Understand that I am skeptical of most of the claims for either side of this discussion, but what DNA indicates a person’s race? T’ain’t no black or white gene. That best we have, so far, is a prevalence of alleles associated with geographic location. So how does one use DNA to establish “caucasoid”?
I linked to the site it because it has most of the ancient Greek references in one place. I take no position as to its other content.
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We have on the one hand, the red hair of some of Tut’s ancestors, and the clearly black physical appearance of some of his other ancestors (Queen Tiye, as noted above.) So Tut was, as he clearly appears to be, racially mixed. As noted above.
Red hair, incidentally, is one of the results you can get from mixing between black African peoples and fair haired Caucasoid peoples, like the ancient Libyans. We see it all the time in the States among black Americans.
It’s clear that Mentuhotpe II was a member of the ruling class. He came from a noble family in southern Egypt, and in time reunified the whole of Egypt, founding the Middle Kingdom. If he’s black, then the ruling dynasty he founded was black and/or mixed for a significant chunk of ancient Egyptian history.
The general pattern in ancient Egyptian history is for southern Egyptians to unify the nation by dominating the north. The Southerners were “black” in the same way that the related Afro Asiatic peoples, the modern day Somalis and various Ethiopian ethnic groups, like the Oromos, are “black”. (On the other hand, if you really do believe that Somalis and Ethiopians aren’t black people, then nothing I have to say will convince you.)
In modern Ethiopia, there are at least two distinct physical types of black people. The Oromos, Amharas, Tigrinyas and other peoples of the highlands are one type, essentially the same as the southern ancient Egyptians. The other type, represented by the Nuer, is found in the Ethiopian lowlands near the western border with Sudan. The Nuer, a Nilotic people, are closely related to the Dinka and other peoples who make up the majority of southern Sudan. They’re very tall, very dark skinned, and quite distinct from the peoples of the highlands. But both types are black. You can’t say that Oromos aren’t really black because they don’t look like Nuer. They’re just two different types of black Africans.
I don’t want to derail the thread, but what relationship african americans have with ancient egyptians, anyway?
What would it change for them if it was proven all the pharaohs were as black as you can get?
My apologies, it should read that after analyzing hair samples, available bones by traditional methods and by using MRI technology, all three teams came to the same conclusion. The bust they produced is clearly not sub-Sahran African. I wish I could link to the picture.
It is not, however, that common even among mixed races. It further seems even more unlikely that it would have been passed generationally if, as you claim, Ramesses II were of mixed-race.
A number of the busts posted on the website all seem to come from between 730
B.C. to 633 B.C. which is coming from the latter part of the Egyptian empire.
The burden is on the Afrocentrist and quite frankly it’s a burden that they are just not meeting. Nothing you have provided can raise the discussion past conjecture. As I noted, three seperate teams (working independently) somehow reached the same conclusion that King Tut was caucasoid. This has been accepted and approved by the Egyptian authorities. Almost all the evidence suppports the notion that the ancient Egyptians were caucasoid and that the mixed-race pharoahs (if that term is correct) came to power in the latter stages of the Egyptian empire.
Ok, I actually did a little digging around and I found a picture of the recently “reconstructed” King Tut:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0510_051005_tutsface.html
Back to the originaly question (or topic), even if we take everything you posted as accurate Belowjob2.0, then the Egyptians were not as “black” as the protestors would like to believe. That is, they were not sub-Saharan Africans.
I will, however, read some of the other links you posted…too late tonight I’m afraid.
Didn’t the Martin research indicate that Tut was buried with a donkey? I thought that settled the question of his race.
And of course it’s not like he was native to Egypt or anything; he was born in Arizona, for crying out loud.
Yeah, but he moved to Babylonia. And has a condo made of stone-a.
He gave his life for tourism.
Somebody’s going to have to explain this joke to me. Sorry.
It is probably very likely that Tutankhamum was darker skinned than some historians want to admit, and not as dark as some others would like to promote, but skin color was possibly not a issue to his family. It is very possible that his father took a wife from the Nubian royal family. It was a common practice to prevent war or solicit trade, or get allies to marry off daughters. If women of that area look anything like the women of Somalia today, they were probably highly sought as wives. Social Class was probably more an issule. We have a Queen of the time sending for Prince among the Hittites; it is just as likely she sent for a Prince among the ancient Nubians and other nations. We know that Nubia and Isreal were once allies in the Bible. Ancient Nubia and Egypt seem to have spent a great deal of time being allies, capturing each other, trading cultures.
Seeking to discover the “racial” identity of these people in a time when “race” did not matter seems an unworthy debate.
As far as features:
Consider the features of Somali model Iman or Waris Dirie http://www.waris-dirie-foundation.com/
Skin color and so called racial characteristics are very different issues. But that will very in families, let alone regions. Hair texture and skin color is not an absolute-- and even in Egypt there is evidence that women and men often used artificial means to enhance their appearance. Because the sun doesn’t give a flying fig what color skin and hair we have, sunlight will burn and bleach anyone’s hair, and what people would have used to protect or beautify the hair, reddish hair on ebony skinned people in North Africa is not uncommon.
I think we have a limited view of what “African” features look like, since most African-Americans originate from specific groups in specific areas.
Typical Fulbe features, for example, look something like this- thin straight noses, delicate lips and generally fine features. We don’t see a lot of Fulbe features in America because they were typically slave traders, not tradees. Now, many Fulbe will tell you they have their origins in Egypt and are not really black. But you and I probably would not agree.
Just as a point of order - we don’t know who Tutankhamun’s parents were. He was obviously well-connected or he never would have been married to Ankhsenpaaten (Akenaten & Nefertiti’s third daughter). At one point, he’s called the King’s Son, but which king is never specified. It’s just possible that he was Akenaten’s brother as his secondary son. It might even just mean son-in-law. Tutankhamun’s mother is anyone’s guess. It’s possible he’s from an important but unroyal family like Nefertiti herself (that is, assuming we’re right in thinking that she was Ay’s daughter. That’s still uncertain. Her mother’s also unknown btw.)
It’s not unprecedented for non-royals to reach high positions in the Egyptian royal family. While I’m inclined to believe the still-unproven assertion that Nefertiti was Smenkhare (it makes complete psychological sense) - if she wasn’t, than Smenkhare’s antecedants are even more of a mystery.
Anyway, I think it’s likely that the Royal family of Egypt exhibited all the traits of the many races of the ancient world which populated its harem. But since we don’t actually know Tutankhamun’s parentage it’s impossible to argue for any firm physical traits.
As kaylasdad99 has noted, this is a zombie thread. However, since the original thread does not appear to have started any flame wars and most of the participants appear to have been reasonable, we’re going to leave this thread open for a while to see if it gets any traction.
Everyone please note the dates of posts to which they respond. Picking fights with departed posters or over long-since forgotten remarks will get this thread shut down.
[ /Modding ]
I see you are not using the One Drop Rule.
Your link doesn’t work for me. But isn’t it true that dark hair often turns reddish on mummified corpses over time? Seems I read that somewhere long ago. And a google image search for mummy hair turns up an awful lot of “redheaded” mummies. Here’s a strawberry “blonde” from Peru, for example.
[D’oh! Didn’t notice that was an old post I’m responding to. Note to self: read entire thread before responding.]
(whoops - zombie thred. NM)
According to the old Batman TV series, Tutankhamen was white. And bearded. And fat.
The mummy is what-3500 years old? can the DNA be sequenced accurately?