Tantor on September 27, 2007 at 7:13 PM

Black people don’t always have broad noses. In fact, eastern Africans (Somalis, Ethiopians, etc.) tend to have thinner, longer noses. Small nosed black people also pop up all over Africa.

Also, Ancient Egyptians migrated from the south (Sudan region) and moved north before they settled and created what we now refer to as the kingdom of Egypt. From the Mediterranean… wow. That’s new.

They weren’t white either. It seems likely that they were Mediterranean people who settled in the Nile delta and built their Lower Egyptian kingdom up from there.

I was also at Cornell when Black Athena came out with the attendant brouhaha. Didn’t do a lot to elevate the academic reputation of the black studies department.

Since there are no photographs of that period, the camera being invented a few years later, this claim of a black Egypt is without obvious fatal flaw. Indeed, fauxtography might be used to buttress this contention. And no doubt, should such photos pop up, Allahpundit will be first to note that photographs from 1324 BC weren’t in color, thereby putting the lie to the afro-centrist theory, and Dan Rather, again, for a second time.

What is racist, however, is the claim that the first man on the moon was white. That needs to be exposed. Any true student of history knows that Michael Jackson had the moonwalk down pat long before 1969.

Dusty on September 27, 2007 at 12:16 PM

My intention wasn’t to say King Tut was black, there were many Egyptian rulers (Including those Nubian rulers and more famous people like Cleopatra) who weren’t “native” to the area anyway. I was refuting this quote:

“Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa,” he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency.

which seems to be saying that blacks had no part in Egypt at all. I was also refuting Bryan’s comment that seemed to imply that the Nubians were always considered enemies. I doubt that these two groups never had any sort of non-combative trade relationship given the number of crossover cultural practices between the two groups. I further doubt that these groups were so deeply entrenched in war with each other that they didn’t intermarry frequently, creating a new group of people that came in many shades of brown, similar to black Americans (who are often mixed with white and have lighter skin colors as a result). There are a number of Egyptian drawings that show Nubians giving tribute to and/or mingling within Egyptian society.

Don’t they realize that North Africa was pretty well seperated from the rest of Africa by the Sahara among other natural obstacles?

This is true for most of Western Africa because of the Sahara, but if you look at the regions the Ancient Egyptians inhabited, and see how close the Nubian kingdom of Kush (now Northern Sudan) was to it, then you’ll see that travel between the two regions wasn’t that difficult, especially when you have the Nile running South to North.

All that said, I think it’s silly to go and protest for Tut’s skin to be shown as being very dark… its irrelevant in the great scheme of life, and for this particular instance, likely untrue.

“He died for tourism!”

“Calling race pimp and adulterer Jesse Jackson. Calling race pimp and adulterer Jesse Jackson. You have a call. Please pick up the BLACK courtesy phone.”

“Gentlemen! Start your Gulfstream V engines. The race to Philly is ON! May the best pimp win.”

When the exhibit was announced, my mother talked about remembering from her childhood the adults discussing Carter and his discovery and passing around newspaper article and pictures. When I suggested a trip to see it in person, she instantly said yes, not her usual form, but she, too, talked about it for days afterward.

Tim Burton on September 27, 2007 at 12:06 PM

My own understanding of the origins of Anti-Slavery movement, antebellum, distinguishes between abolitionists and free soilers. Abolitionists, which included among them, ex-slaves such as Frederic Douglas and Harriet Tubman, objected on moral grounds and were unquestionably inspired by a Christian ethic. Free Soilers on the other hand objected to slavery on economic grounds and included a body of thought inclined to devise unpractical plans for the repatriation of a freed slave populations to Africa. Other racial separatists in the “Free Soil” movement could be said to have been “magical thinkers” as they believed the ex-slave population would some how mysteriously diminish to insignificant levels as had the native-american population in the east. They were of course, ignorant of the role of small pox and other infectious diseases in devastating native populations in the Americas in the decades and centuries prior.

libertarianuberalles on September 27, 2007 at 12:28 PM

Thanks for the correction. I knew she was a Ptolemy, but I thought she was the daughter of a general. Of course, I think there were 8 Cleopatras. I think it’s the 7th that’s the famous one, Mark Antony and Caesar and all that. My specialty is Scottish and British history. My Egyptian history is pretty basic.

Cleopatra VII lost Egypt to Rome in 30BC while Ptolemy I Soter became Satrap of Egypt in 323BC and King in 305BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_I_Soter

Given the family penchant for incest and the usual inbreeding among a ruling clique, they were still vastly Macedonian in lineage.

It seems odd to me that the Egyptians are considered neither black African, nor Arab… despite being in the center of those two very dominant populations.
[Misty217 on September 27, 2007 at 10:59 AM]

Misty, you are mixing up timelines, I think. First, the Egyptians at the time were not in the center of an Arab population — you are projecting recent demographical generalities back to 1300′s BC. Arabs were not a dominant population at the time, either, especially as a group or culture. For instance, and I may also be wrong in the timeline, but Berbers were the people who inhabited the lands west of Egypt at the time, not the Arabs, and they were predominant from Egypt to what is now Morrocco.

As for Nubian/Egyptian cross assimilation, I don’t know what basis you use for this occuring to any signifcant extent at the time of Tut’s reign. Nubian expansionist policy wasn’t notable until some 400 years after Tut’s reign.

Finally, the point isn’t whether there was mixing but whether Tut was Egyptian in the sense of what defines being an Egyptian. For that, lineage is more likely to be a key part of that determination than what the characteristics of the empire’s culture and people were.

During the Abolistionist movement, slaves identified with the enslaved Israelites of the Exodus. The Abolitionist slogan quoted God’s message as delivered by Moses, “Let my people go.” Harriet Tubman was called “the black Moses”. Slave owners were called “Pharoah”.

Now, some descendants of slaves want to identify with the nation that enslaved others, including the ancient Israelites with whom their ancestors identified. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Bigfoot on September 27, 2007 at 10:41 AM

Even more tragic is that a majority of the Abolitionists didn’t want to free the slaves for freedom’s sake, but because they wanted them out of the New World. Ever look at the debates of the Wilmot Proviso?

Misty217 on September 27, 2007 at 10:59 AM

It would require an Egyptologist or anthropologist with specific knowledge about the genetic origins of the eastern Mediterranean peoples to answer that question I would think.
Arabs may be as unrelated to the ancient Egyptians as Nubians apparently are to be presently considered. Perhaps Arabs do not differentiate that early or are to be considered in context to the rise of Islam on the Arabian peninsula -a relatively recent event.

Bryan on September 27, 2007 at 11:26 AM

Yeah, the Tut exhibit without that mask is kinda like a tour of the Air and Space Museum without the Spirit of St. Louis…Very cool, but…