The African Origin of Ancient Egyptian Civilization

[Cynovolans]

That's childish!





the facts are clear and IN YOUR FACE, .

Okay, I'm childish.

 

[Mentuhotep23]

And what is this cultural and biological affinities? That Nubians had an entirely different language? That Nubians did not even adopt Egyptian culture until the New Kingdom domination of the region? That Nubians lack the E3b2 Y-chromosomes which Egyptians and Berbers share?

I've already provided plenty of bio-cultural evidence for Nubian and Egyptian similarities. Their crania cluster together, they have tropical limb proportions and their cultures developed around the same area. The only major difference they really seem to have is language.

Try the link beneath the paragraph.

Can you provide a quote? I don't see anything in the link backing your claim.

I want to know if there is any other craniofacial studies and research that support Keita, because nearly everything you have posted is involved with Keita. Brace and Irish are backed up by several other studies in their research, W. Howells has the same conclusion in his book "Skull Shapes and the Map", and A. Froment in his "Race et Histoire: La recomposition ideologique de l'image des Egyptiens anciens".

Several scholars came to similar conclusions as Keita. Read his review for more details.

As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample
has been described as forming a morphological cluster
with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or \Negroid")
groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter,
1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). Cranial
nonmetric trait studies have found this group to be
similar to other Egyptians, including much later material
(Berry and Berry, 1967, 1972), but also to be significantly
different from LPD material (Berry et al., 1967). Similarly,
the study of dental nonmetric traits has suggested
that the Badarian population is at the centroid of Egyptian
dental samples (Irish, 2006), thereby suggesting similarity
and hence continuity across Egyptian time periods.

Source: Population Continuity or Population Change:
Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501–509 (2007)

The strongest scientific evidence we have for the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians comes from skeletal studies (craniometric and limb proportion analysis).

There haven't been that many studies in recent years. Keita's craniometric research is backed by older studies and he has responded to the flaws in Brace's study (who himself corrected some of his errors recently) while noone has challenged Keita on his. As far as limb proportions are concerned Sonia Zakrzewski confirmed older research that the Ancient Egyptians had super-tropical limb proportions.

The nature of the body plan was also investigated
by comparing the intermembral, brachial, and crural
indices for these samples with values obtained
from the literature. No significant differences were
found in either index through time for either sex.
The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians
had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins
(1983). The values for the brachial and crural
indices show that the distal segments of each limb
are longer relative to the proximal segments than in
many “African” populations (data from Aiello and
Dean, 1990). This pattern is supported by Figure 7
(a plot of population mean femoral and tibial
lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that
the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans.

Source: Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body
Proportions AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 121:219–229 (2003)

 

[Agent327]

What I find ironic in this thread is that the issue taken up isn't with the indisputable evidence that the Ancient Egyptians were ethnically the closest to more Southernly Black skinned African populations, but rather with Ancient Egypt being called 'black' in the Western Social sense for that fact. It's so amazing how hypocritical 'some' people can be (especially anyone living in the Westernized World). As another poster stated earlier simple racial labels such as 'white' will suffice when Greece is concerned but 'Black' is too problematic when it comes to Ancient Egypt!

The National Geographic however doesn't have a problem with applying the social label 'Black' to the population that is ethnically the closest to the Ancient Egyptians, so you all do the math!

What I find ironic in this thread is that the author consistentently misreads posters' criticism and now jas been joined by a poster who can't even read a bold letter title page..

As mentioned repeatedly before: that ancient Egyptians are genetically closest to their Southern neighbours does not validate the conclusion that they are black, which is a racial category and not a 'social' one, BTW.

That NatgGeo title page clearly states "Black conquerors of Egypt. Doing the math I must conclude that our concinced threadstarter has reading disability.

What I find ironic is that this thread seems to be completely egomaniacal.

Given such stubborn selfrighteousness in its author I too have lost interest.

But please, rant on gentlemen.

 

[Verbose]

Yes, well. The pyramids on that cover certainly would seem Nubian, due to their shape, so one might surmise that "black" Pharaos conquering Egypt refers specifically to the 25th dyn., and that the article is one of those that maintain a supposedly "racial" distinction between Egyptians and Nubians, a "White" vs. "Black" dichotimy. (We all seem to agree that's a bogus opposition.)

As for the genetics discussed, it's all relatively interesting, though not always that conclusive (those who feel so inclined can have a whale of a time over it). It doesn't however do much for those of us specifically interested in the Ancient Egyptian society and culture. So far it mostly confirms previous supposition of the ethnogenesis of the Ancient Egyptians — with the odd twist here and there, but the fireworks that interest us mostly appeared after the settling of the Nile Valley.

The assertion that the "original" Ancient Egyptians were "black", regardless which social context is invoked for this, is still wildly anachronistic with regards to the Ancient Egyptian view of themselves, and it's even anachronistic using for instance a 19th c. western view of these things, most directly due to the fact that they made a serious effort at distancing Egypt from the rest of Africa, which was perfectly possible since their entire view of racial classification was a horrible mess, not least from the biology not supporting even the concept of "race" in the first place. Trying to salvage this tends to lead to a train of thought that seems to end up with 1) the Western view of the race of Ancient Egyptians was racist and wrong, but 2) applying their standards, but somehow "corrected", they SHOULD have regarded the Ancient Egyptians as "black" according to their own convention, only they didn't.

Egyptians were Africans we all seem fine with. At worst those of us finding the use of the term "black" a bit rubbish are guilty of a somewhat conservative safety- betting that the ancient Egyptians in all likelyhood looked pretty much like the latter day Egyptians, which is to say like a varied bunch, and with a drift in things like degree of pigmentation moving southwards into the Sudan. And yes, some of them would in all probability have been forced to sit at the back of the bus in 1950's Georgia (which I think is pretty close to the actual linchpin of "blackness" here), though quite probably far from all of them.

And gene frequencies in themselves so far aren't really swaying the argument in either way here, are they? They certainly don't seem to offer much meat specifically reinforcing a strong common descent between Ancient Egyptians those west Africans, and their descendants in the New World, which the term "black" has historically been designed to cover, and which is most relevant in the specific social context of the former slave-societies of the New World. And the point of raising that, is that it seem reasonable to infer that this is an association that the use of "black" to describe Ancient Egyptians will give rise to, and allow.

And apparently a bunch of us think that is wooly-thinking well on par with bold-faced assertions of Egyptians being "White" of yore.

 

[Mentuhotep23]

What I find ironic in this thread is that the author consistentently misreads posters' criticism and now jas been joined by a poster who can't even read a bold letter title page..

As mentioned repeatedly before: that ancient Egyptians are genetically closest to their Southern neighbours does not validate the conclusion that they are black, which is a racial category and not a 'social' one, BTW.

That NatgGeo title page clearly states "Black conquerors of Egypt. Doing the math I must conclude that our concinced threadstarter has reading disability.

What I find ironic is that this thread seems to be completely egomaniacal.

Given such stubborn selfrighteousness in its author I too have lost interest.

But please, rant on gentlemen.

Who are you talking about? Kahotep is the threads OP. And MKGLouisville clearly stated that the National Geographic article was referring to the ethnic group closet to the Egyptians (the Nubians). He makes a good point. Once again I think your reading comprehension comes into question.

I'm assuming that you are mistakenly calling me the thread's author. If so I most certainly haven't misread anyone's post and if I have feel free to point out misinterpretations. I think the people who are egomaniacs are the ones who insist that people see things their way and don't have the integrity to admit that they are wrong which is what I believe happened with you during our exchange.

Oh and you still don't appear to recognize the difference between "social race" and race as a taxonomic scientific concept.

Black is clearly being applied by us in a Western social context not as a scientific racial classification.

Yes, well. The pyramids on that cover certainly would seem Nubian, due to their shape, so one might surmise that "black" Pharaos conquering Egypt refers specifically to the 25th dyn., and that the article is one of those that maintain a supposedly "racial" distinction between Egyptians and Nubians, a "White" vs. "Black" dichotimy. (We all seem to agree that's a bogus opposition.)

I'm pretty sure that MKGLouisville is well aware that the cover is about the Nubian conquest of Ancient Egypt. His point is that all the fuss in this thread over the Ancient Egyptians being called Black by people such as myself flies in the face of mainstream academia who has no problem calling the Ancient Nubians Black.

Not that any of you agree with that.

Egyptians were Africans we all seem fine with. At worst those of us finding the use of the term "black" a bit rubbish are guilty of a somewhat conservative safety- betting that the ancient Egyptians in all likelyhood looked pretty much like the latter day Egyptians, which is to say like a varied bunch, and with a drift in things like degree of pigmentation moving southwards into the Sudan. And yes, some of them would in all probability have been forced to sit at the back of the bus in 1950's Georgia (which I think is pretty close to the actual linchpin of "blackness" here), though quite probably far from all of them.

I beg to differ. Nearly all of them would have been forced to the back of the bus as nearly all of them would have been considered Black by Western standards, especially when you apply the One Drop Rule.

The biological evidence indicates that light-skinned peoples in Ancient Egyptian society atleast from the Early Dynastic - New Kingdom period were a minority. As Keita noted in a quote on the previous page Near Eastern people migrated to the Delta primarily during the Islamic and not the Neolithic period.

You should back up such claims with evidence before suggesting otherwise.

And gene frequencies in themselves so far aren't really swaying the argument in either way here, are they? They certainly don't seem to offer much meat specifically reinforcing a strong common descent between Ancient Egyptians those west Africans, and their descendants in the New World, which the term "black" has historically been designed to cover, and which is most relevant in the specific social context of the former slave-societies of the New World. And the point of raising that, is that it seem reasonable to infer that this is an association that the use of "black" to describe Ancient Egyptians will give rise to, and allow.

Studies of modern Egyptian DNA profiles indicate that the Nile Valley was populated during the Neolithic period by people from tropical East Africa (predominate lineage being E3b with a time depth dated to the Neolithic period), with European and Near Eastern genetic lineages having more recent time depths with a likely introduction during historic times.

ABO blood frequency tests on Dynastic Lower Egyptians group them most closely with the Haratin, dark-skinned natives of the Sahara. DNA studies on 12 Dynasty Ancient Egyptians show lineages of multiple origins including those from Africa.

There is clinal variation in the gene frequencies of Egyptian haplotypes with the Near Eastern and European lineages showing less frequency the further South you go into Egypt where frequencies of African derived lineages including E3a (common in West Africa) become prevalent.

All of this is consistent with the contention that Early Nile Valley populations had tropical affinities and gradually gained European and Near Eastern affinities through gene flow over time.

Most Afrocentric scholars contend that Ancient Egyptians had Africoid phenotypes and biological and cultural affinities to more Southerly Africans which was diluted because of historical migrations and invasions on Egypt not that they were culturally or biologically very close to Western African populations so that is a non-starter.

And apparently a bunch of us think that is wooly-thinking well on par with bold-faced assertions of Egyptians being "White" of yore.

It may very well be anachronistic to ascribe modern racial labels like Black or White to the Ancient Egyptian population but we view history within a modern context. While the Ancient Egyptians did recognize skin colors they had no concept of an Africa or an Asia or Europe or even an "Egypt" (a Greek word to describe the country).

They were a nation (KMT) that defined their culture by language and religion.

I believe it is more accurate to say that we are placing Ancient Egypt within a proper historical context than to say we are imposing modern concepts of race and culture on them. To say that they would be considered Black by modern Western standards is not to impose that label on them or imply that they had such an identity about themselves but to acknowledge the relevance of Ancient Egyptian society to modern people.

Egyptian Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass, claims that Ancient Egyptians were not Black nor was Ancient Egypt an African civilization. A swift rebuttal to that would be to cite the anthropological research that debunks that claim as well as the research of African scholars who have established that the Ancient Egyptians had African cultural traditions.


I take issue with people like JEELEN who claim that my thesis is not backed by my sources. My thesis is not that the Ancient Egyptians SHOULD be considered Black or are Black in an objective context I simply claim that they would be regarded as Black by modern Western standards. That is not an incorrect statement it is the truth.

Attacking the arbitrariness of Blackness in response to my thesis (which is that that Ancient Egyptians were Biologically African and tropically adapted) is a strawman.

 

[Verbose]

You should back up such claims with evidence before suggesting otherwise.

It's really cool how you prescribe an orthodoxy you know.

 

[Mentuhotep23]

It's really cool how you prescribe an orthodoxy you know.

All I'm saying is that you should back up your claims with sources.

 

[MKGLouisville]

As mentioned repeatedly before: that ancient Egyptians are genetically closest to their Southern neighbours does not validate the conclusion that they are black, which is a racial category and not a 'social' one, BTW.

LOL That was the point of posting the cover page from NatGeo precisely because it applied a modern Western social label to Egypt's more Southernly neighbor and that social label was ..... 'Black'! This is the same Southernly neighbor that has constantly been found to be ethnically the closest to early Ancient Egyptians. As confirmed by the "Oxford encyclopedia of AE" (authorative) the Ancient Egyptians were closest to Black skinned Africans, whom are labeled 'Black' in the social sense by anyone in the West, but when it comes to the Ancient Egyptians the social label 'Black' instantly becomes problematic!

Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt

"Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kuhorsehockeyes, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)

Now as Mentuhotep stated, we are not FORCING the social label onto the Ancient Egyptians, but we are saying that it CAN be applied to the Ancient Egyptians just as it has been applied to the Ancient Nubians by NatGeo and to the Somali pirates by hate mongrolers, two Black skinned African populations that cluster closest to the Ancient Egyptians.

What I find ironic is that this thread seems to be completely egomaniacal.

Given such stubborn selfrighteousness in its author I too have lost interest.

But please, rant on gentlemen.

The reason why some advocates of 'Black Egypt', might come off as "self righteous" is because we have had the truth backing what we have been arguing for decades, but some people have been determined to undermine the research. The fact that the idea of "Black Egypt" has been surpressed since the interest in Egypt peaked within the last century, through scientist that applied misguided social labels to their own research. Such as labeling the listed Black skinned Africans in the reference above as "Hamites" or "Medditerranean" who's African features were the result of "invading caucasian" and then lumping the "Midditerranen" and "Hamite" under the "Caucasian" cluster, giving the false impression that the said Black skinned Africans were really "caucasian"! Which perpetuated a blantant lie about Ancient Egyptian biological relationships. In the article below Keita anaylizes numerous older studies of the Ancient Egyptians which make the SAME findings as he does today, but demonstrates the fundematal flaw in the applied racial labels.

Studies and Comments of Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships

So to reinterate again the article above demonstrates that Keita's findings that the Ancient Egyptians were most similar to more Southernly Africans is NOT at all new. Even Carleton S. Coon has confirmed this:

EGYPTIANS

"The [pre-Dynastic] Badarian type represents a small branch of the Mediterranean racial group. ... The Badarian skulls are more prognathous than those of their successors, and have higher nasal indices. ... In fact, while the prognathism and nose form would suggest a negroid tendency, this cannot be established, since the hair form is definitely not negroid. ... Morant shows that the Badarian cranial type is closely similar to that of some of the modern Christians of northern Ethiopia—who incidentally do not show negroid characteristics in the skull—and also to the crania of Dravidian-speaking peoples of southern India. ... On the basis of these racial comparisons, it seems reasonable to suggest that this Badarian physical type may have come from the south, near the headwaters of the Blue Nile. It may represent an early Hamitic racial strain, which persists despite some negroid admixture in Ethiopia and Somaliland to the present day.

(Coon, 1939)

HOWEVER, we now know today that the idea that those "Hamites" (Black skinned Africans) crania metric traits were attributed to admixture with "caucasians" has been thouroughly DEBUNKED by modern research and they are now seen as another Africoid (originated and evolved in Africa) population.

"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,” (Adams, 1967, 1979; MacGaffey, 1966; Seligman, 1913, 1915, 1934), but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions. It makes far better sense to regard the adaptively significant features seen in the Horn of Africa as solely an in situ response on the part of separate adaptive traits to the selective forces present in the hot dry tropics of eastern Africa. From the observation that 12,000 years was not a long enough period of time to produce any noticeable variation in pigment by latitude in the New World and that 50,000 years has been barely long enough to produce the beginnings of a gradation in Australia (Brace, 1993a), one would have to argue that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile and the East Horn of Africa have been equatorial for many tens of thousands of years."
(-- C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")

Apparently alot of posters in this thread are up and arms because Keita let's his research speak for itself, without attaching social labels into the data. He instead demonstrates that the Ancient Egyptians were a localized Northeast African population most similar to more Southernly Northeast Africans than anyone else.....What's so "Afrocentric" about confirming that Africanity of an Ancient African civilization is my question, and why do some get so angry when we can attribute social labels to one population but not the other?

 

[innonimatu]

I'm starting to think we have a conspiracy of black-african-egyptians here! The continued interest in this thread is just... unbelivable!

 

[Verbose]

I'm starting to think we have a conspiracy of black-african-egyptians here! The continued interest in this thread is just... unbelivable!

It's all grist to the mill.

 

[Verbose]

Apparently alot of posters in this thread are up and arms because Keita let's his research speak for itself, without attaching social labels into the data. He instead demonstrates that the Ancient Egyptians were a localized Northeast African population most similar to more Southernly Northeast Africans than anyone else.....What's so "Afrocentric" about confirming that Africanity of an Ancient African civilization is my question, and why do some get so angry when we can attribute social labels to one population but not the other?

Apparently a lot of posters are up in arms because Keita doesn't attach social labels into the data — very sensible, and kudos to him — only to have it done for him by certain posters, viz. the entire train-wreck over "black".

 

[Mentuhotep23]

Apparently a lot of posters are up in arms because Keita doesn't attach social labels into the data — very sensible, and kudos to him — only to have it done for him by certain posters, viz. the entire train-wreck over "black".

I personally believe that there would be no train wreck over the ancient Nubians being called Black had the thread been about them. It is the perception of Ancient Egyptian civilization as non-Black that I believe drives certain posters to keep protesting the statement that they'd be regarded as Black by Western social standards.

The direction of criticism has changed throughout this thread. First the OP's thesis was dismissed as Afrocentrism and alleged holes poked in his claims. Then Keita was attacked as having an Afrocentric bias himself when his research was presented. After it was established that Keita's research has received mainstream acceptance in academia strawmen such as the arbitrariness of Blackness were attacked.

The message I'm getting from certain posters is,

"Keita may be right but you are wrong because you are calling them Black when Blackness is arbitrary"

Jeleen has even gone as far as to misrepresent my position as defending Black as a racial label when I a clearly using it in a social context.


Let's forget about the label Black and deal with the OP's thesis. His thesis is that Ancient Egypt was biologically and culturally African and its people tropically adapted with biological affinities to tropical Northeast African populations.

His thesis is supported by mainstream scholarship. You either agree with it or you don't.

If you don't feel free to challenge it but enough with the strawman arguments.

 

[MKGLouisville]

The continued interest in this thread is just... unbelivable!

I agree with you! It is unbelievable that something so obvious and conclusive could provoke some posters to continue posting in favor of an unsupported theory. This thread should have been over when the research was presented confirming the OP's case, but the idea of what he had proposed must have struck a nerve with some posters.

As Mentuhotep stated this wouldn't be an issue if the OP were attaching the social label to the Nubians (as NatGeo did), but the fact that it is 'the great' Egypt some people just won't stand for it. It's quite amusing actually!

 

[Zardnaar]

The ancient Egytians may have been black by 1950's standards, but I think they were most likely similar to modern Arabs with black rulers at times via conquests. Its not impossable some were part white either via white slaves brought from the Caucasus. I don't think they were black a'la sub saharan bantu black.

 

[MKGLouisville]

The ancient Egytians may have been black by 1950's standards, but I think they were most likely similar to modern Arabs with black rulers at times via conquests

These SSAs would be considered 'Black' by anyone in 2010 standards!

Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt

"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kuhorsehockeyes, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)

Arabs and 'Whites' don't look like modern Black skinned SSA Horn Africans!

I don't think they were black a'la sub saharan bantu black.

No one stated that they were Bantu Black even though they have been found in Egypt in substantial numbers since the formatative period:

"The M2 lineage is mainly found primarily in "eastern", "sub-saharan", and sub-equatorial African groups, those with the highest frequency of the "Broad" trend physiognomy, but found also in notable frequencies in Nubia and Upper Egypt, as indicated by the RFLP TaqI 49a, f variant IV (see Lucotte and Mercier, 2003; Al-Zahery et al. 2003 for equivalecies of markers), which is affiliated with it. The distribution of these markers in other parts of Africa has usually been explained by the "Bantu migrations", but their presence in the Nile Valley in non-Bantu speakers cannot be explained in this way. Their existence is better explained by their being present in populations of the early Holocene Sahara, who in part went on to people the Nile Valley in the mid-Holocene, according to Hassan (1988); this occured long before the "Bantu migrations", which also do not exlain the high frequency of M2 in Senegal, since there are no Bantu speakers there either". S.O.Y. Keita
American Journal of Human Biology
16:679-689 (2004)

I guess that would explain why the Sphinx has Bantu features?

 

[Zardnaar]

As a matter of interest what does DNA evidence say from mummies? I don't think the ancient egyptians were black or white as such but with the timeframe involved several groups ruylesd the Egyptians at onbe point or another.

 

[Plotinus]

I haven't seen a decent answer to the small matter of Abba Moses!

An awful lot of the evidence that's been presented here seems to indicate that the ancient Egyptians were more closely related, at least in some ways, to Nubians, people from the Horn of Africa, and sub-Saharan peoples, than they were to people from the Mediterranean or Europe. But that doesn't seem to me to be saying a great deal. It makes them more like those peoples - but how much more? And what does that really mean? As far as I can tell, all of it indicates that the ancient Egyptians had features in common with those peoples and were related to them by some degree of closeness. But I can't see how one gets from that to the claim that they looked just like them.

Again, saying that they were "biologically African" is fine, but meaningless. Saying that they were "tropically adapted" is fine, but this is presumably a description that could be applied to plenty of people who aren't remotely black, e.g. Malays, indigenous South Americans, etc.

As for those pictures, I would say that the men in the top photo look black - but they certainly don't look like (say) west Africans. The one in the middle looks almost Indian. The woman in the second photo looks mixed race to me, not black.

I'm impressed that anyone can tell the racial characteristics of the Sphinx, given that it appears to have been made by a race of people with features almost entirely blasted off by the sand, and no noses.

And I certainly don't say all that because I don't want the ancient Egyptians to be black or I don't think black people are capable of building that civilisation, or anything like that. I would hope that at least one of the links in my signature would indicate that I don't take such a view. I say it simply because that is how things seem to me. The language used and the pictures presented suggest to me that "black", "biologically African", and the other terms that are being used to describe the ancient Egyptians are simply too broad, or at least are being used in too broad a way, for them to be enormously meaningful. On the evidence presented, I would probably agree that the ancient Egyptians were "black" or "biologically African" or whatever the term is, in the sense that the defenders of this view use the term - but not in the sense in which I[i/] would use the term.

 

[Mentuhotep23]

I haven't seen a decent answer to the small matter of Abba Moses!

What about him?

An awful lot of the evidence that's been presented here seems to indicate that the ancient Egyptians were more closely related, at least in some ways, to Nubians, people from the Horn of Africa, and sub-Saharan peoples, than they were to people from the Mediterranean or Europe. But that doesn't seem to me to be saying a great deal. It makes them more like those peoples - but how much more? And what does that really mean? As far as I can tell, all of it indicates that the ancient Egyptians had features in common with those peoples and were related to them by some degree of closeness. But I can't see how one gets from that to the claim that they looked just like them.

Their cranial traits OVERLAP with tropical Africans which means they looked just like them.

They also descend from them without experiencing any significant differentiation.

Again, saying that they were "biologically African" is fine, but meaningless. Saying that they were "tropically adapted" is fine, but this is presumably a description that could be applied to plenty of people who aren't remotely black, e.g. Malays, indigenous South Americans, etc.

If you want to understand what they looked like and what their biological relationships as well as bio-cultural origins were then terms like Biologically African and tropically adapted are not meaningless.

For instance the term Biologically African answers this question - Where did their physical traits evolve?

Tropically adapted answers this question - What type of climate were they adapted to?

Having a long term residence in the tropics means that they were substantially dark-skinned. They were a dark-skinned (medium to dark brown pigmentation) African people which gives us an idea of what they looked like.

As for those pictures, I would say that the men in the top photo look black - but they certainly don't look like (say) west Africans. The one in the middle looks almost Indian. The woman in the second photo looks mixed race to me, not black.

They're all people of recent African descent. Noone is saying the Ancient Egyptians looked like a stereotypical West African population. to consider only a person who is Black one who looks like a West African invokes the "True Negro" myth.

I'm impressed that anyone can tell the racial characteristics of the Sphinx, given that it appears to have been made by a race of people with features almost entirely blasted off by the sand, and no noses.

It has experienced sand erosion and its nose was broken off in the 12th century by a radical Sufi monk. But at the very least we have an idea of its morphological characteristics ("Broad" or "Negroid") which has given several observers such as Count Constantin De Volney the impression that it is a Black African as well as a forensic artist.



Link to video.

And I certainly don't say all that because I don't want the ancient Egyptians to be black or I don't think black people are capable of building that civilisation, or anything like that. I would hope that at least one of the links in my signature would indicate that I don't take such a view. I say it simply because that is how things seem to me. The language used and the pictures presented suggest to me that "black", "biologically African", and the other terms that are being used to describe the ancient Egyptians are simply too broad, or at least are being used in too broad a way, for them to be enormously meaningful. On the evidence presented, I would probably agree that the ancient Egyptians were "black" or "biologically African" or whatever the term is, in the sense that the defenders of this view use the term - but not in the sense in which I[i/] would use the term.

Terms are terms. You ought to have a good idea of what they looked like based on the evidence presented.

 

[MKGLouisville]

But that doesn't seem to me to be saying a great deal. It makes them more like those peoples - but how much more? And what does that really mean? As far as I can tell, all of it indicates that the ancient Egyptians had features in common with those peoples and were related to them by some degree of closeness. But I can't see how one gets from that to the claim that they looked just like them.

LOL I mean are you seriously asking this question? I mean what else has to be presented for you people to accept that the Ancient Egyptians were a local Northeast African population who's crania are in the same cluster with more Southernly Black skinned Africans populations;

Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
""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)

"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kuhorsehockeyes, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)

Lefkowitz 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." S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54

Who's Limb Proportions were Tropical and once labeled 'Super Negroid'

"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.

Based on Principal that means that they had Dark/Black skin;

"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics."(-- C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")

"During an excavation headed by the German Institute for Archaeology, Cairo, at the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt, three types of tissues from different mummies were sampled to compare 13 well known rehydration methods for mummified tissue with three newly developed methods. .. Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1). The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin."
--(A-M Mekota and M Vermehren. (2005) Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues. Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, Vol. 80, No. 1, Pages 7-13

Again, saying that they were "biologically African" is fine, but meaningless.

True enough being biologically African isn't specific considering Africa's indigenous diversity, but when the research and inference based on that research is introduced in regaurds to which African populations the Ancient Egyptians had the most affintity with, which in turn tells us what the Ancient Egyptians looked like, people throughout this thread have thrown tantrums rather than accept the obvious!

Saying that they were "tropically adapted" is fine, but this is presumably a description that could be applied to plenty of people who aren't remotely black, e.g. Malays, indigenous South Americans, etc.

Again here is a case of not wanting to accept the obvious! Where are the nearest tropics to Egypt?...... That's right in more Southernly Africa! Seems to correlate with the Crania anaylsis doesn't it

As for those pictures, I would say that the men in the top photo look black - but they certainly don't look like (say) west Africans.

Again who said anything about West Africa (strawman)! Don't ignore the two in the back either!

The woman in the second photo looks mixed race to me, not black.

LOL OK now you're just being silly and according to that opinion 90% of African Americans (who are about 85% African) aren't Black looking.

If that woman isn't black then this Woman isn't black either

I'm impressed that anyone can tell the racial characteristics of the Sphinx, given that it appears to have been made by a race of people with features almost entirely blasted off by the sand, and no noses.

Oh don't worry it was inidividuals much more qualified than myself who labeled the Sphinx "Black African" (Which they obviously attributed Bantu features as the only way to be African). Here's the documentary!

The language used and the pictures presented suggest to me that "black", "biologically African", and the other terms that are being used to describe the ancient Egyptians are simply too broad, or at least are being used in too broad a way, for them to be enormously meaningful.

My thing is that if you (not saying that you do) are willing to accept that Nordic, Alpine, and Medditerranean are all variations of what we all refer as white then you (again not saying that you do subscribe to race) and/or people who believe in the concept of race should have no problem recognizing that people who are referred to as 'Black' (Africans) come in different shapes, forms, and hues not just the West African Bantu look, considering that people we refer to as 'white' have variation.

On the evidence presented, I would probably agree that the ancient Egyptians were "black" or "biologically African" or whatever the term is, in the sense that the defenders of this view use the term - but not in the sense in which I[i/] would use the term.

I mean that's your opinion and I respect the fact that you recognize that our point is proven.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nordic, Alpine, Medditerranean would be more 19th century way to define whites normally followed by XYZ subgroup is better usually by that advocates sub group he belongs to. Weren't the black Nubian Pharoahs unusal because they were black as opposed to the Egyptians? I'm reasonably sure the AE themselves didn't class themselves as black but its hard to tell. I have seen pictures on Egyptian ruins with everything thing from pale skin through to black. They seemed to portray themselves as bown skinned as opposed to black.

Some of the rulers woulod have been mixed race and its not impossable they were part black/greek/caucasian/whatever.