Southern Egypt and northern or Lower Nubia have long had a shared history. Collaboration, trade, hostilities, and conflict saw shifting borders and identities, exchanges of people, goods, ideas, and ideologies in various fields and on various levels. These regions have for centuries influenced each other. In this project, cultural and religious exchanges are researched by means of church decoration.
Church decoration is a good entry point to study cultural and religious transformation in this area. In southern Egypt Christianity was an institutionalized religion by the 4th century with bishops and a thriving monastic life. Nobadia was officially Christianized in the 6th century and churches were built there from the middle of the 6th century onwards. In the decoration of their churches, Nubian clergy were inspired by established traditions. Their direct neighbour Egypt seems to have been especially influential.
Most of the churches in Nobadia are now flooded by Lake Nasser/Nubia as a result of the High Dam Project in Aswan.This lake has literally covered the historical religious landscape from view and only the salvaged highlights (1960s UNESCO campaigns) are repeatedly mentioned in textbooks and in outlines of art history. Many churches in smaller places could not be saved and we depend on historical and archaeological documentation for further study.
Previous research on wall paintings in churches and monasteries in Egypt as well as in Nubia have been conducted from two separate perspectives, either in relation to the Egyptian Christian tradition or that of Nubian Christianity. The separation of these two worlds cannot apply however in a multi-cultural, multilingual territory such as this region.
A new approach is necessary: we must look at the region simultaneously from both angles, as influenced by the Egyptian as well as the Nubian tradition. This is essential for understanding the processes that have led to the creation of the unique and distinctive programmes of church decoration that we find in Nobadia. It will also allow us to look at the Egyptian decorative programmes with different eyes: Was there an ‘opposing movement’ of themes coming from the south?