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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: [qb] It is hard to see it when looking at the tomb paintings from far away, but Saqqara paintings ARE lighter upon closer inspection! Again, your own examples that you have provided show this!! You need to look closely at them. Even Ausar agrees that Lower Egyptians tended to be lighter brown while Upper Egyptians were of a richer, darker brown. If you agree that Africans vary in certain features like complexion, then why do you have a problem with this?!! The Egyptians were not all homogenous in the sense that their looks were all the same with no differences. You should know that even in a small corner of Africa, the populations' looks may vary. [/qb][/QUOTE] :) Now that is a good one! I think you are missing my point completely. Egyptian artists produced tomb art and temple art according to a pretty much established system somewhat akin to a modern conveyor belt. Even as far back as the old kingdom, the conventions for portrayals of men, women, dieties and scenes of everyday life were pretty much standardized. While various dynasties may have had their own particular styles, this was pretty much the rule throughout ancient Egypt's history. Therefore, what I am saying is that the color palette used by Egyptian artists in ancient Egypt was pretty much standardized and did not vary by region as you try and indicate. My personal opinion is that the tomb art of the old kingdom in Saqqara followed the same conventions as tomb art in Thebes in the New Kingdom, except maybe certain cosmetic changes in dress, hairstyle, etc. This is the basis of my argument and REALLY has nothing to do with whether the ancients PHYSICALLY had a variation in skin color from north to south, subtle or otherwise. Ausar, being an Egyptian, may be able to comment on the physical characteristics of modern Egyptians, but I am talking about using art to make broad generalizations, when that is all we have as evidence. With this in mind, I do not see enough of a difference in the pictures of tomb art from the valley of the kings to tomb art from Saqqara to justify saying that the ancient Egyptians were "breaking convention" (or following it conversely) in order to depict northern Egyptians as slightly lighter than their southern counterparts. It would make more sense to depict northerners as substantially different, in order to go through the effort to mix the colors in such a way to produce a very subtle difference from north in south artistically. This difference is so subtle as to be negligable, since all artwork from Egypt's ancient period varies in color, even in the Theban tombs! So you cannot say that the brown in Saqqara is somehow outside the range of colors seen in Thebes, when you will see, after looking at many tombs from Thebes and many tombs from Saqqara that they ALL fall in the same stylistic convention established in the earliest days of the Egyptian dynastic system. As a matter of fact there are some tombs in Thebes where the colors are lighter than those at Saqqara, so what does that mean? For us to even begin to get down to the kinds of analysis you are hinting at would require far more than mere photographs from the web. It would require chemical analysis and physical inspection. None of which I think is justified for such a SMALL difference that you seem to indicate. Otherwise, we are stuck with the fact that all of these photos, whether of Theban tomb art or Saqqaran tomb art can be seen in different shades depending on the lighting and cameras used to take the picture. My point is that brown is brown and the Egyptians painted themselves as brown, within a range of shades that was consistent across all regions and time periods. No matter what camera, lighting or how close you look, I believe they all were painted using the same pallete of colors and not distinguishing northerners from southerners purely based on any color code. My main point was and still is that museums and other institutions of Egyptology present the most blatant distortion of the facts of ancient Egypt, in that they consistently rely on unpainted or handpicked statues and items from every period of Egyptian art in order to portray Egyptians as lighter skinned or even European looking. They purposely try and make "afrocentric" or more dark brown African looking portraits from ancient Egypt the exception, rather than the rule. However, if you look at the tomb art from every period of Egyptian history and temples that still have the original paint remaining, you will see that the "afrocentric" style was the RULE not the exception. THIS is what I am against. This is why I rarely used one or two statues from any period of time in Egypt to "typify" an ancient Egyptian from any period. One or two or even ten statues are not enough to be definitive in any way. Therefore, I go to the tombs or temples, because, in most cases you will have hundreds of images in one tomb alone to analyze, versus one or two statues that really dont say ANYTHING by themselves, in terms of broad ideas about stylistic conventions for a certain period or how the population looked and dressed. One or two statues are not enough to give a complete picture of what the ancients were trying to convey. That is why they covered their temples and tombs top to bottom and front to back with images in full color so you could see the FULL picture. Therefore, that is what I use as a reference, not one or two statues in bad condition, which is like trying to take one or two words from a paragraph and characterizing a whole chapter. SEE what I am saying :) [/QB][/QUOTE]
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