Why Is Nubia Unknown Essays - Nubia, Meroitic Alphabet, Alodia

Why Is Nubia Unknown? Nubian civalization lasted 4400 years so why is it unkown? There are several reasons some of wich include. The most significant reason is simple predijice. Another reason is it's isolation. Also we have yet to decipher Nubia's writing. Finnally many of the records we have of Nubia were written by it's enemys. It is almost always the conquerers who write the history. As a result many of the ancient records place Nubia in an unfair light, and are not very trustworthy sources. We know Nubian writing, developed in Mero sometime around 170 BCE, is alphabetic. We even know the sound values for each of the letters. However scholars are still unable to decipher the language. Nubia is very isolated geographicly. It is surounded by deadly desert. Cateracts block travle along the Nile river. Its only neighboring civalization is Egyt. Because of this isolation little was known of Nubia in anceint times, except fantastic legends of gold and wealth. By far the greatest reason for are lack of knowledge of Nubian civalization is simple pedjudice. As far back a Greek times the ?black? race has been seen as infieror, and thus unworthy of the attention of historians. Indeed there is little mention of Nubia in the written records of western civalization from the time it was Cristianized in the 6th century till the 19th. Because of this predjidce scholars regarded Nubian civalization as inferior, derived almost completly from the (?white?) Egyptian culture. This lead to claims as far fetched as (?white?) Libian decended kings ruling Nubia. The only reason Nubia began to get some atention by scholars was when dams threatened to flood unexcavated sites forever. Still as late as 1960 only one Americain scholar was working in Nubian study. Thankfully this trend is changing, and we are begining to get a more accurate, less predjudiced History