Nubians in ancient Egypt - did this happen only in the 800´s b.c.?
bradwel...@yahoo.com
talking about the period of time, cerca the 800´s b.c., when Nubia
conquered Egypt? What else could they be referring to when they say
that ancient Egyptians were Nubian?
Bradwell Jackson
Matt Giwer
> conquered Egypt? What else could they be referring to when they say
> that ancient Egyptians were Nubian?
Generally they are referring to Blacks flying among the pyramids until the invading Whites stolen
their land and their wings. It is the Nation of Islam crap pushed by Screwie Louie Farakhan.
--
If Palestinians were Black, Israel would be a pariah state.
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Joe Bernstein
Bradwell Jackson <bradwel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> When people say that the ancient Egyptians were Nubian, are they
> talking about the period of time, cerca the 800s b.c., when Nubia
> conquered Egypt? What else could they be referring to when they say
> that ancient Egyptians were Nubian?
Any of several things:
1) Most likely, they're referring to one of the many myths people
have entertained about ancient Egypt. This one, popular with
Afrocentrists in the US at least, holds that the ancient Egyptians
looked just like West Africans, and makes about as much sense as
any other of the Egypt-myths floating around (namely, not quite
zero sense; most of the myths have some sort of seed of truth, the
relevant one in this case being that the Egyptians did not look
like most Europeans).
2) Alternatively, they may be referring to something real. Egypt
ruled Nubia (which is, technically, an area on the border between
Egypt and the Sudan, along the Nile) much of the time; the episode
in the 800s BC is just when Nubia returned the favour. It's
reasonable to assume that there was a certain amount of population
mixing that went on - in fact, one standard reply scholars make
to the Afrocentric kookery is to note that Egyptian tomb paintings
seem to show that the Egyptians thought of a wide range of skin
colours as normal, which suggests that in fact residents of Egypt
*were* reasonably familiar with Nubians, and not just as exotic
Others. So they may simply mean that some particular ancient
Egyptian was Nubian (although what on Earth that would *mean*, I'm
not sure - would they be claiming to have evidence of what that
particular person's native language was? or what?) Or they may
mean that some ancient Egyptians in general were Nubians. This
is, however, the interpretation of the idea you're inquiring about
that requires the most violence to the phrasing you're using, so
I dunno.
3) As you note, they may simply be referring to the 8th century BC
or thereabouts. This, however, also requires a certain amount of
violence to the phrasing.
4) I attended a lecture years ago that proposed a notion I haven't
seen repeated since. I don't know enough to comment on its
plausibility, but can comment on, if you will, its *probability*.
First, however, the idea.
This is that we have an archaeological sequence in Nubia, and
we have an archaeological sequence in Egypt, but the one in Nubia,
per lecturer Carter Lupton years ago, becomes a whole lot scantier
right around the time the First Dynasty gets going. Now, the
standard interpretation of this, per Lupton, is that Narmer and
co. went and conquered Nubia. But he wanted to suggest that instead,
the Nubians had gone and *become* Narmer & Co., that is, had invaded
en masse.
Now, as origin stories go, this sort of works. I mean, invaders
as founders of states is a pretty common pattern, and in terms of
what I know of theories of state origins, works reasonably well.
*But*. The evidence on offer, far as I recall, is basically that
there's this gap in Nubia. In general, gaps in the archaeological
record are things it's unwise to argue from. If you have really
*good* archaeology of your region, and you have at least a few
examples of what kind of site you should be looking for so you
can be pretty sure you're not just missing something exotic, OK;
but I have no reason to think these conditions should hold for
Nubia, much of which, after all, is now under Lake Nasser. And
in *particular*, my understanding is that the Nubian archaeological
record has gotten a great deal less gappy that it was when I heard
that lecture.
So even in the unlikely case that this is what these people mean,
the idea is also unlikely to be true.
Anyway, that's what I can come up with.
Joe Bernstein
--
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