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I read the lead paragraph and then dropped down to the section purporting to treat the ethnicity of Egyptians. Appaently, there was no intellectual rigor whatsoever devoted to the subject. The section does little more than conveniently perpetuate the usual lies/myths about ancient Egypt with NO effort to seriously examine the issues. Further, IMO, the selection of the first photograph was selected in an attempt to give credence to those lies. I've been (and continue to be) busy with deadlines, but will return to this subject when I have the time and the patience/inclination to do so. deeceevoice 11:58, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have already mentioned my intention to return to this subject. The treatment of it as is sheds no new light on the debate at all and is simply a regurgitation of the same old lies and half-truths.
Further, I find the apparent self-attribution of the birth of Afrocentrism to Asante as surprising and exceedingly self-serving. Among the oldest "Afrocentric" historians are classic scholars and other Europeans themselves. "Afrocentric" scholarship existed decades, centuries before the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. And I myself was familiar with "afrocentrism" long before I ever even heard of Asante.
Aeschylus, Aristotle, Plato, Herodotus and others readily acknolwedged the blackness of Egypt and its contributions to Grecian and Roman science, arts, letters. If they had been inclined to deny the debt Greco-Roman civilization owed to black Africa, they could not have done so; it was the common knowledge of the era in learned circles.
But there was little or no reason for them to do so. "Afrocentrism" is merely a the dispassionate, scholarly approach; the original approach -- and has become a buzzword, a convenient tool among skeptics schooled in and steeped in the lies of the schlock-history of the modern day for lumping together and often dismissing out of hand historians who have come to certain conclusions at odds with this pop history.
Pop history is the revisionist, disingenuous, lazy, lying, version of world events in the service of racism, white supremacy and imperialism. It has been pretty much the status quo since the European/neo-European (New World) powers, hands bloodied by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattle slavery, felt a need to ennoble their despicable actions.
They had to paint Africans as subhuman or child-like. Acknowledging the blackness of Egypt would have given the lie to their claims that the West was somehow civilizing a bunch of depraved, base savages by placing them in bondage.
Historian Cheickh Anta Diop writes of this inherent contradiction between fact and fiction as experienced by French scholar Constantin François de Volney:
An exception is the evidence of an honest savant. Volney, who travelled in Egypt between +1783 and +1785, i.e., at the peak period of negro slavery, and made the following observations on the true Egyptian race, the same which produced the Pharaohs, namely the Copts:
All of them are puffy-faced, heavy eyed and thick-lipped, in a word, real mulatto faces. I was tempted to attribute this to the climate until, on visiting the Sphinx, the look of it gave me the clue to the egnima. Beholding that head characteristically Negro in all its features, I recalled the well-known passage of Herodotus which reads: 'For my part I consider the Colchoi are a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black skinned and kinky-haired.' In other words the ancient Egyptians were true negroes of the same stock as all the autochthonous peoples of Africa and from that datum one sees how their race, after some centuries of mixing with the blood of Romans and Greeks, must have lost the full blackness of its original colour but retained the impress of its original mould. It is even possible to apply this observation very widely and posit in principle that physiognomy is a kind of record usable in many cases for disputing or elucidating the evidence of history on the origins of the peoples . . .
After illustrating this proposition citing the case of the Normans, who 900 years after the conquest of Normandy still look like Danes, Volney adds:
but reverting to Egypt, its contributions to history afford many subjects for philosophic reflection. What a subject for meditation is the present-day barbarity and ignorance of the Copts who were considered, born of the alliance of the deep genius of the Egyptians and the brilliance of the Greeks, that THIS RACE OF BLACKS WHO NOWADAYS ARE SLAVES AND THE OBJECTS OF OUR SCORN IS THE VERY ONE TO WHICH WE OWE OUR ARTS, OUR SCIENCES, AND EVEN THE USE OF THE SPOKEN WORD [emphasis added]; and finally recollect that it is in the midst of the peoples claiming to be the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that the most barbarous of enslavements has been sanctioned and the question raised whether black men have brains of the same quality as those of white men!42
In far more recent times in this nation (yet still decades ago), the most learned black scholars were well-acquainted with black, African Egypt as an incontrovertible fact. Those were the days when it was de rigueur for true sholars, "intellectuals," to read the classical works. Indeed, there is a continuum of writing and scholarship among African-Americans on the subject of, or referring to, black Egypt -- from Martin Delaney to Arna Bontemps to W.E.B. DuBois to J.A. Rogers to Carter G. Woodson to Cheickh Anta Diop to Chancellor Williams to Yusef Ben Jochannan to Ivan van Sertima and then, finally (but not, really; the tradtion will continue) to the likes of Molefi Kete Asanti and Runoko Rashidi. And then there are people like of Thor Heyerdahl (the Rah voyages) and Basil Davidson, contemporary whites whose works contributed mightily to the "afrocentrist" historical paradigm.
It is only now, with the rise this new generation of "afrocentric" scholars and the higher profile of this approach to the study and interpretation of history, that the label has become popularized and the debate has come to the fore. Ivan van Sertima, in fact, rejects the label "afrocentric," claiming he is simply a historian in search of truth. The interesting thing is that when "afrocentrists" throw the writings of white, classical "afrocentrist" writers in their faces, apologists for the schlock/pop historical approach like Lefkowitz have no credible comeback.
While certainly not pervasive, this knowledge has been persistent; it long has been a common intellectual thread in the African-American community. Such information to a scorned and oppressed people who were constantly being taught by whites that they had contributed nothing of value to civilization, had no written language, and no culture of any merit was more precious than gold. We have protected it and passed it on -- even through the Egyptian Revial period following the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb, which further fueled schlock/pop culture notions of white Egyptians with Nubian slaves.
You are denying that the evidence presented here that Egyptians did not consider themselves to be white. Paul B 02.44 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
White Egyptians were all the rage -- in print, film and decorative arts. These are the images that have fed the ignorant biases of generations of people about ancient Egypt. But through the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s, this knowledge filtered down to everyday black people, many of whom were familiar with the works of J.A. Rogers. The people who possessed this knowledge and the dignity and pride it engendered were called "race men" and "race women."
As a young child in the 1950's, I remember the broader American society of the time. Stepin Fetchit, Amos 'n' Andy, blackface, the cartoon Magpies, and a shytload of darky images were the order of the day. Bojangles took a backseat to Fred Astaire; major league sports were still segregated; Emmit Till was brutally beaten and lynched; and black folks in the South still couldn't vote, drink out of the same water fountains, stop along the highway at a restaurant and expect to be served, or to public bathroom facilities. Growing up in the Midwest, the local amusement park opened to black folks one day out of the year, the movie theater downtown refused admission to blacks, and golf courses and the doors of country clubs were closed to us -- unless we were the hired help. Black people still "wore the mask," as Franz Fanon wrote -- and white people still believed Sambo really existed.
We all went to school, read the same schlock historical accounts -- in separate and unequal schools, and our textbooks were often several years older than those in the white schools, but the contents were the same. World history and world literature started with Rome and Greece. No black folks ever served this nation in war -- except in the mess halls. The Paraohs were white; Nubian slaves and Jews built the pyramids. "Darkest Africa" was black and backward, had always been and probably would always be. Blacks never had a written language. And slavery wasn't that bad; lots of masters were good to their slaves.
Yep. We all read the same lies. The difference was white folks saw the elevator operators, the housemaids, cooks, street sweepers and bootblacks, and for many that was all they saw or knew. They went home to their segregated neighborhoods secure in the knowledge that the white man was the epitome of God's creation and the lord and master of the universe -- always was and always would be.
As a young, black child, on the other hand, I went home to the people behind those masks. In my life, I never met a real Sambo or knew a Stepin Fetchit. My mother was graduated from college at 19; my dad a successful businessman. My redlined, all-black neighborhood (except for "Mrs. Zeke," an elderly Eastern European woman next door), was a rich mix of professionals and blue-collar workers -- the human face of the Great Migration settled "Up South" for greater opportunity for themselves and their children. And down the street, the letter-carrier father of my best friends was a race man. He'd named his daughter Aida and was the first person to tell us the cannibals with the cookpots and with bones in their noses and the Johnny Weismuller "Yes, bwana" Tarzan junk on the television were all lies.
I don't know how or where or when I obtained the knowledge I possessed; but I knew my fourth-grade social studies teacher was a racist. And whether he was lying or just plain ignorant when he told me the ancient Egyptians were white, I couldn't tell, but I did know he was dead wrong.
I find the abysmal and thoroughly obtuse ignorance on the part of so many whites in this regard more than a little curious. Who has not read Langston Hughes' The Negro Speaks of Rivers? The knowledge of black Egypt was such a given among blacks, that Hughes wrote while still a teenager: "I've known rivers ... older than the flow of human blood in human veins....I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
I write these things to say there is a long tradition of "afrocentric" scholarship, and there are many decades of this information being a part of everyday life for a great many African-Americans. It is, in part, how and why we have come to this discussion on Wikipedia and how the tremendous rift in this regard between blacks and whites, exemplified in people like Lefkowitz and Bernal, came to be.
This chasm created by fundamental differences in experiences and knowledge bases of blacks and whites and vastly differing perspectives in many areas also points to an even broader problem -- the consequent raft of misconceptions, silliness and outright racist crap that makes its way into the articles treating black people on Wikipedia. No matter how jaded one is, how accustomed to such appalling ignorance, it's disconcerting and downright disgusting. Not many folks have the patience for it -- and I'm fast losing what little I possess. Most black folk I know -- myself included -- do not have as their raison d'etre correcting the various and sundry racist misconceptions, presumptions and assumptions of white folks. As a matter of fact, we prefer to avoid contact with the most backwardly ignorant of you as much as humanly possible. Just plain fact.
This is background. I wanted to write it here -- as prologue.
Now I must return to my deadlines. And, again, when I have the patience and more time, I will return to this "debate" and to the article at hand.
See ya on the black side.
deeceevoice 15:35, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've read Lefkowitz and the afrocentrist historians. Can you say the same? Nope. And I've reinstated the POV. The article presents arguments against Afrocentrism, but does not present their counter. And as to Bernal and Lefkowitz, Aristotle and Alexandria -- how should I know? Alexandria was built upon a more ancient city after the conquest and renamed. Could Aristotle have studied there before the name change? Perhaps. Perhaps Bernal misspoke and was either too proud, or too angry, or occupied with other things to address the matter. Perhaps you didn't hear him correctly. Beats the hell outta me. Whatever the case, a single, off-the-cuff statement by one writer is hardly a reasonable test of the credibility of the afrocentrist paradigm. deeceevoice 20:09, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've done a little to the section on the ethnic identity of ancient Egypt. I'd like to include a pic of the mural itself to replace the image of the artifact that purports to depict "typical" Egyptians. I don't necessarily disagree with the premise; certainly, taken as a whole, ancient dynastic Egypt was peopled by brown-skinned black people and certainly not all black-skinned Nubians. But I think as an explication of how the Egyptians regarded themselves in relation to other groups of the region and time in their own words and art, the mural is far superior and enlightening than that single, unsubstantiated image. I haven't read the entire article, but that's the section that first attracted my attention. Deadlines. But I will return and deal with the rest. I promise. deeceevoice 16:44, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Why do people label the Egyptian people mixed, out of convienence. Virtually Every Black in America is mixed, but no one dares call us that? By america's own standard, they are black. -- Vehgah 08:14, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
I know of no evidence of any "prominent Wolof and Hamitic influences" on Egyptian. Wolof is part of a very different language group - and has been associated with Egyptian by a Ghanaian writer who has a particular agenda. Can you tell me of a linguist who identifies this Wolof influence? There is no such thing as 'Hamitic' influence on Egyptian. That is meaningless. Egyptian is part of the Afro-Asiatic language group, which used to be called Semito-Hamitic. Hamitic is just an old-fashioned term for the non-Semitic component of the group, now no longer considered to be a linguistically coherent classification. Egyptian is now normally isolated within the Afro-Asiatic group, which covers north Africa and Israel/Arabia. It has also fairly obviously overlaid earlier groups in its southern expansions. In other words, Egyptian can't be influenced by 'Hamitic', Hamitic is just an old fashioned term for the group to which it belongs. Paul B 04.39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What I know is this is a perfectly legitimate Egyptian artifact which itself depicts the ethnographic "universe" as the Egyptians of Rameses' time knew it -- and their place it it, as well. As such, it is a far more pertinent, far more graphic and clearer illustration of who the Egyptians represented themselves to be than the photo of a fairly generic artifact with dubious ethnographic significance that presently accompanies the relevant text and that is accompanied by a caption that is mere conjecture on the part of others as to who and what the Egyptians were. And, please, do not tell me what I "know perfectly well." You do not know at all what I know -- which is the whole point of this debate. You asked me to provide support, and here it is. I didn't manufacture this item. Some advice: do not ask for that which you are unwilling or unprepared to accept. deeceevoice 19:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My, my. You've really got a bug up your butt, don't you? LOL Listen, the artifact is what it is. It's the only one I have access to, though I understand there have been similar/fairly identical ones found by others elsewhere. The ancient Egyptians, as indigenous Africans, were black people. "Black" does not mean literally black -- any more than "white" means literally white. Just as there is really no such thing as black hair, virtually all black folks are actually varying shades of brown -- from the "blackest Nubian/Dravidian/Tamil to "yella." (Do we really have to go through this rather fundamental aspect of "racial identification"?) Obviously, the Egyptians saw themselves as fundamentally "black" folks in relation to the other ethnic groups with whom they came into contact.
What's amusing is how white folks will call black folks with varying skin tones (which happens naturally, even without any "mixing") "Negroes" and "black people," but when it comes to Egypt, they take great pains to point to the fact that Egyptians sometimes depicted themselves using rich, dark brown skin tones as evidence that they aren't somehow "Negroid." WTF? The ethnographic mural is very straightforward, very, very clear -- as was their terminology for themselves. They referred to themselves as "blacks" as the most defining, striking characteristic that set them apart from all other ethnic groups with whom they came into contact (except other indigenous Africans) and -- in much the same way other peoples have referred to black people over the ages, regardless whether they were blue-black, mahogany, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, tan or cafe-au-lait.
Further, the use of the term "Semitic" to describe other people of the region itself testifies to the presence of African blood in their veins. After all, Semites are none other than Eurasians, or (Europeans or Asians) with black African blood. (Where the hell do you think Hasidim got their nappy hair from? Why do you think they've been so despised throughout the ages?) The black blood in them is so strong, that even the Ashkenazi, who've been in Europe for centuries, still often turn up with nappy/frizzy hair. They got that hair from black folks. There are no people indigenous to Africa other than black Africans. The Semites are a product of the confluence of peoples in that region -- of Europeans and Asians interacting with the indigenous blacks of Africa (and that includes Egypt). In fact, "Semitic" properly refers to a language group; it is not a racial or ethnic group. From a strictly scientific standpoint, consider the proposition that segments of humankind, as they migrated from warmer climates to cooler ones, gradually lost much of the pigmentation in their skin. Why the hell would white people, or even relatively fair-skinned Semites (and here we're not talking about the obvious black African and Afro-Semitic peoples of Egypt who remain the predominant population in Egypt to this day), develop in Africa/Egypt, where it's hot as blazes -- and right alongside blue-black Nubians? It didn't happen.
All that notwithstanding, and your silly and thoroughly presumptuous comments (lecturing me on "moral ground" and some ascribed "anger" that I do not have) in response to my earlier post assuming some sort of manufactured history in order to compensate for our subjugated state (notice I mentioned the knowledge passed on was based in part on historical accounts provided by classical historians, as well as archaeological evidence) as well, the fact of the ethnographic mural is incontrovertible; it is a matter of archaeological and historic record. And whether you wish to accept it or not, the ancient Egyptians were BLACK. How do we know? Because they themselves SAID so. deeceevoice 13:25, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Before you go on a jag about Jews and other Semites in the Middle East, perhaps you should take a good look at what ethnologists say the original Jews looked like, what Jesus, himself, in fact, looked like. They were clearly Afro-Semitic, with an emphasis on the "Afro."
And what? "As far as [you] know," the other ethnographic murals are different? Well, I don't know what you've seen; I can only refer to and describe the photographs of the mural I've been looking at. When you can produce a similar mural that depicts the different ethnicities in the region substantially differently, I'll be more than willing to take a look. But even if they do use mud-brown pigment, that's STILL black folks. Until then, "as far as I know" just doesn't cut it. Further, there are numerous images of Egyptians as, literally, black. And I'm sure you've seen those, too. If you haven't, I'd be more than happy to direct you to some interesting images. But you're a smart boy. I'm sure you can find them (and already have) on your own.
Furthermore, the trend in history is toward Afrocentrism. What? No comments about forensic reconstruction? About why, inexplicably, this mural shows black Africans and Egyptians as identicial in physical appearance? Gee, how did that happen? Do you somehow think to contradict the clear archaeological evidence? Didja see what forensic scientists did with the royal mummy believed to be that of Nefertari? Or of King Tut (whose cane shows a Nubian "under his thumb")? The brother was blacker than I am! LMAO. And if you tried to tell someone I wasn't black, they'd laugh in your face. deeceevoice 20:36, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
And let me make one observation. We are not here to debate the pros and cons of anything. We are here to equitably present the pro and con. That Afrocentrism is incorrect is not a foregone conclusion as contributors to this piece would like to present -- something which I am here to prevent. So, sue me. :-p
deeceevoice 20:44, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think we should all avoid making personal remarks about other contributors:
If you need help, please ask a Mediator (like me for instance). -- Uncle Ed (talk) 15:52, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
1) To categorize humans by race/color (You are/I am .. "black".. "white".. "yellow".. "red") is a fairly new concept and was unknown to ancient Egyptians.
2) To the ancient Egyptians, color was an essential part of symbolism. Black symbolized death, resurrection and the underworld. (Osiris, for instance, was referred to as "the black one" because he was the king of the afterlife) The picture deeceevoice refers to is a rendition of a painting of the Book of Gates, a text that appears on several tombs of ancient pharaohs and basically provided a guide for what to expect in the world of the afterlife (netherworld/underworld) and was NOT a description of the world of the living.
Some additional info re the "mural of nations":
First of all, the renderings of the peoples of the sun the Egyptians believed Osiris would resurrect in death are accurate. The mural represents deals with the sun's journey after it sets in the West and the afterlife (known similarly in the Kongo and as illustrated in African-American quilts as "the moments of the sun") 1. Kemetu, the Egyptians (Ret) humanity perfected 2. the Namu, to their east: sunrise 3. Black Afica/the Nile Valley to their south: noon 4. the Tamu to the west: sunset
deeceevoice 00:09, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Further, with regard to "selective evidence," one cannot get more selective than choosing a figural image of a single, relatively obscure 5th dynasty Egyptian offical and characterizing it as "typical." At least the presentation of the mural is an attempt to provide an example of a comparative rendering that explicitly illustrates broad, but specific, groups and clearly labels them by ethnic/national grouping. There are far more numerous statuary images -- royal and otherwise -- that show clear black African phenotypical characteristics. With the one provided, the facial characteristics are not even evident. deeceevoice 00:16, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I read the part about Egyptian color symbolism in the article, and it's not accurate. White was not associated with death, it was the color of sacred things and purity (e.g. Memphis meant "White Walls", priest were dressed in long white robes, the crown of Upper Egypt was white) Yellow was seen as being the equivalent to gold and was symbolic of all that is eternal, indestructible and imperishable. Black, as I already mentioned, symbolized death, resurrection and the underworld (e.g. Osiris, the king of the afterlife was called "the black one." Ahmose-Nefertari, the patroness of the necropolis was portrayed with black skin. Anubis, the Guardian of the Dead was shown as a black man with the head of a black jackal or dog).
Egyptians did NOT protrait themselves "looking exactly like other Africans". They distinguished themselves from non-Egyptians with distinctive clothing and hair-styles and red-brown skin. http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/colors1.jpg
The ethnographic example to which I refer is a very specific mural which very graphically and in great detail depicts the facial characteristics, dress and skin tones of four separate groups of people. The artifact is absolutely authentic, and the characterization of the information it provides is irrefutable. deeceevoice 18:57, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
by unnamed: To understand what's on the tomb wall of Ramses III one needs to examine the full paintings and the complete text of the Book of Gates. http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/16608.jpg
Nubian: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/15652.jpg
Syrian and Nubian: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/15447.jpg
Egyptian: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/15162.jpg
Asiatics: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/16230.jpg
Libyan: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/18236.jpg
Hello unammed, you might want to create an account and sign your name so it's easier to read. You can also contribute to the article too, the pictures look nice. As for you deeceevoice, what's your preoccupation with portraying mainstream scholarly works as Eurocentric? Mainstream is not Eurocentric; it's a label applied to Afrocentrists to give themselves more legitimacy, to propagate unfounded "research" some sort of "paradigm shift." The readers need to know that Afrocentrism is fringe theory at best, instead of some legitimate counterargument to historic research Ware ware 00:49, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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Hello Wareware, thanks for the welcome. I finally signed up. I hope that my comments are more convenient to read now :-). ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
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If you want to show how ancient Egyptians typically portrayed people in the Egyptian mythology, then use the images of the book of gates. If you want to show a vivid portrait of Egyptian features you should use portraits of real people. ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
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When this assertion is debunked, the unnamed contributor returns with other images, apparently asserting that they do, in fact, represent various ethnic groups. Which is it? Are the images nebulous and symbolic? Or are they accurate, detailed renderings? One can't have it both ways. It is clear that the images -- detailed in dress, hairstyles, skin pigmentation -- are meant to be taken as accurate depictions of variouis peoples; the earlier assertion is but a weak attempt to explain away the black pigmentation used by the Egyptians to depict themselves as identical to other Africans.
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I posted the pictures as evidence that Egyptians did NOT portrait themselves identical to other Africans, in fact they portrayed themselves completely different. ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
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Further, with regard to the links contributed, here is another -- of images presented specifically in the context of the mural -- that fully examines the images presented in the mural and varying versions (with links) of it: http://manuampim.com/ramesesIII.htm . Note that while the above links contributed by no-name present images, they do so completely out of context and do not appear to be accompanied by identifying hieroglyphs. Such was not their purpose. On the other hand, the condensed images presented in the "mural of the nations" are idealized, elemental images (with the identifying hieroglyphs that accompany them) in much the way Plato spoke of a generic image of a tree representing all trees. With regard to physical appearance and dress, clearly, the elemental "facts" of Egyptians and other Africans were similar enough that both groups were portrayed identically. The elemental "facts" of Semites and Europeans were substantially different -- enough for them to be portrayed completely differently -- as they were specifically identified by ethnic group. deeceevoice 10:34, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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Interesting that Mr. Ampim states that the "Sethe/Lepsius reproduction version of the "Table of Nations" is ACCURATE in both the representation of the images and the positioning of the texts". Maybe that's the reason why Mr. Ampim, after claiming that "writers and Egyptologists use the cut-&-paste photo distortion technique to make sure that the images and texts cannot be seen in their entire context" he didn't care to show the whole 1913 Sethe/Lepsius version either but left out the Egyptian portraits? http://edoc3.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/lepsius/page/egb1-4/image/09130480.jpg Also, Mr. Ampim doesn't care to put the images and text in their entire context either. Lepsius text reads as follows (starting with "Die ersten sind hier die Asiaten ..." (I translate for you): "The first ones are the Asiatics, with flesh colored skin, blue eyes, black pointed beard and black hair, which comes out of a blue hood with ribbons, they are wrapped in long blue robes, and erroneously labeld as Libyan. The next figures are 4 negroes, without beards, with red woolen hair, dressed in colorful robes. The next 4 are Libyan, again flesh colored with pointed beards in long yellow open robes, and erroneously labeld as Asiatics. The next are again 4 negroes, looking exactly like the first 4 negroes, although once erroneously labeled with Egyptian and written with 3 spelling errors. The errors and misconceptions in the images and text leads to the conclusion that this is an insufficient piece of work and mirrors the bad general state of the whole tomb."
http://edoc3.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/lepsius/page/tb3/image/00003208.jpg
http://edoc3.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/lepsius/page/tb3/image/00003209.jpg ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
I've deleted this text, pending an explanation:
The relationship between racial, cultural and continental identities is one of the more difficult problems in Afrocentic thought. Despite the problems with a Eurocentric approach to history, there has been a common European cultural identity for many centuries. It is more difficult to make the same claim for Africa, in which widely separated cultures were unaware of each-other's existence. For this reason, some Afrocentrists have been accused of manufacturing "African" cultural values by cherry-picking from wholly different peoples.
Aside from concerns about the accuracy of the "common European cultural identity for many centuries," I'm not quite certain of the relevance to the "cherry picking" of "cultural values" to the Afrocentrist historical paradigm. Would someone care to explain/rework the paragraph to make this more clearly relevant? deeceevoice 12:14, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Wareware, thanks for the clarification of your intent. Presumably, the following passage is meant to explain the later reference to "cherry picking":
One thing to point out is that Afrocentrists usually try to make the connections between Egypt and their own ethnic background. For example, Diop was a native Wolof, while Obenga came from a Mbochi-speaking background.
One problem is it is far too general. "Afrocentrists usually...." I realize you haven't read much Afrocentrist history, but I have. And I only just became aware of the purported linkages between Wolof and Mbochi and ancient Egyptian. Your addition makes it seem as though this is widespread. Is it? If not, then you should make only specific assertions with regard to the two historians you mention and leave it at that. Further, how much of the association of language is simply due to the fact that the historian's familiarity with Wolof or Mbochi language equips him with the knowledge to even explore the possibility of a connection and has nothing to do with the fact that it may be his native tongue? You should be careful not to assume too much or to paint Afrocentrist historians with too broad a brush.
Now, with regard to:
The relationship between racial, cultural and continental identities is one of the more difficult problems in Afrocentic thought. Despite the problems with a Eurocentric approach to history, there has been a common European cultural identity for many centuries. It is more difficult to make the same claim for Africa, in which widely separated cultures were unaware of each-other's existence. For this reason some Afrocentrists have been accused of manufacturing "African" cultural values by cherry-picking from wholly different peoples.
I'll leave aside strictly editorial stuff for the moment. But the idea of a common European cultural identity is simply a myth. Goths, Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Albanians, Basques, Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Slavs, Armenians, Magyars, Serbs, Albanians, Huns, Kossaks (Kazaks), Tartars, the rising of the clans in Scotland, the upheavals in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, etc., etc., all bear witness to the fact that the "homogeneity" of Europe is a myth. The armed conflict that has accompanied such historical, political, religious and other cultural differences would be called "tribal warfare" in Africa. It's all a matter of perspective. If you mean something different and I have misunderstood, then by all means tell me; but as it stands, this statement is simply false. With this in mind, the assertions about disparate cultures in Africa are seemingly rendered irrelevant. If you wish to refer to the language thing here, then it's certainly relevant. But it is merely one example involving only two historians. Are there others? Your assertion of "cherry picking" is a broad with regard to assuming shared values and other cultural affectations, so I would expect there to be other examples offered to back up such claims. deeceevoice 20:50, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
"Selective" is more appropriate than what? Notice I haven't dismissed Wareware's train of thought out of hand -- just the overly general manner in which he is attempting to express it. But "greater mobility"? In what sense? And how are you suggesting "mobility" relates to the matter at hand? I'm afraid you haven't at all helped to clarify the point Wareware seems to be trying to make. deeceevoice 03:34, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My apologies for the multiple, successive edits; but after Wareware's mindless and repeated reverts -- done completely without any justification being offered for most of them -- I felt compelled to make fewer changes at a time and (again) specifically state my reasons (perhaps more clearly) for making each one in the hope of stopping this stupid back and forth. For a time, he was reverting my edits of my own material -- edits I made to either correct or refine information that I had presented, in one instance, even reverting a typo. He couldn't possibly have known what he was doing or why -- just simply slavishly reacting to anything he saw that I had done. Let's keep in mind, people, the objective is the accuracy and journalistic integrity of this piece. deeceevoice 09:18, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
About "cherry picking" or "selecting" values and culture -- it's not that I don't understand the sentence. In an editorial sense, what I am trying to get someone to do here is to be more clear in the article just precisely how widespread the manifestation of such a perspective is in Afrocentrist historical analysis. A fairly sweeping generalization has been made. There should be concrete examples provided to back it up that don't read like "they all do it" (because they don't), but that a significant portion of, or principal contentions within, the body of work of Afrocentrists, evidence such a perpsective. Again, how does this perspective broadly manifest itself within the Afrocentrist paradigm? deeceevoice 09:18, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't the article also mention W.E.B. DuBois activism for the recognition of African culture and the "Encyclopedia Africana" as one important afrocentric work? ( Pharlap 06:36, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC))
I think the article comprises most/all important informations concerning afrocentrism, but it doesn't show clearly the shift from the basic idea - a progressive corrective historiography without demeaning other people and their historical contributions to world civilization, and its focus on West African cultures
to
What do you think about structuring the informations in Afrocentric sub-categories, e.g. merging "Egypt and Black Identity" and "Ethnographic murals of the New Kingdom" in one category called "Egyptocentrism", and creating a "Black separatism/nationalism" chapter? ( Pharlap 07:21, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC))
Hi, all, this edit to this page duplicated a large block of text (about 70% of the page). I have removed this duplicated block, and carefully checked it to see if anyone had added anything while it was here; I found one thing, which I have transplanted back into the page.
Please, all, be careful in doing edits - we have seen this problem on a number of pages recently. It's always wise (even on talk pages!) to do a diff on you edit, after it's done, to make sure that what actually happened was what you thought you did. Use of the "section edit" feature also help (and makes editing faster, to boot :-). Noel (talk) 15:16, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | → | Archive 10 |
I read the lead paragraph and then dropped down to the section purporting to treat the ethnicity of Egyptians. Appaently, there was no intellectual rigor whatsoever devoted to the subject. The section does little more than conveniently perpetuate the usual lies/myths about ancient Egypt with NO effort to seriously examine the issues. Further, IMO, the selection of the first photograph was selected in an attempt to give credence to those lies. I've been (and continue to be) busy with deadlines, but will return to this subject when I have the time and the patience/inclination to do so. deeceevoice 11:58, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have already mentioned my intention to return to this subject. The treatment of it as is sheds no new light on the debate at all and is simply a regurgitation of the same old lies and half-truths.
Further, I find the apparent self-attribution of the birth of Afrocentrism to Asante as surprising and exceedingly self-serving. Among the oldest "Afrocentric" historians are classic scholars and other Europeans themselves. "Afrocentric" scholarship existed decades, centuries before the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. And I myself was familiar with "afrocentrism" long before I ever even heard of Asante.
Aeschylus, Aristotle, Plato, Herodotus and others readily acknolwedged the blackness of Egypt and its contributions to Grecian and Roman science, arts, letters. If they had been inclined to deny the debt Greco-Roman civilization owed to black Africa, they could not have done so; it was the common knowledge of the era in learned circles.
But there was little or no reason for them to do so. "Afrocentrism" is merely a the dispassionate, scholarly approach; the original approach -- and has become a buzzword, a convenient tool among skeptics schooled in and steeped in the lies of the schlock-history of the modern day for lumping together and often dismissing out of hand historians who have come to certain conclusions at odds with this pop history.
Pop history is the revisionist, disingenuous, lazy, lying, version of world events in the service of racism, white supremacy and imperialism. It has been pretty much the status quo since the European/neo-European (New World) powers, hands bloodied by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattle slavery, felt a need to ennoble their despicable actions.
They had to paint Africans as subhuman or child-like. Acknowledging the blackness of Egypt would have given the lie to their claims that the West was somehow civilizing a bunch of depraved, base savages by placing them in bondage.
Historian Cheickh Anta Diop writes of this inherent contradiction between fact and fiction as experienced by French scholar Constantin François de Volney:
An exception is the evidence of an honest savant. Volney, who travelled in Egypt between +1783 and +1785, i.e., at the peak period of negro slavery, and made the following observations on the true Egyptian race, the same which produced the Pharaohs, namely the Copts:
All of them are puffy-faced, heavy eyed and thick-lipped, in a word, real mulatto faces. I was tempted to attribute this to the climate until, on visiting the Sphinx, the look of it gave me the clue to the egnima. Beholding that head characteristically Negro in all its features, I recalled the well-known passage of Herodotus which reads: 'For my part I consider the Colchoi are a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black skinned and kinky-haired.' In other words the ancient Egyptians were true negroes of the same stock as all the autochthonous peoples of Africa and from that datum one sees how their race, after some centuries of mixing with the blood of Romans and Greeks, must have lost the full blackness of its original colour but retained the impress of its original mould. It is even possible to apply this observation very widely and posit in principle that physiognomy is a kind of record usable in many cases for disputing or elucidating the evidence of history on the origins of the peoples . . .
After illustrating this proposition citing the case of the Normans, who 900 years after the conquest of Normandy still look like Danes, Volney adds:
but reverting to Egypt, its contributions to history afford many subjects for philosophic reflection. What a subject for meditation is the present-day barbarity and ignorance of the Copts who were considered, born of the alliance of the deep genius of the Egyptians and the brilliance of the Greeks, that THIS RACE OF BLACKS WHO NOWADAYS ARE SLAVES AND THE OBJECTS OF OUR SCORN IS THE VERY ONE TO WHICH WE OWE OUR ARTS, OUR SCIENCES, AND EVEN THE USE OF THE SPOKEN WORD [emphasis added]; and finally recollect that it is in the midst of the peoples claiming to be the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that the most barbarous of enslavements has been sanctioned and the question raised whether black men have brains of the same quality as those of white men!42
In far more recent times in this nation (yet still decades ago), the most learned black scholars were well-acquainted with black, African Egypt as an incontrovertible fact. Those were the days when it was de rigueur for true sholars, "intellectuals," to read the classical works. Indeed, there is a continuum of writing and scholarship among African-Americans on the subject of, or referring to, black Egypt -- from Martin Delaney to Arna Bontemps to W.E.B. DuBois to J.A. Rogers to Carter G. Woodson to Cheickh Anta Diop to Chancellor Williams to Yusef Ben Jochannan to Ivan van Sertima and then, finally (but not, really; the tradtion will continue) to the likes of Molefi Kete Asanti and Runoko Rashidi. And then there are people like of Thor Heyerdahl (the Rah voyages) and Basil Davidson, contemporary whites whose works contributed mightily to the "afrocentrist" historical paradigm.
It is only now, with the rise this new generation of "afrocentric" scholars and the higher profile of this approach to the study and interpretation of history, that the label has become popularized and the debate has come to the fore. Ivan van Sertima, in fact, rejects the label "afrocentric," claiming he is simply a historian in search of truth. The interesting thing is that when "afrocentrists" throw the writings of white, classical "afrocentrist" writers in their faces, apologists for the schlock/pop historical approach like Lefkowitz have no credible comeback.
While certainly not pervasive, this knowledge has been persistent; it long has been a common intellectual thread in the African-American community. Such information to a scorned and oppressed people who were constantly being taught by whites that they had contributed nothing of value to civilization, had no written language, and no culture of any merit was more precious than gold. We have protected it and passed it on -- even through the Egyptian Revial period following the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb, which further fueled schlock/pop culture notions of white Egyptians with Nubian slaves.
You are denying that the evidence presented here that Egyptians did not consider themselves to be white. Paul B 02.44 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
White Egyptians were all the rage -- in print, film and decorative arts. These are the images that have fed the ignorant biases of generations of people about ancient Egypt. But through the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s, this knowledge filtered down to everyday black people, many of whom were familiar with the works of J.A. Rogers. The people who possessed this knowledge and the dignity and pride it engendered were called "race men" and "race women."
As a young child in the 1950's, I remember the broader American society of the time. Stepin Fetchit, Amos 'n' Andy, blackface, the cartoon Magpies, and a shytload of darky images were the order of the day. Bojangles took a backseat to Fred Astaire; major league sports were still segregated; Emmit Till was brutally beaten and lynched; and black folks in the South still couldn't vote, drink out of the same water fountains, stop along the highway at a restaurant and expect to be served, or to public bathroom facilities. Growing up in the Midwest, the local amusement park opened to black folks one day out of the year, the movie theater downtown refused admission to blacks, and golf courses and the doors of country clubs were closed to us -- unless we were the hired help. Black people still "wore the mask," as Franz Fanon wrote -- and white people still believed Sambo really existed.
We all went to school, read the same schlock historical accounts -- in separate and unequal schools, and our textbooks were often several years older than those in the white schools, but the contents were the same. World history and world literature started with Rome and Greece. No black folks ever served this nation in war -- except in the mess halls. The Paraohs were white; Nubian slaves and Jews built the pyramids. "Darkest Africa" was black and backward, had always been and probably would always be. Blacks never had a written language. And slavery wasn't that bad; lots of masters were good to their slaves.
Yep. We all read the same lies. The difference was white folks saw the elevator operators, the housemaids, cooks, street sweepers and bootblacks, and for many that was all they saw or knew. They went home to their segregated neighborhoods secure in the knowledge that the white man was the epitome of God's creation and the lord and master of the universe -- always was and always would be.
As a young, black child, on the other hand, I went home to the people behind those masks. In my life, I never met a real Sambo or knew a Stepin Fetchit. My mother was graduated from college at 19; my dad a successful businessman. My redlined, all-black neighborhood (except for "Mrs. Zeke," an elderly Eastern European woman next door), was a rich mix of professionals and blue-collar workers -- the human face of the Great Migration settled "Up South" for greater opportunity for themselves and their children. And down the street, the letter-carrier father of my best friends was a race man. He'd named his daughter Aida and was the first person to tell us the cannibals with the cookpots and with bones in their noses and the Johnny Weismuller "Yes, bwana" Tarzan junk on the television were all lies.
I don't know how or where or when I obtained the knowledge I possessed; but I knew my fourth-grade social studies teacher was a racist. And whether he was lying or just plain ignorant when he told me the ancient Egyptians were white, I couldn't tell, but I did know he was dead wrong.
I find the abysmal and thoroughly obtuse ignorance on the part of so many whites in this regard more than a little curious. Who has not read Langston Hughes' The Negro Speaks of Rivers? The knowledge of black Egypt was such a given among blacks, that Hughes wrote while still a teenager: "I've known rivers ... older than the flow of human blood in human veins....I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
I write these things to say there is a long tradition of "afrocentric" scholarship, and there are many decades of this information being a part of everyday life for a great many African-Americans. It is, in part, how and why we have come to this discussion on Wikipedia and how the tremendous rift in this regard between blacks and whites, exemplified in people like Lefkowitz and Bernal, came to be.
This chasm created by fundamental differences in experiences and knowledge bases of blacks and whites and vastly differing perspectives in many areas also points to an even broader problem -- the consequent raft of misconceptions, silliness and outright racist crap that makes its way into the articles treating black people on Wikipedia. No matter how jaded one is, how accustomed to such appalling ignorance, it's disconcerting and downright disgusting. Not many folks have the patience for it -- and I'm fast losing what little I possess. Most black folk I know -- myself included -- do not have as their raison d'etre correcting the various and sundry racist misconceptions, presumptions and assumptions of white folks. As a matter of fact, we prefer to avoid contact with the most backwardly ignorant of you as much as humanly possible. Just plain fact.
This is background. I wanted to write it here -- as prologue.
Now I must return to my deadlines. And, again, when I have the patience and more time, I will return to this "debate" and to the article at hand.
See ya on the black side.
deeceevoice 15:35, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've read Lefkowitz and the afrocentrist historians. Can you say the same? Nope. And I've reinstated the POV. The article presents arguments against Afrocentrism, but does not present their counter. And as to Bernal and Lefkowitz, Aristotle and Alexandria -- how should I know? Alexandria was built upon a more ancient city after the conquest and renamed. Could Aristotle have studied there before the name change? Perhaps. Perhaps Bernal misspoke and was either too proud, or too angry, or occupied with other things to address the matter. Perhaps you didn't hear him correctly. Beats the hell outta me. Whatever the case, a single, off-the-cuff statement by one writer is hardly a reasonable test of the credibility of the afrocentrist paradigm. deeceevoice 20:09, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've done a little to the section on the ethnic identity of ancient Egypt. I'd like to include a pic of the mural itself to replace the image of the artifact that purports to depict "typical" Egyptians. I don't necessarily disagree with the premise; certainly, taken as a whole, ancient dynastic Egypt was peopled by brown-skinned black people and certainly not all black-skinned Nubians. But I think as an explication of how the Egyptians regarded themselves in relation to other groups of the region and time in their own words and art, the mural is far superior and enlightening than that single, unsubstantiated image. I haven't read the entire article, but that's the section that first attracted my attention. Deadlines. But I will return and deal with the rest. I promise. deeceevoice 16:44, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Why do people label the Egyptian people mixed, out of convienence. Virtually Every Black in America is mixed, but no one dares call us that? By america's own standard, they are black. -- Vehgah 08:14, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
I know of no evidence of any "prominent Wolof and Hamitic influences" on Egyptian. Wolof is part of a very different language group - and has been associated with Egyptian by a Ghanaian writer who has a particular agenda. Can you tell me of a linguist who identifies this Wolof influence? There is no such thing as 'Hamitic' influence on Egyptian. That is meaningless. Egyptian is part of the Afro-Asiatic language group, which used to be called Semito-Hamitic. Hamitic is just an old-fashioned term for the non-Semitic component of the group, now no longer considered to be a linguistically coherent classification. Egyptian is now normally isolated within the Afro-Asiatic group, which covers north Africa and Israel/Arabia. It has also fairly obviously overlaid earlier groups in its southern expansions. In other words, Egyptian can't be influenced by 'Hamitic', Hamitic is just an old fashioned term for the group to which it belongs. Paul B 04.39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What I know is this is a perfectly legitimate Egyptian artifact which itself depicts the ethnographic "universe" as the Egyptians of Rameses' time knew it -- and their place it it, as well. As such, it is a far more pertinent, far more graphic and clearer illustration of who the Egyptians represented themselves to be than the photo of a fairly generic artifact with dubious ethnographic significance that presently accompanies the relevant text and that is accompanied by a caption that is mere conjecture on the part of others as to who and what the Egyptians were. And, please, do not tell me what I "know perfectly well." You do not know at all what I know -- which is the whole point of this debate. You asked me to provide support, and here it is. I didn't manufacture this item. Some advice: do not ask for that which you are unwilling or unprepared to accept. deeceevoice 19:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My, my. You've really got a bug up your butt, don't you? LOL Listen, the artifact is what it is. It's the only one I have access to, though I understand there have been similar/fairly identical ones found by others elsewhere. The ancient Egyptians, as indigenous Africans, were black people. "Black" does not mean literally black -- any more than "white" means literally white. Just as there is really no such thing as black hair, virtually all black folks are actually varying shades of brown -- from the "blackest Nubian/Dravidian/Tamil to "yella." (Do we really have to go through this rather fundamental aspect of "racial identification"?) Obviously, the Egyptians saw themselves as fundamentally "black" folks in relation to the other ethnic groups with whom they came into contact.
What's amusing is how white folks will call black folks with varying skin tones (which happens naturally, even without any "mixing") "Negroes" and "black people," but when it comes to Egypt, they take great pains to point to the fact that Egyptians sometimes depicted themselves using rich, dark brown skin tones as evidence that they aren't somehow "Negroid." WTF? The ethnographic mural is very straightforward, very, very clear -- as was their terminology for themselves. They referred to themselves as "blacks" as the most defining, striking characteristic that set them apart from all other ethnic groups with whom they came into contact (except other indigenous Africans) and -- in much the same way other peoples have referred to black people over the ages, regardless whether they were blue-black, mahogany, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, tan or cafe-au-lait.
Further, the use of the term "Semitic" to describe other people of the region itself testifies to the presence of African blood in their veins. After all, Semites are none other than Eurasians, or (Europeans or Asians) with black African blood. (Where the hell do you think Hasidim got their nappy hair from? Why do you think they've been so despised throughout the ages?) The black blood in them is so strong, that even the Ashkenazi, who've been in Europe for centuries, still often turn up with nappy/frizzy hair. They got that hair from black folks. There are no people indigenous to Africa other than black Africans. The Semites are a product of the confluence of peoples in that region -- of Europeans and Asians interacting with the indigenous blacks of Africa (and that includes Egypt). In fact, "Semitic" properly refers to a language group; it is not a racial or ethnic group. From a strictly scientific standpoint, consider the proposition that segments of humankind, as they migrated from warmer climates to cooler ones, gradually lost much of the pigmentation in their skin. Why the hell would white people, or even relatively fair-skinned Semites (and here we're not talking about the obvious black African and Afro-Semitic peoples of Egypt who remain the predominant population in Egypt to this day), develop in Africa/Egypt, where it's hot as blazes -- and right alongside blue-black Nubians? It didn't happen.
All that notwithstanding, and your silly and thoroughly presumptuous comments (lecturing me on "moral ground" and some ascribed "anger" that I do not have) in response to my earlier post assuming some sort of manufactured history in order to compensate for our subjugated state (notice I mentioned the knowledge passed on was based in part on historical accounts provided by classical historians, as well as archaeological evidence) as well, the fact of the ethnographic mural is incontrovertible; it is a matter of archaeological and historic record. And whether you wish to accept it or not, the ancient Egyptians were BLACK. How do we know? Because they themselves SAID so. deeceevoice 13:25, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Before you go on a jag about Jews and other Semites in the Middle East, perhaps you should take a good look at what ethnologists say the original Jews looked like, what Jesus, himself, in fact, looked like. They were clearly Afro-Semitic, with an emphasis on the "Afro."
And what? "As far as [you] know," the other ethnographic murals are different? Well, I don't know what you've seen; I can only refer to and describe the photographs of the mural I've been looking at. When you can produce a similar mural that depicts the different ethnicities in the region substantially differently, I'll be more than willing to take a look. But even if they do use mud-brown pigment, that's STILL black folks. Until then, "as far as I know" just doesn't cut it. Further, there are numerous images of Egyptians as, literally, black. And I'm sure you've seen those, too. If you haven't, I'd be more than happy to direct you to some interesting images. But you're a smart boy. I'm sure you can find them (and already have) on your own.
Furthermore, the trend in history is toward Afrocentrism. What? No comments about forensic reconstruction? About why, inexplicably, this mural shows black Africans and Egyptians as identicial in physical appearance? Gee, how did that happen? Do you somehow think to contradict the clear archaeological evidence? Didja see what forensic scientists did with the royal mummy believed to be that of Nefertari? Or of King Tut (whose cane shows a Nubian "under his thumb")? The brother was blacker than I am! LMAO. And if you tried to tell someone I wasn't black, they'd laugh in your face. deeceevoice 20:36, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
And let me make one observation. We are not here to debate the pros and cons of anything. We are here to equitably present the pro and con. That Afrocentrism is incorrect is not a foregone conclusion as contributors to this piece would like to present -- something which I am here to prevent. So, sue me. :-p
deeceevoice 20:44, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think we should all avoid making personal remarks about other contributors:
If you need help, please ask a Mediator (like me for instance). -- Uncle Ed (talk) 15:52, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
1) To categorize humans by race/color (You are/I am .. "black".. "white".. "yellow".. "red") is a fairly new concept and was unknown to ancient Egyptians.
2) To the ancient Egyptians, color was an essential part of symbolism. Black symbolized death, resurrection and the underworld. (Osiris, for instance, was referred to as "the black one" because he was the king of the afterlife) The picture deeceevoice refers to is a rendition of a painting of the Book of Gates, a text that appears on several tombs of ancient pharaohs and basically provided a guide for what to expect in the world of the afterlife (netherworld/underworld) and was NOT a description of the world of the living.
Some additional info re the "mural of nations":
First of all, the renderings of the peoples of the sun the Egyptians believed Osiris would resurrect in death are accurate. The mural represents deals with the sun's journey after it sets in the West and the afterlife (known similarly in the Kongo and as illustrated in African-American quilts as "the moments of the sun") 1. Kemetu, the Egyptians (Ret) humanity perfected 2. the Namu, to their east: sunrise 3. Black Afica/the Nile Valley to their south: noon 4. the Tamu to the west: sunset
deeceevoice 00:09, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Further, with regard to "selective evidence," one cannot get more selective than choosing a figural image of a single, relatively obscure 5th dynasty Egyptian offical and characterizing it as "typical." At least the presentation of the mural is an attempt to provide an example of a comparative rendering that explicitly illustrates broad, but specific, groups and clearly labels them by ethnic/national grouping. There are far more numerous statuary images -- royal and otherwise -- that show clear black African phenotypical characteristics. With the one provided, the facial characteristics are not even evident. deeceevoice 00:16, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I read the part about Egyptian color symbolism in the article, and it's not accurate. White was not associated with death, it was the color of sacred things and purity (e.g. Memphis meant "White Walls", priest were dressed in long white robes, the crown of Upper Egypt was white) Yellow was seen as being the equivalent to gold and was symbolic of all that is eternal, indestructible and imperishable. Black, as I already mentioned, symbolized death, resurrection and the underworld (e.g. Osiris, the king of the afterlife was called "the black one." Ahmose-Nefertari, the patroness of the necropolis was portrayed with black skin. Anubis, the Guardian of the Dead was shown as a black man with the head of a black jackal or dog).
Egyptians did NOT protrait themselves "looking exactly like other Africans". They distinguished themselves from non-Egyptians with distinctive clothing and hair-styles and red-brown skin. http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/colors1.jpg
The ethnographic example to which I refer is a very specific mural which very graphically and in great detail depicts the facial characteristics, dress and skin tones of four separate groups of people. The artifact is absolutely authentic, and the characterization of the information it provides is irrefutable. deeceevoice 18:57, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
by unnamed: To understand what's on the tomb wall of Ramses III one needs to examine the full paintings and the complete text of the Book of Gates. http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/16608.jpg
Nubian: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/15652.jpg
Syrian and Nubian: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/15447.jpg
Egyptian: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/15162.jpg
Asiatics: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/16230.jpg
Libyan: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/images/large/18236.jpg
Hello unammed, you might want to create an account and sign your name so it's easier to read. You can also contribute to the article too, the pictures look nice. As for you deeceevoice, what's your preoccupation with portraying mainstream scholarly works as Eurocentric? Mainstream is not Eurocentric; it's a label applied to Afrocentrists to give themselves more legitimacy, to propagate unfounded "research" some sort of "paradigm shift." The readers need to know that Afrocentrism is fringe theory at best, instead of some legitimate counterargument to historic research Ware ware 00:49, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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Hello Wareware, thanks for the welcome. I finally signed up. I hope that my comments are more convenient to read now :-). ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
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If you want to show how ancient Egyptians typically portrayed people in the Egyptian mythology, then use the images of the book of gates. If you want to show a vivid portrait of Egyptian features you should use portraits of real people. ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
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When this assertion is debunked, the unnamed contributor returns with other images, apparently asserting that they do, in fact, represent various ethnic groups. Which is it? Are the images nebulous and symbolic? Or are they accurate, detailed renderings? One can't have it both ways. It is clear that the images -- detailed in dress, hairstyles, skin pigmentation -- are meant to be taken as accurate depictions of variouis peoples; the earlier assertion is but a weak attempt to explain away the black pigmentation used by the Egyptians to depict themselves as identical to other Africans.
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I posted the pictures as evidence that Egyptians did NOT portrait themselves identical to other Africans, in fact they portrayed themselves completely different. ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
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Further, with regard to the links contributed, here is another -- of images presented specifically in the context of the mural -- that fully examines the images presented in the mural and varying versions (with links) of it: http://manuampim.com/ramesesIII.htm . Note that while the above links contributed by no-name present images, they do so completely out of context and do not appear to be accompanied by identifying hieroglyphs. Such was not their purpose. On the other hand, the condensed images presented in the "mural of the nations" are idealized, elemental images (with the identifying hieroglyphs that accompany them) in much the way Plato spoke of a generic image of a tree representing all trees. With regard to physical appearance and dress, clearly, the elemental "facts" of Egyptians and other Africans were similar enough that both groups were portrayed identically. The elemental "facts" of Semites and Europeans were substantially different -- enough for them to be portrayed completely differently -- as they were specifically identified by ethnic group. deeceevoice 10:34, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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Interesting that Mr. Ampim states that the "Sethe/Lepsius reproduction version of the "Table of Nations" is ACCURATE in both the representation of the images and the positioning of the texts". Maybe that's the reason why Mr. Ampim, after claiming that "writers and Egyptologists use the cut-&-paste photo distortion technique to make sure that the images and texts cannot be seen in their entire context" he didn't care to show the whole 1913 Sethe/Lepsius version either but left out the Egyptian portraits? http://edoc3.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/lepsius/page/egb1-4/image/09130480.jpg Also, Mr. Ampim doesn't care to put the images and text in their entire context either. Lepsius text reads as follows (starting with "Die ersten sind hier die Asiaten ..." (I translate for you): "The first ones are the Asiatics, with flesh colored skin, blue eyes, black pointed beard and black hair, which comes out of a blue hood with ribbons, they are wrapped in long blue robes, and erroneously labeld as Libyan. The next figures are 4 negroes, without beards, with red woolen hair, dressed in colorful robes. The next 4 are Libyan, again flesh colored with pointed beards in long yellow open robes, and erroneously labeld as Asiatics. The next are again 4 negroes, looking exactly like the first 4 negroes, although once erroneously labeled with Egyptian and written with 3 spelling errors. The errors and misconceptions in the images and text leads to the conclusion that this is an insufficient piece of work and mirrors the bad general state of the whole tomb."
http://edoc3.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/lepsius/page/tb3/image/00003208.jpg
http://edoc3.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/lepsius/page/tb3/image/00003209.jpg ( Pharlap 15:12, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC))
I've deleted this text, pending an explanation:
The relationship between racial, cultural and continental identities is one of the more difficult problems in Afrocentic thought. Despite the problems with a Eurocentric approach to history, there has been a common European cultural identity for many centuries. It is more difficult to make the same claim for Africa, in which widely separated cultures were unaware of each-other's existence. For this reason, some Afrocentrists have been accused of manufacturing "African" cultural values by cherry-picking from wholly different peoples.
Aside from concerns about the accuracy of the "common European cultural identity for many centuries," I'm not quite certain of the relevance to the "cherry picking" of "cultural values" to the Afrocentrist historical paradigm. Would someone care to explain/rework the paragraph to make this more clearly relevant? deeceevoice 12:14, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Wareware, thanks for the clarification of your intent. Presumably, the following passage is meant to explain the later reference to "cherry picking":
One thing to point out is that Afrocentrists usually try to make the connections between Egypt and their own ethnic background. For example, Diop was a native Wolof, while Obenga came from a Mbochi-speaking background.
One problem is it is far too general. "Afrocentrists usually...." I realize you haven't read much Afrocentrist history, but I have. And I only just became aware of the purported linkages between Wolof and Mbochi and ancient Egyptian. Your addition makes it seem as though this is widespread. Is it? If not, then you should make only specific assertions with regard to the two historians you mention and leave it at that. Further, how much of the association of language is simply due to the fact that the historian's familiarity with Wolof or Mbochi language equips him with the knowledge to even explore the possibility of a connection and has nothing to do with the fact that it may be his native tongue? You should be careful not to assume too much or to paint Afrocentrist historians with too broad a brush.
Now, with regard to:
The relationship between racial, cultural and continental identities is one of the more difficult problems in Afrocentic thought. Despite the problems with a Eurocentric approach to history, there has been a common European cultural identity for many centuries. It is more difficult to make the same claim for Africa, in which widely separated cultures were unaware of each-other's existence. For this reason some Afrocentrists have been accused of manufacturing "African" cultural values by cherry-picking from wholly different peoples.
I'll leave aside strictly editorial stuff for the moment. But the idea of a common European cultural identity is simply a myth. Goths, Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Albanians, Basques, Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Slavs, Armenians, Magyars, Serbs, Albanians, Huns, Kossaks (Kazaks), Tartars, the rising of the clans in Scotland, the upheavals in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, etc., etc., all bear witness to the fact that the "homogeneity" of Europe is a myth. The armed conflict that has accompanied such historical, political, religious and other cultural differences would be called "tribal warfare" in Africa. It's all a matter of perspective. If you mean something different and I have misunderstood, then by all means tell me; but as it stands, this statement is simply false. With this in mind, the assertions about disparate cultures in Africa are seemingly rendered irrelevant. If you wish to refer to the language thing here, then it's certainly relevant. But it is merely one example involving only two historians. Are there others? Your assertion of "cherry picking" is a broad with regard to assuming shared values and other cultural affectations, so I would expect there to be other examples offered to back up such claims. deeceevoice 20:50, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
"Selective" is more appropriate than what? Notice I haven't dismissed Wareware's train of thought out of hand -- just the overly general manner in which he is attempting to express it. But "greater mobility"? In what sense? And how are you suggesting "mobility" relates to the matter at hand? I'm afraid you haven't at all helped to clarify the point Wareware seems to be trying to make. deeceevoice 03:34, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My apologies for the multiple, successive edits; but after Wareware's mindless and repeated reverts -- done completely without any justification being offered for most of them -- I felt compelled to make fewer changes at a time and (again) specifically state my reasons (perhaps more clearly) for making each one in the hope of stopping this stupid back and forth. For a time, he was reverting my edits of my own material -- edits I made to either correct or refine information that I had presented, in one instance, even reverting a typo. He couldn't possibly have known what he was doing or why -- just simply slavishly reacting to anything he saw that I had done. Let's keep in mind, people, the objective is the accuracy and journalistic integrity of this piece. deeceevoice 09:18, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
About "cherry picking" or "selecting" values and culture -- it's not that I don't understand the sentence. In an editorial sense, what I am trying to get someone to do here is to be more clear in the article just precisely how widespread the manifestation of such a perspective is in Afrocentrist historical analysis. A fairly sweeping generalization has been made. There should be concrete examples provided to back it up that don't read like "they all do it" (because they don't), but that a significant portion of, or principal contentions within, the body of work of Afrocentrists, evidence such a perpsective. Again, how does this perspective broadly manifest itself within the Afrocentrist paradigm? deeceevoice 09:18, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't the article also mention W.E.B. DuBois activism for the recognition of African culture and the "Encyclopedia Africana" as one important afrocentric work? ( Pharlap 06:36, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC))
I think the article comprises most/all important informations concerning afrocentrism, but it doesn't show clearly the shift from the basic idea - a progressive corrective historiography without demeaning other people and their historical contributions to world civilization, and its focus on West African cultures
to
What do you think about structuring the informations in Afrocentric sub-categories, e.g. merging "Egypt and Black Identity" and "Ethnographic murals of the New Kingdom" in one category called "Egyptocentrism", and creating a "Black separatism/nationalism" chapter? ( Pharlap 07:21, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC))
Hi, all, this edit to this page duplicated a large block of text (about 70% of the page). I have removed this duplicated block, and carefully checked it to see if anyone had added anything while it was here; I found one thing, which I have transplanted back into the page.
Please, all, be careful in doing edits - we have seen this problem on a number of pages recently. It's always wise (even on talk pages!) to do a diff on you edit, after it's done, to make sure that what actually happened was what you thought you did. Use of the "section edit" feature also help (and makes editing faster, to boot :-). Noel (talk) 15:16, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)