The ornaments with which they profusely decorate their persons are of various materials, according to the wealth of the woman who owns them. Those of the wealthy are of gold and silver, while those of the poorer class are of buffalo horn, brass, and similar materials. The metal amulets are of a crescent shape, and are open at one side, so as to be clasped on the arm or removed, according to the wearer’s pleasure.
The hair is dressed in a way that recalls the ancient Egyptian woman to the traveller. It is jetty black and tolerably long, and is twisted with hundreds of small and straight tresses, generally finished off at the tips with little knobs of yellow clay, which look at a distance as if they were little lumps of gold. Amulets of different kinds are woven into the locks, and the whole is so saturated with castor-oil that an experienced traveller who wishes to talk to a Nubian woman takes care to secure the windward side, and not to approach nearer than is absolutely needful. As a rule, the Nubian women are not so dark as the men, but approach nearly to a coffee tint.
“Two beautiful young Nubian women visited me in my boat, with hair in the little plaits finished off with lumps of yellow clay, burnished like golden tags, soft deep bronze skins, and lips and eyes fit for Iris and Athor. Their very dress and ornaments were the same as those represented in the tombs, and I felt inclined to ask them how many thousand years old they were.” (Lady Duff Gordon’s “Letters from Egypt.”)
The same writer well remarks that the whole country is a palimpsest, in which the Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over the Bible. In the towns the Koran is most visible; in the country, Herodotus.
One of these graceful Nubian girls is represented in the [frontispiece] to this volume.
The amulets which have been just mentioned are worn by men and women alike, and are sewed up in red leather cases like those of the Bornuans. It is an essential part of their efficacy that their contents should not be known, and if once a case be opened, the enclosed amulet loses its power. The men often wear great numbers of them, tying them on their arms above the elbows.
The houses in which the Nubians live, or rather in which they sleep, are of very simple construction. Residing among the ruins of palaces, the Nubians have never learned to build anything better than a mud hut. These huts are of much the same shape as the old Egyptian buildings, being squared towers, large at the base, and decreasing toward the top, which is square, and in the better class of house answers as a terrace. The roof is covered with palm branches, and every good house possesses a sort of court-yard surrounded by walls, in which the women can pursue their different vocations while sheltered from the sun.
Granaries are seen near every village, and consist of shallow pits sunk in the ground and covered with a sort of white plaster. The villages also possess a shed for the reception of strangers, and each house has a jar of fresh water always kept ready for use.
Fortunately for themselves, the Nubians are both proud and fond of their country; and, although they are despised by the Arabs to such an extent that a Nubian always tries to pass himself off as an Arab whenever he has the opportunity, they are ever boasting of the many perfections of the land which they thus reject.
How long the Nubians may possess this land is doubtful. The Turk, “under whose foot no grass grows,” is doing his best to depopulate the country. The men are pressed for soldiers, as many as thirty per cent. having been carried off in one conscription, and they are always being seized for forced labor—i. e. a life somewhat worse than that of plantation slaves. Consequently, as soon as they take alarm, they leave their village and escape into the interior, abandoning their crops and allowing them to perish rather than serve under the hated rule of the Turk. The least resistance, or show of resistance, is punished by death, and several travellers have related incidents of cold-blooded cruelty which seem almost too horrible to tell, but which were taken quite as matters of ordinary occurrence. Taxation, too, is carried out to a simply ruinous extent, and the natural result is fast taking place, namely, the depopulation of the land, and the gradual lessening of the number of tax-payers.