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![]() | Note: The following sections originated on Talk:Race of ancient Egyptians, but were not archived prior to the talk page being moved (see here), and thus may fully or partially refer to the article history of Race of ancient Egyptians: #RfC, #Maiherpri, #Weird material, #this is not an article about facts, #Rewrite, #The Issue as I see it, and #Photo of "Egyptians" and other ancients at the top of the article. |
It is currently under dispute as to what the content and subject of this article should consist of. The main point of contention seems to be as to whether this article should center on the race/ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians or if it should focus on controversy surrounding this.
It is fairly well established that the northern part of Egypt was a mixing pot of Middle Eastern and Black African with the Southern and Eastern part being Nubian. The Northern part was routinely invade and brought in people from every part of the Empire to work on their extensive construction. I like splitting the postings so that the information that is relevant gets out there. Ultimately the race of the people and whether or not they were light brown or dark brown skin matters less than their contributions to society. ( Aethercracker ( talk) 02:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC))
I think we should include Maiherpri (he was Egyptian noble from Nubian background) papyrus in the discussion, Maiherpri papyrus show him offering to the Gods and whilst he is shown with the normal profile of men of the period, his skin is painted dark brown rather than the usual red ochre and his hair is shown as being short and curly. This papyrus clearly shows how different skin colors were accurately depicted and that a darker skin was the exception rather than the rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiherpri -- Anubis233 ( talk) 01:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
This is Wikipedia. Not essay-pedia. This is classic {{ essay-entry}} stuff. I agree with it, actually, but it just doesn't belong here. Sorry. See also WP:SYNTH. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 22:13, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, probably it is to much to ask a newcomer to an article to read up on a long discussion like this. On the other hand, with all those disputed notices, etc. around I wonder why at least the attempt to do this is not even made. Anyway, if'd read thea rchives, you would finde this comment by User:John Carter: "The numerous previous discussions regarding this article, and the ArbCom, came to that conclusion, that this article is about the current controversy, yes." Based on my knowledge on Nazi and related ideology I had added a section on why this question is so controversial. The whole point is that the controversy is not about facts. Seriously, if it was about facts the Nordicists could not have attempted to deny that the ancient Egyptians had a darker skin colour then the Northern Europeans. Only ideology that is completely detached from the facts would attempt such a thing. On the other hand: If 'white people' had not claimed that the ancient Egyptians were white, 'black people' would have no reason emphasize that the ancient Egpytians were black. This is the reason why I had added the stuff about the 'Nordic Egypt' at the top of the article. If you wan an article about *facts*, sorry, then this is the wrong place. Seriously, we should move a little content then to Origin of the Nilotic peoples and delete the remainder. The issue is notable, but apparently we will not be able to have an article on it, because we lack an editor the is able to write about it from a neutral perspective and willing to battle such a version through.
And especially: If you thing the race and culture section is to essayistic, please consider, that this is not an article about facts. An article on a controversy, on the other hand, has to give all viewpoints, give the arguments for and against them, and, to be useful for the reader, come to a weighted conclusion. wp:NPOV is a policy, and I am willing to brake all style guidelines to have an article that complies with it. This doesn't mean that you'd have to accept that section as it is, but you have to specify to which sentences you object and we can see how we can reword it. Zara1709 ( talk) 22:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Hey wouldn't it be cool if the gods came back and walked the earth. You know that would put and end to all this bickering. Well one would only hope it would.-- 204.118.241.234 ( talk) 21:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
So, I am actually attempting to rewrite the article. Of course, the efforts will be sabotaged if the edit war continues. But please consider this: I didn't remove any content at all (only a few lines that were redundant because the part on the languages had previously been debated in two different sections)! Before I would remove a section, I would discuss it here first. Furthermore, consider that the question whether the Nordicist's view should be included or not is a separate issue from the one of rewriting the article. If you are of the opinion that it shouldn't be included, we can discuss it here. But I think that there are good reasons for its inclusion. 1) It is notable as a minority view. Aside from wp:NPOV considerations: If we don't include it there will be occasional rants about "Nordic Egypt" on this talk page. 2) It is a perfect example of the ideological core of this controversy. It is even based on a first class academic source, a dissertation at a history department that even won an award (only drawback is, that it is in German.) 3) If there was no section on the Nordicist, one would have to explain the ideological content of the controversy on the basis of the dynastic race theory and the Hamitic hypothesis. There will be literature on this (most likely), but I wouldn't know where to find this, but more importantly one would be faced with the question whether these theories constitute scientific racism and then way we will never be able to get this article out of the dispute. For the Nordicists, this is clear and undisputed.
So, if we all attempt to write an encyclopaedia here and don't take concerns about an un-encyclopedic tone as a warrant for disruptive reverting, (feel free to use inline tags), I will continue the rewrite as soon as I find time. We can then move this article to Controversy about the race of ancient Egyptians and see if we can merge Origin of the Nilotic peoples. On the other hand, if you want to continue the edit war, you might achieve it that I withdraw from the article. But that won't help the article, I'd guess... Zara1709 ( talk) 23:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Other than essay-like writing, there is another issue that I have a problem with in this article.
The topic is "Race of Ancient Egyptians". Leaving aside racial biases, a reader may be actually interested in knowing the answer. If I found the answer to be "Caucasoid" I would think "great", if it was "Negroid" then I would think "wonderful". There are indeed readers who would like an objective answer to this question.
I think Zara brings into this article a number of fringe racist authors, whose usually "Nordicist" etc fringe views he then proceeds to criticize. My point is, should we even care about these fringe views?
Take for example an article on, say "The Origin of the Aids Virus". Should all fringe authors who believe that the Aids virus was created by the CIA to kill African-Americans feature on this article? Obviously not. Similarly I think we shouldn't give prominence to fringe racist views on the question of "Race of Ancient Egyptians" but rather concentrate on answering the question objectively citing scientific work.
LuxNevada ( talk) 09:03, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
LuxNevada ( talk) 05:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I am new here, with regards to adding content, and am not sure if I should make this suggestion here. Nevertheless, I would respectfully request that whoever is in charge of changing content for this article remove the pic with the Egyptians supposedly on the bottom. I am requesting that a more factual representation of the tomb drawing be posted in its place. This photo is to be found at this site:
http://manuampim.com/ramesesIII.htm
This page goes into detail concerning fradulent photos such as the one currently on the page of the "Race of the Ancient Egyptians" article. The current photo partially explains the controversy over this subject, as it is but one example of many frauds perpetrated to obscure the origins of the Kamites (you know them as Ancient Egyptians).
Moreover, the page shows the actual drawings from the tomb of Rameses III. IMO, it does not get more authentic than that, and the case is closed on this subject for myself. I just wanted to share knowledge with others who may be unaware of this.
Truthseeka ( talk) 18:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, please explain what you mean by "just another Afrocentric meme." Is that all you have to say? Wish I could say I was surprised to see a comment such as this, as opposed to a comment on the photo I linked to. As for Woland, I guess you were talking to Luka, so there's no need for me to reply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Truthseeka ( talk • contribs) 01:54, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, by your logic, the Greeks could have been from China, as their art was not quite realistic, and they would look quite different from their portrayals in said art. Truthseeka ( talk) 14:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
New title, new article. This page has certainly been through a lot of renames, largely because, I think, the scope has never been clear cut and people have tried to blend two articles into one. This was, I thought, the best one available for a "controversy" article. Constructive commentary on my rewrite is welcome.
As regards where we go from here, I think Race of ancient Egyptians, currently a redirect, should eventually become a disambig pointing to two different articles: this one, and one devoted to the "facts": (the genetics, testimony of ancient writers, etc). As to the title for this "factual" article, I'm unsure. Does anyone have any ideas? Moreschi ( talk) 15:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I am impressed. I wonder what I have been doing wrong in my attempts to clean this up. Probably feeding the trolls too much. Now, if in creating an actual article on the Ancient Egyptians, please help disentangle them from the Egyptians article. The latter is currently controlled by ethnic nationalists steeped in " pharaonism". If we're going to clean up the crackpottery surrounding the ancient Egyptians, we might as soon pool our efforts concerning the US Afrocentrists with those concerning the Egyptian Pharaonists. dab (𒁳) 15:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
as for the "factual article", I've made Origin of Egyptians a {{ R to section}}. -- dab (𒁳) 14:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Please keep the the "Egyptians were African" stuff out of this article. Nobody is disputing that at all. This article is about the "Egyptians were black" meme, which is something quite different. Moreschi ( talk) 19:23, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Enough said! LuxNevada ( talk) 18:35, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
This article isn't factual on any level.
First, because Afrocentrism has NOTHING to do with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. Count Volney said that along with many other WHITE European scholars in the 18th century.
An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may be appropriately referred to in this connection. It is there stated, in describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes, her opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others, were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe."
A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to prove that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of the persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems now so highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic and Aryan races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr. Volney's writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of {iv} all religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long concealed beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the Egyptian Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Diodorus, that "the Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other religious practice."
From: Ruins of Empires Count C.F. Volney. http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Volney/volney00.html
Second, the controversy over "Afrocentrism" and Egypt only really took off and became prominent when a WHITE scholar, Martin Bernal, wrote Black_Athena, which said that the Greeks owed much of their culture, philosophy, math and science to the ancient Egyptians, who were black. That is the reason for the controversy. Black authors, along with the aforementioned white scholars have been talking of the ancient Egyptians as blacks long before the word afrocentrism even existed and there was never any "controversy". European exhibitions of ancient Egyptian themed art at the world's fair in Britain showcased BLACK Egyptians in massive statues of Ramses II. Mr. Bernal is not an Afrocentrist and is another example of the nonsense claim that only blacks believe that ancient Egypt was populated by black Africans. Not to mention the books like "Black Spark White Fire" which were written by white authors who claim that Ancient Egypt was black.
Part of the Egyptian exhibit from the 1851 World's Fair in the Crystal Palace: http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/search/reference.aspx?uid=81330&index=36&mainQuery=crystal%20palace&searchType=all&form=home
http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/story/slide.aspx?storyUid=79&slideNo=7 Big-dynamo ( talk) 23:31, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Can also be found in the Fall 2007 issue of KMT magazine.
Thirdly, no Egyptologist will openly claim that there were no black Africans in Egypt and ruling Egypt in the early dynastic through dynastic periods of Egyptian history. And many of the newer scholarly works are openly suggesting that Egyptian culture flowed from the Sahara and South from along the Nile. A fact that can only reflect the movement of black Africans.
Lastly, this article has no facts in it, does not answer any questions about the appearance of the ancient Egyptians and only posits Afrocentrics claiming ancient Egypt as black African is a controversy, meaning not true, without discussing any of the facts and evidence at hand from Egypt itself. It is about a debate that originates in a country thousands of years and miles removed from Ancient Egypt that does NOTHING to help further the understanding of the history of the Nile Valley and its people. Big-dynamo ( talk) 02:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Let me first start out by saying that I would not object if the article was to be deleted, but that will not happen as many Afrocentrists want an article about it. This revision by Moreschi is the best article I have seen in this series.
Okay, on to Big Dynamo:
1) "Afrocentrism has NOTHING to do with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans" Wrong, it is an Afrocentrist idea. There is no bar on Afrocentrists quoting some white historians to support their claims. Afrocentrism believes that science, culture, civilization that most others think came from non-black sources are actually from black-Africa. There is no bar to "Caucasians" being Afrocentrists.
2) No bar on "WHITE scholar, Martin Bernal" being an Afrocentrist.
3) "ancient Egypt as black African is a controversy, meaning not true" Wrong, the word "controversy" does not mean "false", it means that significant disagreement exists.
LuxNevada ( talk) 06:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Big-dynamo ( talk) 11:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
there are obviously both non-black native Africans, such as the Berber, and black people not of African origin, such as the Negrito populations (granting, of course, that until 80 kya everybody was in Africa, and until 20 kya, everybody was black, which really defeats the distinction in the bigger picture). But the naive conflation of "black" and "African" of course originates in exactly the same circles as the obsession with "black Egyptians", viz., in the US civil rights movement. This never was about finding out about history in the first place, it always was about marking political turf with black pride, and it remains a complete non-issue outside such concerns. -- dab (𒁳) 11:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
"Big-dynamo" is the perfect parody of the sort of approach that kept this article in a hairy mess for three years. This used to be an article pretending to be about Ancient Egypt while actually discussing Afrocentrism. Now, at last, it is an article that is ostensibly about Afrocentrism. It is silly to complain about an article actually discussing what it proposes to discuss in its title and its lead. If Big-dynamo isn't interested in Afrocentrism but in Egyptology, let him edit elsewhere, e.g. at History of Ancient Egypt, and require him to cite actual Egyptological literature. -- dab (𒁳) 07:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Big Dynamo, I agree with the rest of the editors. There's a controversy surrounding the issue and the article is clearly encyclopaedic.
On another note, I've carefully read the article and come up with the following:
a) The tone of the article sounds biased and impartial. It seems like a news article trying to prove a point. Can we fix that?
Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone, otherwise articles end up as partisan commentaries even while presenting all relevant points of view. Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tone can be introduced through the way in which facts are selected, presented, or organized. Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article. The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view.
b) Intro
c) Origins section
d) In the public sphere section
e) Some examples of pov statements:
I have limited time to fix the above. I'll probably come back later. -- fayssal / Wiki me up® 07:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, more comment on Diop is necessary. This guy seems to be the key figure here. His obsession with skin colour of the Ancient Egyptians seems to have risen to actual "academic" status by a weird combination of 1960s to 1970s factors such as the decolonization of Africa, the formation of "indigenous" African states under the banner African socialism, and contemporary developments in the West such as the US civil rights movement, political correctness and the cultural relativism rampant in UNESCO. It is very interesting illustration of the Zeitgeist of the time how Diop's thesis was unacceptable in 1951 but deemed "academic" by 1960. Diop and the post-WWII period is probably at the core of this topic, an explains why we are being pestered by 19th century racialist fallacies even in 2008 on Wikipedia. -- dab (𒁳) 08:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the Wolof reference -- I'm really beginning to enjoy the Diop saga. The hilarious thing is that what passes as pseudo-scholarly crackpottery in western Universities buys him academic honours in Senegal, to the point of having Dakar University named after him. This reminds me of Martiros Kavoukjian and friends -- a sad case of lunatic fringe in sane academia, a "talented scientist" at Yerevan State University. And of course Pan-Turkism and the Sun Language Theory. I would be interested in the amount of melanin Diop actually did find in his mummies, but unfortunately, the Cheikh Anta Diop article has no details. The reference for this appears to be
dab (𒁳) 15:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the comments above can be construed as racist slander against Africans and violates the principle of a nPOV on the subject. I suggest that those interested in the topic keep their opinions to themselves, as it has no bearing on the qualifications of Diop to do research on any subject and Wikipedia is not in the position to confirm or deny any scholarly degree or certificate to any person who seeks it. As such, these types of comments reflect nothing but a biased POV which is a flagrant violation of Wikipedia policies on the subject. The reason for including Diop in this discussion is because of the academic and scholarly debates he engaged in against the academic community, culminating in his presentation at UNESCO. The UNESCO symposium of 1974 was an important chapter in the history of the debate of the "race" of the ancient Egyptians. Individual opinions on Diop or his character are irrelevant to the facts of this event. References to the actual arguments for and against the ancient Egyptians being black or non black are all that are required to cover the controversy in all its aspects. Personal views on the subject and supporting one side over the other is simply a biased POV that makes the article less than what it should be. NOBODY needs your POV to understand the ACTUAL arguments for and against the issue at hand, as the various scholars and thinkers involved have expressed their views quite well for themselves in their works. Big-dynamo ( talk) 01:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Afrocentric claims surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians are strictly WP:FRINGE. We are required to discuss fringe theories as fringe theories per policy ( WP:UNDUE). Perhaps I didn't pick the best source re the Tutankhamun business, but the controversy there is certainly notable (look here, for heaven's sake). If you don't like what I've got - which does mention the protests concerning the skin colour, actually - then it should be easy enough to find a better source. This a minor issue. Although is a "history of controversy" article, we would be doing our readers a grave disservice if we did not point out at some stage (though I have tried hard not to overstress the point) that the controversy is simply a "vexed non-issue" as far as academia is concerned. Oh, yes, and Diop is certainly key to all of this. He is a top figure as far as most Afrocentrists are concerned and also a key person surrounding this meme. Such is common knowledge and barely needs citation (which has been already easily found). Moreschi ( talk) 10:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
And if you want to be technical, that falls in line with the general scholarly view towards Egypt that has been held throughout the debates going back over 100 years. Again, this can easily be supported by referencing the relevant works from various periods and does not need personal views on the validity of one set of views or the other. Big-dynamo ( talk) 02:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)"Our best guess is that he was neither lily white nor ebony black. He was probably somewhere in between," said Nina Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History.
Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community. If proper attribution cannot be found among reliable sources of an idea's standing, it should be assumed that the idea has not received consideration or acceptance; ideas should not be portrayed as accepted unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources. However, a lack of consideration or acceptance does not necessarily imply rejection either; ideas should not be portrayed as rejected or labeled with pejoratives such as pseudoscience unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources.
Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.
I know I'm coming to this article after a long-extended controversy, which I certainly haven't tried to parse in all its glory, but I feel compelled to express a bit of discomfort with the current state. There is an actual, legitimate scientific question here that is lost in all the noise. In spite of the mixing of populations, modern genetic techniques, mainly based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes, have been able to work out an intricate tree-structure of human ancestry. It would be very interesting to know where the ancient Egyptians fit into that tree. It should be possible to work this out using DNA from mummies, but there isn't much data yet, mainly because the Egyptian government doesn't allow outsiders to have access to mummy tissue. It seems to me that this information really belongs in the article somewhere.
More generally, the deliberate exclusion of any actual facts relating to the question seems misguided to me -- it might be excusable if there were some other article on Wikipedia that dealt with this, but now that Race of ancient Egyptians has been redirected here, there isn't. This is all there is. Looie496 ( talk) 17:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
1) As a "critique" is quite obviously, an attempted re-assessment, re-interpretation or, a rebuke, of an argument or bit of information existent within an epistemological sphere, by what measure is the position of those who contest the historic categorization of the "race" of the ancient Egyptian not a "critique"? I can only fathom two explanations for your proposition of the above:
1) Either you pose the two critical positions as something other than a critique because you do not concur with the proposition -- or
2) Because you do not value the discordant propositions themselves.
Both explanations lack encyclopedic merit.
I neither agree nor, in any substantive manner, value, the prattle of the presumptuous and the ethnocentric; yet I recognize the varied positions of those who maintain such sentiments within an information/dialogue-based forum as "critiques", given the meaning of the word.
Further, this entire encyclopedia entry is premised on the examination/definition of critiques of the understood "race" of the ancient Egyptian as prescribed by traditional (or mainstream) Western scholarship. If you have an issue with the notion of divergent opinions (or those who opine -- Bernal, James, etc. -- on this matter) as "critiques", I suggest you call into question the very propriety of this entry in and of itself, rather than issuing arguments poorly grounded in semantics.
As to your later comment re: the original use of the term "stole" (which you link to a reference to George G.M. James' text); the passage itself was not referring to James' work, but I'll humor your preference for the more visceral term: as per the history of ancient Egypt (as chronicled in Stolen Legacy and in preceding and succeeding textual documents), the Macedonians indeed conquered Persia's holdings in North Africa and thereby gained access to Egypt's well of knowledge and culture. From a logistics standpoint, does the fact that the ancient conquering of Egyptian lands took place in "third-party" fashion mean that the well of information was acquired by means other than conquest? Obviously not, no more than we could/should discount the term "commerce" had the Greeks acquired this knowledge through "third-party" trade and barter (which they very well may have; the Persians, the Nubians, the Hebrews and the Bedouins certainly did).
In an overriding fashion, your suggested edits seem an attempt to deprecate positions on matters at hand within these encyclopedic entries (here and on the Race of Jesus). Such a discernibly skewed position on a defined/examined matter reveals an obvious Point-of-View that evidences disdain not only for the treated subject matter, but for the understood intellectual, heuristic, and epistemological purpose of an encyclopedia itself. Hence, I am undoing your recent counter edits in this entry forthwith. If you are able to generate some revision of the passages in question that you believe better expresses substantive meaning within these entries in a manner that is adherent to the encyclopedic construct, then please suggest them. Until then, my response will remain posted here at your talk page, & at the discussion section for the Ancient Egyptian race controversy entry. Best,
sewot_fred ( talk) 02:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Obviously, I never expressed, nor did my edits suggest, that the article in question is about anything other than the Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptians. I offered "critique" as a less derogatory and concise stand-in for the skewed "attempted rewriting" and "splintered" as a less Point-of-View term for "devolved"; finally, I sought to correct what I read as a bombastic application of the positions of George G.M. James, Martin Bernal, Cheikh Diop and the like by replacing James' out of context "stole" with some variant of "appropriated via commerce and conquest".
In no way shape or form do the chronicled edits alter the subject matter at hand -- instead they afford a more encyclopedic tone to the entry. If that is the collective objective here, we can continue to discuss. If instead, the objective is to impose some adherence to a static perception of a particular proposition via the imposition of majority rules, then I have no argument for this group -- other than to wonder the very purpose of the encyclopedia entry itself.
sewot_fred ( talk) 07:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I will not engage debate over an approach to prose in this realm. You obviously experienced not much in the way of difficulty in parsing meaning from that which was communicated. So your opening comment seems merely an unfortunate effort to denigrate and distract.
Instead I will respond to the content of your reply. If critique seems "too mild" given your reading of the Afrocentric theorists and your interpretation of their objectives, then I suggest "challenge" as an apt and accurate expression of their propositions. While avoiding classifications of those who claimed themselves as Afrocentric and those who took little note of the term, I will say that I am far more familiar with James & Bernal than Diop; nowhere do I read either scholar suggesting a " rewriting" (and thereby an erasure, or replacement) of that which is written into established history tracts. Their work instead offers studied alternatives bolstered by analysis of the objectives of those who guard "established knowledge" within institutional frameworks. Hence, they are proposing "critiques" or "challenges" of an otherwise static body of traditional knowledge.
2) My understanding of the current encyclopedic entry is that the article intends to chronicle the controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian: not dismiss the thesis of George G. M. James (aside using his propositions as a reference source) as "myth", nor do the same for Stolen Legacy, nor Afrocentrism (despite the superfluous and devious subsection on the latter). As Stolen Legacy applies to the entry's actual subject matter, it seems to me that the bombastic and sensationalist language of the book's title is applied in a manner that runs counter to the argument actually found within the text, and counter to the subject of the encyclopedia article. It was through "commerce [or trade] and conquest" that James poses the Alexandrian Greeks acquired elements of the ancient Egyptian culture; it is through "commerce and conquest" that the modern construct known as race was "muddled" via human engagement. No different than the ethnic lineage of the post-Roman Brit or the race of the Medieval Spanish were thereby muddled, if assessed through this anachronistic lens. It is through multilateral bias and negligence that these ideas are misconstrued, mis-interpreted, mis-conveyed and thus, mis-chronicled. This is the history of a controversy.
3) "Devolve" and "splinter" do not share synonymous meaning, denotation nor connotation. To "devolve" in this context is to "grow worse": i.e., to "spiral" or "metastasize". To "splinter" is to "divide" or "break apart" -- note that the position of the so-called Afrocentric is divided into two subsets post the passage in question. Thus, "splinters" seems the appropriate verbiage for that which the text conveys.
Unless, again, the objective here is to craft an article that deprecates or dismisses non-mainstream positions within this so-called "Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptian". If this is the authors' (and/or the editors') true collective intent, I suggest a re-titling of the current article.
sewot_fred (
talk)
14:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
The edits in question involve the semantics underlying the following terms & phrases: "critique", "attempted rewriting", "stole", "commerce and conquest", "devolve" and "splinter". This is the subject matter at hand within this conversational stream. Why a good number of you seem so vexed in your attempts to assail extraneous matters within this "discussion" is a matter best left between you and your gods. Speed,
sewot_fred ( talk) 15:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
"English" as in the English language definition of "devolve" (see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/devolve): 3: to degenerate [emphasis added] through a gradual change or evolution <where order devolves into chaos — Johns Hopkins Magazine>. I propose that a summary manner of expressing this definition is to "grow worse".
You surely do not mean to intone Definition #1 in your usage of "devolve", and the link to Wikipedia's encyclopedic treatment of the term is inapplicable here. That leaves Merriam Webster's Definition #2 as your intent (to come by or as if by flowing down, or to "stem from"). I merely suggest that "splinter" is a more appropriate verb for that which the text describes.
As to the "Origin" portion of this entry, the works of Bernal, James, and the Afrocentrists who cite them as scholarly sources in debate, I merely sought to eradicate a discernible Point of View issued in this encyclopedia entry's original prose (a point of view that is further rendered manifest in the comments of multiple participant responders found at this page). Rather than affording any cogency to the standing tone of the article, I read the balance of these comments as a collective subversion of objectivity on behalf of some unknown, ulterior agenda. Yet, for the most part, I appreciate your civility, Moreschi. Best,
sewot_fred ( talk) 18:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
By the way, the message originating from my IP address (commencing with "The edits in question," etc. . . .) was posted as a response to the commenter "dab": I presume that Moreschi and I were replying simultaneously, and thus, the communicative string reads as out-of-sequence. I am replacing that response after the message that it addresses. Best,
sewot_fred ( talk) 20:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I am not sure, but perhaps we should close this section under
WP:DFTT? I for one am mostly done assuming good faith here, this simply isn't the behaviour of someone who actually wishes to communicate. --
dab
(𒁳)
12:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
sewot_fred, could you please say succinctly exactly what change to the article you are proposing? Tom Harrison Talk 12:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Tom, the changes executed in the article in question are to be found here: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy&oldid=236051046) in the second paragraph of the article's "Origin" section. I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole". It is my belief that my suggested phrasing corrects what appear to be a deprecation of the viewpoint the article itself uses as a springboard for a discussion of the Controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian. In my reading, this deprecation, or attempted dismissal, seems to skirt Wikipedia's regulations as pertain NPOV. My edits intended merely to (re-?)establish a neutral tone within this portion of the entry, particularly if the subject matter discussed therein is to be used as a starting point for the entry's larger consideration.
sewot_fred ( talk) 16:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
The changes in word choices offered to the entry in question are "rejected" on what regulation- or content- relevant premise, Tom Harrison? Is the rejection in support of the position offered forth by one Dbachmann: ""Wikipedia does in fact have the "collective intent" to "deprecate or dismiss non-mainstream positions", within WP:UNDUE. (see above).
I have neither reservation nor qualm in "accepting" a rejected proposal from this contingent, particularly not on a matter such as this. I merely request civility in discourse and some content relevant support for rebuking the edits in question. Regards,
sewot_fred ( talk) 18:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Your proposed changes were rejected because the other editors here don't think they improve the article, mostly because they give undue weight to a fringe view (they can correct me if I'm wrong). Civility is good. I have no plans to rebuke you. I will ban you from the page under Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist if you keep trying to slant the article toward your point of view, or keep beating a dead horse on the talk page. Tom Harrison Talk 18:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I would have no inherent interest in the melanin content of Egyptians or anyone else, but the merry go-around finally makes me wonder. How much melanin did people find in mummies? Are there any respectable estimates? In other words, what was the skin type [2] of Tutankhamun? Was he a VI? a IV? a V? Does anyone know? I don't mean to imply this has any significance beyond counselling Tutankhamun on his skin cancer risk, or, seeing that he is dead, none, but I'd love to be able to state, say, "King Tut had skin type V, case closed". -- dab (𒁳) 12:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Rande writes "I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole"." I am a bit surprised at the persistent confusions that runs through Rande's posts. The meaning of the word "critique" is very different from "attempted rewriting". A "critique" is a appraisal, mostly negative, whereas "rewriting" is, well writing something differently! Also Rande actually replaced "allegedly stole" with "through commerce and conquest". The dropping of the word "allegedly" entirely changes the complexion of the sentence, giving support to an idea which the original sentence actually denigrated. LuxNevada ( talk) 00:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
sewot_fred ( talk) 16:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Because it is naive essayish style, because many major statements which are opinions, not facts, are unreferenced and overgeneralized. They do connect well referenced facts, but the overall is loose synthesis.
I may continue much more. I could have flooded the whole text with lots of local tags. The tags on top is a call to review the whole text critically, not to delete it in 5 seconds without much thinking. Mukadderat ( talk) 15:24, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This article is written like a
personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (September 2008) |
It seems to me that we no longer need the citation template ae there are plenty of footnotes and references. Also, I was reading through the article again and I think that developed might be a better word than the infamous devolved. I really really really hate to bring that up again (please don't throw stuff at me). Whats up with the guy adding the essay template? That is not for articles, dude.-- Woland ( talk) 15:27, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I also noticed there is no anthropological article called Ancient Egyptians (it is a redirect to " ancient Egypt", which does not discuss ethnicity). I don't see it normal. How you can have an article about a "controversy" without having an article about the subject? It violates the NPOV style of wikipedia. I would suggest to start "Ancient Egyptians" article and merge the "controversy" there. Mukadderat ( talk) 16:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry to be obnoxious, but I see another issue: the corresponding section, Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy has virtually nothing in common with the discussed article. Wikipedia:Summary style dictates that section Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy must be a summary of the "main" article, " Ancient Egyptian race controversy", rather than a fork of the content. Fortunately, it is curable by simple cut and paste/merge, since there is no POV conflict between the two texts. Mukadderat ( talk) 16:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, are you referring to a deletion of the Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy subsection in the Black People entry, or a removal of the link to this article, as Mukaddaret's comment suggests?
I actually believe that the final paragraph in that subsection could serve as a lucid starting point for considerations regarding the construction of a revised Ancient Egyptian race controversy article. Give it a close read, perhaps.
sewot_fred ( talk) 22:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't just understand the position of Moreschi concerning the blackness of the ancient Egyptians. When it comes to color, they described themsleves as kmt, meaning black. Semitic people saw them as black (Misraïm son of Kush), Herodotus uses the same word black to speak of the skin of the Egyptians and Nubians. Those doing Egyptology know that the controversy surrounding the race and the origin of the ancient Egyptians did not start with Afrocentrism. This is a creation of Moreschi. The controversy belongs to Egyptology from the start. Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, refered to that in his books Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens and Lettres écrites d'Egypte et de Nubie en 1828 et 1829. He said that his research will help resolve the question of the origin of the Egyptians, if they came from the north or from the south. He concluded that they came from the south: Abyssinie (in Ethiopia) or Sennaar (in Sudan). He continued saying that the ancient Egyptians did not look like the Copts of today who are a mixture of different people who later on dominated in Egypt, but like the Kennous or Barabras, the actual inhabitants of Nubia. Those are words from Champollion! One can find this information in the Lettres.... In the Précis..., the father of Egyptology uses a very sharp reasoning. At the end of it he said that the ancient Egyptians belong to a race specific to Africa. Moreschi, according to you, what is the meaning the sentence: race specific to Africa? Not specific to Egypt, but to Africa? Champollion knew for sure that there was a controversy since Volney stated that he could not understand how people could say that Black people lack the faculty of reasoning while the ancient Egyptians who invented philosophy, mathematics were Blacks. Champollion Figeac, not to be confused with Jean-François Champollion, contradicted Volney saying that even if the Egyptians had Black skin, they were not part of the Black stock. Hegel who is a philosopher and who lived at the time of Jean-François Champollion, separated artificially Egypt from the rest of Africa. This hegelian mentality is still alive in some writings and, I am sorry to say so, is behind Moreschi's kind of reasoning. Even Adolf Erman and Hermann Ranke, who tried to trace the origin of the ancient Egyptian from outside of Africa came to admit that the Egyptians do not look like Semites or Lybians but like Nubians. What does it mean, Moreschi? Afrocentrism is only trying to revisit and prolong a controversy born really in the European 18th century, with people like Volney who questioned the enslavement of Africans. The introduction of the present article (I think from Moreschi's hand) is highly misleading and has to be rewritten.-- Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka ( talk) 14:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Paul, maybe you don't know that Egyptology is born with Jean-François Champllion. Gobineau is not even an Egyptologist. My quote has nothing to do with Afrocentrism but everything to do with Egyptology. And this in Champollion's own words. If the man was contaminated by his time, he would have easily said that the ancient Egyptians were Whites, or at least the gorverning body was. Nothing of that kind in his writings. Champollion at the very beginning of Egyptology adopts a new paradigm. He speaks in his Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens about "des faits capitaux (importants fatcs) (p. 455)" which changes "les bases du système adopté jusqu'ici sur l'origine du peuple égyptien (the bases of the system agreed upon up to now about the origin of the Egyptian people) (p. 455)". "Dans cette hypothèse nouvelle, les Egyptiens seraient une race propre à l'Afrique(...). La constitution physique, les moeurs, les usages et l'organisation sociale des Egyptiens, n'avaient jadis, en effet, que des très faibles analogies avec l'état naturel et politique des peuples de l'Asie occidentale, leurs plus proches voisins (With this new hyptothesis, The Egyptians would be a race specific to Africa (...). The physical constitution, the habits, the uses and the social organization of the Egyptians had actually little analogies with the natural and the political state of people of Western Asia, their closest neighbours) (p. 456)". "Tout semble, en effet, nous montrer dans les Egyptiens un peuple tout-à-fait étranger au continent asiatique (Everything, in fact, show us in the Egyptians, a people absolutely stranger to the Asiatic continent (p. 456)". Did the actual research on the origin of the Egyptians find Champollion wrong. No as far as I know. In his Dictionnaire de l'Afrique. Histoire, Civilisation, Actualité published in Paris (2008 for the second edition), the French Bernard Nantet, who is not an Afrocentrist by the way, writes that the Egyptians came from the south (p. 104) following the Nile. People are obsessed with Afrocentrism and are loosing sight on Egyptology. We have to come back to Egyptology and ask to Egyptologists what they say about the origin and the race of the ancient Egyptians. If there is a controversy about it, we have to report it objectively.-- Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka ( talk) 14:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Woland and Moreschi, you are right in accusing to be obsessed with Jean-Champollion. If you knew who the man is to Egyptology you could have been a bit humble, but...The point is that the subject of the present article is Ancient Egyptian race controversy. The word race is in the title. Please read carefully the title of the article. Race, not ethnicity or origin. Of cause, ethnicity and origin can be used in a discussion about race. I wanted to show that one cannot, without cheating or misleading people, speak about the race of the ancient Egyptians confining the discussion within Afrocentrism. The discussion belongs first of all to Egyptology. For a better dimonstration, I went back to the beginning of Egyptology to see if the discussion about the race of the ancient Egyptians had taken place. And who would you find, Woland and Moreschi, at the beginning of Egyptology? Gobineau? Please, let us be humble and try to accept facts! Can a discussion on origins help to clarify a discussion on races? Yes! Let us reason a bit. Are there people indigenous to Africa who are not today classified as Blacks? (I said indigenous to Africa) No! Now, if the ancient Egyptians are indigenous to Africa (Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology and Bernard Nantet, the author of a new dictionary of Africa, agree with that) and if there were living today, wouldn't they have been called Blacks? I think they would. It is as simple as that. Everything else is ideology hiding itself behind pseudo-scientific statements like the non-existence of races, etc. There are plenty of Physical anthropology Journals in the scientific world. These African called ancient Egyptians are giving headache to a lot of people. The problem is that ancient Egyptians are indigenous Africans. Indigenous Africans? It is a scandal that some want to correct.-- Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka ( talk) 16:44, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
What Paul just said. Essentially, Lusala is failing to comprehend a number of basic but important points.
1): The concept of "race" is totally bankrupt of scientific capital.
2): Applying the one drop rule to ancient Egypt is neither productive nor valid nor helpful. The Berbers are African but are certainly not black by any rational standard that is not a byproduct of years of US racism. Ditto for the ancient Egyptians.
3): There is a massive difference between an "origins" controversy and a "race" controversy.
4): Intermediate phenotypes can arise naturally and need not be the result of interbreeding between magically pure races (which is why this article very carefully avoids the misleading term "mixed race"). The Egyptians have actually been ethnically continuous - you know what I mean - for really a very long time. Whatever Champollion says to the contrary.
5): 19th century (and earlier) sources, no matter how venerable, are not always worthy of veneration.
Lusala, until you get all this, from this point we'll just have to treat your continued attempts to further your agenda here simply as talkpage disruption, which will consequently lead to a page-ban. We've civilly answered your questions and have dealt with your points. Now I, for one, am getting bored. Moreschi ( talk) 17:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I've started the sister "factual" article to this one at User:Moreschi/OOET. Moreschi ( talk) 18:22, 23 September 2008 (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 5 |
![]() | Note: The following sections originated on Talk:Race of ancient Egyptians, but were not archived prior to the talk page being moved (see here), and thus may fully or partially refer to the article history of Race of ancient Egyptians: #RfC, #Maiherpri, #Weird material, #this is not an article about facts, #Rewrite, #The Issue as I see it, and #Photo of "Egyptians" and other ancients at the top of the article. |
It is currently under dispute as to what the content and subject of this article should consist of. The main point of contention seems to be as to whether this article should center on the race/ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians or if it should focus on controversy surrounding this.
It is fairly well established that the northern part of Egypt was a mixing pot of Middle Eastern and Black African with the Southern and Eastern part being Nubian. The Northern part was routinely invade and brought in people from every part of the Empire to work on their extensive construction. I like splitting the postings so that the information that is relevant gets out there. Ultimately the race of the people and whether or not they were light brown or dark brown skin matters less than their contributions to society. ( Aethercracker ( talk) 02:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC))
I think we should include Maiherpri (he was Egyptian noble from Nubian background) papyrus in the discussion, Maiherpri papyrus show him offering to the Gods and whilst he is shown with the normal profile of men of the period, his skin is painted dark brown rather than the usual red ochre and his hair is shown as being short and curly. This papyrus clearly shows how different skin colors were accurately depicted and that a darker skin was the exception rather than the rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiherpri -- Anubis233 ( talk) 01:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
This is Wikipedia. Not essay-pedia. This is classic {{ essay-entry}} stuff. I agree with it, actually, but it just doesn't belong here. Sorry. See also WP:SYNTH. Moreschi ( talk) ( debate) 22:13, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, probably it is to much to ask a newcomer to an article to read up on a long discussion like this. On the other hand, with all those disputed notices, etc. around I wonder why at least the attempt to do this is not even made. Anyway, if'd read thea rchives, you would finde this comment by User:John Carter: "The numerous previous discussions regarding this article, and the ArbCom, came to that conclusion, that this article is about the current controversy, yes." Based on my knowledge on Nazi and related ideology I had added a section on why this question is so controversial. The whole point is that the controversy is not about facts. Seriously, if it was about facts the Nordicists could not have attempted to deny that the ancient Egyptians had a darker skin colour then the Northern Europeans. Only ideology that is completely detached from the facts would attempt such a thing. On the other hand: If 'white people' had not claimed that the ancient Egyptians were white, 'black people' would have no reason emphasize that the ancient Egpytians were black. This is the reason why I had added the stuff about the 'Nordic Egypt' at the top of the article. If you wan an article about *facts*, sorry, then this is the wrong place. Seriously, we should move a little content then to Origin of the Nilotic peoples and delete the remainder. The issue is notable, but apparently we will not be able to have an article on it, because we lack an editor the is able to write about it from a neutral perspective and willing to battle such a version through.
And especially: If you thing the race and culture section is to essayistic, please consider, that this is not an article about facts. An article on a controversy, on the other hand, has to give all viewpoints, give the arguments for and against them, and, to be useful for the reader, come to a weighted conclusion. wp:NPOV is a policy, and I am willing to brake all style guidelines to have an article that complies with it. This doesn't mean that you'd have to accept that section as it is, but you have to specify to which sentences you object and we can see how we can reword it. Zara1709 ( talk) 22:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Hey wouldn't it be cool if the gods came back and walked the earth. You know that would put and end to all this bickering. Well one would only hope it would.-- 204.118.241.234 ( talk) 21:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
So, I am actually attempting to rewrite the article. Of course, the efforts will be sabotaged if the edit war continues. But please consider this: I didn't remove any content at all (only a few lines that were redundant because the part on the languages had previously been debated in two different sections)! Before I would remove a section, I would discuss it here first. Furthermore, consider that the question whether the Nordicist's view should be included or not is a separate issue from the one of rewriting the article. If you are of the opinion that it shouldn't be included, we can discuss it here. But I think that there are good reasons for its inclusion. 1) It is notable as a minority view. Aside from wp:NPOV considerations: If we don't include it there will be occasional rants about "Nordic Egypt" on this talk page. 2) It is a perfect example of the ideological core of this controversy. It is even based on a first class academic source, a dissertation at a history department that even won an award (only drawback is, that it is in German.) 3) If there was no section on the Nordicist, one would have to explain the ideological content of the controversy on the basis of the dynastic race theory and the Hamitic hypothesis. There will be literature on this (most likely), but I wouldn't know where to find this, but more importantly one would be faced with the question whether these theories constitute scientific racism and then way we will never be able to get this article out of the dispute. For the Nordicists, this is clear and undisputed.
So, if we all attempt to write an encyclopaedia here and don't take concerns about an un-encyclopedic tone as a warrant for disruptive reverting, (feel free to use inline tags), I will continue the rewrite as soon as I find time. We can then move this article to Controversy about the race of ancient Egyptians and see if we can merge Origin of the Nilotic peoples. On the other hand, if you want to continue the edit war, you might achieve it that I withdraw from the article. But that won't help the article, I'd guess... Zara1709 ( talk) 23:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Other than essay-like writing, there is another issue that I have a problem with in this article.
The topic is "Race of Ancient Egyptians". Leaving aside racial biases, a reader may be actually interested in knowing the answer. If I found the answer to be "Caucasoid" I would think "great", if it was "Negroid" then I would think "wonderful". There are indeed readers who would like an objective answer to this question.
I think Zara brings into this article a number of fringe racist authors, whose usually "Nordicist" etc fringe views he then proceeds to criticize. My point is, should we even care about these fringe views?
Take for example an article on, say "The Origin of the Aids Virus". Should all fringe authors who believe that the Aids virus was created by the CIA to kill African-Americans feature on this article? Obviously not. Similarly I think we shouldn't give prominence to fringe racist views on the question of "Race of Ancient Egyptians" but rather concentrate on answering the question objectively citing scientific work.
LuxNevada ( talk) 09:03, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
LuxNevada ( talk) 05:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I am new here, with regards to adding content, and am not sure if I should make this suggestion here. Nevertheless, I would respectfully request that whoever is in charge of changing content for this article remove the pic with the Egyptians supposedly on the bottom. I am requesting that a more factual representation of the tomb drawing be posted in its place. This photo is to be found at this site:
http://manuampim.com/ramesesIII.htm
This page goes into detail concerning fradulent photos such as the one currently on the page of the "Race of the Ancient Egyptians" article. The current photo partially explains the controversy over this subject, as it is but one example of many frauds perpetrated to obscure the origins of the Kamites (you know them as Ancient Egyptians).
Moreover, the page shows the actual drawings from the tomb of Rameses III. IMO, it does not get more authentic than that, and the case is closed on this subject for myself. I just wanted to share knowledge with others who may be unaware of this.
Truthseeka ( talk) 18:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, please explain what you mean by "just another Afrocentric meme." Is that all you have to say? Wish I could say I was surprised to see a comment such as this, as opposed to a comment on the photo I linked to. As for Woland, I guess you were talking to Luka, so there's no need for me to reply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Truthseeka ( talk • contribs) 01:54, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, by your logic, the Greeks could have been from China, as their art was not quite realistic, and they would look quite different from their portrayals in said art. Truthseeka ( talk) 14:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
New title, new article. This page has certainly been through a lot of renames, largely because, I think, the scope has never been clear cut and people have tried to blend two articles into one. This was, I thought, the best one available for a "controversy" article. Constructive commentary on my rewrite is welcome.
As regards where we go from here, I think Race of ancient Egyptians, currently a redirect, should eventually become a disambig pointing to two different articles: this one, and one devoted to the "facts": (the genetics, testimony of ancient writers, etc). As to the title for this "factual" article, I'm unsure. Does anyone have any ideas? Moreschi ( talk) 15:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I am impressed. I wonder what I have been doing wrong in my attempts to clean this up. Probably feeding the trolls too much. Now, if in creating an actual article on the Ancient Egyptians, please help disentangle them from the Egyptians article. The latter is currently controlled by ethnic nationalists steeped in " pharaonism". If we're going to clean up the crackpottery surrounding the ancient Egyptians, we might as soon pool our efforts concerning the US Afrocentrists with those concerning the Egyptian Pharaonists. dab (𒁳) 15:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
as for the "factual article", I've made Origin of Egyptians a {{ R to section}}. -- dab (𒁳) 14:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Please keep the the "Egyptians were African" stuff out of this article. Nobody is disputing that at all. This article is about the "Egyptians were black" meme, which is something quite different. Moreschi ( talk) 19:23, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Enough said! LuxNevada ( talk) 18:35, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
This article isn't factual on any level.
First, because Afrocentrism has NOTHING to do with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. Count Volney said that along with many other WHITE European scholars in the 18th century.
An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may be appropriately referred to in this connection. It is there stated, in describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes, her opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others, were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe."
A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to prove that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of the persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems now so highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic and Aryan races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr. Volney's writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of {iv} all religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long concealed beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the Egyptian Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Diodorus, that "the Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other religious practice."
From: Ruins of Empires Count C.F. Volney. http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Volney/volney00.html
Second, the controversy over "Afrocentrism" and Egypt only really took off and became prominent when a WHITE scholar, Martin Bernal, wrote Black_Athena, which said that the Greeks owed much of their culture, philosophy, math and science to the ancient Egyptians, who were black. That is the reason for the controversy. Black authors, along with the aforementioned white scholars have been talking of the ancient Egyptians as blacks long before the word afrocentrism even existed and there was never any "controversy". European exhibitions of ancient Egyptian themed art at the world's fair in Britain showcased BLACK Egyptians in massive statues of Ramses II. Mr. Bernal is not an Afrocentrist and is another example of the nonsense claim that only blacks believe that ancient Egypt was populated by black Africans. Not to mention the books like "Black Spark White Fire" which were written by white authors who claim that Ancient Egypt was black.
Part of the Egyptian exhibit from the 1851 World's Fair in the Crystal Palace: http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/search/reference.aspx?uid=81330&index=36&mainQuery=crystal%20palace&searchType=all&form=home
http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/story/slide.aspx?storyUid=79&slideNo=7 Big-dynamo ( talk) 23:31, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Can also be found in the Fall 2007 issue of KMT magazine.
Thirdly, no Egyptologist will openly claim that there were no black Africans in Egypt and ruling Egypt in the early dynastic through dynastic periods of Egyptian history. And many of the newer scholarly works are openly suggesting that Egyptian culture flowed from the Sahara and South from along the Nile. A fact that can only reflect the movement of black Africans.
Lastly, this article has no facts in it, does not answer any questions about the appearance of the ancient Egyptians and only posits Afrocentrics claiming ancient Egypt as black African is a controversy, meaning not true, without discussing any of the facts and evidence at hand from Egypt itself. It is about a debate that originates in a country thousands of years and miles removed from Ancient Egypt that does NOTHING to help further the understanding of the history of the Nile Valley and its people. Big-dynamo ( talk) 02:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Let me first start out by saying that I would not object if the article was to be deleted, but that will not happen as many Afrocentrists want an article about it. This revision by Moreschi is the best article I have seen in this series.
Okay, on to Big Dynamo:
1) "Afrocentrism has NOTHING to do with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans" Wrong, it is an Afrocentrist idea. There is no bar on Afrocentrists quoting some white historians to support their claims. Afrocentrism believes that science, culture, civilization that most others think came from non-black sources are actually from black-Africa. There is no bar to "Caucasians" being Afrocentrists.
2) No bar on "WHITE scholar, Martin Bernal" being an Afrocentrist.
3) "ancient Egypt as black African is a controversy, meaning not true" Wrong, the word "controversy" does not mean "false", it means that significant disagreement exists.
LuxNevada ( talk) 06:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Big-dynamo ( talk) 11:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
there are obviously both non-black native Africans, such as the Berber, and black people not of African origin, such as the Negrito populations (granting, of course, that until 80 kya everybody was in Africa, and until 20 kya, everybody was black, which really defeats the distinction in the bigger picture). But the naive conflation of "black" and "African" of course originates in exactly the same circles as the obsession with "black Egyptians", viz., in the US civil rights movement. This never was about finding out about history in the first place, it always was about marking political turf with black pride, and it remains a complete non-issue outside such concerns. -- dab (𒁳) 11:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
"Big-dynamo" is the perfect parody of the sort of approach that kept this article in a hairy mess for three years. This used to be an article pretending to be about Ancient Egypt while actually discussing Afrocentrism. Now, at last, it is an article that is ostensibly about Afrocentrism. It is silly to complain about an article actually discussing what it proposes to discuss in its title and its lead. If Big-dynamo isn't interested in Afrocentrism but in Egyptology, let him edit elsewhere, e.g. at History of Ancient Egypt, and require him to cite actual Egyptological literature. -- dab (𒁳) 07:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Big Dynamo, I agree with the rest of the editors. There's a controversy surrounding the issue and the article is clearly encyclopaedic.
On another note, I've carefully read the article and come up with the following:
a) The tone of the article sounds biased and impartial. It seems like a news article trying to prove a point. Can we fix that?
Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone, otherwise articles end up as partisan commentaries even while presenting all relevant points of view. Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tone can be introduced through the way in which facts are selected, presented, or organized. Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article. The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view.
b) Intro
c) Origins section
d) In the public sphere section
e) Some examples of pov statements:
I have limited time to fix the above. I'll probably come back later. -- fayssal / Wiki me up® 07:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, more comment on Diop is necessary. This guy seems to be the key figure here. His obsession with skin colour of the Ancient Egyptians seems to have risen to actual "academic" status by a weird combination of 1960s to 1970s factors such as the decolonization of Africa, the formation of "indigenous" African states under the banner African socialism, and contemporary developments in the West such as the US civil rights movement, political correctness and the cultural relativism rampant in UNESCO. It is very interesting illustration of the Zeitgeist of the time how Diop's thesis was unacceptable in 1951 but deemed "academic" by 1960. Diop and the post-WWII period is probably at the core of this topic, an explains why we are being pestered by 19th century racialist fallacies even in 2008 on Wikipedia. -- dab (𒁳) 08:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the Wolof reference -- I'm really beginning to enjoy the Diop saga. The hilarious thing is that what passes as pseudo-scholarly crackpottery in western Universities buys him academic honours in Senegal, to the point of having Dakar University named after him. This reminds me of Martiros Kavoukjian and friends -- a sad case of lunatic fringe in sane academia, a "talented scientist" at Yerevan State University. And of course Pan-Turkism and the Sun Language Theory. I would be interested in the amount of melanin Diop actually did find in his mummies, but unfortunately, the Cheikh Anta Diop article has no details. The reference for this appears to be
dab (𒁳) 15:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the comments above can be construed as racist slander against Africans and violates the principle of a nPOV on the subject. I suggest that those interested in the topic keep their opinions to themselves, as it has no bearing on the qualifications of Diop to do research on any subject and Wikipedia is not in the position to confirm or deny any scholarly degree or certificate to any person who seeks it. As such, these types of comments reflect nothing but a biased POV which is a flagrant violation of Wikipedia policies on the subject. The reason for including Diop in this discussion is because of the academic and scholarly debates he engaged in against the academic community, culminating in his presentation at UNESCO. The UNESCO symposium of 1974 was an important chapter in the history of the debate of the "race" of the ancient Egyptians. Individual opinions on Diop or his character are irrelevant to the facts of this event. References to the actual arguments for and against the ancient Egyptians being black or non black are all that are required to cover the controversy in all its aspects. Personal views on the subject and supporting one side over the other is simply a biased POV that makes the article less than what it should be. NOBODY needs your POV to understand the ACTUAL arguments for and against the issue at hand, as the various scholars and thinkers involved have expressed their views quite well for themselves in their works. Big-dynamo ( talk) 01:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Afrocentric claims surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians are strictly WP:FRINGE. We are required to discuss fringe theories as fringe theories per policy ( WP:UNDUE). Perhaps I didn't pick the best source re the Tutankhamun business, but the controversy there is certainly notable (look here, for heaven's sake). If you don't like what I've got - which does mention the protests concerning the skin colour, actually - then it should be easy enough to find a better source. This a minor issue. Although is a "history of controversy" article, we would be doing our readers a grave disservice if we did not point out at some stage (though I have tried hard not to overstress the point) that the controversy is simply a "vexed non-issue" as far as academia is concerned. Oh, yes, and Diop is certainly key to all of this. He is a top figure as far as most Afrocentrists are concerned and also a key person surrounding this meme. Such is common knowledge and barely needs citation (which has been already easily found). Moreschi ( talk) 10:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
And if you want to be technical, that falls in line with the general scholarly view towards Egypt that has been held throughout the debates going back over 100 years. Again, this can easily be supported by referencing the relevant works from various periods and does not need personal views on the validity of one set of views or the other. Big-dynamo ( talk) 02:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)"Our best guess is that he was neither lily white nor ebony black. He was probably somewhere in between," said Nina Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History.
Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community. If proper attribution cannot be found among reliable sources of an idea's standing, it should be assumed that the idea has not received consideration or acceptance; ideas should not be portrayed as accepted unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources. However, a lack of consideration or acceptance does not necessarily imply rejection either; ideas should not be portrayed as rejected or labeled with pejoratives such as pseudoscience unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources.
Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.
I know I'm coming to this article after a long-extended controversy, which I certainly haven't tried to parse in all its glory, but I feel compelled to express a bit of discomfort with the current state. There is an actual, legitimate scientific question here that is lost in all the noise. In spite of the mixing of populations, modern genetic techniques, mainly based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes, have been able to work out an intricate tree-structure of human ancestry. It would be very interesting to know where the ancient Egyptians fit into that tree. It should be possible to work this out using DNA from mummies, but there isn't much data yet, mainly because the Egyptian government doesn't allow outsiders to have access to mummy tissue. It seems to me that this information really belongs in the article somewhere.
More generally, the deliberate exclusion of any actual facts relating to the question seems misguided to me -- it might be excusable if there were some other article on Wikipedia that dealt with this, but now that Race of ancient Egyptians has been redirected here, there isn't. This is all there is. Looie496 ( talk) 17:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
1) As a "critique" is quite obviously, an attempted re-assessment, re-interpretation or, a rebuke, of an argument or bit of information existent within an epistemological sphere, by what measure is the position of those who contest the historic categorization of the "race" of the ancient Egyptian not a "critique"? I can only fathom two explanations for your proposition of the above:
1) Either you pose the two critical positions as something other than a critique because you do not concur with the proposition -- or
2) Because you do not value the discordant propositions themselves.
Both explanations lack encyclopedic merit.
I neither agree nor, in any substantive manner, value, the prattle of the presumptuous and the ethnocentric; yet I recognize the varied positions of those who maintain such sentiments within an information/dialogue-based forum as "critiques", given the meaning of the word.
Further, this entire encyclopedia entry is premised on the examination/definition of critiques of the understood "race" of the ancient Egyptian as prescribed by traditional (or mainstream) Western scholarship. If you have an issue with the notion of divergent opinions (or those who opine -- Bernal, James, etc. -- on this matter) as "critiques", I suggest you call into question the very propriety of this entry in and of itself, rather than issuing arguments poorly grounded in semantics.
As to your later comment re: the original use of the term "stole" (which you link to a reference to George G.M. James' text); the passage itself was not referring to James' work, but I'll humor your preference for the more visceral term: as per the history of ancient Egypt (as chronicled in Stolen Legacy and in preceding and succeeding textual documents), the Macedonians indeed conquered Persia's holdings in North Africa and thereby gained access to Egypt's well of knowledge and culture. From a logistics standpoint, does the fact that the ancient conquering of Egyptian lands took place in "third-party" fashion mean that the well of information was acquired by means other than conquest? Obviously not, no more than we could/should discount the term "commerce" had the Greeks acquired this knowledge through "third-party" trade and barter (which they very well may have; the Persians, the Nubians, the Hebrews and the Bedouins certainly did).
In an overriding fashion, your suggested edits seem an attempt to deprecate positions on matters at hand within these encyclopedic entries (here and on the Race of Jesus). Such a discernibly skewed position on a defined/examined matter reveals an obvious Point-of-View that evidences disdain not only for the treated subject matter, but for the understood intellectual, heuristic, and epistemological purpose of an encyclopedia itself. Hence, I am undoing your recent counter edits in this entry forthwith. If you are able to generate some revision of the passages in question that you believe better expresses substantive meaning within these entries in a manner that is adherent to the encyclopedic construct, then please suggest them. Until then, my response will remain posted here at your talk page, & at the discussion section for the Ancient Egyptian race controversy entry. Best,
sewot_fred ( talk) 02:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Obviously, I never expressed, nor did my edits suggest, that the article in question is about anything other than the Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptians. I offered "critique" as a less derogatory and concise stand-in for the skewed "attempted rewriting" and "splintered" as a less Point-of-View term for "devolved"; finally, I sought to correct what I read as a bombastic application of the positions of George G.M. James, Martin Bernal, Cheikh Diop and the like by replacing James' out of context "stole" with some variant of "appropriated via commerce and conquest".
In no way shape or form do the chronicled edits alter the subject matter at hand -- instead they afford a more encyclopedic tone to the entry. If that is the collective objective here, we can continue to discuss. If instead, the objective is to impose some adherence to a static perception of a particular proposition via the imposition of majority rules, then I have no argument for this group -- other than to wonder the very purpose of the encyclopedia entry itself.
sewot_fred ( talk) 07:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I will not engage debate over an approach to prose in this realm. You obviously experienced not much in the way of difficulty in parsing meaning from that which was communicated. So your opening comment seems merely an unfortunate effort to denigrate and distract.
Instead I will respond to the content of your reply. If critique seems "too mild" given your reading of the Afrocentric theorists and your interpretation of their objectives, then I suggest "challenge" as an apt and accurate expression of their propositions. While avoiding classifications of those who claimed themselves as Afrocentric and those who took little note of the term, I will say that I am far more familiar with James & Bernal than Diop; nowhere do I read either scholar suggesting a " rewriting" (and thereby an erasure, or replacement) of that which is written into established history tracts. Their work instead offers studied alternatives bolstered by analysis of the objectives of those who guard "established knowledge" within institutional frameworks. Hence, they are proposing "critiques" or "challenges" of an otherwise static body of traditional knowledge.
2) My understanding of the current encyclopedic entry is that the article intends to chronicle the controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian: not dismiss the thesis of George G. M. James (aside using his propositions as a reference source) as "myth", nor do the same for Stolen Legacy, nor Afrocentrism (despite the superfluous and devious subsection on the latter). As Stolen Legacy applies to the entry's actual subject matter, it seems to me that the bombastic and sensationalist language of the book's title is applied in a manner that runs counter to the argument actually found within the text, and counter to the subject of the encyclopedia article. It was through "commerce [or trade] and conquest" that James poses the Alexandrian Greeks acquired elements of the ancient Egyptian culture; it is through "commerce and conquest" that the modern construct known as race was "muddled" via human engagement. No different than the ethnic lineage of the post-Roman Brit or the race of the Medieval Spanish were thereby muddled, if assessed through this anachronistic lens. It is through multilateral bias and negligence that these ideas are misconstrued, mis-interpreted, mis-conveyed and thus, mis-chronicled. This is the history of a controversy.
3) "Devolve" and "splinter" do not share synonymous meaning, denotation nor connotation. To "devolve" in this context is to "grow worse": i.e., to "spiral" or "metastasize". To "splinter" is to "divide" or "break apart" -- note that the position of the so-called Afrocentric is divided into two subsets post the passage in question. Thus, "splinters" seems the appropriate verbiage for that which the text conveys.
Unless, again, the objective here is to craft an article that deprecates or dismisses non-mainstream positions within this so-called "Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptian". If this is the authors' (and/or the editors') true collective intent, I suggest a re-titling of the current article.
sewot_fred (
talk)
14:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
The edits in question involve the semantics underlying the following terms & phrases: "critique", "attempted rewriting", "stole", "commerce and conquest", "devolve" and "splinter". This is the subject matter at hand within this conversational stream. Why a good number of you seem so vexed in your attempts to assail extraneous matters within this "discussion" is a matter best left between you and your gods. Speed,
sewot_fred ( talk) 15:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
"English" as in the English language definition of "devolve" (see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/devolve): 3: to degenerate [emphasis added] through a gradual change or evolution <where order devolves into chaos — Johns Hopkins Magazine>. I propose that a summary manner of expressing this definition is to "grow worse".
You surely do not mean to intone Definition #1 in your usage of "devolve", and the link to Wikipedia's encyclopedic treatment of the term is inapplicable here. That leaves Merriam Webster's Definition #2 as your intent (to come by or as if by flowing down, or to "stem from"). I merely suggest that "splinter" is a more appropriate verb for that which the text describes.
As to the "Origin" portion of this entry, the works of Bernal, James, and the Afrocentrists who cite them as scholarly sources in debate, I merely sought to eradicate a discernible Point of View issued in this encyclopedia entry's original prose (a point of view that is further rendered manifest in the comments of multiple participant responders found at this page). Rather than affording any cogency to the standing tone of the article, I read the balance of these comments as a collective subversion of objectivity on behalf of some unknown, ulterior agenda. Yet, for the most part, I appreciate your civility, Moreschi. Best,
sewot_fred ( talk) 18:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
By the way, the message originating from my IP address (commencing with "The edits in question," etc. . . .) was posted as a response to the commenter "dab": I presume that Moreschi and I were replying simultaneously, and thus, the communicative string reads as out-of-sequence. I am replacing that response after the message that it addresses. Best,
sewot_fred ( talk) 20:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I am not sure, but perhaps we should close this section under
WP:DFTT? I for one am mostly done assuming good faith here, this simply isn't the behaviour of someone who actually wishes to communicate. --
dab
(𒁳)
12:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
sewot_fred, could you please say succinctly exactly what change to the article you are proposing? Tom Harrison Talk 12:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Tom, the changes executed in the article in question are to be found here: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy&oldid=236051046) in the second paragraph of the article's "Origin" section. I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole". It is my belief that my suggested phrasing corrects what appear to be a deprecation of the viewpoint the article itself uses as a springboard for a discussion of the Controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian. In my reading, this deprecation, or attempted dismissal, seems to skirt Wikipedia's regulations as pertain NPOV. My edits intended merely to (re-?)establish a neutral tone within this portion of the entry, particularly if the subject matter discussed therein is to be used as a starting point for the entry's larger consideration.
sewot_fred ( talk) 16:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
The changes in word choices offered to the entry in question are "rejected" on what regulation- or content- relevant premise, Tom Harrison? Is the rejection in support of the position offered forth by one Dbachmann: ""Wikipedia does in fact have the "collective intent" to "deprecate or dismiss non-mainstream positions", within WP:UNDUE. (see above).
I have neither reservation nor qualm in "accepting" a rejected proposal from this contingent, particularly not on a matter such as this. I merely request civility in discourse and some content relevant support for rebuking the edits in question. Regards,
sewot_fred ( talk) 18:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Your proposed changes were rejected because the other editors here don't think they improve the article, mostly because they give undue weight to a fringe view (they can correct me if I'm wrong). Civility is good. I have no plans to rebuke you. I will ban you from the page under Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist if you keep trying to slant the article toward your point of view, or keep beating a dead horse on the talk page. Tom Harrison Talk 18:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I would have no inherent interest in the melanin content of Egyptians or anyone else, but the merry go-around finally makes me wonder. How much melanin did people find in mummies? Are there any respectable estimates? In other words, what was the skin type [2] of Tutankhamun? Was he a VI? a IV? a V? Does anyone know? I don't mean to imply this has any significance beyond counselling Tutankhamun on his skin cancer risk, or, seeing that he is dead, none, but I'd love to be able to state, say, "King Tut had skin type V, case closed". -- dab (𒁳) 12:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Rande writes "I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole"." I am a bit surprised at the persistent confusions that runs through Rande's posts. The meaning of the word "critique" is very different from "attempted rewriting". A "critique" is a appraisal, mostly negative, whereas "rewriting" is, well writing something differently! Also Rande actually replaced "allegedly stole" with "through commerce and conquest". The dropping of the word "allegedly" entirely changes the complexion of the sentence, giving support to an idea which the original sentence actually denigrated. LuxNevada ( talk) 00:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
sewot_fred ( talk) 16:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Because it is naive essayish style, because many major statements which are opinions, not facts, are unreferenced and overgeneralized. They do connect well referenced facts, but the overall is loose synthesis.
I may continue much more. I could have flooded the whole text with lots of local tags. The tags on top is a call to review the whole text critically, not to delete it in 5 seconds without much thinking. Mukadderat ( talk) 15:24, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This article is written like a
personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Wikipedia editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. (September 2008) |
It seems to me that we no longer need the citation template ae there are plenty of footnotes and references. Also, I was reading through the article again and I think that developed might be a better word than the infamous devolved. I really really really hate to bring that up again (please don't throw stuff at me). Whats up with the guy adding the essay template? That is not for articles, dude.-- Woland ( talk) 15:27, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I also noticed there is no anthropological article called Ancient Egyptians (it is a redirect to " ancient Egypt", which does not discuss ethnicity). I don't see it normal. How you can have an article about a "controversy" without having an article about the subject? It violates the NPOV style of wikipedia. I would suggest to start "Ancient Egyptians" article and merge the "controversy" there. Mukadderat ( talk) 16:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry to be obnoxious, but I see another issue: the corresponding section, Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy has virtually nothing in common with the discussed article. Wikipedia:Summary style dictates that section Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy must be a summary of the "main" article, " Ancient Egyptian race controversy", rather than a fork of the content. Fortunately, it is curable by simple cut and paste/merge, since there is no POV conflict between the two texts. Mukadderat ( talk) 16:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, are you referring to a deletion of the Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy subsection in the Black People entry, or a removal of the link to this article, as Mukaddaret's comment suggests?
I actually believe that the final paragraph in that subsection could serve as a lucid starting point for considerations regarding the construction of a revised Ancient Egyptian race controversy article. Give it a close read, perhaps.
sewot_fred ( talk) 22:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't just understand the position of Moreschi concerning the blackness of the ancient Egyptians. When it comes to color, they described themsleves as kmt, meaning black. Semitic people saw them as black (Misraïm son of Kush), Herodotus uses the same word black to speak of the skin of the Egyptians and Nubians. Those doing Egyptology know that the controversy surrounding the race and the origin of the ancient Egyptians did not start with Afrocentrism. This is a creation of Moreschi. The controversy belongs to Egyptology from the start. Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, refered to that in his books Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens and Lettres écrites d'Egypte et de Nubie en 1828 et 1829. He said that his research will help resolve the question of the origin of the Egyptians, if they came from the north or from the south. He concluded that they came from the south: Abyssinie (in Ethiopia) or Sennaar (in Sudan). He continued saying that the ancient Egyptians did not look like the Copts of today who are a mixture of different people who later on dominated in Egypt, but like the Kennous or Barabras, the actual inhabitants of Nubia. Those are words from Champollion! One can find this information in the Lettres.... In the Précis..., the father of Egyptology uses a very sharp reasoning. At the end of it he said that the ancient Egyptians belong to a race specific to Africa. Moreschi, according to you, what is the meaning the sentence: race specific to Africa? Not specific to Egypt, but to Africa? Champollion knew for sure that there was a controversy since Volney stated that he could not understand how people could say that Black people lack the faculty of reasoning while the ancient Egyptians who invented philosophy, mathematics were Blacks. Champollion Figeac, not to be confused with Jean-François Champollion, contradicted Volney saying that even if the Egyptians had Black skin, they were not part of the Black stock. Hegel who is a philosopher and who lived at the time of Jean-François Champollion, separated artificially Egypt from the rest of Africa. This hegelian mentality is still alive in some writings and, I am sorry to say so, is behind Moreschi's kind of reasoning. Even Adolf Erman and Hermann Ranke, who tried to trace the origin of the ancient Egyptian from outside of Africa came to admit that the Egyptians do not look like Semites or Lybians but like Nubians. What does it mean, Moreschi? Afrocentrism is only trying to revisit and prolong a controversy born really in the European 18th century, with people like Volney who questioned the enslavement of Africans. The introduction of the present article (I think from Moreschi's hand) is highly misleading and has to be rewritten.-- Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka ( talk) 14:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Paul, maybe you don't know that Egyptology is born with Jean-François Champllion. Gobineau is not even an Egyptologist. My quote has nothing to do with Afrocentrism but everything to do with Egyptology. And this in Champollion's own words. If the man was contaminated by his time, he would have easily said that the ancient Egyptians were Whites, or at least the gorverning body was. Nothing of that kind in his writings. Champollion at the very beginning of Egyptology adopts a new paradigm. He speaks in his Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens about "des faits capitaux (importants fatcs) (p. 455)" which changes "les bases du système adopté jusqu'ici sur l'origine du peuple égyptien (the bases of the system agreed upon up to now about the origin of the Egyptian people) (p. 455)". "Dans cette hypothèse nouvelle, les Egyptiens seraient une race propre à l'Afrique(...). La constitution physique, les moeurs, les usages et l'organisation sociale des Egyptiens, n'avaient jadis, en effet, que des très faibles analogies avec l'état naturel et politique des peuples de l'Asie occidentale, leurs plus proches voisins (With this new hyptothesis, The Egyptians would be a race specific to Africa (...). The physical constitution, the habits, the uses and the social organization of the Egyptians had actually little analogies with the natural and the political state of people of Western Asia, their closest neighbours) (p. 456)". "Tout semble, en effet, nous montrer dans les Egyptiens un peuple tout-à-fait étranger au continent asiatique (Everything, in fact, show us in the Egyptians, a people absolutely stranger to the Asiatic continent (p. 456)". Did the actual research on the origin of the Egyptians find Champollion wrong. No as far as I know. In his Dictionnaire de l'Afrique. Histoire, Civilisation, Actualité published in Paris (2008 for the second edition), the French Bernard Nantet, who is not an Afrocentrist by the way, writes that the Egyptians came from the south (p. 104) following the Nile. People are obsessed with Afrocentrism and are loosing sight on Egyptology. We have to come back to Egyptology and ask to Egyptologists what they say about the origin and the race of the ancient Egyptians. If there is a controversy about it, we have to report it objectively.-- Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka ( talk) 14:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Woland and Moreschi, you are right in accusing to be obsessed with Jean-Champollion. If you knew who the man is to Egyptology you could have been a bit humble, but...The point is that the subject of the present article is Ancient Egyptian race controversy. The word race is in the title. Please read carefully the title of the article. Race, not ethnicity or origin. Of cause, ethnicity and origin can be used in a discussion about race. I wanted to show that one cannot, without cheating or misleading people, speak about the race of the ancient Egyptians confining the discussion within Afrocentrism. The discussion belongs first of all to Egyptology. For a better dimonstration, I went back to the beginning of Egyptology to see if the discussion about the race of the ancient Egyptians had taken place. And who would you find, Woland and Moreschi, at the beginning of Egyptology? Gobineau? Please, let us be humble and try to accept facts! Can a discussion on origins help to clarify a discussion on races? Yes! Let us reason a bit. Are there people indigenous to Africa who are not today classified as Blacks? (I said indigenous to Africa) No! Now, if the ancient Egyptians are indigenous to Africa (Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology and Bernard Nantet, the author of a new dictionary of Africa, agree with that) and if there were living today, wouldn't they have been called Blacks? I think they would. It is as simple as that. Everything else is ideology hiding itself behind pseudo-scientific statements like the non-existence of races, etc. There are plenty of Physical anthropology Journals in the scientific world. These African called ancient Egyptians are giving headache to a lot of people. The problem is that ancient Egyptians are indigenous Africans. Indigenous Africans? It is a scandal that some want to correct.-- Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka ( talk) 16:44, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
What Paul just said. Essentially, Lusala is failing to comprehend a number of basic but important points.
1): The concept of "race" is totally bankrupt of scientific capital.
2): Applying the one drop rule to ancient Egypt is neither productive nor valid nor helpful. The Berbers are African but are certainly not black by any rational standard that is not a byproduct of years of US racism. Ditto for the ancient Egyptians.
3): There is a massive difference between an "origins" controversy and a "race" controversy.
4): Intermediate phenotypes can arise naturally and need not be the result of interbreeding between magically pure races (which is why this article very carefully avoids the misleading term "mixed race"). The Egyptians have actually been ethnically continuous - you know what I mean - for really a very long time. Whatever Champollion says to the contrary.
5): 19th century (and earlier) sources, no matter how venerable, are not always worthy of veneration.
Lusala, until you get all this, from this point we'll just have to treat your continued attempts to further your agenda here simply as talkpage disruption, which will consequently lead to a page-ban. We've civilly answered your questions and have dealt with your points. Now I, for one, am getting bored. Moreschi ( talk) 17:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I've started the sister "factual" article to this one at User:Moreschi/OOET. Moreschi ( talk) 18:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)