So says late Egyptologist Jean Vercoutter in The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume I
What makes this so baffling, besides the fact that it asks you not to believe your own eyes, is that it's a book co-edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. How could this go unchallenged? In the very first essay Vercoutter advances an unabashed "true negro" assessment of Nile Valley history.
Never have I seen such inane quibbling, where academics, on the basis of things like nasal index and hair texture, proceed to draw pure lines of descent. These types of standards seem to only pertain to Africa, specifically, ancient Africa. They seem most interested in persuading us to believe these are acceptable standards.
Posts: 318 | Registered: Dec 2004
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The "Hamitic" hypothesis jumps off the pages. Its ridiculous how otherwise bright investigators fall for these disingenuous conventions. The sad thing is they fancy themselves the stewards of history, yet, every step of the way, do everything to distort it.
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posted
Does it really surprise you to see this come from sections of Euro scholarship? They get mad when fairy tale European legendary figures are casted as "blacks", but are careless about disfiguring actual historical figures of non-European cultures.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
The book is a reprint and I am not sure how much Gates actually did in this edition. But I am pretty sure that those statements are from the original. Many people told me about these books before they went out of print and I was looking forward to getting them. Having bought 2 of the volumes, I am a bit let down as they don't feature as much new material as I thought they may have had.
Posts: 8895 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Ancient Egypt's oldest and most impressive sculpture is that of a Negro/Black/Noir/Kemi/Ba_ntu... - Hor m Akhet - a visual statement, despite the defacement by the cannons, was made for eternity to gaze upon...
Horemakhet - "horizon of Hor(us)" - source of wisdom - le grand Nègre
The "Hamitic" hypothesis jumps off the pages. Its ridiculous how otherwise bright investigators fall for these disingenuous conventions. The sad thing is they fancy themselves the stewards of history, yet, every step of the way, do everything to distort it.
I don't think anyone fell for anything. They are not kids you know, they are seasoned veterans in their fields. And they are promoting their agendas. In the case of Gates, he got paid, and patted on the head, that's more than enough.
Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
No surprise Henry Louis Gates did a sloppy job as editor. He has never really taken the African roots of ancient Egypt seriously. In one book, "The disuniting of America" by Arthur Meier Schlesinger he is quoted as calling Afrocentric ideas "voodoo". Now you can always find SOME wildly inaccurate group or individual CLAIMING "Afrocentric" this and that, just as you can find some wildly inaccurate "conservatives" but Gates never bothered to sort out what was what and who was who despite the work on the ground by serious people like Keita which was readily available to an academic in 1998 when Schlesinger's book came out. Gates' editing job here is the same sloppiness at work.
Gates is also quoted in Howe's Book "Afrocentrism" as "ambivalent" about "the more sweeping claims" of "Afrocentrists". That is fine. Various sweeping claims do deserve scrutiny, but even Howe is forced to grudgingly admit the African genesis and foundation of ancient Egypt. The fact that Gates cannot even speak to this minimal standard shows his slopiness again. Howe's book was in 1999, Gates has had over a full decade to get up to speed. So far, he hasn't.
even Howe grudgingly, reluctantly, got it right...
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:In the case of Gates, he got paid, and patted on the head, that's more than enough.
Spot on Mike. Gates is one of these uncle Toms hustlers who does not mind making a buck while selling out.
Posts: 1038 | From: Franklin Park, NJ | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
“Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water, just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.”
-- Autobiography of Malcolm X
▬▬▬▬▬▬
Ancient Egypt's oldest and most impressive sculpture is that of a Negro/Black/Noir/Kemi/Ba_ntu... - Hor m Akhet - a visual statement, despite the defacement by the cannons, was made for eternity to gaze upon...
Horemakhet - "horizon of Hor(us)" - source of wisdom - le grand Nègre
posted
Awesome. That's his opinion. More interested than am i in a random guy's opinion is in actual photos i come across.
^^Here [click here] is a collection of medium to dark brown -painted Kemetian statuary and other 3D forms of art which, as is obvious from the above picture and does not seem to cherry pick. Go head, have a look.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Not suggesting this is what should have happened but wouldn't it have been hilarious had the only reply to this thread been someone posting this, no words other images or smilies or anything:
posted
It doesn't say anything when modern Eurocentrics admit AEs are indigenous Africans. They always qualify what they mean: "although the AEs may be indigenous they are certainly not black/negro". They are just echoing the Hamitic theory of indigenous "dark-skinned" whites native to North Africa.
And why would anyone be "baffled" by Henry Louis Gates' behavior re the AEs? Obviously they dont know the man. Posts: 4254 | From: dasein | Registered: Jun 2009
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posted
I know Henry Louis Gates Jr well enough. I read The Signifying Monkey. In my first published article I challenged him over his muted response to James D. Watson. I wasn't familiar with his views on Ancient Egypt though. Not that Vercoutter's views are his. I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
Posts: 318 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Whatbox: Awesome. That's his opinion. More interested than am i in a random guy's opinion is in actual photos i come across.
^^Here [click here] is a collection of medium to dark brown -painted Kemetian statuary and other 3D forms of art which, as is obvious from the above picture and does not seem to cherry pick. Go head, have a look.
Man, thanks for the link. A lot of those I've never seen before.
Posts: 318 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by HERU: I know Henry Louis Gates Jr well enough. I read The Signifying Monkey. In my first published article I challenged him over his muted response to James D. Watson. I wasn't familiar with his views on Ancient Egypt though. Not that Vercoutter's views are his. I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
What Article did you write and who to you write for if you don't mind me asking..??
As far as H. Louis Gates...You never read about his infamous Micheal Jordan quote..
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
I can't see where Skippy has much to do with the writing of the book's chapters which all were written for the original 1976 edition.
Tenured at Harvard he serves as their token for one of their black related publications and does his usual "one of our negroes" job as co-editor and co-author of its new preface.
His name lends the good negro seal of approval to bad caucasian flights of fancy to such inanities in the preface as the word Africa being of Latin etymology and giving two quite untenable suppositions about it with no mention of the Aourigha (link) of ancient Tunisia.
The preface writers' do grudgingly admit "the intellectual framework of this series might seem unfashionably Eurocentric," and proceed in defining blacks as "persons who look as if they are of black African descent" and in pigmentless art pieces "identifiable ... from stereotypical features such as thick protruding lips, flared nostrils, and kinky hair, ... the first and last of those features might be deemed sufficient for identification."
For the preface writers, blacks in antiquity amount to Moses' wife in Numbers 12:1, the self black described woman in Song of Songs 1:5, and Nubians exemplified by Tarharqa. They posit the typical Egyptian/black African disconnect when they state, "black Africans were enslaved by the Egyptians".
Despite these drawbacks there are positive bytes of information in the preface that will be new to the casual art fanciers buying the book only for the artworks. We can only wonder if Skippy is to be credited for them rather than Bindman and Dalton.
quote:Originally posted by HERU: "... as we have seen."
So says late Egyptologist Jean Vercoutter in The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume I
What makes this so baffling, besides the fact that it asks you not to believe your own eyes, is that it's a book co-edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. How could this go unchallenged? In the very first essay Vercoutter advances an unabashed "true negro" assessment of Nile Valley history.
Never have I seen such inane quibbling, where academics, on the basis of things like nasal index and hair texture, proceed to draw pure lines of descent. These types of standards seem to only pertain to Africa, specifically, ancient Africa. They seem most interested in persuading us to believe these are acceptable standards.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by HERU: I know Henry Louis Gates Jr well enough. I read The Signifying Monkey. In my first published article I challenged him over his muted response to James D. Watson. I wasn't familiar with his views on Ancient Egypt though. Not that Vercoutter's views are his. I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
What Article did you write and who to you write for if you don't mind me asking..??
As far as H. Louis Gates...You never read about his infamous Micheal Jordan quote..
Never heard anything about him and MJ. And I'd rather not even put myself out there like that. It was for an Australian based webzine, in response to a New York Times article on DNA where Prof. Gates is quoted, cautioning for what he calls the 'era of the ascendance of biology'. To be sure, I realize he's no Obenga.
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quote: His name lends the good negro seal of approval to bad caucasian flights of fancy to such inanities in the preface as the word Africa being of Latin etymology and giving two quite untenable suppositions about it with no mention of the Aourigha (link) of ancient Tunisia.
[/QB]
In one entry the author advises readers to extinguish any association between 'black' and Tunisia because apparently the stereotypical Negro was a rare and novel occurrence to be casted off with the pygmies. "The prisoners (very like Garamantes) in the mosaics at Zliten are particularly dark and show Negroid features, although they are not Negroes. Moreover ..." (.p339) Cognitive dissonance.
Posts: 318 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Here are some questions- perhaps various ES posters might want to take a shot at one or two on a slow night:
1) What would be a definition of "pan African" prior to colonialism, or the significant presence of outsiders like Arabs?
2) Can it be reasonably said that there was a "pan African" culture prior to said outsiders? If so, what elements made up this cross-Africa culture? religion? Cultural themes and symbols? Material culture- artifacts & tools? Environmental adaptation?
3) Can it be said that there are regional cultural complexes within africa? Either as standalone groupings or existing within a larger umbrella as in #2 above? If so what are the elements?
4) Is the notion of "pan African" a valid one for the Western hemisphere diaspora? That is a unique blend of unrelated peoples brought together thru the common experience of slavery?
------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by HERU: I know Henry Louis Gates Jr well enough. I read The Signifying Monkey. In my first published article I challenged him over his muted response to James D. Watson. I wasn't familiar with his views on Ancient Egypt though. Not that Vercoutter's views are his. I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
How was his response muted? Can you link to your article?
[quote by Howe - using Gates] "rather he [Gates] wants to suggest that a syncretic pan-African culture such as could not have existed on the continent itself, was created through the mixing whic the Atlantic slave trade itself produced, which 'did serve to create a dynamic of exchange and revision among numerous isolated Black African cultures... a truly Pan-African culture fashioned as a colorful weave of linguistic, institutional, metaphysical and formal threads..' His particular concern is to trace a genealogy for the figure of the trickster in afro-American culture which he sees as recurring in folktales from Brazil, or Haiti, to the USA.." He finds the origin of this figure in the Yorbua god Esu-Elegbara, with a direct analogue in Legba among the Fon.. It may be noted that ancient Egypt and Ethiopia play no part in Gates' schema." -----------------------------------
Howe's attempt fails here. FOr one thing the syncretic culture that sprung up via the diasapora is a product of said diaspora with Western African traditions in the mix. Exactly why 'Egypt and Ethiopia" should be in the picture is unclear except as an example of Howe's sly attempt to imply that "West Africans" have no right to comment on anything besides West Africa. It is doubtful whether he would be so presumptuous when discussing Northern Europeans, as to what they "should" think.
Howe also misses the fact that the diasporan mix is not an "Africa only" syncretism. A syncretism is a mix, and that for the disapora, inevitably mustinclude both Egypt and Ethiopia since both form part of the Judeo-Christian narrative that impacted that diaspora. One of Marcus Garvey's parting statements on his deportation for example says: "Look for me in the whirlwind" - a play on something from the prophet Elijah. The Rasta movement as another example is laced with OT references to Ethiopia. All these are part of the mix that emerged from the diaspora. The notion that any such mix should be "confined to West Africa" is as laughable as telling a German that he can't reference anything about Greece, and should confine his thoughts only to approved "Nordic" channels.
Finally Howe misses the point that the African peoples are linked together through their common tropically adapted heritage, DNA (such as the PN2 transition of haplogroup "E") and certain generic cultural elements: ancestor worship, trickster tales, age-grade organizations, and so on, in varying proportions. All of these were well documented before Howe wrote his book. Gates' example of the trickster tale is itself an example of a broad theme cutting across many African cultures, long before the Atlantic slave trade, or any diaspora to the Americas or Arab lands. Trickster tales for example are common among many tribes of Ethiopia. And data like the PN2 transition was discovered in the 1980s, giving Howe a decade to get up to speed.
And there need be no rigid "pan African" culture to validate "Afrocentrism." What Howe conveniently avoids is the long line of research showing that there was indeed a "PAN-NILE VALLEY" cultural complex or a PAN-SUDANIC-SAHARAN cultural complex, or a "Nilotic" cultural complex, as some have termed it, stretching from the Sahara and the Sudan into Egypt, as serious mainstream scholars have long attested- Frankfurt back in the 1950s for example, or even PEtrie in some ways back in the 1800s. And all these are confirmed by recent scholarship: Keita, Redford, Yurco, Wilkinson, et al.
Gates' theory in the Signifying Monkey is no lodestone of "proper" African cultural linkages, as Howe tries to make out, in his attempt to drag Gates into his 'lawsuit' against the "afrocentrists."
In one entry the author advises readers to extinguish any association between 'black' and Tunisia because apparently the stereotypical Negro was a rare and novel occurrence to be casted off with the pygmies. "The prisoners (very like Garamantes) in the mosaics at Zliten are particularly dark and show Negroid features, although they are not Negroes. Moreover ..." (.p339) Cognitive dissonance.
^Indeed. Have you posted any reviews to Amazon re this book?
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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What box Yrs ago I was at the MET,and viewing Kemites in a boat scene like the above a little white girl about 8~9 said to her daddy..they are all blacks!! her daddy then sought to correct image of what she saw by telling her yes hon but these are just the slaves..my teacher in a loud voice then bellowed class!! look how beautiful these Egyptian men and women were.. they looked just like you and they were not slaves,(we did a lot of Museum field trips back then)..
I think people back then more so than today really thought that if blacks were given full credit for Kemet that would be too much and some how racist,"Nubia" could be bargained with,but off course it was seen as lesser if not a bad copy of the former,these were the days before Qustul,Ta-Seti Kerma and genetics,but "Egypt" was if one were really liberal was multi racial and so belonged to everybody not just Africans or blacks.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: What box Yrs ago I was at the MET,and viewing Kemites in a boat scene like the above a little white girl about 8~9 said to her daddy..they are all blacks!! her daddy then sought to correct image of what she saw by telling her yes hon but these are just the slaves..my teacher in a loud voice then bellowed class!! look how beautiful these Egyptian men and women were.. they looked just like you and they were not slaves,(we did a lot of Museum field trips back then)..
I think people back then more so than today really thought that if blacks were given full credit for Kemet that would be too much and some how racist,"Nubia" could be bargained with,but off course it was seen as lesser if not a bad copy of the former,these were the days before Qustul,Ta-Seti Kerma and genetics,but "Egypt" was if one were really liberal was multi racial and so belonged to everybody not just Africans or blacks.
The miniatures really do give us another glimpse of the range of Egypt's people, showing indeed that dark skin is part and parcel of natural indigenous Egyptian variation. About how long ago was the incident Brada and what do you see out there still along these lines?
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by HERU: I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
He's only "prominent" because of his Eurocentric views and propagation of the "true negro" stereotype. You seem amazingly ignorant of the politics of American scholarship. Posts: 4254 | From: dasein | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by HERU: I know Henry Louis Gates Jr well enough. I read The Signifying Monkey. In my first published article I challenged him over his muted response to James D. Watson. I wasn't familiar with his views on Ancient Egypt though. Not that Vercoutter's views are his. I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
What Article did you write and who to you write for if you don't mind me asking..??
As far as H. Louis Gates...You never read about his infamous Micheal Jordan quote..
Never heard anything about him and MJ. And I'd rather not even put myself out there like that. It was for an Australian based webzine, in response to a New York Times article on DNA where Prof. Gates is quoted, cautioning for what he calls the 'era of the ascendance of biology'. To be sure, I realize he's no Obenga.
Yeah, I understand the issiue with privacy esp. on this Site with no Mods you get alot of shady people.
Anyway yeah Gates is quite Eurocentric in his approach.
Guess he started smelling himself when he found out he had a little Irish blood.
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:The miniatures really do give us another glimpse of the range of Egypt's people, showing indeed that dark skin is part and parcel of natural indigenous Egyptian variation. About how long ago was the incident Brada and what do you see out there still along these lines?
Early 80ts this happened,the thing is back then the only people arguing the case for an African read "blk" origin for ancient Kemet were a few radicals in the blk community and they were armed only with the Biblical narrative about Ham or Herodutus's The Histories book II and of course Diop which I first saw this time in the Brooklyn Museum.
Today there have been a definite shift people speak with more confidence and are more un-apologetic about their stance..this in my view is because we have genetics,linguistics,new findings since then that buttress those supposedly once radical ideas now became main stream,you yourself even pointed out how the very conservative Encyclopedia Britannica grudgingly got on board. The only people who persist with this Hamitic,Aryan,Semitic founders of ancient Kemet are dunces,White nationalist and kids with too much time on their hands looking to troll the internet..
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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quote:Originally posted by HERU: I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
He's only "prominent" because of his Eurocentric views and propagation of the "true negro" stereotype. You seem amazingly ignorant of the politics of American scholarship.
@HERU & ANGUISH
Propagation of the "true negro" stereotype? I see nothing ignorant, political or wrong with it.
Are you saying the true Negro does not exist when physiognomy is concerned? I will never understand why you blacks have such an issue with the term true Negro.
Posts: 175 | From: Who knows? | Registered: Jan 2009
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quote:Originally posted by HERU: I'm just saying it's 'baffling' how a prominent black scholar can in someway give credence to that "true negro" nonsense.
He's only "prominent" because of his Eurocentric views and propagation of the "true negro" stereotype. You seem amazingly ignorant of the politics of American scholarship.
@HERU & ANGUISH
Propagation of the "true negro" stereotype? I see nothing ignorant, political or wrong with it.
Are you saying the true Negro does not exist when physiognomy is concerned? I will never understand why you blacks have such an issue with the term true Negro.
Th idea is that the term "Negro" is outdated and can only applied by black people to describe other black people who they perceive to be tomming, hearkening back to the time when the term "Negro" was in current popular use. As far as the "true" part goes the concept is that a Black person without full lips and a broad nose is just as Black as a Black person as a Black person with full lips and a broad nose. One is not more true than the other.
A possible definition of a Black person is a from brown skinned to nearly black brown skinned person who has primary ancestors that lived in Africa recently -no more than a few thousand years ago. The idea is that hair and facial features do not define what Black people are, only skin color and recent African ancestry.
Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
A possible definition of a Black person is a from brown skinned to nearly black brown skinned person who has primary ancestors that lived in Africa recently -no more than a few thousand years ago. The idea is that hair and facial features do not define what Black people are, only skin color and recent African ancestry.
What lioness conveniently and obtusely misses is a key scientific definition- namely tropical adaptations, such as elongated distal segments. No manner of semantic games or smokescreens can duck this reality.
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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The only thing that surprises me is Henry Gates' position. I thought as a prominent African American scholar, he was not a lackey of the Euronuts. I did after all read his book Wonders of the African World.
But other than this, Heru does such writing really surprise you?? Do you really find it so surprising that there are people today who still cling to the outdated "true negroid" or "Hamitic caucasian" concepts??
Posts: 26252 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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What box Yrs ago I was at the MET,and viewing Kemites in a boat scene like the above a little white girl about 8~9 said to her daddy..they are all blacks!! her daddy then sought to correct image of what she saw by telling her yes hon but these are just the slaves..my teacher in a loud voice then bellowed class!! look how beautiful these Egyptian men and women were.. they looked just like you and they were not slaves,(we did a lot of Museum field trips back then)..
LOL That seems to be the mentality many of these whites have. Any black person in ancient art must have been a slave. Wow the guy sounds like Hammered.
I suppose all these portraits of Egyptian royals were "slaves" as well.
Which brings me back to the topic of this Vercoutter fellow. And he's suppose to be an Egyptologist?? I take it he hasn't seen that much ancient portraits then.
Posts: 26252 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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He might be zarahan. They have the same similar m.o., posting styles, and posting content. This Djehuti character has countless sockpuppets on these forums.
Posts: 3085 | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
^ Wrong as usual. But everyone knows YOU are a sockpuppet of Argay in real life. Since you love to have his hand up your... well, you know.
Posts: 26252 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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