Entwined Ethnic Identities

Several ethnic groups lived under the pharaoh’s sceptre. A well-known example, but insufficiently researched, are Nubians inhabiting the Gebelein region in the late 3rd millennium BCE, which are the subject of this talk.
Previous scholars believed they were mercenaries brought to this area by warlords during the turmoil of the First Intermediate Period (ca. 2118–1980 BCE). Their subsequent disappearance from the archaeological record after that time was explained by their alleged eagerness to blend into the local Egyptian society, to which they were supposedly aspiring. This view is undermined by the fact that Nubians deliberately underlined their distinct ethnicity on the stelae.
A wider examination of their presence in southern Upper Egypt shows that they were living there already since the emergence of the pharaonic state and thus can be regarded as native to this land and they mixed with Egyptians. It seems that they even retained their tribal structure when living in Egypt.