posted
Last month I contacted Dr. Shomarka Keita to ask him to comment on the statements made by Zahi Hawass in the media on the race of the Ancient Egyptians, particularly his comments about the work of Cheikh Anta Diop in a short audio interview that was put on the internet.
I provided Keita with a transcription of the interview which I will post below. If you click the link below and go to the bottom of the page you can hear Hawass himself.
Question:How would you describe your reaction to the views of Diop?
Hawass: Of course Cheikh Anta Diop was completely wrong. This is a kind of theory that he developed, it doesn't mean...look at the features of the people, the Black, in Egypt today. Their nose, their lips is completely different from the Negro. And therefore Cheikh Anta Diop's theory, he did it I think at a time to please the Black Americans who really feel they are a minority and wanted to be connected with this place, with a civilization like Egypt. After Cheikh Anta Diop did make his theory there was a conference made by UNCESCO and the recommendation at the end of the conference that this cannot be accepted and they said we need more work in prehistoric times to understand more about the origin of the people.
Question:So how would you define the ancient Egyptians? They were people who came, who were indigenous to this area...
Hawass: I believe that those people settled in the Nile Valley since the old Stone Age, more than 100,000 B.C. and they settled by the Nile. Those people when they went to the desert to hunt animals and to make their own tools and to invent fire and they really always come to the Nile. Then they looked at the Nile and they used this source to make their civilization. And if you look at their religious belief it's unique. From the predynastic period they found out for a king to become a God he has to do certain things in his life: build a tomb, temples for the worship of the Gods, smiting the enemies of Egypt, unification of the two lands, giving offering to the Gods; if you do that you will become a God. And therefore I say all the time that pyramids built Egypt. Because building the tombs made the Egyptians to create technology and astronomy and architecture.
Question:So how do you react to people who say that Egypt is an African civilization?[/I}
Hawass: I really do not believe that Egypt is an African civilization. I believe that Egyptian civilization was unique. Egypt is in Africa but Egyptian civilization has nothing to do with the African cultures. Because of many, many, many features if you look at the Pharonic period it's completely different from anything. If you look at the production or the technology that the Egyptians left it's completely different from any belief at any time. If you look at the Egyptian from the Anthropological point of view they are different from the African. And this is why I believe that Pharonic Egypt is completely unique, they have no connection with the African or even the Arabs; completely independent. And this is why even today Egyptians are Egyptians, That really doesn't mean that we speak Arabic that we can be Arabs. We are really, I feel personally, that we are related even today to the Pharaohs.
Keita asked me to summarize my familiarity with his work and how I felt his views differed from Diop and Hawass based on what I'd already read before giving a direct answer.
This was his response after I provided my summary....
Shomarka Keita
Your summary is fair. Egypt emerged in Africa. Its people had connections to folks west and south and no doubt east, but the mix emerged in Africa. Linguistically and culturally it is connected to where it is. Hawass is Egyptocentric and implies no wider connections at any time depth which is narrow minded. The early Egyptians seen as a nationality were physically and probably linguistically diverse.
The issue is not genealogical connections and process/change for all biological and cultural dimensions. Modern Egyptians, specifically males, clearly are related to E group African populations in the main, but some also have B group.
Bottom line:
Diop wrote without benefit of the most recent work. His use of black and his inconsistencies are problematic. The skin from one mummy cannot be generalized. Hawass seems to equate African with black instead of speaking to connections.
Keita also recommended the following book to me on the subject.
[i]The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, c.10,000 to 2,650 BC (Cambridge World Archaeology)Posts: 647 | From: Atlanta | Registered: Jan 2009
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posted
^Thanks for sharing Morpheus. Looks like some very fair and pointed observations from Dr. Keita.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^Thanks for sharing Morpheus. Looks like some very fair and pointed observations from Dr. Keita.
Why do you say the comments were fair? He claims that skin of one mummy cannot determine the phenotype of the Egyptians. Diop said the skin proved the Egyptians were negroes. Keita's assertion that the test can not be generalized implies that Egypt was a nation made up of mixed races.This view is no different from the average Eurocentric researcher.
Keita also claims that there were inconsistencies in Diop's work. This is a biased statement and lacks any foundation.
Diop used multiple sources to support his conclusion that the Egyptians were negores. As a result we need to know where these inconsistences exist, was it the epigraphic, linguistic, historical or anthropological data he presents--from this statement we don't know what Keita is talking about.
Why should we accept Keita's view there are inconsistencies in Diop's work when he provides no concrete examples? Again, this comment by Keita is the same comment made by Eurocentric Egyptologist about Diop and his work.
In my opinion both authors agree that the Egyptians were a mixed society--not made up solely of negroes.
posted
Why would Hawass think Diop would give two bits about pleasing African Americans, It's his own semi modified Hamitic theory that Diop and was against and not any quest to please AAs.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: Why would Hawass think Diop would give two bits about pleasing African Americans, It's his own semi modified Hamitic theory that Diop and was against and not any quest to please AAs.
He probably believed this because Diop's work was popularized by AAs.
I learned about Diop back in 1970, because I could read French.It was not until 1974 that most AAs learned about his work.
Dr Zahi Hawass has stated that the royal mummies will not give us important evidence about the people because the majority of the Egyptians were common people, The royal family and officials maybe represent 20% of the population and in my opinion the non royal mummies could be very important project for us to understand alot of things about the ancient Egyptians.
So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Posts: 1064 | Registered: Jan 2011
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^Thanks for sharing Morpheus. Looks like some very fair and pointed observations from Dr. Keita.
Why do you say the comments were fair? He claims that skin of one mummy cannot determine the phenotype of the Egyptians. Diop said the skin proved the Egyptians were negroes. Keita's assertion that the test can not be generalized implies that Egypt was a nation made up of mixed races.This view is no different from the average Eurocentric researcher.
Keita also claims that there were inconsistencies in Diop's work. This is a biased statement and lacks any foundation.
Diop used multiple sources to support his conclusion that the Egyptians were negores. As a result we need to know where these inconsistences exist, was it the epigraphic, linguistic, historical or anthropological data he presents--from this statement we don't know what Keita is talking about.
Why should we accept Keita's view there are inconsistencies in Diop's work when he provides no concrete examples? Again, this comment by Keita is the same comment made by Eurocentric Egyptologist about Diop and his work.
In my opinion both authors agree that the Egyptians were a mixed society--not made up solely of negroes.
.
Clyde,
This email response may help you better understand Keita's statement about testing the skin of mummies. I asked Keita some time ago if his work can give us conclusive evidence of what the Ancient Egyptians looked like and particularly what skin color they had.
I provided him with the following article and key quote:
Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1). The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin.
Source: Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7-13
Keita's reply:
HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND NATIVE AMERICAN CELEBRATION!
Please give the full reference for the studies that you referenced: title, authors, year and journals, and of this interesting citation. It sounds interesting Histologically one would be interested in how the melanin is packaged. What cannot be accepted is a study on one mummy. One needs a study on groups of mummies from all social classes, periods, and regions, of those whom one thinks are native Egyptians as opposed to immigrants. Also of course you know that craniofacial analyses give you some idea of facial conformation--which is why I did not mention this--but alone cannot give you skin color. There is a range of African facial confirmations--your starting point in analysis is very important.
There is a history of ideas in anthropology on Africa that is problematic.
My research only effectively covers up to Dynasty I. I have not studied remains in a systematic fashion from the dynastic period in a given region , but hope to do this. There is clear continuity, but also change in morphology for various regions. Please send me that reference so that I can further explore the issue with you.
I think that if one modelled gene flow into Egypt over thousands of years that the model would indicate a change in biology in an average sense, but there was always likely a cline in Egypt. However there was no wholesale replacement of the Egyptian population in the traditional sense, and no evacuation of the whole populace or pushing it aside. My remarks about Upper Egypt are an educated guess--with the caveat that foreigners may have settled in any urbanised region or center. It would be difficult to say more than this with scientific confidence. There is a color gradation in Egypt in some average sense, but of course there are exceptions to the cline.
By compiling information from different sources and getting different opinions you will be able to come to your own conclusions about appearance--which has not been a major focus of mine.
Best Regards.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
He probably believed this because Diop's work was popularized by AAs.
I learned about Diop back in 1970, because I could read French.It was not until 1974 that most AAs learned about his work.
I agree, that is the impression I got from Hawass's statement. He seemed to believe that the intended audience of Diop's work was African-Americans when in fact it was the whole world.
Clyde,
If you haven't already I recommend that you read this article which was written by Keita in defense of Diop. It was written in response to Brace et al. (1993):
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^Thanks for sharing Morpheus. Looks like some very fair and pointed observations from Dr. Keita.
Why do you say the comments were fair? He claims that skin of one mummy cannot determine the phenotype of the Egyptians. Diop said the skin proved the Egyptians were negroes. Keita's assertion that the test can not be generalized implies that Egypt was a nation made up of mixed races.This view is no different from the average Eurocentric researcher.
Keita also claims that there were inconsistencies in Diop's work. This is a biased statement and lacks any foundation.
Diop used multiple sources to support his conclusion that the Egyptians were negores. As a result we need to know where these inconsistences exist, was it the epigraphic, linguistic, historical or anthropological data he presents--from this statement we don't know what Keita is talking about.
Why should we accept Keita's view there are inconsistencies in Diop's work when he provides no concrete examples? Again, this comment by Keita is the same comment made by Eurocentric Egyptologist about Diop and his work.
In my opinion both authors agree that the Egyptians were a mixed society--not made up solely of negroes.
.
Clyde,
This email response may help you better understand Keita's statement about testing the skin of mummies. I asked Keita some time ago if his work can give us conclusive evidence of what the Ancient Egyptians looked like and particularly what skin color they had.
I provided him with the following article and key quote:
Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1). The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin.
Source: Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7-13
Keita's reply:
HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND NATIVE AMERICAN CELEBRATION!
Please give the full reference for the studies that you referenced: title, authors, year and journals, and of this interesting citation. It sounds interesting Histologically one would be interested in how the melanin is packaged. What cannot be accepted is a study on one mummy. One needs a study on groups of mummies from all social classes, periods, and regions, of those whom one thinks are native Egyptians as opposed to immigrants. Also of course you know that craniofacial analyses give you some idea of facial conformation--which is why I did not mention this--but alone cannot give you skin color. There is a range of African facial confirmations--your starting point in analysis is very important.
There is a history of ideas in anthropology on Africa that is problematic.
My research only effectively covers up to Dynasty I. I have not studied remains in a systematic fashion from the dynastic period in a given region , but hope to do this. There is clear continuity, but also change in morphology for various regions. Please send me that reference so that I can further explore the issue with you.
I think that if one modelled gene flow into Egypt over thousands of years that the model would indicate a change in biology in an average sense, but there was always likely a cline in Egypt. However there was no wholesale replacement of the Egyptian population in the traditional sense, and no evacuation of the whole populace or pushing it aside. My remarks about Upper Egypt are an educated guess--with the caveat that foreigners may have settled in any urbanised region or center. It would be difficult to say more than this with scientific confidence. There is a color gradation in Egypt in some average sense, but of course there are exceptions to the cline.
By compiling information from different sources and getting different opinions you will be able to come to your own conclusions about appearance--which has not been a major focus of mine.
Best Regards.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
He probably believed this because Diop's work was popularized by AAs.
I learned about Diop back in 1970, because I could read French.It was not until 1974 that most AAs learned about his work.
I agree, that is the impression I got from Hawass's statement. He seemed to believe that the intended audience of Diop's work was African-Americans when in fact it was the whole world.
Clyde,
If you haven't already I recommend that you read this article which was written by Keita in defense of Diop. It was written in response to Brace et al. (1993):
Thanks for the article. It appears to have been written by a J.D. Walker--not Keita.
It would appear that my interpretation of Keita's views on the Egyptian population suggest that he sees this population as mixed. Given his ideas about the mixed nature of the Egyptian population it would appear that when people use his work to imply that the Egyptians were Black, they may be misusing Keita's work.
My question is: Why do people use Keita to imply the Egyptians were Black, when he sees the Egyptians as a mixed group?
posted
So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Dubious as to the main process of Egyptian history. Were there foreign influenced pharaohs during the high points of say Hyskos or Libyan influence? Sure. But they do not represent the main line of AE history. And several pharaohs in various dynasties showed clear links with Nubia and the south, so attempts some people make at "separation" are dubious.
He probably believed this because Diop's work was popularized by AAs.
^It was to some extent in the US, but that is a side point and Hawass knows it. He built a career, and secured much funding and favor from the white Egyptology establishment by denying and minimizing the indigenous African character of AE. He has to continue beating the propaganda drum to the end, to keep paymaster dollas flowing. At the same time he has to beat a nationalist drum, as if the AEs sprang spontaneously out of the Nile, "independent" of and unrelated to surrounding African cultures. His career is built on these themes. He has to beat these drums to the end. But Hawass is irrelevant ultimately. The database of science and scholarship is in place debunking his claims. It is no longer locked behind the establishment's distorting firewalls. ES is proof of that. The important thing now is to disseminate credible data among the masses in easily understandable form, not compromising accuracy or clarity.
posted
But then again, Hawass is doing quite well off the antiquities gig, receiving nice paydays from the white establishment, and internal cover from the corrupt Egyptian regime:
Wiki: Criticism of Hawass increased following the protests in Egypt in 2011. The New York Times reported in a front page story in July 2011 that he receives an honorarium each year "of as much as $200,000" from National Geographic to be an explorer-in-residence, "even as he controls access to the ancient sites it often features in its reports."[50]
The Times also reported that he has relationships with two American companies that do business in Egypt.[50]
On April 17, 2011, Hawass was sentenced to jail for one year for refusing to obey a court ruling[51] relating to a contract for the gift shop at the Egyptian Museum to a company with links to Hawass.[50] The ruling was appealed and this specific sentence was suspended pending appeal.[51][52] On April 18, 2011, the National Council of Egypt’s Administrative Court issued a decree stopping the court ruling, specifying that he would not serve any jail time, and would remain in his position as Minister of Antiquities.[50][53]
50- Taylor, Kate (July 13, 2011). "Revolt in Egypt Dims Star Power of Zahi Hawass". The New York Times: p. 1. Retrieved July 14, 2011.
51- Taylor, Kate (April 19, 2011). "Egyptian Antiquities Official Defends Fashion Line". The New York Times. Retrieved April 19, 2011.
53- Hawass, Zahi. "Decision in the Court Case Against Me". Drhawass.com. Retrieved April 19, 2011.. The jail sentence was lifted after a new contract was solicited for the gift shop
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
'My question is: Why do people use Keita to imply the Egyptians were Black, when he sees the Egyptians as a mixed group?'
From what I understand there would have been different groups in Egypt,particularly from the New Kingdom onwards. That doesn't mean that the country wasn't predominantly African. Indeed, someone posted this e-mail from Keita-
'No one can say exactly what colour they were, but one might reasonably say that the typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the modal colour in most of the country.'
In another e-mail he also writes that 'Without an analysis of histology of the skin and accurate portraits one cannot say how they looked. We can extrapolate by lookng at the variability of the modern Egyptian with a focus on Upper Egyptian, considering a predictive approach based on latitude, and imagining what they would have been like without the gene flow from the Near East and Europe over thousands of years. This will help you conceptualise the variability of the Nile indigenous population...My research cannot indicate skin colour in any empirical sense.'
So predominantly black African.
Posts: 838 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2011
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'But Hawass is irrelevant ultimately. The database of science and scholarship is in place debunking his claims. It is no longer locked behind the establishment's distorting firewalls. ES is proof of that. The important thing now is to disseminate credible data among the masses in easily understandable form, not compromising accuracy or clarity.'
I agree with you, particularly on the bit about media dissemination. Why aren't the wealthy African-Americans (Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby etc) and ideologically supportive governments (South Africa) getting together to fund this?
Posts: 838 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2011
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Dubious as to the main process of Egyptian history. Were there foreign influenced pharaohs during the high points of say Hyskos or Libyan influence? Sure. But they do not represent the main line of AE history. And several pharaohs in various dynasties showed clear links with Nubia and the south, so attempts some people make at "separation" are dubious.
And were are the STR profiles of these mummies?
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quote:Originally posted by claus3600: 'My question is: Why do people use Keita to imply the Egyptians were Black, when he sees the Egyptians as a mixed group?'
From what I understand there would have been different groups in Egypt,particularly from the New Kingdom onwards. That doesn't mean that the country wasn't predominantly African. Indeed, someone posted this e-mail from Keita-
'No one can say exactly what colour they were, but one might reasonably say that the typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the modal colour in most of the country.'
In another e-mail he also writes that 'Without an analysis of histology of the skin and accurate portraits one cannot say how they looked. We can extrapolate by lookng at the variability of the modern Egyptian with a focus on Upper Egyptian, considering a predictive approach based on latitude, and imagining what they would have been like without the gene flow from the Near East and Europe over thousands of years. This will help you conceptualise the variability of the Nile indigenous population...My research cannot indicate skin colour in any empirical sense.'
So predominantly black African.
I think Clyde is completely not understanding Keita. When Keita speaks of mixing in this instance he is talking about mixing of various african groups. HE IS NOT TALKING ABOUT RACIAL MIXTURE AS HE DOES NOT BELIEVE IN RACE. Clyde doesn't seem to understand that not all Africans look exactly the same. Diop himself pointed this out.
Yes, Keita does say SOME non-africans came in and mingled with the native AE's but that is obvious and accepted by all but ideological loons.
Posts: 214 | Registered: Oct 2011
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'But Hawass is irrelevant ultimately. The database of science and scholarship is in place debunking his claims. It is no longer locked behind the establishment's distorting firewalls. ES is proof of that. The important thing now is to disseminate credible data among the masses in easily understandable form, not compromising accuracy or clarity.'
I agree with you, particularly on the bit about media dissemination. Why aren't the wealthy African-Americans (Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby etc) and ideologically supportive governments (South Africa) getting together to fund this?
I don't think these wealthy AA's are aware of this info and some of them would prob think stuff that is posted on this board is afro-centric nuttiness. The S. African gov't is morally bankrupt and a disgrace so good luck with them on that. They couldn't even intervene to help the 11 million zambians being oppressed, brutalized and killed by Mugabe or the worse fate that was befalling the darfuris and south sudanese.
Hawass' views aren't determined by the $ he's getting from western orgs as they would give him $ regardless because he controls access to the anitquities. His views are common in egypt and he's just another fool brainwashed by racist scholarship and ideology of the 19th and 20th century. Also, maybe deep down inside he feels bad because he looks at AE's depiction of themselves and cannot see his reflection, hahahaaa.
Posts: 214 | Registered: Oct 2011
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Back to Hawass: Hawass: I believe that those people settled in the Nile Valley since the old Stone Age, more than 100,000 B.C. and they settled by the Nile. Those people when they went to the desert to hunt animals and to make their own tools and to invent fire and they really always come to the Nile. Then they looked at the Nile and they used this source to make their civilization. And if you look at their religious belief it's unique. From the predynastic period they found out for a king to become a God he has to do certain things in his life: build a tomb, temples for the worship of the Gods, smiting the enemies of Egypt, unification of the two lands, giving offering to the Gods; if you do that you will become a God. And therefore I say all the time that pyramids built Egypt. Because building the tombs made the Egyptians to create technology and astronomy and architecture.
then he contradicts himself:
Hawass: I really do not believe that Egypt is an African civilization. I believe that Egyptian civilization was unique. Egypt is in Africa but Egyptian civilization has nothing to do with the African cultures. Because of many, many, many features if you look at the Pharonic period it's completely different from anything. If you look at the production or the technology that the Egyptians left it's completely different from any belief at any time. If you look at the Egyptian from the Anthropological point of view they are different from the African. And this is why I believe that Pharonic Egypt is completely unique, they have no connection with the African..
SO let's see.. they have no connection with African cultures, yet they somehow came from "somewhere" and "settled in the Nile Valley" with tools, and cultural practices of the surrounding areas.. Yet they have "no connection".. Nice.. And this guy is supposed to have a PhD?
And here is what credible scientists have to say about "those people":
QUOTE(s): Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508 "A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty." "It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)
Egyptian dynastic civilization based from the 'darker' south (Upper Egypt) not the north (Lower Egypt)
QUOTE(s): "While not attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egyptologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of Lower Egypt ever existed."
"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.": The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." (Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
Egyptian state founded from the south, and indigenous in character. Egyptians dominated Palestine in some eras.
"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."
"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millenium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character." (Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt.
Contact between northern Egypt and Palestine was overland, as evidence in northern Sinai demonstrates.. Israeli archealogists suggest that this evidence represents a commercial network established and controlled by the Egyptians as early as EBA Ia, and that this network was a major factor in the rise of the urban settlements found later in Palestine EBA II. Naomi Porat's technological study of ceramics from EBA sites in southern Palestine clearly demonstrates that in EBA Ib strata many of the pottery vessels used for food preparation were probably manufactured by Egyptian potters using Egyptian technology but local Palestinian clays. In EBA Ib strata there are also many storage jars made from Nile silt and marl wares, which must have been imported from Egypt. Not only did the Egyptians establish camps and way stations in northern Sinai, but the ceramic evidence also suggests that they established a highly organized network of settlements in southern Palestine where an Egyptian population was in residence." (Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
Much older scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.
--Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973). Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
--Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
--Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
--Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
--Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
--Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
--Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959)
--Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
--Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
--Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.
[QUOTE:]
"The evidence also points to linkages to other northeast African peoples, not coincidentally approximating the modern range of languages closely related to Egyptian in the Afro-Asiatic group (formerly called Hamito-Semetic). These linguistic similarities place ancient Egyptian in a close relationship with languages spoken today as far west as Chad, and as far south as Somalia. Archaeological evidence also strongly supports an African origin. A widespread northeastern African cultural assemblage, including distinctive multiple barbed harpoons and pottery decorated with dotted wavy line patterns, appears during the early Neolithic (also known as the Aqualithic, a reference to the mild climate of the Sahara at this time). Saharan and Sudanese rock art from this time resembles early Egyptian iconography. Strong connections between Nubian (Sudanese) and Egyptian material culture continue in later Neolithic Badarian culture of Upper Egypt. Similarities include black-topped wares, vessels with characteristic ripple-burnished surfaces, a special tulip-shaped vessel with incised and white-filled decoration, palettes, and harpoons...
Other ancient Egyptian practices show strong similarities to modern African cultures including divine kingship, the use of headrests, body art, circumcision, and male coming-of-age rituals, all suggesting an African substratum or foundation for Egyptian civilization.."
-- Source: Donald Redford (2001) The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, Volume 3. Oxford University Press. p.28
Sorry Hawass- "those people" will not go away.. That last bit quoted is by conservative Egyptologist Donald Redford who has worked frequently with Hawass over the years...
Hawass sez: "Egyptian civilization has nothing to do with the African cultures."
Yet conservative mainstream the Egyptologists he works with show the opposite... Can any one say Hawass is full of BS? I knew you could.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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Keita does view dynastic Egyptians as a mixed group (meaning composing partly of Eurasians), although I'm not sure about a discrepancy when it comes to how Keita is portrayed by ES residents, and what his actual interpretations are, as most people here acknowledge this partly Eurasian componant.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Thanks for the article. It appears to have been written by a J.D. Walker--not Keita.
I have read that Keita's birth name is Jon Derryll Walker. Keita is African-American and changed his given name to an African one.
This article was also attributed to Keita by Richard Poe the author of Black Spark, White Fire: Did African Explorer's Civilize Ancient Europe?.
quote:It would appear that my interpretation of Keita's views on the Egyptian population suggest that he sees this population as mixed.
Given his ideas about the mixed nature of the Egyptian population it would appear that when people use his work to imply that the Egyptians were Black, they may be misusing Keita's work.
My question is: Why do people use Keita to imply the Egyptians were Black, when he sees the Egyptians as a mixed group?
When Keita speaks of mixture he is talking about people from different regions of Africa and some from the Near East who immigrated to the Nile Valley. He notes that these people had a range of physical characteristics. He is not talking about racial admixture.
A review of studies covering the biological relationship of the ancient Egyptians was undertaken. An overview of the data from the studies suggests that the major biological affinities of early southern Egyptians lay with tropical Africans. The range of indigenous tropical African phenotypes is great; and this range of variation must be considered in any discussion of the Nile Valley peoples. The early southern Egyptians belonged primarily to an African descent group which gained some Near Eastern affinity through gene flow with the passage of time.Posts: 647 | From: Atlanta | Registered: Jan 2009
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Giving donations to cultural projects is far, far, far easier for South Africa to do than dealing with foreign policy issues. All they have to do is provide money. Kind of like the new library I saw they were funding in Timbuktu.
Posts: 838 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2011
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Zahi Hawass said: look at the features of the people, the Black, in Egypt today. Their nose, their lips is completely different from the Negro.
So Hawass admits the Egyptians were black, but they just weren't "negro" as in "true negro". So I take it then that these were fake negroes or rather black caucasians! LOL
quote:Deceptive bleatings of an obsolete dinosaur...
Indeed. He and his muktaba Arab ilk have nowhere left to run. For centuries they and their white Euro-masters have laid claim to the ancient African culture that was Kemet while the real black descendants languish under Arab Islamic rule. But the truth cannot be suppressed.
^ The above is only the beginning. No wonder Hawass and his ilk want to keep the genetic information of the pharaohs top secret!! Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by claus3600: @africurious
quote:
.
Mugabe is the leader of Zimbabwe.
Giving donations to cultural projects is far, far, far easier for South Africa to do than dealing with foreign policy issues. All they have to do is provide money. Kind of like the new library I saw they were funding in Timbuktu.
Right, I meant to write Zimbabwe.
It's good that they funded that library in Timbuktu.
Posts: 214 | Registered: Oct 2011
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That's crazy talk. There is no shred of evidence of the Royals, Nobility and Sutens being nothing but native Egyptians, even the priests were native to the Nile Valley.
quote:Originally posted by asante:
So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
The whole claim that the elite may have different origins from the main populace is a cop-out to say the least. In fact it sounds like the 'Dynastic Race' theory to me. This reminds me of our old troll professor Hammered when he used examples in historical Europe where royal families of one nation may originate from other nations. However, the main point is that all the royals were still white Europeans! The corollary that Egyptian royals would still be black Africans should hold true.
We even have evidence showing that early predynastic elite actually were of Nubian origin.
T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt" American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4) A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt.
By other cranial studies, we know that later on Upper Egyptian and then Lower Egyptians became prominent in royal dynasties with influxes of Nubians every now and then like among the 11th, 12th, 17th and early 18th dynasties.
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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@Djehuti, when we consider that the Kongo-Saharan language family probably originates in the Nile Valley as according to Welmers, the "Nubians" are the same people as the stock by which the Bantu derived and the recent findings makes sense.
Wm. E. Welmers, a linguist, in his 1971 article "Niger-Congo, Mande" gives a probable origin of the whole Niger-Congo language family in the Sudan (pp. 119-120).
quote:
By way of conclusion to this general overview of the Mande languages, a bit of judicious speculation about Mande origins and migrations may not be out of order. It has already been stated that the Mande languages clearly represent the earliest offshoot from the parent Niger-Congo stock—not counting Kordofanian, which Greenberg considers parallel to all of the Niger-Congo, forming a Niger-Kordofanian macrofamily. An original Niger-Congo homeland in the general vicinity of the upper Nile valley is probably as good a hypothesis as any. From such a homeland, a westward Mande migration may have begun well over 5000 years ago. Perhaps the earliest division within this group resulted in the isolation of what is now represented only by Bobo-fing. Somewhat later— perhaps 3500 to 4500 years ago, and possibly from a new homeland around northern Dahomey [now Benin]— the ancestors of the present Northern-western Mande peoples began pushing farther west, ultimately reaching their present homeland in the grasslands and forests of West Africa. This was followed by a gradual spread of the Southern-Eastern division, culminating perhaps 2000 years ago in the separation of its two branches and the ultimate movement of Southern Mande peoples southeast and westward until Mano and Kpelle, long separated, became once more contiguous.
Proto-Bantu is older than the Egyptian language (Bilolo 2010). The Bantu languages is just a branch of Kongo-Saharan that preserved well the old Kongo-Saharan noun-class system. This system is detectable in Egyptian, and as I've said a hundred times already, the Egyptians called themselves Bantus (rmT = Luntu, Rumtu, [Coptic/Tshiluba Lomi, Romi]. They wouldn't call themselves Bantu {Egyptian wntu, Kiswahili Watu/Wantu b>w)/Rumtu if they weren't a Bantu speaking people.
As the book Black Genesis has confirmed, part of the elite actually derived from Chad and it is here where some linguists argue that the branch of Niger-Congo actually originated. The Bantu either originated in Chad or in the Sudan with some spreading up the nile, and the majority spreading out southward in all directions.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
Asar I asked folks here in two different threads to review what Diop said long ago that the Kemities made use of Bantu prefixes and given the new findings it makes sense.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
We are very lucky to have Asar and Wally, these Egyptologists have finally discovered that Egyptian was a lingua franca.
This finding allows us to view the Egyptian language in a different way. Linguists can now study Egyptian and detail what languages were spoken in Egypt when egyptian was invented as a lingua franca.
Their research allows us to recognize that Egypt was a Pan-African civilization, beause many Egyptians after the fall of Egypt went to other parts of Africa East, West and South, and developed new polities that continued to practice some cultural elements made obvious in ancient Egypt. Seeing Egypt as a Pan-African civilization allows us to understand why vestages of egyptian civilization are recognized in the cultures of many African nationalities.
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-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I appreciate it Dr. Winters. As I stated in the Bantu Is A Language thread in the Ancient Egypt forum:
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: Exactly. The people making objections to a relatedness to Bantu don't study Bantu languages. Diop, Obenga and Bilolo have argued the Egyptian to be a Bantu language where major features became non-operational. I think Dr. Rkhty Amen (Linguist and Egyptologist) argues the same thing.
As Robert Blench states in his paper New Developments in the Classification of Bantu Languages and their Historical Implications, quoting Greenberg (1963:35), “Supposedly transitional languages are really Bantu.” In other words, many languages without the features of Bantu are in fact genetically affiliated with Bantu.”
Blench mentions afterwards that Greenberg’s view remained “exiguous” at the time of publication. However, through a process of reexamination he states that,
quote:Within this perspective, “Bantu” can no longer be defined by topological characteristics – Bantoid languages may or may not share the features of narrow bantu, This is essentially the interpretation of GREENSBERG’s somewhat casual remark about transitional languages.
The proponents against a Mdw Ntr – Bantu affiliation assume that in order for the Egyptian language to relate, it has to possess a developed noun class system. As we all know now, this is not the case. The reason you don't see a full-out noun class system, just traces, is because Egyptian was a lingua franca and by nature lingua francas do not possess full noun and verbal systems as the original languages.
It is high time people reevaluate what they think they know about African languages.
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: I said in the dreaded Bantu thread that language folks should review Diop's statement that the Kemites made use of Bantu prefixes,and I agree one family in one dynasty does not make all the ancient Kemites Bantu,but if words like hbny kemetian = ebony Nilo Saharan and both Bantus and Nilo Saharan shared the same location on the Great Lakes I don't know why people remains overly skeptical.
We have to understand that languages that become a pigeon or lingua franca loses many of its features. The Kongo-Saharan noun class system is still detectible in Egyptian, but it is severely reduced and not as productive as a modern Bantu language. But as noted by Blench, a Bantu/Bantoid language doesn't need all of the features to be considered a Bantu language. Even Diop considered, in many respects, Wolof to be Bantu. Obenga was/is on the right track in calling for a reevaluation of the Egyptian language and how we categorize African language families.
We should keep this in mind, however, that there are some pigeon/lingua francas in Africa that maintain full noun-class features. That is because the communities are still surrounded by Bantu speaking people. This wouldn't be the case in Ancient Egypt. So just like Sumerian, it would reduce this feature severely in order to communicate with all of the different language groups. Another clue that this was a lingua franca is that there isn't that many words in the Egyptian language.
James P. Allen in his book The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005: 13) reaffirms this notion when he states that, “Egyptian [the language] is rich in allegory and metaphor, but relatively poor in vocabulary.” If you check out my article on Htp (Hotep) you will see that Egyptian has dozens of variations of the same words in its lexicon. For me this is evidence of many language groups in the area and dialectical variations.
posted
Here is something that might interest others. Here Ehret makes the claim that Diop, in his comparisons, was unaware of exact sound correspondences between Wolof and Egyptian.
posted
^ That Niger-Congo shares a distant yet common origin with Nilo-Saharan is not new. Why this is even shown among the Kordofanian branch of Niger-Congo which holds the most archaic features yet is close to archaic Nilo-Saharan. However, let's be clear what Keita has pointed out and that we shouldn't confuse ethnogenesis with bio-genesis. What you speak of are language phyla and not actual populations. I think it is wrong to say that Niger-Congo itself originated in the Nile Valley when it is much more valid to say its roots lie in the Saharan region between both the Nile Valley and the Niger Valley.
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
But what you're failing to realize is that with language comes culture. I stated in my reply that Niger-Congo could have started anywhere between Chad and the Nile Valley. With that said, not all of the people move: certain families move while others stay. Those cultural elements are still present in the areas for which they began.
When I do my comparisons between Ancient Egypt, Yoruba and the Kongo (sometimes Zulu), I don't look for simple "commonalities." I look for exactitudes to remove all doubt. For instance, when you look at the crowns the Yoruba kings wear, they are of the exact same styles as the "white crowns" from Upper Egypt. Not only are they the same style, they have the same name: Egypt hD.t, Yoruba ade "crown." Words in Egyptian that begin with h- yield zero in the C1 (first consonant) position, and feminine was dropped by New Kingdom times but written for traditions sake (kind of like how we keep the /k/ in the word "know" but don't pronounce it). It's one thing to have the same word for "crown" in your language, but it's another thing completely for them to be the same style as well. This isn't the result of some proto-history common ancestry. If it was, everyone who had a kingdom along the Savannah belt would have these crowns and they'd all be the same name.
I am working on a book now where I demonstrate conclusively that what we know as the major aspects of Egyptian cosmology and religion is in fact Bantu-Philosophy and culture par excellance! These features came out of central Kongo/Uganda/Sudan and moved up the Nile (even to Sumeria: Campbell-Dunn argues for a Kongo origins to the Sumerian language a little earlier than 3000 BCE).
Language is not independent from people and where ever people move, language and culture moves with them. These are the things I painstakingly bring out in my work. My most recent example can be found here in regards to the god Wsr (Osiris), the God Esu and the wAs "scepter" (ashe in Yoruba): http://www.asarimhotep.com/documentdownloads/originsoftheconceptofashe.pdfPosts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: That's crazy talk. There is no shred of evidence of the Royals, Nobility and Sutens being nothing but native Egyptians, even the priests were native to the Nile Valley.
quote:Originally posted by asante:
So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Hey im not saying they had different origins as in they came from Asia or European, im saying different African origins as in different ethnic groups now if the test on the amarna mummies is true there could be some truth to this
posted
I don't see a problem with the above assertion. It is my belief, based on certain evidence and common cultural traits in similar situations across Africa, that the polity of Egypt started off as a confederacy. What often happens in a confederacy is that the recognized groups alter leadership when one dies or a particular line dies out. Sometimes it's after a given time. When one dies, then someone from the next group in line takes the leadership position. This is done in Nigeria with 3 clans who live in the same area.
All three lineages claim descent from the renowned king Oduduwa. They share the leadership of the confederation and when one dies, the elders from the community next in line picks the new leader and it keeps going like that. Where the ethnic groups are not immediately related like in this case , but still under the confederacy, one could see how the scenario in which different ethnic groups could hold royal positions at different times.
As we know different groups occupied the thrown at different times. They may have had this practice in play, but there were no documents (or they were destroyed) that record the formal procedures. One has to wonder how would a "dynasty" begin and end if this wasn't the case? If it was based off of one bloodline then all the Egyptian Pharaohs would be blood kin.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
You had various Nubians AKA Northern Sudanese take the throne, the people from Kush in Southern Sudan, and Lybians/Berbers. But again these people were all from the General Area as far as I know, though it could very well be possible that Central/ West/ East Africans from far distances managed to come and settle in the Nile Valley and contribute to the Royalty and Nobility.
quote:Originally posted by asante:
quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: That's crazy talk. There is no shred of evidence of the Royals, Nobility and Sutens being nothing but native Egyptians, even the priests were native to the Nile Valley.
quote:Originally posted by asante:
So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Hey im not saying they had different origins as in they came from Asia or European, im saying different African origins as in different ethnic groups now if the test on the amarna mummies is true there could be some truth to this
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
Do you propose A. Egyptian as the ancestor to Yoruba or vice versa??
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: I don't see a problem with the above assertion. It is my belief, based on certain evidence and common cultural traits in similar situations across Africa, that the polity of Egypt started off as a confederacy. What often happens in a confederacy is that the recognized groups alter leadership when one dies or a particular line dies out. Sometimes it's after a given time. When one dies, then someone from the next group in line takes the leadership position. This is done in Nigeria with 3 clans who live in the same area.
All three lineages claim descent from the renowned king Oduduwa. They share the leadership of the confederation and when one dies, the elders from the community next in line picks the new leader and it keeps going like that. Where the ethnic groups are not immediately related like in this case , but still under the confederacy, one could see how the scenario in which different ethnic groups could hold royal positions at different times.
As we know different groups occupied the thrown at different times. They may have had this practice in play, but there were no documents (or they were destroyed) that record the formal procedures. One has to wonder how would a "dynasty" begin and end if this wasn't the case? If it was based off of one bloodline then all the Egyptian Pharaohs would be blood kin.
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
No, I think the Yoruba or major branches of the Yoruba originated in the Sudan/Chad area. I believe that many of the cultural features of Egypt originated with their group in the Sudan. You should remember that the Yoruba is not a homogenetic people either. They too are an amalgam of various different African people in the area (some from Benin, some from Oyo, even some from Modern-Day Ghana). This notion of static identity does not fit well in African societies. Some of the same people who branched off from Sudan, where some of these Yoruba originated, went on and settled in other areas and have different identities. I think Diop did an excellent analysis of clan names and family names present among the Wolof in Senegal and various people with these same names still in Sudan. So I believe they were present in the Nile Valley in the real Ethiopia and was part of the founding tradition of Egypt. I am finding too many parallels that cannot be chalked up to a "common origin in the Sahara" as an explanation.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: But what you're failing to realize is that with language comes culture. I stated in my reply that Niger-Congo could have started anywhere between Chad and the Nile Valley. With that said, not all of the people move: certain families move while others stay. Those cultural elements are still present in the areas for which they began.
When I do my comparisons between Ancient Egypt, Yoruba and the Kongo (sometimes Zulu), I don't look for simple "commonalities." I look for exactitudes to remove all doubt. For instance, when you look at the crowns the Yoruba kings wear, they are of the exact same styles as the "white crowns" from Upper Egypt. Not only are they the same style, they have the same name: Egypt hD.t, Yoruba ade "crown." Words in Egyptian that begin with h- yield zero in the C1 (first consonant) position, and feminine was dropped by New Kingdom times but written for traditions sake (kind of like how we keep the /k/ in the word "know" but don't pronounce it). It's one thing to have the same word for "crown" in your language, but it's another thing completely for them to be the same style as well. This isn't the result of some proto-history common ancestry. If it was, everyone who had a kingdom along the Savannah belt would have these crowns and they'd all be the same name.
I am working on a book now where I demonstrate conclusively that what we know as the major aspects of Egyptian cosmology and religion is in fact Bantu-Philosophy and culture par excellance! These features came out of central Kongo/Uganda/Sudan and moved up the Nile (even to Sumeria: Campbell-Dunn argues for a Kongo origins to the Sumerian language a little earlier than 3000 BCE).
Language is not independent from people and where ever people move, language and culture moves with them. These are the things I painstakingly bring out in my work. My most recent example can be found here in regards to the god Wsr (Osiris), the God Esu and the wAs "scepter" (ashe in Yoruba): http://www.asarimhotep.com/documentdownloads/originsoftheconceptofashe.pdf
Dr Zahi Hawass has stated that the royal mummies will not give us important evidence about the people because the majority of the Egyptians were common people, The royal family and officials maybe represent 20% of the population and in my opinion the non royal mummies could be very important project for us to understand alot of things about the ancient Egyptians.
So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Evergreen Writes: The graph you are displaying is representative of one ancient egyptian royal family at one point in time, not all ancient egyptians or ancient egyptian royals. Why do you believe the royals and officials have different origins from the common egyptians?
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Morpheus: Shomarka Keita - The skin from one mummy cannot be generalized.
Evergreen Writes: This is true, though there has been extensive analysis of AE limb attenuation which indicates tropical adaptation and hence tropically adapted melanin intensification akin to other tropical Africans.
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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Shomarka Keita - I think that if one modelled gene flow into Egypt over thousands of years that the model would indicate a change in biology in an average sense, but there was always likely a cline in Egypt.
Evergreen Writes:
Hmmm, I wonder what the basis is to this claim? Is he talking about a cranial, genetic or melanin cline? I doubt this.
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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Keita does view dynastic Egyptians as a mixed group (meaning composing partly of Eurasians), although I'm not sure about a discrepancy when it comes to how Keita is portrayed by ES residents, and what his actual interpretations are, as most people here acknowledge this partly Eurasian componant.
Evergreen Writes:
I would agree and add that many of the "Eurasians" in the small pool of back migrants would have carried indigenous African genes and phenotypes back into Africa given what we know about the Natufians.
The reason this topic is so sensitive with Afrocentrics is that older scholarship proposed models in which non-Africans created all the great civilizations of Africa through migrationism. We now know that genes and phenotypes flowed both ways and that ancient egyptians were primarily African just as ancient Greeks, with African gene flow, phenotypes, etc were still primarily European.
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: I think it is wrong to say that Niger-Congo itself originated in the Nile Valley when it is much more valid to say its roots lie in the Saharan region between both the Nile Valley and the Niger Valley.
Evergreen Writes: Why do you believe Niger-Congo originated in the Sahara? One of the oldest branchs of Niger-Congo, Kordofanian is found in the vicinity of the Nile. Likewise, y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a seems to have derived in NE Africa and spread to west Africa from there. It is possible that proto-Niger-Congo spread west from the Blue/White Nile area with E1b1a carrying males.
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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Dr Zahi Hawass has stated that the royal mummies will not give us important evidence about the people because the majority of the Egyptians were common people, The royal family and officials maybe represent 20% of the population and in my opinion the non royal mummies could be very important project for us to understand alot of things about the ancient Egyptians.
So maybe the Pharaohs and higher officials had different origins to the common Egyptians?
Evergreen Writes: The graph you are displaying is representative of one ancient egyptian royal family at one point in time, not all ancient egyptians or ancient egyptian royals. Why do you believe the royals and officials have different origins from the common egyptians?
I was referring to this family/dynasty not every single Egyptian dynasty
Posts: 1064 | Registered: Jan 2011
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quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: But what you're failing to realize is that with language comes culture. I stated in my reply that Niger-Congo could have started anywhere between Chad and the Nile Valley. With that said, not all of the people move: certain families move while others stay. Those cultural elements are still present in the areas for which they began.
Correction. Language is just one aspect of culture though a crucial one. Another aspect is material culture such as pottery, clothing etc, and then there are ritual patterns and customs. There are many cases of populations adopting the language of other peoples along with a few other aspects of culture but the rest of the culture could be fully intact.
Furthermore all these cultural aspects are all independent of the biology of the populace. You can have a people adopt the language and culture of another without biological or genetic influence from intermarriage etc.
quote:When I do my comparisons between Ancient Egypt, Yoruba and the Kongo (sometimes Zulu), I don't look for simple "commonalities." I look for exactitude to remove all doubt. For instance, when you look at the crowns the Yoruba kings wear, they are of the exact same styles as the "white crowns" from Upper Egypt. Not only are they the same style, they have the same name: Egypt hD.t, Yoruba ade "crown." Words in Egyptian that begin with h- yield zero in the C1 (first consonant) position, and feminine was dropped by New Kingdom times but written for traditions sake (kind of like how we keep the /k/ in the word "know" but don't pronounce it). It's one thing to have the same word for "crown" in your language, but it's another thing completely for them to be the same style as well. This isn't the result of some proto-history common ancestry. If it was, everyone who had a kingdom along the Savannah belt would have these crowns and they'd all be the same name.
Egyptian 'crowns' or headdresses like many African headdresses are symbolic. When you say they are of the exact same styles, what is the basis of your claim? I mean do you know if the symbolism of the Egyptian white crown or hedjet is the same as that of the Yoruba kings? Also the root word hedj in hedjet means WHITE so your corollary with the Yoruba word 'ade' is already debunked. This is what I'm talking about. I'm not denying a common African even Saharan relation between West African cultures like Yoruba and east African cultures like Egypt, but one should be careful about exactitude especially in the case of language. Diop's demonstration with Wolof is more accurate than yours.
quote:I am working on a book now where I demonstrate conclusively that what we know as the major aspects of Egyptian cosmology and religion is in fact Bantu-Philosophy and culture par excellance! These features came out of central Kongo/Uganda/Sudan and moved up the Nile (even to Sumeria: Campbell-Dunn argues for a Kongo origins to the Sumerian language a little earlier than 3000 BCE).
Language is not independent from people and where ever people move, language and culture moves with them. These are the things I painstakingly bring out in my work. My most recent example can be found here in regards to the god Wsr (Osiris), the God Esu and the wAs "scepter" (ashe in Yoruba): http://www.asarimhotep.com/documentdownloads/originsoftheconceptofashe.pdf
And it is exactly this kind of sloppy scholarship that gets Africanist scholarship in trouble. The whole Bantu-Sumerian claim is as wacky as Clyde Winter's Mandingo-Sumerian-Dravidian claim. Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Evergreen wrote: Why do you believe Niger-Congo originated in the Sahara? One of the oldest branches of Niger-Congo, Kordofanian is found in the vicinity of the Nile. Likewise, y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a seems to have derived in NE Africa and spread to west Africa from there. It is possible that proto-Niger-Congo spread west from the Blue/White Nile area with E1b1a carrying males.
Like Keita I try to be careful about separating ethno-genesis via linguistics from bio-genesis. You are right that Kordofanian represents a remote branch that preserves many archaic features, but it's lone presence in the Nuba hills is not enough to warrant origins of the entire language phylum there. The genetic study of languages much like actual genetics in biology follows a center of gravity principle wherein the most likely point of origin of a language family is in the area of its greatest diversity. Unfortunately Kordofanian geographically is an outlier. Most of the languages spoken in the West are the Atlantic-Congo group and possibly Mande. Some north Volta languages also preserving archaic features and a few Atlantic languages. This then makes the origins somewhere between Sudan and Niger (if Holocene wet phase is taken into account). Proto-Niger-Congo itself is dated to around 8,000-10,000 BCE.
Last time I checked E1b1a E-V38 was derived from ancestral E1b1* in West Africa around 24,000-27,000 years BP. Unless you have new findings.
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote: Egyptian 'crowns' or headdresses like many African headdresses are symbolic. When you say they are of the exact same styles, what is the basis of your claim? I mean do you know if the symbolism of the Egyptian white crown or hedjet is the same as that of the Yoruba kings? Also the root word hedj in hedjet means WHITE so your corollary with the Yoruba word 'ade' is already debunked.
It is clear you 1) know nothing of Yoruba society and culture and 2) know nothing about linguistics. There is a homonym for the word "white" in Egyptian and it is not the same as the word for crown HD.t. If HD.t means "white," then what is the Egyptian word for "crown?" HD.t "white" is an adjective and is used to describe something. If HD.t was used to describe the crown then there would be two words involved, not one. Just like the word nfr HD.t "Beautiful crown" (Crown of Upper Egypt). The word nfr is used to describe an attribute of the crown. It's not used to say "beautiful" or "perfect WHITE." You have a lot to learn in this area and this is where you continually fall short. Unlike many of the posters on this forum, I know how to conduct research and know how to do my own comparative work. If you would have done the same you'd know that HD.t also means "plant and loaves" and this is a feminine variation on the root HD which could mean "damage, shatter" or "to sail away, go" AND it means "white, glow, beam, shine, etc." These are things you have to keep in mind when doing research: knowing roots and how to eliminate homonyms from analysis.
Secondly,
Here is the hD.t
Here is the so-called "White Crown" with the bird feathers on the side. When they have the feathers they are known as Atf.
Now here is a sample of the Yoruba crown.
Now notice how all 3 have the same shape, even to the point of the balled top. Also notice a slight change in style in regards to the bird feathers, but the bird essence is still present. Here is another so we don't go around thinking this is just one.
The Yoruba version is a modern variation of the ancient model. Egypt chose feathers, the Yoruba chose to place the whole bird. Again, based on sound correspondences and putative cognates between Yoruba and Egyptian, the word HD.t erroneously labelled "white crown" is simply a word for "crown" (Yoruba ade "crown, king").
Atf may derive from an old word for bird (reflex in Yoruba adaba "dove"; t>d, f>b) and is a symbol of the protection and the spirit of the mothers bestowed upon kings (more of this in my upcoming book).
Djehuty
quote:And it is exactly this kind of sloppy scholarship that gets Africanist scholarship in trouble. The whole Bantu-Sumerian claim is as wacky as Clyde Winter's Mandingo-Sumerian-Dravidian claim
If you are confident in your assertion, then falsify my findings. If it is psuedo-scholarship, then it should be easy for you to do. Take any claim from my article and let's debate it. Put your money where your mouth is.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote: Egyptian 'crowns' or headdresses like many African headdresses are symbolic. When you say they are of the exact same styles, what is the basis of your claim? I mean do you know if the symbolism of the Egyptian white crown or hedjet is the same as that of the Yoruba kings? Also the root word hedj in hedjet means WHITE so your corollary with the Yoruba word 'ade' is already debunked.
It is clear you 1) know nothing of Yoruba society and culture and 2) know nothing about linguistics. There is a homonym for the word "white" in Egyptian and it is not the same as the word for crown HD.t. If HD.t means "white," then what is the Egyptian word for "crown?" HD.t "white" is an adjective and is used to describe something. If HD.t was used to describe the crown then there would be two words involved, not one. Just like the word nfr HD.t "Beautiful crown" (Crown of Upper Egypt). The word nfr is used to describe an attribute of the crown. It's not used to say "beautiful" or "perfect WHITE." You have a lot to learn in this area and this is where you continually fall short. Unlike many of the posters on this forum, I know how to conduct research and know how to do my own comparative work. If you would have done the same you'd know that HD.t also means "plant and loaves" and this is a feminine variation on the root HD which could mean "damage, shatter" or "to sail away, go" AND it means "white, glow, beam, shine, etc." These are things you have to keep in mind when doing research: knowing roots and how to eliminate homonyms from analysis.
Secondly,
Here is the hD.t
Here is the so-called "White Crown" with the bird feathers on the side. When they have the feathers they are known as Atf.
Now here is a sample of the Yoruba crown.
Now notice how all 3 have the same shape, even to the point of the balled top. Also notice a slight change in style in regards to the bird feathers, but the bird essence is still present. Here is another so we don't go around thinking this is just one.
The Yoruba version is a modern variation of the ancient model. Egypt chose feathers, the Yoruba chose to place the whole bird. Again, based on sound correspondences and putative cognates between Yoruba and Egyptian, the word HD.t erroneously labelled "white crown" is simply a word for "crown" (Yoruba ade "crown, king").
Atf may derive from an old word for bird (reflex in Yoruba adaba "dove"; t>d, f>b) and is a symbol of the protection and the spirit of the mothers bestowed upon kings (more of this in my upcoming book).
Djehuty
quote:And it is exactly this kind of sloppy scholarship that gets Africanist scholarship in trouble. The whole Bantu-Sumerian claim is as wacky as Clyde Winter's Mandingo-Sumerian-Dravidian claim
If you are confident in your assertion, then falsify my findings. If it is psuedo-scholarship, then it should be easy for you to do. Take any claim from my article and let's debate it. Put your money where your mouth is.
I have enjoyed your post. As to your "debate" with Dhejuti, it will be a fruitless one. When one has knowledge backed up by tried research and another is armed with information based on half truths and foolish conjecture, the two will never come to some mutual understanding or point of enlightenment. Hence why I generally excuse myself from debates, they don't produce anything of any real worth. I think the saying "lead a horse to water" is applicable here.
Anyway, loved your article. I sent your PDF to a friend of mine from Zim, great piece.
Posts: 1296 | From: the planet | Registered: May 2011
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posted
^The cheer-leading is unnecessary. If you have knowledge then drop some. If not then I suggest you stay out of it like you usually do.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti:
quote:Evergreen wrote: Why do you believe Niger-Congo originated in the Sahara? One of the oldest branches of Niger-Congo, Kordofanian is found in the vicinity of the Nile. Likewise, y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a seems to have derived in NE Africa and spread to west Africa from there. It is possible that proto-Niger-Congo spread west from the Blue/White Nile area with E1b1a carrying males.
Like Keita I try to be careful about separating ethno-genesis via linguistics from bio-genesis. You are right that Kordofanian represents a remote branch that preserves many archaic features, but it's lone presence in the Nuba hills is not enough to warrant origins of the entire language phylum there. The genetic study of languages much like actual genetics in biology follows a center of gravity principle wherein the most likely point of origin of a language family is in the area of its greatest diversity. Unfortunately Kordofanian geographically is an outlier. Most of the languages spoken in the West are the Atlantic-Congo group and possibly Mande. Some north Volta languages also preserving archaic features and a few Atlantic languages. This then makes the origins somewhere between Sudan and Niger (if Holocene wet phase is taken into account). Proto-Niger-Congo itself is dated to around 8,000-10,000 BCE.
Last time I checked E1b1a E-V38 was derived from ancestral E1b1* in West Africa around 24,000-27,000 years BP. Unless you have new findings.
You have this a bit backwards Djehuti. Those findings from Cruciani et al places the origins of this E1b1* divergence in Eastern Africa.
My contribution from another thread:
quote: most data seems to suggest that West Africa was sparsely populated by the onset of the Neolithic era obviously suggesting that they'd migrated from somewhere further North, apparently Northwest Africa (proto-Fulani and Proto-Soninke presence here is already attested). Clyde seems to favor the proto-Mande as existing in the central Sahara and others entertain a Niger-kardofanian grouping suggesting affinities/ultimate origins in the Nile valley. I think populations, and therefore 3 of the main language phyla, likely diverged around 24 kya as can be inferred from Cruciani et al's dates for the divergence of haplogroup E1b1. Maybe there was some sort of refuge in east Africa around this time where people clustered to avoid volatile climates further north, or maybe the early populations of Africa were small and disparate to begin with (though reports conversely show a LACK of current diversity relative to what was present in the past).
Climate and archaeological data going back that far may reveal something interesting (or not).
And keep in mind that while you quote Keita correctly, he also mentions that the diversity principle doesn't apply when they contradict divergence times. That archaic features of the Niger-Congo phylum as found in the Kordofan is significant but you also seem to base this diversity rule on the rigidity of the Niger-Congo language phylum. If you agreed with Blench et al that Niger-Congo is an extension of Nilo-Saharan then you wouldn't see as much of a conflict in that regard. Regardless it is not unlikely that Niger-Congo could have emerged somewhere in the upper Nile valley OR the adjacent Sahara.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
I don't see what is so "Sloppy" about Imhotep's work. He is not as far as I know saying the Sumarians were Bantu just that the Bantu originated in the lower Nile/Chad Area and that this culture spread up the Nile to the Levant and to Sumaria.
This is no different than what the "Establishment" AKA White folks like Wendorf et al say when they say Egyptian Culture started off in The Sahara(Nabta Playa), You realize that Chad is in the Saharah. Bouval made a connection to Chad/Sudan as the origin of Egyptian culture in Black Genesis.
If it turns out that Bantu as a language group started off in the Chad/Sudan area than Imhotep will be right, and considering the Data from DNA tribes he might not be off at all.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti:
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: But what you're failing to realize is that with language comes culture. I stated in my reply that Niger-Congo could have started anywhere between Chad and the Nile Valley. With that said, not all of the people move: certain families move while others stay. Those cultural elements are still present in the areas for which they began.
Correction. Language is just one aspect of culture though a crucial one. Another aspect is material culture such as pottery, clothing etc, and then there are ritual patterns and customs. There are many cases of populations adopting the language of other peoples along with a few other aspects of culture but the rest of the culture could be fully intact.
Furthermore all these cultural aspects are all independent of the biology of the populace. You can have a people adopt the language and culture of another without biological or genetic influence from intermarriage etc.
quote:When I do my comparisons between Ancient Egypt, Yoruba and the Kongo (sometimes Zulu), I don't look for simple "commonalities." I look for exactitude to remove all doubt. For instance, when you look at the crowns the Yoruba kings wear, they are of the exact same styles as the "white crowns" from Upper Egypt. Not only are they the same style, they have the same name: Egypt hD.t, Yoruba ade "crown." Words in Egyptian that begin with h- yield zero in the C1 (first consonant) position, and feminine was dropped by New Kingdom times but written for traditions sake (kind of like how we keep the /k/ in the word "know" but don't pronounce it). It's one thing to have the same word for "crown" in your language, but it's another thing completely for them to be the same style as well. This isn't the result of some proto-history common ancestry. If it was, everyone who had a kingdom along the Savannah belt would have these crowns and they'd all be the same name.
Egyptian 'crowns' or headdresses like many African headdresses are symbolic. When you say they are of the exact same styles, what is the basis of your claim? I mean do you know if the symbolism of the Egyptian white crown or hedjet is the same as that of the Yoruba kings? Also the root word hedj in hedjet means WHITE so your corollary with the Yoruba word 'ade' is already debunked. This is what I'm talking about. I'm not denying a common African even Saharan relation between West African cultures like Yoruba and east African cultures like Egypt, but one should be careful about exactitude especially in the case of language. Diop's demonstration with Wolof is more accurate than yours.
quote:I am working on a book now where I demonstrate conclusively that what we know as the major aspects of Egyptian cosmology and religion is in fact Bantu-Philosophy and culture par excellance! These features came out of central Kongo/Uganda/Sudan and moved up the Nile (even to Sumeria: Campbell-Dunn argues for a Kongo origins to the Sumerian language a little earlier than 3000 BCE).
Language is not independent from people and where ever people move, language and culture moves with them. These are the things I painstakingly bring out in my work. My most recent example can be found here in regards to the god Wsr (Osiris), the God Esu and the wAs "scepter" (ashe in Yoruba): http://www.asarimhotep.com/documentdownloads/originsoftheconceptofashe.pdf
And it is exactly this kind of sloppy scholarship that gets Africanist scholarship in trouble. The whole Bantu-Sumerian claim is as wacky as Clyde Winter's Mandingo-Sumerian-Dravidian claim.
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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Looks like some very fair and pointed observations from Dr. Keita.
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