Emily Vermule response to Martin Bernal's Black Athena:

"Bernal also believes that Egypt was essentially African, and therefore black. But he does not say what we are to make of the historical accounts of Egyptian pharaohs campaigning against black neighbors to the south, in the Land of Kush, as when Tuthmosis I of Egypt, around 1510 B.C., annihilated a black Kushite army at the Third Cataract and came home with the body of a black Kushite prince hanging upside down from the prow of his ship. Perhaps Bernal thinks of this as African tribal warfare?"

Source: Emily Vermeule, "The World Turned Upside Down," The New York Review of Books, March 26, 1992, p. 41.

Richard Poe's response to Emily Vermeule's statement:

"Vermeule is clearly arguing that the very savagery of the fighting between Egyptians and Nubians proves that they must have belonged to different "races." I can find no other way to interpret Vermeule's argument except as an expression of the old notion that a "natural antipathy" exists between people of different races.
19th-century-style racialism is far from dead. It is simply better
camouflaged."

And now Frank Yurco's response to Emily's nonsense:

"The reason for the virulence of the Egyptian attack on Kush in early Dynasty 18, is not based on racial hatred as Vermuele claimed, but has its roots in the discovery that Kamose made and which he inscribed on his second stela, discovered in 1954. In that stela, he states that his troops captured a Hyksos messenger on the oasis road headed south to Kush. His message was, Kamose is attacking the Hyksos king on the southern end of Hyksos ruled Egypt. You have arisen as king without letting me (the Hyksos king) know, but as Kamose is attacking me, you strike him in the rear (from Kush into Upper Egypt), and then we will divide up this Egypt between your land and mine. That is why the attack when it came was so virulent. The Egyptians had realized that the Hyksos were allied to the Kushites, with the Dynasty 17 squeezed in between. The capture of this message drove home the plight of Egypt. Already Seqenenre Ta'aa had died in battle against the Hyksos, and now this, a Hyksos-Kushite alliance. Proof of the alliance has also come from seals with Hyksos names found in the Kushite burial mounds, and Hyksos style pottery also. So, this accounts for the virulent attack on Kush that really took off only after the Hyksos were driven from Egypt. However, since the Kushites had been in this alliance that could have wiped out Egypt in a moment, the Egyptians obviously had it in for both powers once they became masters of their own fate again. Thus there is no need to invoke racial hatred, in Thutmose hanging the Kushite chief head downward from his flagship, but solely the political realization that the Kushites had been allied with the Hyksos, and that the two allied powers had come within a blink of wiping out Egypt and its pharaonic state."

I wonder what Emily Vermeule would make of the stone images of lower Egyptian decapitated bodies on the Narmer Palette!

Don't want to repeat all the things wrong with Vermule's comments because the post would be too long

Instead, some facts she leaves out:

* the Medja were allied with 17/18 dynasty Kemet.

* it was most likely they who intercepted the Kushite messenger for the Hyksos.

so, you have a complex picture:

* Kemetic nationalist royalty allied with the Medja, against the foreign Hyksos.

* Kushites allied with the Hyksos in a plot to divide Kemet between the two of them.

After the Kemetians defeated the Hyksos, they conquered Kush, and the Medja became a kind of state police force known as the Medjay militia..... http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/nubianarchers.html

Kush and Kemet would have a largely adversarial relationship for much of their existence but even so, it is still a complex relationship, as illustrated by 18th Dyansty mummy of Maiherpa who bore the title King's son of Kush: http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/maiherpa.html

Vermule's remarks were desparate. A last ditch appeal to predjudice and attempt to use the Nubian-myth. (control the perception of Blacks in antiquity by designating them Nubian)

quote:

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Originally posted by rasol:
I have posted on this issue before and in different threads.

Don't want to repeat all the things wrong with Vermule's comments because the post would be too long

Instead, some facts she leaves out:

* the Medja were allied with 17/18 dynasty Kemet.

* it was most likely they who intercepted the Kushite messenger for the Hyksos.

so, you have a complex picture:

* Kemetic nationalist royalty allied with the Medja, against the foreign Hyksos.

* Kushites allied with the Hyksos in a plot to divide Kemet between the two of them.

After the Kemetians defeated the Hyksos, they conquered Kush, and the Medja became a kind of state police force known as the Medjay militia..... http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/nubianarchers.html

Kush and Kemet would have a largely adversarial relationship for much of their existence but even so, it is still a complex relationship, as illustrated by 18th Dyansty mummy of Maiherpa who bore the title King's son of Kush: http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/maiherpa.html

Vermule's remarks were desparate. A last ditch appeal to predjudice and attempt to use the Nubian-myth. (control the perception of Blacks in antiquity by designating them Nubian)

[This message has been edited by rasol (edited 25 October 2004).]

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Rasol, don't forget about the trade that was established with Harkhuf. Harkhuf had freindly established trade with the king of Yam. The people of Yam even sent soliders to protect Harkhuf in his trade with Egyptians. It was the Thnw[Libyans] who were very war like disrupting trade between Harkhuf.