This paper reports an analytical and numerical study of natural convection in a shallow lid-driven rectangular cavity filled with nanofluids. Neumann boundary conditions for temperature are applied to the horizontal walls of the enclosure, while the two vertical ones are assumed insulated. The governing parameters for the problem are the thermal Richardson number, Ri, the Prandtl number Pr, the aspect ratio of the cavity, A, the Reynolds number, Re, and the solid volume fraction of Cu-nanoparticles . Its has been performed numerically by solving the full governing equations via the finite volume method and the SIMPLER algorithm. In the limit of a shallow enclosure for convection in an infinite layer, analytical solutions for the stream function and temperature are obtained using a parallel flow approximation in the core region of the cavity and an integral form of the energy equation.