Denial of the African origins of Ancient Egypt?

[Edi]

BigTriece:

Language is a worthless indicator of biological origin. This is because languages cross ethnicity barriers all the time, they absorb from each other, sometimes through several intermediaries, jump all over the place and you can find examples of languages being adopted by entire population groups that originally did not speak them through cultural exchange.

You've been making arguments specifically about the biological origin of ancient Egypt and now suddenly the Yoruba in West Africa are descended from Egyptians because of some linguistic similarities? Give me a fucking break.

And while you're at it, go look up a couple of relatively obscure languages, specifically Finnish and Hungarian. They are found thousands of miles from each other, they have the same roots, but they branch a really fucking long time ago. There is a relation, but neither one is descended from the other.

With Egypt and the Yoruba, it is more likely that they have some common roots somewhere and cultural exchange that has resulted in linguistic cross-pollination.

As far as your voodoo article by Juraj whatsitsface, the bit about black Egyptians writing down the Old Testament in ancient Egypt is suspect at best, to put it charitably. What part of ancient Egypt? When? Egypt stretched all the way to present day Israel at one point and there is all kinds of interesting things related to the history of our present day alphabet and its roots that of necessity deal a whole lot with Egypt but also with the surroundings.

The earliest known writings of the Old Testament are from the area of present day Israel. The presence of Jewish (or related) beliefs in Ethiopia in and of itself is not proof that these things were first written there.

Also, could you please tell me what the hell kind of hallucinogens you're taking, because it looks like every time anyone posts anything, even if it agrees with you, it seems to go through some English to BigTriece translator, you reply to the translated text and out comes fucking gibberish.

Are you actually replying to what people write, or to what you imagine they write? Because right now most of your replies are out of context or strawman distortions and you wander off on utterly bizarre tangents.

[Simon_Jester]

This is an important distinction given attempts to de-Africanize Ancient Egypt biologically and culturally with ideas such as the Dynastic Race theory, Hamitic Hypothesis and Nordic Desert Empire claim.

"Nordic Desert Empire" sounds to me like some exploded idea that was either popular eighty years ago among historians who then lost all credibility by endorsing the Nazis... or like something that popped up recently among white supremacist idiots.

Is there an actual mainstream support for such a lunatic notion among the historical community?

As far as exact skin color is concerned I imagine that there was a range in complexion on average from medium to very dark brown throughout the Dynastic period and the Egyptians gradually became lighter particularly in the North due to foreign admixture from settlements and later invasions.

On the other hand, there was a substantial genetic trickle flowing down the Nile as I understand it; is that not true? I'd expect the genetic profiles of modern Egypt to come from a very wide range of places both to the south and the north.

You could of course argue that Ancient China was a civilization developed by dark-skinned Asians defining "darker than" as being more so than the various ethnic groups of Europe.

I honestly hadn't thought of it in those terms; the real question of "how dark is dark-skinned?" is one that rapidly devolves into hair-splitting that I'm not really interested in getting into. I was trying to give a vague answer because I don't know how to even define how "dark" an entire population is.

Some populations (Nigeria) can be unambiguously described as "dark." Others (Sweden) can be unambiguously described as "pale." In between, you run into trouble: you can express average skin shade, but what about the standard deviation? What about skin lightening and darkening in response to purely climatic factors like sun exposure or lack thereof? So my only working definition of "dark-skinned" is "dark enough to stand out in the only areas I know where people are, by and large, pale."

That's not really true of China in my opinion. The northern Chinese people I know are actually rather pale (though not so much so as the Koreans and Japanese, by and large); the southern Chinese people wouldn't be all that far out of place in southern Europe either if we went purely by skin tone. At least, I wouldn't expect so. For me, it's not so much the darkness of the skin as slight differences in the underlying coloration and (more importantly) the different facial features that create the visual difference. So I wouldn't cast this issue in terms of light/dark.

But again, this isn't based on any formal study, or even formal definition, of collective skin tones, because it strikes me as an area that's too fraught with nationalist/racialist pet theories and emotion to be worth going into all that far. There are too many people for whom saying "this is how dark/not dark the ancient Egyptians were" provokes an emotional response out of proportion to the importance of the question. And too many people willing to promote prima facie absurd ideas like "Desert Nordic Empire" or "Voodoo comes from ancient Egypt."
_________

Again, speaking for myself I'd always assumed Egyptian civilization was indigenous in any normal sense of the term; I'd always assumed the indigenous population was local and presumably dark-skinned by some reasonable standard of 'dark.' My thoughts on the matter don't really go beyond that; it hardly surprises me to discover that the closest relatives of the ancient Egyptians are groups who live along the upper Nile, or who live in the Sahel, or Somalia, or other parts of Africa reasonably close to Egypt.

Strikes me as common sense, really. Who else would we expect them to be closely related to, the Ainu of Japan?

Unfortunately, the last three threads we've had on the subject of ancient Egyptian ancestry in this forum have all suffered from one or more raving lunatics, which keeps sabotaging the discussion. As illustrated by...

What are your CREDENTIALS?

Why is that it of importance? I am not referencing my opinion or my "credentials" in this discussion, I am instead referencing the direct statements and or works of reputed scholars and anthropologist. You see that's the difference between my argument that long piece of source less shit that you just wrote! I am not making my "opinion" or views to hold any fucking weight, rather everything that I've expressed regarding this subject and regarded as fact I back with sources.

You will notice, if you pay attention to anything other than the windmills you've chosen to tilt at, that yes credentials matter. Here is why.

Credentials set context. To obtain credentials, one must study: perform hard work over a long period. This process brings you into contact with the knowledge gathered by other people- knowledge gathered through even harder work, over even longer periods.

When you earn credentials, you do it by becoming educated. Being educated is good. It makes it easier for you to make good arguments. It makes it easier for you to spot and avoid making bad arguments. You will know more about the context in which you speak: you won't mouth off stupidly by making assumptions which contradict basic realities.

You cannot duplicate the effort that goes into earning credentials by pulling together random stuff online. Because when you try to do that, you will be betrayed by the nature of the Internet. You will go looking for sources that support the position you want to defend, and they will tell you what you want to hear. You will learn nothing you didn't already know; you'll just be able to slap a slightly shinier coat of paint on what you already believed. You will not become educated. You will merely become more set in whatever ignorant prejudices you already had.

You might, with luck, become well informed on one thing (say, the skeletons of ancient Egyptians). But that knowledge will not make you an expert in other related things (ancient Egyptian art). It cannot, because unlike a person with a real education, all you did was pursue whatever avenues of study amused you. You were never expected to learn things that struck you as boring or irrelevant to your goal- in this, claiming the glories of ancient Egypt in the name of a group you could identify with.

Thus, you learned plenty about areas relevant to you (skeletal studies that supported the case you wanted to learn to make). But you learned much less about ancient Egypt in general (including important facts about Egyptian art that would have warned you not to make a big fuss about it as evidence for the color of ancient Egyptians). And, in general, you learned nothing whatsoever about how to make a logical argument, how to present evidence efficiently to convince people of things, and other skills that are vitally important in learned debate.

Instead, you learned how to boast and strut and sling putdowns at people you disagree with. On balance, I'd say you came out behind.

Just because Keita is black doesn't mean he's Afrocentric in the same sense you are,

Wow, so because I state that based on Bio-Cultural evidence that the ancient Egyptians would be considered "black" I'm an "Afrocentric". Is someone who states that the Romans were "white" a "Eurocentric"?

Heh. That's amusing to someone familiar with the history of idiotic racism. It was common practice among the same 19th century racist idiots who tried to deny that Egypt was an African culture to claim the glories of Rome as associated with northern Europeans. While at the same time claiming that it was the upright and manly northern Europeans (Germanic barbarians) who eventually overthrew that empire, proving their robust superiority. And so on and so on.

You see, a lot of these idiots saw contemporary southern Europeans as "not white enough." So they felt strongly compelled to at once uphold the idea that their direct (very very white) ancestors were the REAL Europeans... and yet that somehow the actual Romans and Greeks, the only Europeans who'd accomplished anything significant in ancient history, were nonetheless white white white! Not at all dark or swarthy or whatever! Because surely swarthy people can't have done anything important!

They then extended the same argument to Egypt, which is where all the absurd foolishness about ancient Egypt being some kind of cultural transplant from Mesopotamia or whatever came from. Because, again, it would spoil their whole day if they had to admit that people darker than they were actually accomplished anything while their ancestors were still wandering around the forests of Northern Europe painting themselves blue, charging into battle naked, and occasionally wondering whether to adopt this mysterious "wheel" they'd heard of.



This resulted in a lot of stupid nonsense. Today, we can at least recognize that yes, civilization in Europe spread north from the Mediterranean, and that the ancestors of what are now the most prosperous states in Europe (Britain, Germany, France, Scandinavia) were at the time a bunch of barbarians.

And I perceive a certain symmetry of attitudes between you and those long-gone idiots, only in a scaled-down, photonegative version. For them, the peoples of the northern Mediterranean weren't white enough and their whiteness needs to be played up; for you, the people of the southern Mediterranean aren't black enough and their blackness needs to be played up. You at least have somewhat better evidence to play with than they did, but I'm not sure how much it would matter to you if your evidence was crappy. People who get their ego wrapped up in a sense of racial accomplishment are notoriously bad at accepting contrary evidence, or limiting the scale of their claims to the scale of the evidence.

[Spoonist]

@Simon_Jester
Sweden wouldn't be as pale as prejudice dictates. It has imported large groups of people over long periods of time. Enough so that they have changed the genetics of major parts of the pop. You see sweden had about a thousand years where it thought it could compete with the powers on the continent (as did denmark), the pop was too low to keep the wars going so lots and lots of people had to immigrate to keep working those mines and mills after lots of males had been killed off in foreign lands. Add to that all the mercenaries etc. Then in 14th 15th 16th 17th cen, depending on who was cool on the continent they were paid to immigrate to do stuff which the locals couldn't. Heck swedens second largest city was founded up to half with immigrants, with it being a coastal trade city has lead to obvious effects. Even the line of the current king is immigrants. (Stupid nationalists wouldn't recognize stuff like this but hey thats stupid for you). Add to that in modern time there has been lots of refugees coming, like during the two wars in iraq one commune (similar to US state but much smaller) in sweden has taken in more refugees from iraq than the US and Canada combined IIRC. Somalis would come to mind if one is looking for africans. Plus in the boom after WWII where swedens industry had not been bombed to smithereens lots of christian turks (and finns) immigrated as an extra workforce. While that is too recent to leave a permanent biotrace yet, its just a matter of centuries before it does.
If you want to have pale-pale then you'd have to go to inland norway or iceland.

[Simon_Jester]

@Simon_Jester
Sweden wouldn't be as pale as prejudice dictates. It has imported large groups of people over long periods of time. Enough so that they have changed the genetics of major parts of the pop.

Okay, Iceland.

I admit to being rather out of touch with detailed demographic conditions in Sweden.

[ArmorPierce]

Let's look at the definition of Negro again:

• Negro-of, pertaining to, or characteristic of one of the traditional racial divisions of humankind, generally marked by brown to black skin pigmentation, dark eyes, and woolly or crisp hair and including especially the indigenous peoples of Africa south of the Sahara.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Negro

Mulugeta Seraw was the Ethiopian immigrant who was beaten to death by skinheads in Portland back in the late 80's. While he was being beaten the skin heads kept calling him a n******.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/i ... land-trial

By the way do you know what Rosa Parks looked like?

Look at your own definition, it states people of Africa south of the Sahara. Ancient Egypt was mostly not south of the Sahara as far as I know.

As for dark skin see picture below:


I'm on the center is me, the girl on the right is clearly black. Going by definition of brown to black skin would mean that the girl on the left is black when she is clearly of Indian background. Are you considering Indians black too?

If you are, then you are arguing an all together different thing than what everyone else is which I would not find too surprising. Some black people would consider me black too.

[Broomstick]

Please provide proof of Iman's alleged cosmetic procedures.

You are aware that most celebrities who have these procedures have their cosmetic surgeon sign a confidentiality form aren't you?

And yet, the information leaks out anyway. There is a site out there that points out surgery scars, swelling, and other such lovely evidence in photos after celebrities undergo surgery because such surgery does leave scars. That's how the information gets out.

"Good Genes or Good Docs"

In a land of over 85,000 voters

I'm not impressed by a bunch of slack-jawed idiots on the internet. Give me an interview with a medically trained doctor, preferably a plastic surgeon, who can determine if work has been done or not and even venture a good guess at the technique. Give me a photo showing scars or swelling. You can't really hide such surgery.

Iman's face has changed much less over the years than many other celebrities, some of whom no longer look like themselves. Comparing the 1975 vs. 2008 pictures, her brow line is the same. Her nose is actually longer than it used to be. In the later picture, under her right eye (her right, it's on the viewer's left), there is a slight asymmetry compared to the left and what may be cosmetic covering makeup over a scar. Her left eye is slightly narrower than her right, whereas in the earlier picture they are more symmetrical. This is consistent with an injury and some expertly done reconstructive surgery and it's well known Iman suffered a bad car accident and required surgery on her face. Just by what I see, both orbits around the eyes were fractured but repaired to the point that, unless someone looks very closely, the damage isn't really visible. Likewise, there is a slight asymmetry along her nose in the later picture, which leads me to suspect a fracture there as well, which might also account for the change in nose angle. Apparently, she went face-first into a steering wheel or dashboard, with her mid-face taking the brunt, sparing her forehead and jaw line. You know, there is absolutely no shame in having a surgeon work on such injuries, and she must have had a damn good one because she still looks like herself and not everyone is that fortunate after such injuries. I do not, however, see any sign of her nose being narrowed or shortened (the most common “cosmetic” nose job), her lips are still the same, and she even has the normal naso-labial folds associated with aging when she smiles although “fixing” that is a brief outpatient procedure that can be performed over a lunch hour. I'll copy the pictures here so people can easily look at them again.

Iman has "good docs"

Says less than 2/3 of those people, NOT all of them as your wording implied, and not one of them a doctor I'll bet. The opinions of ignorant laypeople do not count as “proof”.

With that said your source less rant below regarding Iman and this alleged rapid and drastic change in skin tone

What? There are there 33 years between those photographs – how the fuck is that “rapid”? 33 years is “rapid” to you? WTF?

... of ONLY the tropically adapted Somalis and Ethiopians (which by the way you haven't specified which particular clan that she is from)

It's no secret she's from Somali, not Ethiopia. Do keep track of the fact they are different countries, will you? As for which specific clan – I don't ever recall seeing that information in print because, frankly, I've never bothered to look for it and I don't see how it's relevant. There is no doubt she's Somali.

I'll say one more thing – in THIS picture she doesn't look bleached at all!

Unless you're proposing that a bleached-out Iman applied full body make-up to restore her color? Maybe some photoshopping? Or maybe she just never did that skin bleaching thing at all?

Though I will say this! I just showed the Somali family (who's skin tones vary from light to coal black) who own the corner store near my job your assertions that their skin tone and the skin tone of all Somali Americans changes because of their residence outside of the Tropics.

You have delibrately distorted my words here. I NEVER stated this was true of “all Somalis”, I very specifically specified is was a subset of Somalis. So, unless this hypothetical “Somali family” you claim to know is of the same ethnic group they can't speak for her.

I also asked them Iman and showed them your assertions (via Ipone). They told me to tell you that "he is a fucking idiot..he doesn't know what he is talking", "Everyone know Iman had surgery to change skin and face"

And “everyone knew” Michael Jackson didn't have vitiligo. Everyone used to know the earth was flat, too, but it doesn't make it so. Unless they have personal knowledge of Iman their opinions don't count for any more than any random internet tough guy.

And it seems you're still not quite convinced I'm female. If you require proof you need only supply me with an address and I'll be happy to mail you some used menstrual products to confirm my gender. Would you prefer to receive pads or tampons?

Is this like the accusations Michael Jackson chemically lightened his skin? Because he didn't, and I even did a thread on the topic shortly after his death. He really did have vitiligo, and because he stayed out of the sun so thoroughly his non-affected skin lightened as well.

You seriously have your fucking head up your ass regarding this don't you? According to one interview with MJ regarding this question (I believe with Oprah) he stated that BECAUSE of his vitiligo he used skin lightening crèmes to mask them. As evident by the shitload of skin lightening crèmes found in his mansion after his death:

You do know that in English it's spelled “cream”, right?

You mean the hydroquinolone and benoquin found in the same medical bag as the propofol that killed him? The shit carried by the doctor who killed him? If that had been used on MJ prior to the time near his death he wouldn't have required so much fucking stage makeup, and people wouldn’t be able to take shots of his vitiligo after it melted off him while up on stage. It leaves the skin albino-white. You wouldn't see a picture like this:
or this:

If, with a final concert tour coming up, he'd decided to get skin-whitening treatments for his skin conditions that was, in fact, his prerogative. It's a perfectly legitimate medical treatment for the vitligo he obviously had. But equally clearly, most of his adult life it was the disease bleaching his skin, not medical treatments. The photographic proof that he went years with blotchy skin is right there.

Well, Egypt straddles the equator

No it doesn't! Southern portions of the country lie within the Tropics.

So... you're saying it's NOT on the equator? Or that the part of Egypt on the equator somehow doesn't count, it's not Egyptian enough somehow?

What are your CREDENTIALS?

Why is that it of importance? I am not referencing my opinion or my "credentials" in this discussion, I am instead referencing the direct statements and or works of reputed scholars and anthropologist.

Quoting an expert does not make you an expert. It just means you got lucky on your Google search.

Googling and Wikipedia experience are not "credentials".

I never claimed to be a fucking scholar. Instead I admit that I began researching this subject as hobby about five years ago

Ah, so you admit you're a self-taught amateur. It's a “hobby”. You have zero credentials and you have never studied this in any sort of academic setting. In other words, you're just another loud mouth on the internet who is upset because not everyone agrees with his ranting.

Egypt is unquestionably African, but there's much more to Africa than Egypt.

True!

Well, I suppose we agree on something then.

Is someone who states that the Romans were "white" a "Eurocentric"?

Yes, actually they would be if they insisted Rome at the height of the empire was entirely white European and nothing else, as it is well documented that there was significant immigration, foreigners could become full citizens, they had contact with both Africa and Asia, and no strong cultural taboos on marrying people who looked different from the majority in Rome. There weren't a lot of dark skinned people in Rome but there were some.

If you want some compelling evidence – sickle cell disease is Italy's most common genetic blood disease, it's more common towards the south of Italy (nearer Africa) and runs as high as 10-13% in some “white” populations. Where do you think that gene came from?

[Terralthra]

Er, Broomstick, Egypt doesn't touch the equator at all. It is at around 22 degrees N latitude at the southern end to 32 degrees N latitude at the northern end.

[Broomstick]

Oh? :::looks at map::: My bad. Damn, my eyes are getting really old.

[Big Triece]

Iman's face has changed much less over the years than many other celebrities

Baaawawa about the most irrelevant shit! So in conclusion we can both agree that Iman is a beautiful woman who fits the general phenotype of the ancient Egyptians to a tee:



Thus the above is a good representation of early ancient Egypt!

So... you're saying it's NOT on the equator? Or that the part of Egypt on the equator somehow doesn't count, it's not Egyptian enough somehow?

Congradulations! You have officially confirmed that you argue for the fucking sake of arguing and that your long rants have shot straight out of your ass!

Quoting an expert does not make you an expert.

When the fuck did I say I was an expert? Apparently my stance on the issue is so well put together in a well understood and legit (referring to the mainstream sources) manner that it caused you shitheads to assume that I was an "expert" in this shit.

Ah, so you admit you're a self-taught amateur. It's a “hobby”.

I'm am not "self-taught"! Through the years I have come across a host of individuals with such credentials who relay complex issues regarding the the numerous sciences referenced on this topic which help me and others get a better understanding of these types of issues.

You have zero credentials and you have never studied this in any sort of academic setting.

Now you're putting words in my mouth! I did take a course in anthropology at my university last year. That does not make me an anthropologist, but it does give me a better understanding of certain things regarding this issue than most individuals who have never studied it.

[Simon_Jester]

And yet you seem to betray a profound lack of knowledge in areas that are not directly related to your main agenda of proving the ancient Egyptians were DARK DARK DARK! by way of skeletal analysis.

Thus, you stubbornly take untenable positions on areas where you know little or nothing. Like ancient Egyptian art and whether or not it's representational. Or like models you've apparently never heard of before they were brought up in the conversation. Or like your assumptions about how membership in certain ethnicity automatically conveys extra knowledge about ancient cultures vaguely related to people of that ethnicity.

These are the marks of someone who has only bothered to study one thing, and has ignored all the fields related to it. You may not be self-taught, but you might as well be- and unlike most of the intelligent self-taught people I know, you can't accept that maybe you didn't learn everything there was to know on the subject.

And that is the mark of someone who assumes that his knowledge of the one thing he cares about makes it appropriate for him to boast and strut and loudly proclaim his superior knowledge of other, completely different things. And who responds to being questioned on those completely different things with more boasting and strutting and put-downs of people who disagree with him.

Your posturing doesn't impress anyone. As I've said before, you'd do better to stick to the areas where you know more or less what the hell you're talking about even if you personally are not a scholar in those fields. Leave general-context issues to people who bothered to study up on more than one thing in their lives.

[PharaohMentuhotep]

Again, speaking for myself I'd always assumed Egyptian civilization was indigenous in any normal sense of the term; I'd always assumed the indigenous population was local and presumably dark-skinned by some reasonable standard of 'dark.' My thoughts on the matter don't really go beyond that; it hardly surprises me to discover that the closest relatives of the ancient Egyptians are groups who live along the upper Nile, or who live in the Sahel, or Somalia, or other parts of Africa reasonably close to Egypt.

Strikes me as common sense, really. Who else would we expect them to be closely related to, the Ainu of Japan?

Arguments over this subject among people who aren't blatant racists tend to be centered around whether or not Ancient Egyptians for the most part looked like modern Egyptians. Consider Brace's position that the Egyptians were simply Egyptians and were unaffected by invasion or migration. I have debated Egalitarians who strongly oppose a "Black" Egypt because they feel it is a robbery of the modern Egyptian heritage. Some argue that North Africa was originally populated by Eurasians or Caucasians during ancient back migrations that preceded the Dynastic period and therefore the Ancient Egyptians are ancestral to Southwest Asia. Some people feel that Ancient Egypt was culturally a part of the Near East, an extension of Mesopotamian culture and only African in geography.

Basically you have a "Middle Eastern/Semitic" vs. "Black/African" debate raging. Still others insist on a "Multiracial" Egypt that had diverse phenotypes in abundance including dark and light skinned people.

On a blog for National Geographic Magazine one of the editors of the magazine posited the question, "Isn't there a question here about what an "indigenous Northeast African" looked like?"

The idea that the Ancient Egyptians looked primarily like more Southerly East Africans is an idea that doesn't sit will with a lot of people for various reasons.

My belief is that the Ancient Egyptians generally looked more like tropical East Africans and gradually assimilated migrants from settlements and invasions over time. This is what Keita appears to be postulating. Ancient Egypt is a modern Egyptian heritage but it was also an African civilization culturally and biologically. It was built by Native Africans just like Aztec civilization was built by Native Americans. Foreign invasions lead the people to change culturally and biologically.

I have Egalitarian motivations for getting involved in such discussions. Racism has severely warped the perceptions of many people and the African historical record has been distorted.

[Broomstick]

Iman's face has changed much less over the years than many other celebrities

Baaawawa about the most irrelevant shit! So in conclusion we can both agree that Iman is a beautiful woman who fits the general phenotype of the ancient Egyptians to a tee:

I am willing to postulate that Iman could be a good example of Ancient Somalian phenotype... one of many. Which probably resembled one of the many phenotypes likely to have been in Ancient Egypt.

Quoting an expert does not make you an expert.

When the fuck did I say I was an expert? Apparently my stance on the issue is so well put together in a well understood and legit (referring to the mainstream sources) manner that it caused you shitheads to assume that I was an "expert" in this shit.

Actually, we've been pretty much laughing at you the whole time. We never assumed you were an expert in anything other than bullshit and bigotry.

Ah, so you admit you're a self-taught amateur. It's a “hobby”.

I'm am not "self-taught"! Through the years I have come across a host of individuals with such credentials who relay complex issues regarding the the numerous sciences referenced on this topic which help me and others get a better understanding of these types of issues.

But you've never studied this in an academic setting. You were never a formal student. Congratulations, you're self taught. If you had a better grasp of the limitations of that method of education that might even be respectable but your reach exceeds your grasp.

You have zero credentials and you have never studied this in any sort of academic setting.

Now you're putting words in my mouth! I did take a course in anthropology at my university last year. That does not make me an anthropologist, but it does give me a better understanding of certain things regarding this issue than most individuals who have never studied it.

One class in anthropology is no form of credential, either. It just gives you enough knowledge to make a complete ass of yourself.

I took several courses in Ancient History in college because I needed electives and was interested in it. Just because I learned to decipher a few hieroglyphs or some cuneiform characters doesn't mean I can read Ancient Egyptian or Sumerian. I even had the privilege of studying anatomy at the Chicago Field Museum, with access to their skeletal collections and a generous amount of time in the reference library and access to curators who ARE true experts in their fields. I would NOT presume to have any sort of credential in history or anthropology or forensics - I am at best an interested and informed layperson. That's why I defer to Thanas in matters of history - he has credentials and knowledge I don't. I don't always like it when he corrects my errors (because I'm human and all), but I do respect his knowledge.

You, BigT - YOU I have no respect for.

[Broomstick]

Arguments over this subject among people who aren't blatant racists tend to be centered around whether or not Ancient Egyptians for the most part looked like modern Egyptians. Consider Brace's position that the Egyptians were simply Egyptians and were unaffected by invasion or migration. I have debated Egalitarians who strongly oppose a "Black" Egypt because they feel it is a robbery of the modern Egyptian heritage. Some argue that North Africa was originally populated by Eurasians or Caucasians during ancient back migrations that preceded the Dynastic period and therefore the Ancient Egyptians are ancestral to Southwest Asia. Some people feel that Ancient Egypt was culturally a part of the Near East, an extension of Mesopotamian culture and only African in geography.

Basically you have a "Middle Eastern/Semitic" vs. "Black/African" debate raging. Still others insist on a "Multiracial" Egypt that had diverse phenotypes in abundance including dark and light skinned people.

My personal inclination is towards the "multiracial" (which I'd rather call "multiethnic:, as race is such a loaded term) but even with that I'd say the darker skin tones were much more abundant than the lighter ones. A "medium dark" African tone with a sprinkling from North African Coast/Middle Eastern groups, but since the genes flowed both ways nobody in any those groups was ever going to be "pure" - people were moving around and mixing in that area pretty much forever. As a wild ass guess - probably 90% medium brown types with about 10% as either very very dark or relatively pale. But I'll admit that's a guess on my part, if some actual, credentialed authority produced solid evidence of some other ratios I'd accept that with no problem. It's just that no one seems willing to make sure a numerical statement, and probably with very good reason given the political and historical issues associated with race in OUR civilization.

I have Egalitarian motivations for getting involved in such discussions. Racism has severely warped the perceptions of many people and the African historical record has been distorted.

And that is unfortunate. Perhaps in another generation this will be less of a problem.

[Big Triece]

My personal inclination is towards the "multiracial" (which I'd rather call "multiethnic:, as race is such a loaded term) but even with that I'd say the darker skin tones were much more abundant than the lighter ones.

• "Were the Ancient Egyptians black? That is entirely up to you. But were they biologically African? It would seem that they were. After considering the full range of anatomical, linguistic, cultural, archeological and genetic evidence, Shomarka Keita feels confident in concluding that the original Egyptians by which he means the pre-dynastic people of Southern Egypt, who founded Egyptian civilization evolved entirely in Africa. Both culturally and biologically, he says, they were more related to other Africans than they were to non-Africans from Europe or Asia.
  
  Through the years, Keita believes, the Egyptians appear to have blended with many immigrants and invaders, many of whom were lighter-skinned and more Caucasoid in appearance than the original Egyptians. Libyans, Persians, Syro-Palestinians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans all left their imprint on the faces of Egypt. But Egyptian civilization remained profoundly African to the very end.
  
  Keita himself rarely resorts to such crudely racial expressions as black and white. But if we might be forgiven a momentary lapse into everyday speech, it would probably not hurt to conceive of Keita's theory as the polar opposite of the Hamitic Hypothesis. Whereas the Hamitic theorists saw Egypt as a nation of white people that was gradually infiltrated by blacks, the biological evidence seems to suggest that it was more like a black nation that was gradually infiltrated by whites."
  
  Black Spark White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? - Chapter 77. Black, White or Biologically African? Pg. 471

[Big Triece]

Look at your own definition, it states people of Africa south of the Sahara. Ancient Egypt was mostly not south of the Sahara as far as I know.

It stated "especially" that does exclude Africans who do not reside south of the desert. If it did then what exactly would you consider the people of the Darfur region of Sudan?

Are you considering Indians black too?

You just referenced a section of the definition that made reference to Africa, so why are you now trying to put non Africans into the equation?

[Spoonist]

Ah, bigT has exalted us with another of his marvellous visits. This after a hiatus of three days before which he gave us an eloquent discourse reusing a pic already posted, an argument already refuted and tried to convey his credentials. So after such an unprecedented preperation period what wonders can he show us this time?

Well for starters he has brilliantly dazzled us by using two posts for what could have been said in one.
The first being a quote and nothing else, showing his unique talent for extrapolating information from complex sources and render them into his expressive summaries so treasured on this forum.
The second being another image which certainly relays his thoughts so much more fluently then a thousand words from his keyboard.
With such content maybe there is a flood coming of similar posts fertilizing the desert of our forum?

We all bow down for this amazing intellect which certainly will continue to do what he does best. Ignoring those who in their inferiority give counter arguments and skipping questions which he in his excellence will not answer since the sheer glory of his answers would humiliate them so.

Now I wish there was something that I could possibly respond to but of course there is nothing there.

[ArmorPierce]

It stated "especially" that does exclude Africans who do not reside south of the desert. If it did then what exactly would you consider the people of the Darfur region of Sudan?

The sub saharan african region runs acrooss th country of Sudan. It's not a surprise if there is some overlap. Hence 'especially'

Are you considering Indians black too?

You just referenced a section of the definition that made reference to Africa, so why are you now trying to put non Africans into the equation?[/quote]

To demonstrate that the logic that dark skin = 'black' is flawed when you were presenting a video of someone claiming to be black.

[Thanas]

At this point I would like to ask everyone else to step back, I'll handle the various issues from now on, as apparently that is the only way to get a proper debate going on. Feel free to add to my posts if it pertains to the subject under discussion and feel free to criticize me, but we will do this in a proper manner.

[Thanas]

The huge multipart reply

Alright. Having gotten completely fed up with this debate, this will be an attempt to show how the ancient Egyptians looked at themselves and how they were regarded by the others regarding their ancestry. This will be done the following way:

a) First, I will look at the ancient sources and outline what they say about Egyptians
b) Then I will look at ancient portraits and ancient art, its dubious value etc.
c) The third part will be a look at analysis done on Egyptian mummies, their DNA analysis as well as a look at Keita's studies, which - contrary to the opinion of some in this thread - are not opinio communis or even free of methodological errors.

I shall state that a lot of the following is information taken from Mathilda's Anthropology blog, which can be found here. Said Author is already getting enough hatemail from Afrocentrists on her blog already, so if anybody takes this as an invitation to further plague her, he/she/it will face consequences. And even though I take a lot of information from her, I have doublechecked her data, especially with regards to the ancient historiographgy and provided the original text as well so that you can check for yourself.


1. What do Ancient Sources tell us about Egyptians and their appearance?
Primary information from here, supplementary information by me.

We have already discussed this quote by Herodotus previously on this board:

104. [1] φαίνονται μὲν γὰρ ἐόντες οἱ Κόλχοι Αἰγύπτιοι, νοήσας δὲ πρότερον αὐτὸς ἢ ἀκούσας ἄλλων λέγω. ὡς δέ μοι ἐν φροντίδι ἐγένετο, εἰρόμην ἀμφοτέρους, καὶ μᾶλλον οἱ Κόλχοι ἐμεμνέατο τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἢ οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι τῶν Κόλχων· [2] νομίζειν δ᾽ ἔφασαν οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι τῆς Σεσώστριος στρατιῆς εἶναι τοὺς Κόλχους. αὐτὸς δὲ εἴκασα τῇδε, καὶ ὅτι μελάγχροες εἰσὶ καὶ οὐλότριχες. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἐς οὐδὲν ἀνήκει· εἰσὶ γὰρ καὶ ἕτεροι τοιοῦτοι· ἀλλὰ τοῖσιδε καὶ μᾶλλον, ὅτι μοῦνοι πάντων ἀνθρώπων Κόλχοι καὶ Αἰγύπτιοι καὶ Αἰθίοπες περιτάμνονται ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς τὰ αἰδοῖα.

104. For the people of Colchis are evidently Egyptian, and this I perceived for myself before I heard it from others. So when I had come to consider the matter I asked them both; and the Colchians had remembrance of the Egyptians more than the Egyptians of the Colchians; but the Egyptians said they believed that the Colchians were a portion of the army of Sesostris. That this was so I conjectured myself not only because they are dark-skinned and have curly hair (this of itself amounts to nothing, for there are other races which are so), but also still more because the Colchians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians alone of all the races of men have practised circumcision from the first.

Translation and text from here.

Note the word used here - μελάγχροες. It is commonly translated as black, however this is not synonymous with the colour black. In fact, it covers a wide variety of colours from bronze to dark black, and is used as a general adjective for dark, swarthy appearances.

For example:

ἦ καὶ χρυσείῃ ῥάβδῳ ἐπεμάσσατ᾽ Ἀθήνη.
φᾶρος μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἐϋπλυνὲς ἠδὲ χιτῶνα
θῆκ᾽ ἀμφὶ στήθεσσι, δέμας δ᾽ ὤφελλε καὶ ἥβην.
175ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο, γναθμοὶ δὲ τάνυσθεν,
κυάνεαι δ᾽ ἐγένοντο γενειάδες ἀμφὶ γένειον.


[172] With this, Athena touched him with her golden wand. A well-washed cloak and a tunic she first of all cast about his breast, and she increased his stature and his youthful bloom. Once more he grew dark of color [swarthy], and his cheeks filled out, and dark grew the beard about his chin.

Also, consider that Herodotus noted that the Egyptians looked like the Cholchians (who inhabited the region we now know as Georgia), I find it puzzling how anybody can say they looked like Nubians. Also note that Herodotus clearly considers the Egyptians and the Ethiopians different races, seeing as how he differentiates between kings of Ethiopian and Egyptian "races".

Or, as Mathilda so aptly summarizes:

"That the Egyptians were dark relative to Greeks is not surprising, considering that the same is true today. But Herodotus’ description of Egyptian hair would, at first glance, appear to conflict with the physical evidence left by the Egyptians themselves – numerous mummies with hair still attached to the skulls showing more straight, wavy, or lightly curled hair types than “woolly.”

The only way to make the evidence consistent is to assume Herodotus spoke in a relative rather than absolute sense. That is, Egyptian hair was on average curlier than Greek hair, and the tightly-curled (“woolly”) hair type was found more often in Egyptians than in Greeks – as is true today. There is no reason to assume on the basis of Herodotus’ words that all or even most Egyptians had “woolly” hair, nor that such hair found in Egyptians was as “woolly” as that of tropical Africans. Indeed, Herodotus himself mentions only “Ethiopians” – not Egyptians – as having the “woolliest hair of all men” (Herodotus Histories 7.70.1). Moreover, Herodotus’ explanation that being melanchroes or oulotriches “indeed counts for nothing, since other peoples are, too” suggests that these adjectives did not apply exclusively to any one “race” of people. [Note by Thanas: Also, it follows that they, by themselves, do not support the notion of the Egpytians and Ethiopians being a unified group seperate from the rest of the Ancient world]

An analogous example of a stereotype based on relative comparison comes from the medieval Arab scholar Ibn Butlan, who noted the Greeks as having “straight blond hair” and “blue eyes.” Does this mean that all medieval Greeks had a Nordic appearance? Certainly not: it merely suggests that the blond-haired, blue-eyed type is more common among Greeks than Arabs and stood out more as a salient characteristic worthy of mention. The Arabs, like the Greeks, noted characteristics that were unusual in their own population and used these traits to typify the foreigners."

****************

Having thus shown the true meaning of Herodotus, let us consider other ancient descriptions:

Arrian, Indica VI.9:

[9] τῶν δὲ ἀνθρώπων αἱ ἰδέαι οὐ πάντη ἀπᾴδουσιν αἱ Ἰνδῶν τε καὶ Αἰθιόπων. οἱ μὲν γὰρ πρὸς νότου ἀνέμου Ἰνδοὶ τοῖσιν Αἰθίοψι μᾶλλόν τι ἐοίκασι, μέλανές τε ἰδέσθαι εἰσὶ, καὶ ἡ κόμη αὐτοῖσι μέλαινα, πλήν γε δὴ ὅτι σιμοὶ οὐκ ὡσαύτως οὐδὲ οὐλόκρανοι ὡς Αἰθίοπες: οἱ δὲ βορειότεροι αὐτῶν καὶ Αἰγυπτίους μάλιστα ἂν εἶεν τὰ σώματα.

[...]The appearance of the inhabitants, too, is not so far different in India and Ethiopia; the southern Indians resemble the Ethiopians a good deal, and, are black of countenance, and their hair black also, only they are not as snub-nosed or so woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; but the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians in appearance.

Here we see the Egyptians describes as a sort of medium type.

Strabo, Geographia 15.1.13:

τῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων οἱ μὲν μεσημβρινοὶ τοῖς Αἰθίοψίν εἰσιν ὅμοιοι κατὰ τὴν χροιάν, κατὰ δὲ τὴν ὄψιν καὶ τὴν τρίχωσιν τοῖς ἄλλοις （οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐλοτριχοῦσι διὰ τὴν ὑγρότητα τοῦ ἀέρος）, οἱ δὲ βόρειοι τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις.

The inhabitants of the south resemble the Ethiopians in colour, but their countenances and hair are like those of other people. Their hair does not curl, on account of the humidity of the atmosphere. The inhabitants of the north resemble the Egyptians.

As Mathilda once more summarizes:

"Arrian and Strabo concur that the Egyptians resembled northern Indians – who are usually straight-haired and occasionally as light-skinned as southern Europeans – rather than the dark Dravidian types of southern India. Furthermore, although Arrian and Strabo differentiate Ethiopians from South Indians in terms of facial form and hair texture, they cite no such differences between the Egyptians and northern Indians."


But it gets better (or worse, if you are an Afrocentrist):

Ammianus Marcellinus:

Homines autem Aegyptii plerique subfusculi sunt et atrati magis quam maesti oris, gracilenti et aridi, ad singulos motus excandescentes, controversi et reposcones acerrimi.

The inhabitants of Egypt are generally swarthy and dark complexioned (tanned), and of a rather melancholy cast of countenance, thin and dry looking, quick in every motion, fond of controversy, and bitter exactors of their rights.

Flavius Philostratos:

Now the inhabitants of the marches (Nubian/Egyptians border) are not yet fully black but are half-breeds in matter of color, for they are partly not so black as the Ethiopians, yet partly more so than the Egyptians.

Clearly differentiating in skintone between Egypt proper and Nubians, with the border parts being a mixture.


(Note that Mathilda also claims this one:
Xenpohanes (= Hesiod, 527-8): Black people resided not in the Nile valley but in a far land, by the fountain of the sun, but that is a mistranslation, so I will not use it here).


Therefore: By all ancient accounts, the Egyptians looked most alike the inhabitants of Georgia (Colchians) or Northern Indians, who look utterly unlike Ethiopians or Horners. There was a clear difference between them and the Nubians/Ethiopians, enough for ancient writers to classify them as different people.

So how can we reconile these sources with the claim that the Egpytians were essentially Nubians? We cannot. The appearance described in the ancient sources is un-nubian, more closely related to Caucasians and Northern Indians than Nubians. There is no other way to state this.

I suppose one could accuse every ancient writer from Homer to the 4th century soldier Ammianus Marcellinus as being part of a massive conspiracy to deny the black status of the Egyptians, but I am sure even people who are not experts in ancient history will immediately discard this as insane.

NOTE: I will ignore any replies that do not deal with ancient sources. This post will only deal with the ancient sources, nothing else.
Tangential spam will be oppressed by Edi. I want Big Triece to directly answer my posts.


You can expect the second part tomorrow or a short time after that.

[PharaohMentuhotep]

The huge multipart reply

Alright. Having gotten completely fed up with this debate, this will be an attempt to show how the ancient Egyptians looked at themselves and how they were regarded by the others regarding their ancestry. This will be done the following way:

a) First, I will look at the ancient sources and outline what they say about Egyptians
b) Then I will look at ancient portraits and ancient art, its dubious value etc.
c) The third part will be a look at analysis done on Egyptian mummies, their DNA analysis as well as a look at Keita's studies, which - contrary to the opinion of some in this thread - are not opinio communis or even free of methodological errors.

I shall state that a lot of the following is information taken from Mathilda's Anthropology blog, which can be found here. Said Author is already getting enough hatemail from Afrocentrists on her blog already, so if anybody takes this as an invitation to further plague her, he/she/it will face consequences. And even though I take a lot of information from her, I have doublechecked her data, especially with regards to the ancient historiographgy and provided the original text as well so that you can check for yourself.

OK Thanas, I'm glad to see that you have begun your summary. You requested that Big T respond directly but I too will take the liberty to address this issue point by point. First of all I have to question the credibility of your primary source, Mathilda. Who is Mathilda? I have experience debating her myself on her Youtube pages. From what I can gather "Mathilda" is an pseudonymous blogger, with no proven credentials in any scholarly field whose stated purpose with her blog is to debunk Afrocentric distortions about the race of the Ancient Egyptians. You portray her as a victim of attacks by Afrocentrists and state that posters will face consequences for attacking her. I do not intend to attack her in any way only provide readers with some insight into her credibility and character.

First of all as I stated she is not a recognized scholar. You will not find any information on her page about her real identity or credentials. As far as we know she is nothing more than a blogger interested in the subject of race and history with a particular fixation on Ancient Egypt. She does however state certain views on her blog for instance here she gives her opinion on the subject of race:

I also think that racial differences are a long way from being cosmetic, and there’s no evolutionary reason for us to be the homogeneous species that a lot of people claim we are-it would mean evolution stopped the day modern humans evolved, which is just anti-logic. There’s biological evidence to the contrary, like different gestation spans, twinning rates etc, and more recent genetics publications that have outright backed race as valid. Which will instantly label me as a racist in many peoples eyes, which is probably why a lot of publishing Phds don’t comment publicly on race (one admitted as much to me). Anyone reading this, the majority of forensic anthropologists take the ‘race is real’ POV, and so do biologists. Anyone who spends a lot of time reading the kinds of papers I will note classic racial terminology is very much alive and in use. The rest take a ‘clinal variation stance (each to their own) but very few maintian ‘we are all the same’.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/about-2/

This quote, especially the part in bold, raised red flags. The claim of race being a biologically meaningful concept when applied to human biological variation is outside the scientific mainstream. However the part in bold in particular about racial differences in gestation and twinning rates is an obvious reference to the research of J. Philippe Rushton, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada who wrote a controversial book titled Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective which is widely recognized in academia to be a promotion of Scientific Racism. Rushton is also the President of the Pioneer Fund, a grant foundation historically known to finance eugenicist research including work that attempted to give scientific support to Nazi and Segregationist philosophies. They are recently known for helping fund the research in the book The Bell Curve.

Here is a chart from Race, Evolution and Behavior summarizing the various Life History Variables Rushton uses to rank races in hierarchical fashion. You will notice that Twinning Rates and Gestation Time are on the chart:




Here is a quote from review of Rushton's book by evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin:

Finally, like all works of its genre, Race,
Evolution, and Behavior has a hard time
distinguishing between speculations and
proven causal relations. At one point,
Rushton admits that what he is describing
is "the possible family life and social
organization of Homo" (my emphasis),
but then slips into a forwardly assertive
mode, assuring the reader that "competition
leads to enlarged penises and testes
to make deeper and more voluminous
ejaculations possible."We are not offered
any data on the relation between penis
size, testis size, and fertility, the author
depending only on the adolescent fantasy
that being well hung means greater
virility. Rushton also tells us that "brain
size, even more than body size, is the key
factor, acting as the biological constant
determining many variables." How he
knows that brain size determines other
variables biologically is not revealed.
What he really wants to say is that he
thinks "Orientals" and Europeans are
smarter and better behaved than blacks,
and that he wants us to believe, as he does,
that the other differences that he claims
exist between "races" are a consequence.
Race, Evolution, and Behavior exhibits
all the characteristics of classic prewar
racist tracts like Madison Grant's The
Passing of the Great Race, but it differs in
one interesting particular. It does not
claim that Europeans are the highest
stage of humanity. Rather, they are in the
middle, second to "Orientals" but superior
to Africans.

This is a masterstroke;
on this basis Rushton can claim not to
be racist, at least not generally. He defines
racism as "hatred or intolerance of another another
race. The treatment of all members
of another race as though they were all
the same, usually in order to do them
harm." But he has declared no hatred of
other races, nor can we catch him out
trying to do them harm. He is just an
objective observer, describing the differences
between races and providing a
theory of how they got that way. There
is no value attached to being smarter,
more temperate, less inclined to criminality,
more prudent, less promiscuous.
His lack of racism is proven by the fact
that he does not describe his own race as
superior to all others. It is clear what
Rushton's advocacy position gains from
positing the superiority of the Asians.
But what is he forced to give up? Not
much.

Source: Review of Genes and Genitals

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O3JUAWOR

Here too is a video where you can hear Rushton in his own words:




Posters on Mathilda's blog have also posted information from Rushton. The fact that Mathilda would reference the theories of such a controversial scholar with an obvious racist agenda is very telling about her personal beliefs on race and calls into question what her own agenda is with her blog. She claims to be attacked by vicious, racist Afrocentrists. Speaking from personal experience I tried to debate her on her Youtube videos, being as civil as I have been here and she began to delete our exchange then decided to close comments to her Youtube videos.

Now I will address your arguments extrapolated from her research point by point but I want you to bare in mind that Mathilda herself is an open racialist and many of the comments she does approve of on her blog come from obvious Eurocentrists and White Nationalists, racists from the other end of the spectrum. Even though she denounces extreme White Nationalism you can see that her audience is interested in validating Black inferiority by debunking the idea of a Black African Ancient Egypt.

1. What do Ancient Sources tell us about Egyptians and their appearance?
Primary information from here, supplementary information by me.

One the whole subject of ancient sources I will appeal to the considerations of Anthropologists when it comes to referencing Greco-Roman writings:

The descriptions and terms of ancient Greek writers have sometimes been used to comment on Egyptian origins. This is problematic since the ancient writers were not doing population biology. However, we can examine one issue. The Greeks called all groups south of Egypt "Ethiopians." Were the Egyptians more related to any of these "Ethiopians" than to the Greeks? As noted, cranial and limb studies have indicated greater similarity to Somalis, Kushites and Nubians, all "Ethiopians" in ancient Greek terms.

Source: The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians

I would not regard Ancient Greek writings as reliable in assessing the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians. The writings are open to interpretation and as it is the time period is too far in Egyptian history to be relevant to the early Ancient Egyptians. The biological evidence indicates a continuity from the Early Dynastic - New Kingdom period. The writings of Herodotus and others come hundreds of years after the New Kingdom period when Egypt gradually absorbed immigrants and experienced occupation by foreigners such as the Nubians, Assyrians and Persians.

We have already discussed this quote by Herodotus previously on this board:

104. [1] φαίνονται μὲν γὰρ ἐόντες οἱ Κόλχοι Αἰγύπτιοι, νοήσας δὲ πρότερον αὐτὸς ἢ ἀκούσας ἄλλων λέγω. ὡς δέ μοι ἐν φροντίδι ἐγένετο, εἰρόμην ἀμφοτέρους, καὶ μᾶλλον οἱ Κόλχοι ἐμεμνέατο τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἢ οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι τῶν Κόλχων· [2] νομίζειν δ᾽ ἔφασαν οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι τῆς Σεσώστριος στρατιῆς εἶναι τοὺς Κόλχους. αὐτὸς δὲ εἴκασα τῇδε, καὶ ὅτι μελάγχροες εἰσὶ καὶ οὐλότριχες. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἐς οὐδὲν ἀνήκει· εἰσὶ γὰρ καὶ ἕτεροι τοιοῦτοι· ἀλλὰ τοῖσιδε καὶ μᾶλλον, ὅτι μοῦνοι πάντων ἀνθρώπων Κόλχοι καὶ Αἰγύπτιοι καὶ Αἰθίοπες περιτάμνονται ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς τὰ αἰδοῖα.

104. For the people of Colchis are evidently Egyptian, and this I perceived for myself before I heard it from others. So when I had come to consider the matter I asked them both; and the Colchians had remembrance of the Egyptians more than the Egyptians of the Colchians; but the Egyptians said they believed that the Colchians were a portion of the army of Sesostris. That this was so I conjectured myself not only because they are dark-skinned and have curly hair (this of itself amounts to nothing, for there are other races which are so), but also still more because the Colchians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians alone of all the races of men have practised circumcision from the first.

Translation and text from here.

Note the word used here - μελάγχροες. It is commonly translated as black, however this is not synonymous with the colour black. In fact, it covers a wide variety of colours from bronze to dark black, and is used as a general adjective for dark, swarthy appearances.

For example:

ἦ καὶ χρυσείῃ ῥάβδῳ ἐπεμάσσατ᾽ Ἀθήνη.
φᾶρος μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἐϋπλυνὲς ἠδὲ χιτῶνα
θῆκ᾽ ἀμφὶ στήθεσσι, δέμας δ᾽ ὤφελλε καὶ ἥβην.
175ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο, γναθμοὶ δὲ τάνυσθεν,
κυάνεαι δ᾽ ἐγένοντο γενειάδες ἀμφὶ γένειον.


[172] With this, Athena touched him with her golden wand. A well-washed cloak and a tunic she first of all cast about his breast, and she increased his stature and his youthful bloom. Once more he grew dark of color [swarthy], and his cheeks filled out, and dark grew the beard about his chin.

Also, consider that Herodotus noted that the Egyptians looked like the Cholchians (who inhabited the region we now know as Georgia), I find it puzzling how anybody can say they looked like Nubians. Also note that Herodotus clearly considers the Egyptians and the Ethiopians different races, seeing as how he differentiates between kings of Ethiopian and Egyptian "races".

First of all we must consider that Herodotus is saying that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent and were a colony sent to the Georgian region by the Egyptian Pharaoh Sesotris. Therefore they are not native to the Caucasus Mountain region by Herodotus's assessment. It would seem that for Herodotus the inhabitants of Colchis are out of place because of their physical characteristics. The exact definition of the term "melanchoes" is questionable however I think it is reasonable to say that it could apply to a range of complexions and generally means "dark-skinned". In this context it would seem that the Colchians are dark-skinned compared to a Greek. As far as "races" are concerned I have heard other translations of the same quote refer to nations. Race was not a word or concept familiar to the Greeks. They dealt with distinct cultures classifying them by language and ethnic identity. In the case of East Africans the various ethnic groups were generalized to be "Ethiopians" (people of burnt face) based on skin color.

Or, as Mathilda so aptly summarizes:

"That the Egyptians were dark relative to Greeks is not surprising, considering that the same is true today. But Herodotus’ description of Egyptian hair would, at first glance, appear to conflict with the physical evidence left by the Egyptians themselves – numerous mummies with hair still attached to the skulls showing more straight, wavy, or lightly curled hair types than “woolly.”

The only way to make the evidence consistent is to assume Herodotus spoke in a relative rather than absolute sense. That is, Egyptian hair was on average curlier than Greek hair, and the tightly-curled (“woolly”) hair type was found more often in Egyptians than in Greeks – as is true today. There is no reason to assume on the basis of Herodotus’ words that all or even most Egyptians had “woolly” hair, nor that such hair found in Egyptians was as “woolly” as that of tropical Africans. Indeed, Herodotus himself mentions only “Ethiopians” – not Egyptians – as having the “woolliest hair of all men” (Herodotus Histories 7.70.1). Moreover, Herodotus’ explanation that being melanchroes or oulotriches “indeed counts for nothing, since other peoples are, too” suggests that these adjectives did not apply exclusively to any one “race” of people. [Note by Thanas: Also, it follows that they, by themselves, do not support the notion of the Egpytians and Ethiopians being a unified group seperate from the rest of the Ancient world]

An analogous example of a stereotype based on relative comparison comes from the medieval Arab scholar Ibn Butlan, who noted the Greeks as having “straight blond hair” and “blue eyes.” Does this mean that all medieval Greeks had a Nordic appearance? Certainly not: it merely suggests that the blond-haired, blue-eyed type is more common among Greeks than Arabs and stood out more as a salient characteristic worthy of mention. The Arabs, like the Greeks, noted characteristics that were unusual in their own population and used these traits to typify the foreigners."

Mathilda is making alot of assumption here. First of all she takes the character of Egyptian mummy hair at face value when we know that after death hair texture can be altered after burial over a long period of time. Consider this passage from Keita (1993) on the texture of Ancient Egyptian hair as analyzed by Eugene Strouhal:

Strouhal (1971) microscopically examined some hair which had been
preserved on a Badarian skull. The analysis was interpreted as suggesting a
stereotypical tropical African-European hybrid (mulatto). However, this hair is
grossly no different from that of Fulani, some Kanuri, or Somali and does not
require a gene flow explanation any more than curly hair in Greece necessarily
does. Extremely "woolly" hair is not the only kind native to tropical Africa.

Source: Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships. S. O. Y. Keita. History in Africa, Vol. 20 (1993), 129-154

http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita-1993.pdf

It is not all that unreasonable to suggest that Herodotus did not mean that all Egyptian hair was extremely wooly but clearly it stood out to him as a trademark of the population.

Having thus shown the true meaning of Herodotus, let us consider other ancient descriptions:

Arrian, Indica VI.9:

[9] τῶν δὲ ἀνθρώπων αἱ ἰδέαι οὐ πάντη ἀπᾴδουσιν αἱ Ἰνδῶν τε καὶ Αἰθιόπων. οἱ μὲν γὰρ πρὸς νότου ἀνέμου Ἰνδοὶ τοῖσιν Αἰθίοψι μᾶλλόν τι ἐοίκασι, μέλανές τε ἰδέσθαι εἰσὶ, καὶ ἡ κόμη αὐτοῖσι μέλαινα, πλήν γε δὴ ὅτι σιμοὶ οὐκ ὡσαύτως οὐδὲ οὐλόκρανοι ὡς Αἰθίοπες: οἱ δὲ βορειότεροι αὐτῶν καὶ Αἰγυπτίους μάλιστα ἂν εἶεν τὰ σώματα.

[...]The appearance of the inhabitants, too, is not so far different in India and Ethiopia; the southern Indians resemble the Ethiopians a good deal, and, are black of countenance, and their hair black also, only they are not as snub-nosed or so woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; but the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians in appearance.

Here we see the Egyptians describes as a sort of medium type.

We should of course consider the migrations that have occurred in Egypt by this time. The Egypt that is described here by Arrian is not the Ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom or the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom.

Strabo, Geographia 15.1.13:


τῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων οἱ μὲν μεσημβρινοὶ τοῖς Αἰθίοψίν εἰσιν ὅμοιοι κατὰ τὴν χροιάν, κατὰ δὲ τὴν ὄψιν καὶ τὴν τρίχωσιν τοῖς ἄλλοις （οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐλοτριχοῦσι διὰ τὴν ὑγρότητα τοῦ ἀέρος）, οἱ δὲ βόρειοι τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις.

The inhabitants of the south resemble the Ethiopians in colour, but their countenances and hair are like those of other people. Their hair does not curl, on account of the humidity of the atmosphere. The inhabitants of the north resemble the Egyptians.

As Mathilda once more summarizes:

"Arrian and Strabo concur that the Egyptians resembled northern Indians – who are usually straight-haired and occasionally as light-skinned as southern Europeans – rather than the dark Dravidian types of southern India. Furthermore, although Arrian and Strabo differentiate Ethiopians from South Indians in terms of facial form and hair texture, they cite no such differences between the Egyptians and northern Indians."[/quote]

Yet they make no references to facial form or hair texture at all and appear to only be talking about complexion. A great deal of Northern Indians by the way are brown-skinned.

Therefore: By all ancient accounts, the Egyptians looked most alike the inhabitants of Georgia (Colchians) or Northern Indians, who look utterly unlike Ethiopians or Horners. There was a clear difference between them and the Nubians/Ethiopians, enough for ancient writers to classify them as different people.

What we can gather from these writings at best is that Colchians looked like Egyptians and that there was a gradient in complexion of people from the Ethiopian territories to Ancient Egypt during the time of the Greek writers. This tells us nothing about the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians from early Dynastic times to the New Kindom period before notable foreign settlements and occupations. I would not be surprised to find that the Ancient Egyptians were noticeably lighter complexioned than more Southerly Africans at this point, especially in the North given the settlements by Near Eastern migrants.

So how can we reconile these sources with the claim that the Egpytians were essentially Nubians? We cannot. The appearance described in the ancient sources is un-nubian, more closely related to Caucasians and Northern Indians than Nubians. There is no other way to state this.

I suppose one could accuse every ancient writer from Homer to the 4th century soldier Ammianus Marcellinus as being part of a massive conspiracy to deny the black status of the Egyptians, but I am sure even people who are not experts in ancient history will immediately discard this as insane.

NOTE: I will ignore any replies that do not deal with ancient sources. This post will only deal with the ancient sources, nothing else.
Tangential spam will be oppressed by Edi. I want Big Triece to directly answer my posts.


You can expect the second part tomorrow or a short time after that.

I look forward to the rest of your summary. I maintain that Greco-Roman writings are unreliable for assessing the physical characteristics of the Ancient Egyptians during earlier Dynastic times.

[Thanas]

OK Thanas, I'm glad to see that you have begun your summary. You requested that Big T respond directly but I too will take the liberty to address this issue point by point. First of all I have to question the credibility of your primary source, Mathilda. Who is Mathilda? I have experience debating her myself on her Youtube pages. From what I can gather "Mathilda" is an pseudonymous blogger, with no proven credentials in any scholarly field whose stated purpose with her blog is to debunk Afrocentric distortions about the race of the Ancient Egyptians.

She states that she is a student of Anthropology. I have no reason to believe otherwise, given her comments on her blog.

You portray her as a victim of attacks by Afrocentrists and state that posters will face consequences for attacking her. I do not intend to attack her in any way only provide readers with some insight into her credibility and character.

First of all as I stated she is not a recognized scholar. You will not find any information on her page about her real identity or credentials. As far as we know she is nothing more than a blogger interested in the subject of race and history with a particular fixation on Ancient Egypt. She does however state certain views on her blog for instance here she gives her opinion on the subject of race:

I also think that racial differences are a long way from being cosmetic, and there’s no evolutionary reason for us to be the homogeneous species that a lot of people claim we are-it would mean evolution stopped the day modern humans evolved, which is just anti-logic. There’s biological evidence to the contrary, like different gestation spans, twinning rates etc, and more recent genetics publications that have outright backed race as valid. Which will instantly label me as a racist in many peoples eyes, which is probably why a lot of publishing Phds don’t comment publicly on race (one admitted as much to me). Anyone reading this, the majority of forensic anthropologists take the ‘race is real’ POV, and so do biologists. Anyone who spends a lot of time reading the kinds of papers I will note classic racial terminology is very much alive and in use. The rest take a ‘clinal variation stance (each to their own) but very few maintian ‘we are all the same’.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/about-2/

This quote, especially the part in bold, raised red flags. The claim of race being a biologically meaningful concept when applied to human biological variation is outside the scientific mainstream. However the part in bold in particular about racial differences in gestation and twinning rates is an obvious reference to the research of J. Philippe Rushton

Okay. Stop right here. You cannot just take a quote like that and automatically equate it with Rushton. Unless you can show me a direct quote on her blog where she completely agrees with Rushton and supports him, then you taking her words and automatically equating it with a certain theory is just character assassination and I will not tolerate it.

Even more, what does this matter? I am not going to trust someone on the internet just because they write well, no, I will factcheck the data myself.

Now I will address your arguments extrapolated from her research point by point but I want you to bare in mind that Mathilda herself is an open racialist and many of the comments she does approve of on her blog come from obvious Eurocentrists and White Nationalists, racists from the other end of the spectrum. Even though she denounces extreme White Nationalism you can see that her audience is interested in validating Black inferiority by debunking the idea of a Black African Ancient Egypt.

I have read the comments on the pages I will reference and nowhere does she come across as a nationalist, an extremist or somebody who believes in black inferiority. There is not a single post on her blog by her which indicates anything like that and you are obviously exaggerating here.

The closest thing I can even notice on her blog that is "racialist" is the theory that men did evolve out of five different homo erectii than just out of one. Which is a scientific theory, not anything denoting racial superiority.

BTW, even if she were a complete racist, her writings can still be easily fact checked, as I did. In fact you'll note that I provided both the original sources and translations. You'll also note that I discarded one of her examples because it most likely was mistranslated.

I would not regard Ancient Greek writings as reliable in assessing the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians. The writings are open to interpretation and as it is the time period is too far in Egyptian history to be relevant to the early Ancient Egyptians. The biological evidence indicates a continuity from the Early Dynastic - New Kingdom period. The writings of Herodotus and others come hundreds of years after the New Kingdom period when Egypt gradually absorbed immigrants and experienced occupation by foreigners such as the Nubians, Assyrians and Persians.

So let me get this straight - you claim that there was no significant overlap during earlier times and any differences in appearance occurred in the new kingdom only? Like I said, I will discuss this later, but that is good to know.

First of all we must consider that Herodotus is saying that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent and were a colony sent to the Georgian region by the Egyptian Pharaoh Sesotris. Therefore they are not native to the Caucasus Mountain region by Herodotus's assessment. It would seem that for Herodotus the inhabitants of Colchis are out of place because of their physical characteristics.

Their physical characteristics make them look similar to Egyptians. However, as we know that the colchians are not horners, therefore the Egyptians cannot have looked like Horners, unless you want to accuse Herodot of lying. If you want to claim the colchians looked like Horners, then please provide evidence for that.

The exact definition of the term "melanchoes" is questionable however I think it is reasonable to say that it could apply to a range of complexions and generally means "dark-skinned".

No. This is just you cherry-picking the definition that suits you best. It can mean a range of things, from the strong "dark skinned" to the less strong and vaguer "swarthy".

In this context it would seem that the Colchians are dark-skinned compared to a Greek. As far as "races" are concerned I have heard other translations of the same quote refer to nations. Race was not a word or concept familiar to the Greeks. They dealt with distinct cultures classifying them by language and ethnic identity. In the case of East Africans the various ethnic groups were generalized to be "Ethiopians" (people of burnt face) based on skin color.

Race was a concept familiar to the greeks. Racism however was not. There is a difference here. The Greeks for example considered themselves different from the Persians etc....but I fail to see what this is going to accomplish here? Surely you are not going to semantic whore and claim that if it means nation, it cannot mean the ethnicity?

Mathilda is making alot of assumption here. First of all she takes the character of Egyptian mummy hair at face value when we know that after death hair texture can be altered after burial over a long period of time.

This is a pointless nitpick - I notice you did not respond to her overall point at all or am I to take this:

It is not all that unreasonable to suggest that Herodotus did not mean that all Egyptian hair was extremely wooly but clearly it stood out to him as a trademark of the population.

as a sign of agreement with her point? Because if so, you and I agree that the Egyptians of Herodots time did not look like Nubians and that the dark skinned among them were most likely a few striking examples and not the norm?

We should of course consider the migrations that have occurred in Egypt by this time. The Egypt that is described here by Arrian is not the Ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom or the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom.

That is a fair point, which I did in fact consider. Like I said, this is just the first of four parts.

Yet they make no references to facial form or hair texture at all and appear to only be talking about complexion. A great deal of Northern Indians by the way are brown-skinned.

However, according to Strabo and Arrian, not enough to be considered the same as Ethiopians. Quite distinct, in fact.

Oh, and is there any particular reason why you snipped out the part where Philostratus described in great detail the various differences between the Egyptians and the frontier/nubian population?

Therefore: By all ancient accounts, the Egyptians looked most alike the inhabitants of Georgia (Colchians) or Northern Indians, who look utterly unlike Ethiopians or Horners. There was a clear difference between them and the Nubians/Ethiopians, enough for ancient writers to classify them as different people.

What we can gather from these writings at best is that Colchians looked like Egyptians and that there was a gradient in complexion of people from the Ethiopian territories to Ancient Egypt during the time of the Greek writers. This tells us nothing about the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians from early Dynastic times to the New Kindom period before notable foreign settlements and occupations. I would not be surprised to find that the Ancient Egyptians were noticeably lighter complexioned than more Southerly Africans at this point, especially in the North given the settlements by Near Eastern migrants.

So you claim that a few hundred years of occupation (note that during herodots time Egypt had just been occupied for about 200 years at most) are enough to lighten the skintone that much that they went from dark brown to "look like Northern Indians and inhabitants of Georgia"?

I look forward to the rest of your summary. I maintain that Greco-Roman writings are unreliable for assessing the physical characteristics of the Ancient Egyptians during earlier Dynastic times.

Assuming of course that we subscribe to your theory that during earlier Dynastic times, no migration of note happened. But I'll respond to that later on.

[Thanas]

EDIT: In case I was not clear about it, everybody is free to discuss and comment btw.

[Edi]

Mentuhotep, you are assuming that Mathilda references Rushton in that comment on her "about" page. I'd rather have evidence of that than mere speculation.

As far as race being real, I don't see anything objectionable in that. Race is mostly a matter of population genetics and variation thereof and the differences in the genetics of various populations also tend to follow geographical separation.

This does not in any way support the racist ideas such as people of a different skin color from a particular group being inferior or superior, stupider or smarter. That kind of thing is from the 19th century when people didn't even know genes existed and subscribed to all sorts of other bullshit too. Quality of nutrition, education and all sorts of other environmental non-genetic factors have an impact on individuals.

Citing genetic differences in and of itself is not an indication of racism or prejudice of the racial supremacist kind.

So enough with the character assassination. If you can refute the actual evidence, go right ahead.

Thanas has stated that he has very long argument segmented into five parts. This first part deals with the ancient sources. He will address the genetics studies later.

It is not too much to ask that any arguments in response to his posts address the content of that post instead of haring off on unrelated tangents.

[Spoonist]

"The Egypt that is described here by Arrian is not the Ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom or the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom."
Just a thought, and I don't know if its necessary. But it would be good to know if bigT, faraoM and Thanas (+broomy?) agree on the time periods. Both in terms of what is this discussion about and also if they agree with the current majority position of historians/egyptologists. This since Keita at least twice has had a differing opinion on start-end dates visavi some of his critics.
Earlier bigT claimed that his only focus was the origins, however that would rule out all ancient sources except hieroghlyphs and almost all of the artwork that bigT himself has posted. So I'm guessing that was just rhetorical flavoring.

---

Regarding the term "melanchoes". Could we get sources? FaraoM and Thanas both make claims regarding this which seems to rely on other authority, could we get that authority?

---

Just curious here, what modern regions would Herodotos be refering to when talking about "Northern Indians" and "Georgia". IIRC the second isn't completely construant with its modern equivalent.

---

@Edi
The problem with the term 'race' is that it has too much value added prejudice attached to it. So the use of it usually becomes misunderstood/flawed/difficult between different cultures. That is why some scientists use terms like populations, clines and lineages instead. However unfortunately none has been established enough for them to be able to replace the concept of the term race. Hopefully someone will invent a new word that can be used instead without the negative history.
Also in my own personal opinion 'race' as a concept for humanity has been outdated because of evolutionary biology.

With that said when looking at, for instance, medical science we know that there is physical differences between different populations. So a modern doctor must take the lineage of a patient into account. Without that info they will mistreat(?) patients of minorities. I have a couple of bad examples just within my circle of friends, so the problem must be huge.
This is where we are doing ourselves as a species a big disfavour by trying to ignore genetics/biology because of counter-racism. Now there are other examples in other fields but medicine is such a clear one that it can not be ignored.

So what I'm driving at is that if one removes the prejudice of the term 'race' what Mathilda is saying is true, but that relies on the context of her other posts so that we get a better indication of her definition of the term. This so that she doesn't mean it in the old sense of the term. But I would have prefered her to use a less value added term to convey her point. This because you have to take idiots and assholes (from both ends of the spectrum) into account when stating things in a public forum.

---

Thought this might be interesting in perspective:
"A 1985 survey (Lieberman et. al. 1992) asked 1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were,

biologists - 16%
developmental psychologists - 36%
physical anthropologists - 41%
cultural anthropologists - 53%
At PhD. granting departments, the figure for physical anthropologists was slightly higher

agree - 50%
disagree - 42% "

[Thanas]

"The Egypt that is described here by Arrian is not the Ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom or the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom."
Just a thought, and I don't know if its necessary. But it would be good to know if bigT, faraoM and Thanas (+broomy?) agree on the time periods. Both in terms of what is this discussion about and also if they agree with the current majority position of historians/egyptologists. This since Keita at least twice has had a differing opinion on start-end dates visavi some of his critics.
Earlier bigT claimed that his only focus was the origins, however that would rule out all ancient sources except hieroghlyphs and almost all of the artwork that bigT himself has posted. So I'm guessing that was just rhetorical flavoring.

He posted stuff from all over the kingdoms. To be on the safe side, I am going to cover everything.

Regarding the term "melanchoes". Could we get sources? FaraoM and Thanas both make claims regarding this which seems to rely on other authority, could we get that authority?

My source is the Odyssey itself. For learned opinions, I also refer you to the Homeric Dictionary by Georg Autenrieth, which defines it as the following:
μελαγ - χροιής , ές: dark - skinned, swarthy, ‘bronzed,’.

Just curious here, what modern regions would Herodotos be refering to when talking about "Northern Indians" and "Georgia". IIRC the second isn't completely construant with its modern equivalent.

Colchians = Modern Georgia region
Indians are, iirc, primarily those centered around the river Indus. .

So what I'm driving at is that if one removes the prejudice of the term 'race' what Mathilda is saying is true, but that relies on the context of her other posts so that we get a better indication of her definition of the term. This so that she doesn't mean it in the old sense of the term.

There is no evidence that she means it in any other way besides a technical term. Heck, she even agrees that Africa was the birthplace of mankind etc. Colouring her a racist is just a huge misdirection attempt here.