Egypt Origins

I think perhaps some of the assumptions that are made about on this subject are a bit narrow becasue people relate geo-political situation of that time period to the current geo-political situation. What i mean by this is that 5000 years ago there werent any defined countries and the like of what we had today, people moved about alot and you didnt need a visa to get from one area to another. This means that there will of course be many different cultures and practises of many different households/tribes/races in one particular region that dont nesceearily relate to the 'original' inhabitants of that region. This means its immpossible to say wether all 'Egyptians' were either fair skinned, originated from Mesopotamia or preffered chicken instead of lamb. Most definately there were certain sections of the general eygptian society that portrayed all or some of these characteristics in some way shape or form, but to classify all Eygptians with one particular characteristic or origin is narrow minded. Even today with set borders and things like immigration laws can you classify all Americans as white, slightly overweight and a bit slow?         

Kids - Welcome to AE - nothing like diving right into a self created controversy.  Perhaps spend a bit if time reading other posts by long standing members before attacking them.  Temujin's been around here for a while and we don't have a great deal of tolerance for intolerance.  BTW - he's pulling your chain - lighten up a bit. 

Hey T - Those of us that know you know that we don't have to worry about you -  - but go easy on Kids - there's not a lot of sense of humor there apparently.

Hello, I am an anthropology grad student that has studied Egypt for the last few years.  I was browsing through your thread and was so alarmed by your posts that I actually signed up on the spot just to say something.

I grew up in the suburbs as an ordinary "all American white kid."  I too was taught in high school all of the false truths that have been constructed as a way too describe Ancient Egypt.  The thing is, in the course of my studies, I have learned just how untrue this "knowledge" is.  First: Ancient Egyptians were not what we would call white people.  They weren't what we would call a mixed "race" (race is such an incorrect term here) either.  To say that would be like saying that modern England is a mixed population simply because there are some blacks living in the country.  Likewise Egypt was, even from early dynastic times, a place where several different peoples existed.  The majority of the population (including royalty), however, were people that we would today consider "black people."  This is pretty much accepted by most people in the field today and all reliable evidence supports this.

The question is, why is there such a debate about this.  The answer is simple.  In order to understand why this is even an issue you must know a little bit about the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of Africa.  To cut a long story short, it became essential for the European powers, if they wanted their economies to continue to benefit from slave labor and colonial exploitation, to dehumanize the African or black person.  A big part of this was to portray him/her as having no history of any consequence and of basically coming from the trees.  In this way colonization could be portrayed as a civilizing mission.  In this way the unprecedented brutality of slavery in the Americas could be condoned as not being inflicted upon a real person.  In creating this image of the black man, it would be extremely detrimental to the cause to show that indeed one of the first and the longest lasting of all great civilizations in human history was predominately black.

I have learned a lot about what a threat that was to the Western powers at the time who attempted to rewrite history.  The French were particularly zealoous in their actions.  There are countless monuments and artifacts that have been defaced or destroyed.  All of the recovered defaced items have striking similarities.  Their noses and lips have been removed or crushed.  This is not a coincidence as these features were considered to be revealingly black features.

Anyway, I just think it's sad that even today these perceptions still exist.  Ask yourselves why you want to believe that Egyptians weren't black.

There is concrete evidence to show the "rewriting of history" that I have seen for myself.  It is known, for example that the Napoleon lead French were responsible for defacing the Sphynx at Giza.  If you do not believe Africans or African Americans then read up on reports from Europeans.  There are recorded logs of ninteenth century European exploration of the region which describe their shock at encountering an ancient black civilization.  Historically speaking there are also some preserved records of early Greeks describing the population that they encountered upon journeying to Egypt as black skinned.  Also there have been testse done on mummified remains which, while not completely reliable (due to the severe erosion of time and the chemicals used in the mummification process), indicate almost without fail that the people that were embalmed were indeed dark skinned people.

Again the question is, why is this so hard to believe.  Egypt was in Africa! It was in a dry, hot, desert region.  All evidence points to a dark skinned indiginous populace.  Yet there is a strong resistance to these facts and they are not made readily available.  The world we live in has been distorted out of the necessity for colonial powers to justify their practices.  You made the statement that Africans have nothing to show for their past.  This is indicative of the way that people in the Western world are educated to believe in white European superiority.  Forget Egypt for a moment, there were kingdoms in Sub-Saharan Africa during the European Middle ages with more wealth and power than anything in Europe at the time.  Kingdoms like Ghana, Songoy and Mali.  In our education system we are not taught about these kingdoms and that is not out of coincidence.  I would recomend reading a book called The Colonizer and the Colonized by Memmi.  It details the colonization process and how eradicating the history of the Africans (who at that time were no longer living in larger kingdoms but rather in smaller tribes) was essential to effective colonial rule.  The Europeans had to establish racial inequality as fact in order to maintain the social climate within the colonies.

I could go on forever about this.  I could talk about how I was taught that the pyramids were built by slaves.  I could bring up the way we are taught to believe that Africans have no written history when in fact massive libraries have been found on the Ivory coast that pre-date the Roman Empire.  It is a source of frustration for everyone in our field because of the tremendous amount of information that has been destroyed and is forever lost to us.

There have been authors to attempt to claim the entirety of Egypt's history as being one of black rule.  This is not acurate as foreigners ruled from 670 B.C. on and at intermittent periods in between.  There is also evidence of mixed race rulers from interracial marriages.  That being said this practice by black authors is a result of the way that blacks raised in the West, upon investigating their history, become alarmed at the amount of information that was left out of their education and end up not trusting any of it.

Believe me buddy, I grew up learning the same things as you.  I thought that all relevent history was the result of people "like me."  I have since learned otherwise.  The information is out there.  The only reason to trully believe that the Egyptians were somehow a non-African people is out of desire to believe that; which is a prolem in and of itself.

you may be correct that it is differant in the US  but it Canada it isn't -I was taught the same thing.