Ancient Egyptians are of Eurasian origin?

[history91]

So basically what these Egyptians and North Africans are saying in groups and forums is that the people in North Africa/Egypt as a whole are Eurasians. They supposedly left Africa and back migrated. So they never were really African, especially sub-Saharan. And they try to use these scientific studies and things like mtDNA U6 to prove that. That's why they are saying North Africa/Egypt were never black always Eurasian. They refer to themselves as Mediterranean Caucasoid Africans. 

This is one example. Check the post out and read the comments.

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=642127639290234&id=341258989377102

[anansi]

Nov 1, 2016 10:15:15 GMT -5 history91 said:

So basically what these Egyptians and North Africans are saying in groups and forums is that the people in North Africa/Egypt as a whole are Eurasians. They supposedly left Africa and back migrated. So they never were really African, especially sub-Saharan. And they try to use these scientific studies and things like mtDNA U6 to prove that. That's why they are saying North Africa/Egypt were never black always Eurasian. They refer to themselves as Mediterranean Caucasoid Africans. 

This is one example. Check the post out and read the comments.

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=642127639290234&id=341258989377102

Couple of fallacies even with back migration depending on when or whom they are talking about doesn't exclude them being "Black" as there are millions of Black Eurasians in existence today tell them, goole up New Guinea, second Kemetian culture as we know it did not travel up the Nile going towards Africa, it traveled from up the Nile to the Med, God's Land or land of the ancestors were way past the lands of the Nahasi to central east Africa, incidentally that's where the so-called Afrisian language phylum came from, I am saying so called because it is increasingly likely that that phylum is connected to the Congo.
Asked them about Ta- Seti and group A culture at Hieraknopolis
Cave Of Swimmers

The Nubian Pastoral Culture as Link between Egypt and Africa: A View from the Archaeological Record
The Nubian Pastoral as Link Between Egypt And Africa

The earliest representations of royal power in Egypt: the rock drawings of Nag el-Hamdulab (Aswan

The Early A-Group in Upper Lower Nubia, Upper Egypt and the surrounding deserts

“Cultural entanglement at the dawn of the Egyptian history: a view from the Nile First Cataract region”, Origini: Prehistory and Protohistory of Ancient Civilizations

'Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: a prehistoric perspective on Egypt’s place in Africa'. Antiquity (2014)

Iconographic and Palaeographic Elements Dating a Dynasty 0 Rock Art Site at Nag el-Hamdulab (Aswan, Egypt)

Now tell your Fb people to read what folks currently in the field have to say about the issue,

[/a]

[history91]

I don't know if you clicked on the link I provided, and I hope you did, but those are not my people.

[amazigh]

The ancient Egyptians Of African origin




*Features ancient Egyptians( skin Colour) (black and dark brown and red and yellow and white)



*Features ancient Egyptians ( Shape of the nose and mouth)( Thick lips and nose boor And sometimes thick lips but moderate as well as the nose and thick

but average And sometimes the lip is not thick, as well as the nose is not a boor





ancient Egyptians

[history91]

White Egyptians?

[hatshepsut]

To me it seems no extreme views on origin are necessary. The Nile offers a highway into central Africa normally forbidden by the Sahara. The Mediterranean allows seafaring access to the Nile Delta, which can also be reached on foot along the coast from east or west. What the deserts and mountains do is restrict entry to these two ends of Egypt, so that any state established there can control choke points. Before Dynasty 1 no group ever held both Memphis and Aswan simultaneously, yet the valley remained far better protected by geography than Anatolia or the Levant would have been.

This meant Egypt could develop with less warfare. Egypt became the ancient world’s richest and most diverse society, by 1500BC having Nubians from the south, Libyans from the west, Asiatics from Syria-Palestine, and Minoans from Crete all participating in its palace culture along with whoever could claim local ancestry back to Neolithic times, under no apparent restrictions on intermarriage or social rise. The key seemed to be that wannabes made themselves useful and learned the Egyptian language. See “Tomb of Maiherperi KV36” for a Nubian-Egyptian military commander, pp. 70-74; “Egypt and the Aegean” for Minoan Greek bull jumpers at Thutmoside Avaris, pp. 75-81, both in Roehrig et al (2005), Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, Metropolitan Museum of Art, downloadable from its web site.

Not that we would call Egypt a “progressive” place; technology remained backward, interpersonal relations and official oppression potentially as brutal as anywhere else. By ancient standards it was, however, more open to its minorities and to women (who were legally, if not socially, equal to men). Barry Kemp (2006), Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization 2ed, from a somewhat Marxist viewpoint and considering Egypt the birthplace of “economic man,” discusses Egyptian concepts of ethnicity and color, which were perceived, but subsumed in terms of loyalty to the king and his bureaucratic state.

Hendrickx and Vermeersh (2000) in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt point to multipolar origins for Egypt’s population. Middle Paleolithic stone tools of Nubian style are present in the Egyptian West Desert to 250Kya. The climate there was wetter during the period 9000 to 5000BC than at later times. A West Desert origin for settlement which developed into the Badarian culture ca. 4500BC is indicated, although by then the desert was not particularly Nubian in character.

It is dangerous to rely on art for physiognomy. Note frequency of robust lips on 11th Dynasty faces we don’t classify as black African today. Art clearly distinguished the darker tone of Nubians (Maiherperi), whose hair was often put into tight curls as well. Yet ancient art is stylized, never photorealistic. Much of that hair turns out to be wigs. Artists and sculptors rendered Egyptian women in light yellowish pigments. Egypt is a land where races of people have been mixing for thousands of years.

Metropolitan Mus., Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh
www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Hatshepsut_From_Queen_to_Pharaoh

Brown University, “Theban 11th Dynasty”
www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/historyofegyptone14/files/27336776.pdf

[history91]

kemetexpert.com/category/conspiracy/

[piccolo]

^ you keep posting links but i don't trust them. might be malware. what is kemetexpert?

[history91]

The author of this blog is Dr Sally-Ann Ashton. She has a BA in Ancient Greek from the University of Manchester, and has a BA (Hons) and MA in Classical Archaeology from King’s College London. She remained at King’s to undertake research for a PhD in Egyptian Archaeology.

During this time she worked as a researcher in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at The British Museum in London and later as co-curator for the special exhibition: ‘Cleopatra of Egypt: from history to myth’. Sally-Ann then moved to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London as a researcher. She was then appointed as Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge with curatorial responsibility for Ancient Egypt and Sudan until 2015.

During her time in Cambridge Sally-Ann obtained an MPhil in Criminological Research (University of Cambridge), and an MSc in Investigative Psychology (University of Huddersfield). She is currently studying full-time for a second PhD in Psychology at the University of Huddersfield, but continues to work as a heritage consultant.

In addition to publishing numerous books and articles on a wide range of subjects relating to Ancient Egyptian and Sudanese cultures, Sally-Ann has undertaken archaeological and anthropological fieldwork in Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Greece, Italy and the Caribbean. Her most recent work has been on the history of African hair combs.

kemetexpert.com/category/conspiracy/

[history91]

Dec 22, 2016 1:25:24 GMT -5 piccolo said:

^ you keep posting links but i don't trust them. might be malware. what is kemetexpert?



No link I post is malware, all legit. As a matter of fact if you click on them you may learn something.

[snakepit]

Dec 19, 2016 20:00:37 GMT -5 hatshepsut said:

To me it seems no extreme views on origin are necessary. The Nile offers a highway into central Africa normally forbidden by the Sahara. The Mediterranean allows seafaring access to the Nile Delta, which can also be reached on foot along the coast from east or west. What the deserts and mountains do is restrict entry to these two ends of Egypt, so that any state established there can control choke points. Before Dynasty 1 no group ever held both Memphis and Aswan simultaneously, yet the valley remained far better protected by geography than Anatolia or the Levant would have been.

This meant Egypt could develop with less warfare. Egypt became the ancient world’s richest and most diverse society, by 1500BC having Nubians from the south, Libyans from the west, Asiatics from Syria-Palestine, and Minoans from Crete all participating in its palace culture along with whoever could claim local ancestry back to Neolithic times, under no apparent restrictions on intermarriage or social rise. The key seemed to be that wannabes made themselves useful and learned the Egyptian language. See “Tomb of Maiherperi KV36” for a Nubian-Egyptian military commander, pp. 70-74; “Egypt and the Aegean” for Minoan Greek bull jumpers at Thutmoside Avaris, pp. 75-81, both in Roehrig et al (2005), Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, Metropolitan Museum of Art, downloadable from its web site.

Not that we would call Egypt a “progressive” place; technology remained backward, interpersonal relations and official oppression potentially as brutal as anywhere else. By ancient standards it was, however, more open to its minorities and to women (who were legally, if not socially, equal to men). Barry Kemp (2006), Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization 2ed, from a somewhat Marxist viewpoint and considering Egypt the birthplace of “economic man,” discusses Egyptian concepts of ethnicity and color, which were perceived, but subsumed in terms of loyalty to the king and his bureaucratic state.

Hendrickx and Vermeersh (2000) in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt point to multipolar origins for Egypt’s population. Middle Paleolithic stone tools of Nubian style are present in the Egyptian West Desert to 250Kya. The climate there was wetter during the period 9000 to 5000BC than at later times. A West Desert origin for settlement which developed into the Badarian culture ca. 4500BC is indicated, although by then the desert was not particularly Nubian in character.

It is dangerous to rely on art for physiognomy. Note frequency of robust lips on 11th Dynasty faces we don’t classify as black African today. Art clearly distinguished the darker tone of Nubians (Maiherperi), whose hair was often put into tight curls as well. Yet ancient art is stylized, never photorealistic. Much of that hair turns out to be wigs. Artists and sculptors rendered Egyptian women in light yellowish pigments. Egypt is a land where races of people have been mixing for thousands of years.

Metropolitan Mus., Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh
www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Hatshepsut_From_Queen_to_Pharaoh

Brown University, “Theban 11th Dynasty”
www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/historyofegyptone14/files/27336776.pdf

" Egypt is a land where races of people have been mixing for thousands of years."
That is simply inaccurate & not factual (if we're talking about the origins of the people who came to create the native dynasties of Kmt) .

[hatshepsut]

Dec 30, 2016 11:46:51 GMT -5 snakepit said:

...if we're talking about the origins of the people who came to create the native dynasties of Kmt.

I can’t say, regarding the earliest people there. Most of the above refers to the Middle and New Kingdoms when Egypt had documented commerce with the outside world, except for Hendrickx and Vermeersh (2000), who wrote their book chapter before the explosion in DNA studies. However, the social progress of Egypt is fascinating. Employing less mechanical technology for agriculture than in the Levant, the Egyptians nonetheless managed to unify and organize a state controlling up to 1000 miles of Nile Valley with little mass violence (by comparison with Mesopotamia, which was a dangerous region politically and militarily), at an early date. Polities of this size didn’t happen elsewhere until China, Persia, Rome, and Peru.

Egypt did possess higher levels of engineering in one area: shipyards and river navigation. Barges were able to carry well over 100 tons, the weight of the obelisks quarried in one piece near Aswan and moved to Karnak.

[zarahan]

Dec 19, 2016 20:00:37 GMT -5 hatshepsut said:

To me it seems no extreme views on origin are necessary. The Nile offers a highway into central Africa normally forbidden by the Sahara.

Actually the Sahara was no barrier enough to prevent the movement of peoples in and out of Egypt from the south. Keep in mind that the Sahara was once a greenbelt millennia ago, and its contraction acted as a "pump" pushing people into the Nile Valley. Those foundational populations as we know came from south of the Sahara primarily. Nothing extreme about that.


yet the valley remained far better protected by geography than Anatolia or the Levant would have been.

Sure, but as far as the foundational peopling of Egypt the Sahara was not a significant barrier. To foreign invaders from the Levant, the deserts were definitely a barrier. As far as invasion from the SOuth- from Nubia/Cush- this was managed more than once- at El Kab centuries before the 25th Dynasty when the Kushites almost destroyed Egypt, to the well known 25th Dynasty centuries later.




This meant Egypt could develop with less warfare.

To some extent but there still was a bit of warfare that enabled the hegemons from the tropical south to take over the entire country.



Egypt became the ancient world’s richest and most diverse society, by 1500BC having Nubians from the south, Libyans from the west, Asiatics from Syria-Palestine, and Minoans from Crete all participating in its palace culture along with whoever could claim local ancestry back to Neolithic times, under no apparent restrictions on intermarriage or social rise.

Sure but keep in mind that Nubians were in Egypt from the very beginning. The Nubian territory includes the Aswan region for example. When the UNESCO rescue mission was undertaken to rescue priceless treasures it was in Nubia that it was undertaken.
whc.unesco.org/en/news/497/
And Nubians are the closet people ethnically to the Egyptians, as credible professional Egyptologists show.





Not that we would call Egypt a “progressive” place; technology remained backward,

Dubious. In what sense did Egyptian technology remain "backward"? Compared to who, at what time? They knew the wheel quite well, but found it was not very useful in moving stones weighing thousands of tons over soft sand, and so on. But they deployed said wheel in siege towers. Other tech in use was similarly shaped by the environment. They developed writing before Mesopotamia and played a part inn development of modern alphabets. So how are they "backward"?




Barry Kemp (2006), Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization 2ed, from a somewhat Marxist viewpoint and considering Egypt the birthplace of “economic man,” discusses Egyptian concepts of ethnicity and color, which were perceived, but subsumed in terms of loyalty to the king and his bureaucratic state.

In what sense is Kemp's argument "Marxist"? Give some specific examples of Marxist thought in relation to Kemp. Economic man could simply mean rational calculation of costs and benefits. The Egyptians had to do such calculations because they worked quite hard at maintaining their irrigation systems for example, and did not have the "easy" life claimed by many. And how would "Marxism" fit into the massive investments poured into funerary/mortuary activity?




Hendrickx and Vermeersh (2000) in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt point to multipolar origins for Egypt’s population. Middle Paleolithic stone tools of Nubian style are present in the Egyptian West Desert to 250Kya. The climate there was wetter during the period 9000 to 5000BC than at later times. A West Desert origin for settlement which developed into the Badarian culture ca. 4500BC is indicated, although by then the desert was not particularly Nubian in character.

The desert was never Nubian in character per se, though Nubian influences were strong.


It is dangerous to rely on art for physiognomy. Note frequency of robust lips on 11th Dynasty faces we don’t classify as black African today.

Black Africans have the most diversity in the world, they can have narrow noses and narrow lips or broad noses or broad lips, or light and dark skin, What do you define as "Black African"? Be specific.




---------------------------
And the modern era's "one drop rule", which whites have used for most of US history and still use in their racial classifications easily makes the Egyptians black as even people like Mary Lefkowitz acknowledge. In fact, in terms of the common American and European understanding and construct of race, credible professional EgyptologisTs note that it is reasonable to call the ancient Egyptians black, and they say so in mainstream archaeological publications.

There are other scientific reasons to see them as dark skinned, indigenous tropical Africans, and as part of a native African lineage, OVER AND ABOVE ANY SOCIAL CONSTRUCT, as the professional scientists repeatedly note. Such tropical peoples would be called "black" in common American and European racial parlance.
egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/thread/15/basic-database-nile-valley-studies




Art clearly distinguished the darker tone of Nubians (Maiherperi), whose hair was often put into tight curls as well.

Art distinguished the darker tone of SOME Nubians. But all Nubians were not a monolithic type. And in addition, there was plenty of dark skin in Egypt. Dark skin in Egypt is not the product of "Nubians." This is a fallacy. Dark skin has been in Egypt since Day 1. If the Egyptians used a stylized red for their Egyptians so be it, but this does not mean you need "Nubians" to account for dark skin in Egypt.



Yet ancient art is stylized, never photorealistic. Much of that hair turns out to be wigs. Artists and sculptors rendered Egyptian women in light yellowish pigments. Egypt is a land where races of people have been mixing for thousands of years.

Sure. Stylized conventions such as yellow skin for women means a true picture of the population as far as skin tone diversity is not shown. Again, you do not need "Nubians" to account for dark skin in Egypt, among men or women. And as for a melting pot- sure. In later eras, other groups were to enter Egypt- Hyskos, LIbyans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, etc etc, and finally Arabs who have not yet left.


Employing less mechanical technology for agriculture than in the Levant, the Egyptians nonetheless managed to unify and organize a state controlling up to 1000 miles of Nile Valley

In what sense did they employ less mechanical technology, and in what era is it less or more? The Egyptians had to deploy a very complex irrigation system of canals, locks, dams etc etc- to go with lifting devices such as the shaduf.


Egypt did possess higher levels of engineering in one area: shipyards and river navigation. Barges were able to carry well over 100 tons, the weight of the obelisks quarried in one piece near Aswan and moved to Karnak.

Actually they deployed very high levels of engineering in their massive constructions of temples, tombs, public works and pyramids, not only the "one area" of shipyards.

[hatshepsut]

Jan 2, 2017 12:41:09 GMT -5 zarahan said:

In what sense is Kemp's argument "Marxist"?  

Your mention of Vivian Davies appreciated. His papers are on the Academia web site; I plan to read them since I’ve overlooked him.

As for technology, “backward” may be the wrong word, yet the public works were executed with very simple tools; the major feat was organizing the workforce, keeping it fed and motivated over the 20 years a project took. Neither the chariot nor the shaduf appear until the 18th Dynasty, however, much later than elsewhere, and similarly for waterwheels, which arrive with the Ptolemies. I believe this is because of the larger population and lower intensity of warfare: Technology tends to be driven by need, so that machines are invented when labor is scarce. Using the Nile as highway, they had some of the nicest river boats I’ve seen. Writing, ca. 3200BC on clay or hippo ivory labels, later papyrus, is another signal accomplishment; yet requires little machinery. I declared Egypt not “progressive” only in relation to modern standards, and to note that stability, not rapid social change, kept priority there. Egyptian human relations stood relatively advanced for the ancient world.

The term “Marxist viewpoint” refers to sociologists and anthropologists who assert that economic factors, especially those related to conflict between social classes, are the primary causal force in social development. To have such a viewpoint does not imply one is a communist; it’s just that Marx and Engels pioneered this analytical approach, which is sometimes, but not always, the most productive way to research. I have a lot of regard for Kemp and own several of his books, although I tend to see Egypt as united more by ideology and language than by economic system as the USA is. Egypt had no political parties; it had a king and a set of temple establishments through whose patronage private estates might be owned. During the Old Kingdom, the crown became weaker once it had had to give away too much land in its efforts to stay in favor with local nomarchs.

Today, race and color are bound up with Western politics that uses those attributes to define the identity of people, a thing I doubt the Egyptians did. I think the art follows literality in that rich women did not get tanned and that the farther south one goes, on average the darker the skin tones. (But see the dark women bakers in Roehrig, 2002, and note that San peoples of southwest Africa have light complexions.) For Egyptians, however, style depicts ethnic or tribal affiliation; the Libyans, Canaanites, and Nubians each portrayed in distinctive styles telling onlookers which group is at hand—several kinds of Nubians exist as well; the mDAy aren’t identical to representatives of tA-nHsj, and Puntites aren’t Nubian in the Hatshepsut temple at Deir el-Bahri even if they are black; their customs obviously differ, for instance building houses on stilts.

Sources

Roehrig (2002), Life Along the Nile. Metropolitan Mus. of Art., p. 11
www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Life_Along_the_Nile_Three_Egyptians_of_Ancient_Thebes_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Bulletin_v_60_no_1_Summer_2002

Shaduf did not appear until New Kingdom:
Caminos, pp. 8, 9 in Sergio Donadoni., Ed. (1997). The Egyptians. University of Chicago Press.

[zarahan]

Originally posted by hatshepsut:

Your mention of Vivian Davies appreciated. His papers are on the Academia web site; I plan to read them since I’ve overlooked him.

I commend you on your documentation, but a bit more research is needed on certain items.



As for technology, “backward” may be the wrong word, yet the public works were executed with very simple tools;

Well the phrase "backward" may not only the wrong word but the wrong concept altogether. As I say above, backward compared to who, and in what era? It could also be said that Mesopotamian public works were executed with very simple tools contemporaneous with the great Egyptian achievements in monumental construction in stone. There are no massive cranes with elaborate gears moving rock or brick at construction sites in Mesopotamia for millennia. Their tools were just as simple as the Egyptians, for quite a long time.

As time went on of course others in the NEar East took an early lead in iron technology, which came relatively late to Egypt- (the New Kingdom period)- when the Egyptians mostly were still using copper or bronze, though they knew of iron. But in the millennia before the iron era, when most of the big stoneworks were completed, Egyptian tech in public works was just as good as elsewhere. Respected Egyptologist Ian Shaw in his Ancient Egyptian Technology and Innovation (2012) book notes that the Egyptians, on the balance were not guilty of conservatism over and above everyone else- quote:

"studies of innovation and transmission of material culture in the Nile valley suggest that the ancient Egyptians were no more or less guilty of inherent conservatism than any other Bronze Age cultures in north Africa and the Near East. Not all Egyptian technological choices were necessarily optimal (in modern terms), but the case-studies discussed in each of the chapters above demonstrate that, within their own cultural and economic contexts, these decisions are usually at least clearly explicable.
--Ian Shaw 2012. p151



the major feat was organizing the workforce, keeping it fed and motivated over the 20 years a project took.

Actually it was much more than simple labor force feeding and control. The engineering work itself was of a very high order. Aside from the complexity of alignment, planning, movements etc etc outside, little details show huge sophistication and technical insight and execution. It was not just a matter of piling stones in a pattern. Internal tunnels, passageways and escape hatches all had to be calculated and engineered working from WITHIN monumental structures. Says Shaw for example of just one aspect of the Great pyramid:

"As far as the internal chambers of the Great Pyramid were concerned, the level of structural engineering was equally high; indeed the roof of the so-called Grand Gallery was the Egyptians’ earliest attempt at corbel vaulting on a colossal scale. The architects surmounted particularly difficult logistics in the creation of the corridor leading up to the main burial chamber of the Great Pyramid (the so-called King’s Chamber). The corridors in other pyramids are all either level or sloping downwards, whereas this one slopes steeply upwards, which would have presented particular problems when it came to blocking the passage with heavy granite plugs, after the king’s body had been placed in the chamber. It is clear from the fact that the plugs in this ‘ascending corridor’ are an inch wider than the entrance that the plugs must have been lowered into position not from the outside, as was usually the case, but from a storage position within the pyramid itself (perhaps in the Grand Gallery). It is also clear that the design had to allow the workmen who pushed the plugs into position to be able to escape down a shaft leading from the Grand Gallery down to the ‘descending corridor’, through which they could then exit."
Shaw p75

Neither the chariot nor the shaduf appear until the 18th Dynasty, however, much later than elsewhere, and similarly for waterwheels, which arrive with the Ptolemies.

True, but then again both chariot and shaduf type devices are late-appearing elsewhere also. When the Egyptians were building the Great pyramids at Giza for example, various other nations around were not using chariots or waterwheels either.



I believe this is because of the larger population and lower intensity of warfare: Technology tends to be driven by need, so that machines are invented when labor is scarce.

Fair enough, technology must have a need to drive it, and must be practical too. Using wheels to move massive blocks in soft sand for example would not be practical. Warfare can be a driver- aggressive Hittite military expansion for example would have a faster need for changing or adopting tech compared to a more conservative defensive strategy centered around fortresses. Technology adoption is a complex process. As Ian Shaw notes in his book- Ancient Egyptian Technology and Innovation:

" In order for a new piece of technology to be adopted, several basic factors need to be in place: (1) access to necessary resources or materials, (2) knowledge of methods of manufacture, (3) availability of suitably skilled craftsmen both to make and use the artefact, (4) a social need or political requirement for the technology in question, (5) a suitable social or economic context within which the technology can be deployed."
--Shaw p97.


The term “Marxist viewpoint” refers to sociologists and anthropologists who assert that economic factors, especially those related to conflict between social classes, are the primary causal force in social development. To have such a viewpoint does not imply one is a communist; it’s just that Marx and Engels pioneered this analytical approach, which is sometimes, but not always, the most productive way to research. I have a lot of regard for Kemp and own several of his books, although I tend to see Egypt as united more by ideology and language than by economic system as the USA is.

Well this still does not speak to a Marxist analysis of social class conflict in Egypt, compared to other factors at hand. If Kemp is making or hinting at that argument he would need a lot more detail.




Today, race and color are bound up with Western politics that uses those attributes to define the identity of people, a thing I doubt the Egyptians did.

True, but academics including Egyptologists have been quite frequent users of race and color categories even today, though not as blatant as in the past- and a newer generation seems more balanced. And outside academe, people in America and Europe, specifically invoke racial and color categories, including said categories indirectly or directly in relation to the Egyptians. Re general constructs, President Obama still continues to be "black" for most white people for example, as well as Afro-Americans. And assorted right wing "race-men" - From Rushton, to Sarich and Miele, etc continually appeal to "the common understanding" of race, or an eyeball standard ("anyone can see a Swede is different from a Zulu" etc etc- as if that is the real issue) to make their arguments for the existence of biological races, racial hierarchies, "rational racism" etc etc. White liberals too make certain assumptions about race based on their common cultural outlook. Based on this common understanding in white Western culture, then it is reasonable to say that the Ancient Egyptians were black, as Egyptologists like Tyson Smith acknowledge.

Assorted racialist right wingers manifest a hypocritical double standard. They want to involve race and color constructs to argue for a supremacist agenda, or bash blacks, or justify "rational" racism, but then they want to conveniently forget race and color when the same social constructs they invoke reasonably make the Egyptians "black." Many scholars have pointed out this double standard.




For Egyptians, however, style depicts ethnic or tribal affiliation; the Libyans, Canaanites, and Nubians each portrayed in distinctive styles telling onlookers which group is at hand—several kinds of Nubians exist as well; the mDAy aren’t identical to representatives of tA-nHsj, and Puntites aren’t Nubian in the Hatshepsut temple at Deir el-Bahri even if they are black; their customs obviously differ, for instance building houses on stilts.

True the Egyptians depicted other ethnicities. But based on a wide range of data, numerous Egyptians, would be classified as "black" based on skin color- not only as far as social constructs, but by studies of skin color distribution. Just being in a desert environment itself for millennia would make for certain patterns for example. Many invoke the fact that the Egyptians identified different ethnicities to argue or imply that "you can't be black unless you are Nubian," or that dark skin in Egypt is a product of being "Nubian." But this is an entirely false picture of Kemet. The Nubians actually are the closest people ethically to the Egyptians, as numerous credible studies show. And dark skin has been in Egypt from Day 1- it is not something "foreign" or dependent on "Nubians."