Yep, I'm jumping on this bandwagon... You may or may not have questions, and I (hopefully!) have answers!
Ask Me About Ancient Egypt
- Thread starter Oracle of Sobek π
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mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
How far down into Sub-Saharan Africa did the Ancient Egyptians travel/trade/explore?
How many times was Ancient Egypt conquered by outside nations? What nations were in Egypt before it was unified?
I believe Upper and Lower Egypt. Which were unified by either Menes, Narmer, or the Scorpion King to make Egypt. Also those three people may have been the same king.
As a matter of fact, I do! More than the average layman, for sure, but not as much as an actual professional. I'm capable of reading/formulating basic sentences containing multiple clauses, and with a dictionary on hand I can muscle my way through a text.
It's an Afro-Asiatic language that forms its own sub-group within that family, kind of like Greek, Albanian, or Armenian in Indo-European. There are some linguists who think it should be classified as a Berber language, though.
We aren't entirely sure. The "female king" Hatshepsut (Reign: 1479β1458 BCE) sent an expedition to Punt, which may be Somalia, and Pepi II (Reign: 2278 BC β c. 2184 BCE) sent a nobleman by the name of Harkhuf on several expeditions, one of which is believed to have reached what is now South Sudan. It may have been further south even than that, though as Harkhuf is known to have brought back a "pygmy" to Pepi II's court.
The language aspect: Surprisingly good! They made a nice dig at Budge (who's now notorious among Egyptologists for his bad translations) and even slipped in a nice easter egg where they made Jaye Davidson say "I am really shitty" instead of "I am all powerful".
Everything else: There's still a hole in the wall where I was pounding my head.
Thoroughly dependent on the dynasty. While many pharaohs married their sisters (and in some cases, mothers and daughters), these marriages were as often ceremonial as not, and heirs would often be produced by minor concubines anyway. But yes, some could definitely give Charles II a run for his money. The Ptolemy's, for example, who weren't even Egyptians, had a family tree more closely resembling a family tumbleweed.
It was arguably conquered 8 times: 1st by the Heqa Khasewet (lit. "Foreign Rulers" - "Hyksos" to most people), a Semitic people who didn't actually conquer the whole country; an enclave in the south remained independent and eventually rallied and drove them out. The 2nd time was by Libyan Berber tribes, who again mostly held power in the north, as the south was frequently de facto independent. The 3rd time was by the Kushites, who saw themselves as the guardians of Egyptian kingship and tradition (that's Egypt's influence over Kush in its imperial days coming back to bite it in the ass). The 4th time was by Assyrians, who drove the Kushites out - but they didn't so much conquer Egypt as puppetize it. Funnily enough, the puppets the Assyrians put on the Egyptian throne eventually got too big for their britches and sent them packing back to Nineveh, and actually presided over a brief renaissance... But that was swiftly ended by the Persians, the 5th conquerors, who did outright rule the whole country and depicted themselves as pharaohs on Egyptian temples. Egypt threw them out a couple of times, but they always came right back, so it's generally seen as a single conquest. The 6th time, the Persians were traded for Macedonian Greeks (Alexander the Great), the 7th time was the Romans, and the 8th was a brief stint with Queen Zenobia's Palmyrene Empire.
Prior to the first unification, there were about 4 polities in the Nile Valley: Djebaut (Buto) in the Nile Delta, and Tjeni (This/Thinis), Nubt (Naqada), and Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Upper Egypt. Tjeni eventually absorbed the latter two and went on to conquer the Djebaut (Lower Egypt) polity, POSSIBLY under Narmer (unification may have occurred prior to his reign, and he may have been putting down a rebellion). Menes was possibly fictional, though there's a good chance he's Narmer under another name, and "the Scorpion King" was a predynastic ruler of Tjeni - possibly Narmer's predecessor.
That's really interesting actually I might have to ask you something about that in the future. Have you ever researched/learned much about Coptic?
I'd like to learn some Coptic, but I have yet to get around to that. I can read the alphabet (it's basically Greek with a few extra letters derived from shorthand hieroglyphs to represent sounds not covered by the Greek alphabet - one of which actually found its way into Cyrillic - but I'm rambling), and that's the extent of it.
What color skin did the Egyptians have?
I have heard tell that they may have had Negroid or Caucasian skin, or Asiatic skin but I'm not sure!
I have heard tell that they may have had Negroid or Caucasian skin, or Asiatic skin but I'm not sure!
THAT question, my friend, NEVER fails to open a can of worms.
You always get Afrocentrists on one side claiming they were totally Sub-Saharan Africans, and White Supremacists on the other claiming they (or at least the elites) were blonde-haired and blue-eyed.
I am of the opinion that both those camps are full of bullshit (though the white supremacists more so... I will NOT abide by blonde Egyptians, dammit!)
Basically, Egypt sits at the crossroads of Africa, the Middle East, and Mediterranean Europe. It was settled in prehistoric times by people from all over those regions, to the point where they mixed together so much one can't honestly say that they were "Negroid" or "Caucasian" or "Asiatic". They were, in short, pretty much all of the above - a mix of genetic legacies and appearances. The further south you went, the more they probably looked like Ethiopians; the further north you went, the more they probably looked like other modern North Africans (Algerians, for example), with the occasional exceptionally dark or exceptionally light person mixed in. Pretty much universally dark (i.e. black or dark brown) hair though. Most importantly, the Egyptians themselves didn't seem to care. They depicted themselves with a variety of skin colours, and for them was made someone "Egyptian" was their culture, not their appearance.
TL;DR They were basically brown, but they didn't care, and neither should you.
Recent discoveries of statues etc has shown Cleopatra in a different light, that she wasnt the "beautiful" queen mark anthony helplessly fell for.
True/False?
I told some friends cleopotras beauty was debunked and she make people write things the way we hear them now...but really I was just going on a limb with very little backround proof.
True/false?
True/False?
I told some friends cleopotras beauty was debunked and she make people write things the way we hear them now...but really I was just going on a limb with very little backround proof.
True/false?
Thanks for clearing that up!
It's just that I went on the Wikipedia page regarding the "Egyptian race controversy" and there were about 10 different theories, all which contradicts the others. And Wikipedia doesn't give a consensus, so it left me justly confused.
Would you say that modern Egyptians are basically Ancient Egyptians as far as genetics goes?
True, kind of. The pictures of Cleopatra (technically "the" Cleopatra is Cleopatra VII) on coins and several Hellenistic bust of her show her with a rather harsh looking face and a hooked, beak-like nose (she likely had a few exaggerated facial features due to the roughly 300 years of inbreeding in the previously mention Ptolemaic dynasty of which Cleopatra was a part). There is a general consensus from ancient, close-to-contemporary sources, though, that she had a very pleasant (even melodious) voice, could speak multiple languages, and was sharp, witty, and intelligent. So in that sense (personality wise) she may have been considered beautiful, and Mark Anthony may have fallen for Cleopatra the person rather than Cleopatra the face and body...
I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?
I haven't really looked into the subject enough to provide a legitimate comment. I do not consider modern Egypt to be a continuation of ancient Egypt, though. They are two very different societies and cultures.
However, as a general rule I don't really consider any ancient people to be "alive genetically" today. People move around, they intermarry and reproduce, and pass along a nice hodgepodge of genetic material. That's okay, desirable even, and I myself am definitely a product of that process. Cultures rise and fall, but people remain people, so the genetics of ancient Egyptians vs. modern Egyptians today, as far as I'm concerned, is a moot point.
Would you say Egyptian Copts, as opposed to the general population, are a continuation of ancient Egypt?
It was part of the same question, just hastily typed. I just spoonfed some friends about Cleopotra putting out propaganda and making scribes etc write her as being "beautiful" so no one would know she wasn't..though I have no idea if that was true or not.
A cultural continuation of Roman/Byzantine Egypt, definitely, albeit with a healthy dose of Arab cultural influence... But only a continuation of Ancient Egypt in a linguistic sense, and even that not so much anymore (there's only something in the neighbourhood of 300 native Coptic speakers today).