I am an Ancient Egypt nerd and it's painful.


divine--apathia's avatar
ugh, I have so many complaints.

1.

It's almost certain that some people in Ancient Egypt were black. It's not rocket science.  A country in Africa, that has black people? shock, horror! and it's not just common sense, there are mummies with afro hair, people of dark skin in art, etc. (Though some argue that skin colour in art is symbolic.)

However, Ancient Egypt, there was a lot of people who didn't originate in Egypt, especially during the later period.

Cleopatra is the most well known example of that, she was part of the Ptolemaic dynasty, who were from Greece.

So if you're talking about Ancient Egypt being 'white washed'... Cleopatra is literally the worst person to make an example with. Cleopatra was not fucking black :iconheaddeskplz:

2.

Don't get me started on the whole
'Isis = the virgin mary!'
'Horus = Jesus!'
'Set = Devil!'

FFS stop trying to force Christianity onto Kemeticism. get fucked. :iconfliptableplz: 

Isis wasn't a virgin mother, she collected the cut up pieces of Osiris, made him a new dick and fucked him! Horus doesn't have 12 disciples!  Set is chaotic, but not evil. the evil being in Ancient Egypt is  A/pep but even then you can't compare the two because A/pep is basically a zombie, for lack of a better word. they don't think or anything, and they don't have any thing to do with condemning a person or harming people, they just want to destroy creation.

3.

so many books on Ancient Egypt are inaccurate :stare: some of it is just really poor transliteration of the language and poor naming of rituals etc, but some of it is the  oddest, most out there shit

I've read everything from  'these gods represent all these races' (sorry, but there is no evidence that Ancient Egyptians knew about Aboriginal Australians, let  alone had a god for them :stare:) to even 'Atlantis was the creation story of Ancient Egypt' >_>

that's not how this works, that's not how any of this works!!
Comments106
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
BrandonScottPilcher's avatar
I've been interested in ancient Egypt since second grade, and I agree with you on #1. Except maybe the part on Cleopatra. It actually is possible she had an African mother at least, if her (half?) sister's skeletal remains are anything to go by:

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/also_in_th…
LizzyChrome's avatar
1.) yes.

2.) I believe that trope is called "Hijacked By Jesus."

3.) ugh, it's awful when writers don't do their research. But at least the Ancient Egyptians aren't around anymore. What's worse is when they get facts wrong about cultures that still exist!
e-c-h's avatar
RyanPowers's avatar
I really hate this "Were the Egyptians black?" argument.  Race wars are stupid.  I'm tired of racist white people saying that black people never achieved anything and I'm tired of Afrocentrists arbitrarily attributing all of history's inventions and achievements to black people.  It's fucking retarded.  Ancient cultures are interesting because they're different and exotic, not because they prove one race to be superior or inferior.  Inventions are interesting because science and technology are neat and fun to learn about, not because they prove the superiority or inferiority of a race.  Stop fucking getting up in arms about this shit.  There are more interesting things to argue about than race.

</argument>
LizzyChrome's avatar
This.

Life will be so much easier when humans get past the idea of "race."
horsiefreak's avatar
I sympathise, I am not as into Ancient Egypt as you seem to be, But I know... more than almost all my peers ( and some of my teachers) about generally history, its annoying. a SOSE teacher ( SOSE is the Study Of Society and Environment, which includes History) knew less about the subject she was teaching then me.
Lytrigian's avatar
1. Ancient Egyptians very much did use skin tone in symbolic ways. Osiris, for example, was often depicted with green skin. There's a fairly famous object from Tutankhamen's tomb, a perfume box showing him with black skin on one side and white skin on the other. In that case it's very clearly symbolic.

Egyptians depicted themselves uniformly with a kind of medium tan skin tone, which they contrasted in art with Nubians who they showed to be much darker, and Asiaitics who they showed to be much lighter. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Set… Now, no doubt this was to a degree an artistic convention, and real Egyptians ran the gamut from moderately dark to fairly light, and it would be incorrect in any event to call them "white". They obviously did not look like Europeans. But to say they were "black" suggests they looked like Subsaharan Africans, which is almost certainly incorrect. The Egyptians themselves didn't seem to think so.

2. Ugh. Yeah. Everyone who goes there vomits up the same supposed lists of "correspondences", but not one of them can ever point to an actual myth to back themselves up, and often don't even seem to understand what I'm talking about when I ask for primary sources. Just a note: the golden dildo was a fairly late addition to the Osiris myth. As far as we can tell in the oldest myths, Isis did indeed find Osiris' dick along with the rest of him.

3. For a long time very little was known about ancient Egypt apart from the remains of their impressive building projects. That allowed all kinds of silly fantasies to develop about them, fantasies which persist even though we now know a great deal about their history. There's no shaking it loose from some people.
divine--apathia's avatar
1. there are AE mummies with african hair 3.bp.blogspot.com/-tIfAxGh3MkI… and a lot of the mummies who don't have stereotypical looking "african hair",  the products and hair styles  have been found in other african people. like this guy here i946.photobucket.com/albums/ad… on the right, has a hair style that's commonly seen in AE 3.bp.blogspot.com/-Dgn-MdHM9As… (and they both used fat to achieve those styles.)


I can't be bothered going through my history because it'll take forever but there is a slew of studies that place 2-6 races in ancient egypt, some of which have african markers. as well as ones with grecian markers and sumerian markers.

2. at least in a kemetic sense, older/younger myths don't have precedence over each other, contradictory myths sit together, without any problem, For example amun/khnum/re  all have creator myths. 
Lytrigian's avatar
there is a slew of studies that place 2-6 races in ancient egypt, some of which have african markers

That would be among the least surprising results possible, but in the era I'm talking about, "Grecian" markers are highly unlikely, and Greeks and Sumerians are not contemporaneous. Sumer had disappeared as a political entity and a distinct people by the time Mycenaean Greece was flourishing.

And by "late" I meant too that we don't find it in Egyptian sources. We find it only in Plutarch's version of the story. It's often included uncritically in retellings of the myth, but we really have no idea where it got it from.
OctarinePegacorn's avatar

This reminds me of when I was reading the comments under the video for “Dark Horse” by Katy Perry ft. Juicy J and a bunch of people were like “She’s referencing Aphrodite? That’s stupid. Aphrodite's Greek, Cleopatra's Egyptian." The song doesn’t really fit with the video (which is set in hiphop!ancient Egypt) in the first place, and I’m pretty sure Cleopatra worshipped Isis, but some people…

benji-0's avatar
My girlfriend is big into egypt too and keeps correcting me. :saddummy:
ThunderStormKnights's avatar
I used to have a crush on Osiris...
shininginthedarkness's avatar
I just think of them as the exact color they painted themselves as, even though the boys and girls were painted different colors so my theory is impossible. But I picture them as having african features but kind of brownish-reddish skin.
I think we can't or shouldn't try to shove them into existing racial ideas, but if we did they'd be way closer to black than white.
MegaHerts's avatar
You can also instead look at this with a totally different mindset. If you understand a culture enough to know how what it actually is, it is also useful to know how we misunderstand Egypt. You can make fun fact images like "Did you know? Egypt is far from homogenous - Egypt was a a multiracial society including Subsaharan Africans and Greeks!"

The comparison with Christianity is hilariously stupid though. What was the context? Was it from some source from one of those shady, ugly Christian website?
Ebonsong's avatar
I'm not into AE stuff (anymore, did research a lot on it years ago), nor of that belief, but I totally get this.

My only complaint to your complaint is there wasn't much meat in the post. You need to add more to this. :P
TheBlackBullets's avatar
I got so tired of seeing that post with incorrect information that I just ended up blocking it.
divine--apathia's avatar
the Cleopatra post?  :lol:
pamixx's avatar
Did you see that Google Maps is mapping the pyramids in street view? AWESOME
Igloo9201's avatar
Anubis FTW.

That does sound painful.  HOW DO I FIND ACCURATE SOURCES I'M RESEARCHING THIS SHIT SO HALP.
divine--apathia's avatar
Look into the kemetic communities :nod:  
wrathfulwraith66's avatar
Walk in the shoes of a viking nerd. It's even more painful!!!!!
divine--apathia's avatar
Technically, kemeticism is my religion, so I'm not just a nerd :lol: 


Are you just a viking nerd, or are you a heathen?
LvKA3's avatar
Literally walk in their shoes. Steal them and wear them. Talk about uncomfortable foot wear!