Digital Landscape as Cultural Memory? Co-creation and the Memory of Nubia

Can a digital reconstruction of a landscape and the settlements within aid in preserving or even constructing cultural memory? Digital Nubia is the development of a digital cultural landscape co-created with third-generation displaced Nubians, based on archival information, maps, descriptions, photographs, drawings and oral history, especially the memories of the Nubians who were forced to leave their houses, land and villages after the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. The inhabitants of Old Nubia, as it became to be known, used to live in a long string of settlements along the Nile River in the south of Egypt and the north of Sudan. This article discusses the context, the settings, and the methods of co-creation that form the basis of the Digital Nubia project. It is a continuation and reformulation of a project that started in the US and Europe but is currently moving the initiative and responsibility into the hands of third-generation Nubians in Egypt and the Nubian diaspora outside Egypt. The project is just one of several modes of collaboration in an effort to preserve the memory of a way of life that has dramatically changed after the forced resettlement of the entire Nubian population. One of the relevant questions is whether a digital reconstruction of the landscape might be more than a reflection of a state of knowledge but can be an effective way of invoking memories or can function as an anchor for additional narratives.