EgalitarianJay
Registered Senior Member
It's not a question of "African influence." Ancient Egypt was organically African. Studying Early Egypt in its African context is not "Afrocentric" but simply correct. - Shomarka Keita
Were the Ancient Egyptians Black? This question has been consistently asked since the dawn of Egyptology. The question is of interest to those involved in the discussion of race and intelligence. If Blacks created an advanced civilization then surely this is proof that they have the same intelligence as Whites and other groups. European scholars have pondered the significance of a Black African Egypt for centuries with some accepting the view and many denying it throughout history proposing alternative positions such as The Dynastic Race Theory, The Hamitic Hypothesis, The Mediterranean "Brown" Race, a Nordic Desert Empire and even claiming that ancient Aliens built the pyramids!
"Just think,"....."that this race of Black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, and even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of people who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery, and questioned whether Black men have the same kind of intelligence as whites! - Count Constatine de Volney
The subject of the race of the ancient Egyptians was brought up at the 1974 UNESCO Symposium in Cairo. There some of the top Egyptologists in the world reviewed the research of Cheikh Anta Diop and Théophile Obenga , two African scholars, who stated that Ancient Egypt should be recognized as a Black African civilization. This position has become known as the Black Egyptian Hypothesis. The position of the Symposium was that the research was too inconclusive to determine what the race of the Ancient Egyptians were with the majority of Egyptologists stating their belief that Ancient Egypt was a Multiracial Civilization with different racial types present within the populace. This position is also presented in modern, mainstream Egyptology books.
The Racial and Ethnic Identity of the Egyptians
There are a number of different ways in which we can define the ancient Egyptians themselves as a distinct racial and ethnic group, but the question of their roots and their sense of their own identity has provoked considerable debate. Linguistically, they belonged to the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) family, but this is simply another way of saying that, as their geographical position implies, their language had some similarities to contemporary languages both in parts of Africa and in the Near East.
Anthropological studies suggest that the predynastic population included a mixture of racial types (negroid, Mediterranean, and European), but it is the question of the skeletal evidence at the beginning of the pharaonic period that has proved to be most controversial over the years. Whereas the anthropological evidence from this date was once interpreted, by Bryan Emery and others, as the rapid conquest of Egypt by people from the east whose remains were racially distinct from the indigenous Egyptians, it is now argued by some scholars that there may have been a much slower period of demographic change, probably involving the gradual infiltration of a different physical type from Syria-Palestine, via the eastern Delta.
The iconography of the Egyptians’ depictions of foreigners suggests that for much of their history they saw themselves as midway between the black Africans and the paler Asiatics. It is also clear, however, that neither Nubian nor Syro-Palestinian origins were regarded as particularly disadvantageous factors in terms of individuals’ status or career prospects, particularly in the cosmopolitan climate of the New Kingdom, when Asiatic religious cults and technological developments were particularly widely accepted. Thus the demonstrably negroid features of the high official Maiherpri did not prevent him from attaining the special privilege of a burial in the Valley of the Kings at about the time of Thutmose 111 (1479-1425 bc). In the same way, a man called Aper-el, whose name indicates his Near Eastern roots, rose to the rank of vizier (the highest civil office below that of the king himself) in the late 18th Dynasty.
Source: The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt p. 309
What can DNA tell us about the race or biological affinity of the ancient Egyptians? There have been recent studies on the DNA of mummies that have given implications about population affinity. One of the recent studies that made news was Schuenemann et al. (2017) which concluded that ancient Northern Egyptians had more Near Eastern genetic affinities who gained Sub-Saharan affinity during the slave trade of the Islamic period. The accuracy of this study has been challenged recently by other scholars. In their paper Jean-Philippe Gourdine, S.O.Y. Keita, Jean-Luc Gourdine and Alain Anselin provided genetic evidence that several Ancient Egyptian mummies from the New Kingdom had Sub-Saharan African affinities.
What does the research indicate to you? Does the recent DNA studies on New Kingdom mummies provide sufficient evidence combined with the archeological, linguistic, anthropological and artistic evidence that the ancient Egyptians were a Black African people? Were they Multiracial or belonged to some other group? Is discussing this topic at all buying in to racial classification schemes or racist in and of itself?
I would like to get some feedback on the research in this opening post from the board. Thoughts?
Were the Ancient Egyptians Black? This question has been consistently asked since the dawn of Egyptology. The question is of interest to those involved in the discussion of race and intelligence. If Blacks created an advanced civilization then surely this is proof that they have the same intelligence as Whites and other groups. European scholars have pondered the significance of a Black African Egypt for centuries with some accepting the view and many denying it throughout history proposing alternative positions such as The Dynastic Race Theory, The Hamitic Hypothesis, The Mediterranean "Brown" Race, a Nordic Desert Empire and even claiming that ancient Aliens built the pyramids!
"Just think,"....."that this race of Black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, and even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of people who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery, and questioned whether Black men have the same kind of intelligence as whites! - Count Constatine de Volney
The subject of the race of the ancient Egyptians was brought up at the 1974 UNESCO Symposium in Cairo. There some of the top Egyptologists in the world reviewed the research of Cheikh Anta Diop and Théophile Obenga , two African scholars, who stated that Ancient Egypt should be recognized as a Black African civilization. This position has become known as the Black Egyptian Hypothesis. The position of the Symposium was that the research was too inconclusive to determine what the race of the Ancient Egyptians were with the majority of Egyptologists stating their belief that Ancient Egypt was a Multiracial Civilization with different racial types present within the populace. This position is also presented in modern, mainstream Egyptology books.
The Racial and Ethnic Identity of the Egyptians
There are a number of different ways in which we can define the ancient Egyptians themselves as a distinct racial and ethnic group, but the question of their roots and their sense of their own identity has provoked considerable debate. Linguistically, they belonged to the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) family, but this is simply another way of saying that, as their geographical position implies, their language had some similarities to contemporary languages both in parts of Africa and in the Near East.
Anthropological studies suggest that the predynastic population included a mixture of racial types (negroid, Mediterranean, and European), but it is the question of the skeletal evidence at the beginning of the pharaonic period that has proved to be most controversial over the years. Whereas the anthropological evidence from this date was once interpreted, by Bryan Emery and others, as the rapid conquest of Egypt by people from the east whose remains were racially distinct from the indigenous Egyptians, it is now argued by some scholars that there may have been a much slower period of demographic change, probably involving the gradual infiltration of a different physical type from Syria-Palestine, via the eastern Delta.
The iconography of the Egyptians’ depictions of foreigners suggests that for much of their history they saw themselves as midway between the black Africans and the paler Asiatics. It is also clear, however, that neither Nubian nor Syro-Palestinian origins were regarded as particularly disadvantageous factors in terms of individuals’ status or career prospects, particularly in the cosmopolitan climate of the New Kingdom, when Asiatic religious cults and technological developments were particularly widely accepted. Thus the demonstrably negroid features of the high official Maiherpri did not prevent him from attaining the special privilege of a burial in the Valley of the Kings at about the time of Thutmose 111 (1479-1425 bc). In the same way, a man called Aper-el, whose name indicates his Near Eastern roots, rose to the rank of vizier (the highest civil office below that of the king himself) in the late 18th Dynasty.
Source: The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt p. 309
What can DNA tell us about the race or biological affinity of the ancient Egyptians? There have been recent studies on the DNA of mummies that have given implications about population affinity. One of the recent studies that made news was Schuenemann et al. (2017) which concluded that ancient Northern Egyptians had more Near Eastern genetic affinities who gained Sub-Saharan affinity during the slave trade of the Islamic period. The accuracy of this study has been challenged recently by other scholars. In their paper Jean-Philippe Gourdine, S.O.Y. Keita, Jean-Luc Gourdine and Alain Anselin provided genetic evidence that several Ancient Egyptian mummies from the New Kingdom had Sub-Saharan African affinities.
What does the research indicate to you? Does the recent DNA studies on New Kingdom mummies provide sufficient evidence combined with the archeological, linguistic, anthropological and artistic evidence that the ancient Egyptians were a Black African people? Were they Multiracial or belonged to some other group? Is discussing this topic at all buying in to racial classification schemes or racist in and of itself?
I would like to get some feedback on the research in this opening post from the board. Thoughts?
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