Black Pharaohs
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| New Lies for Old (Jun. 1997) |
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For 75 years Nubian kings ruled over ancient Egypt, reunifying the country and building an empire. Until recently, theirs was a chapter of history lost in the shadows.
In the year 730 B.C., a man by the name of Piye decided the only way to save Egypt from itself was to invade it. Things would get bloody before the salvation came.
“Harness the best steeds of your stable,” he ordered his commanders. The magnificent civilization that had built the great pyramids had lost its way, torn apart by petty warlords. For two decades Piye had ruled over his own kingdom in Nubia, a swath of Africa located mostly in present-day Sudan. But he considered himself the true ruler of Egypt as well, the rightful heir to the spiritual traditions practiced by pharaohs such as Ramses II and Thutmose III. Since Piye had probably never actually visited Lower Egypt, some did not take his boast seriously. Now Piye would witness the subjugation of decadent Egypt firsthand—”I shall let Lower Egypt taste the taste of my fingers,” he would later write.
{snip}
By the end of a yearlong campaign, every leader in Egypt had capitulated—including the powerful delta warlord Tefnakht, who sent a messenger to tell Piye, “Be gracious! I cannot see your face in the days of shame; I cannot stand before your flame, I dread your grandeur.” In exchange for their lives, the vanquished urged Piye to worship at their temples, pocket their finest jewels, and claim their best horses. He obliged them. And then, with his vassals trembling before him, the newly anointed Lord of the Two Lands did something extraordinary: He loaded up his army and his war booty, and sailed southward to his home in Nubia, never to return to Egypt again.
When Piye died at the end of his 35-year reign in 715 B.C., his subjects honored his wishes by burying him in an Egyptian-style pyramid, with four of his beloved horses nearby. He was the first pharaoh to receive such entombment in more than 500 years. A pity, then, that the great Nubian who accomplished these feats is literally faceless to us. Images of Piye on the elaborate granite slabs, or stelae, memorializing his conquest of Egypt have long since been chiseled away. On a relief in the temple at the Nubian capital of Napata, only Piye’s legs remain. We are left with a single physical detail of the man—namely, that his skin was dark.
Piye was the first of the so-called black pharaohs—a series of Nubian kings who ruled over all of Egypt for three-quarters of a century as that country’s 25th dynasty. Through inscriptions carved on stelae by both the Nubians and their enemies, it is possible to map out these rulers’ vast footprint on the continent. The black pharaohs reunified a tattered Egypt and filled its landscape with glorious monuments, creating an empire that stretched from the southern border at present-day Khartoum all the way north to the Mediterranean Sea. They stood up to the bloodthirsty Assyrians, perhaps saving Jerusalem in the process.
Until recently, theirs was a chapter of history that largely went untold. Only in the past four decades have archaeologists resurrected their story—and come to recognize that the black pharaohs didn’t appear out of nowhere. They sprang from a robust African civilization that had flourished on the southern banks of the Nile for 2,500 years, going back at least as far as the first Egyptian dynasty.
Today Sudan’s pyramids—greater in number than all of Egypt’s—are haunting spectacles in the Nubian Desert. It is possible to wander among them unharassed, even alone, a world away from Sudan’s genocide and refugee crisis in Darfur or the aftermath of civil war in the south. While hundreds of miles north, at Cairo or Luxor, curiosity seekers arrive by the busload to jostle and crane for views of the Egyptian wonders, Sudan’s seldom-visited pyramids at El Kurru, Nuri, and Meroë stand serenely amid an arid landscape that scarcely hints of the thriving culture of ancient Nubia.
{snip}
The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant. Artwork from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome shows a clear awareness of racial features and skin tone, but there is little evidence that darker skin was seen as a sign of inferiority. Only after the European powers colonized Africa in the 19th century did Western scholars pay attention to the color of the Nubians’ skin, to uncharitable effect.
Explorers who arrived at the central stretch of the Nile River excitedly reported the discovery of elegant temples and pyramids—the ruins of an ancient civilization called Kush. Some, like the Italian doctor Giuseppe Ferlini—who lopped off the top of at least one Nubian pyramid, inspiring others to do the same—hoped to find treasure beneath. The Prussian archaeologist Richard Lepsius had more studious intentions, but he ended up doing damage of his own by concluding that the Kushites surely “belonged to the Caucasian race.”
{snip}
For decades, many historians flip-flopped: Either the Kushite pharaohs were actually “white,” or they were bumblers, their civilization a derivative offshoot of true Egyptian culture. In their 1942 history, When Egypt Ruled the East, highly regarded Egyptologists Keith Seele and George Steindorff summarized the Nubian pharaonic dynasty and Piye’s triumphs in all of three sentences—the last one reading: “But his dominion was not for long.”
The neglect of Nubian history reflected not only the bigoted worldview of the times, but also a cult-like fascination with Egypt’s achievements—and a complete ignorance of Africa’s past. “The first time I came to Sudan,” recalls Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet, “people said: ‘You’re mad! There’s no history there! It’s all in Egypt!’ “
{snip}
Revisiting that golden age in the African desert does little to advance the case of Afrocentric Egyptologists, who argue that all ancient Egyptians, from King Tut to Cleopatra, were black Africans. Nonetheless, the saga of the Nubians proves that a civilization from deep in Africa not only thrived but briefly dominated in ancient times, intermingling and sometimes intermarrying with their Egyptian neighbors to the north. (King Tut’s own grandmother, the 18th-dynasty Queen Tiye, is claimed by some to be of Nubian heritage.)
{snip}
Egyptologists of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries would interpret this as a sign of weakness. But they had it wrong: The Nubians had a gift for reading the geopolitical tea leaves. By the eighth century B.C., Egypt was riven by factions, the north ruled by Libyan chiefs who put on the trappings of pharaonic traditions to gain legitimacy. Once firmly in power, they toned down the theocratic devotion to Amun, and the priests at Karnak feared a godless outcome. Who was in a position to return Egypt to its former state of might and sanctity?
The Egyptian priests looked south and found their answer—a people who, without setting foot inside Egypt, had preserved Egypt’s spiritual traditions. As archaeologist Timothy Kendall of Northeastern University puts it, the Nubians “had become more Catholic than the pope.”
Under Nubian rule, Egypt became Egypt again. When Piye died in 715 B.C., his brother Shabaka solidified the 25th dynasty by taking up residence in the Egyptian capital of Memphis. Like his brother, Shabaka wed himself to the old pharaonic ways, adopting the throne name of the 6th-dynasty ruler Pepi II, just as Piye had claimed the old throne name of Thutmose III. Rather than execute his foes, Shabaka put them to work building dikes to seal off Egyptian villages from Nile floods.
Shabaka lavished Thebes and the Temple of Luxor with building projects. At Karnak he erected a pink granite statue depicting himself wearing the Kushite crown of the double uraeus—the two cobras signifying his legitimacy as Lord of the Two Lands. Through architecture as well as military might, Shabaka signaled to Egypt that the Nubians were here to stay.
{snip}
It has been easy to overlook, amid these towering historical events, the dark-skinned figure at the edge of the landscape—the survivor of Eltekeh, the hard-charging prince later referred to by the Assyrians as “the one accursed by all the great gods”: Piye’s son Taharqa.
So sweeping was Taharqa’s influence on Egypt that even his enemies could not eradicate his imprint. During his rule, to travel down the Nile from Napata to Thebes was to navigate a panorama of architectural wonderment. All over Egypt, he built monuments with busts, statues, and cartouches bearing his image or name, many of which now sit in museums around the world. He is depicted as a supplicant to gods, or in the protective presence of the ram deity Amun, or as a sphinx himself, or in a warrior’s posture. Most statues were defaced by his rivals. His nose is often broken off, to foreclose him returning from the dead. Shattered as well is the uraeus on his forehead, to repudiate his claim as Lord of the Two Lands. But in each remaining image, the serene self-certainty in his eyes remains for all to see.
His father, Piye, had returned the true pharaonic customs to Egypt. His uncle Shabaka had established a Nubian presence in Memphis and Thebes. But their ambitions paled before those of the 31-year-old military commander who received the crown in Memphis in 690 B.C. and presided over the combined empires of Egypt and Nubia for the next 26 years.
Taharqa had ascended at a favorable moment for the 25th dynasty. The delta warlords had been laid low. The Assyrians, after failing to best him at Jerusalem, wanted no part of the Nubian ruler. Egypt was his and his alone. The gods granted him prosperity to go with the peace. During his sixth year on the throne, the Nile swelled from rains, inundating the valleys and yielding a spectacular harvest of grain without sweeping away any villages. As Taharqa would record in four separate stelae, the high waters even exterminated all rats and snakes. Clearly the revered Amun was smiling on his chosen one.
Taharqa did not intend to sit on his profits. He believed in spending his political capital. Thus he launched the most audacious building campaign of any pharaoh since the New Kingdom (around 1500 B.C.), when Egypt had been in a period of expansion. Inevitably the two holy capitals of Thebes and Napata received the bulk of Taharqa’s attention. Standing today amid the hallowed clutter of the Karnak temple complex near Thebes is a lone 62-foot-high column. That pillar had been one of ten, forming a gigantic kiosk that the Nubian pharaoh added to the Temple of Amun. He also constructed a number of chapels around the temple and erected massive statues of himself and of his beloved mother, Abar. Without defacing a single preexisting monument, Taharqa made Thebes his.
{snip}
A measure of Taharqa’s status in Nubia is that he remained in power after being routed twice from Memphis. How he spent his final years is a mystery—with the exception of one final innovative act. Like his father, Piye, Taharqa chose to be buried in a pyramid. But he eschewed the royal cemetery at El Kurru, where all previous Kushite pharaohs had been laid to rest. Instead, he chose a site at Nuri, on the opposite bank of the Nile. Perhaps, as archaeologist Timothy Kendall has theorized, Taharqa selected the location because, from the vista of Jebel Barkal, his pyramid precisely aligns with the sunrise on ancient Egypt’s New Year’s Day, linking him in perpetuity with the Egyptian concept of rebirth.
Just as likely, the Nubian’s motive will remain obscure, like his people’s history.
(Posted on January 28, 2008)
Comments
“Artwork from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome shows a clear awareness of racial features and skin tone, but there is little evidence that darker skin was seen as a sign of inferiority.”
Well, this is true to an extent - however, as more evidence shows, each of these “nations” held views similiar to those of European nations up to the 21st Centuries:
Just as the Germans viewed themselves superior to the French, the English superior to the Spaniards and other “continentals” so too did the Romans, Greeks etc consider themselves better than the non-Roman/Greek ‘barbarians’.
The Egyptians enslaved nearly every surrounding non-Egyptian population - from ancient Libyans, to Semites to Nubians.
Posted by Obscuratus at 5:35 PM on January 28
How many years now has a “Nubian’ ruled Detroit, St. Louis, D.C. ETC., 75 years in Egypt must be the record before total collapse.
Posted by Bandmo at 6:31 PM on January 28
All sounds a bit Piye in the sky. If their ‘civilization’ had been built thousands of miles from Egypt then perhaps they would deserve some credit. But even in the ancient world, master craftsmen were imported. Any pyramids in the Nubian desert would have certainly been built by Egyptian technicians.
If there was no racism in the ancient world how is it that the Mediteranean whites, the Mediteranean peoples of North Africa and the Middle East, and the sub-Saharan Africans are all distinct races to this day. Surely they would have merged to become one single race.
‘Only after the European powers colonized Africa in the 19th century did Western scholars pay attention to the color of the Nubians’ skin, to uncharitable effect.’
This line can be refuted with a hundred different facts. For a start, soon after the death of Muhammed in the 7th century, the Arab tribes burst out of Arabia invading anywhere and everywhere, and taking slaves in the process. White European slaves where always worth twice the price of black Africans.
I suppose with the dumbing down of education together with increasing academic shamlessness, we can expect more garbage like this. Another symptom of mass immigration to the West: typical third-world history lessons - with wonderfully weaved myths and half the facts missing.
Posted by eugene at 6:32 PM on January 28
Eygpt was at it’s peak when a Cacusoid-type people ruled. These people advanced technology and built the pyramids. Black “Eygptians” did not make Eygpt great they simply ruled it for a time.
Posted by Howard in Las Vegas at 6:34 PM on January 28
I suppose National Geographic offended the “Afrocentric Egyptologists” by showing King Tut as a somewhat Caucasian individual on a previous cover.
Acutally, if you look at his skull shape, you can see how they tried valiantly in their illustration to bend Tut’s skull to be more in line with an African skull—somewhat low in the forehead and sticking out more in the back. Tut’s actual skull did not support that particular artistic interpretation.
I can still remember the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, TN.
Schlitz, or Bud, I don’t exactly remember had an exhibit called the “Great Kings of Africa.” Hannibal was illustrated as a great corpulent Black (he was a Semitic Carthaginian) and Cleopatra was shown as a comely Black woman (she was a Greek with light, some say blonde, hair).
So, taken in context, I would say that National Geographic is definitely making progress in the direction of truth.
Posted by Garvin Alfred Schmaltz at 7:33 PM on January 28
“The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant.”
Oh thank goodness!!! Just think. If we elect Obama America will be like Egypt under Pire we will all be magically devoid of racism, all will be peace and plenty, sweetness and light, and the lion will lay down with the lamb!
Posted by big bill at 8:05 PM on January 28
I remember seeing a depiction, 3500 years old of an Arabic looking man with a half dozen or so African looking slaves
Posted by Peejay in Frisco at 8:14 PM on January 28
The National Geographic article states that: “The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant.”
This is the most ridiculous and outlandish lie I have ever heard. Anyone who has lived among primitive tribal groups knows that, in general, they despise and fear the adjacent surrounding tribal groups. For example, in Papua New Guinea, there are approximately 750 tribes (language groups), and for the most part, they all fear and hate one another. If you sit in the “Men’s Hut,” and listen to their banter, they are obsessed about how such-and-such tribe are stupid, unclean, evil, practice witchcraft, have sex with pigs, and steal fruit, pigs, and women, how ugly their women are, etc. They fantasize about what they will do to avenge this or that or another insult or wrong by the other ethnic group. This is an evolved universal characteristic in humans, and is why multiculturalism doesn’t work.
Anyone who actually listened in college or read a history or anthropology book knows that tribal groups were at constant war (i.e., the American Indians). And today, many tribal groups remain at war (i.e., Africa). Do you really think that while the Hutus were having their hand and breasts cut off by the Tutsi in the 1980’s that they were thinking, “Let’s celebrate diversity; it’s our greatest strength!” No, they were thinking, “Those @#$%^&^ sub-human beasts – gouge out their eyes – burn them – kill them.
Now, please turn to that National Geographic article and look at the picture of the Black Africans killing the Arabic Egyptians (page 36). Do you believe, as the author suggests, that those Egyptians who were dying, and who knew that their sons would be tortured and killed and their wives and daughters raped and placed into slavery – do your really believe that their dying thoughts were: “I have no prejudice against these black Africans – color is skin deep – they are the same as me – let’s hold hands and sing?
National Geographic should be ashamed of prostrating themselves to false god of multiculturalism.
Posted by at 8:23 PM on January 28
I would like to ask AnRen readers, who are historians or anthropologists, or who have access to ancient texts and accounts of travelers, to post some direct quotes at this web site. What exactly did ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Arabs, Greeks, Chinese, etc. say about other groups they met? Did they ever exhibit prejudice or did they generally consider different ethnic groups as equal or superior to their own? Let’s get some facts, folks.
Posted by at 8:27 PM on January 28
If this “history” was free from politics it would be OK. But as it has been said He who controls the past…
I remember one time reading an account claiming Jesus was black because the ancient Greek Historian Herodotus wrote something like his hair was woolly or some such and ergo Jesus was a brotha.
This guy here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bernal
is one of the most repulsive beings on this earth outside of the Harvard Whiteness Studies department. Leonard Jeffries is one of his biggest fans.
Even if 10% of this is true, Europeans over the last 500 years have overseen such an enormous deluge of scientific, philosophic and moral advancement that NO other civilization has come close to, and that includes Asiatic cultures.
Posted by S & GS at 8:29 PM on January 28
The ancient world was devoid of racism. … Only after the European powers colonized Africa in the 19th century did Western scholars pay attention to the color of the Nubians’ skin, to uncharitable effect.
Oh yes, it was those bad old awful mean nasty white Europeans that introduced “racism” to the area. Before that, everybody lived in hunky-dory kumbaya-singing glorious color-blindedness. If you believe that, I have some swampland in Egypt to sell you.
If this part of the article is so blatantly false, one can only wonder how much of the rest of the article is wrong too. I can see what Amreners have been saying is true. National Geographic has gone the way of the rest of the MSM, and then some.
Posted by Tim in Indiana at 8:31 PM on January 28
What drivel! What claptrap! What lies!
The simplest way to debunk this absurd fantasy is to quote from the scholarly, “RACE IN ANCIENT EGYPT & THE OLD TESTAMENT, by A.A. Sayce and R. Peterson, Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C.,1993.
On pages 79-87, we learn that large numbers of Egyptians, Libyans and Europeans were sent to rule/administer/control Egypt’s conquered southern lands.
These were augmented by refugees from various political upheavals. Finally the Egyptian occupation armies of the southern conquered provinces went north and conquered Egypt proper during a time of great political upheaval.
The pictures, statues and images showing the various Nubian/Cush Pharaohs are not black and are definitely White.
Posted by Sissy White at 8:38 PM on January 28
I have to admit I never read through the above article, because it appears to be just another feeble attempt at flim flamming people into believing blacks were key figures in ancient Egypt. They were not. Not in the real Egypt before its decline into a multiracial state. Here’s a quick recap of the entire Egyptian era, fitted to a nutshell for anyone who wants to know the truth:
Old European Mediterranean types; Proto-Nordics; and Nordic Indo-Europeans, all caucasians, settled the Egyptian area prior to 3500 BC. The latter group inundated the area as part of the great Indo-European invasions that occurred from 5600 BC onwards. Comprised of settlements, the groups were considered to be the inhabitants of the Pre-Dynastic period, which historians consider to have ended around 3100 BC.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 3000 BC this group comprised what was to be the first Egyptian Dynasty.
The inhabitants of Egypt at this period in time were divided into three racial groups, the majority being whites, but included also Semites, and in the very far south, (which is now Sudan) a large number of blacks, who were defeated in war by the Egyptians and enslaved for 2000 years.
The mummy “ginger,” named so because of his red hair, has been verified to have been an example of the vast majority of the inhabitants around 3000 BC via approved dating techniques. He’s on display in the British Museum in London.
3100 BC marks the start of the Dynastic Period, referred to as the Old Kingdom by historians. The area at that time consisted of a northern and southern kingdom. It was the leader Menes who united bothh territories and established a capital city at Memphis on the Nile River.
The great pyramids and Sphinx at Giza were built during this Old Kingdom Period, starting around the year 2,500 BC. The project was launched by Pharaoh Cheops (also known as Khufu), who, because of the pyramids, remains one of the most famous pharaohs of this First Kingdom.
As regards the blacks, fighting between the Egyptians and the Black Nubians were ongoing around 2900 BC by the Old Kingdom pharaohs. Pharaoh Sneferu launched a concerted attack upon Nubia around 2750 BC. Egyptian records show that 70,000 prisoners were taken, a figure that surely would have been a huge amount at any time, but even more so at that early point in time. Egypt conquered all of Nubia in 1296 BC, and built a series of massive forts to protect its southern borders against the blacks. One of the most famous was the fort at Buhen that had walls which were 111 meters high and 4.5 meters thick.
In addition, first public “Whites Only” signs in history were along the banks of the southern Nile. Large stones were erected upon which, in hieroglyphics still visible today, the passage of Blacks past those points was forbidden.
Ancient Egypt’s history is filled with attacks against other peoples and military incursions by others into their territory, and eventually, as with all great civilizations the nation began to fall apart and fall into a slow disintegration.
Egypt’s last great attempt to renew its slowly deteriorating nation was with the leadership of the red haired Pharaoh Ramses II (1292 - 1225 BC). He managed to re-establish the disintegrating Egyptian Empire by retaking considerable land in black Nubia. But Egypt never again reached its original power and heights of glory.
When this Pharaoh’s time had ended, a period of steady decay was the order of the day. The decline was the direct result of the elimination of the original Egyptians, and their replacement with a mixed population of Black, Arabic, and the remnant White population. This eventual multiracial mixed nation was never again to attain the accomplishments achieved by the First, Second or the first part of the Third Kingdoms. At that point in time there were competing claimants to the pharaohs throne, many of whom, racially speaking, bore no resemblance to the original pharaohs at all.
By the time of the above article’s story which is likely for the purpose of attempting to glorify black pharaohs, Egypt was really no more. The mixed races fighting over control of the nation was to continue on for a bit longer, but whatever attempts were made to reinvigorate the masses by these later leaders was in vain. At that point Egypt was really no longer Egypt and hadn’t been for many years.
Writing about that period in Egypt’s history, claiming black accomplishment today, would be like writing about the US in a thousand years if Obama were elected, trying to convince people that it was he, Obama, a black, who was responsible for the creation and construction of the American Empire, when all he would have ever accomplished was to preside over a country in decline that had its best days far behind it.
Posted by Ranger at 8:45 PM on January 28
If Egyptians were black why would the Bible identify Moses wife as being a black person rather than just an Egyptian.
The statue of Nefreterri is not that of a black but a caucasian female.
First Egyptions were white, then black, and then white again. Now they are black once again.
If they were black then the blacks were the first to have slaves and those slaves were the Jews.
Posted by the Soviet Republic of New Jersey at 8:47 PM on January 28
I stopped subscribing to National Geographic decades ago, and suggest you do the same. The board of directors was upended in a coup in the seventies and a strictly multi-cultural, pseudo-Marxist set of directors was installed. That’s what is running the show there now. As for the “absence of racism” in the ancient world, I suggest reading Tacitus, the 1st century Roman historian. Obviously, the author of the National Geographic article above is counting on the fact that you won’t, because if you do, you’ll see that he is a liar.
Posted by Xenophon at 9:30 PM on January 28
I’ve always wondered when National Geographic would finally get around to weaving this fairy tale. In this entire article it never once reveals that by the 25th dynasty Egypt was in its slow decline into oblivion, the fabulous pyramid building dynasties now hundreds of years in the past. Leave it to the Lefties at NG to dredge up this period and hand it to blacks as “proof” that the great history of Egypt was a BLACK history. The only thing the “nubians” did was move into a crumbling Egypt, resurrect some of the Egyptian customs, adopt the Egyptian clothing, and squat through years of wars where Egypt flip-flopped back and forth into and out of Assyrian hands. Finally, with Egypt now an open free-for-all the different cultures fought and looted for control until Egypt looked more and more like Detroit! Watch for Cleopatra (of Macedonian and Greek lineage) to magically become a Nubian.
Posted by P Norman at 10:22 PM on January 28
Imagine President Clinton screaming helplessly at her generals, as they try to explain to her that the eviscerated military is unable to stop the dark, low-riding hordes from overrunning the country. Once the invaders have taken the country, they have no idea what to do with it. After all, what have these people done with their own countries? The leaders settle for tribute, part of which is the requirement that Whites come to their land and fix it up, with electricity, swimming pools, and air conditioning. After 75 years, with no Whites to keep the place up, the Brown empire collapses. 3000 years from now, scholars marvel at the achievements of this brilliant civilization.
So what? Black raiders conquered an effete, degenerate Egypt and forced them to build Egyptian style structures down south. 75 years is merely an episode in the 3000 year history of Ancient Egypt.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 10:40 PM on January 28
The Nubians were slave masters. They used slaves to build monuments to themselves. Look it up.
Posted by Elrey Jones at 11:39 PM on January 28
I have noticed a decided slant in National Geographic that I had never noticed before in all my years of reading this magazine and admiring the exotic pictures from far away places.
Did you notice the article a few months back about “The Wall” (not the fence) that they are building along our border with Mexico? They used the term “wall” about 70 times in that one story. They should have done a an article about how the fence illegals have trashed the desert, natinal parks etc., leaving them litterd with backpacks, water bottles and diapers. Tons of trash, but no mention in the article at all.
Then I noticed an article about “Hip Hop” (Rap) as some marvelous complex art form. Not much mention about the racist, sexist, violent lyrics though.
All that I gathered from this article is that the Nubians were able to make war upon the Egyptians, conquer them and occupy their land for a short period of time. Big deal. They didn’t create anything. The street gangs might be able to take over some neighborhoods for awhile, does that mean future archaeologists will praise them too and lament that they are forgotten in history because of bigotry.
This is why after many, many, years of subscribing to Nat’l Geo. I am discontinuing my patronage. I get enough propaganda as it is. What a shame, it’s turned into a shameless liberal rag.
Posted by at 12:04 AM on January 29
I don’t really know what happen 3000 years ago, but I know what the color of crime is today.
Posted by Flamethrower at 12:13 AM on January 29
So, Hitler was Polish? This guy conquers Egypt at the end of it’s glory days and that makes him Egyptian? he’s no relation to the people who built the pyramids.
Posted by mikeweber at 1:27 AM on January 29
Not even George Orwell predicted such nonsense! History re-writing at it’s best, soon they will claim that they teached the stupid white man how to walk on two legs!
Posted by Skeptikos at 9:20 AM on January 29
The reality is that different racial groups did rule Egypt at differing times in that country’s history, and, at the very end of the Dynasties, the Nubians did rule. But therein lies the rub, I suspect: the end of the Egypt was marked by when the Nubians ruled. There is a lesson there — that the people who built the original civilization of Egypt, were replaced by newcomers, and the original civilization then collapsed.
As to what the orignial Egyptians thought of other races, there is no better source than professor James Henry Breasted, Professor of Egyptology and Oriental History in the University of Chicago in his work “History of Egypt, from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest.”
I have a review of his work, with quotes, online here: http://www.white-history.com/hwr8d.htm
Posted by Arthur Kemp at 9:34 AM on January 29
Once you read past the PC camouflage here, this article really claims very little of interest to afrocentrists. The following
“Revisiting that golden age in the African desert does little to advance the case of Afrocentric Egyptologists, who argue that all ancient Egyptians, from King Tut to Cleopatra, were black Africans.”
is all you need to know.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 9:38 AM on January 29
So many people have stated the historically obvious facts, that I hesitate to wade into the wadi…er, waters.
Point- All the great ‘accomplishments’ of Egypt occurred millennia BEFORE the ‘Nubian Pharaoh’,when she was racially homogenous; during the White-rule phase of things. (see posters comments above)
Egypt was finally ruled by Greek overlords, known as the Ptolemies, of which Cleopatra was the most famous. ARYANS ruling over a ‘multicultural empire.’
Greece’s greatest accomplishments occurred early in her reign, when she was racially homogenous; (I could use the word, ‘pure’…) it was only during the Hellenic period, at the end of an empire-building phase, that Grecian civilization ‘degenerated’ as the historians called it.
Rome’s greatest accomplishments occurred early in her reign, when she was racially homogenous; (I could use the word, ‘pure’…) it was only during the latter Empire’s days, when the use of slave labor from ‘backward tribes’ and sexual profligacy of a multicultural bent occurred, that the Church rose up amidst the ashes of a failed Patrician class that had long ago given up concern for the Plebiscite kinsmen in her midst, that Rome fell.
Europe’s greatest accomplishments occurred early in her respective reigns, when she was racially homogenous, and Christian; (I could use the word, ‘pure’…) It was only during the latter centuries, when country became synonymous with Empire, that those days, (when the use of slave labor from ‘backward tribes’ and sexual profligacy of a multicultural bent occurred) did we enter limping the 20th Century….
America’s greatest accomplishments occurred early in her reign, when she was racially homogenous; (I could use the word, ‘pure’…) it was only during the latter’s days, when she, too, sought Empire rather than Republic, when the use of [freed] slave labor was replaced by outsourcing of a different kind of ‘slave labor’ [H1B visas, anyone?] from ‘backward tribes,’ and sexual profligacy of a multicultural bent occurred, returning us to the ‘glory days’ of each previous multicultural Empire…
ALL OF WHOM PERISHED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.
Need I go on?
Just cut and paste the pertinent details, and (with minor adjustments) you can chronicle EVERY SINGLE NATION on the face of the Earth- her birth, rise, apogee, and fall.
God is not mocked. He alone deserves worship and praise.
Empires always have their Neros, and the ‘pagan hordes’ walk over the rubble of those too self-centered to conserve that which is worth conserving, until another people, in another era, look at the wreckage, and say, “Why did they not see?”
“He who has eyes to see, and ears to hear…..”
Posted by Fr. John at 10:18 AM on January 29
“If Egyptians were black why would the Bible identify Moses wife as being a black person rather than just an Egyptian…”
Posted by the Soviet Republic of New Jersey at 8:47 PM on January 28
She was not Egyptian - she was Ethiopian (see Numbers 12:1).
Posted by at 11:03 AM on January 29
Compare George Washington, the first pharoah of the United States of America with Barack Obama the coming pharoah. Do the same with the earlier European looking pharoahs of Egypt with the mixed breeds who ruled it later and you can see history repeating itself.
Besides the Nubians who conquered Egypt were the Ethiopean types and were more intelligent and capable than the Congo type blacks. The Ethiopeans of today look down upon the blacks living south.
Posted by Salman Khan at 11:11 AM on January 29
Egypt has been ruled by many different groups, off the top of my head I can think of: Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mamelukes (who were mostly slaves from the Cacauses), then finally Turks and the other colonial powers (and thats just in Egypt’s recent history). So the idea that Nubians, a people somewhat similair culteraly to the Egyptians, briefly ruling is not implausible.
However, the line “The ancient world was devoid of racism.” clearly shows a laughable PC intent, so a fair amount of history buffs will see the article for what it is.
Posted by Os-Q at 11:15 AM on January 29
FLASH… It has just been announced by officials of the NGS that another compeling article written by Draper will appear in a forthcoming issue. In that forthcoming article, Draper will provide conclusive proof that our Earth is flat. That the Earth occupies the exact center of the Universe and that the Sun does indeed revolve around the Earth.
It is further anticipated that his expose showing how NASA faked those Moon Landings, NASA’s deliberate policy of deception in PRETENDING to launch space vehicles actually orbiting our Earth will prove conclusively how the world has been duped into believing this colossal fraud. The purpose of this Mega-Fraud, of course, being to try to make the White Race appear superior to all other human nations on this planet.
Seriously, does anyone recall that “whitewash” issue on Africa a few years ago, wherein the NGS did its utmost to try to portray African nations as having made such fantastic advances, politically and economically since gaining their freedom from the colonial powers. That was when I wrote to the NGS to take me permanently off their mailing list. That if they can’t print a truthful story, they need not worry about retaining me as a customer any longer.
Posted by Fed Up at 1:03 PM on January 29
“By the time of the above article’s story which is likelyfor the purpose of attempting to glorify black pharaohs, Egypt was really no more.”
Ranger
- - - - - - - - - - -
You know, I think you have something there, about their purpose. And could it also tie in with the current irrational mania that’s going on over Obama?
Another thought: can you imagine Natl. Geog. running an article on “The White Pharaohs”? I can’t. Of course not! The question then is, “why not?”
Posted by browser at 1:35 PM on January 29
Posted by at 8:27 PM on January 28
I like when you libs come here acting like your fantasy is proven by some article, only to get completely debunked by several posters, “Ranger“‘s post smashes the idea that “racism” didn’t exist in the ancient world. Besides, just think of the stupidity here.
Why would it have honestly taken till the 19th century? really now, all those centuries and 100% of the time no one looks at skin color until some random event in the 19th century? What are the chances now? honestly. If you libs would actually take 3 minutes to examine your arguments, you’d realize Illogic in it all.
Posted by Stuck in No Mans Land at 1:38 PM on January 29
Now, please turn to that National Geographic article and look at the picture of the Black Africans killing the Arabic Egyptians (page 36). Do you believe, as the author suggests, that those Egyptians who were dying, and who knew that their sons would be tortured and killed and their wives and daughters raped and placed into slavery –…..
Posted by at 8:23 PM
………………………………………..
I went to that page in my newly arrived issue of NG, and I see what you mean. Such fantasy artwork! I couldn’t help note the superbly muscular, athletic bodies of the all the warriors shown — highly idealized and pure fantasy, I’m absolutely sure. Anyone who has seen in person, or in pictures, native peoples living their a wild state will at once notice how sickly, scrawny and malnourished they really are. Anyone who’s been among tribesmen in Africa will see that even today.
Even if you look at old photos of American Indians taken in the early days of photography, you will notice how small and slight and withered these supposedly “fierce warriors” were, when posed in front of the unbiased and harshly realistic eye of the camera.
I have no doubts at all that if the artist had depicted these Nubians accurately, he would have shown a scurvy bunch of wild-looking, scrawny, parasite-ridden, half-starved wretches. But that would never pass with the powers that be among the Afrophiliacs who seem to be in control at Natl. Geo. Instead, we get anatomical studies worthy of Michelangelo! And so we get Afro-fantasy instead of fact.
Posted by ghw at 1:58 PM on January 29
One of the most helpful and complete books on history for me is “The March of the Titans.” It’s a history of the white race, and it is unequivocally unscrupulously accurate in every detail. There’s no bogus Afro-centrism type of information within. It’s absolutely excellent. The informatioon I’ve cross-referenced so far has proven to be 100% accurate.
http://www.white-history.com/index.htm
I would encourage all white realists to either buy a copy or to mark the web site as a favorite, because I think it is the best reference book anywhere around that concentrates on those subjects that mostly pertain to the white race.
I’ve been studying it now for about six months and have learned an absolute wealth of information that wasn’t covered in school texts, at least the ones I was familiar with. It may not offer any additional information to those who concentrated more heavily on world history, but to those of us who did not it is indeed an excellent source of information.
If you elect to read it, you’ll see what a liar this Robert Draper really is, though from the posts it appears he didn’t really fool anybody here.
It’s depressing to know that such an old, mainline source such as NG has been corrupted so greatly by radical revisionists in order to advance their perverted multicultural agenda.
Posted by Ranger at 4:13 PM on January 29
“The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant. Artwork from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome shows a clear awareness of racial features and skin tone, but there is little evidence that darker skin was seen as a sign of inferiority.”
Laughable. I am sure its been purged out of the history books but Egyptians had a clear hierarchy of skin color in their paintings. I remember it clearly in Janson’s Art History and it was one of key points for my art history 101 exam in 1985 (i got an A) I am sure its not taught that way any longer.
If anything, this article shows just how far the establishment is willing to rewrite history and twist reality -essentially giving into the demands of afrocentrists - I should not be surprised if one day a National Geographic shows up in my mailbox with a an ‘ancient plane that nubians flew before ice people stole the technology and covered it up”
Posted by at 4:59 PM on January 29
What about the North African Slave trading Berbers of today ? Are they Black “Bruthas” too ?
Posted by at 5:21 PM on January 29
Sissy White says that the Nubians were White.
Well, I don’t know about that, but I did think it curious that the remaining statues of the “Nubian” pharaohs show (every one of them, in the current issue of National Geographic) thin lips, not the thick lips of stereotypical Blacks.
I was struck by this.
Posted by Garvin Alfred Schmaltz at 5:29 PM on January 29
“I can still remember the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, TN. Schlitz, or Bud,…had an exhibit called the “Great Kings of Africa.” Hannibal was illustrated as a great corpulent Black (he was a Semitic Carthaginian) and Cleopatra was shown as a comely Black woman (she was a Greek with light, some say blonde, hair).”I
Posted by Garvin
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I have read speculations, too, that she had red hair. There would seem to a good chance of this, considering that she was of Macedonian descent, and Macedonia was adjacent to Thrace whose people were known (in ancient times) for their red hair the Celts having settled there and in nearby Galatia [“Gaul/Gael”-atia]. Furthermore, she was the product of a long line of incestuous marriages (at least nine generations) intended to keep the original blood pure. The red gene, being recessive, would tend to be brought out by such inbred matings.
The famous Cleopatra whom history remembers was actually Cleopatra VII, renowned for both her brilliance and her beauty. I have a biography of her by the historian, Michael Grant. In his view, he thinks she was probably a brunette. This is an interesting account, with some amazing parallels, between the lines, to contemporary America. According to him, speaking of her ancestry (in condensed quotes):
“Certainly she was not an Egyptian … for she probably did not possess one single drop of Egyptian blood. Cleopatra VII would have described herself as Greek. Whatever the racial ingredients of her Macedonian ancestors, her language, like theirs (though it had been a dialect) was Greek, and so was her entire education and culture. Her remote Macedonian forebears must have been of various complexions, since the Macedonians were of very mixed blood. Not all of them were fair-haired — though apparently her ancestor Ptolemy II Philadelphus was a blond.
“Cleopatra was a Greek queen. And her ruling class, who were allowed to share in the monarch’s riches, were men of Greek culture. descended from Greek and Macedonian [conquerors]. They enjoyed a superior status and special privileges, including law-courts of their own and exemption from the more degrading forms of corporal punishment. There were also, of course many other non-Egyptians in the country besides Greeks — in particular the Jews, who were very numerous.
“But the principal population of the country consisted of Egyptian peasants. In Cleopatra’s time, these fellahin probably numbered between seven and nine million. Although they fared perhaps a little better than in Pharaonic times — and some of the Ptolemies showed a genuine interest in doing something to protect their interests — a very large proportion of this native population lived barely above subsistence level. Except for a relatively few collaborating priests, they were wholly excluded from power and could only note, across a wide gulf, the many privileges which the other communities possessed and they did not.
“However, during the crises of the middle Ptolemaic epoch, the monarchs began to reflect that the Hellenistic states destined to last longest were probably those which managed to effect some compromise with the native cultures. In order to beat back the Seleucids in 217, Ptolemy IV was compelled to admit native Egyptian troops to military service (previously reserved solely for Greeks). The result, however, was that the Egyptians then wanted other privileges as well. Things were changing. The Egyptians were accustomed to complain of discrimination against themselves because they were not Greek. But by the mid-second century BC, the Greeks too, were beginning to protest about discrimination. Rival claimants to the throne needed the help of the Egyptians [and had to appease them]. Cleopatra’s great-grandfather, Physcon, although himself the product of a learned Greek education, favoured the Egyptians so much that the Alexandrian Greeks turned against him; and Athens, in disapproval, omitted to celebrate the festival of his royal house.
“The separateness of Greek and Egyptian communities must not, however, be regarded as absolute. In spite of everything…there had been a great increase in intermarriage and racial fusion. [By] the second century BC, the historian Polybius found that even at Alexandria where, as in other Greek cities of Egypt, mixed marriages remained illegal, [few] of the Greeks were any longer ethnically pure — except in the royal house itself, where no Egyptian blood can be traced. Nevertheless, community interchanges and bilingualism remained the exception rather than the rule.
“This, then was the strange national structure which Cleopatra inherited. During her reign of twenty-one years, she was too heavily pro-occupied with her relations with Rome to be able to devote a great deal of time to internal affairs. But from such evidence as has survived, her relations with the native Egyptian population seem to have been good. Plutarch preserves a significant tradition that, in addition to all her other languages, she spoke the Egyptian tongue — which not a single one of her Ptolemaic predecessors had managed to learn.”
Posted by ghw at 6:03 PM on January 29
Tut, tut Gentlemen. The Ancient Egyptians were a race of
Redheads as evidenced by some of Ramseses Pharohs and the God
Set Himself. Robert E Howard was as close as anyone is ever going
to get. At the end of the Hyperborean Age a strong tribe of Red
Haired Vanir established themselves as rulers in Stygia-already
an ancient land. The previous rulers were probably a race of
blond Aryans. The subsequent royal strife between these two groups is figured in mythology as the struggle between Set and
Osiris. Ultimately of course, the blood of both groups became
attenuated by admixture of inferior blood-the tragedy of Nordic
Man.
Posted by Leif the Lucky at 12:15 AM on January 30
“The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant. “
Just one more example of the promotion of wishful thinking as fact.
Posted by voter at 12:24 AM on January 30
For sub-Saharan blacks to look for their history among the ruins of ancient Egypt is like me looking for my Welsh and Celtic heritage among the ruins of the Parthenon. Same continent, different cultural achievements.
Instead of hijacking another groups heritage and achievements, blacks and the multi-culti PC crowd would do better to look to the achievements and the history of sub-Saharan Africa. Do archaeological work there, look at the history of art,culture,technology, trade and examine and celebrate that genuine history.
Posted by multi culti no more at 10:10 AM on January 30
AND Jewish historians, it would appear, are not prepared to indulge in lies and deceit when it comes to denial of racism in ancient Egypt, in instances, that is, where they were the victims of it.
http://www.unionoffaiths.com/article9_1.html
Posted by A Swain at 11:29 PM on January 31
“Jewish historians are not prepared to indulge in lies and deceit when it comes to denial of racism in ancient Egypt, in instances where they were the victims of it.” — Posted by A Swain
Would it not figure therefore, given the relatively slight visual and cultural difference separating the Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians, that if the Hebrews suffered discrimination and oppression on account of who they were, then the Nubians and other black Africans must have experienced even greater exclusion and “racism”? The only difference between them and the Jews is that they were not literate and did not write it down in a holy book to record it all for posterity.
Posted by browser at 1:52 PM on February 1
One of the first things conquerors do to those they conquer is attempt to destroy their history and rewrite it and the communist’s are no exception. I am so sure that a primitive people who never developed a written language or discovered the wheel were able to conquer and replace the far more advanced people who engineered the great pyramids…
Posted by at 1:30 PM on February 6