Nubian Texts, Nubian Lives

Abstract

Nubian texts provide valuable insight into Nubian social and economic history. Accounts reveal economic priorities both secular and sacred. Documentary evidence hints at the nature of state centralization and the movement of goods and coins in and out of Nubia. Magic reveals Nubia’s deep-seated hopes and fears. Literature shows innovative theology and Nubia’s sense of its place in world history. Funerary inscriptions record the careers of the elite and their sense of their own place in the cosmos. But much is missing from the Nubian textual record as well, suggesting that major literary genres never indigenized in Nubia the way they did in Egypt or Ethiopia. Other genres ebb and flow over time, hinting at the economy of Nubian literacy and the processes through which it ultimately dies.