Black Egyptians

[The Unbreakable]

However, you are talking about a Mesolithic migration, which is very different to discussing the nature of a Bronze Age civilisation.

Actually the evidence suggest that it was the spread of "Neolithic" culture from an African based group in the Middle East (the Natufanians) into Europe, and more specifically the Anatolian and Greek region of southeastern Europe. These African characteristics continued on into the bronze age era, which is even noted in "pre-Black Athena" aged scholarship:

"The inhabitants of the Aegean area in the Bronze Age may have been much like many people in the Mediterranean basin today, short and slight of build with dark hair and eyes and sallow complexions. Skeletons show that the population of the Aegean was already mixed by Neolithic times, and various facial types, some with delicate features and pointed noses, others pug-nosed, almost negroid, are depicted in wall paintings from the 16th century BC. But men and women are always represented with black hair, and the presence of fair-haired people is not attested in the Aegean until later Greek times. Some very tall men buried in the Mycenaean shaft graves may be descendants of invaders who entered the mainland at the end of the 3rd millennium. A few skeletons from the single graves that appear on the mainland at the very end of the Bronze Age suggest the presence of new people from the north."
--- Sinclair Hood, The Home of the Heroes: The Aegean Before the Greeks (1967) also found in Encyclopedia Britannica 1990 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 20: Greek and Roman Civilizations

One aspect of Bernal's argument (that for one reason or another many of his opponents wanted to discredit) was the use of ancient Greek scholars who clearly state that the original people of Egypt were originally black Africans from "Ethiopia" (which they used to describe all regions south of Egypt) as stated by Basil Davidson and even assert that certain people of that general region of Europe (Colchians) were settled by black peoples from Egypt (the Mushabi who later became the Natufanians): Here is the exact quote by Herodotus on the matter:

' As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black with woolly hair.

Note again the continued reference of ancient Egyptians as black people by eye witness accounts. These descriptions are consistent with the results of crania morphologies noted in Egyptian populations. I'm not really into the ancient Greek arguments by Bernal, but the knee jerk reaction by some classical scholars to outright reject any evidence suggesting influence from black Africans into Europe (but conversely have no problem with the opposite happening) raises my eye brow a bit.

I was under the impression agriculture developed independantly in several places between 9000-7000 BC, including places in Africa.

Yes, but this does not dismiss the fact that Demic Diffusion models also occurred from these original independent sources of agriculture. As the study showed and pretty much built upon (from previous findings) the source of the European Neolithic came from a northward migration of the Natufanians of the Levant, who were the result of the Mesolithic Mushabi (Africans). That which originated and spread from the African Sahara was significantly later (over a thousand years) and distinct from that seen in those regions.

If there is an African element to Egyptian history and this has been overlooked then that should be corrected.

You're not really getting it. There is no longer a question of "if" an African element was present in Egypt, it is now established fact that Egypt's origins were indeed from the regions further south and west itself. So says consistent mainstream archaeology, biology, linguistic and cultural relations. If the Oxford Encyclopedia of ancient Egypt (a direct reflection of modern scholarship) did not make this fact clear, then perhaps the Fitzwilliam museums new exhibit on the matter might. They have now dedicated an entire exhibit to showcasing Kemet or ancient Egypt it's proper African context and subsequently state that it was "black". They reference three African scholars, and one (S.O.Y. Keita) is considered the authority of the matter of the biological and cultural origins of ancient Egypt. The lecture videos of the scholars from Cambridge are all available on the website.

That does not, however, make Egypt a "Black" civilisation because it is quite clear that later on in at least the late Bronze and Iron Age the Pharohs were not recognisably "black", and they are not depicted as such.

Then what on Earth would it make it? All the way up until the late New Kingdom when noted foreign invasions and migrations of non black people from the Middle East had settled on the Nile, the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the ancient Egypt shared overlapping biological affinities with black African peoples further to the south of Egypt:

"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.

The continuation of these traits is seen from Pre and early Dynastic Egyptians all the way up until the famed New Kingdom 18-19th Dynasty (King Tut):

"It can be seen that all the pharonic values, including those of 'Smakhare', lie much closer to the negro curve than to the white curve. Since stature equations only work satisfactorily in the individuals to whom they have applied have similar proportions to the population group from which they are derived, this provides justification for using negro equations for estimating stature from single bones of the New Kingdom pharoahs, reenforcing the previous findings of Robins (1983). Furthermore, the Troller and Gleser white equations for the femur, tibia and humerus yield stature values that have a much wider spread than those from negro equations with mean values that are unacceptably large."

"Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise." From: (Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)

"Estimates of living stature, based on X-ray measurements applied to the Trotter & Gleser (1958) negro equations for the femur, tibia and humerus, have been made for ancient Egyptian kings belonging to the 18th and 19th dynasties. The corresponding equations for whites give values for stature that are unsatisfactorily high. The view that Thutmose III was excessively short is proved to be a myth. It is shown that the limbs of the pharaohs, like those of other Ancient Egyptians, had negroid characteristics, in that the distal segments were relatively long in comparison with the proximal segments. An exception was Ramesses II, who appears to have had short legs below the knees."

--Robins and Schute. The Physical Proportions and Stature of New Kingdom Pharaohs," Journal of Human Evolution 12 (1983), 455-465

The latter source is from a 1980's study, which explains the frequent reference of racial terminological (i.e "Negro" and "white"). Overall what both of these studies have found is that the continuation of more southerly African physical traits generally continued on from the pre and early Dynastic periods to the New Kingdom, despite noted prolonged small scale migration into the Nile during these periods. Cranial data finds the same the same thing. This is the exact same thing the Robert Bauval states in his interview.

What you are engaging in here is a racialised appropriation - which is a futile exercise.

Not to be rude or anything, but what exactly are you here arguing if not your own racial theory of the composition of ancient Egypt. You are in favor of the notion of ancient Egypt not being black (and rather something else), as opposed to truly taking a "non racialized" approach. Would it be more appropriate to state that the ancient Egyptians were indigenous Northeast Africans who came from regions further to the south? This is the approach taken by mainstream scholars such as S.O.Y. Keita, which is non racialized yet emphasizes the indisputable overlapping affinities that ancient Egypt had with populations of the Sudan and the Horn of Africa.

The point is, even if Egypt's first pharohs were black, and they set the fundamental groundwork, structure and provided the initial religious framework for the civilisation that does not make the entire subsequent 3,000+ years a great "black" epoch, quite the reverce given that the early pharahos were later supplanted by dynastes which are clearly depicted as much fairer of skin and Semetic of face.

You are essentially arguing in favor of the Dynastic race theory
, which has been discredited since the 1950's:

"As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample has been described as forming a morphological cluster with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or \Negroid") groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter, 1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). Cranial nonmetric trait studies have found this group to be similar to other Egyptians, including much later material (Berry and Berry, 1967, 1972), but also to be significantly different from LPD material (Berry et al., 1967). Similarly, the study of dental nonmetric traits has suggested that the Badarian population is at the centroid of Egyptian dental samples (Irish, 2006), thereby suggesting similarity and hence continuity across Egyptian time periods. From the central location of the Badarian samples in Figure 2, the current study finds the Badarian to be relatively morphologically close to the centroid of all the Egyptian samples. The Badarian have been shown to exhibit
greatest morphological similarity with the temporally successive EPD (Table 5). Finally, the biological distinctiveness of the Badarian from other Egyptian samples has also been demonstrated (Tables 6 and 7).

These results suggest that the EDyn do form a distinct morphological pattern. Their overlap with other Egyptian samples (in PC space, Fig. 2) suggests that although their morphology is distinctive, the pattern does overlap with the other time periods. These results therefore do not support the Petrie concept of a "Dynastic race" (Petrie, 1939; Derry, 1956). Instead, the results suggest that the Egyptian state was not the product of mass movement of populations into the Egyptian Nile region, but rather that it was the result of primarily indigenous development combined with prolonged small-scale migration, potentially from trade, military, or other contacts.

This evidence suggests that the process of state formation itself may have been mainly an indigenous process, but that it may have occurred in association with in-migration to the Abydos region of the Nile Valley. This potential in-migration may have occurred particularly during the EDyn and OK. A possible explanation is that the Egyptian state formed through increasing control of trade and raw materials, or due to military actions, potentially associated with the use of the Nile Valley as a corridor for prolonged small scale movements through the desert environment.
(Sonia R. Zakrzewski. (2007). Population Continuity or Population Change: Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501-509)

As you can see there was not abrupt change that occurred in the Egyptian populace, which one would expect to accompany such a drastic migration from a foreign group of people. Instead there is continuity throughout the pre and early Dynastic period and points onward including modern Egyptians (though with significant distinctions since the time of the Late Period).

I think the current drive to depict the Egyptians as "black" is motivated by thr same desire to depict them as "white" 150 years ago, more specifically I find the suggestion that Cleopatra was black to be bellyachingly funny given the need of the Ptolemaic rulers to demonstate their "Macedonian" lineage.

I believe that a professor Asante of Temple University stated that many Eurocentric scholars including Mary Lefkowitz have attempted to discredit the legitimacy of Egypt's blackness, but overemphasizing this strawman argument revolving around Cleopatra as the face of this argument. Rarely to never do they address any of the biological evidence. I personally find the statement by comedian Steve Martin that King Tut was one of the greatest white men (though he used a racist derogatory term) in history to be amusing and catering to the common Eurocentric themes of his time:



^^ As crazy as it sounds this is how many Westerners seriously believed ancient Egyptians to looked like, based on centuries of racist distortions of the facts. Today a milder approach generally shows them as more Middle Eastern in appearance, but the biological evidence completely refutes that notion and supports them looking like various black African populations....