floacist:

People really don’t believe Ancient Egyptians were ethnically African? Perri: It’s sad but true, so many people don’t believe it. :( Yup and if you ask the average American they will automatically say The Middle East… … but… how— Look at their lips! This man up there favors my great great granddaddy (I’m of African descent, just so you all know) EYES, NOSE—LIPS AGAIN. I MEAN. OMG. SERIOUSLY. LIKE. IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD TO GRASP. White denial. Remember, around the time white people became obsessed with Egypt and began romanticizing its history, they still were allowed to openly hate POC. They refuse to believe that so much power, grace, and beauty could come from people they despised(read: were jealous of). It’s all just a superiority complex to mask their innate insecurity. It’s why they happily lump Egypt in with the Middle East and completely erase Black Egypt from the picture and instead focus on Arab Egypt. It’s also why they have taken to dividing Africa into North Africa and “Sub-Saharan Africa” as if everything that is not of the “exotic desert” is inferior and savage. Taxonomy and classism are just a few of white people’s favorite things to do to make themselves feel like they run shit. The term “middle east” didn’t even exist before the 1960s.

Wow, look at all the ignorance in this post. *sigh*

Okay, first of all, the Middle East is a POLITICAL region. Africa is a physical continent. The Middle East is a term usually used to roughly describe ‘Western Asia’, the juncture between Europe, Africa, and Eastern Asia, but the 5 or so African countries situated north of the Sahara Desert (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco, and it sometimes includes Sudan, depending on who you ask) are often included in this grouping because of similar culture and historical background (aka, they’re all countries that got conquered and were ruled by the Islamic Caliphates for hundreds of years).

A lot of people in Egypt AREN’T ethnically African, and never have been. Cleopatra, for instance, had Greek heritage. Egypt is one of the oldest freaking countries on Earth, one of the birthplaces of civilization. And there was a damn lot of ethnic mixing right from the start. YES, there are loads of ethnic Africans there from various parts of Africa who migrated there and stayed. But there were also THOUSANDS of people who were not ethnically African, but Greek, Roman, Macedonian, Arabic, Persian, etc etc who came and stayed.

If you’d cared to check up on Egyptian history, heritage of the pharaohs changed from dynasty to dynasty. 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. Persia conquered Egypt in 525 BC. Then Alexander the Great came in. Then you get the Ptolemaic dynasty (hello 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.

The reason 'Arab Egypt’ as you so delightfully call it, gets more attention is because more of the famous rulers were not black. We know more about the rulers that WEREN’T necessarily black than we do about the ones that were (because, hello, history. Documents and crap are hard to find, especially about Ancient Egypt, whose culture around art and writing was mostly all about death and the afterlife.) Because we have other documents and stuff talking about what happened during the later pharaohs eras, who…guess what, weren’t black. Again, the heritage of ruling families changed vastly from dynasty to dynasty. And most of the reason 'Arab Egypt’ has become so synonymous with 'Egypt as a whole’ is because…uh…hey. You guys were ruled by the Arab Islamic caliphates for hundreds of years. You steeped in their culture and their way of life and mixed with ethnically Arab people from the late 600s on.

It also has to do with overall culture and trading that Egypt has. They were intimately connected with all of the other Middle Eastern countries and were so close to them. Egypt is literally the bridge between Africa and Eurasia. So don’t you dare come to me and say that Egypt isn’t a part of the Middle East.

Egypt has ALWAYS been a racially mixed country, more so in the New Kingdom on of course (and they were definitely not without discrimination and prejudice, let me tell you). Aka, NOT ALL EGYPTIANS ARE DARK.

And if you’re seriously going to use 'Prince of Egypt’ as a completely accurate representation of Egyptian people, let me remind you that the Pharaohs depicted are Ramses and his father (implied to be Seti and Ramses II), who were rulers in the 19th Dynasty, during the New Kingdom period. Like I said before, ethnic heritage varied wildly by dynasty.

'Near East’ was more often used, but 'Middle East’ has become more popular in recent years. Contrary to the person above me, the term 'Middle East’ could have originated as early as the 1850s, but probably originated around 1902/early 1900s, and was used to describe the region 'between Arabia and India’. The term 'Middle East’ gained more popularity with Europe and America after WWII. The Middle East Institute in DC was formed in 1946, for example. First 'official use’ of the term was in 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine.

The traditional countries of the Middle East include: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the UAE, and Yemen.

The Greater Middle East describes the countries located immediately around those countries, including places like Afghanistan, the four northern African countries besides Egypt, Pakistan, etc.

Egypt may BE in Africa, but it’s ALSO in the Middle East. Kindly do not mix up political regions and physical continents. It’s very annoying for the rest of us.

Basically, for the love of god, stop spreading ignorance.