"Nubian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the council that she would not marry her persecutor, the council announced to the populace that on the next fete day the queen would confront the lions in the elephant arena. What could one man do against such odds? Lions brought from the far Nubian deserts, fierce, untamable. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Aswan and Philse begins Nubia. The Nubian language, which is quite different from Arabic, is spoken by everybody on the island of Elephantine, and its various dialects are used as far south as Dongola, where Arabic again is generally spoken till we reach the land of the negroes, south of Khartum. In Ptolemaic and Roman days the Nubians ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... about him also were scribes and councillors and captains, and beyond these other queens in their carved chairs and attended, each of them, by beautiful women of the household in their gala dress. Moreover, behind the thrones, and at intervals between the columns, stood the famous Nubian guard of two hundred men, the servants of the body of Pharaoh as they were called, each of them chosen for ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... now, And well I'd like to know how many days It must bide there before 'tis found again!"— Some fool's dull joke repeated: good man, he, Unversed in deep text comment, never dreamed What time its Abyssinian mountain roots Swollen by fresh torrents mixed in Nubian lands, And thundered down from rocky ledge to ledge; How sacred Nilus flooding bank and plain Transformed old Egypt to a shining sea: And slaves in swarthy crowds, despised as dirt, Paddled upon the water scattering corn, While swam to their sad eyes a raking glance ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rule little clothing but it suffices for the essential purposes of decency and travellers will live amongst them for years without once seeing an accidental "exposure of the person." In some cases, as with the Nubian thong-apron, this demand of modesty requires not a little practice of the muscles; and we all know the difference in a Scotch kilt worn by a Highlander ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... pleasant-sounding name might cause envy.[1798] In Bornu when a horse is sold, if it is a fine one, it is delivered by night, for fear of the evil eye (covetous and envious eyes) of bystanders.[1799] Schweinfurth[1800] tells an incident of a man who, going through a Nubian village, noticed that the limb of a tree was rotten and ready to fall. He warned some people who were standing under it. Immediately afterwards it did fall, but the fall was attributed to the evil eye of the person who first noticed the danger. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the woof of heaven were torn, A strident shout rang from some neighbour shrubs Three Nubian soldiers ran upon her with Delighted oily faces. Screaming first Commands to her small son to make for home, She laboured to recross the current as when In nightmares the scared soul expects to die ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... myself a few lines in memory of a typical man. Selim was a Nubian of lamp-black skin; but his features were Semitic down to the nose-bridge, and below it, like the hair, distinctly African: this mixture characterises the negroid as opposed to the negro. In the first fourth of the present century he was bought by Mr. Thurburn—venerabile nomen—of ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... took the steep street at a brisk pace, turning neither right nor left, but heading always for the citadel, boring through and trampling down what met them. This at first was not very much, only at one corner a company of Nubian spears came pelting down a lane, hoping to cut them off by a flank movement. Richard stopped his wedge; the blacks buffeted into their shields with a shock that scattered and tossed them up like spray. The wedge held firm; red work for axe and ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... "The addax or Nubian antelope," how frequently one may hear a father say to his small son in the schoolroom, "has horns very similar to those of the Indian antelope, but is a larger animal." "Yes, father," responds the boy brightly, "it has a tuft ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... the Pug and Pard Try to surprise the Nubian Bard. He only smiles, with gesture kind,— Wild flights ...
— A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals • J. G. Francis
... clear and calm. He arose, threw on his cloak, and buckled about his waist a short sword. The Nubian boy that Mardonius had given him for a body-servant awoke on his mat, and asked wonderingly "whither his Lordship was going?" Glaucon informed him he must be at the front before daybreak, and bade him remain behind and disturb no one. But the Athenian was ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... appointed for the departure of the troops Astolpho mounted his winged horse, and directed his flight towards a mountain, whence the fierce South-wind issues, whose blast raises the sands of the Nubian desert, and whirls them onward in overwhelming clouds. The paladin, by the advice of St. John, had prepared himself with a leather bag, which he placed adroitly, with its mouth open, over the vent whence issues this terrible ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... man in whom the most conflicting qualities were blent. In his youth and through his whole life he was passionately fond of hunting; hardy, simple in his habits, marching bareheaded with his legions through German frost and Nubian heat, sharing the food of his soldiers, and exercising the most rigid military discipline. At the same time he has aptly been described as 'the most sumptuous character of antiquity.' He filled the cities of the empire with showy buildings, and passed his last years in a kind ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... as are the ethnological and archaeological finds of this expedition, which will be considered further on, one of its most significant features was its bold advocacy and support of an idea which has been hesitantly advanced in a few circles ever since the study of the Benin bronzes and the Nubian monuments, namely, the existence of a genuinely superior type of culture in Central Africa ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... illusion is enhanced by the Commissioner's house among some trees atop a hill. Well-kept roadways railed with rustic fences lead from the house to the native quarters lying in the hollow and to the Government offices atop another hill. Then also there are the quarters of the Nubian troops; round low houses with conical ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... gleamed upon the waters of a sister sea in motion. That moon was glinting now upon the Arabian Mountains by its desolate shores. Southwards stretched the wastes of Upper Egypt a thousand miles to meet the Nubian wilderness. But over all these separate Deserts stirred the soft whisper of the moving sand—deep murmuring message that Life was on the way to unwind Death. The Ka of Egypt, swathed in centuries of sand, hovered beneath the ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... sticking out of yellow slippers. Now we meet a tawny Arab, a straggling son of the desert, his striped abba or white bournous (robe-like garments) hanging in graceful folds about his tall, straight figure; and now a Nubian, with only a waistcloth about his body. The scene is constantly changing. There are Jews, with dark blue vests and red sashes; Jewesses, in bright purple silks, and with uncovered, handsome faces. Here and there is seen a Maltese or ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... distinctly than I do myself. It is a translation, by my friend, Martin Van Buren Mavis, (sometimes called the "Poughkeepsie Seer") of an odd-looking MS. which I found, about a year ago, tightly corked up in a jug floating in the Mare Tenebrarum—a sea well described by the Nubian geographer, but seldom visited now-a-days, except for the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hung in the air and jangled in Chris's head. Of the many times he had examined Mr. Wicker's window and pored over the rope, the ship and the Nubian boy, he had never gone into Mr. Wicker's shop. So now, alone until someone should answer the bell, he looked eagerly, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... charged him to show readiness of tongue and firmness of heart and sweetness of speech. Then she robed him in a sumptuous dress and gave him diners in plenty, saying, "Be lavish of largesse to the Caliph's household as thou goest in to him." Presently Ja'afar, mounted on his Nubian mule, came to fetch him; and Ghanim advanced to welcome the Wazir and, wishing him long life, kissed the ground before him. Now the star of his good fortune had risen and shone brightly; and Ja'afar took him; and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... said Tortebras we have then shown an Abyssinian, Nubian or Ethiopian, who, black from head to foot, had been found wanting in certain virile properties with which all good Christians are usually furnished, who, having persevered in his silence, after having been tormented and tortured many times, not without much moaning, has persisted in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most bestial, as far as the few times that I saw him went, which were only at William Bankes's (the Nubian discoverer's) rooms. I saw him once go away in a rage, because nobody knew the name of the 'Cobbler of Messina,' insulting their ignorance with the most vulgar terms of reprobation. He was tolerated in this state amongst the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman inspired, and bear ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to his theory of life a woman should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable charm or looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to be looked on, and from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian page should silently bring in a tray with cups and dainties, to be accepted silently, as a matter of course, without drawn-out chatter about cream and sugar and hot water. If one's soul was really ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... knack of language learning, he added a store of desultory various reading; scraps of Chinese and old Egyptian; of Hebrew and Syriac; of Sanskrit and Prakrit; of Slav, especially Lithuanian; of Latin and Greek, including Romaic; of Berber, the Nubian dialect, and of Zend and Akkadian, besides Persian, his mother-tongue, and Arabic, the classic of the schools. Nor was he ignorant of the -ologies and the triumphs of modern scientific discovery. Briefly, his memory was well-stored; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... idea of distance and direction, indicates heights and sometimes tells of interesting land conditions. What we see are but symbols representing a more or less true picture. This method of telling a story is very old; as long ago as 1370 B. C. it was used to show the location of the then famous Nubian Gold Mines. This ancient map is now preserved in ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... as the Franco-Prussian war has gone, the blackest page of its history appears to be the employment of the Turcos, who are nearly as black as average Nubian "niggers." The expedient of mixing black troops with white was not very successful during our own little war. Raids upon hen-roosts were about the most prominent results of the experiment, though said raids were magnified by the Rads into ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... officer, Colonel Stewart, of the 11th Hussars, who knew Egypt well. Having done all that was necessary in the way of interviewing officials at Cairo, the two proceeded together on January 26th, reaching Korosko on February 1st, at which point they took to their camels, and dashed into the Nubian Desert. All sorts of alarming rumours reached England as to Gordon's fate during this hazardous ride, but on February 13th he reached Berber in safety, and we heard that he had reached Khartoum on the 18th. Mr. Power, the Times correspondent, writing from Khartoum ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... beauty, half hidden as it was by the exigencies of the costume she had chosen, was so unusual and brilliant that it seemed to create an atmosphere of bewilderment and rapture around her as she came. She was preceded by a small Nubian boy in a costume of vivid scarlet, who, walking backwards humbly, fanned her slowly with a tall fan of peacock's plumes made after the quaint designs of ancient Egypt. The lustre radiating from the peacock's feathers, the light of her golden ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... entertained by some dancing-girls, whom the Tiger had sent to amuse them; when they observed that a huge pile of dried stalks of Indian corn was rising rapidly round the tent. "What means this?" inquired Ismael angrily; "am not I Pasha?"—"It is but forage for your highness's horses," replied the Nubian; "for, were your troops once arrived, the people would fear to approach the camp." Suddenly the space is filled with smoke, the tent-curtains shrivel up in flames, and the Pasha and his comrades find themselves encircled in what they well know is their funeral ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... Marseilles must surely feel it less than any other great town; she flourishes in a perfect riot of movement and colour. Here all the tribes are met, save those of Central Europe—Frenchman, Serb, Spaniard, Algerian, Greek, Arab, Khabyle, Russian, Indian, Italian, Englishman, Scotsman, Jew, and Nubian rub shoulders in the thronged streets. The miles of docks are crammed with ships. Food of all sorts abounds. In the bright, dry light all is gay and busy. The most sthetic, and perhaps most humiliating, sight that ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Journey of Kenneth, the physician discovered and the departure of Kenneth in disguise to camp of Richard—Nubian slave saves life of king and proves who was traitor in camp—Combat arranged between Conrade and Saladin's champion—Meeting of Richard and ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... delightful to her. It seemed as if she were flying. The powerful Nubian guides, one on each side, lifted her jauntily up, without her being conscious of motion. Having seen them daily for some time past, she was now not much afraid of these handsome athletes, with their polished black skins, set off by dazzling white garments. She called out to Agamemnon, ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... down to this hour. The shape—the divine idea of that shape—the swelling muscle or the dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, Aphrodite or Hercules, it is the same. That I may have the soul-life, the soul-nature, let divine beauty bring to me divine soul. Swart Nubian, white Greek, delicate Italian, massive Scandinavian, in all the exquisite pleasure the form gave, and gives, to ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... directness he stands practically alone, though he does not possess the deliberate ease in which Duveneck rejoices. Sargent's "John Hay" and "Henry James" are absolutely exhaustive as character studies. His "Nubian Girl", however, is woody, no matter how interesting in posture. In nothing does he disclose his marvelous precision of technique so completely as in some of the outdoor studies, like the "Syrian Goats" and the "Spanish Stable". There is nothing like them in the exhibition anywhere, ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... (11), a seaport under Egyptian control, and since the Mahdi's revolt garrisoned by the English, on the Nubian coast of the Red Sea; stands on a rocky islet, and is connected with El Keff on the mainland by a causeway; is the starting-point of caravans to Berber and Khartoum, and as such has a large transit trade, exporting silver ornaments, ivory, gums, hides, gold, &c.; here African pilgrims to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to settle my big children into their quarters, and to see most of them making for the dining-room, agreeably Oriental with its white and red walls, its dome and windows of mushrbiyeh work. Then I darted back to Cairo, in a taxi driven by a Nubian youth, so black that he was almost blue, like a whortleberry. He wore a scarlet tarboosh, a livery of violet, and the holes for silver rings in the tops of his ears were so large that the light shining through gave the effect of inserted diamonds. Unconsciously he made ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... references to the other languages, according as the one or the other of them contains certain radicals with the same meaning as in Sanskrit. If you do not like this, you must prepare for me a Vedic Paternoster, just as Lepsius devised for me a pyramido-Pharaonic, and now prepares a Nubian. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... the Model Homes were built That left some while ago the bard bored I watched the Nubian lions wilt In imitation lairs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... syl.). The Charegite assassin, in the disguise of a Turkish marabout or enthusiast, comes and dances before the tent of Richard Coeur de Lion, and suddenly darting forward, is about to stab the king, when a Nubian seizes his arm, and the king kills the assassin on the spot.—Sir W. Scott, The Talisman ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the native woman shuffled quickly along the outside of the wall surrounding the house of Hahmed the Arab, stopping in front of the great gates, which were closed at sunset, to peer between the wrought bronze work, standing her ground unconcernedly when a Nubian of gigantic proportions suddenly ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... violent disputes with the young men, and arrogantly revile them for not knowing what he thought they might be expected to know. He once went away in disgust, because none of them knew the name of "the Cobbler of Messina." In this condition Byron had seen him at the rooms of William Bankes, the Nubian discoverer, where he would pour forth whole pages of various languages, and distinguish himself especially by his ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to hasten the hour of his death and to create diseases out of pleasures? When the rake of pestilence and the ploughshare of war and the demon of desolation have passed over a corner of the globe and obliterated all things, who will be found to have the greater reason,—the Nubian savage or the patrician of Thebes? Your doubts descend the scale, they go from heights to depths, they embrace all, the end as ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... on a bend of the Nile, not far from the Nubian frontier; it is now called Gebel Silsilch; it was in very ancient times the seat ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... contained nothing dutiable, and the baggage was passed without examination. A special train was on the pier ready to convey the party to Cairo. Beggars and peddlers attempted to approach the train to ask alms or sell their wares, but were driven away with whips by black Nubian soldiers in dark blue uniforms, who appeared to take delight in snapping at the bare legs ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... it started from Shellal, with the intention of travelling up the two hundred miles of Nubian Nile which lie between the first ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... elder, (Hist. Natur. l. vi. c. 32, 35, [28, 29,]) and Dion Cassius, (l. liii. p. 723, and l. liv. p. 734,) have left us very curious details concerning these wars. The Romans made themselves masters of Mariaba, or Merab, a city of Arabia Felix, well known to the Orientals. (See Abulfeda and the Nubian geography, p. 52) They were arrived within three days' journey of the spice country, the rich object ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... through mournful, warning eyes, seen under the wide shade of the strange horned (ammonite) crest, that bears the mystery of the Tetragrammaton upon its upturned front. Over her full bosom, mother of myriads as she was, hangs the same symbol. Her face has a Nubian cast, her hair wavy and plaited, as ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... ante-reception court; and I might have taken possession of the hut, in which musicians were playing and singing on large nine-stringed harps, like the Nubian tambira, accompanied by harmonicons. By the chief officers in waiting, however, who thought fit to treat us like Arab merchants, I was requested to sit on the ground outside in the sun with my servants. Now, I had made up my mind never to sit upon the ground as the natives ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... half, including seven changes of horses and a stoppage of half an hour. In short, we got over the ground in about three hours and three-fourths. We had six horses to our carriage, and a swarthy Nubian, with a capital seat on horseback, rode by us all the way, occasionally reminding our horses that it was intended they should ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... offered for free competition by the Greek cities. As his great gilded galley with two tiers of oars passed down the Mediterranean, the Emperor sat in his cabin all day, his teacher by his side, rehearsing from morning to night those compositions which he had selected, whilst every few hours a Nubian slave massaged the Imperial throat with oil and balsam, that it might be ready for the great ordeal which lay before it in the land of poetry and song. His food, his drink, and his exercise were prescribed for him as for an athlete who trains for a contest, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... forgets that, whilst waiting to beat them down a cloth or two, four or five are consumed by the caravan in waiting. The women, especially the younger ones, are miserably clad here; a fringe, like the thong kilt of the Nubian maidens, made of aloe fibres, with a single white bead at the end of each string, is the general wear; it is suspended by a strap tied round the waist. Hanging over the belly, it covers about a foot of ground in breadth, but ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... morning upon the eastern fringe of the Nubian desert. The sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon across the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains, dotted ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... comparison of the Russian with the German Court. Visit of Prince Victor Napoleon to St. Petersburg; its curious characteristics. Visit of the Ameer of Bokhara; singular doings of his son and heir. Marriage of the Grand Duchess Xenia; kindness, at the Peterhof Palace, of an American "Nubian." Funeral of the Grand Duchess Catherine; beginnings of the Emperor's last illness then evident. Midnight mass on Easter eve; beauty of the music. The opera. Midnight excursions in the northern twilight. Finland and ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... not to be thought of; for at a mere show of reluctance the courtly admiral flushed, frowned, and beat the bed where he lay, a gouty volcano. Gower's one shirt was passing through the various complexions, and had approached the Nubian on its way to negro. His natural candour checked the downward course. He mentioned to Mrs. Carthew, with incidental gravity, on a morning at breakfast, that this article of his attire 'was beginning to resemble ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of this, I recollect an incident the mention of which will, I fear, send a cold shudder through any worshipper of "Nubian" nocturnes and incomprehensible "arrangements." On one occasion after leaving the banquet of this Guild I beheld Whistler—"Jimmy" of the snowy tuft, the martyred butterfly of the "peacock room"—to whose impressionable soul ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss |
