's homes. Ask before photographing anyone or any interior, agree prices before accepting hospitality, and buy directly from the household rather than from a middleman if you can. The village visit is a significant part of household income here and it works best as a straightforward exchange.

Nubians are not Arabs, and Nubia was not Egypt. The homeland runs along the Nile from Aswan south into Sudan, and its people speak Nobiin and other Nubian languages, with a history stretching back to the kingdoms of Kerma, Napata and Meroë — including a period in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE when Nubian kings ruled Egypt outright as the 25th Dynasty.

The flooding

The modern story is displacement, three times over. The first Aswan Dam of 1902 and its two heightenings drowned villages and farmland along the river. Then, between 1963 and 1964, the Aswan High Dam reservoir required the removal of the entire remaining population of Egyptian Nubia — more than fifty thousand people, resettled at Kom Ombo, some fifty kilometres from the river they had lived beside for millennia.

Their villages, palm groves, cemeteries and the landscape itself are under Lake Nasser. Many families were moved to concrete housing laid out on a grid, in a place with different soil, different crops and no river.

Why the houses look like this

The painted, domed architecture you see at Aswan is a continuation and a reassertion. Traditional Nubian houses used vaulted mudbrick roofs — cool, cheap, built without timber — and decorated facades marking the household. Rebuilding in that style, in strong colour, after displacement is a deliberate act of cultural continuity.

Nubian language, music and social custom have persisted through all of it, and there is an active movement for the right of return to the lakeshore. When you are walking through a village at Aswan, that is the background.