It represents a racist idea about what is "African" as if only people of negroid attributes ever widely populated any part of Africa.
(1) Historically, most of North Africa facing the Mediterranean Sea was never predominately populated by people with negroid attributes. All the ancient great city states on the coast of Africa, from Egypt to Carthage were not populated predominately be people with negroid attributes.
(2) Egypt, from ancient times, was a cosmopolitan nation, like the U.S. is today, where people came from and were a mixture of people all around the Middle East. But Egypt did have a dominant stock, and it was not negroid.
(3) The people who have the closest genetic likeness to most Egyptians are the Jews, particularly those Jews whose families never migrated to Europe and back. In truth, someone is not antisemitic when they think they are being antisemitic, for if they were they would be as intolerant of Egyptians as they are of Jews (genetically speaking). While even greater truth, is the fact that Arabs are actually semitic as well, although they are not as closely related to Jews as are Egyptians.
(4) Until Moslem armies conquered Egypt, they never considered themselves Arabs and they never in all their history considered themselves related to Africa south of Egypt as much as to the Mediterranean peoples and others north of Egypt in the Middle East.
Modern African Americans, in their honest pursuit of looking for some lost greatness that slavery stole from them, often latch onto the greatness of Egypt and claim it as their own. It is an understanable process for people whose past is based on a great crime against them and the shame of that crime. Yet the African ancestors of most African-Americans never lived in Egypt nor were ever part of Egyptian culture. They had existed for millenia on and near the western coast of Africa. The area had little cultural intercourse with Egypt, as reflected in the absence of Egyptian influences in the cultures of the area. Most African-Americans have about as much claim to Eqyptian heritage as 99% of Americans do to an Eskimo heritage. But it makes for great mythologies.
Almost all of those who were captured and sold as slaves in the Western Hemisphere originated in a relatively small area bordering the Gulf of Guinea (now the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon). There was some trade (mostly in salt) and there was a trade route between the Islamic Kingdom of Mali and Egypt in the 13th century, but that doesn't make the local residents Egyptians . . .
The reading that I've done on the subject of race & genetics suggests that skin color can not be definitively discerned from a parsing of the genes. Plus, as you stated, Egyptian society has always been 'cosmopolitan'. I expect that the Pharohs will therefore have genetic markers from several populations. Studying the genes may provide some useful insights, but probably is a waste of time from a skin-color perspective.
I'll go with how the Egyptians portrayed themselves in their art -- unless somebody can show me a good reason to believe that the Egyptians were misrepresenting their own appearance.
Actually, I would suspect that the Egyptian Coptic Chrisitians would bear the closest resemblance to ancient Egyptians.
Actually, I would suspect that the Egyptian Coptic Chrisitians would bear the closest resemblance to ancient Egyptians.
Actually, I would suspect that the Egyptian Coptic Chrisitians would bear the closest resemblance to ancient Egyptians.
For most of human history, Northern Africa was much more closely tied to Europe than it was to the rest of the African continent. It wasn't until the two forces of Muhammed and later Charlemagne that people started thinking of North Africa as not being a part of Europe.