All that tells us is that ancient Egyptians were not leukoderms which no one has ever claimed.
"Moving on to softer tissues than bone, one histological study on Egyptian mummies (Mekota and Vermehren 2005) noted in passing that the skin cells were packed with melanin (the pigment that determines human skin color) as expected for people “of Negroid [African] origin”, although they neither specified the exact density nor went into depth." - African Origin of the Ancient Egyptians (this is an essay Truthcentric wrote which I think he submitted to his university as a course module)
"Packed with melanin" is rather ambiguous. People at subtropical latitude have considerable levels of melanin, but are not dark brown/black.
They didn't simply say packed with melanin though. They said "as expected for specimens of Negroid origin", in other words the Ancient Egyptians were dark-skinned like Sub-Saharan African populations (dark brown to black).
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quote: Can you show a source saying ancient Egyptians were black/dark brown? This is not said in either classics or Egyptology.
One of the Egyptologists I've corresponded with: "by acknowledging that the ancient Egyptians were indeed by any reasonable modern definition black and its civilization distinctively African (as the evidence indicates), then it undermines the logic of racism."
A classicist:
"They probably looked different to West Africans and more like East Africans."
Another classicist:
In e-mail communication, I asked whether the Greeks saw the ancient Egyptians as a black population, and they replied:
"yes we think so."
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quote:I've always felt "Aethiopian" might have been used for the very darkest Africans, since it literally meant "burnt faces" (as if evoking burnt wood). For example, a Greek might have called this lady an "Aethiopian"
Can you gives us the exact morphemic etymology of the Greek word "Aethiop"? I doubt it means "black" at all. I strongly suspect it means persons who lived "South of Egypt".
Note that the Spanish "negro" and French "negre" are terms used broadly for the generic dark/brown pigmented African. In fact in most African ethnic groups "colours" range from very dark to brown/yellow, some more than others. And even more so in the U.S. where the traditional term "negro" referred to anyone with ostensible African ancestry.
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Can you show a source saying ancient Egyptians were black/dark brown? This is not said in either classics or Egyptology.
I don't think scholars from either discipline can say conclusively what skin color the Ancient Egyptians had. Egyptologists focus more on the culture of Ancient Egypt than the physical appearance of the people and Classicists are more focused on ancient Greece and Rome than Egypt altogether.
The study I cited is the most objective form of scientific evidence we have and it says that the Ancient Egyptians were as dark-skinned as Negroid (Sub-Saharan African) populations. The Ancient Egyptians' own artwork can give us clues to their appearance but even that is somewhat problematic as the art is often symbolic and stylized even with unrealistic skin colors. However some of the skin colors are clearly meant to be realistic and the most often depict the Ancient Egyptians with a dark skin tone.
Here are some observations from Anthropologists who have spoken to me on the subject.
Shomarka Keita
Email #1:
Without an analysis of histology of the skin and accurate portraits one cannot say exactly how they looked. We can only extrapolate by looking at the variability of the modern Egyptian with a focus on Upper Egypt, considering a predictive approach based on latitude, and imagining what they would have been like without the gene flow from the Near East ad Europe over thousands of years. This will help you conceptualise the variability of the Nile indigenous population.
My research cannot indicate skin color in any empirical sense. Body build has been known for some time, see the work of Sonia Zakrezewski's and others--it is tropical in the eariest formative times. In fact you should write everyone who has written on the biology of the Egyptians recently and pose your questions.
My advice is to think in evolutionary terms--but also accept that like the Roman empire that foreigners were absorbed into Egypt.
Email #2:
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.
Scott MacEachern
Two different issues here. First, I know Shomarka well, and I agree with his conclusions in this article. For me, though, I think that you're rather playing on Rushton's terrain if you accept his 3-race model in the first place: that's simply not a good way to capture human biological variability, whether expressed in somatic or genetic terms. You don't have to try and fit people into any sort of racial straitjacket to note that Egyptians have biological affinities with other African populations: their position along the Nile makes this quite expectable. You might also note that genetic research provides the same result: see for example the article that I have attached to this paper. But I think that any view of ancient Egypt that doesn't take into account both its contacts with other parts of Africa and with areas of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean do not do the culture justice. Egypt is Egypt precisely because it is both African and situated at a crossroad of continent.
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"one might reasonably say that the typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the modal colour in most of the country.”
quote: Without an analysis of histology of the skin and accurate portraits one cannot say exactly how they looked. We can only extrapolate by looking at the variability of the modern Egyptian with a focus on Upper Egypt, considering a predictive approach based on latitude, and imagining what they would have been like without the gene flow from the Near East ad Europe over thousands of years. This will help you conceptualise the variability of the Nile indigenous population.
quote:I don't think scholars from either discipline can say conclusively what skin color the Ancient Egyptians had.
Would that observation also apply to the Ancient Greeks and Romans? After all, both groups are practically at continental crossroads too.
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posted
I think it would have varied like it does for other black African populations.
In one of the e-mail conversations, a classicist used the term "darker". (We were talking about the casting for Exodus.)When I asked whether by "darker" they meant a skin tone that we would readily recognise as African, they replied: yes.
If there's ever a scientific investigation on the skin colour of the ancient Egyptians, I'm wondering whether even we might be surprised.
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I don't see any racism with those movie portrayals, they would be fine for Lower Egyptians at least.
SETI I
So you are saying any major Pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Will Smith, are not dark enough to be considered black in skin tone?
Mention any major pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Hollywood has consistantly portrayed them as much lighter than the paintings. That is racist
quote:Originally posted by lamin: A totally unintelligent response to the post in question. Given that North Indians are phenotypically close to neighbours such as Iranians, Afghans, North Pakistanis, etc., it is safe to conjecture that North Indians branched out from the same environmental node as the others mentioned. This would mean that they originally migrated from further North.
The Indus Valley civilization inhabitants would have been light - moderate brown like the ancient Egyptians, not black.
quote:Re the Aristotle citation: The logic of the quote seems to escape you. This was comparative colour analysis which stated that the best colour was the one between the the 2 extremes of black and white. I mean, how much blacker can you get than "black" itself. In fact the Greek word "melas" is strongest world in the Greek language for that colour.
Furthermore, Aristotle--or his note-taking student--could have made the same point if "Egyptian" was left out of the comparative observation. But the fact that it was included and placed side by side with "Ethiopian" meant that both Egyptian and Ethiopian(Nubian] were equally black. That is, both groups represented the "extremes of blackness" just as women represented the extremes of whiteness, according to Aristotle. Do you follow the logic here?
Both were considered dark relative to the Greeks, but that doesn't mean the Egyptians were black; only the Aethiopians were. Again to quote Snowden:
"In other words, to all these peoples--Ethiopians, Indians, Egyptians, and Moors--who were darker than the Greeks and Romans, classical authors applied color-words but it should be emphasized that in general the ancients described only one of these--Ethiopians--as unmistakably Negroid. To summarize this point, there is no justification to equate Egyptians, Moors or any other north Africans, with Ethiopians, even when a color-word is applied to them, unless details are given as to other physical traits such as color, hair, nose, or lips, or unless there is additional evidence to support an equivalence with Ethiopian."
quote: If not,then either of 2 things: either you are a low-IQ fool or someone so totally brainwashed in Eurocentric anthropology[ I mean , who the heck quotes a pseudoscientist like Baker?]that you are incapable of thinking freely, logically, and critically. [/QB]
Baker's book was published by Oxford University Press, and he worked in the Department of Zoology at Oxford. If he was a pseudo-scientist he wouldn't have worked there and published his research. His book Race appeared in 1974, but was written several years earlier. Its obviously now old (like Carleton Coon's books) and this has to be taken into account, since their approach to human biological variation is obsolete but the book is still useful. All the measurements Baker recorded for Egyptians skulls for example are accurate.
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quote:I don't think scholars from either discipline can say conclusively what skin color the Ancient Egyptians had.
Would that observation also apply to the Ancient Greeks and Romans? After all, both groups are practically at continental crossroads too.
The Greeks and Romans left plenty of literature describing their (average) complexion. The Egyptians left almost nothing, other than the Hymn to Aten:
"The Egyptian texts almost never mention the colour the skin in their descriptions [...] The 'Hymn to Aten' is just saying about races of mankind - that their skin is different without giving further clarifications." (Froment, 1991)
However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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quote:Originally posted by lamin: A totally unintelligent response to the post in question. Given that North Indians are phenotypically close to neighbours such as Iranians, Afghans, North Pakistanis, etc., it is safe to conjecture that North Indians branched out from the same environmental node as the others mentioned. This would mean that they originally migrated from further North.
The Indus Valley civilization inhabitants would have been light - moderate brown like the ancient Egyptians, not black.
Not black according to DEAD
Posts: 42935 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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So you are saying any major Pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Will Smith, are not dark enough to be considered black in skin tone?
Mention any major pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Hollywood has consistantly portrayed them as much lighter than the paintings. That is racist
. [/QB]
Excluding this debate about skin, why should Will Smith (or other male African-Americans) take those movie roles when their craniofacial features and hair texture poorly match the ancient Egyptians? Is that not then racism by the same standards?
If we go along with Egyptians = black, then only Somalis or some other Horner populations should take the roles, not African-Americans or West/Central Africans.
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quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: Dead sez
quote: Can you show a source saying ancient Egyptians were black/dark brown? This is not said in either classics or Egyptology.
One of the Egyptologists I've corresponded with: "by acknowledging that the ancient Egyptians were indeed by any reasonable modern definition black and its civilization distinctively African (as the evidence indicates), then it undermines the logic of racism."
A classicist:
"They probably looked different to West Africans and more like East Africans."
Another classicist:
In e-mail communication, I asked whether the Greeks saw the ancient Egyptians as a black population, and they replied:
"yes we think so."
They're all anonymous, and probably nobodies. And the first quote is nonsensical: "agree the Egyptians were black to stop racism!", has nothing to do with the evidence but politics.
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quote:I've always felt "Aethiopian" might have been used for the very darkest Africans, since it literally meant "burnt faces" (as if evoking burnt wood). For example, a Greek might have called this lady an "Aethiopian"
Can you gives us the exact morphemic etymology of the Greek word "Aethiop"? I doubt it means "black" at all. I strongly suspect it means persons who lived "South of Egypt".
Note that the Spanish "negro" and French "negre" are terms used broadly for the generic dark/brown pigmented African. In fact in most African ethnic groups "colours" range from very dark to brown/yellow, some more than others. And even more so in the U.S. where the traditional term "negro" referred to anyone with ostensible African ancestry.
It means burnt face: aithó (to burn) and ops (an eye, face).
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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The Greeks and Romans left plenty of literature describing their (average) complexion. The Egyptians left almost nothing, other than the Hymn to Aten:
"The Egyptian texts almost never mention the colour the skin in their descriptions [...] The 'Hymn to Aten' is just saying about races of mankind - that their skin is different without giving further clarifications." (Froment, 1991)
However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
^^^ This is a person described in the 17-18th century as "Black Complexion" , look it up John Macky, Memoirs of the secret services, 1733. You will find more of thes these sort of descriptions in the rest of the text as well as other European texts. So sometimes they would describe people who weren't super pale as "black complexioned" like the man above as well as much darker skinned Africans.
The term "black" is a social contruct which changes in different time periods and places
Dead says that although the Egyptians didn't talk about skin color categories because the Egyptians in some tomb painting scenes depicted themslves as brown and the Nubians as jet black that the term "black" means jet black, not brown of any sort.
So accordingly Will Smith and 90% of Africans are not black
another example: Nigerian man, lacking in blackness
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: Didn't Keita also suggest that:
"one might reasonably say that the typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the modal colour in most of the country.”
Yes, he said that to me as well. Note that in the second email I posted above Keita says that statement is an educated guess based on the likelihood that foreigners affected the genetic composition of Egypt. He also mentions craniofacial evidence and body build which are both relevant to the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians.
Here is another email:
Shomarka Keita
Question: What is your basis for stating that the Ancient Egyptian statuary is "Somali-like" in appearance?
Keita: Best way to think of this is in terms of parallelism or microconvergent evolution. Somali males are predominantly of E group lineages; African in origin. Look for yourself at the Egyptian statuary for the architecture of faces if you trust the statuary, and look at Greek or Roman statuary. Go over the faces point by point, of course there is variability, but look for a distillation. Look at faces of Oromo, a range of Nilotic folk etc, and you might be able to see what I mean.
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
The Greeks and Romans left plenty of literature describing their (average) complexion. The Egyptians left almost nothing, other than the Hymn to Aten:
"The Egyptian texts almost never mention the colour the skin in their descriptions [...] The 'Hymn to Aten' is just saying about races of mankind - that their skin is different without giving further clarifications." (Froment, 1991)
However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
Where in the Hymn to Aten do the Ancient Egyptians contrast their skin with Nubians? It just says that the people of the world vary in skin color, nothing about Egyptians and Nubians having different skin tones. In their art they make a contrast between reddish-brown Egyptians and jet-back Nubians but reddish-brown is consistent with many tropical African populations.
Again the best scientific evidence we have for their skin color is the histological analysis of their skin which indicates that they were as dark-skinned as Sub-Saharan African populations. There's also no reason to believe the depiction of the Ancient Egyptians as reddish-brown is symbolic when their ethnographic murals have realistic skin tones for other groups.
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quote:It means burnt face: aithó (to burn) and ops (an eye, face).
Your answer is amusing. If "Aethiop" means what you say it means that's even much weaker than "melas" or "melanchroes". A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
And Baker? So what if he published his nonsense text with Oxford University Press and actually taught there.
Many crackpots have published with Oxford University Press and have taught there too. The fact is that Baker's 1974 text is mainly speculative BS. The Oxford cachet means nothing when a work is confronted by serious intellectual eyes. Either it passes muster or it doesn't. Baker's work doesn't.
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Dead: Whether that's true might not even matter as much as you think. Revisit my earlier posts. Whatever deviations you find from the Wadi Sura types are exactly that: deviations. They are non-native additions to the earlier phenotypes that can be seen in the Wadi Sura caves. Also, in the predynastic, the "predynastic physical type" found at Naqada and types related to it, are found all over Egypt, including in the north. The way I see it, the sailors depicted on the predynastic linen Gebelein cloth exemplify what this predynastic type would have looked like, pigmentation wise.
I don't think they lightened by gene flow, but selection. Also I don't think the reddish glow was common across Africa, but unique to the Saharan desert. I could probably explain why in some detail in later post, but it is linked to heat tolerance. Paul Baker wrote a paper on it in a compendium I used to own, "The Biological Adaptation of Man to Hot Deserts". (1958) Am. Nat. 92:33 7-357, in Readings on Race (Garn ed. 1960).
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posted
Here are some observations from MacEachern on Baker's work as cited by Rushton:
He further (Rushton 2000: 142) makes use of John Baker's (1974) racist and unsystematic list of twenty-one 'criteria for civilization'- which begins to evaluate cultural advance by scoring the amount of clothing that people wear and ends with criteria like 'some appreciation of the fine arts' - in order to dismiss African and American cultural achievements.
Source: Africanist Archaeology and Ancient IQ: Racial Science and Cultural Evolution in the Twenty-First Century World Archaeology, Vol. 38, No. 1, Race, Racism and Archaeology (Mar., 2006), pp. 72-92
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quote:Originally posted by Morpheus: Here are some observations from MacEachern on Baker's work as cited by Rushton:
He further (Rushton 2000: 142) makes use of John Baker's (1974) racist and unsystematic list of twenty-one 'criteria for civilization'- which begins to evaluate cultural advance by scoring the amount of clothing that people wear and ends with criteria like 'some appreciation of the fine arts' - in order to dismiss African and American cultural achievements.
Source: Africanist Archaeology and Ancient IQ: Racial Science and Cultural Evolution in the Twenty-First Century World Archaeology, Vol. 38, No. 1, Race, Racism and Archaeology (Mar., 2006), pp. 72-92
I don't see a problem with the criteria. Northern Europeans had virtually none of them, so the accusations of racism are quite baseless, unless MacEachern is stating Baker is racist against whites too.
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quote:However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
A wrong and illogical interpretation of the Hyman to Aten. The hypothetical fact that the Hymn may have distinguished the two groups in terms of "skin"--granted your interpretation--does not mean that that the 2 groups may not be both black. Swedes, Rumanians, Spaniards, and French may differ slightly in shade but hey, they are all European white.
But reference is made not only to Kush but also to Khor("widow of Egypt"). Why not reference too the races of Asia known to the Egyptians?
The reference here to Kush and Khor( an area of Ancient Egypt)is made on the basis that they were kin to Egypt yet they spoke different languages and were also culturally different--in much the same way that Scotland and England are culturally different and spoke different traditional languages, and, in other words, different in their skin(persona and personality).
The point is that "different in their skin" could mean a number of things in terms of interpretation.
And Akhenaten, the hymn writer, and his immediate family as in the case of his daughters could fit right into some West African area.
Trick question: what is the colour of those Amarna princesses, Akhenaten's daughters? Congo colour, Sudan colour, Nigeria colour, Mali colour, Kenya colour, South African colour, etc? 20 points if you get it right. Now don't play brain dead and live up to your moniker.
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I don't see a problem with the criteria. Northern Europeans had virtually none of them, so the accusations of racism are quite baseless, unless MacEachern is stating Baker is racist against whites too.
According to Rushton Baker's aim in Race (1974) was to find out which races had originated civilization by studying modern people and seeing if they fit the criteria for civilization.
Here is the full list of criteria from Race, Evolution and Behavior p. 142:
TABLE 6.11 Criteria for Civilization
1. In the ordinary circumstances of life in public places, they cover the greater part of the trunk with clothes.
2. They keep the body clean and take care to dispose of its waste products.
3. They do not practice severe mutilation or deformation of the body, except for medical reasons.
4. They have knowledge of building in brick or stone, if the necessary materials are available in their territory.
5. Many of them live in towns or cities, which are linked by roads.
6. They cultivate food plants.
7. They domesticate animals and use some of the larger ones for transport (or have in the past so used them), if suitable species are available.
8. They have knowledge of the use of metals, if these are available.
9. They use wheels.
10. They exchange property by the use of money.
11. They order their society by a system of laws, which are enforced in such a way that they ordinarily go about their various concerns in times of peace without danger of attack or arbitrary arrest.
12. They permit accused persons to defend themselves and to bring witnesses for their defense.
13 They do not use torture to extract information or for punishment.
14. They do not practice cannibalism.
15. Their religious systems include ethical elements and are not purely or grossly superstitious.
16. They use a script (not simply a succession of pictures) to communicate ideas.
17. There is some facility in the abstract use of numbers, without consideration of actual objects (or, in other words, at least a start has been made in mathematics).
18. A calendar is in use, accurate to within a few days in the year.
19. Arrangements are made for the instruction of the young in intellectual subjects.
20. There is some appreciation of the fine arts.
21. Knowledge and understanding are valued as ends in themselves.
Note. Adapted from J. R. Baker ( 1 9 7 4 , pp. 5 0 7 - 5 0 8 ) . Copyright 1974 by J. R. Baker.
I can see why MacEachern considers the list to be racist and unsystematic. Baker clearly selected his criteria to exclude certain groups of people based on cultural customs or lack of cultural customs in order to denigrate certain groups (ex. #14, "Ha! Look at those savages eating people! They are clearly uncivilized!").
Yes, Northern Europeans before the Greco-Roman period would not fit many of these criteria but that is beside the point. Baker is trying to say that certain groups of people at the time of publication are uncivilized because of their lack of cultural development and ignores the state of Europe's ancient tribes.
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Dead: Whether that's true might not even matter as much as you think. Revisit my earlier posts. Whatever deviations you find from the Wadi Sura types are exactly that: deviations. They are non-native additions to the earlier phenotypes that can be seen in the Wadi Sura caves. Also, in the predynastic, the "predynastic physical type" found at Naqada and types related to it, are found all over Egypt, including in the north. The way I see it, the sailors depicted on the predynastic linen Gebelein cloth exemplify what this predynastic type would have looked like, pigmentation wise.
I don't think they lightened by gene flow, but selection. Also I don't think the reddish glow was common across Africa, but unique to the Saharan desert. I could probably explain why in some detail in later post, but it is linked to heat tolerance. Paul Baker wrote a paper on it in a compendium I used to own, "The Biological Adaptation of Man to Hot Deserts". (1958) Am. Nat. 92:33 7-357, in Readings on Race (Garn ed. 1960).
The field is much further now to warrant entertaining this sort of speculation. We now know that the R-V88 Y chromosome, among other lineages, entered Egypt from the north, ~7kya, which is at the same date that the Levantine domesticates entered Egypt and appear in the rock art record in north Africa, e.g. the Acacus and Jebel Quenat.
At this time, styles atypical of the earlier styles appear, and these come with "new" thin-looking figures, most of which were depicted with a mixture of brown and red pigments (reddish brown), or just brown. Together both pigments overlap with the full range of brown and brown-red pigments we're familiar with in pharaonic art. Said figures were, in contrast with the earlier styles, also usually depicted with neolithic features, indicating that these figures really do represent a break from the preceding status quo and that we're not dealing with just an artistic convention used by the earlier groups.
Pale figures also appear here and there in Libya, for the first time.
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quote:It means burnt face: aithó (to burn) and ops (an eye, face).
Your answer is amusing. If "Aethiop" means what you say it means that's even much weaker than "melas" or "melanchroes". A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
And Baker? So what if he published his nonsense text with Oxford University Press and actually taught there.
Many crackpots have published with Oxford University Press and have taught there too. The fact is that Baker's 1974 text is mainly speculative BS. The Oxford cachet means nothing when a work is confronted by serious intellectual eyes. Either it passes muster or it doesn't. Baker's work doesn't.
Aethiops derives from a Greco-Roman etiological myth which explains the origin of the dark brown skin of Sub-Saharan Africans: Phaethon burned the colour of the Sub-Saharan Africans, by scorching them while riding the sun chariot too close (so the peoples there became a 'burnt' complexion).
As Snowden's literature shows, the ancient Egyptians were never considered to be Aethiops, since their skin hue was not dark enough. Of course the Greeks and Romans still described the Egyptians to be darker than themselves, but they were not black.
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quote:A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
I see what you are saying, but the myth is literally saying these peoples were burnt as in scorched or put on fire, not a mere suntan.
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: According to Dead. there's actually no black people posting in this thread or elsewhere on Egyptsearch.
Either you resemble a piece of chacoal or you don't /close thared
Google football teams by country.
Nigerian:
Congo:
Ethiopian:
Eritrean:
These Sub-Saharan African populations are all shades of dark brown (black). North Africans however are not and are moderate - light brown.
Egypt:
Why is this so complicated?
Although the term "black" cannot be measured to an anthropoloical standard 99.99% of Americans and Brits would regard Will Smith as a black man. As we can see Will Simth is slightly lighter than this depiction of Ramesses, similar are depictions of just about any other Pharoah and thousands of other Egyptian artworks (not to mention, Ramesses as depicted in the movie Exodus much lighter still than artifacts of Ramesses)
So in order for your notion to work, you have to move the goal posts so Will Smith is not black
but you won't say it outloud because then your scam and name dropping falls apart
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posted
The DEAD fool does not want to acknowledge that after Egypt fell and after 3,000 years of an impressive civilisation the place was invaded by myriad ruffians and rapists from West Asia and then Greece and then Rome.
The gene pool was eventually rubbished and polluted by savage degenerates from West Asia and Turkey in the form of Islamic invaders. That's what that football photo of occupied Egypt shows--a place rotting and infected under the colonial language of Arabic and its barbaric camel, goat and tent religion of Islam.
And that's Egypt today: weak in sports and weak in intellect. Great Egypt has become a compost pit these days.
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quote:A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
I see what you are saying, but the myth is literally saying these peoples were burnt as in scorched or put on fire, not a mere suntan.
Not that I think this "he said, she said" sort of anecdotal stuff is admissible in serious discussions on ancient population affinity (although it is interesting from a subjective point of view), but what's ironic is that the Bible and other ancient texts in the wider region apply analogous terms to all the people you've claimed weren't thought of as having a 'burnt' appearance, INCLUDING North Indians. Aint that a trip? You should know better, with your biblical background.
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quote:Originally posted by Morpheus: TABLE 6.11 Criteria for Civilization
1. In the ordinary circumstances of life in public places, they cover the greater part of the trunk with clothes.
2. They keep the body clean and take care to dispose of its waste products.
3. They do not practice severe mutilation or deformation of the body, except for medical reasons.
4. They have knowledge of building in brick or stone, if the necessary materials are available in their territory.
5. Many of them live in towns or cities, which are linked by roads.
6. They cultivate food plants.
7. They domesticate animals and use some of the larger ones for transport (or have in the past so used them), if suitable species are available.
8. They have knowledge of the use of metals, if these are available.
9. They use wheels.
10. They exchange property by the use of money.
11. They order their society by a system of laws, which are enforced in such a way that they ordinarily go about their various concerns in times of peace without danger of attack or arbitrary arrest.
12. They permit accused persons to defend themselves and to bring witnesses for their defense.
13. They do not use torture to extract information or for punishment.
14. They do not practice cannibalism.
15. Their religious systems include ethical elements and are not purely or grossly superstitious.
16. They use a script (not simply a succession of pictures) to communicate ideas.
17. There is some facility in the abstract use of numbers, without consideration of actual objects (or, in other words, at least a start has been made in mathematics).
18. A calendar is in use, accurate to within a few days in the year.
19. Arrangements are made for the instruction of the young in intellectual subjects.
20. There is some appreciation of the fine arts.
21. Knowledge and understanding are valued as ends in themselves.
As an aside, I can name a leading political party in the US that would qualify as "uncivilized" by virtue of #13. Many of them wouldn't care much for #15 and #21 either. Posts: 7082 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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Cheikh Anta Diop argues that many Ancient Egyptians were Black Africans; the Greek debt to Egypt. Peter Myers, July 6, 2002; update September 12, 2005. My comments are shown {thus}. Write to me at contact.html.
The argument that Ancient Egypt was African deserves to be put.
Of course, there was also mixing with the Semitic-speaking peoples (the Akkadians, Phoenicians and Hyksos, the people of Babylonia and Assyria, and later the invading Arab armies) and with Indo-Europeans (elements of the Mitanni, Hyksos, Hittites and Sea Peoples; the invading Persian Empire, the Greeks that came in Alexander's wake; then the Romans).
(1) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization (2) G. K. Osei, a black American (3) DIODORUS OF SICILY (4) Herodotus Histories: the Egyptians (2.35-91) (5) Martin Bernal puts the case for African/Semitic influence on the formation of Greek culture and institutions (6) Cyrus H. Gordon on race-mixing in Egypt (7) Donald B. Redford enters the Afrocentrist debate
(1) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, edited and translated by Mercer Cook, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 1974.
The Great Sphinx had a negro head: diop1.jpg
King Narmer, long regarded as the first Pharaoh - with negro features: diop5.jpg
Pharaohs Zoser and Cheops: diop6-7.jpg
Pharaohs Mycerinus and Mentuhotep I: diop8-9.jpg
Pharaoh Sesostris I: diop10.jpg
Pharaohs Tuthmosis III and Taharqa: diop12-13.jpg
Egyptian women - note their wavy braided "Afro" hair: egypt-women.jpg
Another painting of Egyptian women - 18th Dynasty, c. 1400 B.C. - from The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson (The British Museum Press, London 1995; pocket edition 2002), p. 193: egypt-women-2.jpg
Egyptian women's braided wigs: diop25-6.jpg
I'm not trying to polemicise history, as Martin Bernal is in his Black Athena series. Bernal keeps accusing other scholars of "Anti-Semitism", making out that Jews are the saviors of the Black movement today. Yet he ignores the Jewish Bible's responsibility for giving Ancient Egypt - its Pharaohs, its religion, its achievements - a bad reputation. What else does "Exodus" mean, but escape from Pharaonic Egypt? The Jewish Bible's enmity towards Ancient Egypt was later taken up by Christians who stamped out the Egyptian religion, and Moslems who pillaged the pyramids.
Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, edited and translated by Mercer Cook, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 1974.
{p. 1} What Were the Egyptians?
In contemporary descriptions of the ancient Egyptians, this question is never raised. Eyewitnesses of that period formally affirm that the Egyptians were Blacks. On several occasions Herodotus insists on the Negro character of the Egyptians and even uses this for indirect demonstrations. For example, to prove that the flooding of the Nile cannot be caused by melting snow, he cites, among other reasons he deems valid, the following observation: "It is certain that the natives of the country are black with the heat. ..." {endnote 1: The History of Herododus, translated by George Rawlinson. New York. Tudor, 1928, p. 88.}
To demonstrate that the Greek oracle is of Egyptian origin, Herodotus advances another argument: "Lastly, by calling the dove black, they [the Dodonaeans] indicated that the woman was Egyptian. ..." {endnote 2: Ibid., p. 101.} The doves in question symbolize two Egyptian women allegedly kidnapped from Thebes to found the oracles of Dodona and Libya.
To show that the inhabitants of Colchis were of Egyptian origin and had to be considered a part of Sesostris' army who had settled in that region, Herodotus says: "The Egyptians said that they believed the Colchians to be descended from the army of Sesostris. My own conjectures were founded, first, on the fact that they are black-skinned and have woolly hair. ..." {endnote 3: Ibid., p. 115.} Finally, concerning the population of India, Herodotus distinguishes between the Padaeans and other Indians, describing them as follows: "They all also have the same tint of skin, which approaches that of the Ethiopians." {endnote 4: Ibid., p. 184.}
Diodorus of Sicily writes:
{quote} The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are one of their colonies which was brought into Egypt by Osiris. They even allege that this country was originally under water, but that the Nile, dragging much mud as it flowed from Ethiopia, had finally filled it in and made it a part of the continent. ... They add that from them, as from their authors and ancestors, the Egyptians get most of their laws. It is from them that the Egyptians have learned to honor
{p. 2} kings as gods and bury them with such pomp; sculpture and writing were invented by the Ethiopians. The Ethiopians cite evidence that they are more ancient than the Egyptians, but it is useless to report that here. {endquote} {endnote 5: Histoire universelle, translated by Abbe Terrasson. Paris, 1758, Bk. 3 p. 341.}
If the Egyptians and Ethiopians were not of the same race, Diodorus would have emphasized the impossibility of considering the former as a colony (i.e., a fraction) of the latter and the impossibility of viewing them as forebears of the Egyptians.
In his Geography, Strabo mentioned the importance of migrations in history and, believing that this particular migration had proceeded from Egypt to Ethiopia, remarks: "Egyptians settled Ethiopia and Colchis." {endnote 6: Bk. 1, Chap. 3, par. 10.} Once again, it is a Greek, despite his chauvinism, who informs us that the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Colchians belong to the same race, thereby confirming what Herodotus had said about the Colchians. {endnote 7: The Colchians formed a cluster of Negroes among white populations near the Black Sea ... }
The opinion of all the ancient writers on the Egyptian race is more or less summed up by Gaston Maspero (1846-1916): "By the almost unanimous testimony of ancient historians, they belonged to an African race [read: Negro] which first settled in Ethiopia, on the Middle Nile; following the course of the river, they gradually reached the sea. ... Moreover, the Bible states that Mesraim, son of Ham, brother of Chus (Kush) the Ethiopian, and of Canaan, came from Mesopotamia to settle with his children on the banks of the Nile." {endnote 8: Gaston Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient. Paris: Hachette, 1917, p. 15, 12th ed. (Translated as: The Dawn of Civilization. London, 1894; reprinted, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1968.)} ...
{p. 3} Besides, Herodotus was not a credulous historian who recorded everything without checking; he knew how to weigh things. When he relates an opinion that he does not share, he always takes care to note his disagreement. Thus, referring to the mores of the Scythians and Neurians, he writes apropos the latter: "It seems that these people are conjurers; for both the Scythi- ans and the Greeks who dwell in Scythia say that every Neurian once a year becomes a wolf for a few days, at the end of which time he is restored to his proper shape. Not that I believe this, but they constantly affirm it to be true, and are even ready to back up their assertion with an oath." {endnote 10: Herodotus, p. 236.}
He always distinguishes carefully between what he has seen and what he has been told. After his visit to the Labyrinth, he writes:
{quote} There are two different sorts of chambers throughout - half under ground, half above ground, the latter built upon the former; the whole number of these chambers is three thousand, fifteen hundred of each kind. The upper chambers I myself passed through and saw, and what I say concerning them is from my own observation; of the underground chambers I can only speak from report, for the keepers of the building could not be got to show them, since they contained, as they said, the sepulchers of the kings who built the Labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. Thus it is from hearsay only that I can speak of the lower chambers. The upper chambers, however, I saw with my own eyes and found them to excel all other human productions. {endquote} {endnote 11: Ibid., pp. 133-134.}
Was Herodotus a historian deprived of logic, unable to penetrate complex phenomena? On the contrary, his explanation of the inundations of the Nile reveals a rational mind seeking scientific reasons for natural phenomena:
{quote} Perhaps, after censuring all the opinions that have been put forward on this obscure subject, one ought to propose some theory of one's own. I will therefore proceed to explain what I think to be the reason of the Nile's swelling in the summertime. During the winter, the sun is driven out of his usual course by the storms, and removes to the upper parts of Libya. This is the whole secret in the fewest possible words; for it stands to reason that the coun-
{p. 4} try to which the Sun-god approaches the nearest, and which he passes most directly over, will be scantest of water, and that here streams which feed the rivers will shrink the most. To explain, however, more at length, the case is this. The sun, in his passage across the upper parts of Libya, affects them in the following way. As the air in these regions is constantly clear, and the country warm through the absence of cold winds, the sun in his passage across them acts upon them exactly as he is wont to act elsewhere in summer, when his path is in the middle of heaven - that is, he attracts the water. After attracting it, he again repels it into the upper regions, where the winds lay hold of it, scatter it, and reduce it into a vapor, whence it naturally enough comes to pass that the winds which blow from this quarter - the south and southwest - are of all winds the most rainy. And my own opinion is that the sun does not get rid of all the water which he draws year by year from the Nile, but retains some about him. {endquote} {endnote 12. Ibid., pp. 88-89.}
These three examples reveal that Herodotus was not a passive reporter of incredible tales and rubbish, "a liar." On the contrary, he was quite scrupulous, objective, scientific for his time. Why should one seek to discredit such a historian, to make him seem naive? Why "refabricate" history despite his explicit evidence?
Undoubtedly the basic reason for this is that Herodotus, after relating his eyewitness account informing us that the Egyptians were Blacks, then demonstrated, with rare honesty (for a Greek), that Greece borrowed from Egypt all the elements of her civilization, even the cult of the gods, and that Egypt was the cradle of civilization. Moreover, archeological discoveries continually justify Herodotus against his detractors. Thus, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt writes about recent excavations in Tanis* {footnote: Tanis, the Biblical Zoan, at the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile Delts}: "Herodotus had seen the outer buildings of these sepulchers and had described them. [This was the Labyrinth discussed above.] Pierre Montet has just proved once again that 'The Father of History did not lie.'" {endnote 13: Sciences et Avenir, No. 56, October 1951.} It could be objected that, in the fifth century B.C. when Herodotus visited Egypt, its civilization was already more than 10,000 years old and that the race which had created it was not necessarily the Negro race that Herodotus found there.
But the whole history of Egypt, as we shall see, shows that the
{p. 5} mixture of the early population with white nomadic elements, conquerors or merchants, became increasingly important as the end of Egyptian history approached. According to Cornelius de Pauw, in the low epoch Egypt was almost saturated with foreign white colonies: Arabs in Coptos, Libyans on the future site of Alexandria, Jews around the city of Hercules (Avaris?), Babylonians (or Persians) below Memphis, "fugitive Trojans" in the area of the great stone quarries east of the Nile, Carians and Ionians over by the Pelusiac branch. Psammetichus (end of seventh century) capped this peaceful invasion by entrusting the defense of Egypt to Greek mercenaries. "An enormous mistake of Pharaoh Psammetichus was to commit the defense of Egypt to foreign troops and to introduce various colonies made up of the dregs of the nations." {endnote 14: Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois. Berlin, 1773, II, 337.} Under the last Saite dynasty, the Greeks were officially established at Naucratis, the only port where foreigners were authorized to engage in trading. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, under the Ptolemies, crossbreeding between white Greeks and black Egyptians flourished, thanks to a policy of assimilation: "Nowhere was Dionysus more favored, nowhere was he worshiped more adoringly and more elaborately than by the Ptolemies, who recognized his cult as an especially effective means of promoting the assimilation of the conquering Greeks and their fusion with the native Egyptians." {endnote 15: J. J. Bachofen, Pages choisies par Adrien Turel, "Du Regne de la mere au patriarcat." Paris: F. Alcan, 1938, p. 89.}
These facts prove that if the Egyptian people had originally been white, it might well have remained so. If Herodotus found it still black after so much crossbreeding, it must have been basic black at the start.
{p. 27} Before examining the contradictions circulating in the modern era and resulting from attempts to prove at any price that the Egyptians were Whites, let us note the astonishment of a scholar of good faith, Count Constantin de Volney (1757-1820). After being imbued with all the prejudices we have just mentioned with regard to the Negro, Volney had gone to Egypt between 1783 and 1785, while Negro slavery flourished. He reported as follows on the Egyptian race, the very race that had produced the Pharaohs: the Copts.
{quote} ... all have a bloated face, puffed up eyes, flat nose, thick lips; in a word, the true face of the mulatto. I was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but when I visited the Sphinx, its appearance gave me the key to the riddle. On seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remembered the remarkable passage where Herodotus says: "As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black with woolly hair. ..." In other words, the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Romans and Greeks, must have lost the intensity of its original color, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold. We can even state as a general principle that the face is a kind of monument able, in many cases, to attest or shed light on historical evidence on the origins of peoples. {endquote}
After illustrating this proposition by citing the case of Normans who still resembled the Danes 900 years after the conquest of Nor- mandy, Volney adds:
{quote} But returning to Egypt, the lesson she teaches history contains many reflections for philosophy. What a subject for meditation, to see the present barbarism and ignorance of the Copts, descendants of the alliance between the profound genius of the Egyptians and
{p. 28} the brilliant mind of the Greeks! Just think that this race of black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, ana even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of peoples who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery and questioned whether black men have the same kind of intelligence as Whites! {endquote} {endnote 7: C. F. Volney, Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte. Paris, 1787, I, 74-77.}
{p. 28} In 1799 Bonaparte undertook his campaign in Egypt. Thanks to the Rosetta stone, hieroglyphics were deciphered in 1822 by Champollion the Younger, who died in 1832. He left as his "calling card" an Egyptian grammar and a series of letters to his brother, Champollion-Figeac, letters written during his visit to Egypt (1828-1829). Thesc were published in l833 by Champollion-Figeac. From then on the wall of the hieroglyphics was breached, unveiling surprising riches in their most minute details.
{p. 46} Let us start with the oldest of these theses, that of Champollion the Younger, set forth in the thirteenth letter to his brother. It concerns bas-reliefs on the tomb of Sesostris I, also visited by Rienzi. These date back to the sixteenth century B.C. (Eighteenth Dynasty) and represent the races of man known to the Egyptians. This monument is the oldest complete ethnological document available. Here is what Champollion says about it:
{quote} Right in the valley of Biban-el-Moluk, we admired, like all previous visitors, the astonishing freshness of the paintings and the fine sculptures on several tombs. I had a copy made of the peoples represented on the bas-reliefs. At first I had thought, from copies of these bas-reliefs published in England, that these peoples of different races led by the god Horus holding his shepherd's staff, were indeed nations subject to the rule of the Pharaohs. A study of the legends informed me that this tableau has a more general meaning. It portrays the third hour of the day, when the sun is beginning to turn on its burning rays, warming all the inhabited countries of our hemisphere. According to the legend itself, they wished to represent the inhabitants of Egypt and those of foreign lands. Thus we have before our eyes the image of the various races of man known to the Egyptians and we learn at the same time the great geographical or ethnographical divisions established during that early epoch. Men led by Horus, the shepherd of the peoples, belong to four distinct families. The first, the one closest to the god, has a dark red color, a well-proportioned body, kind face, nose slightly aquiline, long braided hair, and is dressed in white. The legends designate this species as Rot-en-ne-Rome, the race of men par excellence i.e., the Egyptians. There can be no uncertainty about the racial identity of the man who comes next: he belongs to the Black race, designated under the general term Nahasi. The third presents a very different aspect; his skin color borders on yellow or tan; he has a strongly aquiline nose, thick, black pointed beard, and wears a short garment of varied colors; these are called Namou. Finally, the last one is what we call flesh-colored, a white skin of the most delicate shade, a nose straight or slightly arched, blue eyes, blond or reddish beard, tall stature and very slender clad in a
{p. 47} hairy ox-skin, a veritable savage tattooed on various parts of his body; he is called Tamhou. I hastened to seek the tableau corresponding to this one in the other royal tombs and, as a matter of fact, I found it in several. The variations I observed fully convinced me that they had tried to represent here the inhabitants of the four corners of the earth, according to the Egyptian system, namely: 1. the inhabitants of Egypt which, by itself, formed one part of the world ...; 2. the inhabitants of Africa proper: Blacks; 3. Asians; 4. finally (and I am ashamed to say so, since our race is the last and the most savage in the series), Europeans who, in those remote epochs, frankly did not cut too fine a figure in the world. In this category we must include all blonds and white-skinned people living not only in Europe, but Asia as well, their starting point. This manner of viewing the tableau is all the more accurate because, on the other tombs, the same generic names reappear, always in the same order. We find there Egyptians and Africans represented in the same way, which could not be otherwise; but the Namou (the Asians) and the Tamhou (Europeans) present significant and curious variants. Instead of the Arab or the Jew, dressed simply and represented on one tomb, Asia's representatives on other tombs (those of Ramses II, etc.) are three individuals, tanned complexion, aquiline nose, black eyes, and thick beard, but clad in rare splendor. In one, they are evidently Assyrians, their costume, down to the smallest detail, is identical with that of personages engraved on Assyrian cylinders. In the other, are Medes or early inhabitants of some part of Persia. Their physiognomy and dress resemble, feature for feature, those found on monuments called Persepolitan. Thus, Asia was represented indiscriminately by any one of the peoples who inhabited it. The same is true of our good old ancestors, the Tamhou. Their attire is sometimes different; their heads are more or less hairy and adorned with various ornaments; their savage dress varies somewhat in form, but their white complexion, their eyes and beard all preserve the character of a race apart. I had this strange ethnographical series copied and colored. I certainly did not expect, on arriving at Biban-el-Moluk, to find sculptures that could serve as vignettes for the history of the primitive Europeans, if ever one has the courage to attempt it. Nevertheless, there is something flat-
{p. 48} tering and consoling in seeing them, since they make us appreciate the progress we have subsequently achieved. {endquote} {endnote 3: Champollion-Figeac, Egypte ancienne. Paris: Collection l'Univers, 1839, pp. 30-31. ...}
For a very good reason, I have reproduced this extract as Champollion-Figeac published it, rather than take it from the "new edition" of the Letters published in 1867 by the son of Champollion the Younger (Cheronnet-Champollion). The originals were addressed to Champollion-Figeac; therefore his edition is more authentic.
{p. 49} Champollion's conclusion is typical. After stating that these sculptures can serve as vignetles for the history of the early inhabitants of Europe, he adds, "if ever one has the courage to attempt it." Finally, after those comments, he presents his opinion on the Egyptian race:
{quote} The first tribes that inhabited Egypt, that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataract and the sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. The ancient Egyptians belonged to a race quite similar to the Kennous or Barabras, present inhabitants of Nubia. In the Copts of Egypt, we do not find any of the characteristic features of the ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with all the nations that have successively dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race. {endquote} {endnote 4: Champollion-Figeac, ibid., p. 27.}
{p. 50} Champollion's opinion on the Egyptian race was recorded in a memoir prepared for the Pasha of Egypt, to whom he delivered it in 1829.
{p. 63} In Les Egyptes, a volume published around 1880, Marius Fontanes attacks the same problem:
{quote} Since the Egyptians always painted themselves red on their monu- ments, partisans of the "southern origin" had to point out a great number of interesting peculiarities likely to help solve the ethno-graphical problem. Near the Upper Nile today, among the Fulbe, whose skin is quite yellow, those whom contemporaries consider as belonging to a pure race, are rather red; the Bisharin are exactly of the same brick-red shade used on Egyptian monuments. To other ethnographers, these "red men" would probably be Ethiopians modified by time and climate, or perhaps Negroes who have reached the halfway mark in the evolution from blackness to whiteness. It has been noted that, in limestone areas, the Negro is less black than in granitic and plutonic regions. It has even been thought that the hue changed with the season. Thus, Nubians were former Blacks, but only in skin color, while their osteology has rcmained absolutely Negritic. The Negroes represented on Pharaonic paintings, so clearly deline- ated by engravers and named Nahasou or Nahasiou in the hiero- glyphics, are not related to the Ethiopians, the first people to come down into Egypt. Were the latter then attenuated Negroes, Nubians? Lepsius's canon gives ... the proportions of the perfect Egyptian body; it has short arms and is Negroid or Negritian. From the anthropological point of view, the Egyptian comes after the Polynesians, Samoyeds, Europeans, and is immediately fol- lowed by African Negroes and Tasmanians. Besides, there is a scientific tendency to find in Africa, after excluding foreign influences, from the Mediterranean to the Cape, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, nothing but Negroes or Negroids of various colors. The ancient Egyptians were Negroes, but Negroes to the last degree. {endquote} {endnote 20: Marius Fontanes, Les Egyptes (de 5000 a715). Paris: Ed. Lemerre, n.d., pp 44-45.}
2) G. K. Osei, a black American (LL.B., LL.M., Ph.D.), wrote in his 1983 Introduction to G. Elliot Smith's booklet The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in America (New York, 1983; I have this booklet but its publisher details are unclear; I obtained it from a Black American bookstore, most likely A&B Books Publishers Brooklyn, NY 11201):
"The Great kings of Africa peacefully spread the African civilization to other parts. This peaceful process was disturbed by the coming of the Hyksos into Egypt. These people conquered lower Egypt and ruled it for nearly two hundred years. They were eventually expelled by a king from Upper Egypt. The kings who came after the explusion of the Hyksos extended the boundaries of Egypt into Asia. Many nations in Asia came under the direct control of Egypt. At this time Egypt was the most powerful country in the world. African culture spread to those conquered nations until a mad half-cast (mulatto) came on the throne. This mad king was non other than Amenophis IV also known as Akhanaten.
"Akhanaten when he mounted the mighty throne deserted the old culture. He changed the religion of Egypt, and he married a white woman from Mitanni. His wife's name was Nefert-iti ("The Fair One Comes"). It was the Egyptians who called Tadukhipa, Dushratta's daughter Nefer-iti. She was at first sent to Egypt to marry Amenophis III but when she arrived the king had died so she had to marry the king's son -Akhenaton. Akhenaton changed his wife's name from Nefertiti to Nefer-neferu-Aten, "Aten is the Fairest of the Fair." It is very important to state here that the decline of the mighty Kingdom began from the time Akhenaton came on the throne. The royal blue blood that ran through the veins of those mighty kings had become diluted by the end of the eighteenth Dynasty. The Kings were the sons of white women from Asia. It must be remembered that the mother of Akhenaton was a white woman called Tyi or Tii. Queen Tii was a foreign woman whose father's name was Iuya and came from Asia Minor. The marriages of the Pharoahs to foreign women shocked the priests of Amen. The priests told Akhenaton that the dynastic miracle of the divine birth should continue but this mad king Akhenaton paid them no attention. Instead the priests were persecuted and Amen was deserted by the King. Akhenaton built a new capital where he started to worship his god. The history of the African Race would be different today if Akenaton had not abandoned the old African Culture to embrace that of a foreign country. He failed to send the army to defend the frontiers his great and proud ancestors had established. As a result of his negligence the mighty empire of Africa fell to pieces. The present day (1983) African leaders must never marry white women. White women will never help them to build Africa to become once again the teacher of the world. We will teach the African to see beauty in himself."
Osei was introducing G. Elliot Smith's booklet THE INFLUENCE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION IN THE EAST AND IN AMERICA : before-columbus.html.
I do not post ALL of Diop's material. The fact that he and Elliot Smith overstated their case, that they were wrong about some things, does not undo the ways in which they were right. The reaction against Diffusion has gone too far.
10 Arguments That Prove Ancient Egyptians Were Black
October 25, 2013 | Posted by A Moore Tagged With: ancient egypt, ancient egyptians are black, black egypy, Cheikh Anta Diop
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Even today, a significant number of mainstream Egyptologists, anthropologists, historians and Hollywood moviemakers continue to deny African people’s role in humankind’s first and greatest civilization in ancient Egypt. This whitewashing of history negatively impacts Black people and our image in the world. There remains a vital need to correct the misinformation of our achievements in antiquity.
Senegalese scholar Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) dedicated his life to scientifically challenging Eurocentric and Arab-centric views of precolonial African culture, specifically those that suggested the ancient civilization of Egypt did not have its origins in Black Africa.
Since some people continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence that indicates ancient Egypt was built, ruled, and populated by dark-skinned African people, Atlanta Blackstar will highlight 10 of the ways Diop proved the ancient Egyptians were Black.
Egyptian mummy with negroid hair
Physical Anthropology Evidence Based on his review of scientific literature, Diop concluded that most of the skeletons and skulls of the ancient Egyptians clearly indicate they were Negroid people with features very similar to those of modern Black Nubians and other people of the Upper Nile and East Africa. He called attention to studies that included examinations of skulls from the predynastic period (6000 B.C.) that showed a greater percentage of Black characteristics than any other type.
From this information, Diop reasoned that a Black race existed in Egypt at that time and did not migrate at a later stage as some previous theories had suggested.
mummy-scan
Melanin Dosage Test Diop invented a method for determining the level of melanin in the skin of human beings. Melanin is the chemical responsible for skin pigmentation and it is preserved for millions of years in the skins of fossil animals.
Diop conducted the melanin test on Egyptian mummies at the Museum of Man in Paris, and determined the levels found in the dermis and epidermis of a small sample would classify all ancient Egyptians as “unquestionably among the Black races.”
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Osteological Evidence According to Diop, osteological measurements (analysis of bones) are perhaps the least misleading of the criteria accepted in physical anthropology for classifying the races of men. A first study of this kind was completed by a German archeologist Karl Richard Lepsius at the end of the 19th century. The Lepsius canon, which distinguishes the bodily proportions of various racial groups, categories the “ideal Egyptian” as “short-armed and of Negroid or Negrito physical type.”
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Evidence From Blood Types Diop found that even after hundreds of years of intermixing with foreign invaders, the blood type of modern Egyptians is the “same group B as the populations of Western Africa on the Atlantic seaboard and not the A2 group characteristic of the white race prior to any crossbreeding.”
Banqueting Scene, Thebes, tomb of Nebamum & Ipuky, 1400 BC
The Egyptians as They Saw Themselves Diop noted that “Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves: KMT, which literally means ‘the Blacks.’ This is the strongest term existing in the Pharaonic tongue to indicate blackness.”
He added: “The term is a collective noun which thus described the whole people of Pharaonic Egypt as a Black people.”
For further evidence, Diop focused on both the monuments and how the ancient Egyptians represented themselves in their art.
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Cultural Unity of Egypt With The Rest of Africa
Diop found that in ancient Egypt there existed “African cultural commonalities” of matriarchy, totemism, divine kinship, and cosmology.”
Through a study of circumcision and totemism, he offers detailed data on the cultural unity between Egypt and the rest of Africa. He noted: “Historians are in general agreement that the Ethiopians, Egyptians, Colchians, and people of the Southern Levant were among the only people on earth practicing circumcision, which confirms their cultural affiliations, if not their ethnic affiliation.”
He added: “The Egyptian style of (adolescent) circumcision was different from how circumcision is practiced in other parts of the world, but similar to how it is practiced throughout the African continent.”
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Divine Epithets Diop also demonstrates that “Black or Negro” was a divine epithet invariably used to refer to the chief benevolent gods of Egypt, while evil spirits were depicted as red. InEurasian culture, good is described as white and evil as black.
Somali Egyptian-Puntite Culture and The 'Issa Princesses during the coronation of the 19th King of Issa - Ugaas Rooble
Evidence From the Bible Diop wrote: “The Bible tells us that ‘…the sons of Ham [were] Cush and Mizraim [i.e. Egypt], and Phut, and Canaan. And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah and Sabtechah.”
According to biblical tradition, Ham was the father of the Black race. Diop asserted that “generally speaking, all Semitic tradition (Jewish and Arab) class ancient Egypt with the countries of the Blacks.”
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Linguistic Unity With Southern and Western Africa In a detailed study of languages, Diop illustrated the strength of the cultural ties between ancient Egypt and its African neighbors by comparing the Egyptian language with Wolof, a Senegalese language spoken in West Africa near the Atlantic Ocean.
Diop clearly demonstrates that ancient Egyptian, modern Coptic of Egypt, and Wolof are related, with the latter two having their origin in the former.
“The kinship between ancient Egyptian and the languages of Africa,” Diop wrote in the General History of Africa, “is not a hypothetical but a demonstrable fact which it is impossible for modern scholarship to thrust aside.”
He believed the kinship to be genealogical, and he provided examples:
In ancient Egyptian “kef” means “to grasp, to take a strip (of something)”; in Wolof it means “to seize a prey.”
“Feh” means “go away” in ancient Egyptian; in Wolof it means “to rush off.”
To further demonstrate similarity between the two languages, Diop also examined verb forms, demonstratives, and phonemes. The results, he found, showed little difference between the two.
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Testimony of Classical Greek and Roman Historians Virtually all of the early Latin eyewitnesses described the ancient Egyptians as black-skinned with woolly hair. Several ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians and Ethiopians had complexions that were “melanchroes,” which most scholars translate as black, while some scholars translate it as “dark” or “dark skinned.”
Some of the most-often quoted historians are Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus.
According to most translations, Herodotus wrote that a Greek oracle was known to be from Egypt because she was “black,” that the natives of the Nile region are “black with heat,’ and that Egyptians were “black skinned with woolly hair.”
Diodorus Siculus wrote that the Ethiopians considered the Egyptians their colony.
Lucian observes an Egyptian boy and notices that he is not merely black, but has thick lips.
Appollodorus called Egypt the country of the black-footed ones.
Aeschylus, a Greek poet, wrote that Egyptian seamen had “black limbs.”
Gaston Maspero states that “by the almost unanimous testimony of ancient [Greek] historians, they [ancient Egyptians] belonged to the African race, which settled in Ethiopia.”
KingTut DNA Evidence (BONUS)
DNATribes, a genomics company that specializes in tracing individuals’ ancestry to certain global populations has recently subjected the published STRs profiles (DNA samples) of Pharaoh Tutankhamen and family to analysis. They report that the closest living relatives of the mummies are sub-Saharan Africans, especially those from Southern Africa and the Great Lakes region.
The company also tested the STR profiles of Ramesses III and found that among present-day populations, Ramesses’ autosomal STR profile is most frequently found in the African Great Lakes region, where it is approximately 335.1 times as frequent as in the world as a whole.
Sources: ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS by Cheikh Anta Diop
quote: They're all anonymous, and probably nobodies. And the first quote is nonsensical: "agree the Egyptians were black to stop racism!", has nothing to do with the evidence but politics.
What's your point about them being anonymous? How does that in any way diminish the relevance of what they've concluded? So when someone gives evidence anonymously at a legal trial, their submission is irrelevant?
I'm still in conversation with them so won't name them, and the moderator here has already advised against posting responses from named professionals.
You suggested that no one in mainstream classics or Egyptology regards the ancient Egyptians as 'blacks', but when I provide quotes from Professors and Phds, you say that they're probably "nobodies". Hahahahahahaha! Says some recent graduate on the internet. And the first quote wasn't saying that we should conclude Egyptian blackness to stop racism, but because the conclusion is a reasonable one, and that this would 'also' have an effect of countering racism.
Don't forget, before fighting against the idea tooth and nail, you yourself twice admitted that people were right to conclude that the ancient Egyptians were a black population. Clearly it became too much for you accept and you renounced your previous acknowledgments.
I think your response pretty much encapsulates the effect your 'issues' have on your ability to bring any sort of objectivity to this discussion. But it seems that you're now it troll mode, treating the issue with half-engaged, dismissive levity.
But hey, keep it up.
Posts: 805 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2013
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quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: @Dead
quote: They're all anonymous, and probably nobodies. And the first quote is nonsensical: "agree the Egyptians were black to stop racism!", has nothing to do with the evidence but politics.
What's your point about them being anonymous? How does that in any way diminish the relevance of what they've concluded? So when someone gives evidence anonymously at a legal trial, their submission is irrelevant?
I'm still in conversation with them so won't name them, and the moderator here has already advised against posting responses from named professionals.
You suggested that no one in mainstream classics or Egyptology regards the ancient Egyptians as 'blacks', but when I provide quotes from Professors and Phds, you say that they're probably "nobodies". Hahahahahahaha! Says some recent graduate on the internet. And the first quote wasn't saying that we should conclude Egyptian blackness to stop racism, but because the conclusion is a reasonable one, and that this would 'also' have an effect of countering racism.
Don't forget, before fighting against the idea tooth and nail, you yourself twice admitted that people were right to conclude that the ancient Egyptians were a black population. Clearly it became too much for you accept and you renounced your previous acknowledgments.
I think your response pretty much encapsulates the effect your 'issues' have on your ability to bring any sort of objectivity to this discussion. But it seems that you're now it troll mode, treating the issue with half-engaged, dismissive levity.
But hey, keep it up.
I never posted Egyptians are black. You are well known as a pathological liar who manipulates and distorts what people post for your own agenda. If you want to revisit your lies on this forum, i'm sure we can... but its pretty boring. There is like 100+ of them, plus all the slanders you post to the extent the forum owner had enough of you and thinks you are a lunatic troll (deleting most your posts on your first user). And once again, you are presenting fictitious "anonymous" emails, or if someone gave you something, you probably twisted it out of context like you did mine. I gave you an email 2 years ago stating I no longer supported the Hamitic model. It is foolish to lie and then state I posted the Egyptians were black, when at the same time of that email I have posts on forums clearly stating they were not black.
Does this guy look black to you?
Him?
Do you just ignore all these? How "objective" of you.
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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The discussions were within the context of the ancient Egyptians as a black African population. Something people unfamiliar with the twilight zone Egyptsearch-esque utterances of Lioness and Dead types are able to conceptualise.
Nice try though.
Posts: 805 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2013
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quote: And once again, you are presenting fictitious "anonymous" emails
Jeez, you sound as irrational as Amun-Ra...
1/12/2013: Me to you:
quote: In your opinion therefore, are people right when they describe the ancient Egyptians as predominantly 'black Africans', regardless of whether 'black' refers to populations from the Horn of Africa, or groups such as the Tutsis?
Look forward to reading your response.
02/12/2013 You to me:
quote: Yes they are correct. Two sources from Keita, I had access through a classics archive, which explains this -
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993a) “Black Athena: ‘Race,’ Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 295-314.
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993b). “Response to Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 329-33.
Everything I posted to you in the last email is true. For me, racialism/racism was delusional and it deteriorated my mental health. I no longer want to write or research this topic, and I have/still am in the process of cutting off all contact. My past is terrible, however I have better help, and am trying to improve.
Like I say, twilight zone...whatever help you were getting clearly hasn't worked.
Posts: 805 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2013
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: black is not skin color alone
therefore any correspondance seeking acknowledgment must define the term clearly
He's already admitted Egyptians looked nothing like him and did not resemble the hair texture or facial features of West Africans ("Negroids"). So that's why he clings onto "blackness" so he can still try to cluster or attach himself to these people. Its basically desperation. If you take "blackness" out, he has no link. This is why he's obsessed with that term and spends his time harassing academics via email to agree the Egyptians were "black".
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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posted
^Uh, no. So you're saying that because the AEs differed from stereotyped West Africans, that modern people today wouldn't refer to them as black?
That people wouldn't regard East Africans as black?
More nutty twilight zone nutjob bs.
You can try and deflect from your e-mailed capitulation all you want, but it's there for all to see.
Posts: 805 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2013
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quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: @ Dead
quote: And once again, you are presenting fictitious "anonymous" emails
Jeez, you sound as irrational as Amun-Ra...
1/12/2013: Me to you:
quote: In your opinion therefore, are people right when they describe the ancient Egyptians as predominantly 'black Africans', regardless of whether 'black' refers to populations from the Horn of Africa, or groups such as the Tutsis?
Look forward to reading your response.
02/12/2013 You to me:
quote: Yes they are correct. Two sources from Keita, I had access through a classics archive, which explains this -
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993a) “Black Athena: ‘Race,’ Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 295-314.
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993b). “Response to Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 329-33.
Everything I posted to you in the last email is true. For me, racialism/racism was delusional and it deteriorated my mental health. I no longer want to write or research this topic, and I have/still am in the process of cutting off all contact. My past is terrible, however I have better help, and am trying to improve.
Like I say, twilight zone...whatever help you were getting clearly hasn't worked.
Just completely distorted emails. You are really a sick man Claus.
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: ^Uh, no. So you're saying that because the AEs differed from stereotyped West Africans, that modern people today wouldn't refer to them as black?
That people wouldn't regard East Africans as black?
More nutty twilight zone nutjob bs.
You can try and deflect from your e-mailed capitulation all you want, but it's there for all to see.
East Africans do not cluster with West Africans in any racial/population sense. They are only "black" since they share dark brown skin (so too do Melanesians). So your obsession with trying to label this or that "black" is quite pointless. Why not categorize by hair texture? Answer is obvious. You just cherrypick the feature you have (black skin) and can relate to, over something you don't have (wavy hair).
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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posted
Its pretty stupid to call people delusional when you provide no evidence whatsoever for your emails. And yes, its not only me claiming you make them up from scratch or distort them, but other posters here (who you have even quoted).
And instead of pesting academics by email to get them to state the Egyptians were black (when they weren't), why not do your own research? You seem incredibly lazy, and just resort to strange manipulative behaviour via emails, or then slandering people online. I see those alleged academics who have told you the Egyptians were not black, you've already started speaking ill of, and smearing them as "racists" or "white supremacists". Like I said, one sick man.
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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quote: Just completely distorted emails. You are really a sick man Claus.
Oh my god. Hahahahaha! You're making a fool of yourself. Sorry to interrupt your trolling with a dose of reality -
Damn, I have to do everything around here!
Did you or did you not send that me that e-mail?
Yes, but I said you distorted it. All your quotes on this page are also inaccurate because you selectively cut and paste them and rearrange them to twist what was actually said. So above, you quote just one line from an academic (if it is even real and not made up). His/her email was only one line? The rest of their email could be saying something very different. Anyone can misrepresent by quoting selectively. You've done this to multiple people on this forum.
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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Do you just ignore all these? How "objective" of you.
What do they look like to you? To me they look like statues with faded paint and facial features that easily fit within East African variation.
For example look at the seated scribe and compare his face to this photo.
We know the paint is faded because in earlier pictures you can see remnants of the dark brown paint which have since faded or been wiped off.
Take note of what Keita has to say about this evidence:
Art objects are not generally used by biological anthropologists. They are suspect as data and their interpretation highly dependent on stereotyped thinking. However, because art has often been used to comment on the physiognomies of ancient Egyptians, a few remarks are in order. A review of literature and the sculpture indicates characteristics that also can be found in the Horn of (East) Africa (see, e.g., Petrie 1939; Drake 1987; Keita 1993). Old and Middle Kingdom statuary shows a range of characteristics; many, if not most, individuals depicted in the art have variations on the narrow-nosed, narrow-faced morphology also seen in various East Africans. This East African anatomy, once seen as being the result of a mixture of different "races," is better understood as being part of the range of indigenous African variation.
Source: The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians
Posts: 647 | From: Atlanta | Registered: Jan 2009
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quote:A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
I see what you are saying, but the myth is literally saying these peoples were burnt as in scorched or put on fire, not a mere suntan.
Not that I think this "he said, she said" sort of anecdotal stuff is admissible in serious discussions on ancient population affinity (although it is interesting from a subjective point of view), but what's ironic is that the Bible and other ancient texts in the wider region apply analogous terms to all the people you've claimed weren't thought of as having a 'burnt' appearance, INCLUDING North Indians. Aint that a trip? You should know better, with your biblical background.
Kushites are described as black, not Egyptians. I think the Biblical and Rabbinical literature supports the distinction I am making. Midrash Yalkut Shim'oni. Noah Sec. 58 for example confines black skin (through the curse of Ham) to Kush, not the other descendants of Ham that represent North Africa.
I am surprised how people on this forum are in denial about all this, when it is a simply an observable reality North Africans are lighter skinned than Sub-Saharan Africans.
Posts: 504 | From: No longer here | Registered: Aug 2014
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