good luck

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Originally posted by multisphinx:
What do you egyptions base your self to be to what race? Do you say you are African or Arab, You beleive you are related to Arabs more or AE(Who are considered Africans)? this poll will be used for a research study i am in the process of doing. Please state if you are egyptioin and what country you living at abroad. thank you.

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Even going back to ancient Egyptian times in the farthest North[the Delta] compared to the South[modern Aswan] it was very disintinct phenotype between these two regions. In fact,in Egyptian text Tales of Sinhue it tells about a man from the Delta that was confused and could not reognize himself in Upper Egypt.

The ancient Egyptian population came from the cultures of Pre-dyanstic Upper Egypt and pre-dyanstic Lower Egypt. The Neolithic cultures in pre-dyanstic Egypt were: The Badarian,Naquada,Tasins, and many others. In the Northern region we have the Merimede,Maadi,Faiyum,and other Neolithic culture.

Here is some references about the people from pre-dyanstic Upper Egypt:

The existence of still earlier culture,called the Tasins,has been
claimed. This culture would have been chracterized by the pressure of
round based calic form beakers with incised designs filled with white
pigment,which are also known fropm contexts of similar date in
Nelothic Sudan. However,the exisdtanece of the Tasins as a
chronologically or culturally seperated unit has never been
demonstrated beyond beyond doubt. Although most scholars consider the
tasian to be simply part of the badarian culture,it has also been
argued that the tasian represents the continuation of Lower Egyptian
tradition,which would be the immediate predessor of the Naquda 1
culture. This however,seems rather implausible ,first because
similarities with the neolithic cultures are no
convincing,and,secondly,because of the tasins obvious ceramic links
with the sudan. If the Tasians must be considered as a specific
cultural entity,then it might represent a nomadic culture with a
Sudanese background,which interacted with the badarian culture
page 40

Ian Shaw

Oxford University of Ancient Egypt

The mid-twentieth Egyptologist Alan Gardiner, who was considered an
authority on the ancient civilization of Kemet, gave the following
report on the human remains of the pre-dynastic Badarians, Amratians,
and Gerzeans:
"These... were long-headed-dolicocephalic is the learned term-and
below even medium stature, but Negroid features are often to be
observed. Whatever may be said of the northerners, it is safe to
describe the dwellers in Upper Egypt as of essentially African stock,
a character always retained despite alien influences brought to bear
on them from time to time." (pg. 392; Egypt of the Pharaohs 1966)

In discussing the Badari culture, for example -- Egypt's earliest predynastic
civilization (4400-4000 BC) -- Shomarka Keita writes that many researchers
have found their remains to be "fundamentally `Negroid'."

Going back even further in time, Keita states:

"...late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which
distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000 and
20,000 years BP... These distinguishing characteristics, commonly called
`Negroid,' are shared with later Nile valley and more southerly groups...
Epipaleolithic `mesolithic' Nile valley remains have these characteristics
and diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in key
craniofacial characteristics."

(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological
Relationships", History in Africa 20 (1993), page 135).

The movement or diffusion of people out of and into Egypt during
this time span from before 4000 B.C.-2000 B.C. or later evolution of
this slightly negriod paedomorphic stock into Dyansty Upper
Egyptians was probably a local development from the unknown latest
hunters of the Lower Nile,while mixture of more massive and rugged
[and also negriod ] Nubians[Anderson,1969];Armelagos,1969] produced
some of the rugged Pre-dyanstic variants . Disease and dietary
selection would have affected the population probably more than
immigration and mixture. Lower Egypt may have had a slightly
different population,less linear in the skull variant but with
longer face,like the earliest farmers in Greece ,but also with thin
noses. But I have to use a IX Dyansty series [Woo ,1930] as a base
for this statement and almost certainly this group in the late third
milliennium B.C. shows minor effects of mixture with sea-trading
peoples from the Levant and Agean. Cyprus since the early Neolithic
[Angel,1953;Furst,1933] had both very lateral and some linear skulls
elements and could have been a source of change and there were
probably exchanges with Palestine[Korgman ,1949;Hrdlicka,1938] and
Mesopotamia [Angel ,1951],both with long [Angel,1951],both with long
headed populations with medium or low rather than linear faces and
some of the same lateral element as in early Anatolian[cf. the later
Hitties] and the Agean [Angel,1951]. The latter is supposed to have
increased in numbers [from what selective force?] in the Bronze Age
and perhaps to have affected Lower Egypt via the Hykos.
This is not enough evidence. But the intruders who appeared in
Greece at time of Indo-Europeans acceptance[Angel,1971] are fairly
robust Iranian[or Nordic Iranian] in form[Korgman,1940] with definite
short and low headed and also intermediate forms of skull: I think
that the Hykos wew probably a parallel blend and also may have had
little genetic effect in an area of high population density already.

page 310

J. Lawrence Angel

Divison of Physical Anthropology
Smithstonian Institution

Washington,D.C. 20560 ,U.S.A.
Received 18 April 1969

Biological Relations of Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean
Populations during Pre-dynastic and Dyanstic
Time*

Lower Egypt on the other hand was probally composed of more a mixture of Africans and non-African people. We see this from evidence from burial sites in the cultures of Lower Egypt.

See the following:

There was probably a break in occupation between levels I and II at
Merimda. Level II, known as the Mittleren Merimdekultur and considered by
the by the excavator to be related to the Saharo-Sudanese cultures..."
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
Pg 38
======================================================================
"The Fayum Neolithic should thus be viewed as a culture at the intersection
of three routes: one from the eastern Sahara, one from the Near East and one
from the Nile Valley itself."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 106
=====================================================================

Here is Midant-Reynes statement on the remains of a 40 year old
epipaleolithic woman from the Fayum Oasis in the same book:
" The body was that of a 40 year old woman with a height of 1.6 meters, who
was of a more modern racial type than the classic "Mechtoid" of the
Fakhurian culture, being generally gracile, having large teeth and thick
jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern "negroid' type."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 82
======================================================================
"The prognathism observed in the skulls from Maadi south and Heliopolis may
or may not indicate the infiltration of a negroid strain into the northern
region."
Most Ancient Egypt
By William C. Hayes
======================================================================

Fundamentally,the people with the most trace to ancient Egyptian culture are probabaly the Fellahin in both Lower and Upper Egypt. majority of the modern population of Egypt tend to come from the Fellahin with some exceptions of some elite Egyptians living in the city of Cairo because many of them can trace their ancestry from Mamelukes,Turks,and even some bedouin Arabs.

See the following link:
http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DIGEST/V02/v02.n077
[scroll down to the thread by Peter Piccone]

Finally, let it be said that the ancient Egyptians were not white=20 Caucasians, nor were they Indo-Aryans. They were African, primarily a brown race, although fair= =20 skinned and leptorhine in the north, black skinned and platyrhine in the south, and= =20 various shades in the middle. They manifested all the physical differences you=20 would expect in so large a continent as Africa. Trigger (see below) uses the term=20 "Nilotic" to refer to their heterogenous character. When all is said and done, though,= =20 this whole question of Egyptian racial identity says more about us today than it does= =20 about the ancient Egyptians.