What the heck ?

Question

I've been reading some of the questions on this page. Man, some of you are just ignorant. I'm a history student and some people rather point the finger then say a something constructive. For example there was one question about the Egyptians. The question is why do historians claim the Egyptians were not black? Well me being a history student it's jelously. You know why? Why do whites always want to say they made everything, it's not true. We had the first empire. No they say, we must of gotten help from another race (white) it's so subliminal. Why can't people look past the melinin?
Amenhotep= first architect
Hatshepsut=Female pharoah
Amenhotep=pharoah
These are only a few of the African kings, check them out.
People need to open there eyes, Africa is a black country not a white one. Yes they were mixed, but are they not black?
Fabolous(rapper) is Dominican is he not black ?

Terracinese listen, they were still black. Why aren't Greeks, Romans and Portuguese black? Blacks were in all those countries, I see what your saying, but why are all three considered white? They all have black blood in them, so why do people say they weren't black? It's a simple question is it based on jelously. At the same time Egyptinas called themselves Kemet. Also, Egypt is a Greek word for back, a black land. Come on people... Arabs and Europeans invaded it they were never there to begin with.

Terracanese it's people like you that make me wonder. You call Greeks, Romans and Portuguese white. Why? They have black in them, but would you call Egyptian people not black? Have you paid attention to there paintings, hyroglyphs and such? These are black featured people, it's not hard to see. At the same time it's Africa, so it's nonesense because it's Africa. Yes they were close to the North your not going to get any lighter. Your still going to be black, Kemet was what they called themeselves. Egypty is what the Greeks called a black land. Yes, they were black, it's written on the walls. Kemet means black skinned, it's in there language look it up. All that mixed breeding came later, it wasn't always this way. Nubian people are the originaters they aren't just going to change color in a year it will take centuries. Do you understand ? Read a book...

Answer 1

The short answer is that the ancient Egyptians were Egyptians - that's how they identified themselves. Modern racial categories are not only anachronistic when applied to the past but nearly all scientists and scholars no longer believe that race is a biological reality. Rather, race is culturally determined and what makes a person a certain race or the identification of what race a given person or people are may and often do change depending on context.

As a historian, or student of history, you should understand the concept of anachronism. What I mean by this is that it is inappropriate to apply modern racial categories to the ancient world as if those categories were exactly the same and defined in the same way in the past that they are now.

The Arab conquest and various conquests before it did not completely depopulate Egypt and replace the population with Arabs or any other cultural/ethnic group. The Arabic language and the religion of Islam were adopted over a span of a few centuries after the conquest of Egypt, but there was never an enormous population of Arabs entering into Egypt and they tended to remain primarily in the Cairo area.
It's also worth noting that much of the Coptic Christian population, which makes up about 6-8% of the modern population of Egypt can, for the most part, trace their heritage back to what I suppose you'd call "ancient" Egypt. Copts are not easily distinguishable from most other Egyptians based solely on physical appearance.


There was a great range of physical appearances in ancient Egypt, much like there is in modern Egypt as the general physical characteristics have probably not changed all that greatly - there have been new population groups introduced, but most scholars feel that their influence has been fairly small and gradual and new population groups have been moving through Egypt since humans first arrived there.

The ancient Egyptians were African, as Egypt is in Africa. "African" is frequently conflated with "black" especially in the US and Europe, despite the vast range of physical appearance, including skin tones and facial features among various indigenous African groups. The ancient Egyptians had a variety of skin tones, roughly similar to those seen in Egypt today - that is, ranging from relatively light skinned/tan to very dark skinned, with hair that is straight, curly or very curly, noses that range in shape and eyes that are brown, blue, grey, or green. This is a standard phenotype for most North Africans.

There was population movement into Egypt despite it's relative isolation from both father south in Africa and from western Asia that contributed in a slight way to the external physical characteristics of the general population.

Ancient Egyptian art had certain conventions for depicting Egyptians as well as other population groups. Egyptian males are typically shown as red or reddish brown, women and old people of either gender in a yellowish shade, Nubians as black, and Asiatics as yellow. This may not have always reflected the reality of individual appearance as most of these depictions were not intended as portraits.

I'd add that the term Kemet refers to the land. It means "black land" not "black people." The writing of the word is always accompanied by the hieroglyphic (or hieratic, etc.) determinitive for land, not with the seated male and female figure determinitive used to denote a group of people. Kemet is often used in texts in a literary construction of opposition to Deshret "the red land" drawing attention to the opposite-pairing of the black land (the stable, fertile river banks of the living) and the red land (the infertile, chaotic desert of the dead). And it was the Ethiopians whom the Greeks and other Classical writers tended to describe as "black" skinned.

As a scholar, I don't think the Egyptians were white, but I don't think that they were "black" in the common usage either - I think that they were Egyptian. I think, based on evidence from their own texts, artistic representations, etc., that they defined themselves as "Egyptian" in opposition to other groups. I don't think that you can apply modern categories with their own baggage to the past and I don't think that it serves any worthwhile purpose to "claim" an ancient cultural group as one's own without a wealth of evidence. I study ancient Egypt because I find it interesting, not because I feel that I need to support a modern social-political ideology and to be frank, at times I get a little tired of the ongoing arguing because I think that it distracts from the really interesting parts of Egyptian culture and because I don't think it should matter what box on a census form an ancient Egyptian would check. I say again, they were Egyptian - and that's all that should matter.

Also, the "first architect" to whom you refer was called "Imhotep" not Amenhotep, a name with a very different meaning.

I've written a great many answers on Yahoo on this topic arguing against both those who argue that the Egyptians were "white" and those who argue that they were "black." Again, as I mentioned above, it is anachronistic to apply modern categories to the past as those those categories and definitions had the same meaning or were even conceived of in the past. It is true that a number of early European scholars were not willing to attribute the Egyptian civilization to indigenous African people, but this view has changed and no responsible scholar would attribute the ancient Egyptian civilization to white Europeans and not only because (again, as stated above) such racial categories are not taken to be particularly meaningful or "real" in a concrete biological sense.

Answer 2

I agree with the others. Africa is a continent - not a country and not a race of people. Also, Amenhotep was not the first architect, a man named Imhotep whom was an Egyptian was the first architect. Another thing, the Egyptians were not entirely black because the Arabs settled that part of the continent. The Ancient Egyptians were purely Egyptians whose skin color resembles that of the modern Arabs. There were black Egyptians as well. The Egyptian kingdom stretched into the country of Nubia which is the now the country of Sudan and the people living in that area are indeed black.
As a white history student I know that we do not claim to have invented everything. Many older civilizations gave us the things we have today and many historians believe that the first people on Earth (a.k.a. Adam and Eve) were black. And as to the blacks having the first empire, I'm not so sure about that either. Although Adam and Eve were probably black they probably lived in what is now Saudi Arabia or in Iraq and Iran and later migrated into what is now the continent of Africa.
And for your information Africa is home to some white people as well.
I feel sorry for you, such a history student who has such a biased opinion on things. Good luck finding a job. No one will take you seriously if you can't examine both sides of the story and be open to other people's ideas.

Answer 3

Why ask a question if you are already sure of the answer? When you tell someone to read a book, I suggest that you know your facts first
1) Africa is not a country, it is a continent
2) Ancient Egypt encompassed many lands along the Nile and the Mediterranean, and was a local melting pot for many different "races"
3) White people do not say that they made everything
4) Egypt was not the first Empire, China was! Really the orientals should take credit for that, not the blacks
5) Some of us can look past melanin, Why can't you?
6) No one believes that only white people invented everything. Lots of great ideas came from all across the world

It appears to me that you want to believe your own ideas so much that you have closed your mind to all others and therefore your education is fast on its way to becoming a colossal waste of time and money. I hope that you are paying for this yourself, because I don't think that taxpayers should have to foot the bill for your sad attempt to rewrite history. Why don't you work on the principle that you have 2 ears and only 1 mouth, which means you should spend twice as much time listening as talking!

Answer 4

You are seriously confused and have been taking an Afro-centric history class, obviously. Africa is a continent; not a race of people. There is an incomplete division between sub Sahara Africa and northern Africa. It is very sad that you let some professor of African studies fill your head with this false picture of anthropological history. " Bud wiser " history is not well supported by the genetic evidence or the archaeological evidence. The Egyptians were of Semite stock and all the fallacy that you are fed by the ideologically driven is not going to change that. How would you like to be a Phoenician, last of your people, and hear that Hannibal , your greatest hero, had been stolen away by a historical revisionist. Or the Greeks, losing Cleopatra by the same method. Do you not have enough pride in the sub Saharan African people to keep you from taking from others? There is more than enough, just in the history of one people, the Zulu, to keep a real historian occupied for years. Do not co-opt the histories of other people.

Answer 5

I think all the art from Ancient Egypt suggests that they were not black, but they would have been darker skin than most of the actors who have played them in movies etc. There is nothing to suggest that people on one side of the Mediterranean sea (Egypt) would be too much darker than those on the other (Italy, Greece etc). People from the north of Africa had less need of melanin in their skin than those closer to the equator. The Nubians, further south from Egypt, were black, and are depicted as such in art and literature.
You need to accept that Africa is not all "Black", it is just Africa.

Additional Comment:
Reread my answer. I did not use the term "white" for Italians, greeks etc. I am suggesting that not all Africans were very dark skinned. Skin colour is influenced by distance form the equator, being a direct reflection of radiation strength. They are no closer to the equator than say, Aztecs, Northern Indians, Southern Chinese etc. None of these are very dark. Although clearly, they are darker than northern Europeans.
Your concept of Africans as "Black" is flawed. Yes, they are mostly dark skinned, but many are not.
It is not me who cannot look past the Melanin. You seem to base your argument on Greek term for Egypt, meaning Black land, and ignore the art and literature which does not show egyptians as black. Why? They had black statues, black stone to carve with. They were darker skinned than Europeans, but they were not "Black" by the concepts we use them today. Not that it would bother me if they were black, but there is no evidence for it. Your opinion not withstanding.

Please don't tell me to read books. I have four tertiary qualifications after my name. I have read many books in my time. I would suggest, as a student, you do not let one issue cloud your objectivity.

Answer 6

Exactly why we have "race" problems today. Let go of your anger and be who you really are. Our world is so intermingled that no one can say with any certainty what "race" they are. I applaud you tho for studying your heritage.

Answer 7

dont write so much no one will read it kill whitey ha haha ha