10 Feb 2023
Helen Strudwick
In February 2023, as part of our pop-up museum activities, Helen Strudwick, Sara Abed and Amr Orensa visited Nubian communities at Gharb Soheil and New Aniba, in southern Egypt. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk to people whose lives had been completely overturned by the construction of the High Dam at Aswan in the 1960s and their removal to new settlements. While much of the western world was focussed on saving ancient Egyptian monuments (most famously the temples at Abu Simbel), about 50,000 Nubians lost their homes and livelihoods. As well as talking to people about our research on Egyptian coffins, our visit also provided an opportunity to talk to these communities about dispersed Egyptian and Nubian heritage and its display in museums around the world (including within Egypt itself).
At Gharb Soheil, we met senior community members who generously invited us into their houses and showed us important objects they had retained to remind them of their traditional homes in the flooded settlements left behind. One of these, Hussein Shellaly, showed us a type of bed (called “angareeb”), typical of beds used in Nubia that bear a strong constructional resemblence to ancient Egyptian beds but that are now dying out. He also showed us traditional stringed instruments and an old stool, which had been in his family for many generations but was now in a sorry state of repair. We invited him to bring it along to our pop-up museum the next day with the promise that Amr would attempt to repair it using the replicas of ancient Egyptian tools. You can see in the photos how successful this was! Hussein is very active on social media and was live posting during our pop-up, which was a novelty for us. When he posted the pop-up on his social media page that promotes for Nubian culture it received a lot of exposure among Nubians who follow him, so that they got a virtual glimpse at what we do.
The pop-up itself was located in front of one of the houses in the village, where we were warmly welcomed by the family and their neighbours. We also found ourselves next to a spice stall; the stall holder, who was, initially, a little dubious about what we were up to, became our biggest advocate, urging his customers and any passers-by to come and take a look, and enthusiastically demonstrating and explaining everything on our tables.
The settlement of Aniba was one of the 44 Nubian villages that were flooded at the time the High Dam was built. The local people were moved to an area named Nasr el-Nuba, close to Kom Ombo, where 44 new villages were created to house them. Sadly, these settlements are nowhere near the Nile, and this separation has been very negative for these displaced people. In addition, the architecture of these villages did not reflect traditional Nubian houses and the local people we met at New Aniba felt that this had contributed to the disappearance of some social and cultural traditions, including the layout of interiors and furniture. Younger community members feel that modern furniture is more appropriate for the new house designs, they said. We met one of the last angareeb makers, Abdel Ghani, who showed us how the traditional beds were made, including legs that are carved in a particular way to deter scorpions from climbing up - which sounds like a very good idea. Another community leader, Amm Ibrahim showed us an ancient wooden lock and key, and how the position of the key would indicate whether the people inside were “at home” to visitors or not. These locks are still in use, although they are dying out nowadays, but are similarities to locks that survive from ancient Egyptian times. He also showed us a wooden vase with a lid used at weddings, which he still kept at home. We in turn showed them the replica tools that we had with us, which they instantly recognised and related to.
Many of the people we met, in both Gharb Soheil and New Aniba, felt the relevance and closeness of their Nubian culture to that of the ancient Egyptians. And they were keen for us to go back to talk to them some more and do more pop-ups in their communities, something that – on our side – we all felt we would like to do.
Created: 10 Feb 2023 Category: news community engagement pop-up Nubia Aswan Gharb Soheil New Aniba
