The picture of Nubia and Nubian history was originally drawn by historians and archaeologists; in recent times, anthropologists and modern linguists have contributed their works. Actually, the first linguists were travellers in the seventh century who discovered and recorded the Nubian dialects of the Nile Valley. But it was not until the nineteenth century that specific studies dealt with these dialects, studies such as that of Reinisch in 1879, or Lepsius in 1840–53.

In the twentieth century starting as early as 1910, there was a discovery of ancient text written in Nubian. Scholars became interested in finding out the affinity between the Nubian language and other languages, and between the different dialects of Nubian.

Nubian has historically been classified as:

1. Mixed negro by Lepsius (1880);

2. Proto-Hamitic by Reinisch (1911) (“Proto” postulates Hamitic in its earliest underdeveloped stage);

3. Sudanic by Westermann (1911) and Meinhof (1912);

4. Eastern Sudanic by Greenberg (1948), MacGaffey (1961) and Trigger (1965).

Today there is a preponderance of opinion that Nubian is an Eastern Sudanic language, a branch of Nilo-Saharan. The Eastern Sudanic people settled in the Nile Valley and brought their language, which became the Nubian of the present day.