quote:
ausar...I did not say he was correct. What I do contend is that many blacks in Egypt today are decendants of Nubians who migrated via the river. Silverman only points out that that process was in play and it is a highly logical process in line with migrations world wide in all time periods. You yourself have said that many Egyptians WERE NOT black. If so , where did these people come from? It is most logical to assume that they were non-negroid North Africans. It is also logical to assume that many of the blacks in AE were Nubians to moved into Egypt or who wrer brought into the country by Egyptians as Silverman states.
Further , in looking through 15 assorted AE history books by various modern Egyptologists NOT A SINGLE ONE EVEN MENTIONS RACE. That supports my view that most of what we have here on our board is non historical politics designed to promote some sort of black, anti western agenda.
No, the modern ''black'' Upper Egyptians donot come from black migrants from Nubia. Most of the migrations of Nubians into Egypt has occured to cities like Alexandria and Cairo. Only small amounts live in areas like Kom Ombo around Aswan.
What you seem to misunderstand is that Southern Upper Egypt has always had a black population from the pre-dyanstic into the dyanstic era. The civilization and culture of ancient Egypt came from Upper Egypt,and Lower Egypt was absorbed into Upper Egypt when both lands were united.
The Nubian migration of mercenaries was too small to make an impact,and does not account for the modern black Egyptians in Upper Egypt. Areas like Southern Upper Egypt were already around the pre-dyanstic era ethnically like the southern neighboors south of them.
Also the ancient Egyptians come from the pre-dyanstic Egyptian cultures of Badari,Naqada,and Faiyum. All the remains of these areas have been found to be negriod by early anthropologist,and this is most likely where the following modern day black Upper Egyptians came from. Their ancestors came from both Eastern Africa and from the drying Sahara desert.
Plus I think you can make an equal case that many of the people who live in northern Egypt came from captives from Western Asia using your logic. Much more Asiatics were brought into Egypt than were Nubians.
The modern Eyptologist are not entirely qualified to comment on the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians except maybe to find them in tomb scenes or from certain translations. The Oxford History of ancient Egypt discusses the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians,and so do other books I have read. Most agree the Egyptians were Africans,and were culturally African with some Western Asian influences around the Delta.
Here are some excerpts from the following books I have read:
In some areas there has been lots of intermingling with other people[especially the north],but even in Middle Egypt there was lots of intermingling with Greeks,and finally in Southern Upper Egypt has been extrenely isolated and retained a dinstinct African phenotypes that is much like the reliefs on the temples of Deir al Medina and the various private tombs in Luxor.
Even going back to ancient Egyptian times in the farthest North[the Delta] compared to the South[modern Aswan] it was very disintinct phenotype between these two regions. In fact,in Egyptian text Tales of Sinhue it tells about a man from the Delta that was confused and could not reognize himself in Upper Egypt.
The ancient Egyptian population came from the cultures of Pre-dyanstic Upper Egypt and pre-dyanstic Lower Egypt. The Neolithic cultures in pre-dyanstic Egypt were: The Badarian,Naquada,Tasins, and many others. In the Northern region we have the Merimede,Maadi,Faiyum,and other Neolithic culture.
Here is some references about the people from pre-dyanstic Upper Egypt:
The existence of still earlier culture,called the Tasins,has been
claimed. This culture would have been chracterized by the pressure of
round based calic form beakers with incised designs filled with white
pigment,which are also known fropm contexts of similar date in
Nelothic Sudan. However,the exisdtanece of the Tasins as a
chronologically or culturally seperated unit has never been
demonstrated beyond beyond doubt. Although most scholars consider the
tasian to be simply part of the badarian culture,it has also been
argued that the tasian represents the continuation of Lower Egyptian
tradition,which would be the immediate predessor of the Naquda 1
culture. This however,seems rather implausible ,first because
similarities with the neolithic cultures are no
convincing,and,secondly,because of the tasins obvious ceramic links
with the sudan. If the Tasians must be considered as a specific
cultural entity,then it might represent a nomadic culture with a
Sudanese background,which interacted with the badarian culture
page 40
Ian Shaw
Oxford University of Ancient Egypt
The mid-twentieth Egyptologist Alan Gardiner, who was considered an
authority on the ancient civilization of Kemet, gave the following
report on the human remains of the pre-dynastic Badarians, Amratians,
and Gerzeans:
"These... were long-headed-dolicocephalic is the learned term-and
below even medium stature, but Negroid features are often to be
observed. Whatever may be said of the northerners, it is safe to
describe the dwellers in Upper Egypt as of essentially African stock,
a character always retained despite alien influences brought to bear
on them from time to time." (pg. 392; Egypt of the Pharaohs 1966)
In discussing the Badari culture, for example -- Egypt's earliest predynastic
civilization (4400-4000 BC) -- Shomarka Keita writes that many researchers
have found their remains to be "fundamentally `Negroid'."
Going back even further in time, Keita states:
"...late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which
distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000 and
20,000 years BP... These distinguishing characteristics, commonly called
`Negroid,' are shared with later Nile valley and more southerly groups...
Epipaleolithic `mesolithic' Nile valley remains have these characteristics
and diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in key
craniofacial characteristics."
(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological
Relationships", History in Africa 20 (1993), page 135).
The movement or diffusion of people out of and into Egypt during
this time span from before 4000 B.C.-2000 B.C. or later evolution of
this slightly negriod paedomorphic stock into Dyansty Upper
Egyptians was probably a local development from the unknown latest
hunters of the Lower Nile,while mixture of more massive and rugged
[and also negriod ] Nubians[Anderson,1969];Armelagos,1969] produced
some of the rugged Pre-dyanstic variants . Disease and dietary
selection would have affected the population probably more than
immigration and mixture. Lower Egypt may have had a slightly
different population,less linear in the skull variant but with
longer face,like the earliest farmers in Greece ,but also with thin
noses. But I have to use a IX Dyansty series [Woo ,1930] as a base
for this statement and almost certainly this group in the late third
milliennium B.C. shows minor effects of mixture with sea-trading
peoples from the Levant and Agean. Cyprus since the early Neolithic
[Angel,1953;Furst,1933] had both very lateral and some linear skulls
elements and could have been a source of change and there were
probably exchanges with Palestine[Korgman ,1949;Hrdlicka,1938] and
Mesopotamia [Angel ,1951],both with long [Angel,1951],both with long
headed populations with medium or low rather than linear faces and
some of the same lateral element as in early Anatolian[cf. the later
Hitties] and the Agean [Angel,1951]. The latter is supposed to have
increased in numbers [from what selective force?] in the Bronze Age
and perhaps to have affected Lower Egypt via the Hykos.
This is not enough evidence. But the intruders who appeared in
Greece at time of Indo-Europeans acceptance[Angel,1971] are fairly
robust Iranian[or Nordic Iranian] in form[Korgman,1940] with definite
short and low headed and also intermediate forms of skull: I think
that the Hykos wew probably a parallel blend and also may have had
little genetic effect in an area of high population density already.
page 310
J. Lawrence Angel
Divison of Physical Anthropology
Smithstonian Institution
Washington,D.C. 20560 ,U.S.A.
Received 18 April 1969
Biological Relations of Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean
Populations during Pre-dynastic and Dyanstic
Time*
Lower Egypt on the other hand was probally composed of more a mixture of Africans and non-African people. We see this from evidence from burial sites in the cultures of Lower Egypt.
See the following:
There was probably a break in occupation between levels I and II at
Merimda. Level II, known as the Mittleren Merimdekultur and considered by
the by the excavator to be related to the Saharo-Sudanese cultures..."
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
Pg 38
======================================================================
"The Fayum Neolithic should thus be viewed as a culture at the intersection
of three routes: one from the eastern Sahara, one from the Near East and one
from the Nile Valley itself."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 106
=====================================================================
Here is Midant-Reynes statement on the remains of a 40 year old
epipaleolithic woman from the Fayum Oasis in the same book:
" The body was that of a 40 year old woman with a height of 1.6 meters, who
was of a more modern racial type than the classic "Mechtoid" of the
Fakhurian culture, being generally gracile, having large teeth and thick
jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern "negroid' type."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 82
======================================================================
"The prognathism observed in the skulls from Maadi south and Heliopolis may
or may not indicate the infiltration of a negroid strain into the northern
region."
Most Ancient Egypt
By William C. Hayes
======================================================================
Fundamentally,the people with the most trace to ancient Egyptian culture are probabaly the Fellahin in both Lower and Upper Egypt. majority of the modern population of Egypt tend to come from the Fellahin with some exceptions of some elite Egyptians living in the city of Cairo because many of them can trace their ancestry from Mamelukes,Turks,and even some bedouin Arabs.
See the following link: http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DIGEST/V02/v02.n077
[scroll down to the thread by Peter Piccone]
Finally, let it be said that the ancient Egyptians were not white=20 Caucasians, nor were they Indo-Aryans. They were African, primarily a brown race, although fair= =20 skinned and leptorhine in the north, black skinned and platyrhine in the south, and= =20 various shades in the middle. They manifested all the physical differences you=20 would expect in so large a continent as Africa. Trigger (see below) uses the term=20 "Nilotic" to refer to their heterogenous character. When all is said and done, though,= =20 this whole question of Egyptian racial identity says more about us today than it does= =20 about the ancient Egyptians.
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