[Governor Dinwiddie]

article: “ancient Egyptians were found to be most closely related to ancient people from the Middle East and Western Asia.”

I guess this means that the Pyramids were not built by African Negroes flying Sopwith Camels.

[TheThirdRuffian]

Depends which Egyptian kingdom you are talking about and which pyramids.

The time between the Old kingdom and cleopatra was over 3,000 years.

In fact, Cleopatra lives closer to us in time than the time the great pyramids were built. The Egyptians had archaeologists who studied ancient Egyptians.

In the middle, there were, indeed, various southern African kingdoms.

[Verginius Rufus]

Is this W. Paul van Pelt related to Linus van Pelt? Of course Snoopy is Charlie Brown’s dog, not Linus’.

[Beowulf9]

Or that Cleopatra was black (as so many believe).

She was Greek.

[Verginius Rufus]

Ancient Egyptian paintings portray Egyptian men as darker than Asians, but definitely different from the clearly black people from further south in Africa.

The 4th-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus has this to say about Egyptians' appearance:

"Now the men of Egypt are, as a rule, somewhat swarthy and dark of complexion..." (22.16.23)

The Latin reads: Homines autem Aegyptii plerique subfusculi sunt et atrati...

Subfusculus is from fuscus, "dark-colored, dark, black"--the sub prefix would indicate "somewhat." Atratus is from ater, "black. dark."

St. Paul was mistaken for an Egyptian (Acts 21.38) by a Roman chiliarch in Jerusalem--who obviously thought that a white man might be an Egyptian. The Roman didn't think Paul was a Jew from Alexandria but a regular Egyptian.