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That study by Arnaiz-Villenas et al seems to have been rather criticized. In this video the study is mentioned and also something about him as a researcher.
quote:Originally posted by Firewall: By the way. HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks 2001 Feb
quote: HLA alleles have been determined in individuals from the Republic of Macedonia by DNA typing and sequencing. HLA-A, -B, -DR, -DQ allele frequencies and extended haplotypes have been for the first time determined and the results compared to those of other Mediterraneans, particularly with their neighbouring Greeks. Genetic distances, neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis have been performed. The following conclusions have been reached: 1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians, 2) Macedonians are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum, 3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles, such as *0305, *0307, *0411, *0413, *0416, *0417, *0420, *1110, *1112, *1304 and *1310. Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group and finally Greeks cluster with Ethiopians/sub-Saharans in both neighbour joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses. The time period when these relationships might have occurred was ancient but uncertain and might be related to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopian people living in pharaonic Egypt.
Antonio Arnaiz-Villena is a Spanish immunologist noted for his controversial research into the genetic history of ethnic groups and fringe linguistic hypotheses.
Greeks and Sub-Saharans Arnaiz-Villena et al. published five scientific articles, where, among other claims, they concluded that the Greek population originates from Sub-Saharan Africa and do not cluster with other Mediterraneans.[8][14][15][16][17] The explanation they offered is that a large number of Sub-Saharans had migrated to Greece (but not to Crete) during Minoan times,[8][14][15][16] i.e. predating both Classical and Mycenaean Greece. Those conclusions were related to the "Black Athena" debate and became embroiled in disputes between Greek and ethnic Macedonian nationalists.[18]
They cited Dörk et al. for having found a marker on Chromosome 7 that is common to Black Africans and, among Caucasoid populations, is found only in Greeks.[14][19] Dörk et al. did find an African-type of cystic fibrosis mutation in Greeks, however this mutation was extremely rare; it was detected only in three Greek families.[19] The explanation they offered is quite different from Arnaiz-Villena's. Dörk et al. state: "Historical contacts—for example, under Alexander the Great or during the ancient Minoan civilization—may provide an explanation for the common ancestry of disease mutations in these ethnically diverse populations."[19]
Hajjej et al. claimed to have confirmed the genetic relatedness between Greeks and Sub-Saharans.[20][21] However they used the same methodology (same gene markers) and same data samples like Arnaiz-Villena et al.[8][15][20][21]
Other authors contradict Arnaiz-Villena's results. In The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, 1994), Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci (view MDS plot[22]). Then, Ayub et al. 2003[23] did the same thing using 182 loci (view dendrogram[24]).[25] Another study was conducted in 2004 at Skopje's University of Ss. Kiril and Metodij, using high-resolution typing of HLA-DRB1 according to Arnaiz-Villena's methodology. Contrary to Arnaiz-Villena's conclusion, no sub-Saharan admixture was detected in the Greek sample.[25]
In a sample of 125 Greeks from Thessaloniki and Sarakatsani, 2 Asian-specific mtDNA sequences (M and D) were detected (1.6%). No sub-Saharan African genes were observed in this population, therefore, non-Caucasoid maternal ancestry in Greece is very low, as elsewhere in Europe.[26] Additionally, in a sample of 366 Greeks from thirteen locations in continental Greece, Crete, Lesvos and Chios, a single African haplogroup A Y Chromosome was found (0.3%). This marks the only instance to date of sub-Saharan DNA being discovered in Greece. In another sample of 42 Greeks, one sequence of the Siberian Tat-C haplogroup turned up, while other studies with larger sample populations have failed to detect this paternal marker in the Greek gene pool[27][28] and while its frequencies are actually much higher in Scandinavian and Slavic populations.[29][30] Also, a paper has detected clades of haplogroups J and E3b that were likely not part of pre-historic migrations into Europe, but rather spread by later historical movements. Greeks possess none of the lineages denoting North African ancestry within the last 5000 years and have only 2% (3/148) of the marker J-M267, which may reflect more recent Middle Eastern admixture.[31]
Jobling et al., in their genetics textbook "Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, Peoples & Disease", state that Arnaiz-Villena's conclusions on the Sub-Saharan origin of Greeks, is an example of arbitrary interpretation and that the methodology used is not appropriate for this kind of research.[32] Karatzios C. et al., made a systematic review of genetics and historical documents, showing great flaws in Arnaiz-Villena's methodology and theory on the Greeks/Sub-Saharan genetic relationship.[33]
Three respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, criticised Arnaiz-Villena's methodology.[34] They stated that "Using results from the analysis of a single marker, particularly one likely to have undergone selection, for the purpose of reconstructing genealogies is unreliable and unacceptable practice in population genetics. The limitations are made evident by the authors' extraordinary observations that Greeks are very similar to Ethiopians and east Africans but very distant from other south Europeans; and that the Japanese are nearly identical to west and south Africans. It is surprising that the authors were not puzzled by these anomalous results, which contradict history, geography, anthropology and all prior population-genetic studies of these groups." Arnaiz-Villena et al. countered this criticism in a response, stating "single-locus studies, whether using HLA or other markers, are common in this field and are regularly published in the specialist literature".[35]
A 2017 archaeogenetic study concluded concerning the origin of both the Minoans and Mycenaeans, that:
Other proposed migrations, such as settlement by Egyptian or Phoenician colonists are not discernible in our data, as there is no measurable Levantine or African influence in the Minoans and Myceneans, thus rejecting the hypothesis that the cultures of the Aegean were seeded by migrants from the old civilizations of these regions.
The other proposed migrations that is mentioned and disproved by the paper pertain to Black Athena's positions that Arnaiz-Villena also tried to support with his work.[36]
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Honestly, if the actress playing Cleopatra in the upcoming Netflix doc wore a red-haired wig, she wouldn't look much different from those Roman portraits that people claim represent the "real" Cleopatra (I notice none of said ancient artworks have labels in Latin identifying whom they're portraying though). The actress isn't even that dark-skinned.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: @Brandon, is this a picture made by you? I found it in a video about Egyptians reacting over Netflix Cleopatra film.
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It's kind of off topic. Although people might question Adele James playing an Egyptian the situation here is that they are questioning her playing a Macedonian Greek, Cleopatra
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Molefi Kete Asante is talking about the Netflix film about Cleopatra. Among many things he mentions that he actually met Zahi Hawass once.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: [QB] Another video where an Egyptian speaks against the Cleopatra documentary
Why Egyptians are mad about Cleopatra Netflix series
I thought this Egyptian was a black self hating Egyptian and anti-black at first but she is brown i think looking at pictures of her. By the way i saw her video a few days ago before the link was posted. She is anti-black. Of course she believes most ancient egyptians were not black,tut etc.. and they come from the mid-east etc..
DW Nerd quote-
quote: You are not an invader. You are a true egyptian! The Ancient Egyptians came from Middle East/Mesopotamia. The ancient egyptian language has similarities with semitic languages from Middle East and has nothing to do with subsaharan languages. The sculptures and paintings even look like you. You are a true Egyptian Princess❤
quote:Originally posted by Firewall: By the way. HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks
quote: HLA alleles have been determined in individuals from the Republic of Macedonia by DNA typing and sequencing. HLA-A, -B, -DR, -DQ allele frequencies and extended haplotypes have been for the first time determined and the results compared to those of other Mediterraneans, particularly with their neighbouring Greeks. Genetic distances, neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis have been performed. The following conclusions have been reached: 1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians, 2) Macedonians are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum, 3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles, such as *0305, *0307, *0411, *0413, *0416, *0417, *0420, *1110, *1112, *1304 and *1310. Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group and finally Greeks cluster with Ethiopians/sub-Saharans in both neighbour joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses. The time period when these relationships might have occurred was ancient but uncertain and might be related to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopian people living in pharaonic Egypt.
You are presenting a study that was very pseudo and aimed to troll the Greeks and their origin.
A group of top scholars addressed and comprehensively rejected the infamous Arnaiz-Villena study, which claimed Greek ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans, as well as subsequent papers published by him and others employing the same flawed approach. They want all of the studies to be withdrawn.
Christos Karatzios, Stephen G. Miller, Costas D. Triantaphyllidis. January 10, 2011
ABSTRACT:
Arnaiz-Villena et al. published five papers making the claim of a Sub-Saharan African origin for Greeks. Hajjej et al. essentially published copies of Arnaiz-Villena's studies using the same methods, and data sets. World leading geneticists have rejected Arnaiz-Villena's methodology (the primary defect is that they relied on too few genetic markers to reliably compare populations). Numerous studies using proper methodology and multiple genetic markers are presented, showing that Greeks cluster genetically with the rest of the Europeans, disproving Arnaiz-Villena's claims. History, as well as genetics, have been misused by Arnaiz-Villena's (and by extension Hajjej's) unprofessional statements and by their omissions and misquotations of scientific and historical citations. The abuse of scientific methods has earned Arnaiz-Villena's research a citation in a genetics textbook as an example of arbitrary interpretation and a deletion of one of his papers from the scientific literature. In order to protect science from misuse, the related papers of Arnaiz-Villena et al. and Hajjej et al. should also be retracted from the scientific literature.Posts: 102 | From: private | Registered: Jul 2021
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An Egyptian lawyer filed a case against Netflix
quote: Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary has filed a case with the Public Prosecutor to shut down the Netflix platform in Egypt, following the trailer release of “Queen Cleopatra. ” A new documentary depicting the historical figure as a black woman.
The Egyptian lawyer has demanded that serious legal action be taken against those responsible for the making of the documentary. He blamed the Netflix management team for its participation in “this crime”.
He also demanded a thorough investigation of the process as well as the overall discontinuity of Netflix’s streaming service in Egypt as a consequence.
The Egyptian lawyer has demanded that serious legal action be taken against those responsible for the making of the documentary. He blamed the Netflix management team for its participation in “this crime”.
He also demanded a thorough investigation of the process as well as the overall discontinuity of Netflix’s streaming service in Egypt as a consequence. It added that the movie trailer, which attracted millions of viewers across the globe, contradicts Egyptian history.
The case said that the documentary promotes Afrocentrism which aims at distorting and obliterating Egyptian identity.
The complaint, which was handed into the Public Prosecution, also stated that: “In order to preserve the Egyptian national and cultural identity among Egyptians all over the world there must be pride in the makings of such work.”
The complaint has also accused the makers of the documentary and platform management of “forgery”.
Former Egyptian Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass described depicting Queen Cleopatra as a black woman as “falsifying facts”, adding that “This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was blonde, not black.”
Queen Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was born in 69 BC and died in 30 BC in Alexandria.
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People are confused and Hollywood is just helping fan the flames by pretending to care about black history. They don't. Hollywood and the West only care about Cleopatra because she was legitimately a white Queen of Egypt who was part of the political intrigue of Rome, which was also white. That means, not African, not Arab or "brown" but white and colonial conquerors, which is the foundation of modern Western civilization.
It allows them to imagine a white Queen dressing up and acting like some indigenous Queen of the Nile Valley. This perception largely comes from the fictionalized account written by Shakespeare. But the reality is that the Greek Dynasty in Egypt promoted Greek culture, especially in Alexandria and among the elites. They did maintain and preserve the ancient culture, but changed it to deify the Ptolemies as gods annointed rulers of the Nile. And outside of religious ceremonies, they primarily dressed and acted according to Greek custom.
Netflix is only promoting this particular revision of the historical narrative because it actually puts black people on the spot to defend something they had nothing to do with. Black people did not really come up with this and it was likely white executives that promoted this farce, along with the Persian director and so forth. Jada Pinkett Smith seems to be nothing more than a figurehead because no sane person would say that the African roots of the Nile Valley starts with the Greeks. Of course it doesn't and no serious African scholar has been using Cleopatra as the basis for any argument in support of that. However, Netflix and their so called woke agenda is just another example of white leftists working against black people even while they claim to be trying to help. They know full dam well that this would trigger backlash and they know full well that there were legitimately black Queens of the Nile they could have portrayed. But they don't want to and actually want to promote the idea that for black people to have an ancient history, they must "race swap" some historical figures. Which is obviously propaganda against and not support for African history.
quote: The Macedonian-Greek character of the monarchy was vigorously preserved. There is no more emphatic sign of this than the growth and importance of the city of Alexandria. It had been founded, on a date traditionally given as April 7, 331 bce (but often cited as 332 bce), by Alexander the Great on the site of the insignificant Egyptian village of Rakotis in the northwestern Nile River delta, and it ranked as the most important city in the eastern Mediterranean until the foundation of Constantinople in the 4th century ce. The importance of the new Greek city was soon emphasized by contrast to its Egyptian surroundings when the royal capital was transferred, within a few years of Alexander’s death, from Memphis to Alexandria. The Ptolemaic court cultivated extravagant luxury in the Greek style in its magnificent and steadily expanding palace complex, which occupied as much as a third of the city by the early Roman period. Its grandeur was emphasized in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by the foundation of a quadrennial festival, the Ptolemaieia, which was intended to enjoy a status equal to that of the Olympic Games. The festival was marked by a procession of amazingly elaborate and ingeniously constructed floats, with scenarios illustrating Greek Religious cults.
Ptolemy II gave the dynasty another distinctive feature when he married his full sister, Arsinoe II, one of the most powerful and remarkable women of the Hellenistic age. They became, in effect, co-rulers, and both took the epithet Philadelphus (“Brother-Loving” and “Sister-Loving”). The practice of consanguineous marriage was followed by most of their successors and imitated by ordinary Egyptians too, even though it had not been a standard practice in the pharaonic royal houses and had been unknown in the rest of the native Egyptian population. Arsinoe played a prominent role in the formation of royal policy. She was displayed on the coinage and was eventually worshiped, perhaps even before her death, in the distinctively Greek style of ruler cult that developed in this reign.
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Euergetes was succeeded by his son Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–205 bce), whom the Greek historians portray as a weak and corrupt ruler, dominated by a powerful circle of Alexandrian Greek courtiers. The reign was notable for another serious conflict with the Seleucids, which ended in 217 bce in a great Ptolemaic victory at Raphia in southern Palestine. The battle is notable for the fact that large numbers of native Egyptian soldiers fought alongside the Macedonian and Greek contingents. Events surrounding the death of Philopator and the succession of the youthful Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180 bce) are obscured by court intrigue. Before Epiphanes had completed his first decade of rule, serious difficulties arose. Native revolts in the south, which had been sporadic in the second half of the 3rd century bce, became serious and weakened the hold of the monarch on a vital part of the kingdom. These revolts, which produced native claimants to the kingship, are generally attributed to the native Egyptians’ realization, after their contribution to the victory at Raphia, of their potential power. Trouble continued to break out for several more decades. By about 196 bce a great portion of the Ptolemaic overseas empire had been permanently lost (though there may have been a brief revival in the Aegean islands in about 165–145 bce). To shore up and advertise the strength of the ruling house at home and abroad, the administration adopted a series of grandiloquent honorific titles for its officers. To conciliate Egyptian feelings, a religious synod that met in 196 bce to crown Epiphanes at Memphis (the first occasion on which a Ptolemy is certainly known to have been crowned at the traditional capital) decreed extensive privileges for the Egyptian temples, as recorded on the Rosetta Stone.
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Physcon was able to rule in Egypt until 116 bce with his sister Cleopatra II (except for a period in 131–130 bce when she was in revolt) and her daughter Cleopatra III. His reign was marked by generous benefactions to the Egyptian temples, but he was detested as a tyrant by the Greeks, and the historical accounts of the reign emphasize his stormy relations with the Alexandrian populace.
During the last century of Ptolemaic rule, Egypt’s independence was exercised under Rome’s protection and at Rome’s discretion. For much of the period, Rome was content to support a dynasty that had no overseas possession except Cyprus after 96 bce (the year in which Cyrene was bequeathed to Rome by Ptolemy Apion) and no ambitions threatening Roman interests or security. After a series of brief and unstable reigns, Ptolemy XII Auletes acceded to the throne in 80 bce. He maintained his hold for 30 years, despite the attractions that Egypt’s legendary wealth held for avaricious Roman politicians. In fact, Auletes had to flee Egypt in 58 bce and was restored by Pompey’s friend Gabinius in 55 bce, no doubt after spending so much in bribes that he had to bring Rabirius Postumus, one of his Roman creditors, to Egypt with him to manage his financial affairs.
In 52 bce, the year before his death, Auletes associated with himself on the throne his daughter Cleopatra VII and his elder son Ptolemy XIII (who died in 47 bce). The reign of Cleopatra was that of a vigorous and exceptionally able queen who was ambitious, among other things, to revive the prestige of the dynasty by cultivating influence with powerful Roman commanders and using their capacity to aggrandize Roman clients and allies. Julius Caesar pursued Pompey to Egypt in 48 bce. After learning of Pompey’s murder at the hands of Egyptian courtiers, Caesar stayed long enough to enjoy a sightseeing tour up the Nile in the queen’s company in the summer of 47 bce. When he left for Rome, Cleopatra was pregnant with a child she claimed was Caesar’s. The child, a son, was named Caesarion (“Little Caesar”). Cleopatra and Caesarion later followed Caesar back to Rome, but, after his assassination in 44 bce, they returned hurriedly to Egypt, and she tried for a while to play a neutral role in the struggles between the Roman generals and their factions.
Her long liaison with Mark Antony began when she visited him at Tarsus in 41 bce and he returned to Egypt with her. Between 36 and 30 bce the famous romance between the Roman general and the eastern queen was exploited to great effect by Antony’s political rival Octavian (the future emperor Augustus). By 34 bce Caesarion was officially co-ruler with Cleopatra, but his rule clearly was an attempt to exploit the popularity of Caesar’s memory. In the autumn Cleopatra and Antony staged an extravagant display in which they made grandiose dispositions of territory in the east to their children, Alexander Helios, Ptolemy, and Cleopatra Selene. Cleopatra and Antony were portrayed to the Roman public as posing for artists in the guise of Dionysus and Isis or whiling away their evenings in rowdy and decadent banquets that kept the citizens of Alexandria awake all night. But this propaganda war was merely the prelude to armed conflict, and the issue was decided in September 31 bce in a naval battle at Actium in western Greece. When the battle was at its height, Cleopatra and her squadron withdrew, and Antony eventually followed suit. They fled to Alexandria but could do little more than await the arrival of the victorious Octavian 10 months later. Alexandria was captured, and Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide—he by falling on his sword, she probably by the bite of an asp—in August of 30 bce. It is reported that when Octavian reached the city, he visited and touched the preserved corpse of Alexander the Great, causing a piece of the nose to fall off. He refused to gaze upon the remains of the Ptolemies, saying “I wished to see a king, not corpses.”
The changes brought to Egypt by the Ptolemies were momentous; the land’s resources were harnessed with unparalleled efficiency, with the result that Egypt became the wealthiest of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Land under cultivation was increased, and new crops were introduced (especially important was the introduction of naked tetraploid wheat, Triticum durum, to replace the traditional husked emmer, Triticum dicoccum). The population, estimated at perhaps three to four million in the late Dynastic period, may have more than doubled by the early Roman period to a level not reached again until the late 19th century. Some of the increase was due to immigration; particularly during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, many settlers were attracted from cities in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and the Greek islands, and large numbers of Jews came from Palestine. The flow may have decreased later in the Ptolemaic period, and it is often suggested, on slender evidence, that there was a serious decline in prosperity in the 1st century bce. If so, there may have been some reversal of this trend under Cleopatra VII.
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By the same token, rigid lines of separation between military, civil, legal, and administrative matters are difficult to perceive. The same official might perform duties in one or all of these areas. The military was inevitably integrated into civilian life because its soldiers were also farmers who enjoyed royal grants of land, either as Greek cleruchs (holders of allotments) with higher status and generous grants or as native Egyptian machimoi with small plots. Interlocking judiciary institutions, in the form of Greek and Egyptian courts (chrēmatistai and laokritai), provided the means for Greeks and Egyptians to regulate their legal relationships according to the language in which they conducted their business. The bureaucratic power was heavily weighted in favour of the Greek speakers, the dominant elite. Egyptians were nevertheless able to obtain official posts in the bureaucracy, gradually infiltrating to the highest levels, but in order to do so they had to Hellenize.
The basis of Egypt’s legendary wealth was the highly productive land, which technically remained in royal ownership. A considerable portion was kept under the control of temples, and the remainder was leased out on a theoretically revocable basis to tenant-farmers. A portion also was available to be granted as gifts to leading courtiers; one of these was Apollonius, the finance minister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who had an estate of 10,000 arourae (about 6,500 acres [2,630 hectares]) at Philadelphia in Al-Fayyūm. Tenants and beneficiaries were able to behave very much as if these leases and grants were private property. The revenues in cash and kind were enormous, and royal control extended to the manufacture and marketing of almost all important products, including papyrus, oil, linen, and beer. An extraordinarily detailed set of revenue laws, promulgated under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, laid down rules for the way in which officials were to monitor the production of such commodities. In fact, the Ptolemaic economy was very much a mixture of direct royal ownership and exploitation by private enterprise under regulated conditions.
One fundamental and far-reaching Ptolemaic innovation was the systematic monetarization of the economy. The monarchy also controlled this from top to bottom by operating a closed monetary system, which permitted only the royal coinage to circulate within Egypt. A sophisticated banking system underpinned this practice, operating again with a mixture of direct royal control and private enterprise and handling both private financial transactions and those that directed money into and out of the royal coffers. One important concomitant of this change was an enormous increase in the volume of trade, both within Egypt and abroad, which eventually reached its climax under the peaceful conditions of Roman rule. There the position and role of Alexandria as the major port and trading entrepôt was crucial: the city handled a great volume of Egypt’s domestic produce, as well as the import and export of luxury goods to and from the East and the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. It developed its own importance as an artistic centre, the products of which found ready markets throughout the Mediterranean. Alexandrian glassware and jewelry were particularly fine, Greek-style sculpture of the late Ptolemaic period shows especial excellence, and it is likely that the city was also the major production centre for high-quality mosaic work.
The Ptolemies were powerful supporters of the native Egyptian religious foundations, the economic and political power of which was, however, carefully controlled. A great deal of the late building and restoration work in many of the most important Egyptian temples is Ptolemaic, particularly from the period of about 150–50 bce, and the monarchs appear on temple reliefs in the traditional forms of the Egyptian kings. The native traditions persisted in village temples and local cults, many having particular associations with species of sacred animals or birds. At the same time, the Greeks created their own identifications of Egyptian deities, identifying Amon with Zeus, Horus with Apollo, Ptah with Hephaestus, and so on. They also gave some deities, such as Isis, a more universal significance that ultimately resulted in the spread of her mystery cult throughout the Mediterranean world. The impact of the Greeks is most obvious in two phenomena. One is the formalized royal cult of Alexander and the Ptolemies, which evidently served both a political and a religious purpose. The other is the creation of the cult of Sarapis, which at first was confined to Alexandria but soon became universal. The god was represented as a Hellenized deity and the form of cult is Greek, but its essence is the old Egyptian notion that the sacred Apis bull merged its divinity in some way with the god Osiris when it died.
The continuing vitality of the native Egyptian artistic tradition is clearly and abundantly expressed in the temple architecture and the sculpture of the Ptolemaic period. The Egyptian language continued to be used in its hieroglyphic and demotic forms until late in the Roman period, and it survived through the Byzantine period and beyond in the form of Coptic. The Egyptian literary tradition flourished vigorously in the Ptolemaic period and produced a large number of works in demotic. The genre most commonly represented is the romantic tale, exemplified by several story cycles, which are typically set in the native, Pharaonic milieu and involve the gods, royal figures, magic, romance, and the trials and combats of heroes. Another important category is the Instruction Text, the best known of the period being that of Ankhsheshonq, which consists of a list of moralizing maxims, composed, as the story goes, when Ankhsheshonq was imprisoned for having failed to inform the king (pharaoh) of an assassination plot. Another example, known as Papyrus Insinger, is a more narrowly moralizing text. But the arrival of a Greek-speaking elite had an enormous impact on cultural patterns. The Egyptian story cycles were probably affected by Greek influence, literary and technical works were translated into Greek, and under royal patronage an Egyptian priest named Manetho of Sebennytos wrote an account of the kings of Egypt in Greek. Most striking is the diffusion of the works of the poets and playwrights of classical Greece among the literate Greeks in the towns and villages of the Nile River valley.
Thus there are clear signs of the existence of two interacting but distinct cultural traditions in Ptolemaic Egypt. This was certainly reflected in a broader social context. The written sources offer little direct evidence of ethnic discrimination by Greeks against Egyptians, but Greek and Egyptian consciousness of the Greeks’ social and economic superiority comes through strongly from time to time; intermarriage was one means, though not the only one, by which Egyptians could better their status and Hellenize. Many native Egyptians learned to speak Greek, some to write it as well; some even went so far as to adopt Greek names in an attempt to assimilate themselves to the elite group.
Alexandria occupied a unique place in the history of literature, ideas, scholarship, and science for almost a millennium after the death of its founder. Under the royal patronage of the Ptolemies and in an environment almost oblivious to its Egyptian surroundings, Greek culture was preserved and developed. Early in the Ptolemaic period, probably in the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, the Alexandrian Museum (Greek: Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) was established within the palace complex. The geographer and historian Strabo, who saw it early in the Roman period, described it as having a covered walk, an arcade with recesses and seats, and a large house containing the dining hall of the members of the Museum, who lived a communal existence. The Library of Alexandria (together with its offshoot in the Sarapeum) was indispensable to the functioning of the scholarly community in the Museum. Books were collected voraciously under the Ptolemies, and at its height the library’s collection probably numbered 500,000 or more papyrus rolls, most of them containing more than one work.
The major poets of the Hellenistic period, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes, all took up residence and wrote there. Scholarship flourished, preserving and ordering the manuscript traditions of much of the classical literature from Homer onward. Librarian-scholars such as Aristophanes of Byzantium and his pupil Aristarchus made critical editions and wrote commentaries and works on grammar. Also notable was the cultural influence of Alexandria’s Jewish community, which is inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch was first translated into Greek at Alexandria during the Ptolemaic period. One by-product of this kind of activity was that Alexandria became the centre of the book trade, and the works of the classical authors were copied there and diffused among a literate Greek readership scattered in the towns and villages of the Nile valley.
The Alexandrian achievement in scientific fields was also enormous. Great advances were made in pure mathematics, mechanics, physics, geography, and medicine. Euclid worked in Alexandria about 300 bce and achieved the systematization of the whole existing corpus of mathematical knowledge and the development of the method of proof by deduction from axioms. Archimedes was there in the 3rd century bce and is said to have invented the Archimedean screw when he was in Egypt. Eratosthenes calculated Earth’s circumference and was the first to attempt a map of the world based on a system of lines of latitude and longitude. The school of medicine founded in the Ptolemaic period retained its leading reputation into the Byzantine era. Late in the Ptolemaic period Alexandria began to develop as a great centre of Greek philosophical studies as well. In fact, there was no field of literary, intellectual, or scientific activity to which Ptolemaic Alexandria failed to make an important contribution.
quote: he priestly family that became the High Priests of Ptah under the Ptolemies was already important in the Memphite temple hierarchy at the start of the Ptolemaic period. For all we know they may even be descended from the Memphite High Priests of an earlier period, although proof is lacking. Whatever their earlier status, they were transformed during the Ptolemaic era into the heads of the religious establishment in Egypt, controlling vast resources, and second only to the king. In essence, for much of the later part of the Ptolemaic era the High Priest of Ptah in Memphis was the head of the native Egyptian community.
This rise to prominence began under Ptolemy II. He engaged on a major series of religious reforms, most notably by introducing the dynastic cult, originally instituted as the cults of his deified sisters Philotera and Arsinoe II. These cults were not limited to the Greeks, but were also introduced to the Egyptians. The Egyptian head of the cult of Arsinoe II, Nesisti-Pedubast, appears to have revived the ancient title of Chief of Artificers (High Priest of Memphis) in the latter part of the reign. Although the cult of Arsinoe itself was transferred after three generations to a related line, the High Priests of Letopolis, the creation of the Memphite pontificate began a process of aggrandisement that eventually culminated in the pontificate of Psherenptah III. This High Priest was head of all the priesthoods in Egypt, and at the age of 14 personally crowned Ptolemy XII as king.
The last member of the main line, Imhotep-Pedubast, died in mysterious circumstances on the day of the fall of Alexandria to the forces of Octavian. His maternal uncle and cousin, Psherenamun I and Psherenamun II, attempted to maintain the pontificate under the Romans. The attempt was apparently unsuccessful and the last clear trace of the office is seen in 23 BC, only seven years after the Roman conquest of Egypt. Certain hierophantic positions that persisted until the rise of Christianity in the third century AD may be traceable to the Memphite pontificate. However, although the possibility cannot be excluded, there is no evidence that they continued to be held by the same family.
Netflix is only promoting this particular revision of the historical narrative because it actually puts black people on the spot to defend something they had nothing to do with. Black people did not really come up with this and it was likely white executives that promoted this farce, along with the Persian director and so forth. Jada Pinkett Smith seems to be nothing more than a figurehead
blame whitey for Jada being an idiot
Take some responsibility I say
Netflix does not care about putting black people on the spot to defend something they had nothing to do with, they simply know controversy sells and supported Jada's project
Do you know who Molefe Asante is? He supports Jada
" 1:26:21 as a historian philosopher I give her our total support "
Molefi Kete Asante is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies.[1] He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University,[2][3] where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.[4][5][6]
Asante is known for his writings on Afrocentricity, a school of thought that has influenced the fields of sociology, intercultural communication, critical theory, political science, the history of Africa, and social work.[7][8] He is the author of more than 66 books and the founding editor of the Journal of Black Studies.[9][10] He is the father of author and filmmaker M. K. Asante.[4]
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