Nubians are native people who live along the shore of the Nile River, from Aswan in southern Egypt extending to the south of Khartoum, Sudan. Before the construction of the high dam, Nubians had a unique heritage, spoke two languages and had a distinct social practices, a unique and private culture.

Historically, the importance of Nubia stems from its location and role of being Egypt's gate or road to Africa. In spite of a troublesome past, war times and slavery occurrences, Nubians have preserved one of the richest traditions and cultures. Such maintenance of their heritage and conservation of identity could be attributed as well to Nubian women. The role of women could be summarized providing consistency and stability; a permanent and durable force in society passing on tradition to the young.

Description of the Village: A village in old Nubia consists of Nugu, a village that is located in parallel to the Nile’s

shore. There existed three kinds of Nubians in old Nubia: the Kenuzi from the north, the Arab and the Mahas from the South of the Kenuzi villages. All villages contain in their center (1) a main mosque, (2) a social center, (3) a post office and (4) a few shops. See Figure 5.

The Nubian houses took a linear form and were ordered in rows that faced the Nile. The linearity always occurred due to the natural contours and geographical aspects involved. Facing the Nile River generated the interaction and intermixing between Nubian dwellings and nature, which generated a unique and natural fabric for villages in old Nubia (El-Hakim, 1993). In larger communities, other communal amenities were included such as a village guesthouse, a fountain, or a mosque, as in the Arab district, which had a public water tap and adjoining toilet facilities.

The mosque has been subject to the main adaptation. Its original courtyard was covered with a vault to increase space and at the same time two new courtyards were added. The first form of the entrance to the mosque, alongside another at the back, is very large and has at one end a guestroom, a loggia and the washing area. Before and after modification, the mosque remained a complete entity and retained its sacred atmosphere. The whole village resembled a living organism, constantly growing and changing (El-Hakim, 1993).

House locations: All houses in Nubia, and their main entrances, were located as to face the Nile River without obligations to geographic directions.

House doorways: Doorways were heavily decorated and demonstrated Nubian heritage. They were the main feature of adornment, which would be carried out starting with the entrance and continued to the rest of the house. Nubian families believed that their highly decorated and colorful doorway was an example of reverence towards the Nile as shown in Figure 5.

Additionally, there was a side or rear entrance to the house, often used by women for daily chores. This type of additional entrance was used in linear extended houses depending on a need for direct access from the courtyard to the whole of the house.

Arrangement of the house: The open courtyard is the main focus of the house in which it could be accessed easily from the entrance as well as rooms adjacent. In the kenuzi and Mahas districts, “houses were structured along the lines of the extended family and were generally built in semi-detached terraces” (Safwat, 2004). Similarly, single residences existed, especially in the Arab and Mahas districts, where the houses were built with a square or rectangular shaped courtyard surrounded by a perimeter wall. Extra space in the courtyard was used to later allow for house expansions. The extended family simply expanded within the complex, adding rooms and storage as the family needed to grow.

The arrangement of a Nubian house was especially apparent in the courtyard. The courtyard was the central part of the house and despite its proximity to the main entrance, it remained private, sheltered and detached for members of the family as well as visitors. It was equipped with 'Mastabat', raised seats of stone or brick, along the walls, which made it flexible for most activities such as cooking, washing, sitting and even for sleeping during the hot summer nights. Nubians houses were sometimes divided into two-storey structures connected via staircases located by a corner of the courtyard, which would be found in north Nubia.

In some village specially Kenuzi and Mahas, houses had another courtyard, the rear courtyard was separated from the main entrance, it served the farmer who owned animals, it was directly connected with rear entrance which was easily for women to move through the house and from out to into the house.

The living room and Khayma: Living rooms were either open to the courtyards while some rooms had high wall-to-wall openings above the door. There existed flat roofed spaces, facing living rooms such as tents, known as a "khayma", that were covered with palm branches and stems (El-Hakim, 1999). More like a loggia, it was a covered sitting area along the open courtyard, which had higher end walls, and consequently a higher roofline, raised by brick columns that are as high as one meter. This resulted in an improved air circulation and maintenance of the space to cool during summers.

Guest room and The Mandara: Nubians were friendly people and displayed their affability by caring for the guest rooms as they considered it to be an important part of the house. The guest rooms usually had separate entrances to allow the guests some freedom in movement as well as maintain the privacy of the inner family quarters.

Roofs: The Nubians of the Mahas and Arab districts used split palm trunks to construct their roofs and wood beams made of acacias. Palm reed thatch and woven palm fronds covered the beams. In the Kenuzi district, however, roofs were constructed as centenary vaults and domes (Figure 5).

Doors and windows: The Nubians supported for the windows were placed in the walls during construction, and the doors and windows were shaped reaching of the walls. In order to provide privacy and reduce the area exposed to the heat and glare of the sun, the windows were built as narrow slits located just below the roof.

External plastering: Especially in the Kenuzi and Arab districts, houses were generally whitewashed. The exteriors of the houses were plastered with a mixture of mud, clay and rock salt from the adjoining rises.

The shapes of kenuzi houses were special. The women and children of the family plastered and decorated the interiors and the exteriors of their homes with bright, bold and colorful designs using paints made of calicoes, ferrous and bauxite compounds available in the area. The designs often symbolized the arts of Nubians they draw many objects such as plants, trees, cars, and airplanes or sometimes described the Nubians people when the hajj returning from the holy city of Makkah.

Ventilation: The courtyard allows fresh air and sunlight to circulate through and move into was the internal part of the dwelling via internal openings such as doorways and sometimes medium sized windows covered with wood shuttering. This acted as a ventilating device and a "private piece of sky" for the benefit of the family. Glass was very rarely used since it had to be brought from Aswan. The very small windows lying just below the rafters or vaulted roofing allowed hot air, rising from within a room, to escape and fresh air to enter from the courtyard (El-Hakim, 1993).

Catenaries vaulting: The vaults were made of roofing that is used today in many parts of the Mediterranean, the African continent and Latin America. The earliest recorded evidence of mud brick construction using a catenaries roof was found in Egyptian Nubia at the fortress of Kuban, a little south of El-Dakka on the east bank of the Nile as shown in Figure 6.

The bricks used for vaults had special dimensions of 25*15*5 cm and contained more straw than usual to allow for improved lightness and strength. Without scaffolding or centering, the mason roughly outlined the parabolic form of the vault in mud on the end wall of the room, which was raised higher than the rest (El-Hakim, 1993).

The economics in Nubia is dependent on the export of dates as it were the basic source of income for all of Nubia before the building of the Aswan High Dam. Since then, trade had prospered in parallel with the consecutive enhancement of the dam and Nubian flooded date palm orchards. See Figure 7. Between the closing and opening of the dam; the floods of the Lake, increase and decrease of the Nile, cultivation became legalized along a narrow strip of land for only four months of the year. Major year-round agriculture was incomplete to the southern district of the Mahas, where the dam reservoir did not greatly affect the agricultural land.

Although the Nubian was completely close to the Nile’s shore, fishing never became an important source of income or nutrition in Nubia. Livestock, however, existed in large quantities during the summer when the nomadic tribes of the Eastern Desert would graze their camels, sheep and goats along the banks of the river before traveling north at the end of the summer to souks in Aswan. Similarly, textiles in Nubia was an irregular industry but was particularly taken for a practice in houses or in small shops to sell in small and close villages (Robert A. et al, 1973). Nubia has a great potential in maintain a sustainable economy by being a main center for the exchange of commodities with different cities in Africa. Its location make sit eligible to contain a dry port that can promote Nubia as a global hub for trade (Amer, 2018).

The difference between the architecture of new Nubia planned by the Egyptian government as and that of old Nubia has had a dramatic effect on the identity and consciousness of Nubians. Nubians who relocated at Kom Ombo and Edna had begun to voice dissatisfaction with their treatment and began to form cooperatives to rebuild their homes on the shores of Lake Nasser.

The Nubians of Kom-Ombo lined themselves to create a cooperative and decided to return immediately after a government decree was issued allowing them to return to old Nubia. Other cooperatives were formed at Abu Simbel, Sadat, Wadi Alaqui, Qustul and Adindan, these townships were the first to return to old Nubia in 1977.

Some Nubians started to, single-handedly, build houses in different locations in the western artery of the Nile in Aswan. Building them how and where they needed, now one of these areas is named western Aswan village, one of the largest filled with Nubian inhabitants.

During the process of their emigration, Nubians established groups and designed websites to promote their cause, in all governorates, to challenge the government to help them in returning to their homeland. Successfully, the United Nations provided its support in 1987 and recommended, after the lake of the High Dam was closely located, to rehabilitate the Nubians along the shore of Lake Nasser.

The idea to rehabilitate the Nubian area stems from a notion of relocating lost Nubian villages and moving flooded sites along the shore of Lake Nasser and parallel to the old site using the same old names. The location of the Nubian village must be near the Nile shore that will identify with hypostasis of the Nubian people and provide them with the chance to reclaim their wealth. See Figure 9a. The village of new Kalabsha in the west Bank of Nile awaits in-depth studies, plans and design proposals. Accordingly, other villages will undergo rehabilitation alongside proposals for new Kalabsha. See Figure 9b, Table 1.

The rehabilitation of Nubia is needed since the stability is possible by Lake Nasser. Nubian rights to return back to their homeland will help in the development of southern Egypt instead of their scattering in many different cities. Participation of the public is also necessary to develop further rehabilitation plans and benefit from different ideas and opinions. This process has been ongoing in Egypt for many purposes; it assists decision makers receiving the feedback of citizens in projects before acted as to ensure a successful future (Aly & Amer, 2011). This specific gap was noticeably present in the emigration project; therefore, this paper recommends that decision makers consider this process in order to achieve just results. The paper also encourages Nubians to uphold their traditions and pass on their culture to following generations.