Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Decorated houses of Nubia

http://tinyurl.com/eu7n3 (saudiaramcoworld.com)
It's a very slow news day today, so I've added this article because it may be of interest to those interested in modern as well as ancient Egyptian culture. The article looks at modern Nubian decorated houses, some os which use imagery dating back to the Pharaonic and Medieval periods. "Even more distinctive than the floor plan of a Nubian house is the decoration of its exterior doorway, or bawaba, which mixes vivid color, adobe brick filigree, figurative and geometric images in mud and white lime-plaster relief, and wall-mounted objects like ceramic plates, automobile headlights, mirrors, cow horns and dried crocodiles. While the full range of these decorative materials has shrunk in recent years, the impulse to draw attention to one’s home, and to its doorway as a symbol of the family, remains strong."
This is a fascinating article.

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