There is a lot of public controversy over which “race” the ancient Egyptians belonged to. Western media has traditionally portrayed nearly all ancient Egyptians as having white skin. Unfortunately, some films are still portraying the Egyptians this way; the 2014 film Exodus: Gods and Kings and the 2016 film Gods of Egypt both received widespread criticism for the fact that nearly all the lead roles were played by white actors.
Nevertheless, I think that, with a few exceptions, nowadays, most people realize that the idea of the ancient Egyptians as almost entirely what we consider “white” is nothing but a racist fantasy. A great deal of controversy still rages, though, over whether the ancient Egyptians were what we consider “black.” A number of authors have tried to argue that ancient Egypt was exclusively or primarily a “black civilization” and that the ancient Egyptians defined themselves as “black people.”
Since the skin color of the ancient Egyptians is a matter of such great controversy, in this article, I want to take a thorough and honest look at the evidence. In this article, we will examine evidence from Egyptian iconography, from Egyptian mummies, from ancient Greek descriptions of the Egyptians, from genetics, and from the conquests and migrations of recorded history. We will discover that Egypt has always been a very ethnically diverse place and that the ancient Egyptians cannot be uniformly classified as belonging to any particular “race.”
First, a little qualification about “race”
People in ancient times did not think of race in the same way that we do. In the twenty-first century, we define “race” in terms of skin color, but, in the ancient world, the concept of skin-color-based racial classification did not exist. The concepts of a “black race” and a “white race” would be totally foreign to them. People recognized that some people had light skin and other people had dark skin, but they didn’t see these things as defining racial characteristics.
Instead, people in the ancient world thought in terms of what we would call “nationalities.” The ancient Egyptians thought of themselves as Egyptians, not “black people” or “white people.” Likewise, all the other peoples of Africa thought of themselves as belonging to whatever nation they belonged. For instance, the people of the Kingdom of Kush thought of themselves as Kushites, not “black people.”
If you walked up to a random man on the street in the Egyptian city of Waset (i.e. “Thebes”) in the fourteenth century BC and asked him, “Are you a member of the black race?” he would be totally confused and he would have no idea what you were talking about. It would be like asking someone on the street today with olive-colored skin, “Are you a member of the olive race?”
The ideas of a “white race” and a “black race” were invented in modern times in order to justify the enslavement of people of African descent by people of western European descent. These concepts are based on extremely superficial physical characteristics and they are scientifically meaningless; anthropologists now regard racial divisions as a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one.
When we apply modern racial divisions to the ancient world, it is very important that we realize that this is deeply anachronistic and that we are applying labels to people that they never would have used themselves and that have no real scientific meaning. Unfortunately, because racial divisions based on skin color are so utterly dominant and inescapable in modern culture, we find ourselves forced to apply them to the ancient world.
ABOVE: Illustration from c. 1854 depicting white slave traders inspecting a black slave in preparation for the slave to be sold. The concepts of a “white race” and a “black race” were created in modern times primarily in order to justify the enslavement of people of African descent. Such concepts did not exist in antiquity.
A little clarification
I also want to clarify that this article is not about the question of whether there were people in ancient Egypt whom we would consider “black.” There were undoubtedly many people in ancient Egypt whom we would consider “black,” just as there are many people in Egypt today who are considered “black.”
One example of a man who lived in ancient Egypt who was definitely what we would consider “black” is Maiherpri, a powerful Egyptian nobleman who lived during the reign of Thutmose IV (ruled 1401 – 1391 BC or 1397 – 1388 BC) and was buried after his death in the Valley of the Kings in tomb KV36.
Maiherpri’s copy of the Book of the Dead contains an illustration depicting him with black skin, rather than the usual brown skin that most Egyptians are depicted with in manuscript illustrations. His actual mummy, meanwhile, shows that he did indeed have naturally dark skin. His mummy also bears a wig of curly black hair, which is undoubtedly meant to represent the natural hair that he had when he was alive.
ABOVE: Illustration of Maiherpri from his copy of the Book of Dead, showing him with black skin
ABOVE: Photograph of Maiherpri’s mummy, which has naturally dark skin and a wig of frizzy hair that is evidently meant to represent the hair he really had when he was alive
Another famous example of an ancient Egyptian who was definitely what we would consider “black” is Lady Rai (lived c. 1560 – c. 1530 BC), who was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Ahmose-Nefertari. After her death, she was buried in a tomb at Thebes. Her mummy is one of the best preserved Egyptian mummies we have and it clearly reveals that she had naturally dark skin. Her elaborately braided hair is also preserved.
The problem is that many Afrocentrists have tried to go beyond saying that there were people in ancient Egypt whom we would consider “black” and have tried to claim that ancient Egypt was mostly or even exclusively a “black civilization,” that the ancient Egyptians defined themselves as inherently black, and even that all black people are descended from the ancient Egyptians.
None of these things are true.
ABOVE: Photograph of Lady Rai’s mummy, which has dark skin and elaborately braided hair
The name “Kemet”
Proponents of the view that ancient Egypt was an exclusively black civilization and that the ancient Egyptians defined themselves as black have claimed that the ancient Egyptians called their country “Kemet,” which they claim means “Land of the Black People.” Many of them further claim that this name referred not just to Egypt itself, but to the entire continent of Africa as a whole and that all black people are therefore Egyptians and people who are not black have never been true Egyptians.
Contrary to these assertions, the ancient Egyptians did not call the continent of Africa “Kemet.” The ancient Egyptians do not seem to have had a name for the entire African continent. The Egyptians did, however, refer specifically to the land around the Nile River in which they themselves lived using the name “Kmt,” which is written in hieroglyphics as follows:
The ancient Egyptians did not normally write using vowels, so we don’t know what the vowel sounds in the word “Kmt” were. Modern scholars have inserted the letter ⟨e⟩ between the consonants in order to make the name pronounceable in English, but we really don’t know exactly what the vowel sounds were. In modern Coptic Egyptian, the name for Egypt is ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (Khēmi), which comes directly from Ancient Egyptian “Kmt.”
The name “Kmt” literally means “the black land.” This name almost certainly refers to the extremely fertile black soil that is found in the areas around the Nile River. The ancient Egyptians frequently contrasted the fertile “black” soil of the lands where they lived with the barren “red” sands of the desert that surrounded them. The ancient Egyptian name for the desert was dšṛt, which literally means “the red land.”
Contrary to what the Afrocentrists have asserted, the name “Kmt” is almost certainly describing the land itself, not the color of the skin of the people who lived there. The ancient Egyptians did not define themselves in terms of their skin color and, as we shall see in a moment, there was, in fact, a great deal of variation in skin tone in ancient Egypt, just as there is in Egypt today.
ABOVE: Photograph of Egyptian soil. The soil is extremely dark because it is extremely fertile.
How the ancient Egyptians thought about skin color
Today, we generally think of skin color as marking a person’s ethnicity, but the ancient Egyptians generally did not think about skin color in the same way that we do. Instead, in ancient Egypt, skin color was widely seen not as a marker of ethnicity, but rather as a marker of gender. In ancient Egyptian art, Egyptian men are usually shown with brown or red skin and Egyptian women are usually shown with white or light brown skin.
The use of different skin colors to signify men and women is a convention that is found in the art of the other cultures in the ancient eastern Mediterranean world as well. Notably, the ancient Minoans used the exact same artistic convention to signify gender; in Minoan frescoes, men are usually shown with brown skin and women are usually shown with white skin.
The reason why the Egyptians and so many other ancient peoples did this is because women in the ancient world were generally expected to stay inside most of the time and remain pale, while men were expected to spend more time outside and become tanned.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a set of painted limestone statues dating to between c. 2649 and c. 2609 BC depicting Prince Rahotep and his wife Nofret. Notice that Rahotep, the man, is portrayed with brown skin and Nofret, the woman, is portrayed with white skin.
ABOVE: Painting from the burial chamber of Nefertari, dating to between c. 1298 and c. 1235 BC, depicting Amentit, the goddess of the west, sitting beside the sun-god Ra. Notice that Ra, who is male, has darker skin than Amentit, who is female.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Minoan fresco from Knossos dating to the middle of the fifteenth century BC depicting a man leaping over a charging bull while one woman seizes the bull by the horns and another woman stands behind the bull with arms outstretched. Notice that the women have white skin while the man has brown skin.
A more cautious look at how Egyptians are portrayed in their art
In addition to gender, all sorts of other societal ideas and artistic conventions affect the way that human beings are portrayed in ancient Egyptian art. We have very few artistic depictions from ancient Egypt from before the Hellenistic Era that can be reliably said to represent a particular person in a detailed and realistic manner.
Because the color of a person’s skin in any work of ancient Egyptian art often has more to do with artistic conventions than with the actual color of that person’s skin in real life, it can be dangerous to use ancient Egyptian art as a guide to what color skin people in ancient Egypt really had.
Nonetheless, we should take note that, in works of ancient Egyptian art where the original colors have been preserved, Egyptians are usually portrayed with skin in varying shades of brown. The men generally tend to have darker brown skin and the women generally tend to have lighter brown skin, although this is not always necessarily the case.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a painting of a man hunting from the tomb of Nebamun at Waset (i.e. “Thebes”), dating to c. 1350 BC or thereabouts
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a painting of female musicians and dancers from the tomb of Nebamun at Waset, dating to c. 1350 BC or thereabouts
Meanwhile, in a few surviving works of ancient Egyptian art, brown-skinned Egyptians are contrasted with black-skinned Nubians. This shows that, despite the range of skin colors that certainly existed in ancient Egypt, the ancient Egyptians generally seem to have thought of themselves as having brown skin and the Nubians to the south as having black skin.
A number of frescoes from the tomb of Seti I (ruled 1290 – 1279 BC) paired with the text of the Book of Gates depict various peoples of the ancient world as the Egyptians imagined them. Among the peoples depicted in the frescoes we see a stereotypical Nubian with black skin, a stereotypical Egyptian with brown skin, and a stereotypical southwest Asian with white skin.
The temple built by Rameses II (ruled 1279 – 1213 BC), the most famous Egyptian pharaoh, at the site of Beit el-Wali, included a number of paintings depicting Rameses II’s conquest and subjugation of the Nubians. In these wall paintings, some of the Nubians are portrayed with black skin and others with brown skin, while the Egyptians are portrayed only with brown skin.
Once again, it is important to emphasize that these representations are conventional ones rooted in stereotypes that the Egyptians had about how people belonging to various nations were supposed to look and they probably do not accurately reflect how all people belonging to those nations actually looked. Nonetheless, they do at least tell us how the Egyptians saw themselves in relation to the other peoples of the ancient world.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a painting from Rameses II’s temple at Beit el-Wali depicting the brown-skinned pharaoh charging in his chariot against his Nubian enemies, who are portrayed with both brown and black skin
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of another painting from Rameses II’s temple at Beit el-Wadi depicting subjugated Nubian peoples bearing tribute to the Egyptian pharaoh
ABOVE: Nineteenth-century illustration of a Book of Gates fresco from the tomb of Seti I (ruled 1290 – 1279 BC), showing (from left-to-right) a stereotypical pale-skinned Libyan, a stereotypical black-skinned Nubian, a stereotypical pale-skinned southwest Asian, and a stereotypical brown-skinned Egyptian
The famous bust of Nefertiti
Proponents of the view that all ancient Egyptians were black are constantly insisting that the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti currently held in the Neues Museum in Berlin must be a fake because it portrays Nefertiti with pale skin. They’ve tried to come up with all sorts of other arguments for why it must be a fake, with one of them being that the bust is too well-preserved to be over three thousand years old.
None of these arguments hold up to any scrutiny; there are plenty of other representations of Egyptian women with pale skin and there are plenty of works of art that are even older than the Nefertiti bust that are just as well preserved.
In reality, the bust is almost certainly authentic, but its authenticity is largely irrelevant to the question of what skin colors people in ancient Egypt had, since it is clearly an example of the standard Egyptian convention of portraying women with pale skin as a marker of their femininity.
As is the case with most works of Egyptian art from before the Hellenistic Period, the Nefertiti bust tells us a lot more about the conventions of ancient Egyptian art than it does about Nefertiti’s actual appearance.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti in the Neues Museum in Berlin, which probably tells us a lot more about the conventions of Egyptian art at the time than it does about Nefertiti’s actual physical appearance
Evidence from mummies
Pretty much all surviving representations of Egyptians from before the Hellenistic Period are heavily conventionalized, which makes it hard to judge how well they reflect the actual appearance of the people they are supposed to represent. They certainly provide us with information about how the ancient Egyptians imagined themselves, but, in most cases, they do not provide us with detailed information about what real individuals looked like.
In the absence of realistic portraits of specific individuals from the pharaonic period, we can instead look at people’s mummies, which can give us some information about what these people looked like when they were alive. Nevertheless, we need to be careful about using mummies as evidence because oftentimes people’s mummies look very different from how the people looked when they were alive.
Mummies’ facial features have often been damaged or distorted either by the embalming process itself or by deterioration after embalming. Many mummies have wigs instead of natural hair and, when they do have natural hair, it is often dyed. Meanwhile, the chemicals used in embalming can sometimes change the color of a person’s skin, making it appear darker or lighter than it would have appeared when the person was alive.
One of the most famous surviving mummies from ancient Egypt is the mummy of Rameses II. From a superficial glance at Rameses II’s mummy, it appears as though he had splotchy brown skin and wavy reddish-blond hair. Things are more complicated than they seem, though. A forensic analysis published in 1987 concluded that Rameses II’s skin has actually been unnaturally darkened due to the chemicals that were used for his embalming and that his natural color would have been significantly lighter.
Meanwhile, the analysis also concluded that his hair was naturally white at the time of his death, since he was about ninety years old at the time. His hair only appears reddish-blond on his mummy because it has been dyed that color with henna. Nonetheless, the analysis concluded that his hair was naturally red when he was a young man and that either Rameses II himself or his embalmers had dyed it red in effort to make it look the way it had when he was younger.
The fact that Rameses II evidently had relatively light skin and wavy red hair illustrates that there evidently were some people in ancient Egypt who were what we would consider “white.”
ABOVE: Photograph of the mummy of Rameses II. He had white hair at the time of his death and his hair only appears red here because it has been dyed with henna. Nonetheless, a forensic analysis of his hair concluded that he really did have red hair when he was a young man.
Ancient Greek descriptions of the Egyptians
Proponents of the view that ancient Egypt was an exclusively or predominately “black” civilization have also tried to point to descriptions of the Egyptians written by Greek authors. They claim that these descriptions clearly characterize the Egyptians as black people. The evidence, however, is a lot less clear-cut than the Afrocentrists claim.
For instance, the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC) says in his Histories 2.104 that he knows that the people of the land of Kolchis (located in what is now western Georgia) are of Egyptian descent in part because the people of Kolchis and Egypt are both “μελάγχροες… καὶ οὐλότριχες,” which means “dark-skinned and curly-haired.” This line is often quoted by Afrocentrist writers with the mistranslation “black-skinned and curly-haired.”
This translation, though, is certainly inaccurate; the word μελάγχροες comes from the Greek word μέλας (mélas), which just means “dark.” Sometimes this word can mean “black,” but it does not inherently mean “black” and the word is often used to describe anything that is of a generally dark color. The word μελάγχροες could therefore refer to anyone with skin that is any color from light brown to completely black.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Roman marble copy of a Greek bust of the historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos, who described the Egyptians as “μελάγχροες… καὶ οὐλότριχες”
Greek stereotypes about the Egyptians
Furthermore, we must absolutely bear in mind at all times that the descriptions we are given in ancient Greek sources of what the ancient Egyptians supposedly looked like reflect a stereotype of how ancient Greek writers imagined the appearance of the Egyptians. When Herodotos says that the Egyptians—or any other people for that matter—look a certain way, it would be a grave error to interpret what he says as an accurate description of all people belonging to that particular nationality, or even necessarily the majority of people belonging to that nationality.
Indeed, ancient Greek writers are rather notorious for stereotyping what people of a certain culture were supposed to look like based on features that weren’t even necessarily held by the majority of the population. For instance, Greek writers stereotyped the peoples of the land of Thrake, located northeast of mainland Greece, as having reddish blond hair and blue eyes.
Nevertheless, we know that this stereotypical appearance doesn’t hold true for all Thrakians or even the majority of Thrakians. It seems that the Greeks simply noticed that reddish blond hair and blue eyes were relatively common among the Thrakians compared to other peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and therefore began stereotyping the Thrakians in this manner.
The same thing is probably true for ancient Greek descriptions of the Egyptians. Clearly, Herodotos and other Greeks noticed that some Egyptians had dark skin and curly hair and they decided that this was the “standard” appearance of an Egyptian person.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of part of a fresco from an ancient Thrakian tomb from a site near Kazanlak, Bulgaria. The ancient Greeks stereotyped Thrakians as having reddish blond hair and blue eyes, but not a single person in this whole fresco actually has red hair.
A word of caution about genetic studies
Now that we’ve talked about evidence from Egyptian iconography, evidence from mummies, and evidence from ancient Greek descriptions, we need to talk about evidence from genetics. This is the evidence that usually tends to dominate the conversation. As I discuss in this article I wrote in February 2020 about the relationship between modern and ancient Greeks, though, we should really be extremely cautious of any sweeping claims made about the ethnicity of ancient peoples based on genetic evidence because genetics don’t work the way that most non-geneticists think they do.
Companies like 23andMe and Ancestry have irresponsibly portrayed genetics as though a simple genetic test can tell you the exact percentage of your total genome that comes from ancestors of a specific nationality. In reality, the vast majority of genes are found in people of all nationalities and there is always much greater genetic diversity among individual people of any particular nationality than there is between the people of two different nationalities collectively.
What genetics companies actually rely on are genetic markers—a handful of genes found within a person’s larger genome that generally tend to be associated with members of a certain reference population with documented ancestors from a certain part of the world.
These genetic markers aren’t always totally reliable, since, in many cases, the same mutation may have occurred in several different parts of world at different times and may be associated with people of totally different backgrounds. For instance, the MTHFR C677T mutation is a genetic marker that is common in people of Mexican ancestry, but also in people Chilean, Chinese, and Italian ancestries. It is also less commonly found in other populations of people from all over the world, including western Europe, Britain, Ireland, and Colombia.
If a geneticist examines the DNA from someone who has the MTHFR C677T gene, they have no way of knowing just from looking at the mutation itself whether the person inherited that mutation from an Italian ancestor, a Chinese ancestor, a Mexican ancestor, a Chilean ancestor, or some other ancestor.
When a personal genome company tells you that you are a certain percent “from” a certain region, what they really mean is that that percentage of the genetic markers they identified within your larger genome are often associated with members of a reference group composed of people with known ancestry in that part of the world. Genetic evidence can be useful, but we need to be very careful with it because, when it comes to genetics, things are a lot more complicated than most people realize.
ABOVE: Screenshot from an advertisement for a DNA ancestry test from Ancestry.com, showing a man looking surprised to find out “52%” of his DNA comes from “Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.” What that percentage really means is that 52% of the genetic markers the analysts found in his DNA are often associated with reference populations of people with known ancestry in that part of the world.
A further word of caution about genetic evidence and ancient Egypt
Things get especially complicated when we start talking about genetics in association with ancient Egypt, since Egypt is a geographically large country with a historically diverse population. Ancient Egyptian history also spans the course of roughly four thousand years, from the rise of Egyptian civilization in the late fourth millennium BC to the conquest of Egypt by the Rashidun caliphate in the seventh century AD. Egypt’s population has, naturally, changed to some extent over the course of its long history.
Unfortunately, people seem to have a very pernicious habit of making grand, sweeping claims about the ancient Egyptians’ supposed “race” based on extremely limited genetic evidence. Both Eurocentrists who want to believe that the ancient Egyptians were all what we would consider “white” and Afrocentrists who want to believe that the ancient Egyptians were all what we would consider “black” are guilty of this.
To give an especially ludicrous example of how genetic evidence has been distorted and misused, in August 2011, a Swiss personal genomics company called iGENEA claimed—supposedly based on an extremely small portion of Tutankhamun’s Y-chromosome DNA that was allegedly shown on screen in a Discovery Channel documentary—that Tutankhamun belonged to certain haplogroups that they claimed include more than half of all men in western Europe.
iGENEA’s already dubious claims became even more distorted and exaggerated in the press. The National Post ran an article with the headline “King Tut DNA more European than Egyptian.” The Daily Mail ran an article with the headline “We’ve got the same mummy! Up to 70% of British men are ‘related’ to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.”
Soon ordinary people who read these headlines were saying that a study had proven that the ancient Egyptians were ethnically western Europeans. The problem is that there wasn’t even a real genetic study at all; the whole story was born from a single genetics company claiming something about one pharaoh’s DNA based on what they thought was a portion of that pharaoh’s Y-chromosomal DNA that had been inadvertently shown on screen in a Discovery Channel documentary.
In fact, the actual researchers who had extracted and decoded Tutankhamun’s DNA denounced iGENEA’s conclusions, saying that the company had acted irresponsibly and unscientifically and that they had misinterpreted the data that had been shown on the screen in the Discovery Channel documentary. Carsten Putsch, one of the geneticists involved in the original project, told LiveScience that iGENEA’s conclusions were “simply impossible.”
Meanwhile, proponents of the view that all ancient Egyptians were what we would consider “black” have made similarly irresponsible claims based on extremely little evidence, often citing the presence of certain genetic markers that tend to be associated with people of sub-Saharan African ancestry in the genomes of certain Egyptian pharaohs as “proof” that all Egyptians were “black.” This, of course, at best only proves that some Egyptian pharaohs had some ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a highly conventionalized representation of Tutankhamun and his wife from the back of Tutankhamun’s throne, on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. This is the man that The Daily Mail apparently claims was ethnically British.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikipedia Commons of a highly conventionalized mannequin of Tutankhamun that was discovered in his tomb
A genetic study on Egyptian mummies published in 2017
A genetic study published in May 2017 in the journal Nature Communications examined DNA samples from a much larger selection of ancient Egyptian mummies than any other previous study had done and concluded that modern Egyptians actually tend to have a much higher number of genetic markers associated with people of sub-Saharan African ancestry than the ancient Egyptians did.
The study concluded that the ancient Egyptians had relatively little genetic affinity with modern people of sub-Saharan African ancestry and that, due to the trans-Saharan slave trade that flourished in the Early Modern Period, the presence of genetic markers associated with sub-Saharan Africa has dramatically grown in the Egyptian population since the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century.
Remarkably, the study also concluded that the ancient Egyptians whose DNA they analyzed tended to have more genetic markers in common with modern peoples of the Near East than with modern Egyptians. If this study is correct, this means that the exact opposite of what Afrocentrists claim is the truth.
Afrocentrists often claim that the ancient Egyptians were all or mostly what we consider “black” and that modern Egyptians are descendants of the Arab conquerors, but this study suggests that the ancient Egyptians had a close genetic affinity with modern peoples of the Middle East and that modern Egyptians actually have a closer genetic affinity with peoples of sub-Saharan Africa than their ancient ancestors did.
Of course, this study also has some serious methodological limitations. Notably, it only examined DNA samples from 151 mummies, all of which came from the site of Abusir el-Meleq in Lower Egypt. Furthermore, judging from Supplementary Data 1, nearly all of the mummies included in the study seem to have belonged to individuals who lived after 1000 BC.
The fact that all the mummies examined in this study came from the same site in Lower Egypt means we should be very careful about making generalizations based on it. I suspect that, if the study had examined mummies from Upper Egypt, they would have found more genetic markers associated with sub-Saharan Africa.
Nonetheless, this was the first genetic study that has ever been conducted using DNA from such a large sample of Egyptian mummies and, despite its very serious limitations, it represents an important step forward in our understanding of the population history of Egypt.
ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the findings of the 2017 genetic study, which concluded that ancient Egyptians from the site of Abusir el-Meleq in Lower Egypt had the most genetic markers in common with modern peoples of the Near East and that they had relatively little genetic affinity with modern sub-Saharan Africans
Realistic portraits of ordinary people from Lower Egypt from the Hellenistic and Roman periods
Images of people from the early periods of Egyptian history are highly conventionalized and they do not normally portray the specific details of the appearances of individual people. Mummies can be misleading, since the process of embalming can change a person’s appearance significantly. Greek sources describing the Egyptians’ appearance are largely based on stereotypes. Finally, genetic studies on ancient Egyptian remains are limited.
Our sources for what people during pharaonic times looked like, then, is complicated to say the least. They do, however, give us a general picture of what Egypt looked like during the time of the pharaohs: an eastern Mediterranean country with a diverse population of people, the majority of whom seem to have had brown skin, but substantial minorities of whom seem to have had darker or lighter skin tones.
Once we start getting into the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 31 BC) and Roman Period (lasted c. 31 BC – c. 646 AD) of Egyptian history, though, we finally start to get realistic portraits of what real people looked like when they were alive. In particular, we have a pretty good impression of what people from Lower Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods looked like thanks to the wealth of highly detailed, realistic encaustic panel portraits that have survived from the region from these periods of Egyptians history.
These are funerary portraits that originally covered the faces of the mummified bodies of the individuals they depict. They are conventionally known as the “Fayum mummy portraits” because many of them were found at sites located near the Fayum Basin in Lower Egypt. They depict ordinary people from the upper and middle classes. Here are a few examples:
ABOVE: Portrait of a young woman from the city of Antinopolis in Lower Egypt dating to around the second or third century AD or thereabouts
ABOVE: Portrait of a young military officer from Lower Egypt, dating to the time of the Roman Empire
ABOVE: Portrait of a young man from the city of Antinopolis in Lower Egypt dating to around the second or third century AD or thereabouts
ABOVE: Portrait of an elderly Egyptian man from the Roman period
ABOVE: Portrait of a young man from the site of Hawara in Lower Egypt
ABOVE: Portrait of a woman dating to the early second century AD
ABOVE: Portrait of a military officer from Lower Egypt from the middle of the second century AD
ABOVE: Portrait of an Egyptian man from the Staatliche Museum in Berlin
ABOVE: Portrait of an Egyptian woman dating to the late second century AD
ABOVE: Portrait of a young man from Fayum dating to around the second or third century AD or thereabouts
ABOVE: Portrait of a woman from Lower Egypt dating to around the late second century AD or thereabouts
ABOVE: Portrait of a man from Fayum, dating to around the mid-second century AD or thereabouts
These portraits reflect the incredible diversity of people that existed in Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. In these portraits, we see real, ordinary people with all different colors of skin who lived in Egypt during this time period.
This is the way Egypt has always been and the way it still is today: a place with people of diverse backgrounds and diverse colors of skin. Literally any one of these people could easily pass as a modern Egyptian.
The population of modern Egypt
The modern population that is most directly descended from the population of ancient Egypt is the population of modern Egypt. Modern Egyptians have a range of different skin tones; some have pale skin, others have dark skin, but the majority generally tend to have brown skin. All the evidence we have just examined indicates that the ancient Egyptians exhibited the same range of skin tones.
It is true that Egypt was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century AD. It is also true that most modern Egyptians are Muslims who speak Arabic, but this doesn’t mean that modern Egyptians aren’t descendants of the ancient Egyptians. As I discuss in this article about whether modern Greeks are related to the ancient Greeks, once you go back to ancient history, matters of ancestry get really complicated. The Arabs conquered Egypt, but they didn’t massacre the Egyptian population and it is likely that most modern Egyptians have more Egyptian ancestors than Arab ancestors.
Furthermore, it is worth pointing out the existence of modern Coptic Egyptians, who make up somewhere around one twentieth of the population of Egypt. These are people who never converted to Islam and instead have remained Christian to the present day, just like the majority of Egyptians in late antiquity. Historically Coptic Egyptians have been highly endogamous, meaning that, historically speaking, they have generally avoided marrying Muslim Egyptians.
For most of their history, Copts even continued to speak Coptic, a later form of the same Egyptian language that was spoken by the pharaohs of old. Today, Coptic is mostly only used as a liturgical language and most Coptic Egyptians speak Arabic like their Muslim neighbors. Nonetheless, Copts have maintained their own culture and their own religion.
I am not going to say that Copts are “pureblooded” descendants of the ancient Egyptians because there is no such thing as a “pureblooded” descendant of any people who lived over a thousand years ago, but, of all the people in the world, they are the ones who have the closest cultural ties to the ancient Egyptians. It so happens that Coptic Egyptians generally tend to have similar skin tones to Muslim Egyptians. Here is a video from 2011 of thousands of Coptic Christians singing in one of the cave churches near the city of Cairo:
If you look at the people in this video, you will see they are mostly varying shades of brown. This is consistent with how the pharaonic Egyptians generally portrayed themselves in art and how the late antique Egyptians shown in the Fayum mummy portraits are represented.
Egypt’s ever-diverse and changing population
Proponents of the view that ancient Egypt was a primarily or exclusively black civilization like to latch onto the date of the Arab conquest as the date when Egyptians supposedly stopped being black, but they are ignoring the fact that people coming to Egypt from the southwest Asia and even Europe is not at all a recent phenomenon in any sense. From the very earliest period in Egyptian history, we have records of people coming to Egypt from all parts of southwest Asia, especially from Canaan, and even from parts of southern Europe.
As early as the nineteenth century BC, there were already people immigrating to Egypt from Canaan and Syria in massive numbers. Some of these Canaanites established a territory in the eastern Nile Delta, where they established the Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt, which ruled contemporaneously with the Egyptian Thirteenth Dynasty.
In around the middle of the seventeenth century BC, a people from southwest Asia known as the Hyksos conquered nearly all of Egypt and ruled for about a hundred years before the Hyksos rulers were finally driven out. During the time when Egypt was ruled by Hyksos, it is impossible to imagine that there was no intermarriage between the Egyptians and the ruling people from southwest Asia.
From at least the eighteenth century BC onwards, the Minoans, a people from the Aegean islands, also had a very significant presence in northern Egypt. Many Minoan artifacts have been found in Egypt. The palace at Avaris in the Nile Delta, most likely dating to the reign of Hatshepsut (ruled c. 1479 – 1458 BC) or the reign of her nephew Thutmose III (ruled 1479 – 1425 BC), was even decorated with a large number of frescoes in a distinctively Minoan style, suggesting that the Egyptians employed Minoan artists.
ABOVE: Reconstruction of a Minoan fresco from the palace at Avaris in the Nile Delta, dating to the fifteenth century BC. Peoples from southeast Europe and southwest Asia have had a significant presence in Egypt since the very beginning.
Of course, it is worth noting that, at the same time that there were people coming to Egypt from southwest Asia, there were also large numbers of people coming to Egypt from the south, from what is now Sudan. Indeed, the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of Egypt (lasted 744 – 656 BC) was made up of rulers who came from the Kingdom of Kush in what is now modern-day Sudan.
It is also worth noting that, long before the Arab conquest, Egypt was ruled by the Achaemenid Persians from 525 BC to 404 BC and then again from 343 BC to 332 BC. In 332 BC, Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great, the king of Makedonia, a kingdom located in northern Greece. After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, Egypt fell under the rule of his general Ptolemaios I Soter, who established a dynasty of Greek rulers that lasted until the death of Cleopatra VII Philopator and the annexation of Egypt by the Roman Empire in 30 BC.
Egypt was ruled by Rome all the way until the Arab conquest. In other words, by the time the Arab conquest happened, Egypt had already been ruled by various foreign nations almost continuously for over a millennium. The Arab conquest, then, is perhaps not such an era-defining event as some people have supposed.
Meanwhile, as noted above, since the time of the Arab conquest, many people from sub-Saharan Africa have been brought to Egypt through the trans-Saharan slave trade. If the genetic study referenced above is correct, this trade has apparently left quite a substantial mark on the present population of Egypt.
None of the foreign nations that have ruled Egypt have ever made any successful effort to exterminate the native population of Egypt. The population of Egypt hasn’t been replaced, but new peoples have moved in and, in some cases, intermarried with members of the local population. There is still direct population continuity from the earliest Egyptians to the Egyptians of the present day.
Modern Egyptians are probably not “pureblooded” descendants of the ancient Egyptians, but it is important to remember that the ancient Egyptians were certainly not “pureblooded” descendants of earlier Egyptians either. Egypt has always been a melting pot with inhabitants from all over the place.
ABOVE: Hellenistic mosaic from the site of Thmuis dating to around 200 BC depicting Queen Berenike II as the personification of the city of Alexandria
Kleopatra VII Philopator’s skin color
The debate over the skin color of the ancient Egyptians has spilled over into debate over the appearance of Kleopatra VII Philopator, the Greek queen of Egypt whom we know in English as “Cleopatra.” In January 2020, when word came out that Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga were the main contenders for the role of Cleopatra in an upcoming biopic, many people accused the filmmakers of whitewashing, saying that the Egyptian queen should be portrayed by a black actress.
The first problem here is that Cleopatra was not ethnically Egyptian at all; in fact, we know almost her entire family history and, as far as we know, she did not have even a single Egyptian ancestor. Nearly all her ancestors came from the region of Makedonia in northern Greece, bordering on Thrake. Her only known non-Greek ancestor is Apama, the Sogdian wife of her distant ancestor, the Greek king Seleukos I Nikator.
Furthermore, as I discuss in this article I wrote in January 2020 about what Cleopatra looked like, we have a tremendous wealth of surviving depictions of Cleopatra from the time when she was alive and none of them give us any evidence that she was what we would consider “black.”
In fact, there is a fresco from the city of Herculaneum dating to the first century AD that definitely represents either Cleopatra herself or a member of her family as a pale-skinned redhead. Although the fresco certainly represents a queen belonging to the Ptolemaic dynasty and it most likely represents Cleopatra VII, since it closely resembles the known portraits of her found on coins, we can’t be completely certain that it is her and, if it is indeed her, we can’t be completely certain that it is accurate.
Likewise, here too we have to be wary of conventions. The ancient Greeks and Romans also tended to portray women as pale-skinned because pale skin was seen as a marker of feminine beauty. Also, the artist who painted this fresco would have certainly known that the Ptolemies were of Makedonian descent and that Makedonia was in the northern reaches of Greece, near Thrake, meaning we can’t totally rule out the possibility that he may have simply assumed that Cleopatra had red hair based on Greek stereotypes of northerners.
ABOVE: First-century AD Roman fresco from the city of Herculaneum representing a Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, probably Cleopatra VII, as a pale-skinned redhead
Hypatia of Alexandria’s skin color
There is also some popular contention over the skin color of the Egyptian mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria. I wrote a whole article on this subject in October 2019, but I will summarize the information in that article here.
Hypatia was born at some point in the second half of the fourth century AD and was assassinated in March 415 AD by supporters of Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, due to her involvement in a heated political dispute between Cyril and Orestes, the Roman governor of Egypt. (For more information about her life in general, you can read this article I wrote about her in August 2018 or this article I wrote in February 2020, in which I debunk an especially inaccurate portrayal of her in popular culture.)
We have far less information about Hypatia than we do about Cleopatra. All we know about her ethnic background is that she came from Alexandria, which is a city in northern Egypt that was founded in Greeks; both she and her father Theon have Greek names; and both she and her father wrote exclusively in Greek. None of this necessarily means that she was ethnically Greek, though, since many people in Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods who had no Greek ancestors adopted Greek culture.
We have no surviving ancient depictions of Hypatia and our only surviving description of her physical appearance is a vague statement from the Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Damaskios of Athens (lived c. 458 – c. 538 AD) that she was “exceedingly beautiful and fair of form.”
We have little reason to think that even this description is reliable, though, since Damaskios was not even born until nearly half a century after Hypatia’s death and we have no evidence that he knew anyone who had known her when she was alive. His description of her as extraordinarily beautiful, then, may just be his own male fantasy.
In short, we know almost absolutely nothing about what Hypatia looked like. The best guess is that she probably looked somewhat similar to some of the women shown in the Fayum mummy portraits, which give us a vague impression of what ordinary Egyptian women looked like in the time when Hypatia was alive.
ABOVE: Image of two different modern portrayals of Hypatia that I featured in this article I published in October 2019. In reality, both of these portrayals are fictional. We have no idea what Hypatia really looked like.
Summary and conclusions
The concepts of a “white race” and a “black race” are modern and would be utterly foreign to the ancient Egyptians. Contrary to what some people have claimed, the name “Kmt” does not mean “Land of the Black People” and the ancient Egyptians did not define themselves in terms of their skin color.
Surviving artistic depictions from the pharaonic periods must be treated with caution because they are often highly conventionalized. Nevertheless, they reveal that Egyptians of the pharaonic periods generally tended to portray themselves with brown skin. There are surviving mummies of people in ancient Egypt who would be considered “white,” people who would be considered “black,” and people who fall somewhere in between.
Genetic evidence must be treated with caution, since genetics is a lot more complicated than most people realize. Nonetheless, a genetic study of Egyptian mummies published in 2017 concluded that the people in ancient Egypt—or at least people who lived at the site in Egypt where the mummies came from—had a close genetic affinity with modern peoples of the Near East.
More realistic surviving depictions of people from Egypt from the Hellenistic and Roman Periods portray them with a range of skin colors, but with brown skin being predominate. This same range of colors still exists in Egypt today and, although the population of Egypt has changed, there is still population continuity between the people of Egypt from the very earliest times and the people of Egypt today.
Excellent…!! I don’t think I have read an account that has as much valid content in as few words… Congratulations !!
A couple of minor points, to emphasize your content : regarding human iconography, 2 or 3D, from the earliest human depictions right up to yesterday’s digital image, we want to be remembered at our best and most handsome, not dishevelled-just-woke-up so all depictions should really be seen as containing quite a bit of human vanity… 🙂
The second point, when discussing DNA etc, we should bear in mind that 99% of human DNA is shared with chimps et al. ( https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/06/bonobos-join-chimps-closest-human-relatives# ) so any use of DNA results outside a purely and very strictly scientific context by DNA researchers is really not valid…
Unfortunately, no matter how much you or any other expert might scientifically present a point, “haters will be haters”…
Anyway, WELL DONE !!
Well, that 1% of DNA must contain quite a bit of power considering that humans have been to the moon and put satellites into space.
Interesting and, especially as we get to the end, quite brave! I agree with the overall thrust of it though I think your argument could have been made stronger by looking at ethnographic descriptions and self descriptions in Egyptian literature. They really are quite open and shut about these things you know, they essentially saw themselves looking like modern Copts.
As an outsider, this whole debate used to be something that was typically American, yet with the internet it has sadly gone global. If you haven’t read it yet, I would recommend Mary Lefkowitz’s book (History Lessons?) which goes into the intellectual history of the whole debate. Very venal. Very boring. But perhaps very necessary.
Thank you so much!
I wrote this article primarily because I’ve come across so many questions on Quora asking about what “race” the ancient Egyptians belonged to that I decided that I needed to give the subject a thorough treatment. I try to gauge what sorts of topics people are interested in based on what questions people are asking on Quora. Consequently, most of my articles tend to start out as Quora answers.
I would have talked more about how the Egyptians describe themselves in their writings, but I, unfortunately, don’t have much familiarity with specific references to skin color in ancient Egyptian texts. As fascinating as I find the Egyptians, I’m actually a Hellenist (which might explain why I spend two whole sections of this article talking about how Herodotos describes the Egyptians, complete with quotations from his Histories in Greek).
You’re right that this article is, in some sense, overtly courting controversy. I haven’t exactly tried to shy away from controversial subjects in the past either; as I mentioned in the article, I wrote an article addressing Fallmerayer’s thesis that modern Greeks are unrelated to the ancient Greeks a couple months ago and that’s definitely the sort of subject that really takes guts to write about.
(Strangely, though, that article hasn’t attracted nearly as much controversy as my article from February 2020 about the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, my article from November 2019 debunking Julian Jaynes’s thesis that ancient peoples were not conscious, or my article from November 2019 debunking the thesis of General Zhukov claiming that Alexander the Great secretly actually lost the Battle of the Hydaspes and covered it up somehow.)
I’m yet to read your controversial article on the shroud but
“Is the Shroud of Turin the Burial Cloth of Jesus?” https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/shroud-of-turin-jesus-burial/
I read this article some time ago on it.
Your Article is good however I only have a few problems with it
a) 60% of the article was spent on “debunking” Afrocentrist claims yet not for once debunking Eurocentrist claims of a Caucasoid Ancient Egypt, that essentially makes you biased because you clearly have a side.
b) You posted only 2 mummies who have African features, are they the only ones you found or what? Because I have at least 100, since I can’t post them here you can search for them on the web Pentawer, ramsesiii, Queen Nodjemet, Princess Ahmose Meyret, Queen Nerfetari, Thutmose I,
c) I also noticed that you may not know what makes a black person, a black person. Whether a person is black or not is determined by two or more typical African features these features are wooly hair, broad nose, thick lips, And dark skin. Because of the diversity of the African race some don’t possess all the above but only two of those, they are still Black. So claiming that AEs were brown not black is pretty silly because brown skin + wooly hair = Black! if Somalis and Eritreans (who are brown) are black then why not AEs?. AEs never saw themselves as related to the Middle East that’s why they constantly referred to Middle Easterners as “Asiatics”, “The Sea People”, “The Foreigners”.
What you did, in this article is classic Eurocentricism, You threw Black people a bone (Maiherpri and Lady Rai) So that they don’t disturb you while you take the meat. You are no different from the Old school Eurocentrists who used to say to black people you should be proud of the 25th Dynasty “the Black Dynasty”, The 25th Dynasty was not the only “Black Dynasty”. DNA has recently proven that the 20th Dynasty was E1b1a Sub Saharan. And also Queen Nefertari the Matriarch of the 18th Dynasty is regarded by all Egyptologists as having been black skinned Ethiopian so that tells us what her descendants (18th Dynasty Pharaohs) and looked like.
Hilarious!
The guy is so blind even saying the classify gender with Colour. Please how
Great comment, your response is perfect! All he did, or try to do, was to confuse some people by attempting to legitimize retreaded Eurocentric propaganda. Interestingly enough, he suggested that the Egyptians were “colorblind,” and yet we have been indoctrinated -HEAVILY – to believe that their forefathers, specifically Noah’s three sons, were different colors! It’s one delusion after another, which is why we must steer clear of these spurious attempts to educate (that are nothing more than veiled discussions to perpetuate Eugenics), or next the story will by that humanity was evolved from humans of recessive genes.
Who are the “humans of recessive genes”, pray tell?
It is honestly quite astonishing how some people are trying so hard to relate the ancient Egyptian culture to black culture. If you ever take a trip to Egypt, you would see the same mix and the same gradients and color shades of brown that you see on the walls of the temples, ranging from pale to really dark skin, all over Egypt. All those people are simply Egyptians. Pale Egyptians don’t refer to themselves as white and darker Egyptians don’t refer to themselves as black. The constant trials to portray Egyptian culture as one that belongs to one race or the other is pathetic. It’s Egyptian, and Egypt is neither white nor black. We have this homogeneity and we don’t label people by their skin color, and that is still ongoing in modern Egypt. Egypt doesn’t divide people by skin color, it’s very homogenous and we do not see things that way. Let me say that one last time, the Egyptian culture does not belong to a certain race, it’s a culture and a nationality, and it belongs to the Egyptians.
Cleopatra was not African, but Macedonian, which may explain why SOME consider ancient Egyptians to be white, though most of us assume they were of Mediterranean (olive skinned) heritage. Egypt was the crossroads of many cultures and the interracial mixing that occurred there over the centuries may explain much of the confusion.
Your point concerning the study of increased subsaharan ancestry is concluded to be a mute thesis in the discussion portion of the same study. Basically amounts to a disclaimer suggesting because no research was done in the south closer to Nubia where there was no Greek colonization. They were likely subsaharan because Egypt and Nubia intermarried and shared communities. Not to mention Egypt evolved from the south at Nubia, Napta Playa , etc.
Dna has not proven Ramses was E1b1a sub Saharan, not even close lol. A study dedicated to detecting the cause of death of Ramses took a small dna sample which was categorized as E1b1a at the time. The sample was neither the purpose of the study or extensively studied. After the study the dna was made publicly available and genetic review in 2020 indicates there’s only a 3% chance it’s E1b1a, and it’s 97% likely to be E1b1b, the most common Egyptian haplogroup.
It would at least be consistent with maternal haplogroups as thus far they appear identical to Egyptian maternal haplogroups:
https://scontent.fjed4-5.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/131987703_402815307464065_1338068223997838401_n.png?_nc_cat=103&ccb=2&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=i10ACqXSAooAX9CdNMI&_nc_oc=AQnoB3c821obxovRmPIjSPRTxr0lZTF_2bBe4siUOm0jUybm3w7EVYYgNoDZzKCNLSSFPC9SjS5XkE9wJRJ7cvV2&_nc_ht=scontent.fjed4-5.fna&oh=1ecf455ee48b90e1b9cc9ed5eb695383&oe=60079985
The chart above shows all the confirmed Egyptian maternal haplogroups discovered. Compare that to the average Egyptian haplogroups and the distribution is identical. Compare them to the results found here: https://www.egyptian-genome.org/
Also to answer your questions
1) Egypt IS Caucasoid. It appears you’re not aware that Caucasiod refers to SKULL SHAPE, not skin tone first of all. And that second of all Afro-Asiatic populations including Hausa Nigerians, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia are all majority Caucasoid in skull shape. This isn’t even a serious question, East Africa in general is primarily caucasoid in skull shape, so regardless of skin color Egyptians were almost certainly caucasoid.
Ramses the III is not sub Saharan, you’re using faulty and outdated studies. And even if he did have haplogroup E1b1a (3% chance, it’s still possible) you do realize 5% of Egypt is E1b1aa and look identical to other Egyptians? That’s no indication of ethnicity, no more than having R1b means you’re European even if it’s common Europe since large parts of Chad and SSA populations also have it. All it means is that 10,000+ years ago you had an ancestor who got the mutation, even if he’s the only ancestor. Haplogroup is not a reliable indicator of ethnicity, my haplogroup M64 is Nihal in origin, from central India in a small tribal population. I have no Indian ancestors and no genetic markers coming from India, my entire family has been in Egypt for thousands of years. So why do I have an Indian haplogroup? I must have had a Dom ancestor from at least 300+ years ago in order for it to leave no genetic mark outside my haplogroup. Either way it means nothing for my 100% Coptic ethnicity. Regardless of whether Ramses III was E1b1a or E1b1b BOTH exist in Egypt, which means he would look like them, both of whom are stereotypical modern Egyptians.
Thutmose wasn’t ‘black’ in any of his depictions, him and the rest of the 18th dynasty all look Egyptian as hell. Have you seen Haptepshut? I don’t know what you’re basing this on but this is bollocks. There are many Blck figures in Egypt that Spencer probably didn’t list because that wasn’t the intent of the article, he simply provided enough to prove that their were ‘black’ people in Egypt. I can list a 100 more as well (real black people, not pharaohs you arbitrarily call black) like Khnum Nakht, High Priestess Anut Tapi etc. if you know a bunch of ‘black’ Egyptian figures that have been proven to be so then great, their were many prominent Nubian and sometimes Punt officials in Egypt who played a big part in history, you shouldn’t need an article to validate that, especially an article that’s primary focus doesn’t center on naming every black person in Egypt.
C) Nope, you don’t know what a black person is, but Spencer clearly does. Ethiopians are black, yet they posses none of the ‘African’ features you claim since they have primarily Caucasian features. Again almost almost all of the ‘African’ features you mentioned have absolutely nothing to do with skin color. Wholly hair?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/PSM_V52_D323_Global_hair_texture_map.png/375px-PSM_V52_D323_Global_hair_texture_map.png.
Guess what, it’s common across North Africa and the Middle East as well and peaks in OCEANIA and parts of South Asia which aren’t even related to modern Africans. Broad Nose and Thick Lips? By that logic President Sisi of Egypt should be ‘black’
https://c.files.bbci.co.uk/12D34/production/_115380177_31e661d7-f34d-4e3e-8a73-c9bb2461c5b7.jpg
On the topic of Broad Noses somehow being black, you do realize that Africa has multiple DIFFERENT genes that govern nose shape. And that the Northern part of West Africa, Sudan, parts of Ethiopia and Somalia all have entirely different nose genes from Central Africa where the typical ‘African’ nose comes from. Since most American blacks come from the Gold Coast the ‘broad nose’ has become a stereotypical symbol of being black… in America. In reality only about half the continent has a broad nose. Again Ethiopia and Sudan are ‘black’ right? Yet so far the typical Ethiopian is Caucasian and has a thin nose depending on his exact ethnic group. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/26/37/9f/26379f7dd5d859db948464bd94ad511b.png
Let me simplify here: Africa is the most diverse continent, you can no more declare a set of traits common to ALL Africans than you can for all Asians or Europeans. Broad noses aren’t common in or anywhere near Egypt in the African American sense, so why Ancient Egyptians would have it, or why you think they would, even if they were black, is beyond me. In reality NONE of the features you mentioned are required to be black (Unless Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan are actually white) and wouldn’t make sense even in a ‘black’ Egypt. You mentioned Somali’s being brown and used it as an excuse for why ‘brown’ people can be considered black. Yet Somalia has an especially flat nose and an existent caucasoid skull population: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-04f6c4a68b5ed4bf9585436a77acd2b8
Quite frankly the only qualification to be black is… to well have black skin. The moronic Europeans who made up the idiotic policy to call the most diverse continent on Earth a single race based solely on skin color didn’t account for how different Africans are from each other. The only way to use the ‘black’ metric and contain all ‘black’ populations is to choose based solely on skin color, or else most of East Africa and large parts of Weat Africa wouldn’t be ‘black’ since they don’t look like Central Africans. At that point Ancient Egypt AND modern Egypt might as well be black considering their skin color is so close lol, and at times darker than their Sudanese counterparts.
You want to know why? Because the last metric left to being black after removing all the features that not all Africans have, is literally having black skin. And about that…
https://www.earthlymission.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/distribution-of-skin-color.png
It’s not like skin color instantly changes from black to white tat Egypt’s borders… there’s a slow change to a lighter color, it should also be noted that the graph divides Egypt into two skin tones, a lighter in the north and a darker in the south. The lighter skin tone is closer to North Africa and the Middle East Nearby, while the darker one matches more southern parts of the Middle East and India, and even some parts of Central Africa.
You might also notice that skin tone seems to suspiciously be vertical… because it is. Surprise, skin tone depends primarily on distance from the equator, any population will become an appropriate skin tone over time via micro evolution. If Egypt was a shockingly different skin color from countries on the same latitude or there was a sudden change from Sudan to Egypt of skin tone you might be able to make the case their was a replacement. Except there isn’t, there’s a natural lightening of skin tone as you go up Egypt and it fits perfectly in with nearby countries. From this alone a super dark ‘black’ Egypt would be impossible as it doesn’t fit into the map. Instead Egypt is darker than European population and basically shares the skin tones of India. Are Indians white? I don’t know many who would agree. Logically Modern Egyptians, Ancient Egyptians, and Indians fit much better in a ‘brown’ intermediary category than either white or black.
Also one final note is you called Queen Nefertari Ethiopian… except she isn’t? Besides no depiction of her indicating foriegn ancestry she herself is believed by most Egyptologist to be the daughter of Ay, the Grand Uncle of King Tut, whom we know the ethncity of and have analyzed to look Egyptian with recent facial reconstructions. She looked just like the rest of the 18th Dynasty… Egyptian, neither black or white.
So far you’ve made some ridiculous outlandish and Afro-centrist claims, while E1b1a could be forgiven as a study DID find that, using it to assume ethncity was a red flag considering haplogroups cannot be used to determine ethnicity or recent ancestry (unless my M64 means I am Indian lol) and randomly claiming random mummies as being Black.
Furthermore you called Spencer here a ‘Eurocenterist’, which is quite ironic since he doesn’t even mention Europe in this response, outside of making comparisons to Greece he never states Egyptians are European and even explicitly calls middle age whites racist. He didn’t throw you a bone… he gave you literally everything there was lol, he didn’t need to list every single black mummy in Egypt to prove his point that they EXISTED lmao. No doubt you’ll call me Eurocentric despite not even mentioning Europe and despite me repeatedly calling them idiots lol, but all that will do is expose your Afro-centric philosophy that is just as bad if not worse than Eurocentric beliefs in its twisting of facts and outright claim fabrication.
Spencer Alexander McDaniel thank you for the very well done article.
You said a whole lot of bias non-sense and you contradicted yourself. Beyond so-called features look at the cultural history including hairstyles, fashion, artifacts other tools collected that are typical of “black” culture that still exists today. When have you ever seen a group of people conquer a nation and not impose their own culture, language, etc? Arabs are not native to modern Egypt just like modern Americans are not native to the Historical America’s. What we know of Egypt today was conquered by various nations (typical and historically documented of white or caucasoid cultures). Modern Egyptians know little of the ancient history not to mention the conquered region was named by Greeks. That’s not rocket science and no essay needed to justify.
Interesting take. Do you care to debate me on your points on a forum with more features? Like say here;
https://www.thecoli.com/threads/the-northeast-african-origins-of-niger-congo-speakers-diaspora-blacks-african-origins-of-civ.777687/
Or one of your choice (preferably one that does not need moderator approval).
Why use this’caucasion’ label to name features that aren’t broad and wide? Although, like you said ‘caucasion’ does not imply ‘white,’ still, it is an old colonialist descriptive that is racist sounding. Caucasion is a term used by 17-19th or 20th century Europeans to describe “European” characteristics. It’s been established that race does not exist. These descriptions like — caucasion, negroid, mongoloid, then the subraces such as nordics, australoid, capoid, mediterranean, dinaric, alpinoid, etc. are names that divide the human race up. Thin lips, acquiline noses are better descriptions. Also, skull shapes that differentiate between so-called white, black and yellow races are shallow descriptions too. There is no race but the human race.
If those Europeans whom you so blithely call “moronic” are so racist, why are Middle Easterners considered white and/or Caucasian in the U.S.? I agree that for too long, Africa as a whole was considered completely “black”, but that is due to the promotion of race hustlers in the U.S. who prefer to see the Continent as belonging solely to dark skinned people.
Unfortunately it’s not a mute thesis, nor does talking big make your claim anymore viable. The source was from Abusir with two of the three mummies fully genotyped from the New Kingdom of Egypt, which is from 1300 BC-650 BC. Unless the Greeks happened to colonize Egypt 300+ years before they arrived your entire claim doesn’t make sense. In fact the samples from when the Greeks actually do conquer Egypt show MORE sub Saharan. Just take a look at the studies results and ACTUALLY review the mummies. Most of them predate the Greeks invasion of Egypt, they could not possibly affect Egypt’s genetics before their arrival, not to mention the mummies don’t even cluster with Greeks or even in their Direction.
Anyway you do realize that Egypt’s Naqqada civilization developed in the city then culture is named after: Naqqada:
https://www.touregypt.net/images/touregypt/naq6a.jpg
Actually to be more specific there were three distinct phases of the culture when it extend upward. Naqqada is literally well within Egyptian borders both of today and 5000 years ago (the first cataract. I don’t know why you think they developed in Nubia. Also you do realize that Nubians aren’t even culturally related to Ancient Rgypt? Ancient Egyptian (language) is Afro-Asiatic. Meaning it’s related to both Asian (Semitic), North African (Berber), West African (Hausa), and East African (Cushitic) language branches. Although phonologically it’s closest to Berber. Either way Nubia speaks a Nilo-Saharan language. For reference here’s a map of Afro-Asiatic speakers today (Arabic has replaced most of the Berber and all of the Egyptian languages however since they’re in the same language group the map looks roughly the same):
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRymZYH-OhMAl_EXEcDQqHXQ2x4b5MMiW2S2E-TLY2c2g&s
While most of Sudan now speaks Arabic (Afro-Asiaitic), you’ll probably notice the small purple dots in the North. That’s the Nubian language, which used to dominate Sudan. Unfortunately Arabic has replaced the awesome language in many places. However that doesn’t change the fact that it’s Nilo-Saharan, an entirely different language group from Egypt. The modern Nilo-Saharan population likely came in when the Sahara began to dry up during the Neolithic from Chad in the Sahara. The oldest Nubian settlement was from the Butana Group in 4000 BC, Naqqada culture roughly began in 3900 BC and arose from Badari culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Egypt_relief_location_map.jpg
In 4400 BC-4000BC. The merimde culture around 4800BC-4300BC and the Tasian culture from roughly 4500BC. All of these people predate the first Nubian settlement by up to 800 years. And all these cultures began within Egypt’s borders. (I also am not counting Fayium A which is the intial settlement of Egypt in the Neolithic era from 9000BC-6000BC. 5000 years before Nubia was even settled) The cultures developed almost totally seperate until the expansion of Egypt allowed it to begin trading and interacting with nearby cultures.
I find your claim that categories of “white” and “black” were “created” to “justify slavery” by Europeans. These terms are merely descriptors of what anyone with eyes can clearly see. I’m nauseated by “woke” whites contorting themselves to “prove” they’re not racist by regurgitating frankly racist opinions on how white people think. Imagine a crime victim, when asked to describe the perpetrator, merely saying “a human being”. That wouldn’t be too helpful, would it?
Hello Spencer,
Thanks yet again for the time and research you put into your answers, both here and on Quora! This armchair historian appreciates them!
Regards,
Radovan
You are welcome! I always put a lot of time into writing my articles. This particular article took me three days to write.
This pure garbage . the is not bold enough to assume his eurocentricity . out of millions of pharaohs with extremely black futures , he picked 2 brown and white unnokwn Pharaoh to prove that the ancien égyptien were white .pre-dynastic Egypt we know was 100 percent black African; why? pre dynastic Egypt was created during the Paleolithic era of human history, meaning old stone age period and we know for certain that the white race had not appeared on the human stage at that point in history; in fact, the white race is only 6,000 years old and not to mention the old stone age cave rock art of black Africans showing them fishing, pregnant women taking baths in the Sahara ocean and most importantly showing these black Africans wearing the Egyptian regalia and then wearing the same regalia during pre dynastic and through ancient Egypt; all non black races, who came into that ancient cultural complex, was subdued and placed into a servant’s role; all non blacks would come and try to militarily force their population into that ancient cultural complex and again was defeated but at times these barbaric people would defeat the ancient Africans but then would be expelled out of ancient Egypt by the black Africans; if non blacks contributed to the civilization of ancient Egypt, then where are their regalia that should have been found inside of Asia or Europe! like most whites or non blacks, you suffer from cognitive dissonance!
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You need to stop mouthing “Calypso Louis” talking points and deal with your racism.
BZ! Well written and researched! Probably one of the best articles on the extremely diverse cultures that comprise ancient and modern Egypt I have seen. I hope this will help put this long and tired debate to bed. I can tell you I have heard and read the exclusively white and black arguments and have called out people on both sides. I became very interested in Egyptian culture as a college student after taking an art history class. I was an Applied Mathematics & Electrical Engineering Major undergrad and a minority myself so I was fascinated to learn about the very diverse culture of Egypt and the surrounding nations. I was especially interested when I learned about the Nubian dynasty (25th) started by King/Pharoah Piyanki. The differences in the ancient world were not racial but rather national as you so eloquently mentioned in your article. Given my love for science and mathematics I found the application of so many of the concepts we accredit to Fibonacci, Euclid, Pythagoras, Heron, and many others present in ancient Egypt and Nubia to be fascinating. Maybe you can do a follow-up article on the various contributions to modern science, engineering and mathematics that came from ancient Egypt, Nubia, and Babylon. Maybe we may never be able to erase racism from the modern world but I think we can certainly debunk the ignorant and stupid from all sides of the spectrum. I know the afrocentrists mean well…trying to colorize the years of western systemic racism and whitewashing of history but they go too far and also need to be checked for factual errors/inaccuracies.
Thanks for posting. Some years ago, I had a debate about this topic with a friend of mine who was convinced that the Ancient Egyptians were sub-Saharan Africans. I’m eager to show him your article.
You’re setting yourself up to lose if he knows his stuff. lol
LOL, I should listen to the illustrious Dr. Tre. Now there’s a real scholar.
Everything in that article has been destroyed in my few exchanges lol. Do you know how stupid I can make you all look if I could post pictures and videos? Don’t try to debate him on a forum where all he has to do is post the sequence of the pharaohs and their Negroid looking children and relatives to dismiss all of your black history denial.
“Everything in that article has been destroyed in my few exchanges.”
That’s wishful thinking on your part. You haven’t really engaged with most of the points in the article. Your general strategy seems to be quote mining, misrepresenting sources, and overwhelming your opponents with torrents of pseudo-intellectual bullshit until they get exhausted and give up. You’re not fooling anyone.
Go back to college, son.
Vanity is the meek man’s shield
Agreed! Huge loss. This article while well-written is full of biases, inaccuracies and false opinions. The attempt to disprove the “blackness” of Ancient Egypt superseded the logic that the modern nation of Egypt does not entirely reflect ancient Egypt populations. The argument should have been about the diversity of the nation and also equally worked to disprove of the “whiteness” of Ancient Egypt which it sadly does not.
Why are whites still trying to take “Kemet” the black land out of it’s African context? This debate has long been settled, when the “Afrocentric movement” lead by Dr. C.A. Diop and T. Obenga at UNESCO 1974 annihilated the notion of Kemet being a non black civilization in every category from oesteological, genetic, linguistic, cultural etc. The Eurocentrics were backed into a corner in the 1990’s and had to concede that every piece of evidence indicates that the original iKami (what they were called) were Africans who migrated from inner regions of the continent.
Afrocentric critic Mary Leftokwitz says Egypt was peopled by persons from sub-Saharan Africa:
“Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, “The Rise of Civilization in Egypt,” Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, “Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships,” History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54.
(Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)
In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.
Quote:
“not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history… Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work..”
Lefkotitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies?
“Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have ‘donated’ people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)… Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese.” [/img]
S. O. Y. Keita, “Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships,” History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
“There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas.” (Nancy C. Lovell, ” Egyptians, physical anthropology of,” in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
and
“must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography.” (“Nancy C. Lovell, ” Egyptians, physical anthropology of,” in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
Obviously, this shows that the Egyptians were completely white, and how foolish the Afrocentrists are to reject this notion. After all Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz recommends Lovell’s research..
The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
T. Prowse, and N. Lovell “Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt”
American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt.
Renown Egyptologist Maria Gatto had this summarization to say about the origins of ancient Kemet ;
“To sum up, Nubia is Egypt’s African ancestor. What linked Ancient Egypt to the rest of the North African cultures is this strong tie with the Nubian pastoral nomadic lifestyle, the same pastoral background commonly shared by most of the ancient Saharan and modern sub-Saharan societies. Thus, not only did Nubia have a prominent role in the origin of Ancient Egypt, it was also a key area for the origin of the entire African pastoral tradition.”
–Gatto M. 2009. The Nubian Pastoral Culture as Link between Egypt and Africa A View from the Archaeological Record. British Archaelogical Reports: Egypt in its African Context: BAR S2204- Archaeopress. 21-29
So for decades it has been proven that the ancient iKami population were black Africans physically and culturally. When it comes to the skewed genetic study that you posted to try to claim a Near Eastern origin for the Ikami populace, you have already admitted the main fault in the study which is the sampling. Only three mummies were sequenced AND ALL THREE CAME FROM LATE DYNASTIC NORTHERN EGYPT FROM A KNOWN GRAVE OF ASIATIC FOREIGNERS…….. This study was SUPERCEDED by another study the next year, which proved through their own analysis that the ancient Egyptian STR profiles matched on that of Sub Saharan Africans. The rebuttal lead by S.O.Y Keita destroys that which you cited piece by piece. Here it is below.
Study implied that ancient Egyptians came from the Asia, and that “sub-Saharan” Africans are recent due to the Islamic slave trades:
QUOTES: “Schuenemann et al.1 seemingly suggest, based largely on the results of an ancient DNA study of later period remains from northern Egypt, that the ‘ancient Egyptians’ (AE) as an entity came from Asia (the Near East, NE), and that modern Egyptians “received additional sub-Saharan African (SSA) admixtures in recent times” after the latest period of the pharaonic era due to the “trans-Saharan slave trade and Islamic expansion..” There are alternative interpretations of the results but which were not presented as is traditionally done, with the exception of the admission that results from southern Egyptians may have been different. The alternative interpretations involve three major considerations: 1) sampling and methodology, 2) historiography and 3) definitions as they relate to populations, origins and evolution.”Tiny sample sizes: “The whole genome sample size is too small (n=3) to accurately permit a discussion of all Egyptian population history from north to south.”
Other DNA data show substantial African affinity: “Results that are likely reliable are from studies that analyzed short tandem repeats (STRs) from Amarna royal mummies5 (1,300 BC), and of Ramesses III (1,200 BC)6; Ramesses III had the Y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a, an old African lineage7. Our analysis of STRs from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies with popAffiliator18 based on the same published data5,6 indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities (see Table 1); most of the individuals had a greater probability of affiliation with “SSA” which is not the only way to be “African”- a point worth repeating.”
Arbitrary definition of some DNA haplogroups as ‘Asian’ problematic: “Conceptually what genetic markers are considered to be “African” or “Asian” .. For example, the E1b1b1 (M35/78) lineage found in one Abusir el-Meleq sample is found not only in northern Africa, but is also well represented in eastern Africa7 and perhaps was taken to Europe across the Mediterranean before the Holocene (Trombetta, personal communication). E lineages are found in high frequency (>70%) among living Egyptians in Adaima9. The authors define all mitochondrial M1 haplogroups as “Asian” which is problematic. M1 has been postulated to have emerged in Africa10, and there is no convincing evidence supporting an M1 ancestor in Asia: many M1 daughter haplogroups (M1a) are clearly African in origin and history10. The M1a1, M1a2a, M1a1i, M1a1e variants found in the Abusir el-Meleq samples1 predate Islam and are abundant in SSA groups10, particularly in East Africa.”
So called “sub-Saharan” patterns in place from the beginning in Egypt and are not merely the product of the ‘slave trade.’ “Furthermore, SSA groups indicated to have contributed to modern Egypt do not match the Muslim trade routes that have been well documented11 as SSA groups from the great lakes and southern African regions were largely absent in the internal trading routes that went north to Egypt. It is important to note that “SSA” influence may not be due to a slave trade, an overdone explanation; the green Sahara is to be considered as Egypt is actually in the eastern Sahara. SSA affinities of modern Egyptians from Abusir El-Meleq might be attributed to ancient early settlers as there is a notable frequency of the “Bushmen canine”- deemed a SSA trait in Predynastic samples dating to 4,000 BC9 from Adaima, Upper Egypt. Haplogroup L0f, usually associated with southern Africans, is present in living Egyptians in Adaima9 and could represent the product of an ancient “ghost population” from the Green Sahara that contributed widely. Distributions and admixtures in the African past may not match current “SSA” groups12.”
Definition of ‘African’ stereotypical, even as strangely, authors exclude many actual African samples near Egypt from the data
“Schuenemann et al.1 seem to implicitly suggest that only SSA equals Africa and that there are no interconnections between the various regions of Africa not rooted in the slave trade, a favorite trope. It has to be noted too that that in the Islamic armies that entered Egypt that there were a notable number of eastern Africans. It is not clear why there is an emphasis on ‘sub-Saharan’ when no Saharan or supra-Saharan population samples–empirical or modelled are considered; furthermore, there is no one way to be “sub-Saharan.” In this study northern tropical Africans, such as lower and upper Nubians and adjacent southern Egyptians and Saharans were not included as comparison groups, as noted by the authors themselves.”
FROM: -Gourdine JP, Keita SOY, Gourdine JL, Anselin A, 2018. Ancient Egyptian Genomes from northern Egypt
Clearly, either you haven’t fully read my article or you have missed some crucial nuances. For one thing, I’m not arguing that there weren’t people in ancient Egypt who would be considered “black” by modern standards. In fact, I spent a whole section near the beginning of this article specifically arguing that there were probably quite a few people in ancient Egypt who would be considered “black” if they were alive today.
Also, the genetic study I referenced didn’t just examine DNA from three individuals; it examined DNA from 151 individuals, but it only attempted to reconstruct the full genomes of three individuals. In any case, I specifically pointed out that there was a problem with the sample size of the study in my article. I also noted that all the mummies they analyzed came from one site in Lower Egypt, which is, of course, problematic.
Obviously, the conclusions of this study should be regarded with some degree of skepticism, but it is the most comprehensive study that has yet been conducted. I generally tend to be skeptical of claims made about the “race” of ancient peoples based on genetic studies, firstly because “race” is a cultural construct, not a biological reality, and secondly because people have a tendency to make sweeping claims based on very limited genetic evidence.
“For one thing, I’m not arguing that there weren’t people in ancient Egypt who would be considered “black” by modern standards.”
Notice how you keep trying to “black” to a segment of the population, rather than acknowledging what the oesteological evidence has indicated. Mary Lefkowitz who is a renown Afrocentric critic herself had to admit that the ancient iKami population was a range of various types of indigenous black African populations. The evidence suggest that the populations of ancient Kemet was divided into three main different types of black African populations. Those being the Niger-Congo speakers (over a third), Nilo Saharan, Cushitic Africans (about a third) and a few other variants.
You cannot be knowledgeable of ancient Kemet if you are not aware of the fact that Europeans were banned from ancient Kemet until the time of the Greek invasion (Kemet was already done after the Persian invasion much earlier). In fact ancient Greek Manethos writes that red haired whites were burned alive as a sacrifice to Osiris;
“Those whose hair is red, of a certain peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires. It is significant that in ancient Egypt, as Manetho tells us, human sacrifices were offered at the grave of Osiris, and the victims were red-haired men who were burned, their ashes being scattered far and wide by winnowing-fans. It is held by some authorities that this was done to fertilize the fields and produce a bounteous harvest, red-hair symbolizing the golden wealth of the corn. But these men were called Typhonians, and were representatives not of Osiris but of his evil rival Typhon, whose hair was red.” – Wikipedia
To say that a 90 year old man from thousands of years ago actually retained his “natural” hair color at age 90 is ridiculous. That is clearly the commonly used “HENNA” hair dye that many black Africans still dye their hair with to this day.
Also you claimed that the Schuenemann 2017 study is the most comprehensive study right after I provide the direct refutation of that studies conclusions. That doesn’t make any sense or did you miss that part of my reply? Keita and several peers in 2018 conducted a study of their own as cited above at the end of my post. The analysis that he did found that complete opposite of the Schuenemann study. He found that every mummy tested thus far has closest genetic affinities with “Sub Saharan Africans” (a misused colonial term). Please read the study. It completely refutes and obliterates what Schuenemann. For some reason this study didn’t get any media coverage (hmmm I wonder why).
Ancient Kemet did not simply “have some black people there”…..IT WAS A BLACK AFRICAN CIVILIZATION FROM START…THAT WAS OVERRAN BY ASIATIC AND EUROPEAN FOREIGNERS AT THE END AS THE IKAMI THEMSELVES WROTE ON THE TEMPLES…
“There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology… In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)”
The only piece of evidence that you all have is a skewed genetic study that has been debunked. Every single category from linguist, osteological (bone structure), cultural, archaeological etc etc proves affinities only with black Africans.
Also those “Fayum paintings” are NOT Egyptians THOSE ARE LATE PERIOD GRECO-ROMAN NOBELS IN EGYPT, SO THAT IS THAT MIXED PHENOTYPE IS WHAT DOMINATED NOT IN KEMET…..BUT IN GREECE AND ROME….THINK ABOUT THAT. The OLD line of miscegenation was in Southern Europe NOT Northern Africa at that time.
Manetho was Egyptian. Do your research.
That was a typo, but if that’s the only point that you think that you can get on me then take it.
First of all, Manethon was an Egyptian priest who lived in around the early third century BC. He did write in the Greek language, since Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean at the time, but he was not an ethnic Greek himself. Furthermore, he did not say anything at all about “white people” being “banned from Egypt,” nor did he say that the Egyptians burned all people with red hair alive.
We don’t have the original passage from Manethon himself pertaining to human sacrifice, but the Greek writer Porphyrios of Tyre (lived c. 234 – c. 305 AD) claims that Manethon wrote in his history Egyptika, which has now been mostly lost, that, in ancient times, the Egyptians had performed human sacrifices. According to Porphyrios, Manethon stated that this practice had been abolished by the pharaoh Amasis.
None of our sources reference Manethon as having said anything about the sacrifices specifically having had red hair; the part about human sacrifices specifically having had red hair actually comes from the Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 –c. 30 BC) in his book Universal History. Diodoros doesn’t say that the Egyptians sacrificed everyone with red hair, but rather that some people who had red hair were sacrificed at the sepulcher of Osiris—presumably because the color red was associated with Osiris’s brother, the god Set. There is some doubt as to whether or not this story recorded by Diodoros is really true.
Also, once again, you have failed to read my article carefully, since I specifically noted in my article that Rameses II’s hair was dyed with henna, but that forensic analysts who examined his hair concluded that it had been naturally red when he had been younger. I am not an expert in forensic hair analysis, so I cannot tell you off the top of my head how they reached this conclusion. I can look into this matter further if you would like.
The claim that the Fayum mummy portraits represent only Greek settlers is based solely on the fact that there were Greeks in Egypt at the time when the portraits were produced and the fact that the portraits clearly draw inspiration from the Greek artistic tradition. The problem is that there was a great deal of mixing of cultures during the Hellenistic Era and many people of native Egyptian descent adopted aspects of Greek culture.
Furthermore, we can detect Egyptian influences both in the portraits themselves and in the manner in which the people were buried. The scholarly consensus is that the portraits are reflective of the overall population of Lower Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods and that they represent not only individuals of Greek descent, but also individuals of Egyptian descent and individuals of mixed Greek and Egyptian descent.
Manethon was born in “Egypt” (what the Greeks renamed Kemet), but he was NOT iKami by lineage. That is clear from his appearance, and by the time in period.
“Manethon stated that this practice had been abolished by the pharaoh Amasis.”
Yes Amasis gained the thrown through the aid of Greek mercenaries during a civil war. THIS WAS DURING THE LATE PERIOD. After the collapse of extensive indigenous Nile Valley dominion with the 25th Dynasty, the “vile Asiatics” began to rein over Kemet and set new standards over the land that they had warred with for over a thousand years.
This is the same period in which the original Ikami population migrated south into Nubia (as noted by Herodotus) and then the contemporary populations throughout “Sub Saharan Africa” today. Many scholars have noted the migration in their belief that ancient Kemet diffused into “Sub Saharan Africa”
“I have not found much evidence that Cuvier had a significant impact on the discussion until much later, although already in 1821 Thomas Edward Bowdich, using the resources of Cuvier’s personal library and his own direct knowledge of the Ashantis, wrote An Essay on the Superstitions, Customs, and Arts, Common to the Ancient Egyptians, Abyssinians, and Ashantees, in which he argued that Egyptian civilization was diffused via Ethiopia **to the West Coast of Africa.**
Bowdich thereby reversed the widespread belief of the time that Egypt had received its civilization from Ethiopia. However, Bowdich’s argument seems to have had little impact, although a similar thesis was established independently some twenty years later.”
– Black Skin, White Skulls: The Nineteenth Century Debate Over the Racial Identity of the Ancient Egyptians; Robert Bernasconi.
“Diodoros doesn’t say that the Egyptians sacrificed everyone with red hair, but rather that some people who had red hair were sacrificed at the sepulcher of Osiris—presumably because the color red was associated with Osiris’s brother, the god Set.”
The only people on Earth who had red hair (and blue eyes) were “pure Caucasians” fresh and untainted from the Caucus. This phenotype was described by Roman general Tacitus (who looked like the people in the Fayum portraits that you posted) when they ran into the ancestors of contemporary white Western Europeans who were the last branch of Caucasians to leave the Caucus. The statement he made is shown below.
“Tac. Ger. 4
– “For my own part, I agree with those who think that the tribes of Germany are free from all taint of inter-marriages with foreign nations, and that they appear as a distinct, unmixed race, like none but themselves. Hence, too, the same physical peculiarities throughout so vast a population. All have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge frames, fit only for a sudden exertion. They are less able to bear laborious work. Heat and thirst they cannot in the least endure; to cold and hunger their climate and their soil inure them.”
The earlier branches of Caucasians who left the caves between 1,700 – 1,200 BC had this uniform phenotype that was scene as a sign of wickness by the iKami. Their reputation further sullied when they went on a rampage when they left the Caucus throughout Asia and the Aegean (which were all originally comprised of peoples who looked like Dravidians of India today and African looking people) that essentially ended the Bronze Age civilizations. They call this event in history the Indo -European migration. The iKami fought off these people and mixed/Semitic (semi white and semi black) people until essentially it’s collapse a thousand years later with the Persians. When the Greeks came in during the 4th century BC they killed all of the native black priest who refused to teach them the native ways, and this is why many like the famous priest class Dogon people (who worship the same dwarf star naked to the invisible eye known as Sirius B that the iKami worshiped) fled into inner Africa (Mali).
“had been naturally red when he had been younger”
That dated analysis was also found Ramses to have white skin, which is contrary to every depiction of the man. It more than likely that post mortem alterations due to the embalming process altered his hair color and texture.
“The current colour of the hair is brown with reddish
highlights, a common observation on many mummies, and
probably originated through post-mortem alteration
(Aufderheide, 2003; Wilson et al., 2001). Sun-exposure,
bacterial reaction, and embalming methods are some of the
factors that may affect the original hair colour. As a result, hair
that was originally black or brown exhibits reddish, orange or
even blond colour due to post mortem alterations. All human
hair, however, does not turn red over archaeological
time-scales (Wilson, 2001). Based on the histological analysis
of the unstained hair samples, the limited fungal influence, and
the macroscopic view, it can be assumed that the original hair
colour was brown. Similar cases of hair preservation have been
reported in studies of both mummified and non-mummified
human remains (Aufderheide, 2003; Brothwell and Dobney,
1986; Lubec et al., 1987; White, 1993; Wilson et al., 2002,
2007b).”
–C. Papageorgopoulou et al. 2008. Indications of embalming
in Roman Greece by physical, chemical and histological
analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science
His facial structure especially his hook nose is consistent with Tutsi phenotype of Central African today.
“The claim that the Fayum mummy portraits represent only Greek settlers is based solely on the fact that there were Greeks in Egypt at the time……Furthermore, we can detect Egyptian influences both in the portraits themselves and in the manner in which the people were buried. The scholarly consensus is that the portraits are reflective of the overall population of Lower Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods”
There are so many wrong with this, and your argument behind using them. You don’t post a sequence of native iKami pharaohs to prove your point of the racial affinities of the ancient populations, but you chose plaster picture after picture of LATE DYNASTIC NORTHERN EGYPTIANS. What do we know from consistent osteological analysis about using these samples;
Nutter (1958) noted affinities between the Badarian and Naqada samples, a feature that Strouhal (1971) attributed to their skulls possessing “NEGROID” traits. Keita (1992), using craniometrics, discovered that the BADARIAN SERIES IS DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT FROM THE LATER EGYPTIAN SERIES, a conclusion that is mostly confirmed here. In the current analysis, the Badari sample more closely clusters with the Naqada sample and the Kerma sample. However, it also groups with the later pooled sample from Dynasties XVIII–XXV. — Godde K. (2009) An Examination of Nubian and Egyptian biological distances: Support for biological diffusion or in situ development? Homo. 2009;60(5):389-404.”
and what do we know about the Badarians as representation of for the early iKami population?
“In addition, the Badarians have been described as near the centroid of cranial and dental variation among Predynastic and Dynastic populations studied (Irish, 2006; Zakrzewski, 2007). This suggests that, at least through the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the Nile valley were a continuous population of local origin, and no major migration or replacement events occurred during this time. — AP Starling, JT Stock. (2007). Dental Indicators of Health and Stress in Early Egyptian and Nubian Agriculturalists: A Difficult Transition and Gradual Recovery. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 134:520–528
To sum up the information the “Negroid” Badarians are a good representation for the indigenous iKami population until the Late Period. Therefore late period ANYTHING has to be questioned with regards to it’s indigenousness. The Late Period is the period of European and Asiatic foreigners. That being said it should be A GIVEN that these Fayum Portraits DO NOT represent REAL IKAMI population. Many Many Many sources acknowledge this fact.
these portraits were popular among nineteenth and early twentieth century collectors and this had a tendency to at first isolate them from their funerary contexts. They were studied by classicists and art historians who, basing their conclusions on details in the paintings along, such as hairstyles, jewelry and costume, identified the portraits as being those of Greek or Roman settlers who had adopted Egyptian burial customs.
http://www.egyptologyonline.com/mummy_portraits.htm
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/masks.htm
quote:
The Fayum, a flourishing metropolitan community in ancient Egypt, consisted of Greeks, Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans, and others. A significant Greek population had settled in Egypt following its conquest by Alexander, eventually adopting the customs of the Egyptians. This included mummifying their dead. A portrait of the deceased, painted either in the prime of life or after death, was placed over the person’s mummy as a memorial.
http://www.encaustic.ca/html/history.html
quote:
The ekphora is a Greek rite, and in many respects the portraits reflect an interest in Greek culture. In the Fayum it is likely that the portraits represent members of a group of mercenaries who had fought for Alexander and the early Ptolemies and were granted land after the Fayum had been drained for agricultural use in the early years of ptolemic rule.
Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt By Susan Walker, PP24..
quote:
The mummy, or Fayum, portraits are Egyptian only in that they are associated with essentially Egyptian burial customs. Painted in an encaustic technique, they represent mostly Greek inhabitants of Egypt.
– Britannica (2007)
That being said….The entire post just seem disingenuous. If we were having this discussion on a live forum I annihilate your argument with pictures of all sorts. Don’t set unsuspecting Eurocentrics up to be slaughtered intellectually by people who have my knowledge level or higher. The information is widespread, and this lie that Kemet was not black is even being contested widely now by native born “Sub Saharan Africans” who are EASILY pointing out how their daily cultural practices MIRROR what we see drawn on the walls of Kemet. These inner Africans (and several other places on the Earth) DIFFUSED from Kemet once these Asiatics and Europeans invaded and destroyed the civilization. THAT IS THE HIDDEN RACIAL CONTEXT BEHIND ANCIENT KEMET. The Western World obsesses over the lies, because the completely opposite racial paradigm of what is eagerly promoted in the West (white supremacy) today was the case in ancient times (and even as recently as Moorish times).
I don’t have enough time to give a thorough rebuttal to everything you say here, but it is mostly nonsense.
First of all, no one knows what Manethon really looked like. There are no surviving portraits or descriptions of him. The portrait head shown in the Wikipedia article about him is a portrait of an anonymous priest of Serapis. We have no reason to think that the priest shown in this portrait head is Manethon.
Even if we did know what Manethon looked like, there would be no reliable way to tell his nationality just by looking at his appearance because, as I have repeatedly stated, nationality is a cultural construct, not a biological reality and people of all different nationalities have always varied in appearance. The idea that people can be divided into nationalities based solely on their physical appearance is a quaint notion rooted in nineteenth-century racist pseudoscience.
Tacitus did not say that the only people on Earth who had red hair in antiquity were “‘pure Caucasians’ fresh and untainted from the Caucus”; the concept of “pure Caucasians” comes from nineteenth-century racist pseudoscience and would have been completely unfamiliar to Tacitus. In reality, as the quote you yourself have provided here proves, Tacitus only said that all Germans had blond hair and blue eyes. Here, though, Tacitus is obviously engaging in blatant stereotyping; he’s saying the exact same thing about the Germans that the Greeks had previously said about the Thrakians. He simply noticed that lots of Germans had blond hair and blue eyes and concluded that this was the “standard” appearance for a German.
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were not a homogenous “racial” group, but rather a linguistic group. We have no evidence that they looked particularly different physically from the previous inhabitants of the parts of Europe that they moved into. The peoples of Europe had already started to generally look to look fairly close to what we consider “white” long before the Indo-European migrations.
In fact, there are still many peoples in Europe today who do not speak Indo-European languages who look “white.” Most notably, the Basque language, the Finnish language, and the Estonian language are all non-Indo-European, but Basque people, Finnish people, and Estonian people generally tend to look like what we consider “white.” (Of course, neither Europe nor Africa has never been what we would consider “racially homogenous” at any point in history; the idea that there was ever a time when any continent was full of people who all looked a certain way is a fantasy.)
Your assertions that the original Egyptians all fled south into sub-Saharan Africa, that the Greeks slaughtered the Egyptian priests who remained, and so on are also fantasies rooted in no good evidence. You have simply asserted these things here without supporting them.
“When the Greeks came in during the 4th century BC they killed all of the native black priest who refused to teach them the native ways, and this is why many like the famous priest class Dogon people (who worship the same dwarf star naked to the invisible eye known as Sirius B that the iKami worshiped) fled into inner Africa (Mali).When the Greeks came in during the 4th century BC they killed all of the native black priest who refused to teach them the native ways, and this is why many like the famous priest class Dogon people (who worship the same dwarf star naked to the invisible eye known as Sirius B that the iKami worshiped) fled into inner Africa (Mali).”
Wow. That is some wacko fringe archaeology. Did you get that from “Chariots of the Gods” or something? As for the Greeks “killing the native black priests”— what is your source for that? In any case, you’re assuming that the priests *were* black, which is the very topic under debate. Ever heard the phrase “circular logic”?
“Wow. That is some wacko fringe archaeology. Did you get that from “Chariots of the Gods” or something? As for the Greeks “killing the native black priests”— what is your source for that? In any case, you’re assuming that the priests *were* black, which is the very topic under debate. Ever heard the phrase “circular logic”?”
So you would consider the “father of history” Herodotus to be “wacko fringe archaeology”.
[30] If you continue upriver past this city for the same amount of time again as you spent travelling from Elephantine to the Ethiopian capital, you will reach the Deserters, or Asmakh as they are called—a word which, translated into Greek, means ‘those who stand to the left of the king’. They were originally 240,000 Egyptian soldiers who deserted to Ethiopia, for the following reason. In the time of King Psammetichus, there were garrisons established in various places: one in Elephantine to afford protection against the Ethiopians, another in Pelusian Daphnae against the Arabians and Syrians, and another in Marea against Libya. (Even in my day there were Persian guard-posts in the same places as there had been in the time of King Psammetichus: the ‘Persians manned garrisons in both Elephantine and Daphnae.) Anyway, the Egyptian troops had been on garrison duty for three years, and no one had come to relieve them. They discussed the matter among themselves and came to the unanimous decision that they should mutiny against Psammetichus and go over to Ethiopia.” – BOOK TWO
EGYPT: GEOGRAPHY, CUSTOMS, HISTORY, TALES
So a quarter million iKami soldiers (and their families logically) migrated into Nubia following the 25th dynasty, and the Asiatic incursion into “The Black Land” according to Herodotus. From Nubia (Meroe) the various African clans migrated for centuries until they reached their contemporary locations throughout Sub Saharan Africa. The Akan clan (like just about every group in “Sub Saharan Africa”) Ghana today also validate this event, and their presence in ancient Kemet and Nubia until their destruction;
“Oral traditions of the ruling Abrade (Aduana) Clan state that Akans originated from ancient Ghana. The Akan people migrated from the north through Egypt and settled in Nubia (Sudan). Around 500 AD (5th century), due to the pressure exerted on Nubia by the Axumite kingdom of Ethiopia, Nubia was scattered and the Akan people moved west and established small trading kingdoms. These kingdoms grew and around 750 AD the Ghana Empire was formed. The Empire lasted from 750 AD to 1200 AD and collapsed as a result of the introduction of Islam in Western Sudan, due to the zeal of the Muslims to impose their religion, their ancestors eventually left for Kong (i.e. present-day Ivory Coast). From Kong, they moved to Wam and then to Dormaa (both located in present-day Brong-Ahafo region). The movement from Kong was necessitated by the desire of the people to find suitable savannah conditions since they were not used to forest life. Around the 14th century, they moved from Dormaa South Eastwards to Twifo-Heman North West Cape Coast. This move was commercially motivated.”
Here are more sources supporting what has been written about the Akan’s Hapi Valley Origins.
http://www.academia.edu/3876359/AKAN_-_The_People_of_Ancient_Khanit_Akan_Land_-_Ancient_Nubia_Sudan_
unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000042627
This has been verified by linguistics (THEIR VERY NAME HAS TRANSLATIVE MEANING IN MEDU NETER (ANCIENT KEMETIC WRITING);
Akan
Akan – the name of a god
Akaniu – a class of gods like Osiris
Indisputable Cultural Overlappings;
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/u440/Treday90/27654511_813543055499468_3868016806185365500_n_zpsuhgmnr7s.jpg
GENETICS VERIFIES THEIR LINEAGE WAS PRESENT IN KEMET DURING DYNASTIC TIMES;
The Distribution of E-M2 and it clades in Central and Southern Africa has usually been explained by the ‘‘Bantu migrations” (which occurred 3000-2500 B.C), in which agriculture and iron technologies spread from the Bantu’s homeland located in the Benue complex i.e. Nigeria/Cameroon’’ But their presence in the Nile Valley and in other Non-Bantu speakers Can Not be explained in this way. E-M2 distribution is probably explained by their presence in the populations of the “Early Holocene Sahara”, Who went on to people the Nile Valley in The mid-Holocene era (12,000 B.P.) according to Hassan (1988). Keita and Boyce; Boyce, A. J. (Anthony J.) (2005). “Genetics, Egypt, and History: Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation”.
So we have ancient sources verifying a migration from Kemet into inner Africa, and oral traditions of inner Africans across the continent verify this same migrational pattern respective to their own people’s path. We have their very name “Akan” HAVING MEANING IN THE ANCIENT KEMETIC LANGUAGE, and genetic evidence verifying the presence of the M2 lineage in Dynastic Kemet. The evidence for this is overwhelming.
So much Afro-centrist nonsense being spouted by “Tre”. Everyone should dismiss everything these black nationalist types have to say. These people have spend their entire lives in denial, making up lie after unsubstantiated lie about the supposed accomplishments of sub Saharan Africans…even though there is zero evidence to support any of it as there is for literally every other corner of the globes history. Among some of the more humorous claims….blacks were the first people to sail to America…even though there’s zero evidence of them ever producing one single sea worthy ship. Blacks were the Sumerians, blacks were the ancient Asians and so much more crap it will make you laugh out loud. Sub Saharan Africans are clearly depicted as slaves in ancient Egyptians art. Mummies still have intact hair…the hair of European or Middle Eastern man. People traveled mostly by sea back then so it makes perfect sense that ancient Egypt and Northern Africa would be populated by nearby Mediterranean and Near East people… as the DNA testing in on 151 mummies shows! Sub Saharan’s would have had to cross a desert the size of the United States on the other hand which is highly unlikely. There’s also a group of “white people” called the Berbers who have been on Northern Africa for 20,000 years so this guys claim that “Europeans were banned from Kemet (the black land….a name it gets from it’s fertile Nile soil…not “black people”, which is a modern day concept.)
Even the word Africa is Roman, and signified a Roman province that was roughly in the area of Tunisia/Libya. So once again, everything they have and consider sacred, including the name Africa, can be attributed to Europeans.
As soon as someone starts posting encyclopedic responses like this joker you know they are overcompensating because they don’t know jack. Where is some real evidence? He claims if he was able to link articles and videos he could prove it without a doubt…articles and videos made by more black nationalist/afro-centric fanatics and European/white hating radical leftists.
Whoa! Hold on there, Raoul; you’re going way too far in the opposite direction. The statement “Black people invented everything” and the statement “Black people have no accomplishments” are equally false.
A few of the things you say here are correct. For instance, it’s true that most ancient Sumerians were not what most people today would consider black. It is also true that the Americas were not discovered by people of recent African ancestry. (The true discoverers of America were the Paleo-Americans who came to the Americas sometime around 17,000 years ago.) A great deal of what you say here, though, is demonstrably incorrect.
Indeed, it feels almost as though you haven’t even bothered to read my article. For instance, your assertion that black people only existed in ancient Egypt as slaves is clearly refuted by the existence of elite black Egyptians like Maiherpri, who was an elite nobleman and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. I talk about him near the very beginning of my article, which suggests to me that you never bothered to read past my first few paragraphs.
It is certainly not true that “everything” black people “have and consider sacred, including the name Africa, can be attributed to Europeans.” There were great civilizations in sub-Saharan Africa in ancient times. These civilizations had cities, written language, iron tools and weapons, gold and silver coins. They built colossal monuments, established large empires, and produced art and works of literature. I discuss some of them in this article from June 2020, which I highly recommend you to read. Moreover, black people have continued to invent things in modernity. They are clearly not at all inferior to white people.
I’m sure you will immediately accuse me of hating white people for saying these things, but the truth is that I don’t hate white people. I myself am white. Just because someone says that black people have accomplished things doesn’t mean they hate all white people. There are some genuine black supremacists out there, but they are extremely rare.
Do you have Google? If so please Google Pentawer mummy then come back and tell me what his hair texture is, We already know from studies carried out by Zahi Hawaas and his team that Both Pentawer and his father Ramses III were E1b1a (West, East African Haplogroup).
Racist much Raoul? You sound like the descendent of a violent, conquering, white nationalist culture that historically destroys and enslaved brilliant human beings they felt threatened their “white power”. So sad, weak and angry. Go learn something and stop being racist.
What’s more reliable artists reconstructions, Commentators with ulterior motives or the actual Y-DNA and mtDNA pure non admixed Egyptians BTW that which answers the question of race conclusively and indisputably is never provided. Pure Egyptian non-admixed=without foreign Y-DNA contamination ends in the 12th Dynasty New Kingdom 4,000 years ago so a study in in The Late Roman and Ptolemaic periods from a Graveyard of such DNA samples can hardly be said to represent Ancient Egypt racially….The 2017 study said as much as it was only based on 3 male mummies from one period site, the study also split Haplogroup E and grouped the skin color Trait of the Sub-Saharans E3a with the Haplogroup B, (Genomic testing allows you to include or exclude and thereby group certain traits with certain populations)… Isolating E3b as the Natufians this is why you get Neolithic Anatolia nearly 100% Deep blue. This same Deep Blue shows up in the Natufian population but you are not told that this dark blue represents E3a, however if you look at the key you plainly see the deep blue represents Bantu/West African/Sub-saharan populations so it is not possible/truthful that no Sub-Saharan ancestry was found in Ancient Egypt instead what actually happened was of the three mummies one of which was E3B none was E3a. The graph of ancient Egypt clearly shows Both E3a and E3b along with Iranian Y-DNA were present in Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was majority Y-DNA Haplogroup “E” what this study attempted to do was Identify E3b as Eurasian due to it’s skin color and mitochondrial Ancestry and remove it from it’s Sub-saharan descendancy from it’s Sub-saharan (Negro) Haplogroup “E” via E1b1/E-P2 it’s ancestral Father and E1b1a it’s fraternal twin sibling. Most of the data supplied concerning race in the article is just as misleading as the 2017 study but next generation studies have confirmed that the non admixed Y-DNA of all Egyptians 4,000 years ago and prior belong to two exclusively African Originating Y-DNA Haplogroups which are Y-DNA haplogroups “B”=Nubians and “E”=Negros/Proto Israelites and Edomites=Natufian Population. The Manchester 2017 12th Dynasty New Kingdom study “The Tomb of Two Brothers” confirms that ancient Egypt was completely African Paternally and Maternally. Khnum Nahkt=E and Nekht Anhk=B.
“The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions” Those people look more brown than black. Which is exactly what is portrayed in Egyptian art. A portion of the population are very dark, and some white, but mosly brown. What’s so hard to grasp?
“There was substantial Arab and Black inflow into Egypt during the Middle Ages. Most immigration into Egypt during ancient times was from the Levant; some (especially after c. 1300) was from Libya.”
You have it a little backwards. There was substantial “Eurasian” inflow during the Late Dynastic Periods onwards. The original population was black African most comparable to the “Nubians” adjacent to the south. The Late Dynastic Egyptians are said to not be a good representative for the TRUE Egyptian population (Schuenemann 2017 used LATE DYNASTIC NORTHERN EGYPTIANS). This fact has been known for decades prior in the scientific community due to numerous peer reviewed studies finding this to be true. For Schuenemann 2017 to use those samples and try to pass them off as some eureka moment in this endless “debate” (Euroceentric refusing to acknowledge their own work) is highly deceptive. The peer reviewed study on the PHENOTYPE (what they looked like) of the iKami puts context to the situation.
“The question of the genetic origins of ancient Egyptians, particularly those during the Dynastic period, is relevant to the current study. Modern interpretations of Egyptian state formation propose an indigenous origin of the Dynastic civilization (Hassan, 1988). Early Egyptologists considered Upper and Lower Egyptians to be genetically distinct populations, and viewed the Dynastic period as characterized by a conquest of Upper Egypt by the Lower Egyptians. More recent interpretations contend that Egyptians from the south actually expanded into the northern regions during the Dynastic state unification (Hassan, 1988; Savage, 2001), and that the Predynastic populations of Upper and Lower Egypt are morphologically distinct from one another, but not sufficiently distinct to consider either non-indigenous (Zakrzewski, 2007). The Predynastic populations studied here, from Naqada and Badari, are both Upper Egyptian samples, while the Dynastic Egyptian sample (Tarkhan) is from Lower Egypt. The Dynastic Nubian sample is from Upper Nubia (Kerma). Previous analyses of cranial variation found the Badari and Early Predynastic Egyptians to be more similar to other African groups than to Mediterranean or European populations (Keita, 1990; Zakrzewski, 2002). In addition, the Badarians have been described as near the centroid of cranial and dental variation among Predynastic and Dynastic populations studied (Irish, 2006; Zakrzewski, 2007). This suggests that, at least through the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the Nile valley were a continuous population of local origin, and no major migration or replacement events occurred during this time.
Studies of cranial morphology also support the use of a Nubian (Kerma) population for a comparison of the Dynastic period, as this group is likely to be more closely genetically related to the early Nile valley inhabitants than would be the Late Dynastic Egyptians, who likely experienced significant mixing with other Mediterranean populations (Zakrzewski, 2002). A craniometric study found the Naqada and Kerma populations to be morphologically similar (Keita, 1990). Given these and other prior studies suggesting continuity (Berry et al., 1967; Berry and Berry, 1972), and the lack of archaeological evidence of major migration or population replacement during the Neolithic transition in the Nile valley, we may cautiously interpret the dental health changes over time as primarily due to ecological, subsistence, and demographic changes experienced throughout the Nile valley region.”
— AP Starling, JT Stock. (2007). Dental Indicators of Health and Stress in Early Egyptian and Nubian Agriculturalists: A Difficult Transition and Gradual Recovery. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 134:520–528
“For Schuenemann 2017 to use those samples and try to pass them off as some eureka moment in this endless “debate” (Euroceentric refusing to acknowledge their own work) is highly deceptive.”
The Schuenemann study concluded that the DNA from the mummies resembled the DNA of “ancient and modern Near Eastern populations” (according to an article in Science magazine). How is that “Eurocentric”? The phrase “Near Eastern” generally applies to the nations of the Levant and Mesopotamian area; it has nothing to do with Europe.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/scientists-thought-ancient-egyptian-mummies-didn-t-have-any-dna-left-they-were-wrong#
“The Schuenemann study concluded that the DNA from the mummies resembled the DNA of “ancient and modern Near Eastern populations” (according to an article in Science magazine). ”
In 2018 that study was thoroughly debunked, and superseded by this study;
FROM: -Gourdine JP, Keita SOY, Gourdine JL, Anselin A, 2018. Ancient Egyptian Genomes from northern Egypt
https://osf.io/ecwf3/
Study implied that ancient Egyptians came from the Asia, and that “sub-Saharan” Africans are recent due to the Islamic slave trades:
QUOTES: “Schuenemann et al.1 seemingly suggest, based largely on the results of an ancient DNA study of later period remains from northern Egypt, that the ‘ancient Egyptians’ (AE) as an entity came from Asia (the Near East, NE), and that modern Egyptians “received additional sub-Saharan African (SSA) admixtures in recent times” after the latest period of the pharaonic era due to the “trans-Saharan slave trade and Islamic expansion..” There are alternative interpretations of the results but which were not presented as is traditionally done, with the exception of the admission that results from southern Egyptians may have been different. The alternative interpretations involve three major considerations: 1) sampling and methodology, 2) historiography and 3) definitions as they relate to populations, origins and evolution.”Tiny sample sizes: “The whole genome sample size is too small (n=3) to accurately permit a discussion of all Egyptian population history from north to south.”
Other DNA data show substantial African affinity: “Results that are likely reliable are from studies that analyzed short tandem repeats (STRs) from Amarna royal mummies5 (1,300 BC), and of Ramesses III (1,200 BC)6; Ramesses III had the Y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a, an old African lineage7. Our analysis of STRs from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies with popAffiliator18 based on the same published data5,6 indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities (see Table 1); most of the individuals had a greater probability of affiliation with “SSA” which is not the only way to be “African”- a point worth repeating.”
Arbitrary definition of some DNA haplogroups as ‘Asian’ problematic: “Conceptually what genetic markers are considered to be “African” or “Asian” .. For example, the E1b1b1 (M35/78) lineage found in one Abusir el-Meleq sample is found not only in northern Africa, but is also well represented in eastern Africa7 and perhaps was taken to Europe across the Mediterranean before the Holocene (Trombetta, personal communication). E lineages are found in high frequency (>70%) among living Egyptians in Adaima9. The authors define all mitochondrial M1 haplogroups as “Asian” which is problematic. M1 has been postulated to have emerged in Africa10, and there is no convincing evidence supporting an M1 ancestor in Asia: many M1 daughter haplogroups (M1a) are clearly African in origin and history10. The M1a1, M1a2a, M1a1i, M1a1e variants found in the Abusir el-Meleq samples1 predate Islam and are abundant in SSA groups10, particularly in East Africa.”
So called “sub-Saharan” patterns in place from the beginning in Egypt and are not merely the product of the ‘slave trade.’ “Furthermore, SSA groups indicated to have contributed to modern Egypt do not match the Muslim trade routes that have been well documented11 as SSA groups from the great lakes and southern African regions were largely absent in the internal trading routes that went north to Egypt. It is important to note that “SSA” influence may not be due to a slave trade, an overdone explanation; the green Sahara is to be considered as Egypt is actually in the eastern Sahara. SSA affinities of modern Egyptians from Abusir El-Meleq might be attributed to ancient early settlers as there is a notable frequency of the “Bushmen canine”- deemed a SSA trait in Predynastic samples dating to 4,000 BC9 from Adaima, Upper Egypt. Haplogroup L0f, usually associated with southern Africans, is present in living Egyptians in Adaima9 and could represent the product of an ancient “ghost population” from the Green Sahara that contributed widely. Distributions and admixtures in the African past may not match current “SSA” groups12.”
Definition of ‘African’ stereotypical, even as strangely, authors exclude many actual African samples near Egypt from the data
“Schuenemann et al.1 seem to implicitly suggest that only SSA equals Africa and that there are no interconnections between the various regions of Africa not rooted in the slave trade, a favorite trope. It has to be noted too that that in the Islamic armies that entered Egypt that there were a notable number of eastern Africans. It is not clear why there is an emphasis on ‘sub-Saharan’ when no Saharan or supra-Saharan population samples–empirical or modelled are considered; furthermore, there is no one way to be “sub-Saharan.” In this study northern tropical Africans, such as lower and upper Nubians and adjacent southern Egyptians and Saharans were not included as comparison groups, as noted by the authors themselves.”
As you can read the more thorough analysis conducted in this counter study a year later found the ancient mummies to of course be Sub Saharan Africans, and have absolutely nothing to do with the contemporary populations of the Near East.
“How is that “Eurocentric”? The phrase “Near Eastern” generally applies to the nations of the Levant and Mesopotamian area; it has nothing to do with Europe.”
Here is context to the subject that you clearly are not aware of….THE DEBATE WAS SETTLED DECADES AGO WHEN THE AFROCENTRICS CORNERED THE EUROCENTRICS WITH THESE FACTS AND MADE THEM CONCEDE THAT THE KEMITES WERE BLACK AFRICANS;
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
“Two opposing theories for the origin of Dynastic Egyptians dominated scholarly debate over the last century: whether the ancient Egyptians were black Africans (historically referred to as Negroid) originating biologically and culturally in Saharo-Tropical Africa, or whether they originated as a Dynastic Race in the Mediterranean or western Asian regions (people historically categorized as White, or Caucasoid). Contemporary physical anthropologists recognize, however that race is not a useful biological concept when applied to humans. Although many people believe they can distinguish “races” on the basis of skin color, more of the variation in human genetic makeup can be attributed to differences between these so-called races than between them. Furthermore, the observable and unobservable (to the eye) physical variation is so great and complex that there are no criteria that can satisfactorily segregate all individuals into one race or another..[…]Unlike the classic typological approach, which interprets variation in physical form as resulting only from admixture of races, contemporary approaches to understanding variation takes into account genetic and physiological adaptations to local and regional environmental factors, such as the intensity of ultraviolet radiation, ambient temperature and humidity. Conceptually, biological affinity express a continuum of relationship that reflects genetic mixing (gene flow) from different local and regional areas in antiquity in addition to evolutionary factors, such as natural selection and genetic drift..[….]There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas..[…] Any interpretation of the biological affinities of the ancient Egyptians must be placed in the context of hypothesis informed by the archaeological, linguistic, geographic or other data. In this context the physical anthropological evidence indicates that the early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection influenced by culture and geography”. (Nancy C. Lovell, ” Egyptians, physical anthropology of,” in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
From Gourdine et. al: “The whole genome sample size [of Schuenemann study] is too small (n=3) to accurately permit a discussion of all Egyptian population history from north to south.”
If the sample size too small to make generalizations, then it’s too small to make generalizations. Period. It doesn’t follow that we can automatically conclude that all Ancient Egyptians were sub-Saharan black. (I know you object to the term “sub-Saharan” and I’m happy to use whatever the accepted nomenclature is.) Your source refutes your argument.
From the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT EGYPT: “Contemporary physical anthropologists recognize, however, that race is not a useful biological concept when applied to humans. Although many people believe that they can distinguish “races” on the basis of skin color, more of the variation in human genetic makeup can be attributed to differences within these so-called races than between them.”
If that’s true, then what is the point of this debate? Why argue about the race of the ancient Egyptians if the concept or race means nothing anyway?
“Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas.”
Sure, that makes sense, but what about Lower Egypt? The article you site states that “The distribution of population characteristics seems to follow a clinal pattern from south to north, which may be explained by natural selection as well as gene flow between neighboring populations.” That sentence implies that the population of Ancient Egypt contained regional variations between the North and the South. Therefore, you can’t logically conclude that all Ancient Egyptians share the same ethnic makeup as the people of “the Sahara and more southerly areas.”
You seem to be operating on the assumption that all indigenous Africa peoples are “black.” The Berbers don’t fit that description, and as I recall, Keita himself considers them to be *indigenous* Africans. Language being correlated with ethnicity, I should also note that linguists generally classify the Ancient Egyptian language as part of the *Afro-Asiatic language* group—a group that includes Berber / Amazigh and the Semitic language family (Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian, Phoenician, etc.) so it would hardly be surprising for the Ancient Egyptians to show genetic affinities with the people of the Near East. ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA also states
“[S]peakers of Proto-Afro-Asiatic dialects migrated back into Africa via the Sinai Peninsula and the Nile River valley before they eventually reached the ancient and present locations of the five constituent language families in Africa—i.e., Egyptian (Nile valley), Amazigh (Berber; North Africa and central Sahara), Chadic (Central Africa, Lake Chad basin), Cushitic (Horn of Africa), and Omotic (southwestern Ethiopia).”
“So you would consider the ‘father of history’ Herodotus to be ‘wacko fringe archaeology’.”
The passage you quoted doesn’t support your argument. Regardless, Herodotus told all kinds of tall tales (e.g. about giant ants, a horse giving birth to a rabbit, omens, prodigies, divine intervention and so forth) and that’s why modern historians don’t take everything he says at face value.
“Wow. That is some wacko fringe archaeology. Did you get that from “Chariots of the Gods” or something? As for the Greeks “killing the native black priests”— what is your source for that? In any case, you’re assuming that the priests *were* black, which is the very topic under debate. Ever heard the phrase “circular logic”?”
The diffusion of populations from Kemet into Sub Saharan Africa is undeniable when you are not ignorant of Sub Saharan African cultures;
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p960x960/94317336_3083937701656819_7375010810659078144_o.jpg?_nc_cat=106&_nc_sid=9e2e56&_nc_ohc=yFYF_H5JM_8AX_N0ZT3&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&_nc_tp=6&oh=9e961fe80515f9f8d7f37546ecb9bb48&oe=5ECA2DCF
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When you look at these pictures of cultural comparisons between “Sub Saharan Africans” and ancient Kemites you HAVE TO feel foolish making such ignorant statements against the known migration that took place from Kemet into inner Africa following it’s collapse.
I just see a lot of cherry-picking of random cultural practices. You could take any two cultures and make them appear similar by selecting points of similarity and disregarding the differences. Also, where did you get this strange stuff about Greeks “killing the native black priests”? I’ve never heard any mainstream scholar say that.
No. They were Mediterranoids similar to Lebanese or Libyans ”
There are so many things wrong with this statement as well. For one you are equating a population with a geographic location……, and that makes no sense when we consider that various different populations have lived in a given region (especially the Mediterranean). The Mediterranean was originally dominated by “Negroid” populations since the time of the Natufians, BUT as I stated earlier when the Indo-Europeans left the Caucus after the 2nd millennium BC they went on a rampage throughout the Eastern Mediterranean that destroyed/usurped the Bronze Age civilizations that were based on that Negroid stock (and Dravidians) and mixed in with them;
“Mediterranean” is an anthropological euphemism for “Negro”. – Anthropologist Wyatt MacGaffey
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“A late Pleistocene-early Holocene northward migration (from Africa to the Levant and to Anatolia) of these populations has been hypothesized from skeletal data (Angel 1972, 1973; Brace 2005) and from archaeological data, as indicated by the probable Nile Valley origin of the “Mesolithic” (epi-Paleolithic) Mushabi culture found in the Levant (Bar Yosef 1987). This migration finds some support in the presence in Mediterranean populations (Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, etc.; Patrinos et al.; Schiliro et al. 1990) of the Benin sickle cell haplotype. This haplotype originated in West Africa and is probably associated with the spread of malaria to southern Europe through an eastern Mediterranean route (Salares et al. 2004) following the expansion of both human and mosquito populations brought about by the advent of the Neolithic transition (Hume et al 2003; Joy et al. 2003; Rich et al 1998). This northward migration of northeastern African populations carrying sub-Saharan biological elements is concordant with the morphological homogeneity of the Natufian populations (Bocquentin 2003), which present morphological affinity with sub-Saharan populations (Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005). In addition, the Neolithic revolution was assumed to arise in the late Pleistocene Natufians and subsequently spread into Anatolia and Europe (Bar-Yosef 2002), and the first Anatolian farmers, Neolithic to Bronze Age Mediterraneans and to some degree other Neolithic-Bronze Age Europeans, show morphological affinities with the Natufians (and indirectly with sub-Saharan populations; Angel 1972; Brace et al 2005), in concordance with a process of demic diffusion accompanying the extension of the Neolithic revolution (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994).”
“Following the numerous interactions among eastern Mediterranean and Levantine populations and regions, caused by the introduction of agriculture from the Levant into Anatolia and southeastern Europe, there was, beginning in the Bronze Age, a period of increasing interactions in the eastern Mediterranean, mainly during the Greek, Roman, and Islamic periods. These interactions resulted in the development of trading networks, military campaigns, and settler colonization. Major changes took place during this period, which may have accentuated or diluted the sub-Saharan components of earlier Anatolian populations”
F. X. Ricaut, M. Waelkens. (2008). Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements Human Biology – Volume 80, Number 5, October 2008, pp. 535-564
“who had migrated into the Nile Valley after the invention of agriculture….We have good evidence for very deep Afroasiatic penetration into the Continent from quite a while ago (before the origins of Ancient Egypt):”
You are completely unaware of the fact that the African continent proper had it’s OWN NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION IN THE FERTILE SAHARA DESERT PERIOD, and the drying of this Saharan region is what caused the African populations to settle on the river Nile. There was NO DEMIC DIFFUSION OF AGRICULTURE FROM THE NEAR EAST INTO AFRICA….THAT DEMIC DIFFUSION FROM THE NEAR EAST OF THOSE NEGROID NATUFIANS (so regardless they were both black African populations as you can read Ricaut 2008 above who created agriculture in the Sahara desert and the near by Levant) DID OCCUR FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT HOWEVER;
“The genetic data do not support a model of demic diffusion by farmers fro the Levant to explain the Neolithic in northern or eastern Africa, or the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages into Africa..”-S. Keita, 2008, “Geography, selected Afro-Asiatic families, and Y chromosome lineage variation.” pg 3-16. IN: Bengston, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008.
“The population of Nubia was never very large.”
This is a false characterization of the oldest civilization on Earth. Nubia was a confederation of African clans that extended all the way from the Sudan into the Great Lakes and beyond. It is the home of humanity and civilization. The Greeks acknowledged this, and the people of Kemet acknowledged these inner African regions as Ta Neter. which was land of the Gods and their homeland. This is supported by archaeology;
“Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant.”(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
Tre. Thanks for your very well referenced , knowledgeable , academic and historical refutation of this bollocks article. The author tries to seem unbiased but i detect a lot of eurocentricity here. Truth stands on its own. Their web of lies is so complicated they keep having to concoct new ones to cover up the old ones. Another telltale sign is how The author spends a lot of time referring to or dismissing ” afrocentrists” but hardly ever addresses eurocentric lies and distortions.
Great job “untwisting” the story!
Wow…so now my post have to be filtered be they appear on the blog. If you truly believe in what you say in your blog post, then you should be willing to stand on it when scrutiny from the “Afrocentrics” come your way. If we were on a public forum where you could not control who gets to see what then you know that you would lose whatever you’re trying to argue. It’s just dishonorable and classic intellectual dishonesty. You wanted smoke with the “Afrocentric” crowd, AND YOU GOT IT. Now you want to cower away when we bring out our guns.
“Now you want to cower away when we bring out our guns.”
You don’t have any “guns,” and that’s why mainstream archeologists don’t agree with your half-assed theories. But evidence doesn’t matter to you. Afrocentrism is more a matter of faith than of logic.
“If the sample size too small to make generalizations, then it’s too small to make generalizations. Period. It doesn’t follow that we can automatically conclude that all Ancient Egyptians were sub-Saharan black.”
You’re a little confused here… those were two different samples that were sequenced. The flawed study from 2017 headlined that it had 90 mummies, but in reality the were only able to sequence THREE….and all from one region during the Late Period…..There is no knowledge that can be gained on the biological affinities of the original ancient iKami population from late dynastic Egyptians (as my numerous PEER REVIEWED sources already presented and IGNORED/RAN FROM by you) verify this caution.
The PEER REVIEWED study Keita if you read it…… dealt with EVERY ROYAL MUMMY that has sequenced thus far. That included King Tut and his family as well as Ramses III and his son (who were already proven to be E1b1a https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8njMacg7XxI/W4sZsBun7OI/AAAAAAAADb0/_hVmXiskNysZz0wtch2YpOYvRQbw0VVaACLcBGAs/s1600/Gourdine_Keita_peerreview_critique_Schuenemann_Abusir.jpg )
Every one of these mummies STR profile was consistent with “Sub Saharan Africans”, and more detailed analysis from over parties showed the closest affinities to be with Southern, Central and West Africans particularly.
“Your source refutes your argument.”
You have yet to prove that.
“If that’s true, then what is the point of this debate? Why argue about the race of the ancient Egyptians if the concept or race means nothing anyway?”
This debate has been racialize and politicized by the white Western World in order to justify the dehumanization of Africans, and even into Jim Crow and today. The book “black skin white skulls” goes into detail about how particular “scholars” during the 19th and 20th century skewed results that they found undesirable by claiming that indigenous unmixed black African populations from Central, West and East Africa were somehow “Caucasoid” (even though all Africans proceed the existence of pale skin which scientist verify is only around 6,000 years old). This racialization of the results is what was called scientific racism. It was a complete double standard of reality. The Europeans would claim that some groups of black Africans were really dark skinned “Caucasoids”, but in SOCIETY/REALITY those Africans (Hausa, Fulani, Somalis, Tutsi, etc) would have been castrated if they tried to assert “whiteness” in the Southern US prior to the 1980’s.
“Sure, that makes sense, but what about Lower Egypt? The article you site states that “The distribution of population characteristics seems to follow a clinal pattern from south to north, which may be explained by natural selection as well as gene flow between neighboring populations.”
You trying to pivot to Lower Egypt as your salvation from a black civilization shows your lack of knowledge about ancient Kemet. Upper Kemet/Lower Nubia was THE SEAT OF THE CIVILIZATION AND THE AREA IN WHICH THE FAMOUS DYNASTIC CULTURE ORIGINATED.
QUOTE(s):
“While not attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egyptologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of Lower Egypt ever existed.”
“While communities such as Ma’adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.”:
The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
“..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life.” (Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
Egyptian state founded from the south, and indigenous in character. Egyptians dominated Palestine in some eras.
“What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east..”
“Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear… The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millenium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character.”
(Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
“From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign ‘race’. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt.
Contact between northern Egypt and Palestine was overland, as evidence in northern Sinai demonstrates.. Israeli archealogists suggest that this evidence represents a commercial network established and controlled by the Egyptians as early as EBA Ia, and that this network was a major factor in the rise of the urban settlements found later in Palestine EBA II. Naomi Porat’s technological study of ceramics from EBA sites in southern Palestine clearly demonstrates that in EBA Ib strata many of the pottery vessels used for food preparation were probably manufactured by Egyptian potters using Egyptian technology but local Palestinian clays. In EBA Ib strata there are also many storage jars made from Nile silt and marl wares, which must have been imported from Egypt. Not only did the Egyptians establish camps and way stations in northern Sinai, but the ceramic evidence also suggests that they established a highly organized network of settlements in southern Palestine where an Egyptian population was in residence.”
(Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
Do you understand? Lower Egypt was a sparsely populated region, until the LATE PERIOD. This is where all of the Asiatics and Europeans settled when they invaded during those later times.
[QUOTE]That sentence implies that the population of Ancient Egypt contained regional variations between the North and the South.[/QUOTE]
The sources that I’ve presented show that not only were Lower Egyptians black Africans, but even the adjacent Palestine shows African affinities. Black African dominated the entire region, including the Arabian Peninsula (Ethiopian/Somali types).
“Therefore, you can’t logically conclude that all Ancient Egyptians share the same ethnic makeup as the people of “the Sahara and more southerly areas.”
You have a misguided interpretation of the research due to you not knowing. Now that sources have been provided that show that the Upper Kemet and Lower Nubia was the hub of the civilization where the culture originated, and where the vast majority of the population originated and lived until the Late Period.
“..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans.” (Barry Kemp, “Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
Now you know that early Lower Egyptians still had tropically adapted body plans, which prove that they too were of a more southerly origin. It was a black civilization no matter your objections.
“You seem to be operating on the assumption that all indigenous Africa peoples are “black.” The Berbers don’t fit that description, and as I recall, Keita himself considers them to be *indigenous* Africans.”
The Berber language is considered Afro-Asiatic, but AFRICAN LINGUIST who participated and won debates at UNESCO conferences’s say different. Theophile Obenga (who beat Christopher Ehret in a debate over this in the 90’s) of Southern Africa has demonstrated that “Afro-Asiatic is FAKE language family”. He states that the West made this family up for idealogical purposes. They force Semitic and Berber languages to mash with indigenous African languages like Cushitic and Omotic etc, and they simply don’t mash together. The Berber language for example has elements from European languages and Semitic languages that result from the European slave trade of North Africa and the Arab invasion.
As far as their feaures are concerned the same facts HAVE to be acknowledged. Their maternal lineage for the most part was inherited by white Christian European slaves (millions) while their paternal marker is largely African. Now as far as blond hair and blue eyes yes that is indigenous to Africa THROUGH ALBINISM. The OCA gene that is shared by almost all pale populations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBJed7x_caw&feature=emb_title
“Language being correlated with ethnicity, I should also note that linguists generally classify the Ancient Egyptian language as part of the *Afro-Asiatic language* group”
This is one of the main reasons HOW the African scholars obliterated the Eurocentrics at UNESCO;
Linguistic Unity With Southern and Western Africa
In a detailed study of languages, Diop clearly demonstrates that Ancient Egyptian, modern Coptic of Egypt and Walaf of West Africa are related, with the latter two having their origin in the former.
“Pharaonic Egyptian – Wolof; (Wolof meaning)
Aku – Aku : foreigners (Creole descendants of European traders and African wives)
anu – K.enou : pillar
atef – ate : a crown of Osiris, judge of the soul (to judge)
ba – bei : the ram-god (goat)
ben ben – ben ben : overflow, flood
bon – bon : evil
bu – bu : place
bu bon – bu bon : evil place
bu nafret – bu rafet : good place
da – da : child
Djoob – Djob : a surname
fero – fari : king
itef – itef : father
kau – kaou : elevated, above (heaven)
kem -khem : black (burnt, burnt black)
kemat – kematef : end of a period, completion, limit
khekh – khekh : to fight, to wage war, war
kher – ker : country (house)
lebou – Lebou : those at the stream, Lebou/fishermen Senegal
maat – mat : justice
mer – maar : love (passionate love)
mun – won : buttocks
nag – nag : bull (cattle)
nak – nak : ox, bull (cow)
NDam – NDam : throne
neb – ndab : float
nen – nen : place where nothing is done (nothingness)
nit – nit : citizen
Ntr – Twr : protecting god, totem
nwt – nit : fire of heaven (evening light)
o.k. – wah keh : correct, right
onef – onef : he (past tense)
ones – ones : she (past tense)
IF ANCIENT KEMETIC WAS AN “AFRO-ASIATIC LANGUAGE”….THAT COMPARISON ABOVE WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE! Every Niger-Congo speaking population for the most part can make an extensive comparable list of their own WHY? Ancient Kemetic language was a LINGUA-FRANCA used by the various distinct type of black Africans as a medium for communication throughout the civilization.
Now JP415 that’s not entirely true. Let’s stick with facts as a counter like you had been doing. That last sentence about Afrocentrism sounds very bias and a bit racist. You’re better than that.
You’re free to disagree with me, but nothing I’ve said is “racist” at all. Afrocentrism is politics, not science-based archeology. Just to be clear: Africans are not the only people who let their political biases distort historical research. The same thing happens in the Balkans and central Asia, so it’s a worldwide problem.
Much afrocentrism is racist if you haven’t noticed. Ever hear of the black israelites? Louis Farrakhan?
I honestly do not know why people throw a fit whenever a white person stars in a movie about the Bible. Has it ever occurred to people that the reason why we principally see white actors in these movies is because North Africans, Middle-Easterners, et.al do not audition for these movies? Now, if it does turn out that people from those ethnic backgrounds *did* try out for the film, and despite being qualified as actors to play the roles, were denied those roles in favor of a white actor, then yes, there would be evidence of systemic racism in Hollywood. However, the reasoning that I have seen regarding this issue usually goes as follows: Premise 1. All the people in Bible movies are white. C. therefore, non-whites are being denied representation in Hollywood. Maybe the non-white actors decided they would have better success auditioning for the ten-millionth Marvel film adaptation instead of a movie about the Bible?
For what it is worth, most of the Bible is fiction anyway, and so the race of the actor does not really matter to be quite honest. It is not as scandalous as the idea of a pale Caucasian portraying Martin Luther King Jr. in a movie.
There are plenty of very good Middle Eastern actors available who can be cast in films about ancient Egypt. After all, the main characters in the 2019 live action adaptation of Aladdin were all played by people of Middle Eastern descent and, although the film won mixed reviews overall, the main actors were widely acclaimed. There are Middle Eastern actors available; Hollywood is just stubbornly refusing to cast them for any film set in ancient Egypt.
The reason why Exodus: Gods and Kings didn’t have any Middle Eastern actors in any of the lead roles is because the director, Ridley Scott, made a conscious decision to only cast white actors in the film because he thought that there weren’t any non-white actors who were famous enough to be cast in it. He said:
He told people who were upset that the film had an entirely white cast to “get a life.” Obviously, this is just blatant racism. The only reason why there aren’t Middle Eastern actors who are as famous as Christian Bale is because directors like Ridley Scott keep refusing to cast Middle Eastern actors.
The problem with that example is that Aladdin was Chinese (not Middle-Eastern) as was Jasmine. Most of the story takes place in an Islamic China rather than Morocco, as Disney would have people believe (even though there are scenes where it is in Morocco). I saw parts of the Broadway play about Jesus where John Legend portrays Jesus (as if Jesus was black) while Alice Cooper (Caucasian) portrayed Herod Antipas (an Idumean). I thought it was interesting that the people who accused Willem Dafoe of “white-washing” in the Last Temptation of Christ were surprisingly silent about an equally implausible Caucasian Herod Antipas. Why this double-standard? Why is it not okay for a Caucasian to portray Jesus but perfectly okay for one to play Herod? Is it because Herod is the villain in the story? Is it because most people think that Idumeans are the same ethnicity as those of European descent?
Hollywood films rely on ‘brand’ names to generate interest, so Scott is correct overall. This is why actors are called “stars” to begin with-their names and reputations alone are box office draws, so why attach “racism” to his decisions? No one is going to give a director millions of dollars to make a movie where the actors are unknowns to most of the world. One reason that Hollywood is so anti-American today is because film studios are desperate for money and look to the Chinese market to make up for the disinterest Americans have in watching America bashing films. Get woke, go broke.
Good points.
The Book of Jeremiah 13:23 only asks the question “Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots?” Saying that someone has dark skin is different from saying that that person is a member of the “black race.” In the Book of Jeremiah, dark skin is merely a physical attribute associated with sub-Saharan Africans. Jeremiah doesn’t have any kind of systematic racial classification system based on skin color.
Just curious…are you suggestion Ethiopians would not be considered of the “black race”? Also, if we are talking about the continent of Africa, would dark skin not refer to “African descent” since other “non-black” countries conquered the region and race was not a concept of that time but considering current reference application ? Would like to hear your thoughts/reasoning.
“I don’t have enough time to give a thorough rebuttal to everything you say here, but it is mostly nonsense.”
lol Well…If you look at our exchanges you have clearly dropped 90% of the what I rebutted in my initial post, and you have opted to harp on the Semantics regarding Mantheno, and his origins. The only reason why I quoted him in the first place was to prove that Ramses II was in no shape or form a Red Haired individual, given the attitude that the iKami had towards red haired people (you know burning them alive and what not). I then went on to say that at that time in history “Indo-European” whites were of a uniform phenotype, which included the red hair that the iKami detested. How can one of the greatest pharaohs in history therefore be a naturally red haired individual?
“Even if we did know what Manethon looked like, there would be no reliable way to tell his nationality just by looking at his appearance ”
Well he was not a black African in appearance, then it goes without saying that he is NOT a native of “the Black Land” known as Kemet lol.
“Tacitus did not say that the only people on Earth who had red hair in antiquity were “‘pure Caucasians’”
You put that quote in my mouth! I never gave those particular words to Tacitus. I cited his quote, because you denied that white people in earlier times had a uniform phenotype, and more importantly that that phenotype included the dreaded “red hair” that the iKami found to be a repulsive representation of the deity Set. For that reason these people with a uniform phenotype as Tacitus described were banned from Kemet until the Late Period when the first Europeans took over the civilization in the 4th century BC.
” In reality, as the quote you yourself have provided here proves, Tacitus only said that all Germans had blond hair and blue eyes.”
Actually it was “red” hair, and Tacitus calls these people nomads. From a more in dept review of their history, we know that those Indo-Europeans were essentially pushed into Central and Western Europe from the Caucus region by the Huns who dominated during that time. Therefore they were not indigenous to mainland Europe.
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/u440/Treday90/2rm5jrl_zpsohqkvnip.png
” Here, though, Tacitus is obviously engaging in blatant stereotyping; he’s saying the exact same thing about the Germans that the Greeks had previously said about the Thrakians. He simply noticed that lots of Germans had blond hair and blue eyes and concluded that this was the “standard” appearance for a German.”
It didn’t real seem like stereotype, but moreso a real life observation with the most minute details.
Tac. Ger. 4
– “For my own part, I agree with those who think that the tribes of Germany are free from all taint of inter-marriages with foreign nations, and that they appear as a distinct, unmixed race, like none but themselves. Hence, too, the same physical peculiarities throughout so vast a population. All have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge frames, fit only for a sudden exertion. They are less able to bear laborious work. Heat and thirst they cannot in the least endure; to cold and hunger their climate and their soil inure them.
and
[4.109] The Budini, however, do not speak the same language as the Geloni, nor is their mode of life the same. They are the aboriginal people of the country, and are nomads; unlike any of the neighbouring races, they eat lice. The Geloni on the contrary, are tillers of the soil, eat bread, have gardens, and both in shape and complexion are quite different from the Budini. The Greeks notwithstanding call these latter Geloni; but it is a mistake to give them the name.”
“The Proto-Indo-Europeans were not a homogenous “racial” group, but rather a linguistic group.”
How is it a linguistic group, when there is NO EVIDENCE of a language being spoken in the Caucus where the migration is said to have came from? How is it a language when the Dorians who were a known Indo-European groups DID NOT HAVE A LANGUAGE. When they came into Greece they ADOPTED the dialect of pre-existing language of the indigenous “black”-Neolithic originated populations of the region. When the Indo-Europeans came into the civilization it caused the Greek Dark Ages…..
” We have no evidence that they looked particularly different physically from the previous inhabitants of the parts of Europe that they moved into.”
“The peoples of Europe had already started to generally look to look fairly close to what we consider “white” long before the Indo-European migrations.”
YES WE DO! This is why the Cheddar man and every prehistoric European is said to have had black skin, and Negroid features. This has been known for over a century;
“Early Europeans still resembled modern tropical peoples – some resemble modern Australian and Africans, more than modern Europeans.. Nor does the picture get any clearer when we move on to the Cro-Magnons, the presumed ancestors of modern Europeans. Some were more like present-day Australians or Africans, judged by objective anatomical observations.” (Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie (1998). African Exodus. Macmillan, p. 162)
and
“The Niger-Congo speakers, Congo, Dahomey and Haya, cluster closely with each other and a bit less closely with the Nubian sample, both the recent and the Bronze Age Nubians, and more remotely with the Naqada Bronze Age sample of Egypt, the modern Somalis, and the Arabic-speaking Fellaheen (farmers) of Israel. When those samples are separated and run in a single analysis as in Fig. 1, there clearly is a tie between them that is diluted the farther one gets from sub-Saharan Africa” (Brace, 2005)
“The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa… Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used. Fig. 2 shows the plot produced by the first two canonical variates, but the same thing happens when canonical variates 1 and 3 (not shown here) are used. This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic), .. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it.” (Brace, 2005)
Did you catch the part where it said that modern white Europeans are not closely related to Bronze Age, Neolithic nor Mesolithic Europeans who were obviously a completely different people. They did not “turn white”, but the Indo-Europeans essentially came and warred with them absorbing SOME genetic material. Also notice how it says that Southern Europeans who have known African ancestry have some resemblance to the earlier European populations.
“In fact, there are still many peoples in Europe today who do not speak Indo-European languages who look “white.”
Those are earlier black African languages. European linguist explains this!
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/u440/Treday90/GJK%20CAMPBELL%20DUNN_zpscc3n5jju.png
40% of Indo-European words are of “unkown” (cough African) origin, and that goes up to 60% of Greek words of unknown/African origin.
“Your assertions that the original Egyptians all fled south into sub-Saharan Africa, that the Greeks slaughtered the Egyptian priests who remained, and so on are also fantasies rooted in no good evidence. You have simply asserted these things here without supporting them.”
Well I’ve already posted pictures of these cultural comparison that are UNDENIABLY in support of that fact. Not to mention we do have DNA…
“Other DNA data show substantial African affinity: “Results that are likely reliable are from studies that analyzed short tandem repeats (STRs) from Amarna royal mummies5 (1,300 BC), and of Ramesses III (1,200 BC)6; Ramesses III had the Y chromosome haplogroup E1b1a, an old African lineage7. Our analysis of STRs from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies with popAffiliator18 based on the same published data5,6 indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities (see Table 1); most of the individuals had a greater probability of affiliation with “SSA” which is not the only way to be “African”- a point worth repeating.” FROM: -Gourdine JP, Keita SOY, Gourdine JL, Anselin A, 2018. Ancient Egyptian Genomes from northern Egypt
https://osf.io/ecwf3/
Which proves that every royal official tested thus far is Sub Saharan African. Explain how all of these facts coupled with recent DNA verification is fantasy?
Who else has “Bushman Canines besides black Africans?
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MIw_fRQyJkI/W8PtD73rUrI/AAAAAAAADdc/rO-vwW_6S8YJyADYxWqW64V0ckxs1C8JgCLcBGAs/s1600/bushman_canine3_dental_in_egypt_adaima.jpg
“I just see a lot of cherry-picking of random cultural practices. You could take any two cultures and make them appear similar by selecting points of similarity and disregarding the differences.”
Come on now man you sound ridiculous! WHO IN EUROPE HAS A CEREMONY FOR DJED? We know of various BLACK AFRICANS who still see the backbone as a sacred communicator between the living and the dead, and they call it EGUN. No one else on this Earth has the types of cultural overlapping with the ancient iKami than black Africans.
“Archaeological evidence also strongly
supports an African origin. A widespread
northeastern African cultural assemblage,
including distinctive multiple barbed
harpoons and pottery decorated with
dotted wavy line patterns, appears during
the early Neolithic (also known as the
Aqualithic, a reference to the mild
climate of the Sahara at this time).
Saharan and Sudanese rock art from this
time resembles early Egyptian
iconography. Strong connections
between Nubian (Sudanese) and
Egyptian material culture continue in
later Neolithic Badarian culture of Upper
Egypt. Similarities include black-topped
wares, vessels with characteristic
ripple-burnished surfaces, a special
tulip-shaped vessel with incised and
white-filled decoration, palettes, and
harpoons…
Other ancient Egyptian practices show
strong similarities to modern African
cultures including divine kingship, the
use of headrests, body art, circumcision,
and male coming-of-age rituals, all
suggesting an African substratum or
foundation for Egyptian civilization..”
[endquote]
Source: The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt,
2001. Volume 3. Oxford University Press. p.28″
The Oxford encyclopedia, Yale (already presented), Cambridge (the new exibit that merges Nubia and Kemet) under recognition of Kemet’s Africanity
https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/collections/kemet
, and many many more “mainstream sources” agrees that black African cultures today mirror that of ancient Kemet.
“Also, where did you get this strange stuff about Greeks “killing the native black priests”? I’ve never heard any mainstream scholar say that.”
It’s not “strange stuff” you simply DON’T KNOW about the Dogon. These are perhaps the most famous and studied people in Africa for their indept knowledge of Sirius B, which is a star that CANNOT be seen with the naked eye. They worship it’s orbit, and it’s closest positioning to the Earth. This star was a center of ancient Kemetic spirituality. This group was of a sacred priestly clan. The Africans did not like how the Greeks appropriated and lamed out the African culture that started in Nubia (see the Qustul incense Burner). When the Greeks took over the land they tried to force the priest to teach them the secrets of the infamous “mystery system”, and those who refused were slaughtered. The Dogon managed to flee migrating for centuries like the most of the other Africans into their contemporary locations. The book “exiled Egyptians” details the history FROM AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE. You cannot not expect European centered scholars/traditionalist who took centuries to widely acknowledge that Kemet was black African to verify that Europeans destroyed the fountain of knowledge that was Kemet, and made the original inhabitants/their teachers destitute in the process.
Tre, you have wonderful information. Where can I find you on social media?
Yet another article that twist itself into knots trying to disprove the “blackness” of ancient Egypt. Like many modern day writers it starts off by giving a disclaimer about what the ancient writers considered black and white (criticizes the perspective a few sources that claimed that Egypt was purely white) but then goes into a tirade against “Afrocentrists” without examples of their arguments to describe the ancient Egyptian Africans as a multi-raced people. Ironically, the article uses the same trite arguments that were used by racist Eurocentric writers to make make its point of a multi ethnic society. I almost fell off my chair at how disingenuous this is. This would not stand up to debate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUtAxUQjwB4&t=3205s
I am not sure what makes you think that my article is “disingenuous.” I assure you, I am arguing in good faith. If anything I say is wrong, it is because I made a mistake, not because I am being intentionally deceptive.
I think what you might recognize is your internal biases were reflected in the article. Whether intentional or not. I’ve re-read and used as a discussion piece in one of my college courses and a routine consensus is the exaggerated effort to disprove of Afrocentrism more so than balanced points to prove population racial uncertainty, diversity or non-whiteness.
“Consensus” of whom? Do these people have some kind of training in archeology or are they just random students venting their unfounded opinions?
Also, you haven’t really engaged with any of the points raised in the article. I don’t see that your comments have added anything to the discussion.
I don’t typically comment on the “racial” issues as these conversations are almost always framed in a manner that effectively precludes any real “resolution”. I have read a few of your pieces and came away that Mr. McDaniel is an objective young intellectual genuinely interested in finding out the truth.
I don’t think the “disingenuous.” comment was necessarily meant in bad faith, but individuals who have been following this conversation over the years have come to find a certain pattern of argument which unfortunately fit your article but as I mentioned before, I don’t think your work deserves that label.
Issue #1 Misrepresentation/ Caricature of Afrocentrists
It is common to caricature the position of Afrocentrists in order to take down a straw man. This is often done but lumping together serious black intellectuals with everyday internet trolls because they both support a black Egypt hypothesis. Seldom are White supremacist internet trolls lumped together with Egyptology scholars who have claimed a Caucasian Egypt. So I will state here briefly, the scholarly position of the black Egypt hypothesis.
The civilization that is referred to as ancient Egypt properly called KMT was a Black African (Saharan/ Subsaharan) civilization. The “Black African” here refers to the essential elements of the civilization ie. Cosmology, Language, Religion, System of Governance, and Genealogy of the founding population. It is not in reference to the ethnicity of the people who lived within the borders of the state.
To say the USA is a western civilization does not mean that all the people that live in the country are western Europeans or even that majority of the people that live in the country are of European descent but it means that dominant/ prevailing Cosmology, Language, Religion, System of Governance of the USA and the founding population was of European origin. That is a fact that can be proved beyond doubt.
Afrocentrists are people that the claim that they can prove beyond doubt that ancient Egypt was a black African civilization. Now if for whatever reason that position is unacceptable then we can have a conversation about that..
Interesting article and well rewritten. However, it does not cover one basic point sufficiently. Regardless of skin color, as there is plenty of evidence of different colors of people in Egypt, ancient Egypt was an African culture. There are many books that have covered this.
Egypt was an African culture? And there have been white people called the Berbers in Northen Africa for 20,000 years.
I agree that most Berbers are not what most people think of as black people, but I don’t think they are what most people think of as white people either. They fall somewhere in between. There are many skin tones other than just black and white. Also, there is variation in skin color among the Berbers; they don’t all have the exact same skin tone.
Raoul, what you failed to note is that “African” refers more to geography (Continent) and not race/skin color. If I said that India is an “Asian culture” would you realize that it is because India is in Asia or assume a more racist mindset like “Asian must mean Chinese”?
I see that to you, “African” means black, which is ignorant mate. Africa is one of the most diverse regions in the world, and the Amazigh people are not what we would consider black, but still African.
I hope you realize that geography rarely dictates race.
why are black people are so focused on claiming Egpyt anyway there are many sub-shahran empires that were great we don’t need Egpyt for people to see that we were not savages we did amazing things thank you sir know we can move on from the whole black Egyptian stuff i just wish people of other origins can do the same!
HI, I read your post and you state that the egyptians were depicted brown in their images, then go on to say that the woman were expected to be pale while the men would stay tanned. There are problems with this considering the Greeks and the Romans did not consider them as tanned, but in the same skin tones as Ethiopians. Either way two major points. 1) You dont use any craniometric studies at all, which shows that the AE from predynastic to Dynastic times were predominantly mulatto. So I dont understand how they could be pale, when even today most Egyptian woman aren’t pale. Majority of the images and majority of the physical descriptions of images describe them as dark skinned, like present day upper egyptians. 2) As for the Fayum mummies, some were shown after facial reconstruction to actually be negroid, most of those images are stylized and not how they actually looked
Wow, this got a lot more comments than your other article about Cleopatra! Glad to see your website seems to be getting some traction.
One comment about Egyptian art being highly conventionalized: completely agree, but when someone was an outlier, Egyptian art also seemed to accommodate that and change accordingly, as for the portrait of Maiherpri in his Book of the Dead. I have also heard, and seen although only anecdotally, that the art and funereal text for nobles was far more “free form” than the highly restricted and formal art and depictions for pharaohs. For instance, the noble gravesites just north of Edfu have a striking range of depictions that you really don’t see in Valley of the Kings.
Of course, it would also be hard to represent a “very white” person in ancient Egyptian wall paintings as well (since they don’t give nearly as much detail as the Hellenistic portraits, even in the best of cases), especially given that if you put a Norwegian in Egypt for their whole life, they’re going to have a pretty solid olive complexion by the time they die, so their portrait would need eye or hair color to have any idea they weren’t your “average Egyptian”.
Oh, oof, like half the comments are politicized nonsense, although it seems to be largely one person commenting over and over again, picking an odd hill to die on. Well, I guess such is the price to pay for getting attention to such a charged topic.
First let me give credit where its due in that the author has allowed the various perspectives to be posted to his site. However, I do agree with another comment (Ian) that the author has been “disingenuous” in that he claims to be taking “a thorough and honest look at the evidence” but yet the article is mostly based around what he calls the problem of Afrocentrists. The stance taken by the author is very Eurocentric (he probably does not realise it), dismissive of new information and the examination itself is limited (I’ve read this type of response on Quora). The article could have easily been about the problem of the Eurocentric view. I would like to tackle a few things:
———-
BLACK SKIN
———-
What many white people do not understand is that the term “Black” is not used to refer to one particular type of colour when it comes to Africans. Black is used to describe dark skin to light brown skin and all the shades in between. If you’ve been to Africa you will understand this:
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/varying-skin-colors-africa-light-dark-and-all-between
It is Eurocentrics that create the false narrative of a “red skin” or “Mediterranean” race in ancient Africa. Therefore it is understandable why Africans claim ancient Egypt was pre-dominantly a “Black” population. But don’t just take it from me, here’s an actual light brown-skinned Egyptian describing themselves as Black:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1893525130911210
————-
ANCIENT EGYPT
————-
Often those that discuss ancient Egypt as being “Black” are discussing the origins of the civilisation. Many white people incorrectly frame the argument as you have done:
authors have tried to argue that ancient Egypt was exclusively or primarily a “black civilization”
It cannot be disputed that Egypt eventually became a very mixed society. However, Eurocentrics tend to evaluate the history from the period where the society became mixed and onwards. Nowhere do you discuss Egypt pre-Invading white foreign invaders; the Hyksos (1640 BC), the Assyrians (671 BC), the Persians (525 BC), the Greeks (332 BC), and the Romans (30 BC). With so many invasions it is obvious that the society became mixed. Who do you believe the early invading forces found in Egypt? White people?
——
UNESCO
——
Note that in UNESCO’s General History of Africa they write the following:
“It is more than probable that the African strain, black or light, is preponderant in the Ancient Egyptian, but in the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say more.”
The Eurocentric in you will only read the last part of the sentence and let out a joyous “Ha!”. But here’s the thing, the extensive General History of Africa was compiled by a team of 40+ specialists from across the globe, and they concluded that it is “more than probable”. You are smart, but I can say with certainty that you do not have the knowledge or experience of the UNESCO team. But I believe to a large degree the reason for not providing a 100% confirmation is due to the problem with racial bias in scientific communities, in that research from Africans and North Africans is often dismissed, or as this article describes “archaeology’s inherent Eurocentrism”:
https://www.theposthole.org/read/article/378
———
ANECDOTAL
———
Feel free to ignore this, but here is some anecdotal evidence. A friend of mine (dark skin) was in Egypt on a tour. He was with his girlfriend (light brown skin). The group was apparently mainly white Americans. At one point in the tour, the Egyptian guide turnaround to my friend and his girlfriend and told the group that it was people that looked like them that built ancient Egypt. He was surprised by this.
———–
CONCLUSION
———–
My hope is that the author can look at his own shortcomings and Eurocentric bias. How many sources did he use from African or North African authors? I’m guessing none. I do acknowledge that he dismissed the idea of white Egyptians for the historical farce that it is. But Eurocentric views are pernicious and seek to simply rob Africans of their history.
I think you’re making a false assumption that people are either “white,” “Black,” or “mixed” and that the Egyptians must have at some point been “purely” either white or Black. As I discuss in the article, however, there is no such thing as racial “purity.” Race is a social construct and there’s no reason to think that there was ever a time when Egyptians all looked a certain way.
The UNESCO statement you cite here is so vague that it is practically meaningless for the purposes of this discussion, since it essentially amounts to “Regardless of their skin color, Egyptians are Africans of some sort.” This is entirely uncontroversial and, indeed, rather obvious. Egypt is located on the African continent and its native inhabitants are therefore, by definition, Africans. Many North Africans, however, are not generally included within the category of Black.
I do think it is important to ask what my biases are. There is no such thing as an objective analysis; every historian has biases of some kind—both conscious and unconscious ones. Nonetheless, we do try to overcome our biases and base our conclusions on the available evidence. You will find that I have actually gone a lot further in arguing that there were people in ancient Egypt whom we would consider Black than many others are comfortable with.
Notably, there are many people, including some scholars, who still insist that there were no Black Egyptians in ancient times and, whenever someone else gives an example of an ancient Egyptian person whom we would obviously consider Black, they insist that the person must have been a foreigner. For instance, Maiherpri and Lady Rai are routinely described as Nubian, not Egyptian. This designation is obviously based on circular reasoning, however, since the only evidence anyone has to support the contention that Maiherpri and Lady Rai were foreign is the fact that they were Black, but yet people only consider their Blackness a sign of foreignness because they themselves have decided that it is for prejudicial reasons. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason why we can’t call Maiherpri an Egyptian.
Race is a social construct and there’s no reason to think that there was ever a time when Egyptians all looked a certain way.
—
Agree. Note I never said they all look the same. Just “Black” in the broad sense used by Africans, as per the links. It’s difficult for those with no experience of Africa or African writers to comprehend this. Eurocentrics have unfortunately sown division amongst “Black” populations to confuse the history.
Notably, there are many people, including some scholars, who still insist that there were no Black Egyptians
—
Agree. Basic common sense, due to whitewashing, goes out the window when it comes to Egypt. For example, Aliens built the pyramids or we cannot say that the Sphinx has a Black face. Both laughable. But thankfully there are many that do see sense.
Cast your net wider in terms of your sources. Look at the roots of early Egyptian culture. Good luck on your journey!
“Race is a social construct and there’s no reason to think that there was ever a time when Egyptians all looked a certain way”
literally absurd, we could say that about Australian aborigines, or native americans before the arrival of Europeans. That they all looked a certain way compared to other populations at a historical point in time. Why not the AE?
“Many North Africans, however, are not generally included within the category of Black.”. Good point, what are they classified as then (hint check the US census forms)? Don’t you think arguing that there are no such things are pure races and then proceeding to state that some people will be excluded out of a certain category contradictory. It appears that whatever “ambiguous entities ” these AE were, they could not be black. The question is why not? Genetic studies suggest that nubians and egyptians overlap. But nubians are considered subsaharan african (black) with no questions asked. Why aren’t “scholars” interested in that line of “evidence”. Please point to a place in the world where two groups shared a boundary for 5k years and remained separate races. Egypt you see is a very “special” place as it is the only place in history where this has happened.
“You will find that I have actually gone a lot further in arguing that there were people in ancient Egypt whom we would consider Black than many others are comfortable with”
Congratulations you have pushed the boundaries of white supremacist thinking. Perhaps now, you can start searching for the truth. The idea that going a step beyond what others will find comfortable is an accomplishment is quite amusing. Would your positions change if they somehow became more comfortable?
Egypt as a society will have looked like modern day, ethiopia, nothern sudan, northern uganda or somalia. Black people with varying degrees of middle eastern admixture. All these societies are called black African. The question is what is so special about ancient egypt. Answer: If Europeans admit it is african then the entire narrative of world history that has been pushed by white supremacist thinking will come crashing down. I have news for you. It is and it will. The truth cannot be buried.
Very good points and well summarized.
i agree with you that egyptians overlapped with nubians in the south but they also did with Canaanites (levantines like Palestinians, Jordanians, Jews etc) and North Africans in the North. the Truth is that this still is the case. with the south being darker and the North being lighter. but all with a gradual fade and no abrupt difference. you could say that north Africans and middle Easterns fade in into East africans going up the Nile. or actually the other way around since middle easterns etc decent fro east Africans originally of course (all humans do). what im trying to say that exept the fact that race is a racist concept and is scientifcally innacurate. that not all Egyptians were the same. the south was more cushitic withEgytpians dissolving into cushitic people like Beja and Nubians having close ties to other people of the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea etc). and the North was more meditereanean. having ties with North Africa, Levant, North Arabia, Anatolia etc. but all with a fade into eachother. for me Egypt is the proof that there is no magic line between white and black which proofs that race is pseudoscientific concept and only used in culture and is not scientifically true. so i don’t think all Egyptians were black but they also weren’t all mediterenean. they were in someway both.
Lol, you’re assumption that most contemporary whites consider AE as purely white is ridiculous-no one I know has EVER said that. I have never come across a web site or article that claimed it either, though they may very well exist.
Without going into too much detail, I will summarize the problem with your post.
First and foremost, “race” is not some vague and generic concept created by “modern society” in recent times. “Race” as we all understand it, is something created by European scientists in the last 500 years, specifically to describe the biological characteristics of Europeans vs all other peoples and assign “superiority” to the former over the latter. Not even the Greeks or Romans had a concept of “race” versus their own ethnocentrism. Therefore, “race” is not of African origin and any African scholar talking of the origins of Ancient Egypt are simply talking about the fact that Egypt is in Africa and that in ancient times the culture and people came from within Africa.
Second, civilization along the Nile is over 5,000 years old and the indigenous Dynastic culture (before 1,000 AD) over 2,000 years old, not counting the predynastic. If one takes into account the predynastic and protodynastic cultures along the Nile you are talking about OVER 10,000 years of history before 1,000 AD. Nobody in their right mind would claim that nothing has changed along the Nile in all that time and that everyone looks exactly the same today as they did 10,000 years ago. That doesn’t make sense. It also doesn’t make sense to lump the dynasties under foreign rule with the indigenous Dynasties that preceded them. Cleopatra was not an Egyptian.
The basic historical facts support an African origin for the ancient Egyptian culture going back primarily to the predynastic and proto dynastic cultures of the Sahara and Sudanese Nile Valley. The precursors for the Dynastic culture are found in the Halfan and Qadan cultures along the Nile between Upper Egypt and Lower Sudan. These two cultures represent over 10,000 years of historical development along the Nile. There is nothing comparable in Lower Egypt. In these phases of Nile Valley history sees the harvesting of wild grain, use of sickles, the development and oldest representations of the Nile Boat, earliest use of pottery and the evolution of social organization. There are no “races” between Upper Egypt and Lower Sudan other than indigenous Africans with black skin (of all shades of brown). This is where the culture of the ancient Dynastic culture on the Nile originated and nowhere else. So the implication that other “races” were along the Nile in ancient times leading up to the founding of the ancient Nile Valley civilization is false.
The idea that there were multiple “races” along the Nile, especially the Upper Nile, where the main focus of Egyptian culture was, is the issue. And the only people promoting that are European scientists who originated the modern concept of race. So the issue starts with them and not anybody else. Putting this on African scholars is simply the typical tactic of those who are in support of European scholarship and its history of “racial” ideologies going back hundreds of years. The first problem is there is no such thing as “race” and the second is that the diversity in Upper Egypt or Dynastic Egypt does not imply “different races”. If that is the case, why wasn’t Rome or Greece in their prime extending far outside of Europe made up of “different races” then?
I have actually written a separate article in which I specifically argue that, contrary to modern popular belief, the ancient Greeks and Romans were not all what most twenty-first-century Americans would consider “white.”
Egyptians were BROWN then, and are BROWN now. Some light brown, some dark brown. The end.
This was very well written Spencer. F the haters lol.
– A Coptic Egyptian.
I do largely agree w/you on this article. I am an American of mainly African w/traces of Native American and European ancestry. Describing peoples’ skin color as black, white and yellow to designate ‘race’ is what we in the Baha’i Faith religion try to avoid. But, it’s unfortunately, unavoidable, in this racialistic world. We beleive that “in God’s eyes there’s no such thing as black or white. That the earth is but one country and mankind it’s citizens,” writings of Baha’u’llah. To me, Nefertiti looks like a medium tanned person of color. Not unlike my late aunt. As far as Ramesses ii — I’ve seen African-Americans of fair yellow to medium reddish-brown skin who possess reddish brown hair. My gr-great grandfather was bi-ethnic/mixed ethnic (–‘ethnic’ because race is nonexistent, rather then bi-racial or mix race). He had light yellow skin and reddish hair. That’s how I think of this pharaoh. However, Ramesses might have been ‘albino.’ He did live a remarkably long life — (surprisingly he didn’t have skin cancer)especially since he was so light in such a hot, tropical climate that bordered a desert.
don’t forget Egyptians in the north are also different from Egyptians in the south with Egyptians in the north being paler, similar to local amazigh tribes and canaanite levantines (Palestinians, local mizrahi jews, jordanians, syrians etc) while in the south Egyptians are darker and fade into kushitic people like Nubians en Beja. Egyptians aren’t all “black” but they did have connections with Egyptians get closer and closer to cushitic people going south. the idea that Egyptians out of nowhere stopped with complete different nubians just over the border without any contact is off course irrational. especially since the Nubians and other cushitic people played such a big role in ancient Egypt. not to mention Egyptians weren’t the only ethnic group native to Egypt. Libyan amazigh in the North-west, Bedouin arabs in the North east, canaanites in the Sinaï, Beja people in the South-East, Nubians in the south. and very likely these ethnicities were not seperated but Egytpians varied from more meditereanen looking in the North to more cushitic looking in south. and anything in between. very similar to today. the idea that there is such a thing as black or white is of course irrational like you described.