Cultural Tourism between Identity and Income. The Case of the Nubian Village of Gharb Soheil

Abstract

The Nubians' historical area of settlement was between Aswan in Egypt and Dongola in the Sudan, on which they developed several outstanding civilizations, going back 5000 years (Emberling 2011 : 6). In the I 960s, the majority of Nubians in Egypt and in Northern Sudan were forced to leave their ancestral lands, when the construction of the Aswan High Dam began, and when Old Nubia was consequently submerged. This shift in place caused many changes in their traditional practices and their economies, which had strong connections to their historical lands, and affected as well their cultural identity (Hopkins and Mehanna 20I0: 5).