Were ancient Egyptians Black?

Answer 1

Nope. Sorry. Michael Jackson and Eddie Murphy did a cute video a few years back, and there are people who made those connections, but no.

A couple of centuries ago people devised a simplistic set of three primary races: caucasian (European: whites), mongoloid (Asian: no, not the mentally retarded old term of mongoloidism, which merely meant that there were physical characteristics that resembled some), and ******* (sub-Saharan African: blacks). Notice the "sub-Saharan" thing. Egypt is and was above the Sahara, or at least on its northeastern corner. The ancient egyptians built elaborate tombs, temples, and government buildings. They are famous for their carved character writing, and the art. The art usually depicts people in aspects of common life. There are scenes of home and family, scenes of work and industry, and scenes of war and the aftermath of war. There are depictions of egyptians and people from other lands. There are pictures of foreigners from countries or parts of the neighboring world that we can identify as Assyrian, and Hittite, etc. There are those with the distinct ******* racial features and even coloration (it is amazing how much color remains after thousands of years) that depict people from contacts further up the Nile river, which is branching south into Africa below the Sahara desert.

The depictions are often very clear--black Africans were not the normal or primary population of that people we call the ancient egyptian. Go visit the library and crack open the books and look at the pictures. Then do the reading, which I put later simply because most of the things we have about Egypt are not addressing this question, most egyptologists never brought it up until fairly recently. They could see the pictures on the walls which made the image of ancient egypt very and surprisingly clear. Clearer and earlier than for most of the ancient world.

Answer 2

People of the Mediterranean region, like Hebrew, Arabs, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Romans, Spanish, Greeks, etc are generally olive skinned to varying degree.

Certainly, there were black ancient Egyptians; but they were more likely tan, like the rest of the peoples around the Med.

There is a artistic convention that the Minoans (Crete) and others used where men were red or tan and woman were pale; but I can recall some slides from art History with Nubians who were painted darker than the Egyptians (also wore different clothes).

Answer 3

Black is a misnomer - the wrong word for what you mean.
Africa contains several distict races.
Anthropology doesn't like the subject because to talk about race was so discredited by science to the point that it was brought to a head, like a fesetering pimple about to burst by our supposedly Nordic friends in Germany in the 1930-40's and Ken Burns is occupying Public TV telling of the results. So we try to avoid the subject.
However, while tribalism existed in Africa, there were several races in Africa when modern Europeans the inland. They include the Pygmy and what I was taught to call "The true Black" both of the Rain Forest (One of course is perfectly proportioned, but short, the other has extremely high levels of the agent that colors the skin dark, just like the Aryans of India), the Bushman of the Kalahari Desert, The Berbers which are actually from Germany or Gaul in the times of the Romans and the ones you are interested in, the Nilo-Egyptians, who have extended down the entire eastern coast of Africa due to Islam and trade.
They are distinct from the peoples of the middle east in that those people are considered to be another race, whose name escapes me. There are questions about racial differences in the Upper and Lower Kingdom being the reason for the initial seperation, but I believe that the recent satelite images showing that the land to the west was fertile for far longer then we thought is the reason for the delay of the two kingdoms, in that the Upper Kingdom had this land to relie upon for grain and its loss drove it north into the Lower Kingdom.

Answer 4

Some ancient Egyptians were, but not all were. It was a large Kingdom in its day & there were actually many ethnicities that which comprised the entire Empire of Egypt.

Answer 5

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.
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.

Answer 6

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 7

Ancient Egypt spanned thousands of years. It started off mostly white, and thrived. It became a mixed society at its epoch. It eventually became predominately black and decayed.
Ancient Egypt's history is a sneak preview of America's coming fate.

Answer 8

Yes and no. While it was an indigenous kingdom it was known as Kemet (the black land) and its people were dark skinned. Through the centuries as it was taken over by different groups (the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs...) the skin colour of its people gradually lightened.

Answer 9

ancient egyptians were indeed black. check their skin tone on the hieroglyphics

Answer 10

They were people of mixed colors. Just an FYI...Americans are the only ones to "cagetorize" people. You wouldn't go to Mexico and ask if they were black or Mexican would you? They are just Mexican.