Objective view of Race of 13th Century in general Egyptian civilization area

[KerguelenExileDissident]

Well the title may be deceptive because (unlike a common trend that says anything you dig up is objective knowledge) we know that even artifacts may be subjective indeed because Ancients false view of themselves. For example Assyrians records show they never lost a battle - which is false.

In this case it presents a interesting view of what the Ancient Egyptians considered Egyptian, Libyan, Nubian, and Asian.

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l90/KerguelenExile/00001.jpg

Notice how much lighter Libyans of that time are to in contrast to today.

Notice the Egyptian seems for the most part to be seen as being Red. This may mean 2 possibilies, the Egyptians were whites who's skin had become very tanned and thus the red color, OR they were another branch of the Caucasian race that just had darker skin, perhaps it's own genetic mutation who knows either is likely.

Second is a possible admixture with darker skinned races, but that is ultimately what happened anyway.

Notice the "asian" which to the Egyptians of 13th century B.C. was basically "the levant." This was the same area that ancient Hebrews lived during the time of Judges 1400s-1000's. Clearly they are not Negroid as some would have you think, and quite clearly they are not dark skinned at all. In fact the skin tone looks very similiar to that of the pictures in any European bible.


Also, the Nubian "race" has also changed greatly, modern day Sudanese are much more Arab looking, which is likely from centuries of at first White influence and then Arab influence lightened up the Nubians quite a bit.

So to some extent all these branches are basically "extinct" although that is a bad term to use.

At any rate this map shows that the people who live in these places in modern times have greatly changed.

Examples of modern day Egyptians, Libyans, Sudanese, and "asians" or levantines.

Egyptian

[KerguelenExileDissident]

Looking at this second map it's like "What happened!"

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l90/KerguelenExile/00002.jpg

of course we know what we would expect from the Stormfront crowd

"it wuz da joos comie"

[Contra Mundum]

Ancient Libyans looked almost Nordic in that picture.

[Vessper]

This is excellent information!
Congratulations for this.

Notice the Egyptian seems for the most part to be seen as being Red. This may mean 2 possibilies, the Egyptians were whites who's skin had become very tanned and thus the red color, OR they were another branch of the Caucasian race that just had darker skin, perhaps it's own genetic mutation who knows either is likely.

Second is a possible admixture with darker skinned races, but that is ultimately what happened anyway.

Notice the "asian" which to the Egyptians of 13th century B.C. was basically "the levant." This was the same area that ancient Hebrews lived during the time of Judges 1400s-1000's. Clearly they are not Negroid as some would have you think, and quite clearly they are not dark skinned at all. In fact the skin tone looks very similiar to that of the pictures in any European bible.


Also, the Nubian "race" has also changed greatly, modern day Sudanese are much more Arab looking, which is likely from centuries of at first White influence and then Arab influence lightened up the Nubians quite a bit.

So to some extent all these branches are basically "extinct" although that is a bad term to use.

At any rate this map shows that the people who live in these places in modern times have greatly changed.
The admixture of dark skinned races it the correct one. If you move 100 Norwegians to Africa, their babies will be as pale as the Norwegians born in cold Norway.
Nonetheless, obviously the Egyptian working class tanned because of the working, maybe we should look for pictures of noble Egyptians.


About the Asians and Nubians, it's very interesting, I have to research more on this. It really surprises me, it looks that after all at least part of the Near East was White.

Ancient Libyans looked almost Nordic in that picture.

There are pale skinned meds, believe me.

[Mary Magdalene]

You may find this interesting..Afro-centric propaganda which maintains that Ancient Egypt was a Black civilization. The most common lies and distortions currently being made by the Afro-centric Black supremacists are dealt with graphically in the following article..

http://www.white-history.com/egypt.htm

Eb6vc5zYysc&feature=related

VG-DQxKjadY&feature=related

[Tellurocrat]

Ancient Libyans looked almost Nordic in that picture.
Weren't they Phoenicians?

And, OP, if the Egyptians were tanned whites, wouldn't the Libyans also be tanned?

[Contra Mundum]

Weren't they Phoenicians?

And, OP, if the Egyptians were tanned whites, wouldn't the Libyans also be tanned?

No, they used sunscreen.

[Vessper]

Mary Magdalene, excellent videos!

No, they used sunscreen.
xD

[Contra Mundum]

You may find this interesting..Afro-centric propaganda which maintains that Ancient Egypt was a Black civilization. The most common lies and distortions currently being made by the Afro-centric Black supremacists are dealt with graphically in the following article..

http://www.white-history.com/egypt.htm

Eb6vc5zYysc&feature=related

VG-DQxKjadY&feature=related


Here's a recent story about Nefertiti's bust. The face underneath the surface doesn't appear much different, so perhaps it isn't a big deal.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090331/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_nefertiti_face

[Mary Magdalene]

Here's a recent story about Nefertiti's bust. The face underneath the surface doesn't appear much different, so perhaps it isn't a big deal.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090331/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_nefertiti_face

Interesting article Heefiat. Nefertiti has fine delicate features and it appears she had blue/grey eyes also.

[Contra Mundum]

I think it's pretty obvious that the old kingdom was dominated by caucasians, but I see no evidence that they were nordic.

Some may have had red hair, but their facial features do not appear similar to scandinavians.

Was Tutankhamun from the middle or late kingdom? He appears mixed race but mostly caucasian.

[Vessper]

White Egyptians were obviously meds, how may a nord be in Egypt in that time?.
About Tutankhamun, no idea.

[Tellurocrat]

White Egyptians were obviously meds, how may a nord be in Egypt in that time?.
Nordicist probably claim so.

[Vessper]

Nordicist probably claim so.

Nordicists claim that all the important civilizations were Nordic in origin, including Greece, Rome, Egypt, etc. They even say that the Slavic civilizations were originally Nordic too. It's obviously false. It's sad because modern White Nationalism is full of Nordicist ideas, whether direct (Nordicist Skinheads, etc) or indirect (Stormfront). That's the reason why I follow my own kind of White Nationalism, I call it "True White Nationalism". I think we should be proud of the White Race in general (also being proud of every civilization, but I mean stop fighting between us, stop Nordicists and Medicists) and also stop telling nonsense affirmations, which makes us very unrespected.

[Mary Magdalene]

I think it's pretty obvious that the old kingdom was dominated by caucasians, but I see no evidence that they were nordic.

Some may have had red hair, but their facial features do not appear similar to scandinavians.

Was Tutankhamun from the middle or late kingdom? He appears mixed race but mostly caucasian.

Tutankhamun was son of Akhenaton. Its not clear who his mother was, it could have been his wife Nefertiti or Kiya (his concubine).Tutankhamun ruled in the New Kingdom (1336 - 1327 BC). Its quite hard to assess the race of Akhenaten as he was a very strange looking man.(picture below)

http://www.heptune.com/Marfans.html

[http://www.amarnaproject.com/images/index/akhenaten_small.jpg

[Morpheus]

Artwork isn't the most reliable way to assess population affinity when you are dealing with a region as biologically heterogeneous as Northeast Africa. The Ancient Egyptians were not depicting races with their artwork. Only the ethno-nationalities they knew. They did not define themselves by physical appearance. What made a person Egyptian was their culture and they assimilated many groups of people over the course of the Dynastic period before the various invasions by foreigners which added more diversity to the region.

The modern scholarly consensus on the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians is that they were primarily biologically African and had a variety of indigenious phenotypes (craniofacial features, skin colors, hair texture etc.), making attempts to classify them by racial terms like "Negroid" and "Caucasoid" a useless endeavor.


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Here's a good anthropological article by the scholar in the 2nd video above on the subject of the Ancient Egyptians biological relationships:





The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians

Professor S.O.Y. Keita
Department of Biological Anthropology
Oxford University

Professor A. J. Boyce
University Reader in Human Population
Oxford University

What was the primary geographical source for the peopling of the Egyptian Nile Valley? Were the creators of the fundamental culture of southern predynastic Egypt—which led to the dynastic culture—migrants and colonists from Europe or the Near East? Or were they predominantly African variant populations?

These questions can be addressed using data from studies of biology and culture, and evolutionary interpretive models. Archaeological and linguistic data indicate an origin in Africa. Biological data from living Egyptians and from skeletons of ancient Egyptians may also shed light on these questions. It is important to keep in mind the long presence of humans in Africa, and that there should be a great range of biological variation in indigenous "authentic" Africans.

Scientists have been studying remains from the Egyptian Nile Valley for years. Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans.

Another source of skeletal data is limb proportions, which generally vary with different climatic belts. In general, the early Nile Valley remains have the proportions of more tropical populations, which is noteworthy since Egypt is not in the tropics. This suggests that the Egyptian Nile Valley was not primarily settled by cold-adapted peoples, such as Europeans.

Art objects are not generally used by biological anthropologists. They are suspect as data and their interpretation highly dependent on stereotyped thinking. However, because art has often been used to comment on the physiognomies of ancient Egyptians, a few remarks are in order. A review of literature and the sculpture indicates characteristics that also can be found in the Horn of (East) Africa (see, e.g., Petrie 1939; Drake 1987; Keita 1993). Old and Middle Kingdom statuary shows a range of characteristics; many, if not most, individuals depicted in the art have variations on the narrow-nosed, narrow-faced morphology also seen in various East Africans. This East African anatomy, once seen as being the result of a mixture of different "races," is better understood as being part of the range of indigenous African variation.

The descriptions and terms of ancient Greek writers have sometimes been used to comment on Egyptian origins. This is problematic since the ancient writers were not doing population biology. However, we can examine one issue. The Greeks called all groups south of Egypt "Ethiopians." Were the Egyptians more related to any of these "Ethiopians" than to the Greeks? As noted, cranial and limb studies have indicated greater similarity to Somalis, Kushites and Nubians, all "Ethiopians" in ancient Greek terms.

There are few studies of ancient DNA from Egyptian remains and none so far of southern predynastic skeletons. A study of 12th Dynasty DNA shows that the remains evaluated had multiple lines of descent, including not surprisingly some from "sub-Saharan" Africa (Paabo and Di Rienzo 1993). The other lineages were not identified, but may be African in origin. More work is needed. In the future, early remains from the Nile Valley and the rest of Africa will have to be studied in this manner in order to establish the early baseline range of genetic variation of all Africa. The data are important to avoid stereotyped ideas about the DNA of African peoples.

The information from the living Egyptian population may not be as useful because historical records indicate substantial immigration into Egypt over the last several millennia, and it seems to have been far greater from the Near East and Europe than from areas far south of Egypt. "Substantial immigration" can actually mean a relatively small number of people in terms of population genetics theory. It has been determined that an average migration rate of one percent per generation into a region could result in a great change of the original gene frequencies in only several thousand years. (This assumes that all migrants marry natives and that all native-migrant offspring remain in the region.) It is obvious then that an ethnic group or nationality can change in average gene frequencies or physiognomy by intermarriage, unless social rules exclude the products of "mixed" unions from membership in the receiving group. More abstractly this means that geographically defined populations can undergo significant genetic change with a small percentage of steady assimilation of "foreign" genes. This is true even if natural selection does not favor the genes (and does not eliminate them).

Examples of regions that have biologically absorbed genetically different immigrants are Sicily, Portugal, and Greece, where the frequencies of various genetic markers (and historical records) indicate sub-Saharan and supra-Saharan African migrants.

This scenario is different from one in which a different population replaces another via colonization. Native Egyptians were variable. Foreigners added to this variability.

The genetic data on the recent Egyptian population is fairly sparse. There has not been systematic research on large samples from the numerous regions of Egypt. Taken collectively, the results of various analyses suggest that modern Egyptians have ties with various African regions, as well as with Near Easterners and Europeans. Egyptian gene frequencies are between those of Europeans and some sub-Saharan Africans. This is not surprising. The studies have used various kinds of data: standard blood groups and proteins, mitochondrial DNA, and the Y chromosome. The gene frequencies and variants of the "original" population, or of one of early high density, cannot be deduced without a theoretical model based on archaeological and "historical" data, including the aforementioned DNA from ancient skeletons. (It must be noted that it is not yet clear how useful ancient DNA will be in most historical genetic research.) It is not clear to what degree certain genetic systems usually interpreted as non-African may in fact be native to Africa. Much depends on how "African" is defined and the model of interpretation.

The various genetic studies usually suffer from what is called categorical thinking, specifically, racial thinking. Many investigators still think of "African" in a stereotyped, nonscientific (nonevolutionary) fashion, not acknowledging a range of genetic variants or traits as equally African. The definition of "African" that would be most appropriate should encompass variants that arose in Africa. Given that this is not the orientation of many scholars, who work from outmoded racial perspectives, the presence of "stereotypical" African genes so far from the "African heartland" is noteworthy. These genes have always been in the valley in any reasonable interpretation of the data. As a team of Egyptian geneticists stated recently, "During this long history and besides these Asiatic influences, Egypt maintained its African identity . . ." (Mahmoud et al. 1987). This statement is even more true in a wider evolutionary interpretation, since some of the "Asian" genes may be African in origin. Modern data and improved theoretical approaches extend and validate this conclusion.

In summary, various kinds of data and the evolutionary approach indicate that the Nile Valley populations had greater ties with other African populations in the early ancient period. Early Nile Valley populations were primarily coextensive with indigenous African populations. Linguistic and archaeological data provide key supporting evidence for a primarily African origin.


References Cited:

Angel, J. L., and J. O. Kelley, Description and comparison of the skeleton. In The Wadi Kubbaniya Skeleton: A Late Paleolithic
Burial from Southern Egypt. E Wendorf and R. Schild. pp. 53-70. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. 1986

Brauer, G., and K. Rimbach, Late archaic and modern Homo sapiens from Europe, Africa, and Southwest Asia: Craniometric comparisons and phylogenetic implications, Journal of Human Evolution 19:789-807. 1990

Drake, St. C., Black Folk Here and There, vol 1. Los Angeles: University of California. 1987

Keita, S.O.Y., Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships. History in Africa 20:129-154. 1993

Mahmoud, L. et. al, Human blood groups in Dakhlaya. Egypt. Annuals of Human Biology. 14(6):487-493. 1987

Paabo, S., and A. Di Rienzo, A molecular approach to the study of Egyptian history. In Biological Anthropology and the Study
of Ancient Egypt. V. Davies and R. Walker, eds. pp. 86-90. London: British Museum Press. 1993

Petrie, W.M., F. The Making of Egypt. London: Sheldon Press. 1984

Thoma, A., Morphology and affinities of the Nazlet Khaterman. Journal of Human Evolution 13:287-296. 1984

[Vessper]

Tutankhamun was son of Akhenaton. Its not clear who his mother was, it could have been his wife Nefertiti or Kiya (his concubine).Tutankhamun ruled in the New Kingdom (1336 - 1327 BC). Its quite hard to assess the race of Akhenaten as he was a very strange looking man.(picture below)

http://www.heptune.com/Marfans.html

[http://www.amarnaproject.com/images/index/akhenaten_small.jpg

Yes, he is quite wierd looking. He looks...Asian?
I guess he was mongrel.

Art is not a completly reliable source but it can tell us a lot. You can obviously distinguish between Whites and Blacks even in art.

[Felix the Cat]

Are there any significant racial differences between contemporary North Africans, Egyptians and Middle Easterners?

[Vessper]

Are there any significant racial differences between contemporary North Africans, Egyptians and Middle Easterners?

Yes and no.
All of them are mixed but you can find different grades of admixture (black predominant or mongoloid predominant) in different populations. The White admixture is present but I would say that you actually can't find a real White between them.
I think the Turks are the only ones who are not mixed with blacks and remained Turkish is essence (though the Turks are also another mixture of races since the beggining)
And there might be some more unmixed populations that I forgot to say.

Basically, they are a mixture between Mongoloids, Sub-Saharan Africans and a tiny White admixture.

[Morpheus]

Art is not a completly reliable source but it can tell us a lot. You can obviously distinguish between Whites and Blacks even in art.

When art is realistic you can tell somethings from it however as Hawass said, in the video above, Egyptian art was often not realistic.

Some of the skintones were symbolic and the physical features were sometimes exaggerated. There is also the matter of stereotyped thinking about what are "Black" features and "White" features which may not reflect actual biological diversity as Keita notes.

Most of the videos and webpages you see arguing about the racial characteristics of the Ancient Egyptians rely on typological thinking.

For instance you said that Ahkenaten looked Asian (Mongoloid?) or perhaps a mongrel (mixed race). Is this because of the shape of his eyes? Several populations have epicanthic folds including the San of Southern Africa.

Other people may look at his full lips and long jaw and come to the conclusion that he was Black ("Negroid").

The features of that bust are very unusual. Some Egyptologists have suggested that he suffered from a disease that disfigured his face:

The Mystery of Akhenaten: Genetics or Aesthetics? (http://www.heptune.com/Marfans.html)


Alot of the artwork from the amarna period portrays Egyptians with exaggerated features and that may be the case with this sculpture as well.

[Mary Magdalene]

Maybe the Berbers are something like how the ancient Egyptians used to be. they seem to have quite aryan characteristics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v315/jinniya/whites/kabyle_berber.jpg
http://www.efratnakash.com/galleries_l_pics/africa/morocco_high_atlas/11-0004.jpg
Two Berber girls
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/07/zidaneEPA100706_228x377.jpg
Berber: Footballer Zinedine Zidane

[Joe McCarthy]

I suppose this highlights why Egyptologists can't make up their minds as to the Egyptians' race. What we do know is that they were caucasoids of some kind, and Breasted dismissed the notion that they were black, though there were blacks among them.

[Joe McCarthy]

Herodotus noted the relatively dark appearance of Egyptians when he was there, but that would likely indicate that miscegenation had done its work as that was a late date in the history of ancient Egypt.

[Morpheus]

Herodotus noted the relatively dark appearance of Egyptians when he was there, but that would likely indicate that miscegenation had done its work as that was a late date in the history of ancient Egypt.

As far as skin color is concerned in most artistic depictions they portrayed themselves as brown in contrast to their pale-skinned neighbors (Libyans and Syro-Palestinians) of the same latitude and jet-black Nubians.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Seti.jpg

Some scholars have interpreted this to mean that the Ancient Egyptians were Black-White hybrids (mulattoes), dark-skinned Caucasians (Hamites), proto-Mediterraneans (Brown race) or simply Blacks Africans of a slightly lighter shade than the Nubians due to latitude.

Cranial studies group them with tropical East Africans (Nubians, Ethiopians, Somalis etc.) rather than Southern Europeans or Southwest Asians.

When Herodotus visited Egypt it was part of the Persian empire. The Egyptians had blended with several people by then, mostly lighter-skinned Southwest Asians so I'd imagine that they got lighter over time rather than darker.

[Joe McCarthy]

Two points.

1. The Persian conquest was comparatively recent and in terms of time would have had far less of a period to work its fusion effects as contrasted with the several thousand years of Egyptian history. Even assuming you're right, the fusion effects would have still left the Egyptians dark.

2. What mainstream Egyptologists claim that Egyptians were actually black Africans? Please, no Afrocentrists.

[Morpheus]

Two points.

1. The Persian conquest was comparatively recent and in terms of time would have had far less of a period to work its fusion effects as contrasted with the several thousand years of Egyptian history. Even assuming you're right, the fusion effects would have still left the Egyptians dark.


The foreign migrations into Egypt that I'm referring to are from the Near East (Southwest Asia). Egypt was fairly uniform throughout the Dynastic Period until the New Kingdom when they became an expanding empire and brought several foreigners into the country who freely intermarried with native Egyptians. These people were much lighter-skinned than the indigenious Egyptians.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Ibscha.jpg


Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure. The Libyans were also closely related to the Egyptians, living in the oases west of Egypt; ethnically the Libyans were Berbers. In the historic periods, both Nubians arid Libyans readily moved into Egypt and were integrated into the Egyptian populace.
During the Middle Kingdom (c. 2020-1786 B.C.E.), many Semitic peoples were brought to, or settled in, Egypt. In the New Kingdom period (c. 1570-1085 B.C.E.), many other foreign groups found Egypt hospitable. Many came as a result of military operations. Sea Peoples (of Aegean and northern Mediterranean origin) captured in warring operations were conscripted into the Egyptian army, and later, upon retirement, were settled as veterans onto Egyptian farms granted by the pharaoh as bonuses; many of these Sea People warriors married Egyptian women and in the next generation produced mixed Egypto-Sea People children. Nubians and Libyans also served in Egypt's army and upon retirement received farms as bonuses, and they likewise married Egyptian women and produced mixed children. At least in part, such reception and free intermingling of foreign and Egyptian populations must have added to the heterogeneous nature of the Egyptian populace. Nubians as mercenaries in Egyptian armies are documented pictorially and in inscriptions from the First Intermediate period (c. 2230-2020 B.C.E.), from the Middle Kingdom (2020-1786 B.C.E.) and from the New Kingdom.

Source: “Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?”
By Frank Yurco (BAR magazine, Sept./Oct. 1989)

PDF (http://homelink.cps-k12.org/teachers/filiopa/files/AC383EB269C648AAAA659593B9FC358C.pdf)



2. What mainstream Egyptologists claim that Egyptians were actually black Africans? Please, no Afrocentrists.

Several anthropologists contend that the Ancient Egyptians were Black Africans.

I posted a mainstream scientific source on the previous page.

Here's a more detailed review:


A review of studies covering the biological relationship of the ancient Egyptians was undertaken. An overview of the data from the studies suggests that the major biological affinities of early southern Egyptians lay with tropical Africans. The range of indigenous tropical African phenotypes is great; and this range of variation must be considered in any discussion of the Nile Valley peoples. The early southern Egyptians belonged primarily to an African descent group which gained some Near Eastern affinity through gene flow with the passage of time.


Source: A brief review of studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships International Journal of Anthropology Volume 10, Numbers 2-3 / April, 1995


PDF (http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita-1993.pdf)

[Joe McCarthy]

I found this interesting in reading up a bit on the Egyptian racial controversy page at Wiki.

Supporters of Afrocentrism have claimed that Tutankhamun was black, and have protested that attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features have represented the king as too white.[138]

When pressed on the issue Zahi Hawass, the current Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated that "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it …. Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa."

[Joe McCarthy]

Also this from the same page:

In 1975 the mummy of Rameses the Great was taken to Paris for conservation and the treatment of fungal infestations. A detailed examination of the mummy showed that his hair had been grey at the time of his death, and had been dyed red using plant extracts, but scientific analysis showed that the original natural color of the hair before going grey was also red. [149]


[edit] Other mummies and paintings

Mummy of Yuya (left), senior official of the 18th Dynasty, and his wife Tjuyu
Badly mutilated mummy of Seqenenre Tao IIVarious commentators have noted instances of mummies or tomb paintings showing notables having blond or red hair:

The wife of king Dedefre of the 4th Dynasty was his half-sister Hetepheres (Hetop-Heres II), who is shown in the colored bas reliefs of her tomb to have been a distinct blonde. It is assumed therefore that she was Libyan.[150]
The tomb of the wife of Zoser, the builder of the first pyramid in Egypt, has a painting showing her with reddish-blond hair.[151]
Paintings from the Third Dynasty show native Egyptians with red hair and blue eyes.[152]
Tomb paintings of Amenhotep III (father of Akhenhaten) shows him as having light red hair.[153]
The mummy of the wife of King Tutankhamen has auburn hair.[154]
The mummy of courtier Yuya, great-grandfather to Tutankhamun, had been taller than average and had caucasoid facial traits. His name is also not Egyptian, and the anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith considered that his appearance was not typically Egyptian.[155]
Red-haired mummies were found in the crocodile-caverns of Aboufaida.[

As I noted at the outset, all we really seem to know is that we don't know for sure, though these are very early subjects which is telling.

[Morpheus]

I found this interesting in reading up a bit on the Egyptian racial conroversy page at Wiki.

Supporters of Afrocentrism have claimed that Tutankhamun was black, and have protested that attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features have represented the king as too white.[138]

When pressed on the issue Zahi Hawass, the current Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated that "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it …. Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa."

Yes.

Hawass is the most reputed Egyptologist in Egypt and is very knowledgeable on the Ancient Egyptian culture but he's not qualified to speak on human biology. His contention that Egypt was not an African civilization is not the mainstream view of experts on African history:


Modern Scholarship

While some Egyptian Egyptologists such as Zahi Hawass insist not only that the Ancient Egyptians did not fit neatly into a racial group, but that Ancient Egypt was not an African Civilization there is a growing scholarly consensus among academics of various fields who contend that while Ancient Egypt is an Egyptian Heritage it was also a Classical African Civilization, with cultural and biological connections to Egypt’s African neighbors. [52] Ancient Egyptian history is taught in several African studies programs at Universities around the world. Several anthropologists who study the bio-cultural relationships of the Ancient Egyptian population call for a recognition of Africa’s tremendous genetic diversity when considering the racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians. [53] Since race is not considered to be a valid scientific concept by most scientists the focus of some experts who study population biology has been to seek an answer to the question of whether or not the Ancient Egyptians were primarily biologically African rather than which race they belonged to. [54] In 1996 Indianapolis museum of art curator, Theodore Celenko, held an exhibition titled Egypt in Africa in order to present works of art that emphasized Egypt’s cultural connection to the rest of the African continent. [55] A collection of essays was formed into a book published under the same name, edited by Celenko, which included contributions from leading experts in various fields including archaeology, art history, physical anthropology, African studies, Egyptology, Afrocentric studies, linguistics and classical studies. Among the contributors were Chike Aniakor, Molefi Kete Asante, Robert Steven Bianchi, Arthur P. Bourgeois, Shomarka Keita, Christopher Ehret, Chapurukha M. Kusimba, Frank M. Snowden, Jr., and Frank J. Yurco. While the contributors differed in some opinions the scholarly consensus was that Ancient Egypt was and should be considered a Classical African Civilization. [56]


Hawass relies on outdated racial concepts when arguing that the Ancient Egyptians were not Black. You can hear his opinion at the bottom of the page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1624_story_of_africa/page88.shtml

If you read further on the King Tut section of that wikipedia page you will see what Keita has to say about such arguments.

[Joe McCarthy]

Of course even assuming Egypt to be 'African' that wouldn't in and of itself make it black. Even 'racists' acknowledge blacks resided in Egypt. The real question becomes who was the ruling strata from early on. The info I posted on mummies, etc., is revealing on this score.

[Morpheus]

Also this from the same page:



As I noted at the outset, all we really seem to know is that we don't know for sure, though these are very early subjects which is telling.

Some of those references are suspect however it is well-known that analysis of Ramses's hair determined that he was a natural red head and there are a few light-haired mummies.

Hair isn't a reliable determinant of biological affinity however, especially when we are talking about mummy hair which is subject to chemical bleaching by embalming fluid and tends to change color over after death in certain environment.

Potential change to hair color can be explained more scientifically by examining the chemistry of melanin which is responsible for hair color in life. All hair contains a mixture in varying concentration of both black-brown eumelanin and red-yellow phaeomelanin pigments, which are susceptible to differential chemical change under certain extreme burial conditions (for example wet reducing conditions, or dry oxidising conditions). Importantly, phaeomelanin is much more stable to environmental conditions than eumelanin, hence the reactions occurring in the burial environment favor the preservation of phaeomelanin, revealing and enhancing the red/ yellow color of hairs containing this pigment. Color changes occur slowly under dry oxidising conditions, such as in the burials in sand at Hierakonpolis. Whether the conditions within the wood and plaster coffin contributed to accelerated color change, or whether this individual naturally had more phaeomelanin pigmentation in his hair is hard to say without further analysis

Source: archeological hair (http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/hair.html)


Of course even assuming Egypt to be 'African' that wouldn't in and of itself make it black. Even 'racists' acknowledge blacks resided in Egypt. The real question becomes who was the ruling strata from early on. The info I posted on mummies, etc., is revealing on this score.


The info I posted is far more up to date and more reliable than many of the sources in that section of the Wikipedia article that you posted. It's fairly conclusive that the Ancient Egyptians were Black Africans (Saharo-tropical variants/Africoid) from the earliest Dynasties and then blended with their neighbors over time.


This review has addressed several issues regarding the biological affini-
ties of the ancient inhabitants of the northern Nile valley. The morphological
metric, morphometric, and nonmetric studies demonstrate immense overlap
with tropical variants. General scholars must understand that a "shift in
paradigm" from "Negro"-only-as-African has occurred, just as Nordic-only-
as-European was never accepted. Actually, it was always biologically wrong
to view the Broad phenotype as representative of the only authentic "African,"
something understood by some nineteenth century writers. Early Nile valley
populations are best viewed as part of an African descent group or lineage
with tropical adaptations and relationships. This group is highly variable, as
would be expected. Archaeological data also support this position, which is
not new. Over time, gene flow (admixture) did occur in the Nile valley from
Europe and the Near East, thus also giving "Egyptians" relationship with those
groups. This admixture, if it had occurred by Dynasty I, little affected the major affinity of southern predynastic peoples as illustrated here. As indicated by the analysis of the data in the studies reviewed here, the southern predynastic peoples were Saharo-tropical variants.



PDF (http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita-1993.pdf)

[Joe McCarthy]

To say that it is 'fairly conclusive' is not supported by the preponderance of the evidence. In terms of the sentiment among scholars, it is still an open question and simply dismissing early mummies strikes me as pretty partisan, especially as the color is not the only indicator. We're dealing with wavy hair. One thing is for sure, if the evidence in terms of mummies supported your position, you wouldn't hesitate to use it.

[Joe McCarthy]

Since you mentioned Keita I'll add this:

"When the question of race is raised about the Ancient Egyptians or any other African population it has to be understood that the concept of race is not felt to be valid by most modern scientists....it's very difficult to talk about the diversity of the ancient populations because we don't have a lot of ancient DNA studies. However in terms of physical diversity it can be imagined that the modern diversity to be found in Egypt in terms of craniofacial features, skin color and what have you would likely have been very similar to that found in the past. We do have to acknowledge that at different moments in time, especially in Northern Egypt, various peoples who were non-Egyptian in terms of their ethno-nationality did in fact come into the country. I do think it's possible to look at modern DNA profiles and in essence determine what most likely are due to external influences of more recent time depths vs. more ancient influences perhaps even going back to the paleolithic period."[

I'll also add that your view of Egypt as black which later mixed is shared by Afrocentrist Ivan van Sertima. It isn't anything approaching a definite concensus view.

[Brechun]

I'd say the AE's were either of middle eastern or east african black descent for sure. Their east african origin would go very well in line with how strikingly caucasian, if not nordic, that so many of their depictions looked.

The idea of them being white, at all, is a very dejected and fringe view on their makeup. Especially in the case of them being "nordic".

[Columnist]

Not to be a nit-picker, but I think it is Lybians, not Libyans. It is etymologically related to Lubna, Berber woman. Maybe Lebanon (Lubnan) is related.

[Morpheus]

To say that it is 'fairly conclusive' is not supported by the preponderance of the evidence. In terms of the sentiment among scholars, it is still an open question and simply dismissing early mummies strikes me as pretty partisan, especially as the color is not the only indicator. We're dealing with wavy hair. One thing is for sure, if the evidence in terms of mummies supported your position, you wouldn't hesitate to use it.

The evidence from the mummies does support my position. Read Keita's paper that I posted. It covers nearly every major study on Ancient Egyptian remains over the past 200 years and addresses various theories many of which have been debunked by modern scholarship. Bare in mind when reading that Wikipedia article that it can be edited by anyone. Many of the studies quoted are taken out of context or have been superseded by more recent research.

As far as wavy haired mummies is concerned Keita addresses this:

Strouhal (1971) microscopically examined some hair which had been
preserved on a Badarian skull. The analysis was interpreted as suggesting a
stereotypical tropical African-European hybrid (mulatto). However, this hair is
grossly no different from that of Fulani, some Kanuri, or Somali and does not
require a gene flow explanation any more than curly hair in Greece necessarily
does. Extremely "woolly" hair is not the only kind native to tropical Africa.
This is not to say that gene flow (admixture) never occurred, but only to reit-
erate that natural variation should be considered the first line of explanation.
This kind of hair, and the lack of appreciation of the Elongated African con-
cept (see Hiernaux 1975), have led some (e.g., Robins and Shute 1986) to fail
to view their data in an adaptive context. This results in implying that southern early Egyptians were not part of the Saharo-tropical group which includes "Negroes."

Source: A brief review of studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships International Journal of Anthropology Volume 10, Numbers 2-3 / April, 1995

PDF (http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita-1993.pdf)


Since you mentioned Keita I'll add this:


"When the question of race is raised about the Ancient Egyptians or any other African population it has to be understood that the concept of race is not felt to be valid by most modern scientists....it's very difficult to talk about the diversity of the ancient populations because we don't have a lot of ancient DNA studies. However in terms of physical diversity it can be imagined that the modern diversity to be found in Egypt in terms of craniofacial features, skin color and what have you would likely have been very similar to that found in the past. We do have to acknowledge that at different moments in time, especially in Northern Egypt, various peoples who were non-Egyptian in terms of their ethno-nationality did in fact come into the country. I do think it's possible to look at modern DNA profiles and in essence determine what most likely are due to external influences of more recent time depths vs. more ancient influences perhaps even going back to the paleolithic period."

This quote comes from the video I posted on the previous page. It's consistent with what I've said and what Keita says in his papers. Keita like many anthropologists maintains that there are no biological races and uses very technical terminology that many people may not be familiar with.

His position is basically that the Ancient Egyptians were biologically African and by that he means that they evolved their traits in Africa. They did not migrate to the Nile Valley from Europe, Asia or anywhere else. They were aboriginal Africans. They were also tropically adapted, meaning that they evolved their traits in a tropical climate, which based on ecological principles would mean that they were dark-skinned.

They had a variety of traits including broad and narrow faces and noses, curly, wavy and straight hair. Their limb proportions were super-tropical and their cranial measurements cluster with tropical East Africans such as the Nubians, Somali and Ethiopians. Based on the preponderance of evidence we know for certain what they looked like. This is consistent with the bulk of the most realistic artwork as well as archeological and linguistic evidence. These people would be considered Black by most of the world. He's not saying that they were Negroid which implies a stereotypical and non-evolutionary model of human variation.

This is a good summary of Keita's position written by an author who consulted him on the subject:


Were the Ancient Egyptians black? That is entirely up to you. But were they biologically African? It would seem that they were. After considering the full range of anatomical, linguistic, cultural, archaeological, and genetic evidence, Shomarka Keita feels confident in concluding that the original Egyptians --- by which he means the pre-dynastic people of Southern Egypt, who founded Egyptian civilization--evolved entirely in Africa. Both culturally and biologically, he says, they were more related to other Africans than they were to non-Africans from Europe or Asia.

Through the years, Keita believes, the Egyptians appear to have blended with many immigrants and invaders, many of whom were lighter-skinned and more Caucasoid in appearance than the original Egyptians. Libyans, Persians, Syro-Palestinians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans all left their imprint on the faces of Egypt. But Egyptian civilization remain profoundly African to the very end.

Keita himself rarely resorts to such crudely racial expressions as black and white. But if we might be forgiven a momentary lapse into everyday speech, it would probably not hurt to conceive of Keita's theory as the polar opposite of the Hamitic Hypothesis. Whereas the Hamitic theorists saw Egypt as a nation of white people that was gradually infiltrated by blacks, the biological evidence seems to suggest that it was more like a black nation that was gradually infiltrated by whites.

Source: Black Spark, White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? Chapter 77. Black, White or Biologically African? page. 471


I'll also add that your view of Egypt as black which later mixed is shared by Afrocentrist Ivan van Sertima. It isn't anything approaching a definite concensus view.

Because it's shared by Ivan Van Sertima it isn't a definite consensus view?

It's shared by a multitude of scholars of various disciplines.

Keita is a more reputed anthropologist than Van Sertima but their position is the same.

It's notable that National Geographic Magazine consulted Keita for this subject. He is the leading authority on the subject.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/Ancient_Egypt

[Brechun]

Morpheus, have you ever read much into the linguistic aspect of the AE race debate? I don't see that brought up as often as it should be. I've heard that the AE language shared many similarities with modern somalian, especially how it was an afro-asiatic language that existed long before modern day arabic, which is largely derived from ancient east african languages. If the AE were of arabic origin, they'd surely speak a language related to pre-afro-asiatic arabic, or whatever their old language was called.

EDIT: Oh shit, Mansa? That's you? It's been ages since we last talked.

[Morpheus]

Morpheus, have you ever read much into the linguistic aspect of the AE race debate? I don't see that brought up as often as it should be. I've heard that the AE language shared many similarities with modern somalian, especially how it was an afro-asiatic language that existed long before modern day arabic, which is largely derived from ancient east african languages. If the AE were of arabic origin, they'd surely speak a language related to pre-afro-asiatic arabic, or whatever their old language was called.

EDIT: Oh shit, Mansa? That's you? It's been ages since we last talked.

Nice to see you again, Zorn. :)

Yes, while language alone doesn't tell you about a group's biological characteristics it can be use to chart historical migrations of populations. The Afroasiatic language family originated in East Africa and was spoken exclusively in that region before the formation of the Ancient Egyptian state. The ancestors of Ancient Egyptians descend from the earliest Afroasiatic speakers. Archeological evidence indicates that the Ancient Egyptians migrated from further South to settle the Nile Valley. This is consistent with the biological evidence which indicates that they have tropical African affinities.


Here's a detailed essay by linguist and Professor of African history, Christopher Ehret on the subject:


Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture


http://wysinger.homestead.com/africanlanguage.jpg


Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots.

The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grains as food.

A new religion came with them as well. Its central tenet explains the often localized origins of later Egyptian gods: the earliest Afrasians were, properly speaking, neither monotheistic nor polytheistic. Instead, each local community, comprising a clan or a group of related clans, had its own distinct deity and centered its religious observances on that deity. This belief system persists today among several Afrasian peoples of far southwest Ethiopia. And as Biblical scholars have shown, Yahweh, god of the ancient Hebrews, an Afrasian people of the Semitic group, was originally also such a deity. The connection of many of Egypt's predynastic gods to particular localities is surely a modified version of this early Afrasian belief. Political unification in the late fourth millennium brought the Egyptian deities together in a new polytheistic system. But their local origins remain amply apparent in the records that have come down to us.

During the long era between about 10,000 and 6000 B.C., new kinds of southern influences diffused into Egypt. During these millennia, the Sahara had a wetter climate than it has today, with grassland or steppes in many areas that are now almost absolute desert. New wild animals, most notably the cow, spread widely in the eastern Sahara in this period.

One of the exciting archeological events of the past twenty years was the discovery that the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated these cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. The societies involved in this momentous development included Afrasians and neighboring peoples whose languages belonged to a second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). The earliest domestic cattle came to Egypt apparently from these southern neighbors, probably before 6000 B.C., not, as we used to think, from the Middle East.

One major technological advance, pottery-making, was also initiated as early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East.

Very late in the same span of time, the cultivating of crops began in Egypt. Since most of Egypt belonged then to the Mediterranean climatic zone, many of the new food plants came from areas of similar climate in the Middle East. Two domestic animals of Middle Eastern origin, the sheep and the goat, also entered northeastern Africa from the north during this era.

But several notable early Egyptian crops came from Sudanic agriculture, independently invented between 7500 and 6000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharan peoples (Ehret 1993:104-125). One such cultivated crop was the edible gourd. The botanical evidence is confirmed in this case by linguistics: Egyptian bdt, or "bed of gourds" (Late Egyptian bdt, "gourd; cucumber"), is a borrowing of the Nilo-Saharan word *bud, "edible gourd." Other early Egyptian crops of Sudanic origin included watermelons and castor beans. (To learn more on how historians use linguistic evidence, see note at end of this article.)

Between about 5000 and 3000 B.C. a new era of southern cultural influences took shape. Increasing aridity pushed more of the human population of the eastern Sahara into areas with good access to the waters of the Nile, and along the Nile the bottomlands were for the first time cleared and farmed. The Egyptian stretches of the river came to form the northern edge of a newly emergent Middle Nile Culture Area, which extended far south up the river, well into the middle of modern-day Sudan. Peoples speaking languages of the Eastern Sahelian branch of the Nilo-Saharan family inhabited the heartland of this region.

From the Middle Nile, Egypt gained new items of livelihood between 5000 and 3000 B.C. One of these was a kind of cattle pen: its Egyptian name, s3 (earlier *sr), can be derived from the Eastern Sahelian term *sar. Egyptian pg3, "bowl," (presumably from earlier pgr), a borrowing of Nilo-Saharan *poKur, "wooden bowl or trough," reveals still another adoption in material culture that most probably belongs to this era.

One key feature of classical Egyptian political culture, usually assumed to have begun in Egypt, also shows strong links to the southern influences of this period. We refer here to a particular kind of sacral chiefship that entailed, in its earliest versions, the sending of servants into the afterlife along with the deceased chief. The deep roots and wide occurrence of this custom among peoples who spoke Eastern Sahelian languages strongly imply that sacral chiefship began not as a specifically Egyptian invention, but instead as a widely shared development of the Middle Nile Culture Area.

After about 3500 B.C., however, Egypt would have started to take on a new role vis-a-vis the Middle Nile region, simply because of its greater concentration of population. Growing pressures on land and resources soon enhanced and transformed the political powers of sacral chiefs. Unification followed, and the local deities of predynastic times became gods in a new polytheism, while sacral chiefs gave way to a divine king. At the same time, Egypt passed from the wings to center stage in the unfolding human drama of northeastern Africa.

A Note on the Use of Linguistic Evidence for History

Languages provide a powerful set of tools for probing the cultural history of the peoples who spoke them. Determining the relationships between particular languages, such as the languages of the Afrasian or the Nilo-Saharan family, gives us an outline history of the societies that spoke those languages in the past. And because each word in a language has its own individual history, the vocabulary of every language forms a huge archive of documents. If we can trace a particular word back to the common ancestor language of a language family, then we know that the item of culture connoted by the word was known to the people who spoke the ancestral tongue. If the word underwent a meaning change between then and now, a corresponding change must have taken place in the cultural idea or practice referred to by the word. In contrast, if a word was borrowed from another language, it attests to a thing or development that passed from the one culture to the other. The English borrowing, for example, of castle, duke, parliament, and many other political and legal terms from Old Norman French are evidence of a Norman period of rule in England, a fact confirmed by documents.


References Cited:

Ehret, Christopher, Nilo-Saharans and the Saharo-Sahelian Neolithic. In African Archaeology: Food, Metals and Towns. T. Shaw, P Sinclair, B. Andah, and A. Okpoko, eds. pp. 104-125. London: Routledge. 1993

Ehret, Christopher, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone Consonants, and Vocabulary. Los Angeles: University of California Press, Berkeley. 1995

Wendorf, F., et al., Saharan Exploitation of Plants 8000 Years B.P. Nature 359:721-724. 1982

Wendorf, F., R. Schild, and A. Close, eds. Cattle-Keepers of the Eastern Sahara. Dallas: Southern Methodist University, Department of Anthropology. 1984

[Contra Mundum]

Nice to see you again, Zorn. :)

Yes, while language alone doesn't tell you about a group's biological characteristics it can be use to chart historical migrations of populations. The Afroasiatic language family originated in East Africa and was spoken exclusively in that region before the formation of the Ancient Egyptian state. The ancestors of Ancient Egyptians descend from the earliest Afroasiatic speakers. Archeological evidence indicates that the Ancient Egyptians migrated from further South to settle the Nile Valley. This is consistent with the biological evidence which indicates that they have tropical African affinities.


Here's a detailed essay by linguist and Professor of African history, Christopher Ehret on the subject:


There is some disagreement as to the origin of the Swahili language. The dominate language in east Africa and the only sub-Saharan language that had a written form. Some believe it's native to that region, others believe it came from Arab and Persian traders. Perhaps the Egyptian language link to east Africa is because both places were influenced from traders and settlers from Asia.

[Morpheus]

There is some disagreement as to the origin of the Swahili language. The dominate language in east Africa and the only sub-Saharan language that had a written form. Some believe it's native to that region, others believe it came from Arab and Persian traders. Perhaps the Egyptian language link to east Africa is because both places were influenced from traders and settlers from Asia.

Swahili is a Bantu language with Arabic loan words due to long standing contact between Southeast Africans and Arab traders.

The Ancient Egyptian language is descended from Proto-Afroasiatic. Archeological evidence indicates that the Semitic languages (the only branch of Afroasiatic spoken outside of Africa) of Southwest Asia were introduced to the region from East Africa, not the other way around.

[Vessper]

When art is realistic you can tell somethings from it however as Hawass said, in the video above, Egyptian art was often not realistic.

Some of the skintones were symbolic and the physical features were sometimes exaggerated. There is also the matter of stereotyped thinking about what are "Black" features and "White" features which may not reflect actual biological diversity as Keita notes.

Most of the videos and webpages you see arguing about the racial characteristics of the Ancient Egyptians rely on typological thinking.

For instance you said that Ahkenaten looked Asian (Mongoloid?) or perhaps a mongrel (mixed race). Is this because of the shape of his eyes? Several populations have epicanthic folds including the San of Southern Africa.

Other people may look at his full lips and long jaw and come to the conclusion that he was Black ("Negroid").

The features of that bust are very unusual. Some Egyptologists have suggested that he suffered from a disease that disfigured his face:

The Mystery of Akhenaten: Genetics or Aesthetics? (http://www.heptune.com/Marfans.html)


Alot of the artwork from the amarna period portrays Egyptians with exaggerated features and that may be the case with this sculpture as well.

Sometimes skins are symbolic, indeed. But big nose and fat lips is a black trait, and someone with fine lips can never be a full Black.

[Morpheus]

Sometimes skins are symbolic, indeed. But big nose and fat lips is a black trait, and someone with fine lips can never be a full Black.

This is precisely the way alot of 19th and early 20th century anthropologists thought. The reality is that narrows noses and faces are very common in tropical East Africa due to adaptation to an arid environment while Africans in West Africa have broader faces and noses due to adaptation to a humid climate. Both people are equally biologically African and cranial studies indicate that Ancient Egyptians had both broad and elongated traits (as they were a blend of Neolithic Saharans and tropical East Africans).


http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w164/MysticNinjaJay/egyptianroyalcoupleiman.jpg


Hiernaux (1975) has accounted for variation in Africa using a nonracial approach; he does not specifically address the northern Nile Valley in great detail, but his concepts, based on micro-evolutionary principles (adaptation, drift, selection), are applicable in this region in the light of recent archaeological data. For example, in living and fossil tropical Africans, narrow faces and noses (versus broad “Negro” ones) do not usually indicate European or Near Eastern migration or “Europoid“ (Caucasian) genes, called Hamitic as once taught, but represent indigenous variation, either connoting a hot-dry climatic adaptation or resulting from drift (Hiernaux, 1975).

Hiernaux calls this morphology “Elongated African.” Some of the neolithic Saharans of tropical African affinity (Sutton, 1974; Hiernaux, 1975; after Chamla, 1968) who emigrated to the Nile Valley (Hassan, 1988) might be an example. The view that “elongated” characteristics are indigenous and equally tropical African (“Black") for specific archaeological series and peoples is supported by Gabel (1966), Hiernaux (1975), and Rightmire (1975a,b). The range of variation, “Broad” (stereotypical “Negro”) to Elongated, can be subsumed within a single unit designated Africoid, thereby acknowledging the wider affinities and multiple tropical microadaptive strategies, as well as drift.

Source: Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions American Journal of Physical Anthropology 87:245-254 (1992)


PDF (http://wysinger.homestead.com/further_study_keita.pdf)


An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn
of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,”
(Adams, 1967, 1979; MacGaffey, 1966; Seligman, 1913, 1915, 1934), but that explanation
founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid”
people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form
but none for skin color or limb proportions. It makes far better sense to regard the adaptively
significant features seen in the Horn of Africa as solely an in situ response
on the part of separate adaptive traits to the selective forces present in the hot dry
tropics of eastern Africa. From the observation that 12,000 years was not a long
enough period of time to produce any noticeable variation in pigment by latitude
in the New World and that 50,000 years has been barely long enough to produce
the beginnings of a gradation in Australia (Brace, 1993a), one would have to argue
that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile and the East Horn of Africa have been
equatorial for many tens of thousands of years.


Source: Clines and Clusters Versus “Race:” A Test in Ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on the Nile Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 36:1-31 (1993)

PDF (http://wysinger.homestead.com/brace.pdf)