THEancient sports history traditionally begins and ends in the classical realm. Perhaps this is because of the multiplicity of existing sources on Greek and Roman sports. Behind this narrow view of the naive assumption that Greek sports were without precedent in their Mediterranean environment. In the field of sports history, several historians of Antiquity in recent years have made substantial contributions aimed at correcting the existing Greco-Roman insularity. (1)
The most popular sport competition in the classical struggling world. The literary culture and the material is filled with elements illustrating the prevalence of the struggle and the motive of the struggle. This study will attempt to demonstrate that wrestling enjoyed significance in ancient Nubia, as evidenced by several centuries before Homer's wrestling accounts. Ancient iconographic and literary evidence, combined with ethnographic studies, will be used to elucidate the popularity of the struggle of the Nubian people.
Testimonies of struggle in ancient Nubia
Wrestling was extremely popular with the ancient Egyptians, judging by the frequency with which the sport appears in Egyptian art (2). There are a multitude of fight scenes which appear in the tomb of the Old Kingdom of Ptahhotep (2300 BC) until the time of New Kingdom (2000-1085 BC). Some of the most interesting scenes show foreigners fighting Egyptians. Nubian wrestlers appear at least five times in Egyptian art. Our info about ancient Nubian wrestling is dependent on these glimpses into Egyptian iconography, with a belated description in Heliodorus' Aithiopica.
This section will analyze ancient evidence and attempt to reconstruct a tradition of ancient Nubian struggle.
The history of Egypt provides a continuous web of economic interaction with Nubia that began in the Old Kingdom and lasted until the Persian conquest of Egypt in 525 B.C. (3) At first, the boundaries of Nubian trade constituted interaction of exotic goods through their own intermediaries in the hands of Egyptian merchants. Apparently the trade was not reciprocal. Egyptian wares in Nubia are rare throughout the Old Kingdom. There is also evidence to suggest that several of the Old Kingdom pharaohs sent military expeditions to Nubia. These shipments increase during the First Intermediate Period (2250-2000 BC), as evidenced by Egyptian goods in Nubia. It was not until the Middle Kingdom (2000-1780 BC) that there was a concerted effort to protect Pharaohnic Egyptian economic interests to the south.