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RfC

It is currently under dispute as to what the content and subject of this article should consist of. The main point of contention seems to be as to whether this article should center on the race/ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians or if it should focus on controversy surrounding this.

  • hah, "currently"? This "dispute" has crippled this "article" since its inception in 2005. It is high time it is {{split}} into decent articles with well-defined foci, one on actual archaeogenetics and Egyptology, the other on Afrocentrist ethnic nationalism. dab (𒁳) 11:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

It is fairly well established that the northern part of Egypt was a mixing pot of Middle Eastern and Black African with the Southern and Eastern part being Nubian. The Northern part was routinely invade and brought in people from every part of the Empire to work on their extensive construction. I like splitting the postings so that the information that is relevant gets out there. Ultimately the race of the people and whether or not they were light brown or dark brown skin matters less than their contributions to society. (Aethercracker (talk) 02:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC))

If I'm understanding you, you do think that it would be a good idea to split this into two articles; one about the archaeogenetics and one about...something else. My problem is that I have no idea what the 'something else' (i.e. Afrocentrist ethnic nationalism) would be or even how we could go about writing it without creating the same problems that this article has.Woland (talk) 19:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
I guess we could have a separate article "Controversy about Race of Ancient Egyptians", which is what some want this article to be. LuxNevada (talk) 22:38, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Maiherpri

I think we should include Maiherpri (he was Egyptian noble from Nubian background) papyrus in the discussion, Maiherpri papyrus show him offering to the Gods and whilst he is shown with the normal profile of men of the period, his skin is painted dark brown rather than the usual red ochre and his hair is shown as being short and curly. This papyrus clearly shows how different skin colors were accurately depicted and that a darker skin was the exception rather than the rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiherpri --Anubis233 (talk) 01:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Please see the article on original research. --Woland (talk) 06:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Weird material

This is Wikipedia. Not essay-pedia. This is classic {{essay-entry}} stuff. I agree with it, actually, but it just doesn't belong here. Sorry. See also WP:SYNTH. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 22:13, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

  • I totally agree. Wikipedia is not a place for essays. The deleted section starts with "If one accepts the UNESCO statement on the race question from 1950, it should not matter what skin colour a person has, even if the person in question is the head of state of a mighty nation." This is tortured language! Wikpedia is certainly not the place for well written essays, let alone badly written ones! LuxNevada (talk) 22:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

this is not an article about facts

Ok, probably it is to much to ask a newcomer to an article to read up on a long discussion like this. On the other hand, with all those disputed notices, etc. around I wonder why at least the attempt to do this is not even made. Anyway, if'd read thea rchives, you would finde this comment by User:John Carter: "The numerous previous discussions regarding this article, and the ArbCom, came to that conclusion, that this article is about the current controversy, yes." Based on my knowledge on Nazi and related ideology I had added a section on why this question is so controversial. The whole point is that the controversy is not about facts. Seriously, if it was about facts the Nordicists could not have attempted to deny that the ancient Egyptians had a darker skin colour then the Northern Europeans. Only ideology that is completely detached from the facts would attempt such a thing. On the other hand: If 'white people' had not claimed that the ancient Egyptians were white, 'black people' would have no reason emphasize that the ancient Egpytians were black. This is the reason why I had added the stuff about the 'Nordic Egypt' at the top of the article. If you wan an article about *facts*, sorry, then this is the wrong place. Seriously, we should move a little content then to Origin of the Nilotic peoples and delete the remainder. The issue is notable, but apparently we will not be able to have an article on it, because we lack an editor the is able to write about it from a neutral perspective and willing to battle such a version through.

And especially: If you thing the race and culture section is to essayistic, please consider, that this is not an article about facts. An article on a controversy, on the other hand, has to give all viewpoints, give the arguments for and against them, and, to be useful for the reader, come to a weighted conclusion. wp:NPOV is a policy, and I am willing to brake all style guidelines to have an article that complies with it. This doesn't mean that you'd have to accept that section as it is, but you have to specify to which sentences you object and we can see how we can reword it. Zara1709 (talk) 22:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

This is not a article about "Nordicists", which is what the deleted section reads like. Also the style of the section is quite like an essay, rather than encyclopedic. Also I just cannot get my mind round to your "this is not an article about facts". Are you saying that this article should ignore facts? LuxNevada (talk) 22:46, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Zara does have a point. This article should primarily be about how the "race of ancient egyptians" meme has developed within Afrocentrism. The actual (non) debate itself can go to some other articles (though actually Origin of the Nilotic peoples is itself a massive {{essay-entry}}). What I don't agree is that the section I've just removed again is the way to fix this. As LuxNevada points out, it does read as being related to a different topic, quite apart from the original synthesis problems. Moreschi (talk) (debate)
At least you see one point of my argument... But what about the other points? I read the section again. The only sentence that I personally consider obviously problematic was the one about the ancient Egyptian paintings, because it would need a citation. In the light of what I have written previously an article on a controversy needs to some extend imitate an essay: Some Nordicists believed the ancient Egyptians to be white. Is this view sustainable? No. Afrocentrist believe that the ancient Egyptians were black. Is this view sustainable? Yes. Conclusion: The ancient Egyptians were black, what some white people would find hard to believe. This is a typical thesis-antithesis-conclusion scheme, but there isn't any other way to write an article about a controversy.
This section isn't any more an essay than the history book I referred to. Texts about controversies can't be written any "more encyclopaedic" than this. I don't have to spell out wp:NPOV, do it? If you are to give all significant views and weight them, people who want to have an article "XY is fact." are going to be disappointed.
And also: There is a very good reason to include the Nordicist view in this article. Otherwise the reader might fail to understand why this question is an issue for Black People. It would appears as if out of nothing Blacks started to talk about the "Race of ancient Egyptians". The white racism pre-dates them a 60 years or so should be mentioned with a few sentences. The "Hamite-hypothesis would be more important, but as it happened I started with the Nordicists. It would actually be possible to include this, too, and probably reword a few sentences, but this has to wait until tomorrow, because I am already at 3 reverts. Zara1709 (talk) 23:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't agree that an article titled "Race of ancient Egyptians" should have a focus on the controversy about what various sides of the race debate claim. That article should be titled "Controversy about Race of ancient Egyptians". However if there is a majority of two (Moreschi and Zara) then I am not going to debate this point and you can focus on Afrocentrism. I know enough about Wikipedia to know how these things can drag on.
I really came to this curious to know about the race of ancient Egyptians and was instead treated to statements like "To allege a relation between race and culture is common in Racism". If you have to have this Afrocentrism, then write it better so that it reads like an objective description of the debate rather than an essay. And also move it down to within the article instead of being right at the top. I would support a re-write by Moreschi. LuxNevada (talk) 07:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
You still have not replied to my argument that it is impossible to write an "objective description of a debate" that doesn't emulate the structure of an essay. Since you have at least have stated what wording you object by now, I can see how we can reword this... I think I will also have to restore one passages removed by Miskon - the current Egyptian self-view is no less relevant than the view of contemporary afro-Americans. Zara1709 (talk) 20:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
You wrote "it is impossible to write an "objective description of a debate" that doesn't emulate the structure of an essay." No, that is incorrect, it is possible to objectively describe a debate without making it into an essay. There, I have answered your question. The entire section is essay-like, by far the worst case of un-encyclopedic writing I have seen on Wikipedia. Please don't restore. If Moreschi wants to re-write, I will support him/her. LuxNevada (talk) 20:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey wouldn't it be cool if the gods came back and walked the earth. You know that would put and end to all this bickering. Well one would only hope it would.--204.118.241.234 (talk) 21:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Great, LuxNevada, now the ip's who adhere to certain myths are back on this talk page. It is kind of hard for me to go on working on topics related to white racism, when some people call my mother a 'nigger' on my talk page and other people bash my style of writing as un-encyclopedic when I am trying to point out that the ancient Egyptians were black. If you haven't done so, read the talkpage archives here. The disputed section was written after a longer discussion with someone wouldn't see the problem of a theory of the Aryan race originating in Atlantis. There are still ideologies out there that most people will now find completely absurd, but which were once common ground in Nazi Germany. Zara1709 (talk) 21:20, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Look, I am sorry that someone abused your mother, that's completely out of line. My intention is not to abuse you, nor to get into arguments about superiority or inferiority of any race. What concerns me here is that the section reads like a bad essay and is definitely not written in an encyclopedic style. LuxNevada (talk) 21:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
No, if you want to call the disputed section "the worst case of un-encyclopedic writing I have seen on Wikipedia" you are confusing a textbook on the history of ideas (racism, in this case) with a biology textbook. The lines: "To allege a relation between race and culture is common in Racism. Historically, the adherents of the concept of a Nordic race went as far as to declare the presence of 'their' race the necessary condition for any culture, a tendency that was already reminiscent in the work of Georges Vacher de Lapouge and reached its climax at Alfred Rosenberg. Consequently Nordicist like the Norwegian-German eugenicist Alfred Mjöen alleged that the Nordic race had formed the ruling class in ancient Egypt." were basically translated from Lutzhöft's dissertation on Nordic thought. The style of writing that you call un-encyclopedic might not pass in a biology paper, but it will pass definitely at religious or political science departments. Zara1709 (talk) 21:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite

So, I am actually attempting to rewrite the article. Of course, the efforts will be sabotaged if the edit war continues. But please consider this: I didn't remove any content at all (only a few lines that were redundant because the part on the languages had previously been debated in two different sections)! Before I would remove a section, I would discuss it here first. Furthermore, consider that the question whether the Nordicist's view should be included or not is a separate issue from the one of rewriting the article. If you are of the opinion that it shouldn't be included, we can discuss it here. But I think that there are good reasons for its inclusion. 1) It is notable as a minority view. Aside from wp:NPOV considerations: If we don't include it there will be occasional rants about "Nordic Egypt" on this talk page. 2) It is a perfect example of the ideological core of this controversy. It is even based on a first class academic source, a dissertation at a history department that even won an award (only drawback is, that it is in German.) 3) If there was no section on the Nordicist, one would have to explain the ideological content of the controversy on the basis of the dynastic race theory and the Hamitic hypothesis. There will be literature on this (most likely), but I wouldn't know where to find this, but more importantly one would be faced with the question whether these theories constitute scientific racism and then way we will never be able to get this article out of the dispute. For the Nordicists, this is clear and undisputed.

So, if we all attempt to write an encyclopaedia here and don't take concerns about an un-encyclopedic tone as a warrant for disruptive reverting, (feel free to use inline tags), I will continue the rewrite as soon as I find time. We can then move this article to Controversy about the race of ancient Egyptians and see if we can merge Origin of the Nilotic peoples. On the other hand, if you want to continue the edit war, you might achieve it that I withdraw from the article. But that won't help the article, I'd guess... Zara1709 (talk) 23:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The re-written version is much better. However this part "This was part of a general tendency to declare the presence of the 'white' race the necessary condition for any culture, which was already reminiscent in the work of Georges Vacher de Lapouge and reached its climax at Alfred Rosenberg.[19] However, the Nordicist's attempt to claim the achievements of ancient cultures for 'their' race was already highly controversial when it came to the Roman Empire;[20] For the ancient Egyptians the Nordicist's claim is not worth any serious consideration at all,[21] but it illustrates why this topics is an issue in modern society. White people, who were unable to accept the historic achievements of people with a darken skin than themselves, felt the need to rewrite human history in racial terms. In this extreme case the element of ideology is clearly visible. However, even within the scientific community, the question of the Origin of the Nilotic peoples was, until the 1970s, overshadowed by a debate about "race"." is still essay-like and un-encyclopedic, which I have accordingly deleted. LuxNevada (talk) 04:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
HAVE YOU READ ANYTHING OF WHAT I HAD WRITTEN ON THIS TALK PAGE? Why do you think I write a 12 line discussion entry on, among other, why the Nordicist's view is relevant here? Could you at least have the courtesy to state whether you consider it relevant and only demand that it should be rewritten completely or whether you don't consider it relevant at all? And of course I have understood by now that you consider my style of writing as "un-encyclopedic", which is why I have made efforts to explain that it is appropriate to this content. Instead of just repeating "essay" and "un-encyclopedic" you be should looking at my arguments and trying to substantiate your point. Otherwise we are just stuck at the point that we obviously have different ideas of what an encyclopaedia article is. I think I have repeatedly made clear that we can discuss this issue here (of course, a paragraph about such a topic is difficult to word). It is difficult to get it right the first try, but unlike other editors I am actually doing something here. For wp:civil and all that stuff, removing the disputed passage was unnecessary. If you don't want to discuss it, you simply give that impression you just don't like this topic to be mentioned, for whatever reason. I would just revert, but I am to bored of this to count whether another revert would be within the limits of wp:3RR. Zara1709 (talk) 06:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I have read what you have written, and there is no need to YELL. I understand you think that an essay style is appropriate, but it is not. That is not something I made up, but the way Wiki works. I appreciate you wanting to "doing something here". My efforts are also to make Wiki better. I just feel that essay like rantings about racism is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. LuxNevada (talk) 08:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
This is an article about the controversy about the race of ancient Egyptians. Some white racists believed that the ancient Egyptians were 'white' (more white than the Mediterranean people). I asked you to to tell me whether you think that this is relevant in this article (considering wp:NPOV: "The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly." ) Is the Nordicist's view, which academic literature of the 70s has analysed as ideology, relevant? Even writing in caps did not help you notice this question, so I guess this is the end of the discussion. Zara1709 (talk) 15:51, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
i think the Nordic view is legitimate to mention. you have at least 3 references in there and it is part of the record of egyptology and racist views hsitorically. it has historical interest. i think the language can be modified a bit so it is more neutral, rather than just taking it out, but also you have left out the guiseppe sergi views which are also part of the record. i think a compromise can be arranged in rewording rather than editors just removing things they don't like. that does not show good faith.Zapnathpantwo (talk) 18:21, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, let's try to be constructive. I am leaving the section largely as it is. I am only taking out the sentence "Before the UNESCO statement on the race question from 1950, theories of scientific racism frequently alleged a relation between race and culture." It is hard to believe that an "UNESCO statement" brought about a sea change, that racists theories changed overnight and stopped alleging a relation between race and culture. LuxNevada (talk) 19:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
My last post referred to the prior version of Zapnathpantwo. In the newer version I find this completely un-encyclopedic "Such claims illustrate why the topic remains an issue in modern society. White people, who were unable to accept the historic achievements of people with a darken skin than themselves, felt the need to rewrite human history in racial terms. In this extreme case the element of ideology is clearly visible." Come on! Besides reeking of particular editors' opinions, it is unsourced. I am sure you can find a source that says "White people, who were unable to accept the historic achievements of people with a darken skin than themselves, felt the need to rewrite human history in racial terms". Cite such a source and I will make it clear it is that author's opinion. LuxNevada (talk) 19:53, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
So what. If you are concerned about a sentence being original research, then there is the or-tag. The whole point of this controversy here is not that I am saying that my writing is perfect, but that LuxNevada shows no intent of criticizing it in a civil form. Seriously, repeated removal of the content in question when a discussion is being asked for appears to me more uncivil that a lot of things that are sometimes said on discussion pages. I know how to deal with the usual pov-pushers by now, but I don't know how to deal with this. Anyway, whereas LuxNevada apparently doesn't trust me to write something encyclopaedic, I'd have to insist on some REALLY important distinction here. "Nordic" is not the same as "White", it is not even the same as "Aryan". (Thus the material on Gobineau.) One of the previous versions explained the core of the 'Nordic Egypt' argument as "the claim the the ancient Egyptians had a skin as white (or as pale) as the contemporary Norwegians," before I removed that to take the concerns about an encyclopaedic tone into account. So currently the explanation is longer and and not as direct, which might make some readers overlook it. Nobody (except the adherents of such 'myths') can take a 'Nordic Egypt' seriously into consideration; It is on the same level as that Aryans-out-of-Atlantis theory (and quite different from the Hamitic-hypothesis). Even Lutzhöft, who is on the level of the discussions about race from the 1960s, bashes it as pseudo-science. His study is, btw. the only one detailed enough, so I'd say that it is authoritative. I would really like to work out the details of the development of 'scientific' theories about a Hamitic Egypt, but I don't know if I want to put up with it if the bickering here continues. Zara1709 (talk) 06:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Zara, I cannot agree with what you think "civil" means. You write "repeated removal of the content in question when a discussion is being asked for appears to me more uncivil". That is not uncivil, what it really means is that you haven't convinced me that your essay-type writing is acceptable on Wiki. You write "essay or not-essay", but no, "not-essay" is not-acceptable. I am leaving the section about Hamites, even though I think it is kind of irrelevant to the article. Other sections, like un-sourced statements, and discussion about the "Nordic" race are being removed. LuxNevada (talk) 08:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Edit warring is uncivil, of course. Some of the lines of the the section were written hastily and definitely needed to be reworded, but others took me quite some time to formulate. (Not counting the time that I spend on reading the sources anyway.) It is not a great prospect for an encyclopaedia that is a collaboration when the efforts some people make are undone by others.
You are demanding that my arguments instantly convince you that the content in question should be kept? Have you stopped for a minute to think what this means? If both sided take not being convinced as a sufficient reason for a revert, then the edit war just continues. If we go by wp:consensus, not being convinced can only mean that further discussion is necessary. That is just a specific problem of this discussion; there are several other editors out there who are worse.
I don't know if it would be worth it to continue the discussion whether the sentence on he UNESCO statement on the race questionshould be kept, but I do it anyway: From the articles on The Race Question and Scientific racism I obtained the information that: "Such theories [of Scientific racism], and associated actions, have been strongly denounced since World War II and the Holocaust, in particular by a 1950 UNESCO statement, signed by an international group of scholars, known as The Race Question." To give the reader a broad chronological context, I found it necessary to include this here. That is why I used the word 'before' to state a temporal relation. The UNESCO statemant was not the reason scientific racism disappeared, but it marked the turning point.If I want to say that "the UNESCO statement brought about a sea change," that would be a causal relation an I would use the word 'because'. So I'm adding it back in. We can discuss the general issue of "objectivity" tomorrow. Zara1709 (talk) 09:53, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The Issue as I see it

Other than essay-like writing, there is another issue that I have a problem with in this article.

The topic is "Race of Ancient Egyptians". Leaving aside racial biases, a reader may be actually interested in knowing the answer. If I found the answer to be "Caucasoid" I would think "great", if it was "Negroid" then I would think "wonderful". There are indeed readers who would like an objective answer to this question.

I think Zara brings into this article a number of fringe racist authors, whose usually "Nordicist" etc fringe views he then proceeds to criticize. My point is, should we even care about these fringe views?

Take for example an article on, say "The Origin of the Aids Virus". Should all fringe authors who believe that the Aids virus was created by the CIA to kill African-Americans feature on this article? Obviously not. Similarly I think we shouldn't give prominence to fringe racist views on the question of "Race of Ancient Egyptians" but rather concentrate on answering the question objectively citing scientific work.

LuxNevada (talk) 09:03, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

    • I think a re-naming to "Controversy about Race of Ancient Egyptians" would be appropriate, also with a link to the other article about Nilotic people for those interested in the scientific evidence. LuxNevada (talk) 18:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I actually just logged in to talk about renaming this. I really think that the word 'race' needs to be taken out (since it is a loaded term, etc) and that the article should focus on the afrocentrist view and responses to the view and that the title should reflect that, e.g. Afrocentrist views of Ancient Egypt (that title sucks though, but something like it). During the RfC (Where was everyone? You people have lives or something?) there was also the idea of splitting off some of the information into an Archaeogenetics of Ancient Egypt article, which I think is a really cool idea. As for the Nordicist view. No, I don't think that it belongs at all, unless its in the context of what afrocentrists have said about it or some junk.--Woland (talk) 21:31, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
    • I don't think the "Nordicist" views belong here (I had never heard that word before I came across this article), but as a practical matter am willing to let Zara keep some of it in.
    • Woland, I like your idea of re-naming the article Afrocentrist views of Ancient Egypt. If you do it, I will support you.

LuxNevada (talk) 05:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

  • Afrocentrist views of Ancient Egypt would be quite a monster! That would have to incorporate as well the whole "how much did the Egyptians influence/colonize/whatever Ancient Greece" (ergo, was European society founded by Egyptians). Then we really are into Black Athena territory proper. Now, I'm completely in favour of having an article on that debate, but IMO that should be kept separate (although the two are obviously linked) from the "Race of ancient Egyptians" article. I don't see a problem with using the word "race" in the title, either: obviously it's "loaded", but then again the whole debate basically started with anachronistic and wrong use of the term "race" as applied to ancient Egypt.

Photo of "Egyptians" and other ancients at the top of the article

I am new here, with regards to adding content, and am not sure if I should make this suggestion here. Nevertheless, I would respectfully request that whoever is in charge of changing content for this article remove the pic with the Egyptians supposedly on the bottom. I am requesting that a more factual representation of the tomb drawing be posted in its place. This photo is to be found at this site:

http://manuampim.com/ramesesIII.htm

This page goes into detail concerning fradulent photos such as the one currently on the page of the "Race of the Ancient Egyptians" article. The current photo partially explains the controversy over this subject, as it is but one example of many frauds perpetrated to obscure the origins of the Kamites (you know them as Ancient Egyptians).

Moreover, the page shows the actual drawings from the tomb of Rameses III. IMO, it does not get more authentic than that, and the case is closed on this subject for myself. I just wanted to share knowledge with others who may be unaware of this.

Truthseeka (talk) 18:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Truthseeka, for your post. I knew about this falsification. Nice to read again on the subject. It reminds me about the translation of the word Kmt when it applies to the population. Egyptologists have distorted all the grammatical rules to avoid translating it into the Blacks. Ancien Egyptians can be anything except Blacks. But this is not science. It is ideology. I am sorry for Erik Hornung. He is a great Egyptologist. But on the issue of the race of the ancient Egyptians, he failed to be objective.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 21:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Picture me rolling my eyes right now. Please keep your POV off of the talk page. Thanks.--Woland (talk) 21:42, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, please do. This is just another Afrocentric meme, and a rather tiring one. I think we might need a FAQ here eventually explaining what's been done to death already, and what hasn't been. Moreschi (talk) (debate) 07:58, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
That got me thinking. Maybe even a List of Afrocentric memes would be useful, though that's probably too difficult too keep neutral for mainspace. I might write one up for my userspace, though. Moreschi (talk) 09:37, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, this is a rather open-ended topic. I think you are doing great till now, and don't think you need to push yourself to include much more material. LuxNevada (talk) 14:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Very true, particularly when what's here already needs cleanup so badly. Extras can wait for another day :) Moreschi (talk) 14:50, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Moreschi, please explain what you mean by "just another Afrocentric meme." Is that all you have to say? Wish I could say I was surprised to see a comment such as this, as opposed to a comment on the photo I linked to. As for Woland, I guess you were talking to Luka, so there's no need for me to reply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Truthseeka (talk • contribs) 01:54, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, no, I was talking to Luka too. Besides, there aren't any pictures any more, so this thread is rather academic. Moreschi (talk) 08:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I looked for Manu Ampim on the net, and the information is rather thin. Not sure why he is called Professor, he appears self-employed. He claims that the Ra-Hotep and Nofret statues in the Cairo museums are fakes, which would be rather startling if proven true. The point is that there are lot of opinions like this in the world. There are theories, for example that Area 51 is an alien base, or that the moon landings were faked. Wiki policy is quite clear that every theory that is there in the world does not belong to Wiki. If you look at the pictures on Manu Ampim's page, they are rather poorly taken (the flash used washes out the pics, non-professional photography). Yes, the figures look black, but it is fairly obvious that the Egyptians did come in contact with blacks. So to see blacks on Egyptian walls should not be surprising even if Egyptians were not black. LuxNevada (talk) 10:30, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Not to mention a fact that nobody (particularly the Afrocentrists) really gets: neither Greek nor Egyptian traditions of art have much to do with realism. Moreschi (talk) 10:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
LuxNevada, you are missing the point. There are TWO sets of Africans in the tomb paintings. One set is labeled as Kamites (Egyptians), and the other is named as Nahesi (other Africans, particularly Nubians). You are attempting to explain this away by omitting one African group. As for the statues, they do appear to differ substantially from traditional Kemetic art, but I'm not sure one way or the other.
Dear Unsigned One, I can't miss a point that does not exist. I said nothing about "sets" of paintings. Neither did Ampim, or as far as I read of his crackpot theories. I was just commenting that if Ampim has found an ancient Egyptian painting showing blacks, it doesn't make Egyptians black. If however he could show that most of ancient Egyptians paintings showed a majority of blacks, then I would agree with his thesis. As such he produces a couple of paintings, that doesn't amount to much. The human head on the Sphynx looks rather non-black to me (not necessarily "Nordic" either). LuxNevada (talk) 18:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
You're right, you're not missing the point; you're evading it. You keep glossing over the Medew Netjer (you call them hieroglyphics) that LABELS the African groups, as well as the 2 other groups. The fact that the Africans are LABELED as Kamites is what is significant. But of course, the label only matters with the Nubians. Regardless, I'm outta here; too much of a centuries-old agenda here. Have fun, Eurocentrists. Truthseeka (talk) 04:01, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
I can't make head or tail out of what you are saying. If I am right then the point does not exist, in which there is nothing to be evaded. Also you write "you call them hieroglyphics", when I never called them anything like that. I have no idea what the significance of what you say about Medew Netjer, Kamites, Numbians etc. is when I didn't refer to them. LuxNevada (talk) 10:28, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
The point that Truthseeka is making is, as has already been noted, a familar Afrocentric meme. The Egyptians in the New Kingdom divided humanity into four "races" or peoples. There are many images of this, all consistent with one another. In each case Libyans and Semites are portrayed with pale skin. Nubians are depicted black and Egyptians are depicted brown as in this example. In one tomb (Rameses III) the artist has mislabeled the Nubians with the hieroglyph for Egyptians. Hence there is this one picture which shows black skinned people next to a label that says "Egyptians". He also got the other labels mixed up, but Afrocentrists try to forget about that. Instead they insist that this proves that Egyptians and Nubians are portrayed identically in Egyptian art - based on one image with mixed up captions. If there were to be an FAQ on this then this would be a prime candidate for inclusion. Paul B (talk) 14:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Moreschi, by your logic, the Greeks could have been from China, as their art was not quite realistic, and they would look quite different from their portrayals in said art.Truthseeka (talk) 14:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

by Moreschi's logic, we have to rely on evidence other than Greek art in establishing that they were not, after all, from China. dab (𒁳) 15:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes. My point was nothing especially complicated: Greek "portraiture" was in fact nothing of the sort. Those sculptures of Alexander probably have no resemblance to how he looked in real life: the whole point was to make your subject look like a god. In fact, this was taken so far that there have been several cases where Greek sculptors, hoping to make an extra buck, took sculptures of Aphrodite, and added a snake, thereby turning them into...Cleopatra. Egyptian art was very similar in idea, they just had different techniques and materials. Forcing modern concepts of artistic realism onto ancient-world art is just another anachronism. Moreschi (talk) 12:13, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


So here we are

New title, new article. This page has certainly been through a lot of renames, largely because, I think, the scope has never been clear cut and people have tried to blend two articles into one. This was, I thought, the best one available for a "controversy" article. Constructive commentary on my rewrite is welcome.

As regards where we go from here, I think Race of ancient Egyptians, currently a redirect, should eventually become a disambig pointing to two different articles: this one, and one devoted to the "facts": (the genetics, testimony of ancient writers, etc). As to the title for this "factual" article, I'm unsure. Does anyone have any ideas? Moreschi (talk) 15:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Good job, thanks. As for article name, how about "Race of Ancient Egyptians Evidence". Not the best, but the best I could come up with. LuxNevada (talk) 19:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I am impressed. I wonder what I have been doing wrong in my attempts to clean this up. Probably feeding the trolls too much. Now, if in creating an actual article on the Ancient Egyptians, please help disentangle them from the Egyptians article. The latter is currently controlled by ethnic nationalists steeped in "pharaonism". If we're going to clean up the crackpottery surrounding the ancient Egyptians, we might as soon pool our efforts concerning the US Afrocentrists with those concerning the Egyptian Pharaonists. dab (𒁳) 15:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Dab, if you can cite specific issues where more accuracy is desirable I will be glad to help you (subject to limits owing to the fact that I do have a real life). LuxNevada (talk) 18:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
it's a problem of scope rather than accuracy ({{coatrack}}). About half of the Egyptians article consists of material that would be perfectly appropriate at History of ancient Egypt. The ethnic nationalist editors at the article are adamant that this is the way it's going to stay. --dab (𒁳) 19:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Logically the article Egyptians should be merged with Egypt just like, for example, Argentinians redirects to Argentina. However that may be a battle that we will probably not win. Passion trumps logic on Wiki. LuxNevada (talk) 05:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
um, no, Egyptians should be an "ethnic group" article like Belarusians (doesn't redirect to Belarus) or French people (doesn't redirect to France). Neither are these articles about the ancient Slavs or Gauls. And no, passion doesn't trump logic on the wiki. It just manages to stall progress a little bit. This article is an extreme case, but usually the stalling is in the order of months, not years. dab (𒁳) 13:28, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

as for the "factual article", I've made Origin of Egyptians a {{R to section}}. --dab (𒁳) 14:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I see. Egyptians could then be the main article written in summary style and Origin of Egyptians a child article and the counterpart (or at least partially so) to this. That would work. I'll start compiling reference material. Moreschi (talk) 21:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Please keep the the "Egyptians were African" stuff out of this article. Nobody is disputing that at all. This article is about the "Egyptians were black" meme, which is something quite different. Moreschi (talk) 19:23, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

A Big Thanks to Moreschi for bringing sanity to this seemingly intractable topic

Enough said! LuxNevada (talk) 18:35, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah right. An administrator who has a content dispute on a page, zaps all previous work to post his own preferred version, using his admin powers. Looks like conflict of interest to me.Magnuseur (talk) 06:26, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Using my admin buttons where? The move button is not restricted to administrators. Unless you mean blocking all of Enrique's and Omniposcent's socks, of course, but that's just routine maintenance. Moreschi (talk) 12:05, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, now admin buttons have been used, because you are a CU confirmed sock of our old friend Enriquecardova (talk · contribs). Your latest incarnation has been blocked indefinitely, as has now your main account: you are banned. I'm also going to semi-protect this talk page, I think, to stop you disrupting our progress. Moreschi (talk) 12:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

This article should be deleted

This article isn't factual on any level.

First, because Afrocentrism has NOTHING to do with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. Count Volney said that along with many other WHITE European scholars in the 18th century.

An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may be appropriately referred to in this connection. It is there stated, in describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes, her opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others, were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe."

A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to prove that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of the persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems now so highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic and Aryan races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr. Volney's writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of {iv} all religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long concealed beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the Egyptian Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Diodorus, that "the Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other religious practice."

From: Ruins of Empires Count C.F. Volney. http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Volney/volney00.html

Second, the controversy over "Afrocentrism" and Egypt only really took off and became prominent when a WHITE scholar, Martin Bernal, wrote Black_Athena, which said that the Greeks owed much of their culture, philosophy, math and science to the ancient Egyptians, who were black. That is the reason for the controversy. Black authors, along with the aforementioned white scholars have been talking of the ancient Egyptians as blacks long before the word afrocentrism even existed and there was never any "controversy". European exhibitions of ancient Egyptian themed art at the world's fair in Britain showcased BLACK Egyptians in massive statues of Ramses II. Mr. Bernal is not an Afrocentrist and is another example of the nonsense claim that only blacks believe that ancient Egypt was populated by black Africans. Not to mention the books like "Black Spark White Fire" which were written by white authors who claim that Ancient Egypt was black.

Part of the Egyptian exhibit from the 1851 World's Fair in the Crystal Palace: http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/search/reference.aspx?uid=81330&index=36&mainQuery=crystal%20palace&searchType=all&form=home

http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/story/slide.aspx?storyUid=79&slideNo=7 Big-dynamo (talk) 23:31, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Can also be found in the Fall 2007 issue of KMT magazine.

Thirdly, no Egyptologist will openly claim that there were no black Africans in Egypt and ruling Egypt in the early dynastic through dynastic periods of Egyptian history. And many of the newer scholarly works are openly suggesting that Egyptian culture flowed from the Sahara and South from along the Nile. A fact that can only reflect the movement of black Africans.

Lastly, this article has no facts in it, does not answer any questions about the appearance of the ancient Egyptians and only posits Afrocentrics claiming ancient Egypt as black African is a controversy, meaning not true, without discussing any of the facts and evidence at hand from Egypt itself. It is about a debate that originates in a country thousands of years and miles removed from Ancient Egypt that does NOTHING to help further the understanding of the history of the Nile Valley and its people. Big-dynamo (talk) 02:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Big Dynamo's Mistakes

Let me first start out by saying that I would not object if the article was to be deleted, but that will not happen as many Afrocentrists want an article about it. This revision by Moreschi is the best article I have seen in this series.

Okay, on to Big Dynamo:

1) "Afrocentrism has NOTHING to do with the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans" Wrong, it is an Afrocentrist idea. There is no bar on Afrocentrists quoting some white historians to support their claims. Afrocentrism believes that science, culture, civilization that most others think came from non-black sources are actually from black-Africa. There is no bar to "Caucasians" being Afrocentrists.

2) No bar on "WHITE scholar, Martin Bernal" being an Afrocentrist.

3) "ancient Egypt as black African is a controversy, meaning not true" Wrong, the word "controversy" does not mean "false", it means that significant disagreement exists.

LuxNevada (talk) 06:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, anyone can be an Afrocentrist. Egyptologists don't deny there were Black Africans in Egypt, even ruling Egypt, why should they? Egypt was rule by Asiatics too at one point. Afrocentrism and the idea that ancient Egyptians were 'black Africans' are inextricably linked. And as you say, controversy definitely doesn't mean false, it means serious disagreement. Doug Weller (talk) 07:30, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Doug, thanks for your post. LuxNevada (talk) 10:52, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Everything said above is irrelevant and childish. Whether or not the ancient Egyptians were black is determined by facts and evidence. The idea itself is not a "controversy". It is no more controversial than saying that the ancient Greeks were white. The point being is that SOME people do not want to deal with facts and evidence and would rather stay as FAR FROM IT as possible. Therefore, in their fantasy world they can pretend that ancient Egypt was some magical population of "in between" complexion, which does not exist in reality and is not based on science. Scientists no longer speak of race because there are no races. That does not mean that skin color does not exist and it does not mean that all ancient Egyptians were some "special" color separate from black Africans and whites. To make such a statement is a sign of the incredible amount of nonsense being used to support an illogical argument to begin with. Statements like the Egyptians were in between black and white makes no sense, because no population is all one complexion in Africa (including all black populations) and modern Egypt has people who are black and people who are white. But the absolutely silly part is the idea that brown is different from black. Show me a black person who is not brown. In reality the controversy is the fact that some people still claim that ancient Egypt was not black in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And the reason it is a controversy is because these people have a vested interest in maintaining the lies that they tell. Therefore, instead of dealing with specific facts and evidences, they rely on hollow shells of empty arguments that are based on pure absurdity, as in the idea that black people are not brown or that the idea that the Egyptians were black is something that started with black Americans, which is demonstrably false. In fact it is a lie.
And if one really wants to talk about the things that are controversial in Afrocentrism, one should talk about the idea that blacks are superior because of melanin. The idea that whites are inferior and predisposed to violence and savagery because of a lack of melanin and so forth. Those are the kinds of things that were truly controversial. The idea that the ancient Egyptians were black is not.
Again, facts and evidences are all that are needed to discuss ancient Egyptian complexion. Controversy has nothing to do with it and is simply a diversion so that those who are maintaining a lie don't have to deal with the truth. If you aren't going to address the facts and evidence, then the idea that the ancient Egyptians were black is a controversy (because it is false) is not supported and not proven to begin with. It can't be a controversy if they were indeed black. But of course, an article like this doesn't really want to get to the bottom of it, because they don't want to know the truth or be proven wrong. And the reasons for the controversial nature of the idea of the ancient Egyptians being black are clearly laid out in many books, including Black Athena, which makes it a result of white supremacy. But obviously, rather than deal with the fact of racism in Egyptology, which has been present since the very beginning, people would like to play childish games and call black Africans racists and black Americans the only people on the planet that believe the ancient Egyptians were black. Which is stupid.
And the real mistake here is to think that LuxNevada or Moreschi are even knowledgeable about the subject they discuss as opposed to being propagandists trying to maintain the "party line" at all costs. And it is this that makes the idea "controversial" because those who want to defend the opposing view or pretend that ancient Egypt was not primarily black African have to use every means at their disposal to hide and obfuscate the facts. The only purpose here is to make an article that demonizes black Americans as racists and whites as objective and fair with no history of racism in historical, anthropological, archaeological or egyptological discourse, which is so funny it is incredible. But whites aren't "controversial" for being historically racist. The idea that only blacks are for trying to correct the distortions of the racists is simply nonsense rhetoric, unscientific and dumb.

Big-dynamo (talk) 11:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

"Everything said above is irrelevant and childish", "controversy is the fact that some people still claim that ancient Egypt was not black in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary", "real mistake here is to think that LuxNevada or Moreschi are even knowledgeable about the subject they discuss as opposed to being propagandists", etc etc etc... I am not going to waste my time responding to such diatribes. LuxNevada (talk) 11:57, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Suffice to say, the issue is facts and evidence. Thats is all that is required. The point is that the data and evidence is available to prove that the ancient Egyptians were/were not not primarily black Africans beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no reason for controversy. If you want to talk about Afrocentrism and controversial ideas in Afrocentrism, then fine, but that does not prove anything about the appearance of the ancient Egyptians. America and the events that have happened in the last 500 years there are totally and completely IRRELEVANT to the history and identity of people along the Nile Valley 3 to 6,000 years ago. There was no America then and there was no such thing as an African American. So any "controversies" that exist there are irrelevant to ancient Egypt. But that is just a basic history and geography lesson for those people who don't comprehend common sense, because what Americans consider "controversial" is irrelevant as they had NOTHING to do with it.Big-dynamo (talk) 12:05, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Oh, this is just silly. The issue is not facts and evidence: if it were, we wouldn't have prominent academics calling this a "vexed non-issue". There will soon be a "facts and evidence" article at a different title, however, if you but exercise a little patience. It won't be this one. You're just committing the same old fallacy of saying "all Africans are black". This is not necessarily the case, if normal definitions of black and white are applied. You're also just trolling. Please stop or you will be banned from this article. Moreschi (talk) 10:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
The point is that you don't know Egypt from a can of spray paint. You make statements like "scientist say it is a vexed "non-issue". Which means absolutely nothing and shows about how much you know on the subject. I asked for an article presenting facts and evidence and you present none. That is the point and that is the bottom line. I am calling the article a waste of band with, because it says absolutely nothing about Egypt and focuses on "controversies" that are irrelevant to the origin and identity of the ancient Egyptians. Therefore, it presents NOTHING of value and doesn't even ADDRESS the so-called "controversy" to begin with. What is the point of calling something a controversy if you aren't going TO PROVE beyond a doubt that WHY it is a controversy. The article is nothing but an excuse to AVOID the facts and evidence to focus on irrelevant "controversies" as convenient diversions from reality. I am completely serious when I say that an article that tries to portray African Americans as racist is RACIST and should be deleted. That is my argument. Such an idea is RACIST in itself and deserves NO PLACE on wikipedia. Therefore the article is BIASED, presents a particular POV and does not meat the standards of EDUCATING anyone on ancient Egypt. It only promotes RACIST STEREOTYPES of African Americans as being DUMB and IGNORANT and NOT HAVING a history outside of slavery and NEEDING to MAKE UP history to feel good for themselves. If one is going to discuss facts and evidences and the ACTUAL controversies of Afrocentrism (which haven't been addressed) then that is one thing. But this article DOES NONE OF THAT and only tries to pass of African Amercians as RACISTS while pretending WHITES are unbiased and honest in all things and should be trusted as the SUPREME AUTHORITY on Afrian history. Again, this is nothing but a RACIST attack on Africans and should be deleted or CHANGED to actually reflect the subject.Big-dynamo (talk) 12:24, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I read the article again and couldn't find anything in it which suggested that African-Americans (the entire population) are racist. Maybe it suggests that some individual African-Americans have race as a motivation for examining history. Is your position that if someone says some particular African-American are racist, then that someone is alleging that the entire population of African-Americans are racist? LuxNevada (talk) 17:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

there are obviously both non-black native Africans, such as the Berber, and black people not of African origin, such as the Negrito populations (granting, of course, that until 80 kya everybody was in Africa, and until 20 kya, everybody was black, which really defeats the distinction in the bigger picture). But the naive conflation of "black" and "African" of course originates in exactly the same circles as the obsession with "black Egyptians", viz., in the US civil rights movement. This never was about finding out about history in the first place, it always was about marking political turf with black pride, and it remains a complete non-issue outside such concerns. --dab (𒁳) 11:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The idea here is that the article should present facts and evidence and less running of the mouth. Show the facts and evidence from ancient Egypt and stop talking about "controversies" that are irrelevant to those facts. Afrocentrics are IRRELEVANT to the facts and evidence from ancient Egypt. Unless you are going to address facts and evidence, then you are only playing games because you know the facts and evidence are against you. Why else would someone create an article about ancient Egypt and discuss African Americans who have absolutely nothing to do with the facts and evidence from ancient Egypt itself. The ONLY way to prove/disprove the skin color of the ancient Egyptians is facts and evidence from ancient Egypt. There is no other way. Using Afrocentrics as some substitute for facts and evidence is about as silly as using martians as the basis for understanding the history of Greenland. One has NOTHING to do with the other. But that is exactly the point of the idiotic examples of non historical rhetoric that parades as fact on this subject, where focusing on Afrocentric debates becomes a substitute for actual first hand facts and evidence from ancient Egypt itself. Big-dynamo (talk) 12:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
You still miss the point. When we say this article is about the controversy, that's literally what we mean. It is not about the subject of the controversy, it is not about ancient or modern Egyptians, it's about the debate itself. And Afrocentrics are directly relevant to the debate/controversy. Of course 'facts and evidence' are necessary to prove what I suspect is the different skin colors of ancient Egyptians, but this article is not about skin color. Can you see the difference? The actual debate itself needs a separate article. Doug Weller (talk) 12:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Of course Doug is right: I'm working on compiling reference material for that separate article. BTW, Big-dynamo (talk · contribs) has been banned by Jayvdb (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) from this article and talk page for 48 hours as a reward for his flaming. Moreschi (talk) 13:24, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Big Dynamo, if you had read the discussion that went on before, you would have seen that what you want had already been discussed. I wanted the article to be only about the scientific evidence (though I doubt you will really like the complete evidence), but others wrote that there was enough controversy for it to be included. I deferred to that judgment which I now consider right. You would also have found in the previous discussion that the article you desire about the scientific evidence has already been planned (as also pointed out by Moreschi). LuxNevada (talk) 17:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
He's a troll dude. He'll never understand, believe me, I've tried. Just walk away...--Woland (talk) 21:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

"Big-dynamo" is the perfect parody of the sort of approach that kept this article in a hairy mess for three years. This used to be an article pretending to be about Ancient Egypt while actually discussing Afrocentrism. Now, at last, it is an article that is ostensibly about Afrocentrism. It is silly to complain about an article actually discussing what it proposes to discuss in its title and its lead. If Big-dynamo isn't interested in Afrocentrism but in Egyptology, let him edit elsewhere, e.g. at History of Ancient Egypt, and require him to cite actual Egyptological literature. --dab (𒁳) 07:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Some notes

Big Dynamo, I agree with the rest of the editors. There's a controversy surrounding the issue and the article is clearly encyclopaedic.

On another note, I've carefully read the article and come up with the following:

a) The tone of the article sounds biased and impartial. It seems like a news article trying to prove a point. Can we fix that?

Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone, otherwise articles end up as partisan commentaries even while presenting all relevant points of view. Even where a topic is presented in terms of facts rather than opinions, inappropriate tone can be introduced through the way in which facts are selected, presented, or organized. Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article. The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view.

b) Intro

  • Today..., scholarly consensus..., that... - This is a poorly structured sentence.

c) Origins section

  • The first paragraph needs a few references. "Specifically" is a weasel word.

d) In the public sphere section

  • Attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features have encountered much Afrocentric protest over concerns that he has been represented as "too white". The source for this says nothing at all about that (neither "protests" nor "much protests"). here it is for a review

e) Some examples of pov statements:

  • This has not prevented Afrocentrists from....
  • Such claims by Afrocentrists have not been limited to....
  • despite... - another weasel word.

I have limited time to fix the above. I'll probably come back later. -- fayssal / Wiki me up® 07:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with most of the points you raise. Specifically, I fail to see how specifically is a "weasel word". This is a WP:FRINGE subject, and NPOV does not mean we should fake agnosticism towards fringy literature. Specifically, George James, Cheikh Anta Diop, Martin Bernal aren't Egyptologists. James was an academic in the field of Logics, which doesn't make his Stolen Legacy an academic publication, so much as a cranky hobby horse. Bernal is a scholar of modern Chinese history, and his musings on Afrocentric ideas have the same status as James'. No comment on Diop is necessary. This isn't about academic literature, it is about amateur literature by people holding some unrelated academic degree. --dab (𒁳) 08:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, we are not going to argue specifically about "specifically." But having something like "this controversy is related to a bullshit fringy theory and proponents are totally mistaken and have attempted times and times to mislead us in order to fulfill their political/whatever agendas... because it has been proved by academic Y, Z and W who argue that that is bullshit" is inappropriate regardless of the nature of the article - because the article should cover the controversy and not the "how we feel about them." That is my point. It is about the tone. I don't really care much about the subject. -- fayssal / Wiki me up® 09:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Dbachmann that the article doesn't suffer from serious deficiencies in its current form. Some of the words like "specifically" and "despite" have been used properly. LuxNevada (talk) 10:08, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't care much about weasel words. For the rest, I thought Dbachmann agreed with me :) The rest of my points above concern deficiencies. I was also hoping someone would review this and see if it has anything to do with "Attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features have encountered much Afrocentric protest over concerns that he has been represented as "too white"" first before commenting. -- fayssal / Wiki me up® 10:48, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Diop

Actually, more comment on Diop is necessary. This guy seems to be the key figure here. His obsession with skin colour of the Ancient Egyptians seems to have risen to actual "academic" status by a weird combination of 1960s to 1970s factors such as the decolonization of Africa, the formation of "indigenous" African states under the banner African socialism, and contemporary developments in the West such as the US civil rights movement, political correctness and the cultural relativism rampant in UNESCO. It is very interesting illustration of the Zeitgeist of the time how Diop's thesis was unacceptable in 1951 but deemed "academic" by 1960. Diop and the post-WWII period is probably at the core of this topic, an explains why we are being pestered by 19th century racialist fallacies even in 2008 on Wikipedia. --dab (𒁳) 08:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

If you got some of the good references which makes of Diop a central element in the controversy, please add it. If not, then I don't think this discussion would lead us somewhere because it wouldn't be fit to be included in the article as per wp:syn. -- fayssal / Wiki me up® 09:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
um, yeah? I just did? Diop tried to measure the melanin in mummies in order to establish "ethnic affiliation", for crying out loud, and got Dakar University named after him for his troubles. It doesn't get any more relevant than that. --dab (𒁳) 10:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I actually researched "melanin" a bit. I mean, if the stuff is organic, how well does it preserve for 3,000+ years? Unfortunately I could not find any credible discussion on the topic. LuxNevada (talk) 17:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the Wolof reference -- I'm really beginning to enjoy the Diop saga. The hilarious thing is that what passes as pseudo-scholarly crackpottery in western Universities buys him academic honours in Senegal, to the point of having Dakar University named after him. This reminds me of Martiros Kavoukjian and friends -- a sad case of lunatic fringe in sane academia, a "talented scientist" at Yerevan State University. And of course Pan-Turkism and the Sun Language Theory. I would be interested in the amount of melanin Diop actually did find in his mummies, but unfortunately, the Cheikh Anta Diop article has no details. The reference for this appears to be

Diop, Cheikh Anta, "Origin of the Ancient Egyptians," Journal of African Civilizations, Vol. 4, No. 2, Nov. 1982, pp., 9-37[1]

dab (𒁳) 15:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Dab, you may be surprised at the respect Diop got from African universities, but I can tell you that when it comes to liberal arts Western universities are little better. You better toe the politically correct line, or else... Evidence? Ask Lawrence Summers how significant evidence was in getting him booted out of his job. LuxNevada (talk) 17:37, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the comments above can be construed as racist slander against Africans and violates the principle of a nPOV on the subject. I suggest that those interested in the topic keep their opinions to themselves, as it has no bearing on the qualifications of Diop to do research on any subject and Wikipedia is not in the position to confirm or deny any scholarly degree or certificate to any person who seeks it. As such, these types of comments reflect nothing but a biased POV which is a flagrant violation of Wikipedia policies on the subject. The reason for including Diop in this discussion is because of the academic and scholarly debates he engaged in against the academic community, culminating in his presentation at UNESCO. The UNESCO symposium of 1974 was an important chapter in the history of the debate of the "race" of the ancient Egyptians. Individual opinions on Diop or his character are irrelevant to the facts of this event. References to the actual arguments for and against the ancient Egyptians being black or non black are all that are required to cover the controversy in all its aspects. Personal views on the subject and supporting one side over the other is simply a biased POV that makes the article less than what it should be. NOBODY needs your POV to understand the ACTUAL arguments for and against the issue at hand, as the various scholars and thinkers involved have expressed their views quite well for themselves in their works.Big-dynamo (talk) 01:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

No more of this nonsense for six months now. Good. Moreschi (talk) 20:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Tutankhamun

Afrocentric claims surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians are strictly WP:FRINGE. We are required to discuss fringe theories as fringe theories per policy (WP:UNDUE). Perhaps I didn't pick the best source re the Tutankhamun business, but the controversy there is certainly notable (look here, for heaven's sake). If you don't like what I've got - which does mention the protests concerning the skin colour, actually - then it should be easy enough to find a better source. This a minor issue. Although is a "history of controversy" article, we would be doing our readers a grave disservice if we did not point out at some stage (though I have tried hard not to overstress the point) that the controversy is simply a "vexed non-issue" as far as academia is concerned. Oh, yes, and Diop is certainly key to all of this. He is a top figure as far as most Afrocentrists are concerned and also a key person surrounding this meme. Such is common knowledge and barely needs citation (which has been already easily found). Moreschi (talk) 10:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

There's a tendency in Wikipedia that whenever someone posts some concerns, s/he gets faced with things like "you don't like my edits..." This is not the case. I didn't know who inserted the reference there (it could have been there for years - who knew?). I do like your edit of course but the source you used does not address that point. And I know a few references can be easily provided but my intention was to review the article and not to edit it. There is a controversy re the Tutankhamun face and I didn't care about who used that link. The important is the reference itself. I had to read the whole referenced article before finding nothing. Another reader would have done the same and find nothing and then go somewhere saying "why trust wiki?" All what I have done is review the article. [Flat earth] deals with a fringe subject as well but it is and merits to be rated a good article (GA). This one needs to get differentiated from journalism. Re Diop, if he was the main protagonist and that there is some published material about his role then great. Are you preparing some draft or something Moreschi? I only found a red link, above, of one of your subpages. -- fayssal / Wiki me up® 12:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
The reference you're questioning seems to come from the 16th paragraph down, The most controversial object in the new show is a latex reconstruction of Tutankhamun’s head based on a CT scan of his mummy in 2005. The bust shows the boy-king to be an almond-eyed figure with a broad forehead and elongated skull. But some in America have taken exception to the light skin tone of the model, suggesting that he should have been blacker – something the CT scan cannot tell.
I'm sure that there are better references though since that is one of the main things that brought attention to the afrocentrists. --Woland (talk) 16:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Reference 20 from the Tutankhamun article might be better as its from the National Geographic article. See here. --Woland (talk) 17:10, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
And again, this is form of personal POV on the subject of Tutankhamun as it tries to promote support for one side of a controversial issue that is supposedly being written to be neutral and free of the debate itself. Either the article is going to be neutral to the debate or it isn't. The fact is that the Tutankhamun exhibition in the U.S. generated protests over the reconstruction of King Tut being given a prominent display over and above the actual artifacts from Egypt. These protests generated controversy as well as a public debate between scholars on the topic. The actual facts of the protests and the reactions of those involved in the exhibition to those protests are all that is needed to cover the controversy. Again, this is not the place to try and convince anyone whether one side or the other is correct and the arguments of those involved speak to all the issues that are most often raised in such debates to begin with. A better article on the subject and the actual comments of those involved reflecting the scholarly view as well as the view of the protesters can be found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13992421 For example, comments by Nina Jablonski are a good example of the scholarly view on the topic:

"Our best guess is that he was neither lily white nor ebony black. He was probably somewhere in between," said Nina Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History.

And if you want to be technical, that falls in line with the general scholarly view towards Egypt that has been held throughout the debates going back over 100 years. Again, this can easily be supported by referencing the relevant works from various periods and does not need personal views on the validity of one set of views or the other. Big-dynamo (talk) 02:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
BD, you wrote earlier "Statements like the Egyptians were in between black and white makes no sense... But the absolutely silly part is the idea that brown is different from black." and then you quote Nina Jablonski "Our best guess is that he was neither lily white nor ebony black. He was probably somewhere in between," said Nina Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History. I guess the contradiction escapes you. You probably think that brown skinned Mediterranean people you will find in Italy, Spain and Portugal are black too. While you are at it, don't ignore Iranians, Pakistanis and North Indians either. LuxNevada (talk) 04:20, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I am not Nina Jablonski and therefore her statements do not contradict my own. The point of this article is not to debate the skin color of the ancient Egyptians, it is to present the positions as presented by those involved in the controversy itself. My position has not changed, but this article is not about my position on the subject and it isnt't about me trying to defend my position against your POV. Therefore, the article should only focus on those events that show the controversy that has surrounded the debate over the skin color of the ancient Egyptians. The statements on either side of the debate should be presented, but not the POV of those writing about the subject. It sounds to me like you want the article to reflect your POV on the subject and therefore use statements of those involved in the debate or controversy in such a way to present one side or the other as being "right". That is an absolute contradiction of what this "revised" article is supposed to be about. It isn't about debating the issue of the skin color of the ancient Egyptians it is about documenting the actual controversies, debates and arguments that have arisen over the issue. If you cannot keep your POV out of the discussion and simply document the views and opinions of those involved in the debate, then I suggest you need not be involved in the topic.Big-dynamo (talk) 10:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Uh, dude....The only person around here pushing a POV is you. You will obviously see what is a good start at a NPOV article as being slanted towards the other side. And not-for-nothin-, but both WP:fringe and WP:undue both apply in this case.--Woland (talk) 15:33, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually you should read the guidelines that you have posted for yourself:

Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community. If proper attribution cannot be found among reliable sources of an idea's standing, it should be assumed that the idea has not received consideration or acceptance; ideas should not be portrayed as accepted unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources. However, a lack of consideration or acceptance does not necessarily imply rejection either; ideas should not be portrayed as rejected or labeled with pejoratives such as pseudoscience unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources.

Ideas that have been rejected, are widely considered to be absurd or pseudoscientific, only of historical interest, or primarily the realm of science fiction, should be documented as such, using reliable sources.

In other words, it is not up to wikipedia as to what ideas are fringe. Wikipedia just reports the facts and consensus by relevant authorities in the field. Taking the position that one side of a controversy is fringe without any supporting documentation represents a POV on the subject. The purpose of this article is not whether Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism or other such ideologies are fringe or not, it is to document the actual controversies and debates that have arisen over the topic. Using this article as a way of presenting ones own personal views on the subject without proper documentation is POV. This is not an article about whether or not Afrocentric views are FRINGE. In fact this article is not really about Afrocentrism at all. Using this article as a way of presenting ones views of Afrocentrism can and should be considered as a non objective bias that keeps the article from following the WP:POV guidelines. Bottom line, this is not an article about the validity or accuracy of Afrocentrism, no more than it is an article about racism, Eurocentrism or Aryanism. There are already topics that cover those ideologies and critiques of those views are not needed here.Big-dynamo (talk) 16:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually it is not. That is your own personal POV on the subject. This article is not about Afrocentrism. If you want to discuss Afrocentrism and the concerns about Afrocentrism among scholars in the academic community, then you already have a separate topic for that discussion. The topic here is "Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy" not "Afrocentric views of the race of the Ancient Egyptians". Using this article as an attack on the ideas of Afrocentrism means that the article is biased against one side of the debate and cannot be considered as objective. It would be no different if someone decided to claim that all white anthropologists are racist for having views different from people who view the ancient Egyptians as black. If you agree that this article is to be objective, then that means that it should not make any value judgements about the parties involved in the dispute, their motivations or politics and simply focus on the facts at hand. Otherwise, not only will the article to continue to be plagued by edit wars, but will stay disputed. There is nothing to dispute about the fact that there have been controversies about the "race" of the ancient Egyptians. That is a fact and everyone knows it. But that is a totally separate and complete thing from the actual debate itself and which side is right and which side is wrong, which IS a subject of debate. Using this topic as an opportunity to try and support or reject one side of the argument as a vehicle for ones own opinions is something that violates the articles defined in WP:POV. Big-dynamo (talk) 16:50, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
What? Sorry, you're not making sense. The controversy over the race of ancient Egpytians is one that involves Afrocentrics very, very heavily. It was barely anything anyone thought about very much (apart from the "dynastic race" crowd, but that was really something else altogether) until Diop and co arrived on the scene. You can't unlink Afrocentrism and the Ancient Egyptian race controversy. And it is perfectly valid to have a "history of controversy" article. And no, the facts are not in dispute. There is a very solid academic consensus on where the ancient Egyptians came from and what their skin colour was. I will write an Origin of Egyptians article shortly, to cover partially your concerns. Apart from that, the scope of this article is decided and you will not change that. So please stop trying. Moreschi (talk) 16:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
This article is not about Afrocentrism. As I said, if you want to talk about Afrocentrism then you already have a topic and category for it. Afrocentrism played a part in the debate, but the purpose of the article is not to discuss Afrocentrism. Afrocentrism, Aryanism, White Supremacy, Nordicism and many other "isms" have played a significant role in this debate and are an impetus behind the debate, not simply Afrocentrics. Trying to portray this debate as simply the musings of some "Afrocentrics" who are searching for historical glory is to present a biased view of one side of the debate over the other. It is perfectly acceptable to report the facts of the issue as presented by the people involved in the debate, such as those who view Afrocentrics as pseudohistorical or those who view the academic community as racists, but to say that Afrocentrics are pseudohistorical or that the academic community is racist in the context of this debate only constitutes a personal opinion and POV on the subject and not an objective rendering of the facts at hand.Big-dynamo (talk) 17:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
And no one is trying to use this article as a vehicle for their opinions at all. All the article does is follow the history of the controversy and its focal points, while occasionally pointing for the reader which suppositions agree with academic consensus and which do not. That's perfectly objective. Moreschi (talk) 17:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
But that is the point. It is not supposed to point the reader to anything. Just state the facts. It doesn't require anything other than that. Report what side A says and then report side B and let them speak for themselves. Trying to write the article in such a way to "pointing" towards one side as being "more accepted" is basically presenting a biased perspective on the topic. If person A is debating person B as not being credible, then "pointing" out that person B is popular constitutes bias, as it hints that the reader should accept person B's view because it they are popular. Therefore, such "pointing" should be avoided.Big-dynamo (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Oh, now this really is silly. There's no need for us at Wikipedia to pretend agnosticism towards fringe theories: fringe theories are written about in their context as fringe theories, and Wikipedia is here to represent faithfully academic consensus. To pretend that Afrocentric memes are on the same level as current scholarly thought is counter to all policy. Moreschi (talk) 17:27, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually it is not for Wikipedia to determine what is fringe. A controversial topic does not mean fringe. Wikipedia has policies that promote objectivity. If someone has an argument AGAINST the scholarly community (and there are many), then reporting about that argument does not require taking sides and supporting one side or the other. Wikipedia's policy is that theories are considered FRINGE because of documented and reliable sources that define such views as fringe. This article is not about whether or not Afrocentrism is fringe or not. This article is not about Afrocentrism. You are trying to use the article as a way of defending one side of a controversial topic, while at the same time degrading the other. By definition you are therefore biased and cannot fulfill the goals of providing objective input to a particular topic. I suggest that his is the major flaw with the current article, in that it is being used as a defense for (or against) a particular view as opposed to the actual controversy itself. In this way Wikipedia becomes a party to the debate, as opposed to a third party. Again, wikipedia is not the scholarly community and therefore wikipedia has no obligation to support or defend scholarly issues. Wikipedia reports the facts and opinions of those relevant to various issues and does not present itself as the source of those opinions or facts. or as a supporter or defender of those facts or opinions. Big-dynamo (talk) 17:47, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I give up. You're basically saying we cannot present fringe theories as fringe theories, because it lies outside anyone's competence to determine what is fringe. Rational debate has come to an end, I think. Moreschi (talk) 17:56, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Nope. This article is not about Afrocentrism. That is the point. Whether Afrocentrism is fringe or not needs to be discussed in a separate article. This article is about a debate. A debate is not fringe it is what it is. Whether or not the idea of the ancient Egyptians as black Africans is fringe or not is perfectly acceptable in the article as long as it is presented in context. For example: "Party A, in response to party B claimed that the views represented fringe ideas. This was further supported by party C who made the following comment 'blah blah blah'" followed by the appropriate references. That is completely different from saying that Party A consistently presents FRINGE arguments against Party B that are not the consensus in the general community" without any relevant sources and not supported by the positions and documented claims by party A.Big-dynamo (talk) 18:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
But the article is about the debate concerning an Afrocentric meme. Moreschi (talk) 19:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Don't bash your head against the wall too hard, man. Its not worth it. On a side issue; I really hate the word 'meme.' I hate the concept of meme, I think memetics are stupid, as all or most of us anthropology people do. I won't belabor the point though. --Woland (talk) 19:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually the topic of the article is "Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy" not "controversy over Afrocentric views on the ancient Egyptian race". If the article had the latter title it would make sense to focus on Afrocentrism as a core feature of the debate. As it stands, it is only a general discussion of the debate. The reason I call this out is because there are many, many debates over the ancient Egyptian race and all of them do not involve Afrocentrics and all of them are controversial. If you are going to cover the topic in its entirety, then you have to understand that it is not about Afrocentrism at all. You should change the name of the article if the intent is to show how Afrocentric views on the ancient Egyptian race are controversial. I have no problem with that, but this article is more general than that and not specific to Afrocentrism, IMO. And, the reason that a focus of Afrocentrism does not belong here is because of your persistent attempts to bias the article by supporting one side of the debate over the other. You say you are pointing out the scholarly accepted view, but in reality all you need to do is cite the appropriate facts, which includes the scholarly consensus. However, such a citation requires more than the views of one scholar. You have so far provided no documentation on anything approaching a scholarly consensus, other than the views of a few scholars. Those views are the views of the individual scholars, not scholarly consensus.Big-dynamo (talk) 20:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Can someone please bite the bullet and ban this troll? To say that Afrocentrism is only part the controversy surrounding the ancient Egyptian race controversy is so wrong I don't even know where to start. It's all about Afrocentrism, and Big dynamo has just conclusively proved he should not be editing this topic area. Moreschi (talk) 20:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
      • The trouble with BD is that he writes volumes, says multiple things that are contradictory, and moves on without looking back. For example he started out by saying that no controversy exists "The point is that the data and evidence is available to prove that the ancient Egyptians were/were not not primarily black Africans beyond a reasonable doubt is the point. There is no reason for controversy." and "the so-called "controversy" to begin with.". Later he contradicts himself by writing "There is nothing to dispute about the fact that there have been controversies about the "race" of the ancient Egyptians. That is a fact and everyone knows it." Hard to debate productively with someone who writes so much and doesn't stay logical. LuxNevada (talk) 21:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Discomfort

I know I'm coming to this article after a long-extended controversy, which I certainly haven't tried to parse in all its glory, but I feel compelled to express a bit of discomfort with the current state. There is an actual, legitimate scientific question here that is lost in all the noise. In spite of the mixing of populations, modern genetic techniques, mainly based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes, have been able to work out an intricate tree-structure of human ancestry. It would be very interesting to know where the ancient Egyptians fit into that tree. It should be possible to work this out using DNA from mummies, but there isn't much data yet, mainly because the Egyptian government doesn't allow outsiders to have access to mummy tissue. It seems to me that this information really belongs in the article somewhere.

More generally, the deliberate exclusion of any actual facts relating to the question seems misguided to me -- it might be excusable if there were some other article on Wikipedia that dealt with this, but now that Race of ancient Egyptians has been redirected here, there isn't. This is all there is. Looie496 (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry. Your concerns are correct and appreciated. Origin of Egyptians is on the way - give me a month or so to produce a first draft - where the legitimate scientific questions will be dealt with. Race of ancient Egyptians will then be a disambig. Moreschi (talk) 17:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Recent Barlow Counter Edits

1) As a "critique" is quite obviously, an attempted re-assessment, re-interpretation or, a rebuke, of an argument or bit of information existent within an epistemological sphere, by what measure is the position of those who contest the historic categorization of the "race" of the ancient Egyptian not a "critique"? I can only fathom two explanations for your proposition of the above:

1) Either you pose the two critical positions as something other than a critique because you do not concur with the proposition -- or

2) Because you do not value the discordant propositions themselves.

Both explanations lack encyclopedic merit.

I neither agree nor, in any substantive manner, value, the prattle of the presumptuous and the ethnocentric; yet I recognize the varied positions of those who maintain such sentiments within an information/dialogue-based forum as "critiques", given the meaning of the word.

Further, this entire encyclopedia entry is premised on the examination/definition of critiques of the understood "race" of the ancient Egyptian as prescribed by traditional (or mainstream) Western scholarship. If you have an issue with the notion of divergent opinions (or those who opine -- Bernal, James, etc. -- on this matter) as "critiques", I suggest you call into question the very propriety of this entry in and of itself, rather than issuing arguments poorly grounded in semantics.

As to your later comment re: the original use of the term "stole" (which you link to a reference to George G.M. James' text); the passage itself was not referring to James' work, but I'll humor your preference for the more visceral term: as per the history of ancient Egypt (as chronicled in Stolen Legacy and in preceding and succeeding textual documents), the Macedonians indeed conquered Persia's holdings in North Africa and thereby gained access to Egypt's well of knowledge and culture. From a logistics standpoint, does the fact that the ancient conquering of Egyptian lands took place in "third-party" fashion mean that the well of information was acquired by means other than conquest? Obviously not, no more than we could/should discount the term "commerce" had the Greeks acquired this knowledge through "third-party" trade and barter (which they very well may have; the Persians, the Nubians, the Hebrews and the Bedouins certainly did).

In an overriding fashion, your suggested edits seem an attempt to deprecate positions on matters at hand within these encyclopedic entries (here and on the Race of Jesus). Such a discernibly skewed position on a defined/examined matter reveals an obvious Point-of-View that evidences disdain not only for the treated subject matter, but for the understood intellectual, heuristic, and epistemological purpose of an encyclopedia itself. Hence, I am undoing your recent counter edits in this entry forthwith. If you are able to generate some revision of the passages in question that you believe better expresses substantive meaning within these entries in a manner that is adherent to the encyclopedic construct, then please suggest them. Until then, my response will remain posted here at your talk page, & at the discussion section for the Ancient Egyptian race controversy entry. Best,

sewot_fred (talk) 02:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

This is hilarious stuff. However, I should note that there were no suggested counter-edits by me. They were restorations of phrasing written by other editors. What this mysterious "well of information" to which Ptolemy and chums gained access I don't know, and I doubt you do either. Do you think you could make some specific points rather than just proliferating turgid prose? Paul B (talk) 02:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone understand what this guy is talking about?--Woland (talk) 04:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand what he is talking about, but I do understand his "talking". Basically this is the talk of someone who has spent too much time in liberal arts academics and has lost the ability to discuss issues with clarity. LuxNevada (talk) 23:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
And another one who assumes this article is about the 'race' of Ancient Egyptians, rather than about the controversy. --Doug Weller (talk) 06:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, I never expressed, nor did my edits suggest, that the article in question is about anything other than the Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptians. I offered "critique" as a less derogatory and concise stand-in for the skewed "attempted rewriting" and "splintered" as a less Point-of-View term for "devolved"; finally, I sought to correct what I read as a bombastic application of the positions of George G.M. James, Martin Bernal, Cheikh Diop and the like by replacing James' out of context "stole" with some variant of "appropriated via commerce and conquest".

In no way shape or form do the chronicled edits alter the subject matter at hand -- instead they afford a more encyclopedic tone to the entry. If that is the collective objective here, we can continue to discuss. If instead, the objective is to impose some adherence to a static perception of a particular proposition via the imposition of majority rules, then I have no argument for this group -- other than to wonder the very purpose of the encyclopedia entry itself.

sewot_fred (talk) 07:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Sewot fred, could you please write in clear English rather than in pompous pseudo-academese? Thank you.
To reply to your points: "critique" is far too mild a term to describe the views of Diop et al; "critique" implies merely "criticism of established views" - they went a hell of a lot further. And "stole" is perfectly appropriate here, given the long tradition of the "stolen legacy myth". "Stole" is the word the Afrocentrists themselves use, it's not something I've forced upon them. And what is the difference between "splintered" and "devolved"? They both mean the same thing...Moreschi (talk) 10:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I will not engage debate over an approach to prose in this realm. You obviously experienced not much in the way of difficulty in parsing meaning from that which was communicated. So your opening comment seems merely an unfortunate effort to denigrate and distract.

Instead I will respond to the content of your reply. If critique seems "too mild" given your reading of the Afrocentric theorists and your interpretation of their objectives, then I suggest "challenge" as an apt and accurate expression of their propositions. While avoiding classifications of those who claimed themselves as Afrocentric and those who took little note of the term, I will say that I am far more familiar with James & Bernal than Diop; nowhere do I read either scholar suggesting a " rewriting" (and thereby an erasure, or replacement) of that which is written into established history tracts. Their work instead offers studied alternatives bolstered by analysis of the objectives of those who guard "established knowledge" within institutional frameworks. Hence, they are proposing "critiques" or "challenges" of an otherwise static body of traditional knowledge.

2) My understanding of the current encyclopedic entry is that the article intends to chronicle the controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian: not dismiss the thesis of George G. M. James (aside using his propositions as a reference source) as "myth", nor do the same for Stolen Legacy, nor Afrocentrism (despite the superfluous and devious subsection on the latter). As Stolen Legacy applies to the entry's actual subject matter, it seems to me that the bombastic and sensationalist language of the book's title is applied in a manner that runs counter to the argument actually found within the text, and counter to the subject of the encyclopedia article. It was through "commerce [or trade] and conquest" that James poses the Alexandrian Greeks acquired elements of the ancient Egyptian culture; it is through "commerce and conquest" that the modern construct known as race was "muddled" via human engagement. No different than the ethnic lineage of the post-Roman Brit or the race of the Medieval Spanish were thereby muddled, if assessed through this anachronistic lens. It is through multilateral bias and negligence that these ideas are misconstrued, mis-interpreted, mis-conveyed and thus, mis-chronicled. This is the history of a controversy.

3) "Devolve" and "splinter" do not share synonymous meaning, denotation nor connotation. To "devolve" in this context is to "grow worse": i.e., to "spiral" or "metastasize". To "splinter" is to "divide" or "break apart" -- note that the position of the so-called Afrocentric is divided into two subsets post the passage in question. Thus, "splinters" seems the appropriate verbiage for that which the text conveys.

Unless, again, the objective here is to craft an article that deprecates or dismisses non-mainstream positions within this so-called "Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptian". If this is the authors' (and/or the editors') true collective intent, I suggest a re-titling of the current article.


sewot_fred (talk) 14:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

sewot, I second Moreschi, your prose is a joke. Yes, I can parse it too, and the grammar is technically (mostly) correct, but it still makes you sound like an idiot. There is learned jargon, and then there is "pompous academese" empolyed to dodge the issue. We can discuss the semantics of "devolve", "splinter", or "metastasize", but this will only metastasize this talkpage into an unreadable, fragmented, offtopic mess. And yes, you are spot on, Wikipedia does in fact have the "collective intent" to "deprecate or dismiss non-mainstream positions", within WP:UNDUE. --dab (𒁳) 14:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The edits in question involve the semantics underlying the following terms & phrases: "critique", "attempted rewriting", "stole", "commerce and conquest", "devolve" and "splinter". This is the subject matter at hand within this conversational stream. Why a good number of you seem so vexed in your attempts to assail extraneous matters within this "discussion" is a matter best left between you and your gods. Speed,

sewot_fred (talk) 15:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


Um, no, stole is entirely correct. This is not limited to Diop and James at all, and my use of the word stole is not limited to one person. For one thing, Bernal claimed that Greece was essentially an Egyptian colony (and how is that not a "attempted rewriting of the historical narrative") - getting its culture that way - and Afrocentrists (see Mary Lefkowitz's "History lesson: a race odyssey") have been claiming that Aristotle "stole" his philosophy from Alexandria, that Greek religion was an Egyptian copy/paste, and that Greek philosophy was also an Egyptian copy/paste from the Book of the Dead for a very long time now.
And no, "devolved" does not mean "worsen". Please see devolution: this term is not a pejorative. Moreschi (talk) 15:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok, now I don't understand you. In English, please? Moreschi (talk) 17:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

"English" as in the English language definition of "devolve" (see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/devolve): 3: to degenerate [emphasis added] through a gradual change or evolution <where order devolves into chaos — Johns Hopkins Magazine>. I propose that a summary manner of expressing this definition is to "grow worse".

You surely do not mean to intone Definition #1 in your usage of "devolve", and the link to Wikipedia's encyclopedic treatment of the term is inapplicable here. That leaves Merriam Webster's Definition #2 as your intent (to come by or as if by flowing down, or to "stem from"). I merely suggest that "splinter" is a more appropriate verb for that which the text describes.

As to the "Origin" portion of this entry, the works of Bernal, James, and the Afrocentrists who cite them as scholarly sources in debate, I merely sought to eradicate a discernible Point of View issued in this encyclopedia entry's original prose (a point of view that is further rendered manifest in the comments of multiple participant responders found at this page). Rather than affording any cogency to the standing tone of the article, I read the balance of these comments as a collective subversion of objectivity on behalf of some unknown, ulterior agenda. Yet, for the most part, I appreciate your civility, Moreschi. Best,

sewot_fred (talk) 18:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the message originating from my IP address (commencing with "The edits in question," etc. . . .) was posted as a response to the commenter "dab": I presume that Moreschi and I were replying simultaneously, and thus, the communicative string reads as out-of-sequence. I am replacing that response after the message that it addresses. Best,

sewot_fred (talk) 20:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


I am not sure, but perhaps we should close this section under WP:DFTT? I for one am mostly done assuming good faith here, this simply isn't the behaviour of someone who actually wishes to communicate. --dab (𒁳) 12:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

sewot_fred, could you please say succinctly exactly what change to the article you are proposing? Tom Harrison Talk 12:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Tom, the changes executed in the article in question are to be found here: (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy&oldid=236051046) in the second paragraph of the article's "Origin" section. I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole". It is my belief that my suggested phrasing corrects what appear to be a deprecation of the viewpoint the article itself uses as a springboard for a discussion of the Controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian. In my reading, this deprecation, or attempted dismissal, seems to skirt Wikipedia's regulations as pertain NPOV. My edits intended merely to (re-?)establish a neutral tone within this portion of the entry, particularly if the subject matter discussed therein is to be used as a starting point for the entry's larger consideration.

sewot_fred (talk) 16:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Your proposal has been read, discussed, and rejected by a consensus of editors here on the talk page. Please accept that. Tom Harrison Talk 17:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The changes in word choices offered to the entry in question are "rejected" on what regulation- or content- relevant premise, Tom Harrison? Is the rejection in support of the position offered forth by one Dbachmann: ""Wikipedia does in fact have the "collective intent" to "deprecate or dismiss non-mainstream positions", within WP:UNDUE. (see above).

I have neither reservation nor qualm in "accepting" a rejected proposal from this contingent, particularly not on a matter such as this. I merely request civility in discourse and some content relevant support for rebuking the edits in question. Regards,

sewot_fred (talk) 18:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Your proposed changes were rejected because the other editors here don't think they improve the article, mostly because they give undue weight to a fringe view (they can correct me if I'm wrong). Civility is good. I have no plans to rebuke you. I will ban you from the page under Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist if you keep trying to slant the article toward your point of view, or keep beating a dead horse on the talk page. Tom Harrison Talk 18:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

So, melanin?

I would have no inherent interest in the melanin content of Egyptians or anyone else, but the merry go-around finally makes me wonder. How much melanin did people find in mummies? Are there any respectable estimates? In other words, what was the skin type[2] of Tutankhamun? Was he a VI? a IV? a V? Does anyone know? I don't mean to imply this has any significance beyond counselling Tutankhamun on his skin cancer risk, or, seeing that he is dead, none, but I'd love to be able to state, say, "King Tut had skin type V, case closed". --dab (𒁳) 12:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no reliable information about this. Diop claimed to have found lots of the stuff, his critics argued that chemical degredation and the process of mummification led to so many problems that no legitimate conclusions could be reached. There's much discussion of this deep in the Talk:Afrocentrism article archives, but extracting it would be painful. Regarding Tut, the reconstructions of his face were based on traditional police forensic methods. The three labs were given a computer generated 3D scan of his skull and asked to reconstruct it in the same way that police do with decomposed bodies. The choice of skin pigmentation was based on traditional racial anthropometrics. The US lab was not told whose the skull was, but identified it as North African. Skin pigment was chosen on that basis. No melanin was extracted from the mummy. Paul B (talk) 13:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wording

Rande writes "I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole"." I am a bit surprised at the persistent confusions that runs through Rande's posts. The meaning of the word "critique" is very different from "attempted rewriting". A "critique" is a appraisal, mostly negative, whereas "rewriting" is, well writing something differently! Also Rande actually replaced "allegedly stole" with "through commerce and conquest". The dropping of the word "allegedly" entirely changes the complexion of the sentence, giving support to an idea which the original sentence actually denigrated. LuxNevada (talk) 00:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Lux, there is no "confusion" at all. It was my stated editorial objective to remove the very "denigration" read in the original phrasing. It is my belief that such phrasing affords a skewed point-of-view to what is (I presume) intended as an objective encyclopedic chronicle. It seems obvious that this article has been "tagged" as problematic, in dual fashion, for good cause. I also note there has been a project undertaken to comprehesively "rewrite" the piece. Grand idea. I only hope that the collected authors & editors approach their work in a balanced, civil, and objective fashion. This approach should take into account the distinction between a pejorative entry on "The History of the Controversy over the Origin of Western Civilization" (which the current entry seems to suggest as the topic at hand, given the subtext of the standing "Origin" section) and a wholly distinct and balanced "History of the Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptian" (which the entry's current title promises yet does not quite deliver). Best,

sewot_fred (talk) 16:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Essay tag

Because it is naive essayish style, because many major statements which are opinions, not facts, are unreferenced and overgeneralized. They do connect well referenced facts, but the overall is loose synthesis.

  • (1) Intro unreferenced and basically useless for understading.
  • (2) "Today, the debate largely takes place outside the field of Egyptology." - dubious
  • (3) "Origins" section which links afrocentrism to Kleopata is unreferenced (cited quote is a cited quote and not upport to the general text)
  • (4) "In academia, the opinion about African/Egyptian roots of the European civilization continued throughout the 20th century" - says who?
  • 5 - "Figures attached to the group centering around the journal include" - unusual style for wikipedia
  • 6 "Mainstream scholarship has generally been critical of the journal" says who?

I may continue much more. I could have flooded the whole text with lots of local tags. The tags on top is a call to review the whole text critically, not to delete it in 5 seconds without much thinking. Mukadderat (talk) 15:24, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

That is not the appropriate tag. There is another tag for articles that read like essays.--Woland (talk) 15:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
The appropriate tag is: . Not that I agree.--Woland (talk) 15:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks sorry. I used wrong tag. Please tell me whihc tag must be used for an article full of generalized unreferenced statements. Meanwhile I will place tags on all dubious phrases. Mukadderat (talk) 16:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


Please don't use the essay tag in articles. It's inappropriate, and as much a statement of your opinion as what you're complaining about. Note too that "The Arbitration Committee has placed this article on probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be banned by an administrator from this and related articles, or other reasonably related pages." Tom Harrison Talk 15:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes it is a statement of my opinion and I am free to express it as long as I don't put it into the article content. Please explain how you see my edits disruptive. Mukadderat (talk) 16:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I haven't said they were disruptive. I let you know the article is subject to arbcom probation. Please take that as an invitation to inform yourself and contribute constructively. Tom Harrison Talk 19:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Citation template, essay template, etc

It seems to me that we no longer need the citation template ae there are plenty of footnotes and references. Also, I was reading through the article again and I think that developed might be a better word than the infamous devolved. I really really really hate to bring that up again (please don't throw stuff at me). Whats up with the guy adding the essay template? That is not for articles, dude.--Woland (talk) 15:27, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

"Plenty" does not mean enough. Since you both obviously look only at the external appearance, not at an essence, let me tag all statements which are opinions and beg for authorship. Mukadderat (talk) 16:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Go for it. Do try to put them on the talk page first though. We're trying to walk softly on this one. This article was just rewritten, and as such it does have problems.--Woland (talk) 16:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't look into the page history. I may well understand that it could have been much worse. I also understand that a major rewriting may go in broad strokes to be polished and cracks filled later. I came to this article extremely accidentally and it just appeared to me as very poor. Please see my remarks above. In particular, I would point out to very poor first sentence: It says nothing about the essence of the topic. In must be rewritten to say clearly what is article going to be about. Unfortunately I cannot do it myself. But as an ignorant it the area I may say that the article is not very helpful. Mukadderat (talk) 16:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
If I could count the number of times I've stumbled into the same thing...in fact thats how I got started with this. The article is pretty bare bones right now, I agree.--Woland (talk) 17:11, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptians

I also noticed there is no anthropological article called Ancient Egyptians (it is a redirect to "ancient Egypt", which does not discuss ethnicity). I don't see it normal. How you can have an article about a "controversy" without having an article about the subject? It violates the NPOV style of wikipedia. I would suggest to start "Ancient Egyptians" article and merge the "controversy" there. Mukadderat (talk) 16:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

As of now the plan has been to expand Origin of Egyptians into its own article, which should cover the aspects of ethnicity (though everything I've read within mainstream Egyptology would say that ethnically the Egyptians were Egyptian, though there are some fuzzy areas along with regional variations). Back when this was called Race of the ancient Egyptians I proposed the same thing. Summarize it in the main Ancient Egypt article. After doing some research I came to the conclusion (with the not-so-gentle help from other editors) that this subject does warrant it's own article. I guess we'll see what happens when the origin article is up. The whole system of related articles is a mess which is why I started an RfC awhile back, which got very few comments. Anyway, your help, fresh-eyes and comments are welcome.--Woland (talk) 17:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Summary style

I am sorry to be obnoxious, but I see another issue: the corresponding section, Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy has virtually nothing in common with the discussed article. Wikipedia:Summary style dictates that section Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy must be a summary of the "main" article, "Ancient Egyptian race controversy", rather than a fork of the content. Fortunately, it is curable by simple cut and paste/merge, since there is no POV conflict between the two texts. Mukadderat (talk) 16:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

IMO that section in Black people could just be deleted. Moreschi (talk) 18:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
It is kind of a non sequitur isn't it. --Woland (talk) 20:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Moreschi, are you referring to a deletion of the Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy subsection in the Black People entry, or a removal of the link to this article, as Mukaddaret's comment suggests?

I actually believe that the final paragraph in that subsection could serve as a lucid starting point for considerations regarding the construction of a revised Ancient Egyptian race controversy article. Give it a close read, perhaps.

sewot_fred (talk) 22:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

  • Ugh. No, that whole section at Black people should just be deleted, it's off-topic. And no, I don't believe that paragraph is very good either. For one thing, it's simply wrong: ancient Egyptians in the media are generally represented as, well, Egyptian (and what does this term "Caucasian" mean, anyway? There is no quasi-essentialist Caucasian "type" as racialists like to thing, so the term is, like "Negroid", unhelpful anyway). Moreschi (talk) 08:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't just understand the position of Moreschi concerning the blackness of the ancient Egyptians. When it comes to color, they described themsleves as kmt, meaning black. Semitic people saw them as black (Misraïm son of Kush), Herodotus uses the same word black to speak of the skin of the Egyptians and Nubians. Those doing Egyptology know that the controversy surrounding the race and the origin of the ancient Egyptians did not start with Afrocentrism. This is a creation of Moreschi. The controversy belongs to Egyptology from the start. Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, refered to that in his books Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens and Lettres écrites d'Egypte et de Nubie en 1828 et 1829. He said that his research will help resolve the question of the origin of the Egyptians, if they came from the north or from the south. He concluded that they came from the south: Abyssinie (in Ethiopia) or Sennaar (in Sudan). He continued saying that the ancient Egyptians did not look like the Copts of today who are a mixture of different people who later on dominated in Egypt, but like the Kennous or Barabras, the actual inhabitants of Nubia. Those are words from Champollion! One can find this information in the Lettres.... In the Précis..., the father of Egyptology uses a very sharp reasoning. At the end of it he said that the ancient Egyptians belong to a race specific to Africa. Moreschi, according to you, what is the meaning the sentence: race specific to Africa? Not specific to Egypt, but to Africa? Champollion knew for sure that there was a controversy since Volney stated that he could not understand how people could say that Black people lack the faculty of reasoning while the ancient Egyptians who invented philosophy, mathematics were Blacks. Champollion Figeac, not to be confused with Jean-François Champollion, contradicted Volney saying that even if the Egyptians had Black skin, they were not part of the Black stock. Hegel who is a philosopher and who lived at the time of Jean-François Champollion, separated artificially Egypt from the rest of Africa. This hegelian mentality is still alive in some writings and, I am sorry to say so, is behind Moreschi's kind of reasoning. Even Adolf Erman and Hermann Ranke, who tried to trace the origin of the ancient Egyptian from outside of Africa came to admit that the Egyptians do not look like Semites or Lybians but like Nubians. What does it mean, Moreschi? Afrocentrism is only trying to revisit and prolong a controversy born really in the European 18th century, with people like Volney who questioned the enslavement of Africans. The introduction of the present article (I think from Moreschi's hand) is highly misleading and has to be rewritten.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 14:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

  • More misleading statements. Kmt does not mean "land of blacks", it means "black land", referring to the Nile-irrigated soil, as opposed to the "red desert". Anything to the contrary is sheer nonsense. The origin of the Egyptians is a legitimate scientific question that will shortly be dealt with at Origin of Egyptians: if you want the answer now, they were a Saharan and Nilotic mixture. Certainly they were African. And no, Champollion's other research is just outdated. Modern science shows that the Egyptian stock has been fairly continuous with little change for a very long time. Just because Champollion is a very important figure in Egyptology does not mean that everything he said was right. His research is going to be at archaic times: FFS, in his day people were enthusiastically pushing the "dynastic race theory" (something I will make very clear is fringe and racist in orgin when I do write the follow-up to this article). The undoubtedly African origins of the Egyptians does not mean they were black or white - they were neither - and despite occasional instances of earlier commentary, the "race" question (as opposed to an "origins" question) is indeed inseparable from Afrocentrism and 20th century racial politics. "Were the Egyptians African in origin or not" is something people have been asking for a very long time: this has been a bona fide scientific debate: current consensus is that the answer is "yes, they were". "Were the Egyptians black or white" is just modern silly Afrocentrist much ado about nothing. Moreschi (talk) 16:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, maybe you don't know the Egyptian language. There are many kmt-words. I am not refering to kmt-N23 (in Erman and Grapow with the determinative of the irrigation canal) or to kmt-O49 ( with the determinative of the village with cross-roads. Cf Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, p. 498; Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, p. 288) but to kmt-A1 (with the determinative of people. Cf Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, p. 288; Lam, De l'origine égyptienne des Peuls, p. 262). I know exactly what I am talking about. Now on races in Africa. Can you tell people the race or the races which originally came out of Africa a part from the Black race? Are they other people originally from Africa who are neither Black nor White? In other words, people who do not fall into any category of races existing in the world? Is this case of absence-of-race applicable also to other ancient people like Romans, Greeks...or only to some Africans? Let us be finally objective!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 17:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Assuming this isn't just trolling...the ancient world was largely colour-blind. Ethnicity was judged on the basis of culture, not skin colour. So it's anachronistic to think in modern racial terms when we're discussing the ancient world. And two, as you really should know, there is no "white race", and there is no "black race": these terms have been comprehensively proven to be scientifically bankrupt and devoid of credence. But if you insist on applying the one drop rule to ancient Egypt...be my guest, but it has no place on Wikipedia except as a quaint object of analysis. Moreschi (talk) 17:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
So, I'll ask again, Moreschi, given your position & weighing the considerations & concerns raised by those who dissent from your position (from an informed station and within this field of study), what is the real objective of this article/entry which you, indeed, authored?
It is fairly obvious that you do not seek to explore (nor chronicle, in any balanced and substantive fashion), the "Controversy over Race in Ancient Egypt" as the matter has been meted-out in modern and contemporary cultural spheres. Best, [User:Rande M Sefowt|sewot_fred]] (talk) 15:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, but since I can't understand your mode of discourse, I can't reply to what you say. Moreschi (talk) 16:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Sefowt, Please do not point fingers at Moreschi as if he is pushing some POV. The structure and content of this article was discussed and and we came to a consensus, after which Moreschi stepped up and did a lot of the work. The objective of this article is to document this controversy, and it is a fair approximation of this. Does it need work? Sure. However, this is no reasson to abandon good faith. --Woland (talk) 11:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The race of the ancient Egyptians

Woland, you know what? It seems to me that Moreschi focusing too much attention on Afrocentrism comes to ignore the history of Egyptology! I reminded him that the introduction of the article does not stand. The controversy about the race of the ancient Egyptians is an Egyptological topic from the time of Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology. Actually Champollion speaks of the past and says that his research is meant also to be a response to this debate. Please read his Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens (1828, pp. 455-460 (Elibron Classics)). For Jean-François Champollion, Nubians, Ethiopians, the Inhabitants of the Oasis and the Egyptians, form "une famille des peuples très anciennement civilisés dans le nord-est de l'Afrique". This familly is indigenous to Africa. Africa has never produced two or more races. Only the Black race with its variations from dark to light as one can still see it today. Everything else came from outside, the Egyptian did not. I was worried with the expulsion of Big-Dynamo mounted by Moreschi. Now Moreschi began targeting Sefowt and suspected me of trolling. That's going too far for a common work. According to me, there is a need to come back to the previous version of the article. The actual does not reflect accurately the Controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
1) Race is not a valid biological concept. Racial categories are cultural constructs that are always changing(e.g. in the 19th century Italians and Irish weren't considered to be white). Taking todays culturally constructed racial categories and applying them to the past is inherently anachronistic. Talking about the genetics of a past population is something else entirely (btw, the genetic categories that we create don't match up with the racial categories, imagine that). 2)The previous version of the article was a bloviated sack of original research and pig vomit. 3) Through consensus, a number of users decided that this article would be about the controversy surrounding afrocentrist claims about the Egyptians. Thats what it is. In the future, hopefully, articles will be created that talk about the archaeogenetics and such but that is not what this article is about. --Woland (talk) 15:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Woland, I have to desagree with you. There will be anachronism in giving a race to ancient Egyptians from an actual point of view only if there were no elements of the past for making any racial construction. Those elements do exist: be they anthropological, linguistic or cultural. The truth is that people are behaving in an hypocritical manner. On one hand they say that race doesn't exist when dealing with the Egyptians, on the other hand they can tell you about the Nubians being Blacks, (thus about the Black pharaohs). But do not these Nubians belong to the same familly than the Egyptiansas pointed out by the father of Egyptology, I mean Jean-François Champollion? The article cannot simply deal with this controversy within Afrocentrism. The actual version can, at the most, be a section of the article but surely not the whole article, because this controversy belongs first and formost to the field of Egyptology itself as I have stated before. I can document that. I can't understand that people can write on this subject and yet ignore the existence of that documentation. Up to now we just cheating people taking the controversy out of its native field! The article as it stands is a nonsense. It can only make sense as a part of a wide article.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 16:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, you're wrong and as has been pointed out before the Origin of Egyptians article will focus on the things you talk about (to some extent). There is no scientific or historical need to talk about the "race" of a given people whether they be Nubian, Egyptian or Martian, and as I've said discussing the genetics is an entirely different topic and would be valid. I don't see anyone being hypocritical here, talking about the "race" of any discrete group is just not helpful in any scholarly way, especially when the races we arbitrarily identify do not line up with the genetic evidence. You should read about Race versus Ethnicity maybe. Yes, people in the 19th (and earlier) century were obsessed with a kind of scientific racism, that does not mean that we should 1) trust those sources or 2)give them any credence whatsoever.--Woland (talk) 16:20, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Woland, I have the impression that you forgot the title of the present article. It is about Ancient Egyptian race controversy. I am trying to remind people that the introduction is misleading in its attempt to confine the problematic within the field of Afrocentrism: Controversy surrounding the race of ancient Egyptians has been a persistent meme in Afrocentrism since the early years of the 20th century. This problematic is as old as Egyptology. The work of Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, deals boldly with it. My preoccupation is legitimate in as much as Wikipedia has to present the state of the matter not our ideas about the existence or the non existence of races or of something else. So I repeat myself, this article is concealing something: the literature about the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians within the field of Egyptology. It is misleading: making to believe that the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians is a fabrication of Afrocentrism.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 19:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok, give me 5 references (from mainstream peer reviewed journals) from the past ten years that discuss this controversy about race within Egyptology. --Woland (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Please, Moreschi, try to answer to the preoccupation of Rande. He seems to me that he is raising the following questions: 1. What is the objective of the article. 2. Can we say that you do not want to write about the race of the ancient Egyptians in accordance with the morden literature? Even so, there will be a problem. Because Herodotus is ancient. He pointed out that the Egyptians are black colored. He said so also about the Nubians and the Indians who live far from the Persian Empire. The ancient knew the colors. Those colors are still the reference for us today to say who is who, that the Nubians and the southern Indians are Black. Why not the ancient Egyptians (before the invasion of the People of the Sea and the Semites (second millenium before our Era. At this time all that we know of Egypt was already in place for at least on millenium!))--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 18:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, not the "misinterpreting Herodotus" meme. We're getting the full blast here, aren't we? You really do have no case. Well, might as well get this over with in one go.
Herodotus did not say that the Egyptians were black. He said that they had non-white skin comparable to that of the Indians: certainly darker than the Greek somatic norm, but lighter than the Ethiopians, who he and others (notably Diodorus) viewed as the "blackest" of known races in the ancient world, and those with the most features we uselessly label "Negroid" today. The Ethiopian yardstick, FYI, keeps going all the way up to Shakespeare's Much ado about Nothing. "Ethiopian" literally means "sun-burnt peoples". Please also note that "intermediate phenotypes", as the Egyptians seems to have had, can occur naturally and need not be the result of intermarriage between "pure blacks" and "pure whites".
Manilius's colour scheme, dating from roughly the 1st century AD, is also helpful here: from blackest to whitest: Ethiopians, Indians, Egyptians, Moors. Flavius Philostratus, another ancient commentator, described those living on the Ethiopian-Nubian boundary to be not fully black - not as black as the Ethiopians, but blacker than the Egyptians: Ammianus Marcellinus described the Egyptians as subfusculi (somewhat dark). Therefore, ancient evidence fully supports the lede of this article. And, as I have already pointed out, in the ancient world they simply didn't care about this stuff: it was not a racist place. Slavery was colour-blind, as were most other things. Moreschi (talk) 18:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, first and foremost, this is not about trolling. It is about your misleading statements. I challenge you to tell me in which book Herodotus said that the Egyptians had non-white skin comparable to that of the Indians. I have the 9 books of Herodotus here in my room in two translations. My interventions have nothing to do with misinterpreting Herodotus. Herodotus said something about the skin color of the Egyptians, the Colchians, the Ethiopians and the southern Indians. He uses the same term black. It is about translations, not about interpretations. Maybe it you who is relying on interpretations. So give me the reference of Herodotus. By the way, even Aristotle, the father of natural sciences, spoke about people who are very black, and named the Ethiopians along with the Egyptians!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Your research seems selective. See [3]. Doug Weller (talk) 06:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
  • This is silly. What is this "Black race" nonsense? Sure, there's been lots of speculation in academia for years as to the origin of the Egyptians - Champollion et al. And attempts to deny the Egyptians an African orgin may well have been racially motivated. But the race controversy - as opposed to origin - really is Afrocentric furore and nothing but. Moreschi (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I know, I've been trying to pound that into the skulls of people for too long.--Woland (talk) 20:40, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, there is sort of a valid point in there somewhere, although it's hard to make in a rigorous way. The basic point is that it seems that if you took an ancient Egyptian, dressed him in modern clothes and put him on an American street today, and asked people what race he was, most would say without hesitation that he was black. It's also hard to deny that modern paintings and drawings of ancient Egyptians, especially from the 19th century, tend to look more "Caucasian" than old Egyptian statues and paintings. Looie496 (talk) 21:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Egyptians do appear in moderm clothes on American streets. Some, no doubt would be called 'black'. Others would not. There's really little reason to suppose that the modern Egyptians are dramatically different from the ancient ones. It's also quite easy to deny that "modern paintings and drawings of ancient Egyptians, especially from the 19th century, tend to look more Caucasian than old Egyptian statues and paintings." See, for example Long's An Egyptian Feast, which depicts Egyptians with bronze skins, along with some paler and some darker ones [4]. BTW, the 19th century scientist Thomas Huxley placed southern Europeans in a racial category he called "melanochroi". By Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka's logic this must mean he thought they were literally coloured black. Paul B (talk) 22:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Paul, if you go from the hypothesis that "the modern Egptians are (not) different from the ancient ones", you might be right that some look like Whites and others like Blacks. But that's far from the reality. Because of the successive invasions by Asians and Europeans starting basically from the 2 millennium BCE, Egypt went on dramatic changes. Thus according to Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, the ancient Egyptians do not look like the Copts, the inhabitants of today's Egypt (who are a mixture of indigenous Africans and immigrants or strangers from Asia and Europe), but like the Kennous or Barabras, the actual inhabitants of Nubia. Paul, if you want to have a more real picture of how looked the ancient Egyptians, you have to turn your eyes toward Nubia, toward the Soudan!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 23:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I know this is Afrocentric dogma - ancient Egyptians must have looked different from modern Egyptians. But there's just not a great deal of evidence for that. Champollion was writing at the very beginning of modern scholarship of Egypt, and at a time when racial theories were filled with problematic scientific and ideological assumptions. It's as pointless quoting him as it would be to quote Gobineau. Paul B (talk) 11:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
  • And, actually, Champollion was just wrong. All these "ethnicity-changing invasion" theories have been proven to pure nonsense, and in fact modern research shows that the Egyptians have been an ethnically unchanging bunch for a very, very long time. As in, they're still the same Saharan/Nilotic admixture they were in the predynastic era. And yes, if requested, I can produce refs for this. Moreschi (talk) 13:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptians: Race, Origin and Ethnicity

Paul, maybe you don't know that Egyptology is born with Jean-François Champllion. Gobineau is not even an Egyptologist. My quote has nothing to do with Afrocentrism but everything to do with Egyptology. And this in Champollion's own words. If the man was contaminated by his time, he would have easily said that the ancient Egyptians were Whites, or at least the gorverning body was. Nothing of that kind in his writings. Champollion at the very beginning of Egyptology adopts a new paradigm. He speaks in his Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens about "des faits capitaux (importants fatcs) (p. 455)" which changes "les bases du système adopté jusqu'ici sur l'origine du peuple égyptien (the bases of the system agreed upon up to now about the origin of the Egyptian people) (p. 455)". "Dans cette hypothèse nouvelle, les Egyptiens seraient une race propre à l'Afrique(...). La constitution physique, les moeurs, les usages et l'organisation sociale des Egyptiens, n'avaient jadis, en effet, que des très faibles analogies avec l'état naturel et politique des peuples de l'Asie occidentale, leurs plus proches voisins (With this new hyptothesis, The Egyptians would be a race specific to Africa (...). The physical constitution, the habits, the uses and the social organization of the Egyptians had actually little analogies with the natural and the political state of people of Western Asia, their closest neighbours) (p. 456)". "Tout semble, en effet, nous montrer dans les Egyptiens un peuple tout-à-fait étranger au continent asiatique (Everything, in fact, show us in the Egyptians, a people absolutely stranger to the Asiatic continent (p. 456)". Did the actual research on the origin of the Egyptians find Champollion wrong. No as far as I know. In his Dictionnaire de l'Afrique. Histoire, Civilisation, Actualité published in Paris (2008 for the second edition), the French Bernard Nantet, who is not an Afrocentrist by the way, writes that the Egyptians came from the south (p. 104) following the Nile. People are obsessed with Afrocentrism and are loosing sight on Egyptology. We have to come back to Egyptology and ask to Egyptologists what they say about the origin and the race of the ancient Egyptians. If there is a controversy about it, we have to report it objectively.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 14:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

  • At most, your obsession with what Jean-François Champollion said about anything belongs in the article about him and perhaps as a brief mention in the future Origins article. You don't seem to understand the differences between what race, ethnicity, and origins are. And to get back to anachronisms. Did Herodotus mean the same thing by "black" that we do now? Did Champollion? The answer is, of course, no. Why? Because the meaning of the word has changed and will keep on changing. Especially since neither operationalized the term. --Woland (talk) 15:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, that's all about origin. Which will get its own separate article. Not, by and large, race. Which is something entirely different, with a different controversy. "Origin" is "where they came from". "Race" is "what skin colour where they". Race differs from ethnicity too in normal usage, something else you don't seem to get. Well done for exactly proving my point made above. At this point we're really getting into WP:TE territory. Moreschi (talk)
    • P.S: why this fascination with the 19th century and the ridiculous veneration of Champollion? Yes, he was very clever, but no, he wasn't a god and a lot of his research was wrong and is outdated now. Moreschi (talk) 14:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
      • I mean, just to illustrate my point, Egyptologists have spent years trying to work out where the Egyptians came from. Diop tried to measure the melanin levels in mummies. One is concerned with origin, the other with race. Moreschi (talk) 14:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Woland and Moreschi, you are right in accusing to be obsessed with Jean-Champollion. If you knew who the man is to Egyptology you could have been a bit humble, but...The point is that the subject of the present article is Ancient Egyptian race controversy. The word race is in the title. Please read carefully the title of the article. Race, not ethnicity or origin. Of cause, ethnicity and origin can be used in a discussion about race. I wanted to show that one cannot, without cheating or misleading people, speak about the race of the ancient Egyptians confining the discussion within Afrocentrism. The discussion belongs first of all to Egyptology. For a better dimonstration, I went back to the beginning of Egyptology to see if the discussion about the race of the ancient Egyptians had taken place. And who would you find, Woland and Moreschi, at the beginning of Egyptology? Gobineau? Please, let us be humble and try to accept facts! Can a discussion on origins help to clarify a discussion on races? Yes! Let us reason a bit. Are there people indigenous to Africa who are not today classified as Blacks? (I said indigenous to Africa) No! Now, if the ancient Egyptians are indigenous to Africa (Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology and Bernard Nantet, the author of a new dictionary of Africa, agree with that) and if there were living today, wouldn't they have been called Blacks? I think they would. It is as simple as that. Everything else is ideology hiding itself behind pseudo-scientific statements like the non-existence of races, etc. There are plenty of Physical anthropology Journals in the scientific world. These African called ancient Egyptians are giving headache to a lot of people. The problem is that ancient Egyptians are indigenous Africans. Indigenous Africans? It is a scandal that some want to correct.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 16:44, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh for heaven's sake. Of course we all know who Champollion was. If you knew anything about 18th-19th century history you would also know how primitive knowledge of ancient ethnicities was at that time. Try reading the writings of a scholar as important as Sir William Jones, for example. After all, Champollion died decades before Darwin published, and at a time when almost no ancient artefacts inscribed in non-classical languages could even be understood. He was a pioneer in the field. As for your rhetorical question "Are there people indigenous to Africa who are not today classified as Blacks? (I said indigenous to Africa) No!" The answer is absolutely "yes!" Even the Egyptians themselves depicted the Berbers/Libyans as pale-skinned. Paul B (talk) 16:52, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

What Paul just said. Essentially, Lusala is failing to comprehend a number of basic but important points.

1): The concept of "race" is totally bankrupt of scientific capital.

2): Applying the one drop rule to ancient Egypt is neither productive nor valid nor helpful. The Berbers are African but are certainly not black by any rational standard that is not a byproduct of years of US racism. Ditto for the ancient Egyptians.

3): There is a massive difference between an "origins" controversy and a "race" controversy.

4): Intermediate phenotypes can arise naturally and need not be the result of interbreeding between magically pure races (which is why this article very carefully avoids the misleading term "mixed race"). The Egyptians have actually been ethnically continuous - you know what I mean - for really a very long time. Whatever Champollion says to the contrary.

5): 19th century (and earlier) sources, no matter how venerable, are not always worthy of veneration.

Lusala, until you get all this, from this point we'll just have to treat your continued attempts to further your agenda here simply as talkpage disruption, which will consequently lead to a page-ban. We've civilly answered your questions and have dealt with your points. Now I, for one, am getting bored. Moreschi (talk) 17:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Make that two.--Woland (talk) 17:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Woland and Moreschi, stop intimidating people. You cannot on one hand be involved in the redaction of this article and on the other hand try to ban those who do not share your views. I am aware of what you have done to Big-dinamo. You are abusing your power as administrators. I suppose that you know very well the rules of Wikipedia. This article is not a discussion on the existence of races. It is about the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians. The controversy does exist. According to you, only within the field of Afrocentrism. My position is that this controversy is also present in Egyptology starting from the work of the father of Egyptology, Jean-François Champollion. We have to look for a concensus to include this position. How can you think that only you are right? Why are you so pretentious? Do you realise that there are articles on White people and on Black people here in Wikipedia? The term People is an euphemism for race. Let's not be so hypocrite! To Paul, I will remind that there are a lot of studies about the formation of the Berber people. Read them and will notice that they are mixed (indegenous Black Africans plus White people from Europe and Asia). There are other cases. The Fulani/Peul for example are according to Aboubacry Moussa Lam, a mix from Egypt between Black Africans and White Asians. You people have to cool down, control your temper and accept a concensus to re-work this article which is, as it stands now, one sided. That's not good for the reputation of Wikipedia.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 21:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka, let me draw your attention to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist . People have read what you have to say and rejected it. Your posts on this talk page are becoming disruptive. Tom Harrison Talk 22:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Luka, I'm not an admin so I don't know what you're talking about. You really need to go back and read wikipedia policy, and possibly some science and history that was written after the 19th century. You have some serious misconceptions about the nature of race(e.g. there is no such thing as 'mixed-race,' I actually read modern physical anthropology articles, you should try it). You really need to take a step back, dude. We have really tried to be civil and address your concerns. --Woland (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, we have. If you persist in not getting it, then the article probation clause of this case will kick into play and you'll be sitting on the sidelines. Moreschi (talk) 20:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
There's really no value in continuing this discussion, but I'll just repeat one question, although the point has already been made: how do you imagine that the distinction between 'black people' and 'white people' came about? Has it occurred to you that there must have been transitional phenotypes for these distinctions to have emerged in the first place? In other words, there have to have been "non black and non white" people before there were "mixed race" people. And where do you imagine that these transitional types were most likely to have emerged? Surely at an ecologically transitional space between the origin of humanity and its expansion into the wider world. As for the Berbers, who live in just such an area, you know only too well tha they are depicted as 'white' by the Egyptians and that that's earlier than any known "invasion" from outside Africa. You just ignore that fact. Paul B (talk) 22:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Update

I've started the sister "factual" article to this one at User:Moreschi/OOET. Moreschi (talk) 18:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

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