Introduction to the SJE's
Collection of Nubian Antiquities

Nubia is located between the 1st and the 4th cataracts of the Nile. It has its own distinct culture and its own language, Nubian. The villages are built along the river — the desert rules outside this strip of habitation.   When the High Dam at Aswan was completed in 1968, the N half of Nubia (c. 500 km along the river) was flooded and the Nubians were resettled in other parts of Egypt and the Sudan. In the S part of Nubia most of the inhabitants remain, living on an expanding irrigation agriculture. Many men work abroad.   Nubia has always served as an important link between the different parts of NE Africa. The Scandinavian Joint Expedition to Sudanese Nubia UNESCO organized during the 1960s an international campaign to save the monuments of Nubia, including the temples at Abu Simbel and on Philae.   Within this framework Nordic archaeologists investigated a concession area in the Wadi Halfa reach in N Sudan (1961-64). Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden financed the project which was directed by Professor Torgny Säve-Söderbergh of Uppsala University. The Sudan granted the Scandinavian countries many of the finds — a major part of the Nubian collection as well as all documentation are now in the custody of Uppsala University.