Ancient Egypt Genomes and Human Features

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, Mentuhotep said:

This is yet again another ploy to try and not teach history as it is and separate the blackness of Ancient Egypt

 On the contrary, the "blackness" of the 25th Dynasty of Egypt is well understood and acknowledged by the team. What is rejected is binary thinking such as "these people are black and these others are not," when reality paints a more nuanced picture full of gradations. Along the Nile could be found and still can be found a spectrum of melanin content from very dark black to light brown. The very much black African @Sundiata who curated this thread can speak more on this. His nefarious agenda may surprise you.

[Gurken Khan]

Painting from Seti I's tomb - found at: https://seshkemet.weebly.com/egyptians-not-black-or-white.html

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Genava55]

Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[alre]

what's your point? the kushite temple should have people painted in red?

anyway, the time reference for the kushite faction in 0AD should include the 25th dinasty and the meroitic kingdom I suppose.

[Genava55]

3 hours ago, Mentuhotep said:

Soo you want to send me an article saying they found 3 individuals dated to the roman era of ancient egypt (the very end of ancient Egypt) and compared it to modern Egyptians as a means to disprove the Blackness of ancient Egypt? Surely you can do better mate. 

Read the article. 

 

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Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we present 90 mitochondrial genomes as well as genome-wide data sets from three individuals obtained from Egyptian mummies. The samples recovered from Middle Egypt span around 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period. Our analyses reveal that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than present-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times. This analysis establishes ancient Egyptian mummies as a genetic source to study ancient human history and offers the perspective of deciphering Egypt’s past at a genome-wide level.

 

Edited July 20, 2021 by Genava55

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Genava55]

1 minute ago, Mentuhotep said:

Yes I  read it, not my first time as well. Ancient Egypt is over 3000 years of history and people want to make their claims during THE LAST dynasty? Doesn't make sense, generally we are talking about the pyramid builders, well that report is fixated on a time 2 thousand years later. You will find many times the information that is dazzling in the limelight on mainstream is usually redundant. For example Gebelain man, when there are literal kings just kept on the shelf (but I digress).

Still the article says explicitly that Post-Roman Egypt got more gene flows from Sub-Saharan populations and that New Kingdom Egypt, Ptolemaic Egypt and Roman Egypt were less close to the genome of Sub-Saharan populations than Post-Roman Egypt.

[Gurken Khan]

Temple of Buhen (via: http://worldtraveler55.com/travelpage/sudan/thingstodo/sudanthings01.html )

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Two skin-tones are represented in art and descriptions: (jet-) black, and reddish to dark brown. [from p1 of this thread]

 

18 minutes ago, Mentuhotep said:

Yes, that was my main concern. If we are to be accurate in presenting these civilisations we must do it correctly and not based on our preconceived biases  (They did not use brown/black they used red like the Ancient Egyptians because both these civilsations did not draw themselves based on skin colour - red is not a skin colour it was symbolic).

Maybe you could back your claims with sources?

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Mentuhotep]

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Edited July 22, 2021 by Mentuhotep

[Mentuhotep]

13 hours ago, Genava55 said:

Still the article says explicitly that Post-Roman Egypt got more gene flows from Sub-Saharan populations and that New Kingdom Egypt, Ptolemaic Egypt and Roman Egypt were less close to the genome of Sub-Saharan populations than Post-Roman Egypt.

Proverbs 26:4-5

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 minutes ago, Mentuhotep said:

Proverbs 26:4-5

Losing patience with you.

[Mentuhotep]

Black in ancient egypt 

In ancient Egypt, black (km) was created from carbon compounds such as soot, ground charcoal or burnt animal bones. Black was a symbol
of death and of the night. Osiris, the sovereign of the afterlife, was called "the black one", alluding not only to his role in the underworld, but also to his resurrection after he was murdered (Robins 2008). One of the few real-life people to be deified, Queen Ahmose-Nefertari was the patroness of the necropolis, and she was usually portrayed with black skin. The black images of the queen embody the concept of regeneration, as the fertile ancestress of the royal line of the eighteenth dynasty (Manniche 1970:
11–19; Robins 2008). Anubis, the god of embalming, was shown as a black jackal or dog, even though real jackals and dogs are typically brown Anubis
As black symbolized death it was also a natural symbol of the underworld and
resurrection. Unexpectedly perhaps, it could also be symbolic of fertility and even life. The association with life and fertility is likely due to the abundance provided by the dark, black silt of the annually flooding Nile. The color of the silt became emblematic of Egypt itself and the country was called the "Black Land" (Kmt) from early antiquity (Mathieu 2009: 26-27). On the other hand, black is associated with
chaos and enemies, so men to the south of Egypt ( this does not mean that men in Egypt were not African, this is a nationality thing )were SOMETIMES depicted by black skin, which did not denote their race because they were also depicted red (see previous post). Nevertheless, the rest of the foreigners of Egypt, were depicted by yellow skin ( not consistent because they were also painted red) symbol of caution and danger. In the later Macedonian and Ptolemaic periods black stones were used almost exclusively for magical healing statues.

Notice the Maiherpri picture. The papyrus with the black drawing of him was found and now people mindlessly regurugitate he is of "Nubian" origin. But I can guarantee 99% of people have not seen the other papyrus drawing of him. This is what I'm talking about selective images only being shown to present a certain narrative (there is way too much of this happening and it makes you wonder if people have no shame whatsoever) 

(important) Things in Ancient Egypt were not consistent throughout all dynasties, take this into consideration when view the post - therefore whenever anyone says the ancient egyptians did this and did that, remember they are over 3000 years of history and you must be specific as to which dynasty and pharoah 

The first picture alone should tell you that black did not represent RACE.

For those who use your modern concept of color in art and apply it to Ancient Egyptian art, you may want to stop.

 

 

 

[Genava55]

You are really unconvincing. Are you sure you want to continue this shameful exhibition of your ignorance and fanaticism? 

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

Oh dear, another " we waz kangs" cult follower...

[Sundiata]

@Mentuhotep, you're barely adding anything of value to this thread, and are in fact derailing it. This thread is about the Kingdom of Kush, not about "black Egypt" or whatever. In fact, your posts are irrelevant to almost anything pertaining to this game. This isn't a political forum, and this isn't a forum to have racial arguments. The internet is already full of those, and we try to keep things as civil as possible here.

The one argument on which I'll admit you sort of have a point is about the color depicted on Kushite temples. Color is very poorly preserved on Kushite monuments, especially the more southern ones, but from the few surviving examples, varying tones of red (especially darker red) were indeed most commonly used, following Egyptian standards. If you'd just stuck to that argument, no problem, it's a *potentially* valid criticism. But on the other hand, none of the major temples depicted in-game have surviving color on their exterior facades and it's worth noting the famous Kushite granite statues were often deliberately blackened. Yellows are often used for Egyptian gods and goddesses. Kushite women are never depicted yellow. 

That said, please refrain from further spamming this, or any other thread with your unnecessarily racialized posts. Race is not the focus of our development team. Thank you. 

 

On 20/7/2021 at 7:32 AM, Genava55 said:

Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694

@Genava55, not to lend too much credence to our new fellow, but I see this study referenced rather carelessly all over the place. 

From the very same study you linked:

"However, we note that all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt. It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced." 

The study involved genetic material from only 3 mummies from the New Kingdom, out of 90 mummies. The other 87 were from later periods, post-New Kingdom. None of those 3 older mummies had full genome sequences because the DNA was too degraded. And all the mumies came from a single location 100 km south of the Delta, and was compared to modern DNA from the Delta. This tells us very little about Ancient Egypt as a whole, especially not Upper Egypt or Egypt prior to the New Kingdom collapse. To make it worse, the "Sub-Saharan" samples used for comparison came primarily from the West African Yoruba and Mandinka and Central African Pygmies, instead of Sudanese, or other North East African black populations, which is ridiculous of course... The scientists of that study even acknowledge it themselves when they wrote: "Clearly, more genetic studies on ancient human remains from southern Egypt and Sudan are needed before apodictic statements can be made."

Also, "Absolute estimates of African ancestry using these two methods in the three ancient individuals range from 6 to 15%", which isn't even that negligible for people so far up north into Egypt, more than 600 km north of the border of Lower Nubia and almost 850 km north of the border with Upper Nubia, from a bird's eye view. That would be c. 730km and and over 1000km respectively, when following the Nile. I honestly wouldn't have suspected any common ancestry using the proxies they used... Also worth noting that there were deportation events of Kushites (and I presume those perceived to be Kushites), from Egypt, most famously under the Assyrians who bragged about not leaving even one Kushite in the land (definitely hyperbole, but still relevant).

Perhaps this illustration will emphasize the pointlessness of a "black vs white Egypt"-debate, which isn't only completely anachronistic, as those modern categories meant next to nothing to ancient Nile populations, but also because Ancient Egyptian identity wasn't a racial identity in the first place but a cultural, religious, linguistic and political one. Egypt has always been a crossroads between North Africa and the broader Mediterranean, the Levant and the Middle East in general, and Nubia and Subsaharan Africa. These guys are both Ancient Egyptians, it's that simple:

 

[Mentuhotep]

17 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

you're barely adding anything of value to this thread, and are in fact derailing it.

I did say and I quote "I was going to present my research regarding the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians but I realize this is not the thread for that (As this is about Kush). And knowing now this game is based around the time period of 500 BC onwards. My information is based on 3 thousand years before that during the predynasty and old/middle kingdom.  it is redundant to this topic". But after being asked to present sources for my claim, that is exactly what I did. 

I have also studied extensively on Kush and will maybe add some info on that. 

However, before I leave, I will lastly leave my research on the Heminunu statue which you have posted you so you have idea about what goes on in academia - this is not related to Kush but why reject knowledge? We're all on this path. 

I must say I am also surprised and disappointed to the replies I received following the research I posted. "We waz kangz". Where is this coming from, from people who say they are historians? The research I posted is valid and was awaiting academic criticism. But it seems my points were too valid to have an argument against and must result to ad hominem attacks "Are you sure you want to continue this shameful exhibition of your ignorance and fanaticism?". 

But as I said, I will leave this forum after lastly addressing the Heminunu statue. 

Thank you all.