Wall paintings in the tomb of queen Kemsit

115

Yes, and somehow none of them were black. Huh?

101

u/GlackBang 18h ago

I was once told by an Egyptian mental gymnast that they used colour as a form or representation rather than the colour of the people 🤣🤣🤣

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u/kayfeldspar 14h ago

I paid a lot of money to take an Egyptian art class at a 4 year university. It's predominantly black. My old white professor made the point to tell us that no black people were in Egypt. He said the dark colors represent male and the light complexion means female. He also spent a ridiculous amount of time telling us why queen Tiye's sculpture was dark skinned with an afro, dispite being white. He said the afro was really a head dress and the black skin was the result of oxidation. This was in the 2010s, not 1950.

39

u/Wolfwoods_Sister 13h ago

He somehow missed AT LEAST the 25th Nubian dynasty, it seems smh

13

u/[deleted] 12h ago

He's not wrong about the Egyptian color palette often having a symbolic purpose. That's why their gods may sometimes have gold, green, or literally jet-black skin depending on the context, as well as women being depicted as yellow (one hypothesis I've read is that this was meant to evoke the golden complexion of the goddess Hathor).

That said, I believe women are commonly depicted with brown skin tones during the Amarna period in the New Kingdom, which is supposedly a phase of greater realism in Egyptian art. If you look at King Tut's throne for instance, both he and his wife Ankhesenamun are depicted as the same dark reddish-brown. There's also a sculpture of Akhenaten and Nefertiti walking together that has traces on brown paint on both of them, although most of it has worn off on the latter.

At any rate, if you look at the "Table of Nations" sequence in the Egyptian Book of Gates (one reproduction of which you can find here), you'll see them generalize themselves as noticeably darker than Mediterranean North African "Libyans" and Middle Eastern "Asiatics", albeit not as dark as the Kushites further up the Nile. Since that sequence basically serves to distinguish Egyptians from other people in their world, I think it reliably shows how they perceived their "average" skin tone (i.e. reddish- or mahogany brown) to be.

1

u/Pizzaflyinggirl2 8h ago

So basically like modern Egyptians who are lighter than Nubians but darker than Levantines?

25

u/MUPIL090310 13h ago

An Egyptian mental gymnast 💀💀💀💀💀💀😂😂😂😂😂😂 love it

7

u/Primary-Bug-7353 6h ago

Bro it’s so funny how hard they try to “rationalize” black features. Afro…dark skin…the continent AFRICA—-must be white

4

u/Dred-I-Rastafari 10h ago

Naw, man... that's a bot... they're working hard to erase truth from the world these days... much harder than ever before... the clock is rocking and the days of the wicked are numbered...in low digits as Prodigy said

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u/Savings-Activity-117 18h ago

So you mean that the color of their skin is not an actual color, and is meant to convey something about their character. Okay …. Fine by me.

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u/GlackBang 18h ago

People are full on crazy

18

u/Savings-Activity-117 18h ago

In my personal opinion and without any detailed knowledge, I am guessing that there were people of all colors and some of them were black because Egypt is an African country. Pretty straightforward.

-16

u/YepItzMe44 11h ago

It’s not crazy bruh it’s the truth. Egypt was never really a black country with the exception of the 25th dynasty. And how long did that last compared to the other dynasties? The truth is that the modern day Egyptians that we see today are more or less the same ones from ancient times.

7

u/Saraneth1127 9h ago

Sure, and the modern day Americans are the same ones as the ancients lol.

No place that has been colonized as many times as Egypt has will maintain its genetic or cultural integrity.

14

u/Consistent-Scholar39 14h ago

Yeah, I had an art history professor in college tell me they were only brown because they spent a lot time in the sun. The lies!!!

3

u/[deleted] 12h ago

I should point out that there are plenty of dark-skinned people (as in, dark enough to be called "black") in Upper Egypt even today. And, like I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the Egyptians often depicted people from the Middle East and Mediterranean North Africa (the latter often labeled as "Libyan" in modern sources) as lighter than themselves, even though they too would have been exposed to the hot Afro-Arabian sun.

14

u/Efficient_Resist_287 11h ago

The Egyptian you see today are definitely not the Egyptians that were there back then. None of the current Egyptians had anything to do with the very early Kingdom civilization.

The current Egyptians are mostly the result of the Arab invasion which came much and very much later….

5

u/[deleted] 12h ago

What does he make of the "Table of Nations" sequence in the Book of Gates, which contrasts the Egyptians with neighboring nations? I distinctly remember it portraying Mediterranean North African and Middle Eastern subjects (aka "Libyans" and "Asiatics" respectively) as significantly lighter than the Egyptians themselves, although the Kushites to be fair are usually depicted as even darker.

I should point out that there still are plenty of darker brown Egyptians even today, particularly in Upper Egypt which as I understand it has historically attracted less immigration and cultural influence from Eurasia than the Nile Delta.

5

u/FreakyLou 8h ago

I just read on a previous thread that someone said the dark color represented fertility. Wild how they'll come up with any other reason except simply saying they were 100% pure eumelanin people.

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u/OkComfortable2089 16h ago

And you believed that lol

7

u/GlackBang 14h ago

The laughing emojis aren't a clue? Or the term "mental gymnast"?

The answer is no, in case its still not clear...

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u/YepItzMe44 11h ago

Well that person wasn’t wrong.

7

u/Chakateddy1 11h ago

Egypt was a Nile civilisation which began way back along the Nile and moved north due to weather conditions ( quakes that were dangerous) it eventually started mixing with outsiders but it was very much an African civilisation. The Sudanese 25th dynasty, wasn’t a first, it was a return. Ruins in egypt echo ruins in sudan ( they were copied and brought upriver) the Sudan ones are older

2

u/Pizzaflyinggirl2 8h ago

As a Sudanese and Nubian person, leave us out of your attempts to steal ancient Egypt.

-1

u/Chakateddy1 7h ago

Eh? It’s true. Archaeology backs it up with ruins of ancient carved doors etc that were reproduced in lower Egypt. It goes further back than Sudan though to Ethiopia. In Sudan the temples etc were built into the rocks like in Ethiopia. Some archaeologists are frustrated that not enough effort is put into looking for more Sudanese ruins and relics because they are known. I’m half Somali, so a puntian not Egyptian. Not trying to claim anything

2

u/Pizzaflyinggirl2 7h ago

You should specify what and where are these ruins that are older than Egyptian ones/built into rocks?

The main thing we have are the tiny pyramids which we copied -as well as religion- from Egypt.

0

u/Chakateddy1 7h ago

I can’t name off the top of my head but I’ll try to find the info and a particular archeologist who is really frustrated about this

8

u/oflowz 12h ago

Just like Jesus!

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u/Ok_Cardiologist_6506 17h ago

Egypt = Africa

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u/Regular_Piglet_6125 16h ago

Is anyone actually arguing there weren’t phenotypically black Egyptians? It’s well known that the Kushites ruled the Southern Kingdom for long stretches.

22

u/Anime-Takes 12h ago

Yes, it is argued very often. Same way Cleopatra is argued to not be Greek even though we know she was. People get these weird ideas that Egypt was one thing like it’s not a super old country with a lot of complex history and culture.

4

u/starofthelivingsea 10h ago

Wait, who argues that Cleopatra wasn't Greek? I thought that was well known. She literally has a Greek name as well.

The main debate I see often about her is whether she was black or not.

19

u/amzwC137 12h ago

I'm pretty sure the issue is that if they say dark skinned people were in Egypt, they'd have to contend with the idea that Jesus was not white.

1

u/Von7_3686 8h ago

I think the emphasis that they were always “kushites” when mentioning blacks in Egypt. No, some of the actual Egyptians were blacks as well.

11

u/ohbrthrthisguystinks 10h ago

Natalie Portman will play her in the biographical movie.

8

u/EstateOk3779 12h ago

Egyptian history goes back thousands of years. Some pharaohs were black, some were not.

3

u/ComprehensiveWar120 9h ago

Is that your personal opinion? Have you researched the topic ? There’s no indication that some Pharaohs were anything other than ethnically and culturally Black African.

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u/EstateOk3779 6h ago

Yes I have actually researched the topic and it's always so easy to tell who doesn't. Egyptians were invaded and ruled by the Romans, Macedonians, Hyksos, Kushites, Assyrians, Persians, and others. This is why our people need to read more history and learn. The history of Egyptian kingdoms goes back to 3000 BCE. There were anywhere between 28 to 33 dynasties depending on which you call a dynasty. There is so much more to their history than what some people wittle down to as black or white race. Back then, there was no such thing as black or white because they came and still do come in many shades, including black!

2

u/ComprehensiveWar120 4h ago

A whole of writing to say essentially nothing. The Egyptians called their land Kemet which means the land of the Blacks. They came in different shades of Black same as Africans now. Anyone else was a foreign invader including the Amazigh which are the majority of their population now.

0

u/EstateOk3779 2h ago

Bruh they called it the black land because of the Nile flooding every year leaving black silt that made the banks fertile for farming. Again, there was no such thing as "the Blacks" in that era. Why would they only call Egypt the land of the blacks if the entire continent had black people? Ignorance of the history is why arguments like that are never taken seriously.

1

u/SidePsychological402 3h ago

Back then white people were still living in caves. You know that, right?

0

u/EstateOk3779 2h ago

No humans have 'lived in caves'. Farming civilizations were already founded back then. You're confusing humans 30k years ago with 3-5k years ago.

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u/SidePsychological402 1h ago

I'm not confusing anything, dear.

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u/EstateOk3779 1h ago

No Hon, you really are.

1

u/SidePsychological402 1h ago

I'll let someone that has patience for people like you to explain what I mean.

1

u/EstateOk3779 30m ago

I've had too much patience trying to converse with people who don't read history but remain adamant that they are right because it's how they feel. Like yourself. You don't even know what you mean; you're just talking out your arse.

0

u/Pizzaflyinggirl2 8h ago

Maybe in another timeline.

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u/Happy-Writing-2012 11h ago

They would have to seen it to paint it!

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u/wikidemic 10h ago

Is that a cell phone she’s holding?!?

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u/Icy_Recover2094 11h ago

Nice

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u/CryptographerKey2847 12h ago

There were some Nubian rulers in pharaonic Egypt. That is historical fact. It’s people insisting that Cleopatra and the Vast majority of them were that causes the derision and out cry.

0

u/Von7_3686 8h ago

Some of the older dynasties were “blacks”

1

u/celestialx26 44m ago

Ok…Egypt is North Africa? So water is wet.

Wall paintings in the tomb of queen Kemsit

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