I think the answer to that is BOTH, for many here including myself.

Love it or hate but it has been an issue in Egyptology for years and I believe will continue to be one for some time.

This board was created out of the controversy discussing this RACE topic created on the parent board.

At the time it was said that this board was created for Racists. Those who still post here who were around at that time know what I am talking about. If people are offended then they should not read or post on the Race issue as many posters here choose not to participate in such discussions.

However I think Ausar has a valid point in that he has posted some very interesting topics Like " A discourse between a man and his Ba" or "opening of the mouth ritual" and no one responds to the posts even though they are significant features of this ancient culture.

Ausar could ban the posts on Race, perhaps we should make a thread and vote Yea or Nay on the issue of Banning race posts.

However I think it is a relevant topic within Egyptology even though it is a sensative issue that many would prefer not to discuss. I say as long as people are being cordial and providing reputable info to support their position...why not??

Hiding from an issue that many find of some importance only breeds further ignorance.

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Originally posted by neo*geo:
There is much more to ancient Egypt than the question of what race they belonged to. Why is it that new threads pop up on the subject almost every other day? Are people here really interested in Egyptology or is there a political agenda beneath the surface?

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Let us be real. Exactly who are we talking about that might be offended by this historically relevant topic? I have already written about White folks' catatonic reaction to the reality of Black (ancient and modern) Egypt, even when expressed begrudgingly by folks such as Marius Fontanes in Les Egyptes (Paris: pp 44-45.):
"The ancient Egyptians were Negroes, but Negroes to the last degree." Obviously a difficult thing to concede.
This pathetic, reactionary ideology has even been expressed on this board:
"That is why it is proper to teach it (Ancient Egypt) as the first great civilization in (White) Western history.....that is exactly what we do and will continue to do."

We should not be so naive as to think that this issue is about race. No, it is about a theft! About stealing the African people's historical and cultural heritage and perpetuating a fraud! Diop refers to this as the counter-revolution to continue to deny to Africans the moral advantage of Egyptian civilization. We should also not be so naive as to think that this isn't the same historical agenda of "Egyptology"- from Breasted to Hawass.

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Originally posted by Wally:

Let us be real. Exactly who are we talking about that might be offended by this historically relevant topic?

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THE IKHNATON FAMILY

"if we were consciously aware of the racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians (Black Africans), we would have immediately sought the answer to the question of the elongated skulls of the Amarna period in Black Africa (IE, the Mangbetu)! To paraphrase C.A. Diop, you can't possibly understand Ancient Egypt without connecting it to its Black African reality. This methodology is used in the study of ALL societies, both ancient and modern.

HATSHEPSUT

[The right side was inscribed with the "Son of Re" prenomen, however, it read "Sa.t Re". The 't' in Sa.t representing the femine form of the word.]

Please consider the following which may serve to clarify matters:
Sa(t)(Pronounced Seh) means woman;female;daughter in Ancient Egyptian - Thus, SaRe means "Re's daughter."
Hetshepsu (Hay-shayp-soo)(masc. noun) means "First among noble MEN"
Hetshepsit (Hay-shayp-see)(fem. noun-'t' silent) means "First among noble WOMEN"
The correct translation of the Queen's name and title is Htshpst/St.R is: "The first amongst noble women, Re's daughter..."

THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE

"the Ancient Egyptian language is NOT a dead language. It not only survives as Coptic Egyptian, but also in related languages such as Wolof(Senegal) and Yoruba(Nigeria). Coptic is a continuation of the Egyptian language, kept alive in the liturgy of the Coptic church and covering an unbroken span of at least 40 centuries, the longest such record known for a language. These colonized Africans kept their language alive, banned from colloquial usage by the Arabs, in much the same ingenious manner that other Africans kept the ancient African gods alive while being forced to adopt Christianity (i.e., Santeria in Cuba, Mardi Gras and Voudum in Louisiana). Osiris is still Usiri and Isis is still Ese (Isi) in the Coptic language (The Greeks added an 's' to Ancient Egyptian proper nouns)."

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Originally posted by neo*geo:
Mainly Egyptians, but also simply people who don't believe there is some vast consipracy among historians to disguise Egypt as a non-African civilization. There are other forums to discuss your black empowerment and we shall overcome rhetoric. I don't believe this is one of them. You may find more receptive readers on an Afrocentric website. Here, people want to discuss Egyptology...

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neo*geo, he already posts the same crap on all the Africanist sites. He spams them all.

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Originally posted by neo*geo:
Mainly Egyptians, but also simply people who don't believe there is some vast consipracy among historians to disguise Egypt as a non-African civilization... Here, people want to discuss Egyptology...

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I sure hope no one is scared off by race topics. I personally like to see diverse opinions on any thread. If nothing else, they keep us on our toes. But to think that there is no "consipracy" amongst to disguise Egypt is wishful thinking. As usual, I work best with examples.

The following is from The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt:

"The iconography of the Egyptians' depictions of foreigners suggest that for much of their history they saw themselves as midway between the black Africans and the paler Asiatics."

This is not true. Nubians are often depicted with the same reddish skin color so often seen on Egyptians. And Egyptians, and sometimes even Asiatics are depicted with the same black skin often seen on some Nubians.

From Life in Ancient Egypt by Adolf Erman:

"In physical structure they (AE's) are still Africans, though in later times they have adopted an Asiatic Language... We may conscientiously believe them to be natives of their own country, children of their own soil, even if it should be proved that their old language, like their modern one, was imported from other countries."

We see the dynastic theory at work here. Budge noted that while the AE language had some words of Asian origin, it was an African language.

Watch the next AE program on TV and tell me you don't see a problem. The discovery channel has no problem calling Nubians black and using black actors to play them, but this connection is not made with AE.

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:
I sure hope no one is scared off by race topics. I personally like to see diverse opinions on any thread. If nothing else, they keep us on our toes. But to think that there is no "consipracy" amongst to disguise Egypt is wishful thinking. As usual, I work best with examples.

The following is from The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt:

[b]"The iconography of the Egyptians' depictions of foreigners suggest that for much of their history they saw themselves as midway between the black Africans and the paler Asiatics."

This is not true. Nubians are often depicted with the same reddish skin color so often seen on Egyptians. And Egyptians, and sometimes even Asiatics are depicted with the same black skin often seen on some Nubians.[/B]

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The key word is "sometimes." I have a hard time making generalizations based on artwork but clearly, they understood that their physical differences when compared to neighboring peoples for the most part weren't as extreme as for example, Nubians to Libyans. They blended the characteristics of all neighboring populations.

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:

From Life in Ancient Egypt by Adolf Erman:

[b]"In physical structure they (AE's) are still Africans, though in later times they have adopted an Asiatic Language... We may conscientiously believe them to be natives of their own country, children of their own soil, even if it should be proved that their old language, like their modern one, was imported from other countries."

We see the dynastic theory at work here. Budge noted that while the AE language had some words of Asian origin, it was an African language.[/B]

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Is Erman not allowed to have his own opinion? Egyptology isn't an exact science. I'm sure you can just as easily find an Egyptologist who disagrees with him. There aren't many things all Egyptologists collectively agree on and NO one is an authority figure on ancient Egyptian history, not even Hawass.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:

Watch the next AE program on TV and tell me you don't see a problem. The discovery channel has no problem calling Nubians black and using black actors to play them, but this connection is not made with AE.

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That's because for the most part, Nubians are a black African people. Egyptians have always varied in complexion and bone structure and it does history no justice to put a label on ancient Egyptians. I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that the overwhelming majority of AE's were black as the Nubians were so how can we label such a racially ambiguous population? The cable channels like Discovery recognize this is a sensitive issue and have made strides to use integrated casts possibly in an effort to keep everyone happy.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:

And let's not forget the confusion over the black skinned RMT from the tomb of Ramses III. These are not accidents. Egypt has been disconnected from Africa for a reason, and this disconnect continues today. What are your thoughts on this?

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I would like to pose a question to you. On the tomb of Ramses III, there is a black skinned figure, who is labeled RMT. Even Erman notes that RMT only refers to Egyptians. The Theban Mapping Project web sites says the figure in the picture is a Nubian erroneously labeled an Egyptian, which is not true. Frank Yurco also says that the image was shown incorrectly, when it was not. Do you find this at least a little bit suspicious?

You said:

"for the most part, Nubians are a black African people."

I agree with this, but so were the Ancient Egyptians. Again I'm going to borrow from John Clarke and say that we need to abandon the colonial way of thinking and all of the terms it brought along. To say something like black African assumes there is a such thing as a non-Black African. There is no such thing as a black person. People we call black are for mostly various shades of brown. The fairer skinned people living in African are mostly relative newcomers, or people that made the round trip out of Africa and found their way back.

I've always maintaned that there was an Asian presense in Africa prior to unification and throughout. But Ausar has posted, on a number of occasions, info that tells us that that the majority of AE's population was centered around Upper Egypt. Even today I challenge a foreigner to distinguish a Sa3eedi Upper Egyptian from a modern Nubian. I've seen them both and I could not tell them apart.

The Upper Egyptian population has mixed little in history relative to the Lower population. And most AE's looked like modern Upper Egyptians. In other words, most AE's were black. And let's not forget that AE's maintained that they came from the south.

And not to offend any Egyptians reading this. I'm not saying that none of the Lower Egyptians are decended from AE's. But 3000 years ago, the AE population did not look like it does today. The explosion in population was in the last century.

Lastly, I don't see how we can say that it's OK to say that the Nubians were black, but AE's were not because they were more mixed. How do we know Nubians were not mixed as well? If we know so little about them, how do we know they were black? Is it because of how AE's portrayed them? This can not be it because to an AE, Nubian means gold miner. So what do you mean when you say Nubian? Do you mean Kushite? Or what about Medjah? Perhaps A-Group or C-Group Nubians?

The points is that we accept Nubians as black just because it makes sense to us, I guess. This is funny because we haven't even defined who the Nubians were. And how do we know Egypt's southern neighbors didn't have a foreign element just like AE.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:
neo,
I would like to pose a question to you. On the tomb of Ramses III, there is a black skinned figure, who is labeled RMT. Even Erman notes that RMT only refers to Egyptians. The Theban Mapping Project web sites says the figure in the picture is a Nubian erroneously labeled an Egyptian, which is not true. Frank Yurco also says that the image was shown incorrectly, when it was not. Do you find this at least a little bit suspicious?

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Here lies your hypocrisy. Erman is wrong on ancient Egyptian language because you don't agree with him but he's right on this tomb painting because it supports your argument. The whole basis for your conspiracy hunting is based on the opinion of an Egyptologist who you don't even agree with. Not being a trained Egyptologist, I can't begin to try to decipher the inscription, plus I've never seen it. I don't doubt that there were many Nubians who looked Egyptian and vice versa but if there were ever cases where Egyptians didn't distinguish themselves phyically from Nubians it was an exception.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kem-Au:
You said:

"for the most part, Nubians are a black African people."

I agree with this, but so were the Ancient Egyptians. Again I'm going to borrow from John Clarke and say that we need to abandon the colonial way of thinking and all of the terms it brought along. To say something like black African assumes there is a such thing as a non-Black African. There is no such thing as a black person. People we call black are for mostly various shades of brown. The fairer skinned people living in African are mostly relative newcomers, or people that made the round trip out of Africa and found their way back.

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I'm not even going to get baited into another discussion about race. I'll just end it here by saying that there are black Africans in N. Africa but not all N. Africans are black. The same applies to Egypt. Culturally, ancient Egypt and Nubia are in the same family but while there was some physical homogenity in Nubia, Egypt had remained throughout history, heterogeneous. This is an undeniable fact. You can argue it however many ways you like but even the pre-dynastic Egyptian crania was heterogeneous.

You will also notice that in a battle scene with the Nubians in the Rameses II tomb there is an Egyptian with black skin wearing a white loin cloth. I wish I could post this picture,but unfortunatley this website does not take jpg.

What you must also take in mind is that artwork from the Old kingdom does not become realistic untill about the 11th dyansty. During this time most subject wheater from Upper or Lower Egypt is depicted in reddish brown for females and yellowish colors for females. Both of these color conventions is symbolic possibly representing the difference between female and male. In most scenes Egyptians doing every day things in their tomb are depicted with accuracy;while book of the dead papyri often show people as dead white which correlates with spirtual symbolism.

We have plenty of scenes dating to the Middle and New Kingdom that show Egyptians with a nautralistic dark-brown color. All these depictions are consistent with the modern Upper Egyptians living from Assuit down to Aswan.

Need I not need to remind people that Ta-Seti-aka----the Nubian nome was incorporated into the Egyptian nome system. This nome was called the first of the first symbolizing the origin of Egyptian civlization. Some Nubians were hotile while others were actually cooperative with Egypt. Egyptians and Nubians during the pre-dyanstic culture shared a similar culture to each other. The Qustal incense burner is evidence of that because it shows pharonic kingship,and the incese burner was manufactured in Qustal not Upper Egypt.

I agree with your post but physically, Egyptians have always skewed dark brown in the south to light brown and mediterranean in the north. Upper Egypt may have been more populated in the early periods but there was a major shift northward as the Delta became more fertile and more migrants settled around lower Egypt.

Even if upper Egypt was always more populated there were large numbers of people living in large settlements around lower Egypt. There were major cities like Saqqara, and Memphis. These were cities that several Old Kingdom Pharoahs made their capitals. The Hyksos built a major city, Avaris, in the Delta. The 19th dynasty is believed to have originated from around Avaris.

During the Old Kingdom most other nomes across various parts of Egypt was govenored by local nomarchs. Later when the breakup of the Old Kingdom we witness a breakup of these nomarch into little provinces with the area of modern Luxor[Waset] is independent.

quote:

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Originally posted by neo*geo:
Here lies your hypocrisy. Erman is wrong on ancient Egyptian language because you don't agree with him but he's right on this tomb painting because it supports your argument. The whole basis for your conspiracy hunting is based on the opinion of an Egyptologist who you don't even agree with.

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There is absolutely no hipocracy here. I was merely pointing out that RMT means Egyptians people, and that even Erman recognizes this. If it makes you feel better here is another reference:
http://abey.home.mindspring.com/eclipses.htm

Just because I don't agree with someones idea for AE origins does not mean I have to dismiss their entire body of work.

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Originally posted by Marcus:
Kem-Au and Ausar, what are your opinions on the Ramesside period? (regarding race)

Ausar, do you think the Ramses II facial reconstruction is accurate? I don't think you commented on it.
http://www.highculture.8m.com/r2.htm

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When it comes to inividuals this is tough. Seti and Ramses came from the delta region, but this alone doesn't tell us anything. On wall reliefs, the are painted with the usual dark brown skin complexion usually shown on AE's. My suspicion is that this also doesn't tell us anything. So to answer your question, I don't know.

You know the mumification process dries the body out.

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Originally posted by Ozzy:
neo*geo, he already posts the same crap on all the Africanist sites. He spams them all.

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Poor baby...
Kind of upset because I'm disseminating information on the Ancient Egyptians' OWN view of their nation's racial identity to "all the Africanist" sites. I certainly would like to make this information available to as many people as possible. This Egyptian graphic and their linguistic explanation of who they were, culturally and racially, should logically be included in every textbook pertaining to Ancient Egypt, especially in the sections usually titled "land & people."
It may be of interest that the majority of the responses to my website's information has been positive. It is amazing that these "Africanists" don't seem to see a problem here. They seem to accept this information in a reasoned and intelligent manner, and very often as an incentive for further study and investigation.
The "non-Africanists" seem to view this information, from the Ancient Egyptians themselves, as heresy! You would get the same reaction if you tried to explain to a "non-Africanist" the unlikelihood of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ being a blond, blue eyed Scandinavian! And their arguments to the contrary would make about as much sense. When you get an inane response such as "what does the ethnic or racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians have to do with Egyptology", you know immediately with whom you're dealing with.
The good news is that Time and Truth are inseparable, and using the African science of dialectics, this nonsense will continue through several clearly defined phases:

Original -- Black Egyptian Civilization (reality)

Colonial -- White Egyptian Civilization (usurpation)

Neo-colonial -- a Black & White Egyptian racial nirvana (appeasement by including Blacks in their own culture in order to perpetuate a racial fable)
(We are currently in this stage of development)

quote:

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Originally posted by Wally:
Poor baby...
Kind of upset because I'm disseminating information on the Ancient Egyptians' OWN view of their nation's racial identity to "all the Africanist" sites. I certainly would like to make this information available to as many people as possible. This Egyptian graphic and their linguistic explanation of who they were, culturally and racially, should logically be included in every textbook pertaining to Ancient Egypt, especially in the sections usually titled "land & people."
It may be of interest that the majority of the responses to my website's information has been positive. It is amazing that these "Africanists" don't seem to see a problem here. They seem to accept this information in a reasoned and intelligent manner, and very often as an incentive for further study and investigation.
The "non-Africanists" seem to view this information, from the Ancient Egyptians themselves, as heresy! You would get the same reaction if you tried to explain to a "non-Africanist" the unlikelihood of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ being a blond, blue eyed Scandinavian! And their arguments to the contrary would make about as much sense. When you get an inane response such as "what does the ethnic or racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians have to do with Egyptology", you know immediately with whom you're dealing with.
The good news is that Time and Truth are inseparable, and using the African science of dialectics, this nonsense will continue through several clearly defined phases:

Original -- Black Egyptian Civilization (reality)

Colonial -- White Egyptian Civilization (usurpation)

Neo-colonial -- a Black & White Egyptian racial nirvana (appeasement by including Blacks in their own culture in order to perpetuate a racial fable)
(We are currently in this stage of development)

Neo-original -- Black Egyptian Civilization (back to reality at a more sophisticated level - No more "Eurocentrists", "Afrocentrists", or - praise the lord! - no more "Egyptologists", -- just Historians.)

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LOL!!!!!

* * * * *
Unfortunately, it seems that some people feel they have a duty to hijack others' threads repeatedly because of their own personal agendas. Illumination of hidden information is a good thing, but it has come to bludgeoning the board with it...
which is not a good thing.

Valid information and perspectives will even become suspect if those presenting them allow themselves to start to appear as obsessed fanatical crackpots.

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Originally posted by Artemi:
Artemi
Valid information and perspectives will even become suspect if those presenting them allow themselves to start to appear as obsessed fanatical crackpots.

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quote:

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They have crack in Egypt?

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Hmmm... I'm not sure... but they do have pot.