why would the history channel show the ancient egyptian as white if thay were black?

Question

why would american try to mis-lead us, the truth is thay was white---white power

Answer 1

Your Simple Answer:

That the Egyptians by and large were dark is certain, and many must have been what we today call "black."


More Detailed Answer:

*Being on the continent, Egypt has always been an African civilization though it straddles two regions, Africa and the Middle East. It's fairly clear that the cultural roots of ancient Egypt lie in Africa and not in Asia.

*Skulls have been measured and compared and DNA tests attempted in various forms, but conclusions are few. Skulls are more similar to those found in the Northern Sudan and less similar to those found in West Africa, Palestine, and Turkey. It seems that there has been some genetic continuity from Predynastic time through the Middle Kingdom, after which there was a considerable infiltration into the Nile Valley from outside populations. That the Egyptians by and large were dark is certain, and many must have been what we today call "black."

Answer 2

The word "race" appeared around 50-75 years ago. We referred to people as black, white, yellow, red. I do not know who came up with the idea of the word "race." But 'race' is a scientific term for when animals are closely related to other animals, sort-of a sub-species of a specific animal. "Race' has absolutely NOTHING to do with people and the color of their skin. The closest word we have that is correct is "ethics" A good example is the Civil War. There were over 100 different flags in the Civil War. One Flag; the one we see all the time, was shown in a black and white movie, with no sound. Suddenly that one flag; became THE flag, of the Civil War. That flag was on a Confederate war ship, that was sunk after 2 days of battle. It was never used again in the Civil War. But in tv and movies, and on vehicles, it is every where!

Answer 3

The History Channel also claimed the stealth fighter was super-sonic. They try and make history entertaining. The race of the Egyptians change with invasions, the original people were probibly brown and appeared like Berbers. It is thought that the ancient Egyptians ventured into the area from what is now the western Sahara.

At one point dark skinned peoples from Sudan and Ethiopia, than Kush and Nubia, into the area. Eventually some of these people became pharohs. Later caucasion invaders took Egypt, and were forced out by an apparently blended race of semetic and ******* people.

These people were in turn forced out of power by invading Greek forces. Who were conquered by Roman, who were conquered and assimilated by Arabs. All we can say with certainty is that the ancient Egyptians were, well, ancient Egyptians.

Answer 4

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.
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.

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.

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.


Regarding the History Channel, as a prior poster noted, the History Channel is not a professional historical organization. It's an entertainment channel. You might also be interested to know that many of the actors in the re-enactments shown on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, etc., are actually modern Egyptians. When the documentaries are made, especially if they include new footage in Egypt, they frequently hire local Egyptians to "re-enact" historical events (or, at least, the producer's idea of how those events took place). I've watched them film the things while I was in the field.

So, if you're going to play the race game, ask yourself - are modern Egyptians "black" or "white" according to your categeories. And then see if your racist argument holds up even by your own standards, let alone those of professionals.

Answer 5

The Egyptians (and the Arabs and the inhabitants of Mesopotamia) were all of AFRICAN descent, that dominant gene pool would make them "BLACK" in today's racist color-coding of human beings.

Egyptians in the movies are portrayed as light skinned caucasians simply because the actors are light skinned caucasians.

Only director Mel Gibson has taken any steps in historical accuracy by hiring locals to portray the ancients speaking in their own languages.

ALSO - beware the History Channel, as its only purpose is to popularize history for public consumption and entertainment. The history channel is not a documentary source of information nor is it a professional history organization.

Answer 6

Oh, here we go. Another ignorant white supremacist.

Do a little research into the subject, why don't you? If you had, you would know that the origins of the Egyptians is unclear. They might have come from the Middle East, making them caucasion, or they might have come from more southern parts of Africa, giving them black roots.

But here's the all important question... WHO CARES?

Answer 7

"DNA"STUDIES have recently shown that almost 99.9 % of american indians east of the rockies have no genetic relationship with the chumash genes of the western tribes at all (so where did they come from???)and the egyptian situation may well have some new light shone upon it also!!rammses has red hair,his body exists partially intact and can be sampled at any time ,if it is allowed by egyptian authorities!!that is not to say that ramses was white or any other race identifiable today but the potential now exists ,as never in the past, to define and be precisely accurate in such racial considerations!!and this will truly rewrite history as we now believe it to be!!if the findings of the cameron film and findings prove that jesus' bones are in the ossuary from jerusalem that also will impact history immeasureablly!!that .of course would mean that there was "no ressurection","no eternal son of god",just a man perhaps masquerading as such!!this can not be the basis of a religion!!and if islam has held jesus as a prophet that too negates islam as a religion for having gone so far out of it's way to gain "acceptance" by claiming kinship to a blasphemy you would have to be percieved as accomplices in the blasphemy by their own reasoning!!i have no ax to grind in either case but find the evidenciary proofs very culturally interesting!!as we are all of us a part of every culture framed by the human race;no culture does indeed have all of the relevent answers to life's mysteries and very little has positively been achieved to try and beat down everyone else trying to get them to believe otherwise!! what is a coffee colored race?..it isn't african unless it comes from africa!!there are strains of hippolyta's blood that have been found in mongolia,hippolyta was the queen of the amazons who was captured by jason and was being sent back to greece in chains but escaped to the steppes of asia,and her genes survived in the horse people althoughout aisa and are a frequent embarasment to the women of various tribes as suddenly a light color of hair and eyes occurs "out of nowhere" amongst people of mongolian stock who have dark black eyes and straight black hair as a matter of course!!an asian friend of mine has personnaly indicated that this is indeed so in all of her generations of relatives from these areas!!so "real science can debunk and reinvigorate us all ,out of the darkling past and mystery into true reason and valid knowledge and with irresistible proofs!!exciting really!

Answer 8

Egyptians are Caucasian are they not? Dark skinned Caucasians who reside in Africa, making them African, but not black.

Answer 9

Because they were not black. They were closely related to the Semitic people, Arabs, Jews and so on. So they were, in fact, brown. The Egyptians did conquer, and were in turn conquered, by Nubians and Libyans who were black. But the ancient Egyptians, those who created the civilization were brown. Do not believe the Afro-centric rewriting of history.

Answer 10

Egyptians were Arabic