The African Origin of Ancient Egyptian Civilization

[Vastatosaurus Rex]

I wrote this paper last summer for leisure. I actually submitted it to the National Gallery of Writing and it got accepted. The thesis of the paper is that ancient Egypt was a native African civilization rather than a "Near Eastern" or "Mediterranean" one like most people think. I thought I'd post it here simply for the sake of stimulating a discussion on the matter.

The African Origin of Ancient Egyptian Civilization

Few bygone civilizations fascinate us as much as that of the ancient Egyptians. The kingdom along the Nile River has been the subject of countless books, magazine articles, movies, and television shows and documentaries. There is even a hotel in Las Vegas with an ancient Egyptian theme! Museums all over the world dedicate entire galleries to excavated Egyptian artifacts, and Egypt itself receives millions of tourists flocking to photograph its ruins each year.

There are many reasons behind our infatuation with ancient Egypt. One is its sheer antiquity. Egypt is one of the world's oldest civilizations, blossoming at a time when most of the rest of the world (including the ancestors of the Greeks, Chinese, and Maya) had yet to build anything more impressive than stick huts. Another reason is that we are amazed by the Egyptians' achievements: their colossal temples and tombs, their uncannily well-preserved mummies, their art, and their glittering jewelry. A third reason is that despite more than two centuries of study by Egyptologists, much about ancient Egypt still remains mysterious. Many questions about the Egyptians still have their answers buried by the sands of time. For instance, how were the pyramids built? What was responsible for the early death of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun? And how did the Egyptians influence later civilizations such as Greece and Rome?

However, the most contentious question concerning ancient Egypt, the one that has inspired the most emotionally charged arguments, concerns their ethnic identity. Egypt lies on the African continent, specifically in its northeastern region, yet traditionally historians have classified it as part of the "Near Eastern" (alongside Sumer, Babylon, and Israel) or "Mediterranean" (alongside Greece and Rome) cultural blocs. Whenever anyone makes a movie or television show set in Egypt, white rather than black actors are chosen to play the Egyptians; for instance, Yul Brynner as the pharaoh Rameses in C.B. Demille's The Ten Commandments, or Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep in The Mummy. The implication here is that despite being in Africa, ancient Egypt was really a white civilization of European or Asian origin rather than being truly African.

This view is wrong. The best evidence we have suggests that the civilization of ancient Egypt was established in the main by indigenous Africans. This is not to say that there was no influence, biological or cultural, from Asia or Europe on Egypt, but any such influence was slight. The ancient Egyptians, biologically and culturally, were fundamentally Africans.

Biologically African

Before we begin, we need to clarify on what it means to be biologically African. Most people think they know what African (or "Negroid") features look like: for instance, broad noses and thick lips. While many Africans do have those features, there are many who do not. According to the physical anthropologist Jean Hiernaux in his 1975 book The People of Africa (Hiernaux 1975):

"In sub-Saharan Africa, many anthropological characters show a wide range of population means or frequencies. In some of them, the whole world range is covered in the sub-continent. Here live the shortest and the tallest human populations, the one with the highest and the one with the lowest nose, the one with the thickest and the one with the thinnest lips in the world. In this area, the range of the average nose widths covers 92 per cent of the world range: only a narrow range of extremely low means are absent from the African record."

Narrower noses and thinner lips, so-called "Caucasian" features, are particularly common in northeastern African countries not far from Egypt, such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and northern Sudan. Why this is so remains unknown, although some anthropologists have noted a correlation between nose width in humans and air moisture, with narrower noses predominating among peoples living in drier climates. The point is that native African facial features are diverse and are not limited to the stereotypical broad-nosed, full-lipped "Negroid" type.

With that in mind, how can we tell whether the Egyptians' skeletal structure was more African or European/Asian?

One way physical anthropologists can tell how closely related certain populations are is by studying the overall shape of their skulls, because skull shape varies from population to population. Populations with the most similar-looking skulls are considered more closely related.

Analyzed this way, ancient Egyptian skulls in general turn out to be more similar to skulls from northeastern African countries such as Ethiopia or northern Sudan than to European or Asian skulls (Kemp 2005). Sub-Saharan traits are especially strong in skulls from southern Egypt (also known as Upper Egypt) (Keita 1990, 2005), although they are less pronounced in northern Egyptian (or Lower Egyptian) skulls.
However, there is some evidence implying that Egyptians did eventually mix with Asians and Europeans. Comparison of Egyptian skulls across time shows continuity for most of Egyptian history, but there is a degree of change in later periods, when Egypt experienced increased infiltration from foreigners (Zakrzewski 2004). By then, however, Egyptian civilization was in decline. Any foreign admixture during Egypt's golden years was small in scale.

Ancient Egyptians also appear to be more closely related to Africans than to Europeans or Asians when we take into account the shape of their skeletons beyond their skulls. Particularly important here is the length of the limbs. People from Africa have proportionately longer limbs than people from Europe or Asia, because longer limbs more easily dissipate heat. Ancient Egyptians' limb proportions are more similar to those of Africans than Europeans or Asians (Zakrzewski 2003). One study (Robins and Shute 1986) found the Egyptians' limbs to be even longer than those of most Africans, calling them "super-Negroid"!

Another line of evidence concerns hair morphology. One might think that all one has to do to tell what hair texture the ancient Egyptians had is to simply look at their mummies, but this can be misleading. Analysis of hair from Egyptian mummies shows that the proteins in it have been damaged, possibly by chemicals used in the mummification process (Bertrand 2003). Damage to hair's chemical structure can change texture. Fortunately, there is a more reliable way to tell the original texture of a hair is by measuring the cross-section with a special instrument called a trichometer. Using this, one can get the minimum and maximum diameter of a hair. Then, one divides the minimum measurement by the maximum and multiplies the product by a hundred, producing an index.

Populations vary in the indices of their hairs' cross-section. Curly-haired populations, such as Africans and Melanesians, have indices between 55 and 70. On the other hand, straight-haired populations, such as Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans, have indices above 70.

When ancient Egyptian hair samples are subjected to trichometer measurements, they typically turn out indices between 35 and 66.5. This indicates that most ancient Egyptians had naturally curly hair, as do most Africans (M'Bantu and Supia 2001). However, it must be noted that Egyptians usually shaved their heads to rid themselves of hair lice and wore wigs most of the time (often the hair used to make the wigs was imported from surrounding nations). Thus ancient Egyptian artwork does not usually depict Egyptians with their natural hair.

Finally, there is the question of the Egyptians' skin color. You might think that looking at Egyptian paintings would easily answer this, but the problem is that Egyptian art was symbolic rather than realistic. Characters in Egyptian murals may be brown, yellow, gold, green, white, or black depending on the symbolism. The most common convention in earlier Egyptian art is to paint men brown and women yellow, but in later dynasties both sexes are portrayed as brown-skinned. Whatever caused this change in convention remains a mystery, but the point is that Egyptian art is not meant to accurately portray its subjects' skin tones.

If we wanted to more accurately determine the skin color of the ancient Egyptians, we should look at the skin cells in their mummies and take note of the amount of melanin, the pigment that determines skin tone. One study (Mekota and Vermehren 2005) did just that when analyzing Egyptian mummies' soft tissue. They described the skin cells as being "pack with melanin, as expected for specimens of Negroid [African] origin." Unfortunately, they did not go into depth or specify exactly how much melanin was in the skin cells, but by choosing the word "Negroid", they implied that the ancient Egyptians' skin tones were within the range we call "black".

In conclusion, the ancient Egyptians were, by and large, not white people like Yul Brynner or Arnold Vosloo. In fact, if we saw them today, we would probably call them "black".

Physical anthropology is not the only discipline which provides evidence for the African origin of ancient Egypt. Archaeology also shows us that ancient Egyptian civilization was fundamentally rooted in Africa as well.

Archaeologically African

The oldest evidence of an organized society in Egypt comes from the country's far south, in a basin called Nabta Playa out in the Sahara Desert. In this barren environment, archaeologists have found the remains of villages with huts built in straight rows, wells, stone-roofed chambers with the bones of dead cattle (most likely sacrificed) buried within, and even a circle of megaliths similar to England's Stonehenge. These ruins date back to between the 10th and 7th millennia BC. Back then, the Sahara was grassland, and there was a lake within the basin, allowing people to live there (Wendorf and Schild 1998).

The Nabta Playa proto-civilization may represent the earliest stage of Egyptian civilization. One reason to think so is the evidence for cattle sacrifice there. Cattle sacrifice was also practiced by ancient Egyptians; as many as 16,000 cattle were sacrificed in one year to the god Amun during the reign of pharaoh Rameses III (Dollinger 2009). Perhaps this Egyptian tradition had its roots in Nabta Playa.

Around 5,500 years ago, the Sahara dried up, forcing the people living there into Egypt's Nile Valley, where they adopted farming. Soon, two early civilizations developed, one in northern Egypt and another in southern Egypt. Of these two cultures, it was the southern Egyptians who developed what we think of as ancient Egyptian civilization. It is in southern Egypt that we first find evidence of social and economic differentiation among people, indicating the establishment of a social hierarchy similar to that of later Egyptian culture. The institution of the pharaoh also appears to be southern in origin; the oldest artifact with pharaonic iconography on it is an incense burner found in Qustul, just north of the modern Egypt/Sudan border. In time, the culture of Upper Egypt dominated that of Lower Egypt and even conquered it by 3100 BC, making Egypt a single country for the first time in history (Bard 1994).

The genesis of ancient Egyptian culture in the country's south is inconsistent with any argument that Egyptian civilization is part of the "Near Eastern" or "Mediterranean" cultural bloc. If civilization in Egypt was indeed an import from Asia, we would expect the north to dominate and conquer the south. Instead, the reverse was the case, which shows that Egyptian culture was essentially an indigenous---and therefore African---development.

Linguistically African

The Ancient Egyptian language is classified by most linguists as one of a phylum of languages called "Afroasiatic" or "Afrasian". This language phylum is believed to have originated in the Horn of Africa (the region encompassing Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea) between 15,000 and 13,000 BC and spread to Egypt between 12,000 and 10,000 BC (Ehert 1996). Other examples of Afrasian languages include Hausa (spoken in Nigeria), Tuareg (spoken throughout the southern Sahara), and Oromo (spoken in Ethiopia).

Culturally African

Before I begin, I will admit that Africans do not belong to a single culture. In fact African cultures have always been diverse. Among the different types of cultures that have developed in Africa are urban civilizations, rural chiefdoms, pastoralist tribes, and hunter-gatherer bands. Broad generalizations about African cultures are therefore difficult to make.

With that said, the ancient Egyptians did share many customs with several other societies in Africa. Among these customs:

• Divine Kingship: Unlike in Mesopotamia, where the king was an intermediary between the gods and the mortal population, in Egypt the pharaoh was a god who had the power to make the Nile flood and inundate farmers' fields. In other African societies, the king is also thought to be a god with control over the weather; his duty is to make it rain.
• Circumcision: In both ancient Egypt and some African societies, children would be circumcised as a coming-of-age rite.
• Animal Worship: Egyptians thought that certain animals were living representations of their gods. For instance, cats represented the goddess Bast, cattle the goddess Hathor or the god Apis, and crocodiles the god Sobek. Many African societies also practice this type of animal worship.
• Ancestor Worship/Veneration: The Egyptians believed in honoring their deceased ancestors and would hold feasts in their honor. Ancestor veneration is also widespread in the rest of Africa.
• Voodoo: The Egyptians believed that if you made an image of your enemies and damaged it, the enemies would be hurt as well. A similar belief is found in the "voodoo" religions of Africa.

The above is far from a complete list of shared cultural practices between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, but it should suffice to show that the Egyptians had at least a little in common with other African peoples.

Why is Egypt not recognized as African?

The ancient Egyptians were Africans. Their biology, language, and culture all evolved within Africa, not in Asia or Europe. Yet most people do not realize this and continue to think of Egypt as part of the "Near East" or "Mediterranean".

This reason for this should be obvious: it is a legacy of racism. When Westerners began studying the remains of ancient Egypt in the 18th and 19th centuries, they could not admit that native Africans built this civilization. After all, many Western economies depended on the subjugation and exploitation of Africans, whether as slaves or colonial subjects. The justification for this was that Africans were dim-witted savages that needed to be dominated by the white man. If one of the world's earliest and most influential civilizations was built by Africans, that justification for exploitation would be refuted. Therefore, early Egyptologists argued that the Egyptians were really invaders from Europe or Asia rather than native Africans.

Fortunately, modern science has marched on since those prejudiced beginnings, and has shown us that the ancient Egyptians were indeed of African origin. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the evidence connecting Egypt to the rest of Africa, so popular culture continues to depict it as non-African.

Why Egypt's Africanity must be recognized

Acknowledging the African roots of ancient Egypt is important for two reasons. The first reason is that it will make our reconstructions of ancient Egypt more accurate. When recreating the past we must strive to be as accurate as possible. Failure to be accurate would lead to the propagation of misconceptions that distort our view of the past.

The second reason is that denying Egypt its Africanity in spite of the facts does a disservice to people of African descent. It denies them their heritage and sends the message that people of their stock could not have accomplished a civilization as powerful or influential as Egypt. It therefore perpetuates racism against Africans and people with African ancestry.

If we are to challenge racism and come together as one species, we must admit the fact that people of all skin tones have contributed to human development throughout history. We should stop pretending that only the light-skinned peoples of Europe and Asia matter in history. To continue to do so is to perpetuate a harmful lie.

It is time to accept the truth. One of the world's oldest civilizations, one which help lay the foundations for our own modern civilization, was established by Africans.

Works Cited

Bard, Kathryn A. "The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence." Journal of Field Archaeology 21.3 (1994): 265-288.

Bertrand, L., et al. "Microbeam synchrotron imaging of hairs from Ancient Egyptian mummies." Journal of Synchroton Radiation (2003).

Dollinger, Andre. "Farmed and Domesticated Animals." An introduction to the history and culture of Pharaonic Egypt. 24 June 2009
<http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/tim ... nimals.htm>

Ehert, Christopher. "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture." Egypt in Africa. Comp. Theodore Celenko. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art and Indi¬ana University Press, 1996. 25-27.

Hiernaux, Jean. The People of Africa. N.p.: Encore Editions, 1975.

Keita, S.O.Y. "Early Nile Valley Farmers, From El-Badari, Aboriginals or 'European' Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data." Journal of Black Studies 36.2 (2005): 191-208.

Keita, S.O.Y. "Studies of Ancient Crania from Northern Africa." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 83 (1990): 35-48.

Kemp, Barry J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. 1989. 2nd ed. N.p.: Routledge, 2005. 53.

M'bantu, Anu, and Fari Supia. "Egyptology: Hanging in the Hair." Ancient Africa's Black Kingdoms. Ed. Myra Wysinger. 8 July 2001. 24 June 2009 <http://wysinger.homestead.com/hair2.html>.

Mekota, A.M., and M. Vermehren. "Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues." Biotechnic & Histochemistry 80.1 (2005): 7-13.

Robins, G., and C.C.D. Shute. "Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions." Human Evolution 1 (1986): 313-324.

Wendorf, Fred, and Romuald Schild. "Late Neolithic megalithic structures at Nabta Playa (Sahara), southwestern Egypt." The Comparative Archaeology Web. Mar. 1998. 24 June 2009 <http://www.comp-archaeology.org/WendorfSAA98.html>.

Zakrzewski, Sonia R. "Intra-population and temporal variation in ancient Egyptian crania." Program of the Seventy-Third Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The Hyatt Regency Hotel, Tampa, FL. 14 Apr. 2004.

Zakrzewski, Sonia R. "Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (2003): 219-229.

[Samuel]

I'm going to have to argue with this. For starters I'm pretty sure the inhabitants of Kush were different from the population of Egypt and its people and rulers illustrated differently as well.

In conclusion, the ancient Egyptians were, by and large, not white people like Yul Brynner or Arnold Vosloo. In fact, if we saw them today, we would probably call them "black".

Like Obama?

Divine Kingship: Unlike in Mesopotamia, where the king was an intermediary between the gods and the mortal population, in Egypt the pharaoh was a god who had the power to make the Nile flood and inundate farmers' fields. In other African societies, the king is also thought to be a god with control over the weather; his duty is to make it rain.

Forgive me if I am remembering wrong, but I believe the belief is that the origional inhabitants of a land have that power and the kings generally laid claim to that. For example, in Burkina Faso the rulers and preists were seperate due to the kings not being the native inhabitants.

Also, are you sure the King was viewed as a God with the power to cause the flood? I'm pretty sure such a religious belief wouldn't hold together for long.

Circumcision: In both ancient Egypt and some African societies, children would be circumcised as a coming-of-age rite.

Aren't these societies in Western Africa?

Animal Worship: Egyptians thought that certain animals were living representations of their gods. For instance, cats represented the goddess Bast, cattle the goddess Hathor or the god Apis, and crocodiles the god Sobek. Many African societies also practice this type of animal worship.

Where were these African societies located? If these practices did not exist in Kush or Libya, it is more likely that they were formed locally than were imported from the rest of Africa.

Voodoo: The Egyptians believed that if you made an image of your enemies and damaged it, the enemies would be hurt as well. A similar belief is found in the "voodoo" religions of Africa.

Isn't voodoo from Western Africa? And can you give a source for the Eqyptian belief systems working that way?

I'm not a professional historian, but I think you need to build a much better case. Egypt was located on the shores of the Mediterranean and was in constant contact with the near eastern powers. Its ability to access the rest of Africa was blocked by Kush and the Sahara desert. Can you provide any information on trade routes across the Sahara during the time of the Old Kingdom?

[Vastatosaurus Rex]

For starters I'm pretty sure the inhabitants of Kush were different from the population of Egypt and its people and rulers illustrated differently as well.

Since Kush was next door to Egypt, you'd think there would be some genetic and phenotypical overlap between the inhabitants of the two nations.

If it helps, this thread was the source of my claims about ancient Egyptian culture.

[Simon_Jester]

One problem I see:
You cite a lot of things that ancient Egypt and various African civilizations have in common (the style of their religions, the veneration of monarchs). What you do not do is show that these customs existed in sub-Saharan Africa before they existed in ancient Egypt. For instance, you do not prove that there were divine kings in Africa* before there were divine kings in Egypt.

Which means that your argument could just as well be used to prove the Egyptian origin of African civilization. And evidence that proves the opposite of what you think as easily as it proves what you think isn't very good evidence.

Another problem:
You do not do an adequate job of showing that various Egyptian customs did not exist in Mesopotamia, the other place they could have gotten them from. Or that they existed in the prehistoric Sudan (Kush), the only place in Africa they could have gotten them from. Therefore, the fact that you can claim similarities between the ancestor-veneration of Africa and of Egypt proves little; the Chinese venerate ancestors too, and it's pretty obvious they didn't get the idea from anywhere in Africa or from Egypt.

In short, if you want to show that X is related to Y, you must show that there are features of Y that are unique to X and its known relatives. Which you haven't done.

*Shortened from "sub-Saharan Africa" for brevity, using "Africa" to denote sub-Saharan Africa and to exclude Egypt.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

While I tend to agree on the basic plausibility of a north African origin for Egyptian civilization in the Saharan green period (plausibility, not necessarily agreement with it as a factual thing), the simple fact is that we already have native Africans who perfectly exemplify all the characteristics of what Egyptians looked like: Berbers. They predated the Arab conquest and are unquestionably the native population of North Africa. But they are not black as such in the modern racial sense. Sheesh, we know some of the Pharaohs were redheads.

But let's not forget that Egyptian civilization was unique because it wasn't a civilization in the classic, literal sense. Egypt basically did not have cities. It had extremely densely arranged villages and some ritual centres which consisted basically of temples and palaces and nothing else. Egypt was like an island in a desert sea at its height; it did not need large, highly concentrated walled cities like Sumer, Elam, the Harappans, etc, because before the camel the desert completely blocked travel. The banks of the Nile were an island in a sea more impregnable than the actual ocean.

Thus Egyptian culture developed uniquely because its people started building monuments and temples and palaces without going through the stage of walled settlements like Jericho and Çatal Huyuk in the other parts of the Near East. This provides a much better, structuralist argument for why Egyptian customs were so unique from those of the rest of the Near East, and more generally (especially in regards to the treatment of women) mimic the very early developed cultures which came into existence on islands, like the Minoans. Regardless of their exact origins or ethnicity, their position as a virtually unique culture that developed in a hydraulic regimen unique from the Near East which required extensive dams and levies to sustain agriculture, whereas they did not, provides a far more parsimonious explanation for their specific traits and differents from other Near East cultures. Their climate and geography dictated that they were a civilization without true cities until well into the stage of unified polities, which most other civilizations in the rest of the world followed the opposite course.

That is a sufficient, and preferred explanation.

But this is not to say that the ancient Egyptians were not African; it is just much more likely that they looked to our eyes, like modern berbers do, to briefly address the issue of ethnicity. Trying to use curly hair as evidence for a population being black is also extremely disingenuous, as all near-east peoples have a high incidence of extremely curled hair. For that matter those genes happily continue on in a lot of Jewish people today who are otherwise white; I had a girlfriend who was paler than I am (and I am really, really damned pale) who had a very impressive Jewfro. It is simply impossible to equate curly hair with blackness.

Also the stylization of Egyptian art is explicit and meaningful: Egyptians are depicted as a very red brown, which makes berber skin tones well; the Nubians are shown explicitly as coal black, which is what they are in the modern era.

For an example of a berber, here we go:



Tightly curled dark hair, certainly, and beautiful coal black eyes (which are a feature of many people in the Afro-Asiatic ethnic grouping which includes the semitic peoples, berbers, Egyptians, etc), the later of which is certainly well-attested in Egyptian art. But the skin tone is a bronzed red-brown nicely matching Egyptian depictions of their own skin colour, and contrasting sharply with the appearance of the black peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa.

[Norseman]

I should also add that the Hall of Ma'at, a debunking website, has an extensive section dedicated to afrocentrism, it's definately worth reading.

[Vastatosaurus Rex]

@ Duchess

You say that the brown tone ancient Egyptians painted themselves as having, as opposed to the literally black tone they gave their neighbors to the south, proves that they weren't "black". The problem is, a lot of so-called "black" people are also brown-skinned like the AEs:





Of course, racial "blackness" is a subjective and nebulous idea---I've met people who consider Indians to be black, and people who don't consider Ethiopians or other narrow-featured sub-Saharan Africans to be black. Therefore, whether the ancient Egyptians were "black" is pretty much up to your definition of "blackness". That does not change the fact that, biologically, the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to other northeast African populations (most of whom are considered "black" by many people) than to anyone else, whether European, Near Eastern, or even sub-Saharan.

With regards to your suggestion that ancient Egyptians were most like Berbers, there is actually some genetic evidence that Egyptians living today, despite mixing with various groups since antiquity, are still more closely related to northeast Africans (e.g. Sudanese and Ethiopian groups) than to northwest Africans such as the Berbers.

Y-Chromosome data


mtDNA data


@ Norseman

I am not an Afrocentrist. In fact I reject many claims associated with Afrocentrists (e.g. black Cleopatra, black Hannibal, Greeks stealing philosophy from Egyptians, Africans teaching civilization to Mesoamerican Olmecs, etc.). I don't think simply acknowledging an indigenous African (specifically northeast African) origin for the Egyptians is sufficient to label me an Afrocentrist.

[Thanas]

I have to say that compared to a scholarly article, your paper is worthless. You say you cited a lot of works, but in fact you did not cite anything at all - a cite should look like:

"ancient egyptians share common traits, these are .......,[1]"

And then you would have another thing below that says:
[1] Person x, Title y, pages X-Y.

[Lonestar]

@ Duchess

You say that the brown tone ancient Egyptians painted themselves as having, as opposed to the literally black tone they gave their neighbors to the south, proves that they weren't "black". The problem is, a lot of so-called "black" people are also brown-skinned like the AEs:

I guess I'll point out the obvious, that both those people are descended from American slaves, where there was a very high incidence of white-on-black rape.

[Elfdart]

I have no idea where this chromosome study came from, but even if it's true, it shows that the Egypt 1 group (whatever that is) is actually closer to the Arabs and Tunisians than it is to the sub-Saharan Africans (like the Masai) on the chart. The graph makes it appear the other way around by starting one axis at zero and using odd-numbered points, while the other uses even-numbered points. For example, the Masai are .04 different from the first Egyptian group, while the Arabs and Tunisians are only .03 away from them. Yet the chart makes it look like the Egyptians and Masai are closer. This look like theTexas Sharpshooter at work, and even then, they have to use an oval to fit these countries into the cluster. Not exactly convincing, as far as I can tell.

One more thing: Lumping the Sudanese and Ethiopians into the sub-Saharan African cluster is really a lot of pettifoggery, since that is NOT how the term is typically used, which is to describe the various peoples living in places like Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Zambia and so on*. On top of that, all the countries in the oval cluster have huge amounts of Arab and other Middle Eastern influence (for example, the fairly large number of East Africans descended from Jews) due to trade and other relations.

You might as well try to argue that Mexican civilization since 1500 is more Indian/Native American than Spanish, on the grounds that one cluster of Mexicans has more DNA in common with people living in Guatemala or El Salvador than with the people of Spain. This would be stupid since not are are almost all Mexicans at least partially of Spanish descent, but so are most people in Guatemala and El Salvador. There are differences in the various Spanish-speaking parts of the Americas (Cubans are mostly European and/or African, for example), but there's a reason these countries are referred to as Spanish-speaking America or Latin America.


*It's like describing Ghana as a "western" country because of its location, when you know the term "western" is used to describe European countries or those countries where European influence is predominant.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I have to say that compared to a scholarly article, your paper is worthless. You say you cited a lot of works, but in fact you did not cite anything at all - a cite should look like:

"ancient egyptians share common traits, these are .......,[1]"

And then you would have another thing below that says:
[1] Person x, Title y, pages X-Y.

Since I have never authored a peer-reviewed article on history, I don't know if that (sometimes called "Chicago", "Turabian" or even "classic" or "traditional") is the only acceptable citation style. By quick googling it appears to be.

Vastatosaurus Rex appears to use a slightly unorthodox variant of the MLA citation style, which is recognizable from the "Works Cited" headline before the references list. The unorthodoxy comes from the fact that in correct MLA style you should list the name of the author and the quoted or paraphrased pages in parenthesis, for example: (Smith 200-205). Furthermore, you should not give the year unless it's necessary. Year belongs to APA and Harvard styles.

Since there are a lot of citation styles (national variants do exist as well), I would not say that the style used by V. Rex is completely wrong for a scholarly paper rather than it is, as far as I can tell, not appropriate for an article in the field of history.

[Broomstick]

their uncannily well-preserved mummies

Nothing uncanny about it. Plenty of people just shoved in a sand dune in that part of the world mummify quite nicely. In fact, some of the stuff poured on Eqyptian mummies at various time might have interfered more than helped with preservation. About the only thing the Egyptian embalmers really did to enhance natural mummification was to remove the viscera, which do decay most rapidly. Ancient Peruvians also did a nice job of making mummies in their arid climate areas..

For instance, how were the pyramids built?

With rocks.

And how did the Egyptians influence later civilizations such as Greece and Rome?

Is that actually something mysterious? Cripes - all three of those groups had written records.

Egypt lies on the African continent, specifically in its northeastern region, yet traditionally historians have classified it as part of the "Near Eastern" (alongside Sumer, Babylon, and Israel) or "Mediterranean" (alongside Greece and Rome) cultural blocs.

Key word here being cultural - historians have always known that Egypt was physically located in Africa, but it is an undeniable fact based upon extensive written records that Egyptians had considerable contact with the Mediterranean groups of their time. And when I say written records I don't just mean Egyptian, everyone else with writing wrote about dealing with the Egyptians, too.

Whenever anyone makes a movie or television show set in Egypt, white rather than black actors are chosen to play the Egyptians; for instance, Yul Brynner as the pharaoh Rameses in C.B. Demille's The Ten Commandments,

Yul Brynner's Mongolian grandparents would be rather shocked to hear that they were white, I think. You do know that Mr. Brynner was of mixed ethnicity, don't you? In addition to Mongolian (specifically Buryat) he also had Russian and Swedish in his background. Those are just the ones I recall off the top of my head, there might be more.

Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep in The Mummy. The implication here is that despite being in Africa, ancient Egypt was really a white civilization of European or Asian origin rather than being truly African.

Mr. Vosloo might be Caucasian, but he was actually born in Africa and thus is an African... but apparently not one of the "proper" color for your argument.

Egypt was a crossroads - it lay between several ethnic groups and close to two other continents. Based on actual mummies you can find everything from people that would be clearly labeled "Caucasian" today to people who would clearly be "Negroid" to the occasional Asian sort and LOT of people of what would today be considered "mixed race". This is true as far back as anyone has been able to look. Egypt has always been a melting pot.

The ancient Egyptians, biologically and culturally, were fundamentally Africans.

I'm getting the feeling you're using the word "African" as a code word for "black". The Libyans are just as African as the Nigerians, but most people wouldn't look at them and consider them "black Africans".

Egypt and the Nile crossed from predominantly dark-skinned sub-Saharan Africa to predominantly lighter-skinned northern African.

So ... ARE you using "African" to mean "dark-skinned"? Then say so. Make it explicit.

The point is that native African facial features are diverse and are not limited to the stereotypical broad-nosed, full-lipped "Negroid" type.

Yes. African populations are more diverse than on any other continent. This isn't exactly a hot new item, it's been known for decades.

With that in mind, how can we tell whether the Egyptians' skeletal structure was more African or European/Asian?

As there is not a singular type of "African skeleton" that is a nonsensical question. There isn't a singular skeletal time for either Europe or Asia, much less the greater diversity of Africa.

One way physical anthropologists can tell how closely related certain populations are is by studying the overall shape of their skulls, because skull shape varies from population to population. Populations with the most similar-looking skulls are considered more closely related.

Unless they're on opposite sides of the planet.

Skull shape is a limited indicator of relationship, it is not definitive proof one way or the other.

Sub-Saharan traits are especially strong in skulls from southern Egypt (also known as Upper Egypt) (Keita 1990, 2005), although they are less pronounced in northern Egyptian (or Lower Egyptian) skulls.

Which is what one would expect based on geographic proximity to other peoples, and it also indicates that Ancient Egyptians were not purebreds but, as is true of just about everyone, mongrels.

Any foreign admixture during Egypt's golden years was small in scale.

Nonetheless, it did exist.

Populations vary in the indices of their hairs' cross-section. Curly-haired populations, such as Africans and Melanesians, have indices between 55 and 70. On the other hand, straight-haired populations, such as Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans, have indices above 70.

Since when are Europeans uniformly straight-haired? Or are you claiming that curly-headed blonds are really black Africans based on their hair textures?

This is the problem with claiming such characteristics as straight-vs-curly hair is a definitive sign of ethnic ancestry. Curliness by itself gives no information on hair and skin color; hair and skin color by themselves give no indication of curliness of hair.

Finally, there is the question of the Egyptians' skin color. You might think that looking at Egyptian paintings would easily answer this, but the problem is that Egyptian art was symbolic rather than realistic.

No, I wouldn't make skin color assumptions based on Egyptian painting because I know enough about Egypt and its art to know that, outside of a VERY brief period, it was not intended as realistic portraiture. Egyptian women were uniformly depicted as lighter skinned than the men, and skin color for Egyptian nationals were standardized to a "male" color and "female" color. In other words, the color was as indicative of gender as the mode of attire. Foreigners were depicted with other colors, northerners lighter and southerners darker.

However, the 24th Dynasty, which historical records indicate as originating with Lybians in 945 BC were depicted as having "normal" Egyptian skin colors though there were almost certainly people who'd be called "Caucasian" today and were, again, almost certainly lighter skinned than the average Egyptian. They were succeeded by the 25th Dynasty in 727 BC when the Kushite king Piye invaded Egypt and took over. The were, unquestionably, of sub-Saharan appearance, that is, dark/black skinned people. Yet pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty who were unquestionably dark skinned than the average Egyptian were still depicted in Eqyptian art in "standard" Egyptian skin color.

Methinks the Ancient Egyptians didn't really give a fuck about skin color, to them nationality was what counted. Of course, that is my opinion, I don't present it as fact.

Oh, and how do we know these facts, the exact years in which power transfers occurred, and where the new rulers came from? Written records.

About the only period of Egyptian history where I would try to draw ethnic or skin color conclusions from Egyptian art was the period of Akhenaten. Even there it is questionable just how realistic these depictions were - but Nefertiti's most famous bust shows a woman with skin tones much closer to what is expected in Europe or Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. I would, however, not hold it up as proof of anything in regards to her race or ethnicity.

Characters in Egyptian murals may be brown, yellow, gold, green, white, or black depending on the symbolism. The most common convention in earlier Egyptian art is to paint men brown and women yellow, but in later dynasties both sexes are portrayed as brown-skinned. Whatever caused this change in convention remains a mystery, but the point is that Egyptian art is not meant to accurately portray its subjects' skin tones.

The consistency of men and women's skin tones being depicted differently actually varies - even at a later date you would find "old fashioned" depictions so I wouldn't put too much stock in that.

If we wanted to more accurately determine the skin color of the ancient Egyptians, we should look at the skin cells in their mummies and take note of the amount of melanin, the pigment that determines skin tone. One study (Mekota and Vermehren 2005) did just that when analyzing Egyptian mummies' soft tissue. They described the skin cells as being "pack with melanin, as expected for specimens of Negroid [African] origin." Unfortunately, they did not go into depth or specify exactly how much melanin was in the skin cells, but by choosing the word "Negroid", they implied that the ancient Egyptians' skin tones were within the range we call "black".

All melanin is not created equal. Caucasians and Asian in sunny climes (and there is no disputing that Egypt is one of the sunniest places on Earth, both in number of days per year and intensity of solar radiation) will also have cells "packed with melanin" but it is chemically different varieties of melanin. There are many variants of melanin, most divided into eumelanin (the darkest such pigments) and pheomelanin (lighter and reddish pigments). Outside of albinos, ALL humans actually have both categories of melanin, it's the proportions that determine skin and hair color.

So saying "packed" with melanin just means in life the person was exposed to a lot of sunlight. Unless you know what sort of melanin those cells are packed with, though, it doesn't really speak to skin color.

In this barren environment, archaeologists have found the remains of villages with huts built in straight rows, wells, stone-roofed chambers with the bones of dead cattle (most likely sacrificed) buried within, and even a circle of megaliths similar to England's Stonehenge. These ruins date back to between the 10th and 7th millennia BC. Back then, the Sahara was grassland, and there was a lake within the basin, allowing people to live there (Wendorf and Schild 1998).

Have you ruled out that the south of Egypt might have been drier and thus more likely to preserve ancient evidence? If so, based on what evidence?

If you have determined that this is actual evidence of a source of civilization and not an artifact of favorable preservation due to environment, on what basis do you determine that these people where, in fact, of sub-Saharan origin and not northern African? After all, at that time the Sahara was not a barrier to the movement of people from either direction.

Finally, if you do determine that the original Ancient Egyptians were of sub-Saharan origin, were they of the typical "negroid" group, or of the Khoi-San group who are notably lighter-skinned than most sub-Saharan Africans and who used to have a much wider geographic distribution, possibly even being the dominant ethnic type in Africa?

The Nabta Playa proto-civilization may represent the earliest stage of Egyptian civilization. One reason to think so is the evidence for cattle sacrifice there. Cattle sacrifice was also practiced by ancient Egyptians; as many as 16,000 cattle were sacrificed in one year to the god Amun during the reign of pharaoh Rameses III (Dollinger 2009). Perhaps this Egyptian tradition had its roots in Nabta Playa.

Cattle sacrifice was also found in Ancient Greece and the Indian sub-continent - is that a basis for African origin there, as well? Animal sacrifice is a common feature of pre-modern (and arguably modern) societies, so common I just don't think it is a valid basis for comparison or evidence.

The Ancient Egyptian language is classified by most linguists as one of a phylum of languages called "Afroasiatic" or "Afrasian". This language phylum is believed to have originated in the Horn of Africa (the region encompassing Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea) between 15,000 and 13,000 BC and spread to Egypt between 12,000 and 10,000 BC (Ehert 1996). Other examples of Afrasian languages include Hausa (spoken in Nigeria), Tuareg (spoken throughout the southern Sahara), and Oromo (spoken in Ethiopia).

And Hebrew.... Hebrew is also Afro-Asiatic. Will you now argue that Jews are actually black Africans regardless of any evidence to the contrary? In fact, all Semetic languages are Afro-Asiatic, including Arabic. It pretty much dominates Africa north of the Sahara. Will you now argue that Arabs are black Africans?

(Yes, there are black African Jews... but they are a distinct minority of Jews just as are Chinese Jews. It has more to do with Jews interbreeding, either willingly or through rape, with their neighbors than it has to do with the ultimate origin of Jews)

Divine Kingship: Unlike in Mesopotamia, where the king was an intermediary between the gods and the mortal population, in Egypt the pharaoh was a god who had the power to make the Nile flood and inundate farmers' fields.

Divine kingship is by no means limited to Africa and was found in central and south America as well. Thus, it is not definitive proof that Egyptian culture was of sub-Saharan origin.

Circumcision: In both ancient Egypt and some African societies, children would be circumcised as a coming-of-age rite.

Circumcision was widely practiced in many places, including Australia. It's hard to argue that the Australian Aborigines were somehow influence by African customs. Or at least, influenced any more recently than tens of thousands of years ago. Thus, circumcision is not definitive proof that Egyptian culture was of sub-Saharan origin.

Animal Worship: Egyptians thought that certain animals were living representations of their gods. For instance, cats represented the goddess Bast, cattle the goddess Hathor or the god Apis, and crocodiles the god Sobek. Many African societies also practice this type of animal worship.

So do societies in other parts of the world. Again, this is not definitive proof.

Ancestor Worship/Veneration: The Egyptians believed in honoring their deceased ancestors and would hold feasts in their honor. Ancestor veneration is also widespread in the rest of Africa.

And everywhere else in the world! This is an even weaker slice of "evidence". Or didn't you know that many Asian cultures also venerate their dead, to the point of having ancestral shrines in the home and leaving offerings of food on graves?

Voodoo: The Egyptians believed that if you made an image of your enemies and damaged it, the enemies would be hurt as well. A similar belief is found in the "voodoo" religions of Africa.

AND every-fucking-where else in the world! The ancient Europeans did this, too, as did just about every OTHER culture on the planet!

The above is far from a complete list of shared cultural practices between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, but it should suffice to show that the Egyptians had at least a little in common with other African peoples.

It just as easily demonstrates they had "a little in common" with everyone else, too!

The ancient Egyptians were Africans. Their biology, language, and culture all evolved within Africa, not in Asia or Europe. Yet most people do not realize this and continue to think of Egypt as part of the "Near East" or "Mediterranean".

Probably because culturally and politically they had closer ties to the Near East and Mediterranean than Bantu farmers south of the Sahara.

It's rather like how we acknowledge that Australia has considerable ties to Europe despite being an entirely different continent with a closer proximity to China than England. Or that Hong Kong has been heavily influenced by ties to the UK despite being half way around the world.

Acknowledging the African roots of ancient Egypt is important for two reasons. The first reason is that it will make our reconstructions of ancient Egypt more accurate. When recreating the past we must strive to be as accurate as possible. Failure to be accurate would lead to the propagation of misconceptions that distort our view of the past.

On the other hand, pretending that Egypt was ENTIRELY of "African" (read, black-skinned sub-Saharan) origin is just as much a distortion as saying they had no influence from that quarter.

The reality is that Egypt did (and still does) straddle a border between several major ethnic groups and that is has always been influenced by all of them (though which group dominated varied from one time to another).

And that is really a fundamental problem with peoples' thinking today - that everything must be either-or. Ancient Egypt was arguably the first "melting pot" society and it is high time that was recognized. Yes, their neighbors to the south contributed - so did the people to the north. Egypt has always had a rainbow of skin colors and physical types. We will not undo the ignorance and racism of the past by replacing it with a new fantasy for political or racial reasons, we will only perpetuate a new form of bigotry.

Yes, Egypt IS African - but it's not black African or white African, or north African or south African. It's Egyptian, a unique blend of people and influences with a whole lot of stuff completely original to them. Because, really, it's a slap in the face to Egyptians to claim they couldn't come up with original ideas all on their own and that they had to somehow import them from the north or south. Or don't you give them credit for being as inventive and innovative as anyone else?

[Thanas]

Yes, you are correct, my choice of words was unfortunate.

EDIT: Directed at Marcus Aurelius, not Broomstick.


As for Egyptian influence on Greece and Rome, that one is very much debatable. Greece itself seemed to have influenced Egypt more than the other way around, especially when it comes to architecture and the sciences.

EDIT 2:
As for skin colour, that argument does not really help the case much considering that the Egyptians had extensive mingling with semite tribes, the Hethites, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Nevermind the time when they were under Persian or Greek rule...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

@ Duchess

You say that the brown tone ancient Egyptians painted themselves as having, as opposed to the literally black tone they gave their neighbors to the south, proves that they weren't "black". The problem is, a lot of so-called "black" people are also brown-skinned like the AEs:

First, as Lonestar said: These people are mulattos, not black Africans. I am not given up to the ridiculous American obsession of shoving every single person in the world into a couple of racial categories like you seem to be, and I can clearly tell the differences. And there are DEFINITE differences between the woman you provided a picture of, and the woman I did, which will review and enlighten you:

The shape of the face is flattened out, and more asiatic, on the black woman whose picture you showed. It tends to give the impression of a reverse oval, seeming wider than long, though that is to some extent a trick of how someone used to observing white faces would see it. The cheekbones are intensely prominent and the chin narrow and fine but almost jutting. Conversely for the berber woman we see that the face matches more the classic oval; the cheekbones are slightly less prominent, but the chin is flatter and more integrated to the jaw. The lips are also much thinner, and the hair, while still thick and curly, is of faintly different texture.

Now, then, the skin tone. For the black lady it is an intensely mocha colour--like coffee, rich and brown. A delicate, earthy hue which, if certainly attractive, is of entirely different nature to the beautifully intense metallic bronze-red of a berber. There really is an extreme difference between the two that you seem completely unable to grasp. The colour of skin of a berber is not black; it seems more like what we might expect of a Chino in the old Spanish castas, the child of an Indian parent and a half black, half white parent. Yet the berbers are not the result of such an admixture, and even then the skin tone is, while unquestionably not white, still surprisingly light, with the defence against the sun (for melanin, while resulting in blackness, is not simply directly linked in result to skin colour. Other factors in skin colour exist) coming more in how that bronzed, brown-red sheen definitely prevents the perfect reflection that a white person would have.

Berbers belong to a distinct ethnic categorization from other Africans, and the ancient Egyptians did too, possibly a completely different one from even berbers. Linguistics helps us here--the Afro-Asiatic languages are divided into six language families and they include the semitic branch, the berber, and the Egyptian, but not any sub-Saharan peoples. You yourself said that most genetic diversity in the entire world is in Africa, which is try, so why the absurdity of trying to blur the ethnic distinctions of a place which will by definition have the most number of ethnicities? Africa is the motherland of the entire human race, and still contains the majority of our diversity. There is a Berber racial-ethno classification there, and a Nilotic one, and a Bantu, Kushite (best way to refer to the Ethiopian peoples, who form their own distinct racial-ethno group in turn), and an Egyptian... I can tell someone of a Nilotic background apart from someone of a Bantu background at a heartbeat. These people are not from the same ethnic group.

Of course, racial "blackness" is a subjective and nebulous idea---I've met people who consider Indians to be black,

That's really funny, since I consider at least northern Indians to be white, if you're referring to the subcontinent. I could see how some people would claim that about some of the interior tribal peoples in the Deccan, though, but again the bone structure is unique and the skin tone is not like that of the Bantu, or even the Nilotic peoples. Blackness is subjective because the entire idea of a unitary black people is purely a political creation of individuals like Marcus Garvey back at the turn of the 20th century.

and people who don't consider Ethiopians or other narrow-featured sub-Saharan Africans to be black.

They look nothing like Bantus.



The cheekbones are more prominent than on a berber woman, but again we see major differences: Small nose, less jutting chin, somewhat angled forehead, generally sharper and more vertical cast to the features. Some of the most beautiful people in the world, I'll readily grant, and also not Bantus. They speak a Semitic language in the Afro-Asiatic group and have distinct features.

Therefore, whether the ancient Egyptians were "black" is pretty much up to your definition of "blackness". That does not change the fact that, biologically, the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to other northeast African populations (most of whom are considered "black" by many people) than to anyone else, whether European, Near Eastern, or even sub-Saharan.

You are NOT getting the whole thing about the genetic diversity of Africa, are you?

With regards to your suggestion that ancient Egyptians were most like Berbers, there is actually some genetic evidence that Egyptians living today, despite mixing with various groups since antiquity, are still more closely related to northeast Africans (e.g. Sudanese and Ethiopian groups) than to northwest Africans such as the Berbers.

[/quote]

But they don't look black. Sigh, you're completely not understanding this. Okay, here we go:



This is a chart showing the divergence of the human genome, compiled from information by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Notice that the maximum divergence between any group is .03%. Notice something very interesting, though. The extremely tall and thin-featured Ethiopians are genetically most closely related to.... The pygmies!



This San woman, in short, would have the closest genetic relationship to the Ethiopian woman I showed above. Yet the Ethiopians are by far the most highly divergent "black" population from the San, who were once used to embody all the supposed "primitive" characteristics of African peoples by racialists. Now you may understand why your chromosome data is simply irrelevant. Because Africa has the greatest genetic diversity of any area on the planet, it is entirely possible for the Egyptians to be pale white redheads and yet still be more closely related to the Ethiopians than to the Berbers, let alone actual Casucasians. And the archaeological evidence strongly, strongly suggests that in terms of features the Egyptians saw themselves highly distinct from the Nilotic peoples and other so-called "black" ethnic groups in terms of appearance. And, for that matter, Ramses II, who you draw on your deviant art site looking like a classic Bantu, was in fact a redhead, we know that as a fact.

Trying to base classification on a single trait is absurdist, but so is trying to say the Egyptians were black or "African" based on genetics alone. We are all African.

I'll use myself as an example:



My facial structure is actually extremely African--very prominent curved cheekbones, sharp tipped but faintly jutting jaw, rather angular forehead. The profile shows a series of sweeping curves from the bottom of the face to the top with very considerable vertical differences and prominences, especially when viewed from the side. Now this is to a certain extent what in "white" terms is considered Slavic, but it also matches very perfectly with the Ethiopian people, I have one picture I could upload on my computer that shows an Ethiopian woman with a face almost identical to mine. Does this make me somehow black? Rather not, though not normal American western European stock, either. On the other hand my genetics are certainly different from many people whose face I share. An extremely strong grouping and series of traits is an indicator, possibly, of some degree of genetic uniqueness. But because the amount of genetic drift in the human population is very small, there are no firm guarantees on appearance anywhere. The simple fact is that the Egyptians could be mostly closely related to the Ethiopians genetically and yet have looked like me. They certainly did not, but they could have easily developed that way in the right climatic conditions. As it is, they differentiated from Ethiopians (very, very slightly) in such a way that, through other evidence, suggests they probably looked quite a lot like berbers, which is unsurprising, because they shared basically the same climatic conditions.

That said, I merely argued this point for the sake of trying to enlighten you about both the realities and the chimaeras of "race". As Elfdart observed, the chart has been rigged to favour a northeast African association rather than a Northwest African association which seems more likely. Nonetheless, it is not necessary for this claim about the invalidity of the chart you provided to be true for my point to be true, as the amount of genetic diversity in Africa is such that people with berber-like physical characteristics could have easily developed twice and be wildly genetically divergent from each other in doing so and yet look largely physically similar, because Africa is basically the resevoir of the human genome.

[Vastatosaurus Rex]

And, for that matter, Ramses II, who you draw on your deviant art site looking like a classic Bantu, was in fact a redhead, we know that as a fact.

IIRC, there are reports of tests being done on his hair which found some pheomelanin in it, but even dark-haired people can have some pheomelanin in their hair follicles, so that's not the same as proving he was a redhead.

[Thanas]

At this point I'd like you all to not dogpile Vastatosaurus Rex. He shall have enough time to answer any and all criticism.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

At this point I'd like you all to not dogpile Vastatosaurus Rex. He shall have enough time to answer any and all criticism.

I'll volunteer to take him on in the Colosseum if he feels this thread is overwhelming.

[Broomstick]

And, for that matter, Ramses II, who you draw on your deviant art site looking like a classic Bantu, was in fact a redhead, we know that as a fact.

IIRC, there are reports of tests being done on his hair which found some pheomelanin in it, but even dark-haired people can have some pheomelanin in their hair follicles, so that's not the same as proving he was a redhead.

I believe I pointed out earlier that, aside from albinos (partial or total) ALL humans contain BOTH eumelanin and pheomelanin. It's the proportions of each that determine the exact shade of skin and hair.

You're reaching - there is nothing to say that Rames couldn't be redheaded AND of predominantly African (however you wish to define that) ancestry.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And, for that matter, Ramses II, who you draw on your deviant art site looking like a classic Bantu, was in fact a redhead, we know that as a fact.

IIRC, there are reports of tests being done on his hair which found some pheomelanin in it, but even dark-haired people can have some pheomelanin in their hair follicles, so that's not the same as proving he was a redhead.

I believe I pointed out earlier that, aside from albinos (partial or total) ALL humans contain BOTH eumelanin and pheomelanin. It's the proportions of each that determine the exact shade of skin and hair.

You're reaching - there is nothing to say that Rames couldn't be redheaded AND of predominantly African (however you wish to define that) ancestry.

Red hair can actually be quite common in berber populations, as a matter of fact, reaching 4% in some tribes.

[Broomstick]

Red hair can also appear in sub-Saharan dark-skinned/dark-haired populations. I mean very red hair, not just a little red... but in that case it's a sign of nutritional deficiency.

Skin and hair color can vary considerably in the same individual over a lifetime as well.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Red hair can also appear in sub-Saharan dark-skinned/dark-haired populations. I mean very red hair, not just a little red... but in that case it's a sign of nutritional deficiency.

Skin and hair color can vary considerably in the same individual over a lifetime as well.

I'm aware of that, but the chance of a Pharaoh suffering from nutritional deficiency is basically nil.

[Simon_Jester]

I have to say that compared to a scholarly article, your paper is worthless. You say you cited a lot of works, but in fact you did not cite anything at all - a cite should look like:
"ancient egyptians share common traits, these are .......,[1]"
And then you would have another thing below that says:
[1] Person x, Title y, pages X-Y.

As a scholarly article, the lack of in-line citations is a serious but easily fixed problem. I'm wouldn't he presented this as being up to scholarly article standards; the National Gallery of Writing is not a scientific journal.

[Broomstick]

Red hair can also appear in sub-Saharan dark-skinned/dark-haired populations. I mean very red hair, not just a little red... but in that case it's a sign of nutritional deficiency.

I'm aware of that, but the chance of a Pharaoh suffering from nutritional deficiency is basically nil.

Yes. Which would make it unlikely that a red-haired Pharaoh is of predominantly sub-Saharan ancestry, wouldn't it? Much more likely north African with a heavy dose of Caucasian.

[Thanas]

At this point I'd like you all to not dogpile Vastatosaurus Rex. He shall have enough time to answer any and all criticism.

I'll volunteer to take him on in the Colosseum if he feels this thread is overwhelming.

No. Not until you and I finish our own little match.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

At this point I'd like you all to not dogpile Vastatosaurus Rex. He shall have enough time to answer any and all criticism.

I'll volunteer to take him on in the Colosseum if he feels this thread is overwhelming.

No. Not until you and I finish our own little match.

Oh god I totally forgot about it. *checks schedule for the next two years* Summer of 2011? No, seriously, I'll see what I can do over spring break, mayhaps, if you have the time then.