Posted on 01/21/2008 11:49:03 AM PST by SunkenCiv
What is that?
“I am not surprised if there were Black pharoahs in Egypt. Tell the truth, Ancient Egyptians look like mixed race people, mostly Black and White.”
The original Ancient Egyptians were an eastern Mediterranean type people who closely resembled Semitic and Berber peoples. They became a mixed race group as a result of an influx of Kushite slaves and soldiers - mainly archers. The book cited previously discusses this sinlge purely Kushite group of Pharoahs. But at that point in Egyptina history Ancient Egypt as a political entity was on the skids, having also experienced Lybian and ultimately Macedonian Dynasties.
If you look at Ancient Egyptian paintings of themselves, they clearly depict the men as red or brown skinned and the women as yellow or white skinned. Kushites were depicetd black and Lybians and Asians as white.
But being “Egyptian” was not a matter of race, but of culture. “Blacks” or “Asians” who accepted Egyptian culture and Egyptian gods were considered Egyptians.
Actually slavery in the ancient world was highly correlated with ethnic differences, because the largest source of slaves was captives taken in war and warfare was waged (setting aside the Roman empire) by largely homogenous ethnicities or tribes against neighboring peoples of a different ethnicity or tribe (albeit they may be of similar shades of skin color).
Tribalism describes the ancient world (again setting aside Roman civilization, which was a big step forward in human societies) better than racism, but one shouldn't pretend that tribalism was any better than racism or differed much from it in any essential way. To take a more modern example, the hatred between Hutus and Tutsis might not be considered racism by many people because both peoples happen to be black-skinned, but the tribalism at work there is essentially no different from racism.
...and of course, the Nubians had been beaten up, occupied, and squeezed for tribute by various Egyptian dynasties going quite far back in time, so it was really payback.
“What’s a nubian?”
Mark
It was correlated with ethnicity as you note, but it was not ethnically driven as it was in the Americas.
There were African Roman Emperors and African slaves and Germanic slaves and Germanic soldiery in the Empire.
Greek city states might be just as likely to enslave other Greeks as they would enslave non-Greeks.
In the world of the western 1700’s and early 1800’s, slavery was essentially race related. No?
Yes, I agree. As a result of the changing European economy in the Middle Ages, slavery largely died out in Europe (setting aside the problem of the persistence of serfdom in the Russian Empire and other far eastern lands).
Slavery came back when during the voyages of exploration the Portuguese invented the African slave trade. The huge numbers of African slaves transported to the New World lead to the association of slavery with race. And, of course, as slavery came under attack as immoral, its defenders attempted to justify it on racial grounds.
A Nubian was somebody from Nubia - from the Ancient Egyptian word “nb’ meaning gold as that area was a source of gold. It corresponded to modern day Sudan. Nubian was later used to refer to any black African as opposed to Egyptians and Berbers who werer not black.
During most of the Ancient Egyptian period however, Nubia was referred to as Kush and the inhabitants as Kushites. So I think Nubian was a later Egyptian term for the same people.
Google Nubia and Google Kush
I think Septimius Severus was probably a Berber. Not every African is or was Black, and black ethnocentrists would have us believe.
Ummm... I knew that...
I was actually quoting a line from one of the funniest scenes ever shot in a movie... From “Chasing Amy.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mSVZmk8Yzg
Actually, that’s the best scene in the entire movie. I’m not 100% sure that it’s worth watching the entire movie for that one scene though...
Sorry, just trying to be a smartass.
Mark
To the contrary, it was almost always ethnically-driven. In the ancient world (setting aside the Roman Empire, which, as I have said, was more advanced), typically, relatively homogenous ethnic groups made war on ethnically different neighboring peoples and made their captives of wars into slaves.
There were African Roman Emperors and African slaves and Germanic slaves and Germanic soldiery in the Empire.
I don't know why you are trying to take issue with me on the point of the Roman Empire, as I have already said the Roman Empire represented a major civilizational advance and a departure from typical practices in the ancient world.
Greek city states might be just as likely to enslave other Greeks as they would enslave non-Greeks.
In the case of the Greeks also, as I have said, they typically took as slaves captives of other Greek tribes defeated in war. The helots, for example, were from the tribe of the Messenians and were made to serve the Spartans after the Spartans defeated the Messenians in war.
In the world of the western 1700’s and early 1800’s, slavery was essentially race related. No?
The enslavement of the slaves used in the Western Hemisphere originated in largely the same way as slavery typically always had. One tribe or ethnic group (in this case black Africans) defeated another tribe or ethnic group (also black Africans) in war and made the captives into slaves. Only in this case, the enslavement happened in West Africa and the leaders of the victorious tribe sold their slaves to Portuguese, and later other European, slave traders to be transported and used as slaves in other lands.
The insistence on drawing a strong distinction between slavery between different races as opposed to slavery between different ethnicities is of little value. Killing and enslaving people who are ethnically different is little different from killing and enslaving people who are racially different, and one should not consider tribalism any better than racism, because in fact it differs little from it.
The Pharaohs were all black idiots even try to say that Cleopatra's family (the Ptolemy's) were black when in fact they were 100% Greek.
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