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Didyme, Ptolemy II's Egyptian sidechick
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Elmaestro: [QB] ^There are many loops they contort themselfs into for the sake of the "delusion" some might speak of. You know how religious people reason when it comes to specific passages documented in their secred text... See Alan Cameron [b][i]Tale of two Mistresses [/i][/b] - [i]Didyme and Asclepiades[/i] [QUOTE][i]In the ordinary way skin black as coal might be thought to suggest a negro: a Nubian, say, or Ethiopian. But (as our own use of the word illustrates) when applied to skin colouring, [b]black is a very relative term, normally implying no more than skin significantly darker than the speaker's.[/b] Can the name help? Didyme is not an uncommon name, but it is above all an *Egyptian name.* 3 Preisigke's Namenbuch (1922) cites well over one hundred undifferentiated examples of Didymos/Didyme; 4 When we encounter a dark-skinned Didyme in a Hellenistic epigram, we have every right to expect an Egyptian... Can we identify such a woman? It seems not to have been noticed that Ptolemy Philadelphus had a mistress called Didyme, "one of the native women" ...... The source is the Memoirs of the king's great-great-grandson, Ptolemy Euergetes 11. 16 In the mouth of a Ptolemaic king, very conscious of his Macedonian blood, [b]"native" clearly means Egyptian.[/b] [/i][/QUOTE]So essentially in relation to Didyme the whole plight of the egyptian characteristic can be summed up with the psycoology of Mr. Cameron, implicitly documented in this one text. What I mean by that is Alan takes his time to establish that Didyme is nothing but egyptian, then goes on to establish her as black. What makes this interesting is the works he cite and how he cites them -J-Vocoutter - to point out the classical misconception that the Egyptians classified themselves as a different stock than the "Nubians" Via visual artistic interpretation. - Leucippe and Clitophon & Acts of Peter on the differences between egyptians and other dark skinned peoples. [QUOTE]The Egyptians carefully distinguished themselves from their darker Nubian and Ethiopian neighbors in their art.8 But to the Greeks the Egyptians had always seemed dark-skinned. 9 A number of texts spell out the difference fairly precisely. For example, Achilles Tatius describes Nilotic pirates as "darkskinned, though not absolutely black like an Indian, but more like a half-caste Ethiopian, .10 Particularly explicit is the description in the probably second-century Acts of Peter of a demonic female as "a pure Ethiopian, not Egyptian but completely black. , 11 Inside Egypt skin colour was naturally an important identifying characteristic, and personal descriptions in official documents regularly specify whether an individual is dark- or light-skinned. 12[/QUOTE]Notice these depictions are Post Common era descriptions. As you read further into this piece you'll see classical descriptions clustering Egyptians with Ethiopians and such. And the final point is the actual description of Didyme herself, Native & comparable to coal. So How relative are we supposed to consider the following classical depictions of Aegyptians in general... [QUOTE]simply call Egyptians "black" or "dark." Herodotus, for example, uses "μελαγχροε" (2.104). To the Greek Ammianus (22.16.23) Aegyptii plurique subfusculi sunt et atrati. The Ps.- Aristotelian Physiognomonica classifies the Egyptians together with the Ethiopians as (άγάν μέλανες), a sign (the writer alleges) of cowardice.13 In Aeschylus, the Danaids refer to themselves as(μελανθές ήλιόκτυπου γένος). 14 In the anonymous fragment(...), "make Egyptian" means "make dark." To judge by the titles of numerous lost plays, Athenian audiences were fascinated by stories of Egypt, and it is likely that Egyptians were distinguished from Greeks on stage by appropriately painted masks, just as black and white complexions are clearly differentiated in Greek vase painting.15[/QUOTE] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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