Reconstruction illustration, Ramesses II Ramses II Statue, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt.
Do you agree with jari that the most famous and powerful Pharaoh of Egypt, who commissioned some of the largest monuments was probably of "mixed race"??
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This statue is not authentic. It can be purchased at the Turin Museum of Italy.
quote: Do you agree with jari that the most famous and powerful Pharaoh of Egypt, who commissioned some of the largest monuments was probably of "mixed race"??
Disagree. Ramses II wasn't a "mixed raced" mongrel as you or Jari define it. His ancestry is highly indigenous, Although i do believe he possessed Non Egyptian ancestry, most likely from the Levant.
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The quote is given in David Rohl's book 'Legend: the Genesis of Civilization'. It actually compares the types of skull found from people of the Naqada I and II era burials from the same site.[/QUOTE][/qb][/QUOTE]a review in Amazon summarizing Rohl's alternative theory book:
By Emmet Sweeney - See all my reviews This review is from: Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation (Paperback) This book is an enjoyable and informative read, with David Rohl displaying his usual erudition and flair for explanation. The chapters dealing with the rise of the first civilizations are particularly intriguing, and the proofs listed of early Mesopotamian influence on Proto- and Early Dynastic Egypt have arguably put the question of Egyptian origins beyond dispute. Unlike most mainstream Egyptologists, Rohl is not afraid to question conventional dates and dating-systems, and his own "New Chronology" would subtract about three and a half centuries from Egyptian dates as found in the textbooks. But this is overly cautious, and Rohl ignores a great body of evidence demanding a much more radical reduction in timescales. Take for example the Mesopotamian influence on early Egypt. This sounds remarkably like the culture-bearing migration from Mesopotamia to Egypt and Canaan recorded in the biblical story of Abraham. The two were never connected, of course, because the Abraham story is placed by conventional historians a thousand years after the founding of Egypt's First Dynasty. Yet it can be shown that everything, absolutely everything, about the Patriarch epoch, the epoch of Abraham, Joseph and Moses, indicates that it belongs in the Early Bronze Age. The Patriarch narratives are full of references to cultural and religious practices which point clearly in this direction. Among the most notable of these are: (a) Human sacrifice (mentioned in the Abraham story and the birth legend of Moses); (b) Religious use of ziggurats and pyramids (Jacob's "stairway to heaven", at the top of which was the "house of God".); (c) Mention of cosmic catastrophes (In Abraham, Joseph and Moses narratives); (d) References to Cosmic Pillar or Tower, and its destruction (In Abraham narrative). It is in fact with Abraham that Hebrew history first connects with Egypt - and the connection was established, it appears, right at the beginning of the histories of the two peoples. We might note, for example, the striking phallic associations of both Abraham and Menes, the first pharaoh. The name Abraham actually means "father of many", and the Patriarch initiates the custom of circumcision, whilst the Egyptian Menes (or Mena or Min) clearly takes his name from the phallic god Min, who was also associated with circumcision and was perhaps the most important deity in Egypt at the beginning of the First Dynasty. Similarly, Jewish legend recalls that Abraham entered Egypt during the reign of the first pharaoh, and emphasizes that, when he arrived, the Egyptians were virtual barbarians, and to the Patriarch went the credit of teaching them the rudiments of civilization. (See Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews). All this dramatically calls to mind the evidence of archaeology, which has revealed a culture-bearing migration from Mesopotamia to Egypt just before the beginning of the First Dynasty, which David Rohl has so ably illustrated. If "Abraham" then, or the Abraham epoch, was contemporary with Menes, the first pharaoh, this has dramatic consequences for the whole of Egyptian and Hebrew history. Most immediately, it implies that the Patriarch Joseph, who brought the Hebrew tribes into Egypt, be identified with the Egyptian seer Imhotep, who laboured for pharaoh Djoser at the start of the Third Dynasty. Imhotep was the greatest and most celebrated of all Egyptian seers, who solved the crisis of a seven-year famine by interpreting Djoser's dream. In precisely the same way, biblical history tells us that, about two centuries after Abraham, a young Hebrew seer named Joseph became vizier to the pharaoh after solving the crisis of a seven-year famine by interpreting the king's dream. Removing a thousand years from Egyptian chronology therefore seems to have the effect of producing a precise match between the histories of the two neighbouring peoples. And the matches continue through subsequent centuries. These however are missed by Rohl because he remains too cautious.
________________________________________________
The ‘Dynastic Race’ By David Rohl
The birth of Egyptian civilisation have always been a bit of a mystery. How did it come about? And who were the first pharaohs? Were they indigenous North Africans or Sumerians coming from the east? That thorny question had been a subject of heated debate amongst academics over the last 100 years … that is until fairly recently when our tendency towards political correctness deemed that such difficult issues should be swept under the scholarly carpet. But the question of pharaonic origins still remains one of the great puzzles of Egyptology.
Following the abandonment of the Tower of Babel, the biblical story tells of a great migration of the 'sons' of Noah. His eldest, Ham, was the father of Cush who journeyed to north-east Africa in order to establish a kingdom in the lands of Ethiopia and Sudan. The Egyptians knew this area as the 'land of Kush' – after Noah's grandson. Cush had a younger brother called Mizraim and he was the traditional founder of the Egyptian civilisation. The '-im' ending of this name is a West Semitic pluralisation. Thus the original name of Noah's second 'grandson' was Mizra. It is therefore interesting to note that the Assyrians referred to Egypt as Musri whilst a modern Egyptian calls himself a Masri ('one of Masr'). The biblical tradition of an eponymous ancestor of the pharaonic state called Mizra/Musri/Masr thus has extra-biblical confirmation.
I think we can make one further important connection between the Genesis/Koran text, Sumerian tradition and pharaonic royal mythology. The Egyptians believed that their first king was called Horus. Now this name means 'the distant one' suggesting someone who came from afar. It is surely more than an extraordinary coincidence, then, that the Mesopotamian flood heroes, Ziusudra (Sumerian), Atrahasis (Akkadian) and Utnapishtim (Babylonian), all bear the same epithet 'the distant one'? Could it be that the legendary Horus of Egypt was none other than the biblical flood hero and that his descendants, through Ham and Mizraim, settled in Egypt as the Followers of Horus (i.e. 'the ones descended from Horus, 'the distant one')?
Given this extraordinary possibility, perhaps we should investigate how some of the other primeval gods of Egypt might fit into the picture.
It was well known in the ancient world that the Egyptian goddess of love and fertility, Isis (written Iset), was the equivalent of Mesopotamian Ishtar and Canaanite Astarte (biblical Ashtaroth). She is regularly depicted at the head of Pharaoh's sarcophagus, arms raised in the act of prayer. This striking image is identical to the 'dancing goddess' figure found in the Eastern Desert rock drawings and on the Nakada II pottery. So, could this predynastic goddess, associated with the invaders, be the earliest form of Isis/Ishtar? The answer perhaps lies with her husband, Osiris.
In a previous article I proposed that the discovery of hundreds of prehistoric rock carvings in the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea was evidence of a foreign invasion which occurred just a couple of centuries before the rise of the 1st Dynasty in Egypt. These amazing drawings show fleets of ships carrying warriors, chieftains, 'dancing goddesses' and what appear to be the standards of Sumerian gods. Many of the boats are being dragged by their crews, suggesting transportation of the vessels across the desert from the Red Sea to the Nile. It's time, then, to go in search of these 'people from the east' in the tombs, temples, hieroglyphs and paintings of ancient Egypt.
An hour's drive north of Luxor, on the west bank of the Nile, there is a vast necropolis of 2000 predynastic graves. The place is called Nakada after the nearby village. Nakada turned out to be one of the most important excavation sites in Egypt because of the light it sheds upon the origins of the pharaonic state. Its excavator was the 'father of Egyptian archaeology', Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the first British professor of Egyptology and founder of University College London's Egyptology Department where I myself studied and obtained my degree.
The cemetery at Nakada turned out to be the necropolis of the town of Nubt ('Gold Town') which grew up as a result of early gold-mining activities in the Wadi Hammamat region, just across the river in the Eastern Desert. 'Gold Town' was the Klondyke of predynastic Egypt.
What Petrie found in this vast cemetery were two groups of people which he designated Nakada I and Nakada II (and III). The people of Nakada I culture were the earliest occupants of the cemetery, whilst Nakada II superseded them and were therefore chronologically later. The burial goods and distinctive structures of the graves made Petrie realise, almost from the start, that he was dealing with two very different groups. The evidence seemed to indicate the arrival of newcomers in the Nile valley marked by the Nakada II graves which were soon shown, on stylistic grounds, to be contemporaneous with the rock art of the 'invaders' found in the Eastern Desert. Based on the evidence of the Nakada II graves, Petrie developed a theory of an incursion of easterners from Sumer who had taken over southern Egypt and subjugated the indigenous Nakada I population. These invaders, with their superior weapons and technology, eventually came to dominate the whole Nile valley and gave rise to what he called the 'Dynastic Race'.
Up until the 1950s Petrie's Dynastic Race theory received widespread support in Egyptological circles. Indeed, one of its proponents even began to refer to the predynastic invaders as a 'Super Race'. Petrie and his followers were very much of their age. They believed in the superiority of western civilisation over what we today call the Third World. They were colonialists with a colonial view of history. The idea of an intellectually superior race, invading Africa and civilising the region, was quite natural from their political perspectives. The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Arab/Israeli wars put an end to this way of thinking within ancient world studies.
In the politically correct world of late-twentieth-century scholarship the Dynastic Race theory has been quietly forgotten. As a result, it is very rare these days to find an Egyptologist prepared to give credence to the idea of foreign invaders at the dawn of Egyptian history. But should we reject the basic evidence because of the political views of past archaeologists? Nobody disputes that Petrie found what he found. So perhaps we should look again at the Dynastic Race theory – but this time without the rhetoric of pre-war colonialism. It is obvious that we cannot rewrite ancient history in the light of events in our own century. It is surely the historian's job to construct a coherent picture of the past based on the archaeological evidence – wherever it leads.
So, what does that evidence tell us about Egypt's origins?
Petrie found several new elements in the Nakada II graves. First, unlike the earlier Nakada I burials, many of the grave pits themselves were lined with mud bricks. This was the first time that bricks had been used in Egypt and archaeologists have determined that mud brick technology was a Sumerian invention.
Second, the pottery shapes and techniques of decoration were also new – again with clear precursors in Mesopotamia.
Third, the Nakada II warriors were buried with a new type of weapon known as the 'pear-shaped mace'. This was in contrast to the Nakada I people who used 'disk-shaped maces'. Interestingly, not only do the Eastern Desert rock-drawings show the chieftains holding the round-headed weapon but it also became the weapon par excellence of the later pharaohs who were regularly depicted smiting their enemies with the pear-shaped mace.
Fourth, lapis lazuli appears amongst the grave goods for the first time in Nakada II. This beautiful dark blue stone comes from Badakhshan in Afghanistan and was traded across land and by sea (via the Persian Gulf) to Sumer where it was greatly prized. Its sudden appearance in Egypt thus confirms contact with the Sumerians of southern Iraq.
Fifth, the complex niched-facade mudbrick architecture which develops out of Nakada III culture is identically paralleled in Sumer where it was used to decorate the temples of the gods. In Egypt it became a standard design feature of the early pharaohs' tombs. The design is so complex that it is hard to believe the niched-facade structure could have been independently invented in the two regions. All authorities accept that such architecture originated in Sumer and was 'exported' to Egypt.
These are just some of the technologies and artefacts which clearly point to contact between Mesopotamian and Egypt. However, this does not prove that there was a military conquest (rather than simple trade) or if the Sumerian settlers in the Nile valley went on to become the first pharaohs. Here there are more tantalising clues.
A magnificent ivory knife handle was discovered near Nakada, at the turn of the century, which shows a Sumerian hero figure controlling two great lions on one side and a battle on the other between long-haired warriors (one of whom carries a pear-shaped mace) and short-haired opponents who are getting the worst of the conflict. The long-haired victors are associated with high-prowed boats, just like the ones found in the desert rock art, whilst the short-haired losers are represented by sickle-shaped boats made of papyrus and associated with the River Nile. The Gebel el-Arak predynastic knife (now in the Louvre) is not only an amazing 5000-year-old artefact but it appears to depict Sumerian invaders with their high-prowed ships in the very act of conquering the Nile valley.
The evidence for Mesopotamians in Egypt is even more compelling at the site of Butu (ancient Pe-Dep) in the western delta. There, German archaeologists have recently unearthed coloured clay cones which, if their counterparts in Sumer are anything to go by, were used to decorate buildings. This decorative cone technique is so striking that it is hard to imagine it being invented independently in Egypt after it had come into use in Mesopotamia.
Did this élite Sumerian clan eventually come to dominate the whole of Egypt and establish the first pharaonic dynasty? An important clue is found in the fact that the later nobility of Egypt called themselves by a special name. They were known as the 'Pat' or the iry-Pat ('belonging to the Pat') – a term which implied membership of a special clan or blood-line. This term was reserved for members of the royal family, courtiers and high officials. Interestingly, a text from the Middle Kingdom (1000 years after the unification of Egypt at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty) refers to a man who reached high office 'in spite of the fact that he was not iry-Pat', suggesting that the ruling class were expected to have been directly descended from an ancestral élite. These great founding ancestors were also known by another title. The later hieroglyphic texts refer to the 'Followers of Horus' who first established kingship in the Nile valley. They are shown in predynastic and early dynastic carvings carrying their standards into battle in support of kings who bore the title of 'Horus' as part of their names. So, was the first Horus-king a real person who later became deified. Could there have been an original human Horus and, if so, was he African or Mesopotamian?
To answer these questions we need to return to the stories in the book of Genesis and Holy Koran. In my book Legend – The Genesis of Civilisation I identified the location of the traditional site of the Garden of Eden in western Iran, the mountain of Noah's Ark in Kurdestan, and the Tower of Babel in southern Iraq. I argued that the Old Testament legends surrounding Noah and the Flood and then King Nimrod were also to be found in the Sumerian literary tradition. It appears that the Genesis narrative may have been based on actual historical events from primeval times.
-
Following the abandonment of the Tower of Babel, the biblical story tells of a great migration of the 'sons' of Noah. His eldest, Ham, was the father of Cush who journeyed to north-east Africa in order to establish a kingdom in the lands of Ethiopia and Sudan. The Egyptians knew this area as the 'land of Kush' – after Noah's grandson. Cush had a younger brother called Mizraim and he was the traditional founder of the Egyptian civilisation. The '-im' ending of this name is a West Semitic pluralisation. Thus the original name of Noah's second 'grandson' was Mizra. It is therefore interesting to note that the Assyrians referred to Egypt as Musri whilst a modern Egyptian calls himself a Masri ('one of Masr'). The biblical tradition of an eponymous ancestor of the pharaonic state called Mizra/Musri/Masr thus has extra-biblical confirmation.
I think we can make one further important connection between the Genesis/Koran text, Sumerian tradition and pharaonic royal mythology. The Egyptians believed that their first king was called Horus. Now this name means 'the distant one' suggesting someone who came from afar. It is surely more than an extraordinary coincidence, then, that the Mesopotamian flood heroes, Ziusudra (Sumerian), Atrahasis (Akkadian) and Utnapishtim (Babylonian), all bear the same epithet 'the distant one'? Could it be that the legendary Horus of Egypt was none other than the biblical flood hero and that his descendants, through Ham and Mizraim, settled in Egypt as the Followers of Horus (i.e. 'the ones descended from Horus, 'the distant one')?
Given this extraordinary possibility, perhaps we should investigate how some of the other primeval gods of Egypt might fit into the picture.
It was well known in the ancient world that the Egyptian goddess of love and fertility, Isis (written Iset), was the equivalent of Mesopotamian Ishtar and Canaanite Astarte (biblical Ashtaroth). She is regularly depicted at the head of Pharaoh's sarcophagus, arms raised in the act of prayer. This striking image is identical to the 'dancing goddess' figure found in the Eastern Desert rock drawings and on the Nakada II pottery. So, could this predynastic goddess, associated with the invaders, be the earliest form of Isis/Ishtar? The answer perhaps lies with her husband, Osiris.
-
The names Isis and Osiris are Greek forms of Egyptian Iset and Asar. The latter is written with the hieroglyphs of a throne and an eye. Amazingly, a Sumerian god local to Eridu (where I have placed the Tower of Babel) is also called Asar and his name is written in Sumerian with the symbol for a throne. It appears that the Egyptian god of vegetation and rebirth may originally have come from southern Iraq, having been introduced to the Nile valley (along with his consort) by Sumerian worshippers.
-
The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are decorated with scenes from the Amduat ('That which is in the Underworld'). The dead king's spirit is seen being transported from his tomb in the western necropolis across the great underworld ocean of the abyss towards the eastern horizon. His craft is a high-prowed boat just like the ships found in the predynastic rock art. The dead pharaoh is accompanied by the primeval gods, with Re-Atum as his protector. Together, they journey through seven gates before reaching the shore of the underworld desert where the crew is depicted dragging the boat of Re-Atum towards the dawn horizon. There the spirit of the king is reborn as the rising sun over the Isle of Flame. This place is otherwise known as the primeval mound of creation surrounded by the Waters of Nun. It was here that the original primeval temple was constructed by the gods. The island is described as a sandy circular mound surrounded by reeds growing in a freshwater marsh. The temple shrine lies at the centre of the island on a low mound. All later Egyptian temples are architecturally designed to recreate this setting. To enter the temple you pass between two great artificial desert mountains (the pylon gateway) and cross an expansive desert (the open-air perystyle court. You then enter the reed marsh of the Waters of Nun (the hypostyle hall with its giant reed and papyrus columns) surrounding the Island of Nun, before reaching the sacred shrine (the holy of holies) representing the primeval Temple of Nun. All this time you have been gradually ascending as the floor of the temple rises up, step by step. This represents the mound of creation on which the primeval shrine rests.
Once we realise that the Egyptian primeval age or 'First Time' was set not in the Nile valley but rather in Sumer, we can finally identify this island and its primeval mound with a real physical place. The Sumerian texts tell us that the first city on earth came into being as the great ancestors arrived on a small sandy island, surrounded by reeds in the freshwater swamps of southern Iraq. There, on that island, the city of Eridu was founded with the building of a small reed shrine on top of a sandy mound. Over the centuries the shrine grew into a great temple, the final form of which was to become the infamous 'Tower of Babel' of Genesis. Eridu's Sumerian name was Nun.ki – the 'Mighty Place'. The Egyptians referred to the swamp surrounding their primeval island of creation as the 'Waters of Nun'. Thus the primeval temple of Egyptian mythology was one and the same as the legendary Tower of Babel.
read this once, don't feel like going through it again, no opinion as of yet. Rohl has credibility problems in his other biblical linking arguments
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti:
While I don't agree with everything Rohl says, I believe he may have a point with the traditional chronology being off. I think he relies a little too much on the Bible, but I think there is some truth in that much of the roots in Biblical myth are based on Sumerian. I also believe that some of the Hebrews or at least some of their forebears had their origins in Iran of around the Armenian region. These were the non-black Middle Easterners who adopted Semtic language and culture from the original black Semites.....
(from different post on Sumerians: )
^ My fault. I thought you were insisting that the identity of the Medes was associated with the Sumerians and so they were black. The Bible is myth, but like all myth does contain or is based on many historical facts. I am well aware of Genesis and what it says of the various lineages. However, what you need to realize is that the Biblical authors were not anthropologists or ethnologists who accurately catalouged every people in the area and their relationships. There is some truth to the lineages. Like for example 'Ham' was associated with black peoples, specifically Africans and that Egypt, Kush, Punt, and Canaan (which we now know was colonized by Africans in Neolithic times) share a common heritage. However Shem is taken to be the founder of Semitic speaking peoples, even though the Semitic languages also originated in Africa. There is also the Hebrew word 'Kushi' meaning black and the confusion since there are black populations indigenous to Asia as well as Africa.
Just to let you know, the Sumerians were not Semitic speaking people. Their language is unrelated to any other known language all we know about them is their culture. I will say that judging by the statuary they left behind, many of them look little different from modern-day Iraqis who are light-skinned and not black, especially the rural marsh Arabs who likely do represent the original Sumerian people. However I do not doubt the diversity of the area. It is a given that close neighbors of the Sumerians were a people called the Elamites who were the indigenous people of Iran and founded civilization there long before Iranian Medes or Persians. It is also known that the actual founders of civilization in Mesopotamia were not the Sumerians but a people archaeologists call Ubaidians, and who were also indigenous the Mesopotamian area before the Sumerians arrived. It is still not known where the Sumerians proper originated. Some think Central Asia, while others say either Anatolia. It is clear that from painted works there were darker-skinned/black peoples in the area as well who represented the original inhabitants....
The Sumerians were NOT considered a Hamitic people in the Bible.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Kushi, from Kush, doesn't mean the color black. It's used to refer to black people as an ethnic taxon. One cannot juxtapose black against Semitic. Neither color nor ethnicity can be apposed to language.
Hham and Shem were both black in the Hebrew mindset.
quote: Shem was especially blessed black and beautiful, Hham was blessed black like the raven, and Yapheth was blessed white all over.
(PIRQE DE RABBI ELIEZER 28a)
Now neither the internal search engine nor GOOGLE hits any of the many times I posted this quote from the Pirqe de Ribbi Eli`ezer as to Shem being black and beautiful and Hham black as the raven.
Why is that? Somebody's afraid of something!
The Hebrews' Shem doesn't correspond to the linguists Semites anymore than their Kush does to Cushitic. Elam is the firstborn son of Shem and Elamites didn't speak Semitic. K*na`an is a son of Hham and Canaanites did speak Hebrew. The fact is that the Israelites called the Hebrew language "the language of Canaan."
Continental Africa houses the majority of individual Semitic languages and those speakers there in the Horn are all BLACK N BEAUTIFUL with their Semitic selves.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: [qb] ^ My fault. I thought you were insisting that the identity of the Medes was associated with the Sumerians and so they were black. The Bible is myth, but like all myth does contain or is based on many historical facts. I am well aware of Genesis and what it says of the various lineages. However, what you need to realize is that the Biblical authors were not anthropologists or ethnologists who accurately catalouged every people in the area and their relationships. There is some truth to the lineages. Like for example 'Ham' was associated with black peoples, specifically Africans and that Egypt, Kush, Punt, and Canaan (which we now know was colonized by Africans in Neolithic times) share a common heritage. However Shem is taken to be the founder of Semitic speaking peoples, even though the Semitic languages also originated in Africa. There is also the Hebrew word 'Kushi' meaning black and the confusion since there are black populations indigenous to Asia as well as Africa.
Just to let you know, the Sumerians were not Semitic speaking people. Their language is unrelated to any other known language all we know about them is their culture. I will say that judging by the statuary they left behind, many of them look little different from modern-day Iraqis who are light-skinned and not black, especially the rural marsh Arabs who likely do represent the original Sumerian people. However I do not doubt the diversity of the area. It is a given that close neighbors of the Sumerians were a people called the Elamites who were the indigenous people of Iran and founded civilization there long before Iranian Medes or Persians. It is also known that the actual founders of civilization in Mesopotamia were not the Sumerians but a people archaeologists call Ubaidians, and who were also indigenous the Mesopotamian area before the Sumerians arrived. It is still not known where the Sumerians proper originated. Some think Central Asia, while others say either Anatolia. It is clear that from painted works there were darker-skinned/black peoples in the area as well who represented the original inhabitants.
The quote is given in David Rohl's book 'Legend: the Genesis of Civilization'. It actually compares the types of skull found from people of the Naqada I and II era burials from the same site.
a review in Amazon summarizing Rohl's alternative theory book:
By Emmet Sweeney - See all my reviews This review is from: Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation (Paperback) This book is an enjoyable and informative read, with David Rohl displaying his usual erudition and flair for explanation. The chapters dealing with the rise of the first civilizations are particularly intriguing, and the proofs listed of early Mesopotamian influence on Proto- and Early Dynastic Egypt have arguably put the question of Egyptian origins beyond dispute. Unlike most mainstream Egyptologists, Rohl is not afraid to question conventional dates and dating-systems, and his own "New Chronology" would subtract about three and a half centuries from Egyptian dates as found in the textbooks. But this is overly cautious, and Rohl ignores a great body of evidence demanding a much more radical reduction in timescales. Take for example the Mesopotamian influence on early Egypt. This sounds remarkably like the culture-bearing migration from Mesopotamia to Egypt and Canaan recorded in the biblical story of Abraham. The two were never connected, of course, because the Abraham story is placed by conventional historians a thousand years after the founding of Egypt's First Dynasty. Yet it can be shown that everything, absolutely everything, about the Patriarch epoch, the epoch of Abraham, Joseph and Moses, indicates that it belongs in the Early Bronze Age. The Patriarch narratives are full of references to cultural and religious practices which point clearly in this direction. Among the most notable of these are: (a) Human sacrifice (mentioned in the Abraham story and the birth legend of Moses); (b) Religious use of ziggurats and pyramids (Jacob's "stairway to heaven", at the top of which was the "house of God".); (c) Mention of cosmic catastrophes (In Abraham, Joseph and Moses narratives); (d) References to Cosmic Pillar or Tower, and its destruction (In Abraham narrative). It is in fact with Abraham that Hebrew history first connects with Egypt - and the connection was established, it appears, right at the beginning of the histories of the two peoples. We might note, for example, the striking phallic associations of both Abraham and Menes, the first pharaoh. The name Abraham actually means "father of many", and the Patriarch initiates the custom of circumcision, whilst the Egyptian Menes (or Mena or Min) clearly takes his name from the phallic god Min, who was also associated with circumcision and was perhaps the most important deity in Egypt at the beginning of the First Dynasty. Similarly, Jewish legend recalls that Abraham entered Egypt during the reign of the first pharaoh, and emphasizes that, when he arrived, the Egyptians were virtual barbarians, and to the Patriarch went the credit of teaching them the rudiments of civilization. (See Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews). All this dramatically calls to mind the evidence of archaeology, which has revealed a culture-bearing migration from Mesopotamia to Egypt just before the beginning of the First Dynasty, which David Rohl has so ably illustrated. If "Abraham" then, or the Abraham epoch, was contemporary with Menes, the first pharaoh, this has dramatic consequences for the whole of Egyptian and Hebrew history. Most immediately, it implies that the Patriarch Joseph, who brought the Hebrew tribes into Egypt, be identified with the Egyptian seer Imhotep, who laboured for pharaoh Djoser at the start of the Third Dynasty. Imhotep was the greatest and most celebrated of all Egyptian seers, who solved the crisis of a seven-year famine by interpreting Djoser's dream. In precisely the same way, biblical history tells us that, about two centuries after Abraham, a young Hebrew seer named Joseph became vizier to the pharaoh after solving the crisis of a seven-year famine by interpreting the king's dream. Removing a thousand years from Egyptian chronology therefore seems to have the effect of producing a precise match between the histories of the two neighbouring peoples. And the matches continue through subsequent centuries. These however are missed by Rohl because he remains too cautious.
________________________________________________
The ‘Dynastic Race’ By David Rohl
The birth of Egyptian civilisation have always been a bit of a mystery. How did it come about? And who were the first pharaohs? Were they indigenous North Africans or Sumerians coming from the east? That thorny question had been a subject of heated debate amongst academics over the last 100 years … that is until fairly recently when our tendency towards political correctness deemed that such difficult issues should be swept under the scholarly carpet. But the question of pharaonic origins still remains one of the great puzzles of Egyptology.
Following the abandonment of the Tower of Babel, the biblical story tells of a great migration of the 'sons' of Noah. His eldest, Ham, was the father of Cush who journeyed to north-east Africa in order to establish a kingdom in the lands of Ethiopia and Sudan. The Egyptians knew this area as the 'land of Kush' – after Noah's grandson. Cush had a younger brother called Mizraim and he was the traditional founder of the Egyptian civilisation. The '-im' ending of this name is a West Semitic pluralisation. Thus the original name of Noah's second 'grandson' was Mizra. It is therefore interesting to note that the Assyrians referred to Egypt as Musri whilst a modern Egyptian calls himself a Masri ('one of Masr'). The biblical tradition of an eponymous ancestor of the pharaonic state called Mizra/Musri/Masr thus has extra-biblical confirmation.
I think we can make one further important connection between the Genesis/Koran text, Sumerian tradition and pharaonic royal mythology. The Egyptians believed that their first king was called Horus. Now this name means 'the distant one' suggesting someone who came from afar. It is surely more than an extraordinary coincidence, then, that the Mesopotamian flood heroes, Ziusudra (Sumerian), Atrahasis (Akkadian) and Utnapishtim (Babylonian), all bear the same epithet 'the distant one'? Could it be that the legendary Horus of Egypt was none other than the biblical flood hero and that his descendants, through Ham and Mizraim, settled in Egypt as the Followers of Horus (i.e. 'the ones descended from Horus, 'the distant one')?
Given this extraordinary possibility, perhaps we should investigate how some of the other primeval gods of Egypt might fit into the picture.
It was well known in the ancient world that the Egyptian goddess of love and fertility, Isis (written Iset), was the equivalent of Mesopotamian Ishtar and Canaanite Astarte (biblical Ashtaroth). She is regularly depicted at the head of Pharaoh's sarcophagus, arms raised in the act of prayer. This striking image is identical to the 'dancing goddess' figure found in the Eastern Desert rock drawings and on the Nakada II pottery. So, could this predynastic goddess, associated with the invaders, be the earliest form of Isis/Ishtar? The answer perhaps lies with her husband, Osiris.
In a previous article I proposed that the discovery of hundreds of prehistoric rock carvings in the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea was evidence of a foreign invasion which occurred just a couple of centuries before the rise of the 1st Dynasty in Egypt. These amazing drawings show fleets of ships carrying warriors, chieftains, 'dancing goddesses' and what appear to be the standards of Sumerian gods. Many of the boats are being dragged by their crews, suggesting transportation of the vessels across the desert from the Red Sea to the Nile. It's time, then, to go in search of these 'people from the east' in the tombs, temples, hieroglyphs and paintings of ancient Egypt.
An hour's drive north of Luxor, on the west bank of the Nile, there is a vast necropolis of 2000 predynastic graves. The place is called Nakada after the nearby village. Nakada turned out to be one of the most important excavation sites in Egypt because of the light it sheds upon the origins of the pharaonic state. Its excavator was the 'father of Egyptian archaeology', Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the first British professor of Egyptology and founder of University College London's Egyptology Department where I myself studied and obtained my degree.
The cemetery at Nakada turned out to be the necropolis of the town of Nubt ('Gold Town') which grew up as a result of early gold-mining activities in the Wadi Hammamat region, just across the river in the Eastern Desert. 'Gold Town' was the Klondyke of predynastic Egypt.
What Petrie found in this vast cemetery were two groups of people which he designated Nakada I and Nakada II (and III). The people of Nakada I culture were the earliest occupants of the cemetery, whilst Nakada II superseded them and were therefore chronologically later. The burial goods and distinctive structures of the graves made Petrie realise, almost from the start, that he was dealing with two very different groups. The evidence seemed to indicate the arrival of newcomers in the Nile valley marked by the Nakada II graves which were soon shown, on stylistic grounds, to be contemporaneous with the rock art of the 'invaders' found in the Eastern Desert. Based on the evidence of the Nakada II graves, Petrie developed a theory of an incursion of easterners from Sumer who had taken over southern Egypt and subjugated the indigenous Nakada I population. These invaders, with their superior weapons and technology, eventually came to dominate the whole Nile valley and gave rise to what he called the 'Dynastic Race'.
Up until the 1950s Petrie's Dynastic Race theory received widespread support in Egyptological circles. Indeed, one of its proponents even began to refer to the predynastic invaders as a 'Super Race'. Petrie and his followers were very much of their age. They believed in the superiority of western civilisation over what we today call the Third World. They were colonialists with a colonial view of history. The idea of an intellectually superior race, invading Africa and civilising the region, was quite natural from their political perspectives. The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Arab/Israeli wars put an end to this way of thinking within ancient world studies.
In the politically correct world of late-twentieth-century scholarship the Dynastic Race theory has been quietly forgotten. As a result, it is very rare these days to find an Egyptologist prepared to give credence to the idea of foreign invaders at the dawn of Egyptian history. But should we reject the basic evidence because of the political views of past archaeologists? Nobody disputes that Petrie found what he found. So perhaps we should look again at the Dynastic Race theory – but this time without the rhetoric of pre-war colonialism. It is obvious that we cannot rewrite ancient history in the light of events in our own century. It is surely the historian's job to construct a coherent picture of the past based on the archaeological evidence – wherever it leads.
So, what does that evidence tell us about Egypt's origins?
Petrie found several new elements in the Nakada II graves. First, unlike the earlier Nakada I burials, many of the grave pits themselves were lined with mud bricks. This was the first time that bricks had been used in Egypt and archaeologists have determined that mud brick technology was a Sumerian invention.
Second, the pottery shapes and techniques of decoration were also new – again with clear precursors in Mesopotamia.
Third, the Nakada II warriors were buried with a new type of weapon known as the 'pear-shaped mace'. This was in contrast to the Nakada I people who used 'disk-shaped maces'. Interestingly, not only do the Eastern Desert rock-drawings show the chieftains holding the round-headed weapon but it also became the weapon par excellence of the later pharaohs who were regularly depicted smiting their enemies with the pear-shaped mace.
Fourth, lapis lazuli appears amongst the grave goods for the first time in Nakada II. This beautiful dark blue stone comes from Badakhshan in Afghanistan and was traded across land and by sea (via the Persian Gulf) to Sumer where it was greatly prized. Its sudden appearance in Egypt thus confirms contact with the Sumerians of southern Iraq.
Fifth, the complex niched-facade mudbrick architecture which develops out of Nakada III culture is identically paralleled in Sumer where it was used to decorate the temples of the gods. In Egypt it became a standard design feature of the early pharaohs' tombs. The design is so complex that it is hard to believe the niched-facade structure could have been independently invented in the two regions. All authorities accept that such architecture originated in Sumer and was 'exported' to Egypt.
These are just some of the technologies and artefacts which clearly point to contact between Mesopotamian and Egypt. However, this does not prove that there was a military conquest (rather than simple trade) or if the Sumerian settlers in the Nile valley went on to become the first pharaohs. Here there are more tantalising clues.
A magnificent ivory knife handle was discovered near Nakada, at the turn of the century, which shows a Sumerian hero figure controlling two great lions on one side and a battle on the other between long-haired warriors (one of whom carries a pear-shaped mace) and short-haired opponents who are getting the worst of the conflict. The long-haired victors are associated with high-prowed boats, just like the ones found in the desert rock art, whilst the short-haired losers are represented by sickle-shaped boats made of papyrus and associated with the River Nile. The Gebel el-Arak predynastic knife (now in the Louvre) is not only an amazing 5000-year-old artefact but it appears to depict Sumerian invaders with their high-prowed ships in the very act of conquering the Nile valley.
The evidence for Mesopotamians in Egypt is even more compelling at the site of Butu (ancient Pe-Dep) in the western delta. There, German archaeologists have recently unearthed coloured clay cones which, if their counterparts in Sumer are anything to go by, were used to decorate buildings. This decorative cone technique is so striking that it is hard to imagine it being invented independently in Egypt after it had come into use in Mesopotamia.
Did this élite Sumerian clan eventually come to dominate the whole of Egypt and establish the first pharaonic dynasty? An important clue is found in the fact that the later nobility of Egypt called themselves by a special name. They were known as the 'Pat' or the iry-Pat ('belonging to the Pat') – a term which implied membership of a special clan or blood-line. This term was reserved for members of the royal family, courtiers and high officials. Interestingly, a text from the Middle Kingdom (1000 years after the unification of Egypt at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty) refers to a man who reached high office 'in spite of the fact that he was not iry-Pat', suggesting that the ruling class were expected to have been directly descended from an ancestral élite. These great founding ancestors were also known by another title. The later hieroglyphic texts refer to the 'Followers of Horus' who first established kingship in the Nile valley. They are shown in predynastic and early dynastic carvings carrying their standards into battle in support of kings who bore the title of 'Horus' as part of their names. So, was the first Horus-king a real person who later became deified. Could there have been an original human Horus and, if so, was he African or Mesopotamian?
To answer these questions we need to return to the stories in the book of Genesis and Holy Koran. In my book Legend – The Genesis of Civilisation I identified the location of the traditional site of the Garden of Eden in western Iran, the mountain of Noah's Ark in Kurdestan, and the Tower of Babel in southern Iraq. I argued that the Old Testament legends surrounding Noah and the Flood and then King Nimrod were also to be found in the Sumerian literary tradition. It appears that the Genesis narrative may have been based on actual historical events from primeval times.
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Following the abandonment of the Tower of Babel, the biblical story tells of a great migration of the 'sons' of Noah. His eldest, Ham, was the father of Cush who journeyed to north-east Africa in order to establish a kingdom in the lands of Ethiopia and Sudan. The Egyptians knew this area as the 'land of Kush' – after Noah's grandson. Cush had a younger brother called Mizraim and he was the traditional founder of the Egyptian civilisation. The '-im' ending of this name is a West Semitic pluralisation. Thus the original name of Noah's second 'grandson' was Mizra. It is therefore interesting to note that the Assyrians referred to Egypt as Musri whilst a modern Egyptian calls himself a Masri ('one of Masr'). The biblical tradition of an eponymous ancestor of the pharaonic state called Mizra/Musri/Masr thus has extra-biblical confirmation.
I think we can make one further important connection between the Genesis/Koran text, Sumerian tradition and pharaonic royal mythology. The Egyptians believed that their first king was called Horus. Now this name means 'the distant one' suggesting someone who came from afar. It is surely more than an extraordinary coincidence, then, that the Mesopotamian flood heroes, Ziusudra (Sumerian), Atrahasis (Akkadian) and Utnapishtim (Babylonian), all bear the same epithet 'the distant one'? Could it be that the legendary Horus of Egypt was none other than the biblical flood hero and that his descendants, through Ham and Mizraim, settled in Egypt as the Followers of Horus (i.e. 'the ones descended from Horus, 'the distant one')?
Given this extraordinary possibility, perhaps we should investigate how some of the other primeval gods of Egypt might fit into the picture.
It was well known in the ancient world that the Egyptian goddess of love and fertility, Isis (written Iset), was the equivalent of Mesopotamian Ishtar and Canaanite Astarte (biblical Ashtaroth). She is regularly depicted at the head of Pharaoh's sarcophagus, arms raised in the act of prayer. This striking image is identical to the 'dancing goddess' figure found in the Eastern Desert rock drawings and on the Nakada II pottery. So, could this predynastic goddess, associated with the invaders, be the earliest form of Isis/Ishtar? The answer perhaps lies with her husband, Osiris.
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The names Isis and Osiris are Greek forms of Egyptian Iset and Asar. The latter is written with the hieroglyphs of a throne and an eye. Amazingly, a Sumerian god local to Eridu (where I have placed the Tower of Babel) is also called Asar and his name is written in Sumerian with the symbol for a throne. It appears that the Egyptian god of vegetation and rebirth may originally have come from southern Iraq, having been introduced to the Nile valley (along with his consort) by Sumerian worshippers.
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The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are decorated with scenes from the Amduat ('That which is in the Underworld'). The dead king's spirit is seen being transported from his tomb in the western necropolis across the great underworld ocean of the abyss towards the eastern horizon. His craft is a high-prowed boat just like the ships found in the predynastic rock art. The dead pharaoh is accompanied by the primeval gods, with Re-Atum as his protector. Together, they journey through seven gates before reaching the shore of the underworld desert where the crew is depicted dragging the boat of Re-Atum towards the dawn horizon. There the spirit of the king is reborn as the rising sun over the Isle of Flame. This place is otherwise known as the primeval mound of creation surrounded by the Waters of Nun. It was here that the original primeval temple was constructed by the gods. The island is described as a sandy circular mound surrounded by reeds growing in a freshwater marsh. The temple shrine lies at the centre of the island on a low mound. All later Egyptian temples are architecturally designed to recreate this setting. To enter the temple you pass between two great artificial desert mountains (the pylon gateway) and cross an expansive desert (the open-air perystyle court. You then enter the reed marsh of the Waters of Nun (the hypostyle hall with its giant reed and papyrus columns) surrounding the Island of Nun, before reaching the sacred shrine (the holy of holies) representing the primeval Temple of Nun. All this time you have been gradually ascending as the floor of the temple rises up, step by step. This represents the mound of creation on which the primeval shrine rests.
Once we realise that the Egyptian primeval age or 'First Time' was set not in the Nile valley but rather in Sumer, we can finally identify this island and its primeval mound with a real physical place. The Sumerian texts tell us that the first city on earth came into being as the great ancestors arrived on a small sandy island, surrounded by reeds in the freshwater swamps of southern Iraq. There, on that island, the city of Eridu was founded with the building of a small reed shrine on top of a sandy mound. Over the centuries the shrine grew into a great temple, the final form of which was to become the infamous 'Tower of Babel' of Genesis. Eridu's Sumerian name was Nun.ki – the 'Mighty Place'. The Egyptians referred to the swamp surrounding their primeval island of creation as the 'Waters of Nun'. Thus the primeval temple of Egyptian mythology was one and the same as the legendary Tower of Babel.
read this once, don't feel like going through it again, no opinion as of yet. Rohl has credibility problems in his other biblical linking arguments
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti:
While I don't agree with everything Rohl says, I believe he may have a point with the traditional chronology being off. I think he relies a little too much on the Bible, but I think there is some truth in that much of the roots in Biblical myth are based on Sumerian. I also believe that some of the Hebrews or at least some of their forebears had their origins in Iran of around the Armenian region. These were the non-black Middle Easterners who adopted Semtic language and culture from the original black Semites.....
(from different post on Sumerians: )
^ My fault. I thought you were insisting that the identity of the Medes was associated with the Sumerians and so they were black. The Bible is myth, but like all myth does contain or is based on many historical facts. I am well aware of Genesis and what it says of the various lineages. However, what you need to realize is that the Biblical authors were not anthropologists or ethnologists who accurately catalouged every people in the area and their relationships. There is some truth to the lineages. Like for example 'Ham' was associated with black peoples, specifically Africans and that Egypt, Kush, Punt, and Canaan (which we now know was colonized by Africans in Neolithic times) share a common heritage. However Shem is taken to be the founder of Semitic speaking peoples, even though the Semitic languages also originated in Africa. There is also the Hebrew word 'Kushi' meaning black and the confusion since there are black populations indigenous to Asia as well as Africa.
Just to let you know, the Sumerians were not Semitic speaking people. Their language is unrelated to any other known language all we know about them is their culture. I will say that judging by the statuary they left behind, many of them look little different from modern-day Iraqis who are light-skinned and not black, especially the rural marsh Arabs who likely do represent the original Sumerian people. However I do not doubt the diversity of the area. It is a given that close neighbors of the Sumerians were a people called the Elamites who were the indigenous people of Iran and founded civilization there long before Iranian Medes or Persians. It is also known that the actual founders of civilization in Mesopotamia were not the Sumerians but a people archaeologists call Ubaidians, and who were also indigenous the Mesopotamian area before the Sumerians arrived. It is still not known where the Sumerians proper originated. Some think Central Asia, while others say either Anatolia. It is clear that from painted works there were darker-skinned/black peoples in the area as well who represented the original inhabitants....
The Sumerians were NOT considered a Hamitic people in the Bible.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: [qb] Kushi, from Kush, doesn't mean the color black. It's used to refer to black people as an ethnic taxon. One cannot juxtapose black against Semitic. Neither color nor ethnicity can be apposed to language.
Hham and Shem were both black in the Hebrew mindset. [QUOTE] Shem was especially blessed black and beautiful, Hham was blessed black like the raven, and Yapheth was blessed white all over.
(PIRQE DE RABBI ELIEZER 28a)
Now neither the internal search engine nor GOOGLE hits any of the many times I posted this quote from the Pirqe de Ribbi Eli`ezer as to Shem being black and beautiful and Hham black as the raven.
Why is that? Somebody's afraid of something!
The Hebrews' Shem doesn't correspond to the linguists Semites anymore than their Kush does to Cushitic. Elam is the firstborn son of Shem and Elamites didn't speak Semitic. K*na`an is a son of Hham and Canaanites did speak Hebrew. The fact is that the Israelites called the Hebrew language "the language of Canaan."
Continental Africa houses the majority of individual Semitic languages and those speakers there in the Horn are all BLACK N BEAUTIFUL with their Semitic selves.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: [qb] ^ My fault. I thought you were insisting that the identity of the Medes was associated with the Sumerians and so they were black. The Bible is myth, but like all myth does contain or is based on many historical facts. I am well aware of Genesis and what it says of the various lineages. However, what you need to realize is that the Biblical authors were not anthropologists or ethnologists who accurately catalouged every people in the area and their relationships. There is some truth to the lineages. Like for example 'Ham' was associated with black peoples, specifically Africans and that Egypt, Kush, Punt, and Canaan (which we now know was colonized by Africans in Neolithic times) share a common heritage. However Shem is taken to be the founder of Semitic speaking peoples, even though the Semitic languages also originated in Africa. There is also the Hebrew word 'Kushi' meaning black and the confusion since there are black populations indigenous to Asia as well as Africa.
Just to let you know, the Sumerians were not Semitic speaking people. Their language is unrelated to any other known language all we know about them is their culture. I will say that judging by the statuary they left behind, many of them look little different from modern-day Iraqis who are light-skinned and not black, especially the rural marsh Arabs who likely do represent the original Sumerian people. However I do not doubt the diversity of the area. It is a given that close neighbors of the Sumerians were a people called the Elamites who were the indigenous people of Iran and founded civilization there long before Iranian Medes or Persians. It is also known that the actual founders of civilization in Mesopotamia were not the Sumerians but a people archaeologists call Ubaidians, and who were also indigenous the Mesopotamian area before the Sumerians arrived. It is still not known where the Sumerians proper originated. Some think Central Asia, while others say either Anatolia. It is clear that from painted works there were darker-skinned/black peoples in the area as well who represented the original inhabitants.
Posts: 8806 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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This statue is not authentic. It can be purchased at the Turin Museum of Italy.
quote: Do you agree with jari that the most famous and powerful Pharaoh of Egypt, who commissioned some of the largest monuments was probably of "mixed race"??
Disagree. Ramses II wasn't a "mixed raced" mongrel as you or Jari define it. His ancestry is highly indigenous, Although i do believe he possessed Non Egyptian ancestry, most likely from the Levant.
LMAO It figures Lyingass would be passing off frauds as authentic!
By the way, there is no evidence that Ramses family was of foreign ancestry. Notice that the passage by Harris and Wente cited by Jari points out to features in common with Levantine Natufians who we know were of African ancestry.
One only needs to look at his lineage. Ramses II is the third king of the 19th dynasty. He was son of Set I (the second king of the 19th dynasty) and his wife Tuwa. Seti I was in turn the son of the first king of the 19th dynasty, Ramses I and his wife Sitra. Ramses I was the son of a Delta nobleman named Setimeramen who was also a military commander. Many think Setieramen may have been a Hyksos descendant because his home was close to Avaris the old Hyksos capital. It is possible, but not certain. Even if he is a descendant of Hyksos, again the only traces of this are features like orthognathy and projecting zygomatic arches neither of which is unusual for Africans. So having Hyksos ancestry somehow negates African ancestry.
Ramses I Posts: 26310 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
The Egyptians, to some extent, were and remain a race of mongrels, so I don't disagree. As for Ramesses, his family have a background in Avaris, as noted, capital of the Hyksos prior to their expulsion. The 19th Dynasty also venerated the god Seth who was somewhat associated with the Hyksos, so some link to these semites may be imagined. Seti I, Ramesses II and Siptah, a later member of the dynasty, are also supposed to have been natural red-heads, according to analysis of their mummies. Red hair is highly rare among Egyptians but not unknown in Palestine.
Posts: 870 | From: uk | Registered: Apr 2011
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Because something has been restored in some way that means what?
where's your evidence of it being restored and it what way was it restored? Without that you have no case. Let's take any artifact you post. Are you telling me none of them have been restored?
for comparison:
same features, wtf?
quote:Originally posted by Siptah:
Disagree. Ramses II wasn't a "mixed raced" mongrel indigenous, Although i do believe he possessed Non Egyptian ancestry, most likely from the Levant.
and why do you believe he had this tiny half speck of Levantine ancestry?
Posts: 42940 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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It figures Lyingass would be passing off frauds as authentic!
Look at this groupie calling one of the most famous Egyptian statues a fraud, no evidence presented, a statue featured by Diop. What's wrong with this statue? tell us wise one
Posts: 42940 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Good point. I was basing my assumption on the Harris and Wente et al passage when they noted the possibility of miscegenation between Modern Mediterraneans of Levantine type and Northern Egyptians.
quote:"Since the Ramessides were of northern extraction, this could represent miscegenation with modern Mediterraneans of Levantine type. The projecting zygomatic arches of Seti I suggest remnants of the old Natufian/Tasian types of the Holocene period. - Harris and Wente" - James Harris and Edward Wente. X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980).
You are right it remains a possibility and not a fact. It is also worth to mention Modern (Levantine) Mediterraneans and their overall significant influence from Black Africa; Genetically, Linguistically etc so even if his ancestral make up contains slight traces of Levantine it doesn't negate the bulk of his indigenous African make up.
Posts: 535 | From: From the Darkest of the Abyss | Registered: Apr 2010
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posted
@Simple Girl, probably a dark skinned Middle Easterner. No surprise since they have notable African ancestry
@Rahotep, ancient Egyptians were never mongrels. They always had a greater affinity to southerners until an increased level of diversity due to a rising level of foreign migrants in the Late Period.
Posts: 1502 | From: Dies Irae | Registered: Oct 2010
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quote:Because something has been restored in some way that means what?
It depends on the factors of what is being restored and its restoration process. Simply because the process of restoration was achieved doesn't mean such a process was 100% precise in determining its original condition.
quote:Where's your evidence of it being restored and it what way was it restored?
This black basalt statue of Ramses II was discovered in shapeless fragmentary pieces by Jacques Rifaud in 1818. It was then taken to the Turin Museum of Italy and was later recomposed.
For more information read Egyptian art in Egyptian Museum of Turin by Ernesto Scamuzzi:
quote:Let's take any artifact you post. Are you telling me none of them have been restored?
Of course not. I mentioned before on how it all depends on the factors of what is being restored and its restoration process. This particular statue of Ramses II was discovered in shapeless fragmentary pieces so we do not know how much or what was lost when it was recomposed at the Turin Museum. We can question the level of precision taken with its restoration attempt however.
What particular parts did they find?
What particular parts was lost?
How precise was this recomposition process?
And so on...
quote:and why do you believe he had this tiny half speck of Levantine ancestry?
Read my response to Djehuti above.
Posts: 535 | From: From the Darkest of the Abyss | Registered: Apr 2010
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness: Originally posted by the Siptah:
This statue has been restored.
quote: for comparison:
same features, wtf?
Wouldn't your comparison be better if both depictions of Ramses II were in a profile view?
Posts: 535 | From: From the Darkest of the Abyss | Registered: Apr 2010
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quote:Originally posted by A Simpleton: He's depicted here smiting one of his enemies being the same color as himself. Anyone know where that foe is from?
Posts: 26310 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DaDumbHo: The Egyptians, to some extent, were and remain a race of mongrels,...
Strange. I thought your premise was that they were "cockasians". Now you are calling them "mongrels" so which is it?? By the way, we know MODERN Egyptians are very mixed with foreign ancestry but the same cannot be said for their ancient ancestors who were not.
Posts: 26310 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Strange. I thought your premise was that they were "cockasians".
I wouldn't mock the concept of "Caucasoid" just yet. As mentioned in a recent thread of mine, there does exist a larger genetic cluster which corresponds to "Caucasoid", so I think Caucasoids are real. That doesn't change the fact that the ancient Egyptians, in overall physiognomy (as opposed to just a few facial traits), clustered with Negroids instead of Caucasoids.
Posts: 7094 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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It figures Lyingass would be passing off frauds as authentic!
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