Story of Nubia, Important Ancient African Civilization, Given New Life : Archeology: Building of dam unlocks archeological secrets. Museum display reflects new appreciation of sophisticated culture.

Artifacts saved from the waters of the Nile are helping to shed light on a little-known great civilization of ancient Africa.

While the world has long acknowledged the importance of Egypt, neighboring Nubia, whose civilization began to flower around 3800 BC., had fallen between history’s cracks until recently.

A display at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute is among the latest evidence of archeology’s new appreciation of the significance of this sophisticated ancient culture, which may have given Egypt the concept of the Pharaoh.

“It is important for everyone to realize that sophisticated civilizations other than Egypt existed at the time; that central Africa has a place in history,” says Timothy Kendall, associate curator of Egyptian and ancient near-Eastern art at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

The beginning of this new-found interest in Nubia can be traced to a decision by Egypt in the early 1960s to harness the power of the Nile River by building a high dam outside Aswan. Before construction began, Egypt and Sudan opened the area south of the city to archeologists.

More than 30 years later, the fruits of that labor are going on display in a few museums around the world, as scholars reassess the intertwined civilizations of Egypt and Nubia.

The exhibit at the Oriental Institute contains more than 100 Nubian artifacts, including jewelry, pottery, statues and a pair of sandals--a fraction of the 5,000 items uncovered by the institute during decades of digging.

A more comprehensive and permanent exhibit of Nubian artifacts will go on display May 10 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Nubians “were interacting with the Mediterranean world,” Kendall says. “They were literate, urbanized. They had sumptuous tombs and temples.

The Greek poet Homer describes the Cushites--as they were then known--with heroic adjectives. The Egyptians were awed by their wealth.

“As a result of excavation in the 1960s, enough has been recovered to show that Nubia was a sophisticated culture--outside the shadow of Egypt,” says Emily Teeter, curator of the exhibit at the Oriental Institute.

The most significant artifact on display in Chicago is an incense burner engraved with a seated ruler and a crown and a falcon, twin motifs that became the symbols of Egypt’s kings. The burner dates from 3100 BC or earlier, meaning that it could have predated Egypt’s Pharaohs.

“The idea of a Pharaoh may have come down the Nile from Nubia to Egypt,” says Bruce Williams, cataloguer of the artifacts in the exhibition. “That would make Nubian civilization the ancestor of Egypt’s, at least in one critical aspect.”

For years little was known about the Nubians. Even accounts from the time when the civilization was at its peak are sparse.

“They were so far from the Mediterranean world, that not much of their history was written by classical writers,” Kendall says.

There were explorations in the region at the turn of the century. One notable foray was in 1909 by George Reisner, the Museum of Fine Art’s curator.

But race tinged the scholarship of Reisner and others who dug in the area.

“A product of his times, Reisner didn’t understand he was digging up an independent African kingdom as he moved up the Nile into Nubia,” Kendall says. Instead, archeologists of the time portrayed the Nubians as poor neighbors and imitators of the Egyptians.

“In the past, white European scholars that explored the Sudan couldn’t believe the works they found were the works of black people,” Kendall says. “A lot of early writing (about Nubia) was confusing because it took away the credit due to the Africans.”

Teeter says Nubian culture was divided into periods. At different times in its history, Nubia had different burial patterns and varying tomb types and art.

“What caused these differences, we don’t know,” Teeter says. “If there is a change in art or tomb styles, does it mean different people lived in the region? If so, where did they come from?”

Teeter says that what is certain is that Nubia had a very strong effect on Egypt.

Kendall says the Egyptians had wealth in food, but their luxuries came from central Africa. The Nubians were the middlemen in that trade, bringing in herbs, ivory, ostrich feathers, leopard and giraffe skins, and gold.

“Nubia became rich and powerful, something like the oil states of today,” Kendall says. “Eventually, they became so powerful they were a threat to Egypt, and it became simpler for Egypt to take control.”

“Egypt ruled Nubia from about 1500 BC to about 1100 BC,” Teeter says. There isn’t a great amount of evidence of what life was like in Nubia then because most of the records of the time are from the Egyptian perspective, and they treated the Nubians as inferior.

“We do know the Egyptians installed governors and maintained trade between the two cultures,” she says.

In fact, the age in which the Egyptians controlled Nubia is considered Egypt’s Golden Age.

Most of the well-known treasures of Egypt, including those from the tomb of King Tutankhamen, were from Nubia, Teeter says.

The tables were turned about 750 BC, when the Nubians conquered Egypt and established what is known as the 25th dynasty.

When the Nubians arrived, Egyptian culture was stagnant. But it flowered again under Nubian rule, which fostered art and grand temples.

“They were portrayed as good and pious rulers; beneficial to the country,” Kendall says. “They were more feeling than the earlier kings. They showed mercy to their opponents. They didn’t butcher people. They didn’t put prisoners to death. They put them to work.”

The Nubians were well on their way to re-establishing the power of Egypt when they were pushed out by the invading Assyrians a century later, Kendall says.

The Nubians returned south, where they continued to prosper, although their temples and pyramids became smaller and more influenced by the cultures to their south.

For a time, the Nubians communicated and wrote in the language of the Egyptians. They eventually developed their own language, which has yet to be deciphered.

However, they did expand south of modern Khartoum, where burial mounds and jewelry have been found.

Nubia remained independent long after Egypt fell to the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Arabs. It extended civilization to other Africans along the Nile, Kendall says.

Most Nubians converted to Christianity about the 6th Century, and historians note that Nubia participated as an ally in the Crusades launched by Europeans to free the Holy Land from Muslim rule.

The civilization eventually disappeared, but no one knows why, Teeter says.