Old Nubian is a Nubian (North-Eastern Sudanic) language spoken in the Medieval Christian kingdoms of Nubia. Being a dead language, very little is known about its phonology, and previous studies by Hintze and Browne have remained unsatisfactory in this regard.

Based on a detailed investigation of the behavior of loanwords from Byzantine Greek, this paper aims to provide a consistent approach to the morphophonological conditions underlying progressive and regressive assimilation patterns in Old Nubian and arrive at a preliminary reconstruction of Old Nubian syllable structure and suprasegmental phonology.