Ancient Nubia

Ancient Sudan

Ancient Egypt

The Ancient World

Africa Today. National Geographic, the world's leader geography education center, has a neat on-line atlas where you can print maps of Africa and other countries around the world.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/xpeditions/main.html

Sudan Today
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/CIA_Maps/Sudan_19884.gif

Egypt Today
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/CIA_Maps/Egypt_19870.gif

Site Maps of Egypt and Sudan/Nubia from the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/INFO/MAP/SITE/ANE_Site_Maps.html

Satellite Photographs of Egypt, Sudan, and the Nile River

Image shows geological features which determine the course of the Nile River
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/sc-sudan.gif

Image of the Nile River at the sharp bend in the river called the 4th cataract in Sudan
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/nile2.html

Dakhla Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, about 370 miles south of Cairo.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/dakhla.html
Image shows "outcrops of Nubian sandstone, the construction material used to build many of the Pharaohs' temples. Scientists are using radar imaging in desert areas to study structural geology, mineral exploration, ancient climates, water resources and archaeology."

Giza Pyramids in Egypt
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/radar/sircxsar/giza.html

Here are several good images of Africa and the world.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Map_Satellite/menu_Map.html

"What Do Maps Show" (Grades 5-8). Teaching Unit from the U.S. Geological Survey
http://info.er.usgs.gov/education/teacher/what-do-maps-show/index.html

THE NEW NUBIA MUSEUM IN ASWAN

Opening of the Nubia Museum: A Comment from UNESCO
http://www.unesco.org.eg/prog/Cult/Nubia.htm
UNESCO played a pivotal role in the Nubian Monuments campaign in the 1950s and 1960s that rescued many important antiquities from the Aswan Dam flooding. UNESCO was also central in the development of this museum that opened in 1997. "The Nubia Museum was highly praised by all invitees and the media at large, which has extensively covered this unique event."

The New Nubia Museum in Aswan
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~assem/4/4nubia.html

A Review by O. E. Kaper
"After lengthy preparations which involved great numbers of people and organisations, the new Nubia Museum has been built. It was formally opened by President Mubarak of Egypt on 23 November 1997, but some parts of the building will only be in operation at a later date. The new museum is of major significance for Egyptian archaeology, for tourism in Egypt, and last (but not least) for the Nubian people."

Archaeology, Volume 52, Number 4, July/August 1999
http://www.archaeology.org/

At The Museums: A Walk Through Time
By Angela M.H. Schuster

Nubia: The Land Upriver
Northwestern University's Professor Peter A. Piccione has developed an excellence overview of Nubia for his course, History B94: History of Ancient Egypt (http://www.library.nwu.edu/class/history/B94/). One section is called Nubia: The Land Upriver. We are including links to this valuable source. Here are the major sections and you can click on these topics and go to his site.

I. The Geography of Nubia
II. Early History of Nubia: The Palaeolithic Era
III. Early History of Nubia: The Neolithic Era
IV. The Economic Importance of Nubia
V. The C-Group People
VI. The Kerma Culture: Early Kush
VII. Nubia in the Middle Kingdom
VIII. Nubia in the New Kingdom
IX. The Kingdom of Kush: Napata
X. The Kingdom of Kush: Meroe

ANCIENT NUBIA
http://library.advanced.org/22845/index.shtml
An excellent website prepared by students and placed as a semi-finalist in the international ThinkQuest contest. It is includes an overview and sections on geography and topology, climate and natural resources, and archaeological history. Online quiz and a translator are unique aspects.

K-12 Electronic Guide for African Resources on the Internet © By Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Home_Page/AFR_GIDE.html

Be sure and check out the COUNTRY-SPECIFIC PAGE, especially the page for Sudan.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Country_Specific/Sudan.html

General Information and Discussion

The Nubian Homepage- Akubakr Sidahmed
http://i-cias.com/private/abubakr/nubia/index.htm

Afrocentric Debate Resource Homepage
http://www.he.net/~skyeagle/afro.htm

"The Nile's Other Kingdom: Nubia, Not Egypt, May Have Been The First True African Civilization"
By Scott Macleod, Time, September 15, 1997 Vol. 150, No. 11
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/1997/dom/970915/aarch.the_niles_oth.html

Confounding experts, an ancient culture thrives in Egypt CNN Report.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9604/08/egypt.nubia/

Sudan.net
Extensive site covering all aspects of Sudan history, life, and culture. Include, for example, digitized music and list of Sudan music websites. Many links.
http://www.sudan.net/

Abubakr Sidahmed's Nubia Homepage
Extensive coverage of history and contemporary affairs
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/9435/

Special Topics

The Role of Women in Nubia
http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/Afro-Amer/women_in_nubia

Decipering Meroitic
http://homepages.luc.edu/~cwinter/kush1.htm

Nubian Language
Article from the Encyclopedia of the Orient by Abubakr Sidahmed
http://i-cias.com/cgi-bin/eo-direct-frame.pl?http://i-cias.com/e.o/nubian_l.htm

"The Feline: From Goddess to Pet"
The domestic cat may well have had its origins in ancient Nubia!
http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/fl/pcto/feline.html

References

Africana Studies Research page on Nubia
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/8192/nubia.html

Annual Egyptological Bibliography, published by the International Association of Egyptologists in cooperation with the Netherlands Institute for the Near East. Special section on Nubian Studies. A Relative Chronology of Nubia and Egypt
http://www.leidenuniv.nl/nino/aeb.html

Additional Images of Nubia

Images from Egypt with some relevance to Nubia
http://www.tulane.edu/lester/text/Ancient.World/Egypt/Egypt.html

Nubia Museum in Aswan
http://www.powerup.com.au/~ancient/preview.htm

Ancient Meroe: A Sudanese Civilization
http://orion.it.luc.edu/~cwinter/sudan2.htm

"KUSH, Kingdoms on the Nile", highlights some of the rivalries and grievances which have been smoldering since the twilight of time. Based on the Institut du Monde Arabe exhibition.
http://www.culturekiosque.com/art/exhibiti/index_se.htm

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

WHAT IS ARCHAEOMETRY/ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE?
http://www.uiuc.edu/unit/ATAM/whatis.html

"In its broadest sense, "archaeometry" (or "archaeological science") represents the interface between archaeology and the natural and physical sciences. This interdisciplinary field requires close collaboration between archaeologists, art historians, curators, and scientists who apply modern instrumental techniques to extract technological, cultural, and historical information from both inorganic and organic materials. "

Mummy Project. A project from the University of Illinois looking at mummies
http://www.uiuc.edu/unit/ATAM/mummy/home.html

CYBERMUMMY
http://www.cmi.k12.il.us/Urbana/projects/cybermummy/
"One of the most spectacular artifacts housed at the World Heritage Museum at the University of Illinois in Urbana is this mummy acquired in 1989 from a Chicago antiquities dealer. Unlock its secrets with the help of modern medical imagery, a supercomputer, and an archeologist."

CENTER FOR ONLINE PROFESSION EDUCATION (COPE)
http://www.edc.org/LNT/home.htmL
EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT CENTER, INC.

COPE hosts an annual Leadership and New Technology summer institute at Harvard and its website has an excellent newsletter and library. The library http://www2.edc.org/urltrack/library.asp contains a current and future directions section and regularly updated coverage of the following topics: Developing and Implementing a Technology Plan, Building and Maintaining a Technology Infrastructure, Professional Development, Integrating Technology into Curriculum and Classroom Practices, Policy Issues, Funding and Assessment. Online courses are also offered. The section on integrating technology is particularly impressive: General Curriculum Integration Resources
Subject Area Resources for Curriculum Integration
Classroom Portraits
Curriculum Standards
Online Courses for Students
Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education.

http://www.ed.gov/Technology
This site provides the views of the USDOE and educational resources for school personnel, parents, and students. WWW links, funding sources, after school activities, and other leads are provided.

Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in the United States
http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OSTP/NSTC/PCAST/k-12ed.html

Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide/

EDSITEMENT, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, brings together the best of the humanities on the web. It is a constantly growing collection of the most valuable online resources for teaching English, history, art history, and foreign languages. SO CHECK BACK OFTEN!

Included (as of 7/99) are the following websites http://edsitement.neh.gov/websites-lit.htm

National Geographic's website has downloadable maps, family expeditions to an exciting new destination each week, an exhibition hall, and a discussion of U.S. geography standards.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/xpeditions/main.html

Art and Life in Africa Online which examines "African works of art in the context of the lives of African peoples."
http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/

Perseus Project
Maps, texts, translations, and commentary for students of the ancient world.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

And their lesson plans http://edsitement.neh.gov/guides/g_intro.htm include "Women in Africa: Tradition and Change," "Historical Evidence," "Evaluating Eyewitness Reports," and "Mapping the Past."

K-12 Electronic Guide for African Resources on the Internet by Ali B. Ali-Dinar http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Home_Page/AFR_GIDE.html
This is on the leading website for the study of Africa in the world. It got 1 million hits one month this year. Who says that learning about Africa is not popular! Teachers: This site has lesson plans and other important teaching and learning resources!

NubiaNet provides resources for studying about Nubia that address recently developed National Standards for History and standards in geography and other subjects. NubiaNet is intended to contribute to realizing these standards. Here is our brief summary of the history standards, and links to additional information and resources.

NubiaNet is based a pedagogical approach aligned with the recently developed National Standards for History that seeks to promote these values:

Historical Understanding: History is a broadly integrative field, recounting and analyzing human aspirations and strivings in at least five spheres of human activity: social, scientific/technological, economic, political, and cultural (religious/philosophical/aesthetic).

Historical Thinking: The Standards advocate that students engage in active questioning and learning, not in the passive absorption of facts, names, and dates. Properly done, skills in five types of historical thinking should result: chronological thinking, historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation, historical research capabilities, and historical issues-analysis and decision-making.

Subject Matter Content: The National Standards report states that "these five sets of Standards in Historical Thinking are defined . . . largely independent of historical content in order to specify the quality of thinking desired for each. It is essential to understand, however, that these skills do not develop, nor can they be practiced, in a vacuum. Every one of these skills requires historical content in order to function . . ." (p. 16) Making the specific subject matter content regarding ancient Nubia widely accessible for the first time lies at the heart of this project.

The National Standards in History propose as Topic 4 under "Standards in History for Grades K-4": "The History of Peoples of Many Cultures Around the World." It is suggested that students should understand selected attributes and historical developments of societies in such places as Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Our entire project, and especially the web site, will endeavor to provide access to materials that are not otherwise widely accessible. One key task which faced us and will face all teachers will be to select materials on Nubia that can provide a solid foundation for meeting the National Standards for Historical Understanding and Historical Thinking.

Similarly, Nubia materials can be used to meet the World History standards suggested for Grades 5-12, especially given the emphasis placed on "comparative civilizations." The following are excerpts from sections in which Nubia-related content could be useful.

Era 2: Early Civilizations and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples, 4000-1000 BCE

Standard 1: The major characteristics of civilization and how civilizations emerged in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus valley

Standard 2: How agrarian societies spread and new states emerged in the third and second millennia BCE

Standard 3: The political, social, and cultural consequences of population movements and militarization in Eurasia in the second millennium BCE

Standard 4: Major trends in Eurasia and Africa from 4000-1000 BCE

Era 3: Classical Traditions, Major Religions, and Giant Empires, 1000 BCE-300 CE

Standard 1: Innovation and change from 1000-600 BCE: horses, ships, iron, and monotheistic faith

Standard 2: The emergence of Aegean civilization and how interrelations developed among peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Asia, 600-200 BCE

Standard 3: How major religions and large-scale empires arose in the Mediterranean basin, China, and India, 500 BCE-300 CE

Standard 4: The development of early agrarian civilizations in Mesoamerica

Standard 5: Major global trends from 1000 BCE-300 CE

WHERE TO FIND DISCUSSIONS AND COPIES OF NATIONAL STANDARDS

National Standards for History
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/hstocb.html
A comment from Gary B. Nash and Charlotte Crabtree who served as co-directors for the National Standards for History project.

The Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory
http://www.mcrel.org/standards/
has received national and international recognition for its work in standards-based education. Their resources include (a) Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education (On-line Version) and (b) "Connections+" which consists of Internet resources--lesson plans, activities, curriculum resources--linked with corresponding subject-area content standards.