Nubia’s history and archaeological landscapes have been intertwined with the Egyptian state for millennia but, owing to centuries of academic coloniality, Nubia has often been viewed as “a mere satellite of its more famous neighbour” in the words of Henry Gates Jr writing in the preface (p.14). The focus on Egyptian monumentality constructed during ancient Nubia’s colonial past by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century excavators limited interpretations of Nubian society to that of subjugation and inferiority to the Egyptian state. However, methodological approaches that foreground Nubian agency, the pioneering use of archaeological theory and collaboration with modern Nubian descendants has gradually altered our comprehension of the complexity of the ancient Nubian landscapes and communities. Through Ancient Nubian art: a history, Rita Freed presents a beautifully illustrated chronology of Nubian technology and intergenerational material-culture traditions imbued with creativity, accompanied by contextual discussions and a narrative that immerses the reader in ancient Nubia’s artistic past. This book celebrates the richness of Nubian traditions, highlighting the importance of community and heritage and the power of Nubian identity.
The book’s approach centres on ‘Nubianness’ rather than direct comparisons with Nubia’s geographical neighbours; the broader African context within which Nubia is situated is emphasised—and greatly welcomed. This is introduced through Gates’s powerful preface to the book, which draws on the utilisation of both ancient Egypt and Nubia’s past in debates of black civilisation and intellect within the abolition movement and the consequent usage of the Nubian namesake within today’s African American society. Freed recognises the “racist tropes [that] still cloud our understanding of Nubia’s material culture” (p.22) stemming from embedded archaeological narratives that focus on ancient Egyptian colonial domination. Instead, Freed utilises a framework that consistently highlights Nubia’s internal developments through 8000 years of history, draws on Nubian agency and resistance under Egyptian colonial occupation, and the reimagination of elite Nubian identity after centuries of Nubian–Egyptian entanglements, presenting a long-lived practice of artisanal traditions that survive to this day.
The structure of the book enables the reader to follow the foundation, development, transformation and re-emergence of Nubian material-culture traditions alongside additional contextual discussions pertaining to modes of life, architecture and burial practices. Freed organises the chronology according to radiocarbon dates from Nubian sites, rather than following the more traditional approach of using the Egyptian dynastic chronology, which marks an important step forward in the discipline. Freed initially situates the reader in the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods (8000–3800 BCE, Chapter 1), contextualising the roots of Nubian tradition. In Chapters 2 to 4, the author marks the archaeological transition to the categorisation of Nubian cultures as defined by Reisner in the early twentieth century. The emergence of the A-Group culture (3800–2900 BCE) between the first and second cataracts—followed by the C-Group and Pan-Grave cultures (2300–1500 BCE) and the simultaneous emergence of the Kerma culture (2600–1500 BCE) at the third cataract—highlights the divergent developments of earlier Mesolithic and Neolithic traditions, and the broad delineation of Indigenous territories marked by the bounds of the specific material culture, burial practices, architecture and mobility of these groups, each of which are contextualised with precision by Freed. The complexity and overlap of the chronology in these chapters is considered by Chapter 5’s brief discussion of Egyptian New Kingdom colonialism (1550–1069 BCE), which is followed succinctly by the Napatan (Chapter 6, 780–270 BCE) and Meroitic (Chapter 7, 270 BCE–350 CE) periods and the post-Meroitic period to present day (Chapter 8, 350 CE–present), illustrating a substantial continuity of Nubian artistic tradition.
Through detailed analyses of the processes of craftsmanship, Freed is able to highlight the skill and creativity of Nubian artisans in a writing style that truly animates these objects to emphasise the human experience and situates their utility in daily life. In particular, the inclusion of a personal anecdote by Gavaza Maluleke (pp.78–79), regarding ancestral beads and their significance in Indigenous South African tradition, is especially important; it marks a significant change to how Nubian material culture is analysed and interpreted, and its relevance within communities beyond obvious use. Freed is to be commended for this novel approach, truly placing Nubian culture within the broader African sphere.
Throughout the book, the author redirects centuries of analysis through an Egyptian lens towards centring on Nubianness, which provides a fresh outlook for approaches to Nubian archaeology. The concept of ‘Nubianisation’ through “intermarriage and cultural exposure” (p.33) during the Egyptian colonial period in the mid to late second millennium BCE is introduced. This stands in sharp contrast to the concept of ‘Egyptianisation’; a loaded term that reflects the academic coloniality of approaches to Nubia that focus on highlighting the integration of ‘dominant’ Egyptian features into Nubian culture. Instead, the author emphasises the integration of Nubian features into colonial Egyptian culture, which importantly reverses Egyptocentric interpretations but may generate another acculturation model without clarification. Nonetheless, Freed considers the survival of Nubian artistic traditions, particularly through the resistance of women throughout Egypt’s colonial rule, and their complex entanglements with Egyptian art (Chapter 5) which was integral to the preservation and adaptation of Nubian identities, later influencing Napatan and Meroitic art (Chapters 6 & 7). Identities in colonial Nubia were heavily entangled in the complexities of social structures, resource access, marginalisation and the high degree of mobility within the Middle Nile and desert regions, impacted by internal interconnections, as well as Nubian–Egyptian pre- and early-colonial interactions pre-dating the mid-second millennium BCE. The book successfully demonstrates the continued survival of Nubian cultural diversity through an array of stunning artworks.
This publication manifests the approaches increasingly practised by researchers of ancient Nubia to reinterpret archaeological evidence from the perspective of the traditionally marginalised. Implementing a novel redirection that re-examines how Nubian art is categorised and hierarchised, Freed delivers an impressive guide, illustrated with a wealth of archaeological data, which removes Nubia from Egypt’s periphery and places it among Africa’s great civilisations.
