A Day on the Nile: Living in a Town in Nubia

Abstract

As archaeologists, we are often asked what it was like to live in the past. By blending a fictional narrative with factual archaeological evidence, we offer an interpretation of what a typical day may have been like living at Sai, a town on an island in the River Nile during the second millennium before the common era (BCE), in what is now Sudan. We focus on the question at different levels, thinking about the day-to-day life of the residents of an ancient town, activities that took place, and its broader historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. We also explain how archaeologists work and interpret some of the evidence we discuss, focusing on a range of methods. These include recent advances in virtual 3-D reconstruction, which offer a unique perspective on our interpretation of the past. Many themes covered in this article are highly relevant today and can be linked to several UN Sustainable Development Goals (in particular, 9, 11, and 12). We encourage readers to think about some of the things we discuss in relation to their own lives and experiences and have provided a number of call-out questions in speech bubbles throughout the article to get some of these discussions started.