For such a rich and complex group, there is very little information available about who were were prior to slavery, especially coming from within our own community. Google the term “ancient Africa” and you will see a myriad of sites all with sparse information to share about the lives of our people before the transatlantic slave trade. However, I did come across a special on PBS called Wonders of the African World and a journey taken by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr to Africa to unearth some of our rich history. The first installment, Black Kingdoms of the Nile, shares information about ancient Nubia, a civilization that rivaled ancient Egypt, but is rarely discussed:
The term “Nubia” means many things to many people. In America it has come to be virtually synonymous with blackness and Africa. To ethnographers and linguists, it refers to a specific region straddling southern Egypt and northern Sudan, where black-skinned Nubians have traditionally lived. To archaeologists in the 1990s it is an ever-widening area of the Middle Nile Valley and surrounding deserts that extends approximately from Aswan in Egypt south to modern Khartoum, Sudan, and beyond.
What most people don’t know is that ancient Nubia was the site of highly advanced black African civilizations that rivaled ancient Egypt in wealth, power and cultural development. In fact, Nubian kings ruled over Egypt as pharaohs for nearly 100 years.
Read more here at pbs. org and watch more below.
