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Could anybody that is knowledagble post all Greco-Roman descriptions of people of the Nile Valley down to ancient Kush and beyound. Please include the time period,author of the quote and also full text description.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Still 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, which certainly amounts to but little, since several other nations are so too; but further and more especially, on the circumstance that the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, are the only nations who have practised circumcision from the earliest times.
Thirdly, it is certain that the natives of the country are black with the heat, that the kites and the swallows remain there the whole year, and that the cranes, when they fly from the rigours of a Scythian winter, flock thither to pass the cold season. If then, in the country whence the Nile has its source, or in that through which it flows, there fell ever so little snow, it is absolutely impossible that any of these circumstances could take place
This was what I heard from the priests at Thebes; at Dodona, however, the women who deliver the oracles relate the matter as follows:—“Two black doves flew away from Egyptian Thebes, and while one directed its flight to Libya, the other came to them. She alighted on an oak, and sitting there began to speak with a human voice, and told them that on the spot where she was, there should henceforth be an oracle of Jove.
By calling the dove black the Dodonaeans indicated that the woman was an Egyptian.
The Nasamonians could not understand a word of their language, nor had they any acquaintance with the language of the Nasamonians. They were led across extensive marshes, and finally came to a town, where all the men were of the height of their conductors, and black-complexioned. Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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From a chauvinistic Greek observation attributed to Achilles Tatius by Helen Morales (Introduction) and Tim Whitmarsh (Translator), in lower Egypt, i.e. the Delta region...
"All were huge, black-skinned [not the pure black of the Indians, more as you would imagine a half-caste Ethiopian], bare-headed, light of foot but broad of body. They were all speaking a barbarian language. "
My personal thoughts on the piece above was:
...and this was supposedly very late in the dynastic era, essentially its declining period, following one foreign invasion after another.
Source posted by yourself, Ausar: herePosts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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In terms of your question, here is Cheikh Anta Diop's summary.........
The Egyptian Race According to the Classical Authors of Antiquity
To the Greek and Latin writers contemporary with the ancient Egyptians the latter's physical classification posed no problems: the Egyptians were negroes, thick-lipped, kinky-haired and thin-legged; the unanimity of the author's evidence on a physical fact as salient as a people's race will be difficult to minimize or pass over. Some of the following evidence drives home the point.
(a) Herodotus, 'the father of history', -480(?) to -425. With regard to the origins of the Colchians25 he writes:
it is in fact manifest that the Colchidians are Egyptian by race ... several Egyptians told me that in their opinion the Colchidians were descended from soldiers of Sesostris. I had conjectured as much myself from two pointers, firstly because they have black skins and kinky hair (to tell the truth this proves nothing for other peoples have them too) and secondly, and more reliably for the reason that alone among mankind the Egyptians and the Ethiopians have practiced circumcision since time immemorial. The Phoenicians and Syrians of Palestine themselves admit that they learnt the practice from the Egyptians while the Syrians in the river Thermodon and Pathenios region and their neighbors the Macrons say they learnt it recently from the Colchidians. These are the only races which practice circumcision and it is observable that they do it in the same way as the Egyptians. As between the Egyptians themselves and the Ethiopians I could not say which taught the other the practice for among them it is quite clearly a custom of great antiquity. As to the custom having been learnt through their Egyptian connections, a further strong proof to my mind is that all those Phoenicians trading to Greece cease to treat the pudenda after the Egyptian manner and do not subject their offspring to circumcision.26
Herodotus reverts several times to the negroid character of the Egyptians and each time uses it as a fact of observation to argue more or less complex theses. Thus to prove that the Greek oracle at Dondona in Epirus was of Egyptian origin, one of his arguments is the following: '. . . and when they add that the dove was black they give us to understand that the woman was Egyptian.'27 The doves in question - actually there were two according to the text - symbolize two Egyptian women who are said to have BEEN carried off from the Egyptian Thebes to found the oracles in Greece at Dodona and in Libya (Oasis of Jupiter Amon) respectively. Herodotus did not share the opinion of Anaxagoras that the melting of the snows on the mountains of Ethiopia was the source of the Nile floods.28 He relied on the fact that it neither rains or snows in Ethiopia 'and the heat there turns men black'.29
(b) Aristotle, -389 to -332, scientist, philosopher and tutor of Alexander the Great.
In one of his minor works, Aristotle attempts, with unexpected naivete', to establish a correlation between the physical and moral natures of living beings and leaves us evidence on the Egyptian-Ethiopian race which confirms what Herodotus says. According to him, 'Those who are too black are cowards, like for instance, the Egyptians and Ethiopians. But those who are excessively white are also cowards as we can see from the example of women, the complexion of courage is between the two.'30
(c) Lucian, Greek writer, +125(?) to +190.
The evidence of Lucian is as explicit as that of the two previous writers. He introduces two Greeks, Lycinus and Timolaus, who start a conversation.
Lycinus (describing a young Egyptian): 'This boy is not merely black; he has thick lips and his legs are too thin. . . his hair worn in a plait behind shows that he is not a freeman.'
Timolaus: 'But that is a sign of really distinguished birth in Egypt, Lycinus. All freeborn children plait their hair until they reach manhood. It is the exact opposite of the custom of our ancestors who thought it seemly for old men to secure their hair with a gold brooch to keep it in place.'31
(d) Apollodorus, first century before our era, Greek philosopher.
'Aegyptos conquered the country of the blackfooted ones and called it Egypt after himself.'32
(e) Aeschylus, -525(?) to -456, tragic poet and creator of Greek tragedy.
In The Suppliants, Danaos, fleeing with his daughters, the Danaids, and pursued by his brother Aegyptos with his sons, the Aegyptiads, who seek to wed their cousins by force, climbs a hillock, looks out to sea and describes the Aegyptiads at the oars afar off in these terms: 'I can see the crew with their black limbs and white tunics.'33
A similar description of the Egyptian type of man recurs a few lines later in verse 745.
(f) Achilles Tatius of Alexandria.
He compares the herdsmen of the Delta to the Ethiopians and explains that they are blackish, like half-castes.
(g) Strabo, -58 to about +25.
Strabo visited Egypt and almost all the countries of the Roman empire. He concurs in the theory that the Egyptians and the Colchoi are of the same race but holds that the migrations to Ethiopia and Colchoi had been from Egypt only
'Egyptians settled in Ethiopia and in Colchoi.'34 There is no doubt whatever as to Strabo's notion of the Egyptian's race for he seeks elsewhere to explain why the Egyptians are darker than the Hindus, a circumstance which would permit the refutation, if needed, of any attempt at confusing 'the Hindu and Egyptian races'.
(h) Diodorus of Sicily, about -63 to +14, Greek historian and contemporary of Caesar Augustus.
According to Diodorus it was probably Ethiopia which colonized Egypt (in the Athenian sense of the term, signifying that, with overpopulation, a proportion of the people emigrate to new territory).
The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians `are one of their colonies,35 which was led into Egypt by Osiris. They claim that at the beginning of the world Egypt was simply a sea but that the Nile, carrying down vast quantities of loam from Ethiopia in its flood waters, finally filled it in and made it part of the continent. . . They add that the Egyptians have received from them, as from authors and their ancestors, the greater part of their laws.36
(i) Diogenes Laertius.
He wrote the following about Zeno, founder of the stoic School (-333 to -261): 'Zeno son of Mnaseas or Demeas was a native of Citium in Cyprus, a Greek city which has taken in some Phoenician colonists.' In his Lives, Timotheus of Athens describes Zeno as having a twisted neck. Apollonius of Tyre says of him that he was gaunt, very tall and black, hence the fact that, according to Chrysippus in the First Book of his Proverbs, certain people called him an Egyptian vine-shoot.37
(j) Ammianus Marcellinus, about +33 to +100, Latin historian and friend of the Emperor Julian.
With him we reach the sunset of the Roman empire and the end of classical antiquity. There are about nine centuries between the birth of Aeschylus and Herodotus and the death of Ammianus Marcellinus, nine centuries during which the Egyptians, amid a sea of white races, steadily crossbred. It can be said without exaggeration that in Egypt one household in ten included a white Asiatic or Indo-European slave.39
It is remarkable that, despite its intensity, all this crossbreeding should not have succeeded in upsetting the racial constants. Indeed Ammianus Marcellinus writes: ". . .the men of Egypt are mostly brown and black with a skinny and desiccated look."39 He also confirms the evidence already cited about the Colchoi: 'Beyond these lands are the heartlands of the Camaritae40 and the Phasis with its swifter stream borders the country of the Colchoi, an ancient race of Egyptian origin.'41
Beyond this, I know that Plutarch said that the tradition about Osiris was that he was Black........
Diodorus said that Osiris was Mitzraim(Egypt), who was the son of Ham.........(If you need me to, I can can give you the references on these last two descriptions).
This is what I know and have researched. Salaam
Posts: 826 | From: U.S.A. | Registered: Jun 2006
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Great stuff Israel. I think there is archaeological proof of Seti 1 in Colchis.
********** 'Aegyptos conquered the country of the blackfooted ones and called it Egypt after himself.'32 -- Blackfooted ones=Kemi or Thebes Ethiopia="Land of Thebes" Aegyptos in Linear B= Ae-ku-pi-tos = Land of Koptos Mizraim="Mesir"
Posts: 7 | Registered: Dec 2006
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