fantastic-nonsense:

historyweeps:

fantastic-nonsense: empressmo: fantastic-nonsense: empressmo: hit-men: Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I think I just threw up. Locs are NOT dirty hair. WTF? Locs that “form naturally” are just matted, fucked up, dirty hair. That’s from being poor and homeless and ungroomed as fuck. Are you crazy? Locs are done on purpose. They are a cultural statement, not being dirty. Locs are actually made using different butters or oils and twisted. They are also regularly washed. Locs are incredibly clean and protect the actual hair from becoming damaged. Locs are a wonderful hairstyle, that aren’t yours to “claim as your own.” Your words, not mine. That is exactly what you are doing. Taking a hairstyle from PoC and making it yours. Your hypocrisy is astounding. And for the record, I’m not responding to your asks anymore. You wanna sport nasty ass hair that look like breadsticks that have been in a tanning bed for a hundred years, be my guest. (PS: I need to add @cakerevolution ‘s point that Egyptians were PoC. Do you think they were white? They had technology ahead of their time.) the op is stupid. ancient egyptians are not whites. they were africans . africans are not whites. lolololol white people wish the ancient egyptians were white. well they were not . so stop trying to claim them. they didnt claim you as is obvious from the writings on the wall. white people are annoying this early in the morning smh Oh my god blanket statements. I can’t even. “Egyptians” were not black. Some of them were, and there were some dynasties that were black, but stop ignoring and erasing the majority of Egyptian history. Please refer to these links, because I am NOT writing all this crap out again. The first one addresses the “egyptians are africans” question. Please get your heads out of your asses and pick up a couple history, archeology, and anthropology books. Just because Egyptians are not white doesn’t mean they’re black, either. There ARE more skin colors than white or black, you know. Egypt was an extremely racially mixed country, which means there were black people and there were white people and there were all colors in between. Today the majority of Egyptians are descendents of people from Middle Eastern cultures because of the Islamic Caliphates. Ethnic Egyptians make up like 95% of the population. Take a look at pictures of modern Egypt. They look black do you? Stop saying “Egyptians were black,” because it’s not true, and it’s definitely not true from the Macedonian invasion on. That is a blanket statement and erases a hell of a lot of people and history. EGYPTIANS ARE NOT WHITE. EGYPTIANS ARE NOT WHITE. EGYPTIANS ARE NOT WHITE. NOTHING WHITES SAY WILL CHANGE HISTORY. AFRICANS ARE BLACKS TODAY EGYPT IS BLACK AND ARAB IN ANCIENT EGYPT THEY WERE BLACK. YOU HAVE NOT CHANGED ANYONES MIND. You’re not exactly changing anyone’s mind either. What is your proof for saying Ancient Egyptians were black? And actually today, the vast majority of people in Egypt today are ethnic Egyptians (99.6%, in fact), with various Arab minorities (specifically Bedouin, Beja, and Dom, from the Sanai Peninsula) and “other” minorities composing the other .4%. The majority of “black” people living in Egypt right now are refugees from Sudan (aka, they wouldn’t be there if not for the political and ethnic conflicts that went on in Sudan a couple of years ago). You’re obviously not doing your homework. I’m not changing history. You are, by ignoring historical, cultural, anthropological, and archeological evidence of said culture being extremely racially mixed and the Modern Egyptians themselves. And you really ought to look at that first link. You’re ignorantly blaring your opinion without actually knowing anything. Do some research and get back to me. And I never said they WERE white. I actually specifically said they WEREN’T white. Reading comprehension: you need it. All right, here’s the thing: linking back to poorly cobbled together arguments on your on tumblr does not disprove a dissenter and is a non-argument especially when you don’t have any actual data and research to support your claims. All your arguments are pressed together from the widely discredited ‘Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy’, and, yes, discredited by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. There is no way to determine physical features, and it’s highly racist. Egypt was and continues to be inhabited by various ethnic groups, and therefore it is nearly impossible to say ‘oh, all Ancient Egyptians were a certain ethnicity’. This is also due in part to the fact that it lasted longer than any ancient empire. We know that some of the earliest Egyptians were from the Levant, which groups countries such as Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Turkey. It is incredibly important to note that Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures did not have a hierarchical society based on race, but rather geographic region. Furthermore, we know the Kush empire ruled in Egypt during the Napatan era, which c~ 970-200 BCE. This ruling empire was from Nubia, and, indeed, most of Egyptian history is dotted by ‘South African’ rulers, and Egypt is absolutely included geographically with Africa. Waving a few statistics and pointing angrily doesn’t erase the fact that: a) there were black (Nubian [incidentally considered the ‘A-People’, i.e. the FIRST TO SETTLE IN EGYPT, Merimide) Egyptians b) there were IndoEuropean (Hittites) egyptians c) there were “”middle-eastern”” Egyptians (e.g. Canaanites, Assyrians) Egyptians have always had a diverse ethnicity and racial identity, but completely erasing the fact that their first ancestors came from Nubia is revisionism. Anecdotally though, one of the most renowned modern Egyptologists had to say: “Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the Egyptians as “black”, while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans.” (Stuart Tyson Smith)





>says Ancient Egypt was highly diverse ethnically and racially and to give a blanket statement of “Egyptians were black” is ignoring history and ignorant.

>gets called racist and told “EGYPTIANS WEREN’T WHITE” despite explicitly saying they weren’t at least three times.

Yeah, this is a great way to start off this conversation.

Okay, first, no, my argument was not cobbled together from the “Ancient Egypt race controversy” page. Most of my knowledge comes from various world history classes, my extensive education as a Latin student, and a lot of independent research due to the fact that I love Egypt and Egyptian mythology (I think it’s extremely interesting…I mean I adore all mythologies, but especially Greek, Roman, and Egyptian) and I like to look up stuff. If you want sources, I’d be perfectly happy to give you sources for all of my assertions made. I linked those posts because they had my argument, not because they provided sources. I didn’t want to have to re-type my whole argument out so I simply linked it for convenience’s sake.

I never once stated that there were not black people in Egypt. Actually, I addressed this statement directly and said there WERE (plenty of them) and some dynasties did indeed have Nubian or Kush rulers (the 22nd and the 25th dynasties come to mind). My argument hinges on the statement “ANCIENT EGYPTIANS WERE BLACK.” Because…no, they weren’t. SOME of them were. Many were not. The thing that a lot of you apparently fail to understand is that Egypt is and always has been the connecting bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It has always been a MAJOR trading hub, and as such, as always been a home to a wide variety of ethnicities and races. Egypt has also been invaded a ridiculous amount of times and has had said invaders occupy their land and rule over them, creating even more ethnic mixing.

Besides all of that though, there’s distinct differences that a lot of historians and anthropologists acknowledge between (Ancient) Northern Egypt and Southern Egypt.

And you acknowledge that some of the earliest Egyptians were linked to the Levant region without acknowledging that all of those countries are in the region we now call the Middle East? I mean, I know it’s a political region, but please take a look at ethnic Turks, Palestinians, Jordanians, and Syraics. They are not black. They are not white, either.They are their own distinct ethnicities and cannot be classified as either white or black…because they are not. This idea that the world can be separated into white and black and that there are not other colors is dangerous and racist, not the idea that Egypt is and always has been racially diverse.

Now, onto my sources.

It is well known that the Egyptians were careful observers and their art in the Middle Kingdom period depicts realistic features when they depict foreigners, who they depict as quite different from themselves. See this paper and this article about it. Other than that though, color in Ancient Egyptian art was HIGHLY symbolic and is not a good or accurate depiction of skin color. See this, this, and this. In addition, lightness/darkness of skin in art was actually often conveyed in Egyptian art to symbolize CLASS or RANK, not actual color, due to the whole “the lighter your skin the more wealthy you are because it means you don’t have to work out in the fields and get tanned” thing. That is a thing that persists among many cultures in many different time periods.

The cultures in Lower Egypt (by the mouth of the Nile, in the North) have been connected with the Levant, while the cultures in Upper Egypt (The southern part of Egypt) have been connected more closely with the Nubians and other North-eastern African cultures. This already presents a dichotomy in skin color and racial makeup, as this would present those in Lower Egypt to be visibly lighter skinned than those in Upper Egypt and have different racial makeup. Remember, Egypt was not one untied country until the Dynastic era. They were two different cultures with different people. Therefore even saying pre-dynastic Egypt was black is false and inaccurate, as this is obviously not the case. Upper Egypt likely was predominately made up of what we would call today black people (Nubians were black), while Lower Egypt was not. Most scholars today reject the hypothesis that Egypt as a whole originated in Nubia. So no, they weren’t the “first people” to settle in Egypt. They were one of the first peoples to live around the area that would become Egypt. The Nubians are actually considered foreign invaders and fought several wars with Egypt during the Dynastic era (which is why some of the Dynasties are ruled by said Nubians…because they successfully invaded).

Then we get into the dynastic era. A lot of the pharaohs in the 22nd and 23rd dynasties (the Third Intermediate Period after the New Kingdom collapsed) were of Libyan descent. The Late Period Pharaohs were of Persian and Macedonian descent. Ethnic origins of most pharaohs up until the Sixteenth dynasty are unknown. Many are simply credited with being part of rivaling factions within Egypt. Due to its geographical location at the crossroads of several major cultural areas, Egypt experienced a number of foreign invasions during historical times, including by the Canaanites, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedonian Greeks, the Romans (Byzantium in late antiquity/early Middle Ages), and (later on in the 600s-800s) the Arabs. Persia conquered Egypt in 525 BC. Then Alexander the Great came in. Then you get the Ptolemaic dynasty (dear old Cleopatra). Rome conquered them in 48 BC and basically stuck governors that answered to the Emperor as the rulers of Egypt. All this results in a very mixed bloodline for everyone. There’s absolutely no possible way to state Ancient Egyptians were black after the Persian and Greek occupations, which of course then lead into the Roman occupation.

This source asserts that there were likely 4 distinct groups living in Ancient Egypt based on sources that the Ancient Egyptians themselves identified: Egyptians, those living to the South (Nubians and others, asserting that the Egyptians themselves did not see Nubians and those living south of them to be “Egyptian”), those living to the West (western nomads, ‘Libyans’ in the sense of anyone living west of the Nile and south of the Mediterranean), and those living to the East (the Asiatics).

The scant DNA testing we have suggests major racial and ethnic diversity in Ancient Egypt. Some of the tests that have been carried out have been traced back to Nubian or Sub-Saharan roots, while others have much more Eurasian or Middle Eastern genetic makeup. A lot of the DNA testing today (I cite this one because it’s the most extensive one I’ve seen, but there are others) actually suggest that Northern Africans (specifically North Eastern Africans) have a distinct genetic makeup separate from Sub-Saharan Africa, though definitely influenced by it and there are Sub-Saharan markers. Their overall conclusion is essentially “North African populations retain a unique signature of early “Maghrebi” ancestry, but North African populations are not a homogenous group and most display varying combinations of five distinct ancestries.” Basically, North Africans are not one or the other, but a combination of all.

You can’t use cranial testing (the shape of the skull) to determine race (it’s now highly disputed because skull shape is determined mostly by environmental factors and culture for instance, the cultures that do the “flat skull” technique), because race and cranial variation is very low (and instead correlated with climate variables).

If you’re going to argue the “Kemet=black people” route, refer to this article where it states this meant “People of the Black Land” and that most mainstream scholars accept this, and also that the Egyptians never referred to any of the black peoples they knew with this term, only themselves (source).

In 2008, S.O.Y. Kieta said, “There is no scientific reason to believe that the primary ancestors of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast Africa…. The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range of evolutionary influences over time, although researchers vary in the details of their explanations of those influences.”

Essentially, modern Egyptians are largely a good representation of what Ancient Egyptians probably looked like.

My last point is that contemporary consensus is that Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile valley population separate from Sub-Saharan Africa, though the population consisted of a Sub-Sahara/Northern Africa population mix with some Arab and Levant influences, and that the “Black Egyptian” theory is heavily contested by the vast majority of modern scholars at best and utterly false at worst. The basic thing is that Ancient Egyptians themselves did not differentiate or see race as we do today, so it is difficult to apply modern racial or ethnic categories to a group of people who did not subscribe to the same theories we do and that was an exceedingly racially mixed culture.

Additionally, and I put this at the end simply because I know some people will have ignored my entire post and scrolled to the bottom, if all Ancient Egyptians were black….what happened to them? Why does 99.6 of Egypt’s modern population have distinct racial and ethnic differences from Sub-Saharan cultures? Not even the hundreds of invasions and occupations would have wiped them out entirely.

Again, I never stated that there weren’t any black people. What I SAID is that saying Egyptians as a whole were black paints an ignorant narrative of what was actually there and ignores what we know about Egyptian history. Yes, there were dynasties that were ruled by rulers from Nubia and even further South, but these are few and far between (as far as we know, these dynasties were the 22nd, the 23rd, and the 25th dynasties). The heritage of the Pharaohs changed from dynasty to dynasty. Asserting that just because black people ruled Egypt during specific dynasties meant that all Egyptians are black is ignorant, ignoring wide swaths of people and just proving that you two yourselves are racist, because you are generalizing an entire culture and geographic region with the argument that “it’s Africa, of COURSE they were black.”

The point of my post was NEVER to say that there weren’t black people in Egypt. It was a trading hub for the entire world and was the bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of COURSE there were black people. My assertion is that Ancient Egyptians as a whole were not black, and probably were not even the majority. I was also stating to not apply blanket statements like “ANCIENT EGYPTIANS WERE BLACK” when you know literally nothing about the culture or history of said place except that “it’s in Africa.” Just because it’s in Africa does not necessarily equal black. Isn’t that exactly the same thing that SJW try to say on here like “EUROPEAN DOES NOT EQUAL WHITE. THERE WERE POC IN EUROPE.” Like can you get anymore hypocritical? You want us to acknowledge racial diversity in Europe but won’t even acknowledge it in a place EXTREMELY WELL KNOWN for its racial diversity?