Eurocentrics claim that this word doesn't actually mean black even though it's been translated as such by Oxford and other esteemed institutions.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: you got a problem?
Do you?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: you got a problem?
Do you?
No. what about you... You got a problem?
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: you got a problem?
What are you on about? I'm just asking a question.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
No examples given.
What Eurocentric said what, quoted , when?
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
Herodotus, for example, referred to the Egyptians as melanchroes. That term is sometimes translated as “black-skinned,” but Herodotus typically used a different word to describe people from further south in Africa, suggesting that “dark-skinned” is more appropriate. Source:http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2014/12/ridley_scott_s_exodus_were_ancient_egyptians_white_black_or_brown.html
Several Ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians and Ethiopians were black or dark skinned,[94] with woolly hair,[95] which became one of the most popular and controversial arguments for this theory. The Greek word used is “melanchroes”. While scholars such as Diop, Selincourt and George Rawlinson translate the Greek word "melanchroes" as "black", Najovits states that "Dark-skinned is the usual translation of the original Greek melanchroes"[96] and he is followed by A.D. Godley and Alan B. Lloyd.
Afrocentric misreadings of classical texts
The meaning of melas and melanochroes
In their efforts to paint the ancient Egyptians "black," Afrocentrists rely heavily on misreadings of ancient Greek and Roman literature – many of which stem from a severe misunderstanding of the historical use of color terms. In many ages and many cultures, descriptions of human complexion as "white," "brown" or "black" would correspond in modern usage to "fair," "tan" or "swarthy." According to the anthropologist Peter Frost (*):
This older, more relative sense has been noted in other culture areas. The Japanese once used the terms shiroi (white) and kuroi (black) to describe their skin and its gradations of color. The Ibos of Nigeria employed ocha (white) and ojii (black) in the same way, so that nwoko ocha (white man) simply meant an Ibo with a lighter complexion. In French Canada, the older generation still refers to a swarthy Canadien as noir. Vestiges of this older usage persist in family names. Mr. White, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Black were individuals within the normal color spectrum of English people. Ditto for Leblanc, Lebrun, and Lenoir among the French or Weiss and Schwartz among the Germans.
In the same vein, the Greek words melas and leukos when applied to skin color were usually equivalent to "swarthy" and "fair" rather than the racial terms "black" or "white" as Afrocentrists would prefer (see definition of melas in the online LSJ lexicon). There are numerous examples of this usage in Greek literature – one unequivocal example describes an aged Odysseus magically regaining his youth (Homer Odyssey 16.172-176):
With this, Athena touched him [Odysseus] with her golden wand. A well-washed cloak and a tunic she first of all cast about his breast, and she increased his stature and his youthful bloom. Once more he grew dark of color [melanchroiês], and his cheeks filled out, and dark grew the beard about his chin.
In describing the skin tone of Odysseus, Homer used the word melanchroiês – a form of the same word that other Greeks sometimes chose to describe Egyptians, and one that is the source of much Afrocentric misunderstanding. If taken literally, the word would mean "black-skinned"; however, it is clear from the context that Homer means "of swarthy complexion" rather than racially "black," and intends to describe Odysseus regaining his youthful color. Otherwise we would have to assume that during the process of rejuvenation Odysseus transformed into a black African! This despite the numerous ancient artistic portrayals of Odysseus as Greek-looking and certainly not "black" in any modern racial sense.
Likewise, when the ancient writers described Egyptians as melas or melanchroes, they almost surely meant "dark-complected" rather than literally "black." Any ambiguity in such descriptions can be resolved by noting that other classical writers such as Manilius specifically identified the Egyptians as medium in complexion rather than "black," and that the Egyptians portrayed themselves as lighter and finer-featured than their African neighbors to the south. ]http://www.geocities.com/enbp/quotes.html
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
Apparently most scholars understand melanchroes to mean black and not merely swarthy or dark-skinned. The person that derided Afrocentrics in that article even admits that melanchroes literally means black, so I don't understand why he is engaging in such distracting semantics.
Virtually all of the early Latin eyewitnesses described the ancient Egyptians as black-skinned with woolly hair. Several ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians and Ethiopians had complexions that were “melanchroes,” which most scholars translate as black, while some scholars translate it as “dark” or “dark skinned.”
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
"Too black a hue as an Egyptian or Ethiopian(Nubian) marks a coward--so too, too white a hue as with women. The best color is the intermediate tawny color of the lion. That color marks for courage".
Aristotle, PHYSOGNOMICA
That more or less clinches it.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
The root of melanchroes means 'jet-black'. But people generally aren't going to leave it at that because they feel that the Greeks objected to the idea that the modal skin pigmentation of the AE, Colchians etc. was literally 'melas' or RBG #000000.
Even though the modal AE skin pigmentation level was neither of these in the minds of the Greeks, there are always going to be ideologues on both sides who insist that melas (as used in reference to AE skin complexion) should be translated to modern racialized terminology/concepts that describes RBG #000000 or RBG #FAE88A ('swarthy').
For this reason, I see this issue (i.e., the meaning of 'melas' and its derivatives) as a giant red herring and the playground of liars. Thread carefully is all I have to say to those who are caught in the crossfire.
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin: "Too black a hue as an Egyptian or Ethiopian(Nubian) marks a coward--so too, too white a hue as with women. The best color is the intermediate tawny color of the lion. That color marks for courage".
Aristotle, PHYSOGNOMICA
That more or less clinches it.
Some people doubt Aristotle wrote that ancient text, but it is nonetheless authentically ancient Greek (thereby it is known as a pseudo-Aristotlean text). But I agree that, regardless of how one interprets "melanchroes", the perception that Egyptians of the time belonged to a "dark skin" category comparable to the Sudanese of the time is telling. Not that the Greeks would have worked with our latter-day racial constructs, but it is an intriguing look in the similarities and differences they perceived between certain peoples.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin: "Too black a hue as an Egyptian or Ethiopian(Nubian) marks a coward--so too, too white a hue as with women. The best color is the intermediate tawny color of the lion. That color marks for courage".
Aristotle, PHYSOGNOMICA
That more or less clinches it.
Aristotle "clinches" it? How about these?
Why are the Ethiopians and Egyptians bandy-legged? Is it because of that the body of itself creates, because of disturbance by heat, like loss of wood when they become dry? The condition of their hair supports this theory; for it is curlier than that of other nations…” (Aristotle, Problemata_ 909, 7)
Dialogue: Lycinus (describing an Egyptian): ‘this boy is not merely black; he has thick lips and his legs are too thin…his hair worn in a plait shows that he is not a freeman.’ Timolaus: ‘but that is a sign of really distinguished birth in Egypt, Lycinus. All freeborn children plait their hair until they reach manhood…’ (Lucian, _Navigations_, paras 2-3)
Dialogue: “Aegyptos conquered the country of the black-footed ones and called it Egypt after himself” (Apollodorus, Book II, paras 3 and 4)
Dialogue: Danaos (describing the Aegyptiads): ‘I can see the crew with their black limbs and white tunics.’ (Aeschylus, _The Suppliants_, vv. 719-20, 745)
“…the men of Egypt are mostly brown or black with a skinny desiccated look.” (Ammianus Marcellinus, Book XXII para 16) Ibn Qutayba (828-89) wrote: Wahb ibn Nunabbih said: Ham the son of Noah was a white man, with a handsome face and a fine figure, and Almighty God changed his color and the color of his descendants in response to his father’s curse. He went away, followed by his sons, and they settled by the shore, where God increased and multiplied them. They are the blacks. …Some of his children went to the West. Ham begat Kush ibn Ham, Kan`an ibn Ham, and Fut ibn Ham. Fut settled in India and Sind and their inhabitants are his descendants. Kush and Kan`an’s descendants are the various races of blacks: Nubians, Zanj, Qaran, Zaghawa, Ethiopians, Copts, and Berbers. (Kitab al-Ma`arif, ed. Tharwat `Ukasha, 2nd ed., Cairo, 1969, p. 26)
“For the fact is as I soon came to realise myself, and then heard from others later, that the Colchians are obviously Egyptian. When the notion occurred to me, I asked both the Colchians and the Egyptians about it, and found that the Colchians had better recall of the Egyptians than the Egyptians did of them. Some Egyptians said that they thought the Colchians originated with Sesostris’ army, but I myself guessed their Egyptian origin not only because the Colchians are dark-skinned and curly-haired (which does not count for much by itself , because these features are common in others too) but more importantly because Colchians, Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only peoples in the world who practise circumcision and who have always done so."
Source, The histories By Herodotus, Robin Waterfield, Carolyn Dewald
Even Manilius who is frequently quoted to prove the Egyptians were distinct from Africans said that they were less(a KEY word) sun-burt than the Aethiopians, not that they weren't sun-burnt at all. And if you've seen some of the ethnic groups of Central and Southern Sudan("Aethiopia") you'd see why Manilius said they "stain the world in darkness".
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
The ancient Greeks helped birth 'our' constructs. Only the last 40 years had black come to mean the Bla k American s and their West African parents.
Dictionaries of the English language still don't know only American Negroes are black.
US Englishblack Definition of black in English:
black Top 1000 frequently used words Pronunciation: /blak/ ADJECTIVE
1Of the very darkest color owing to the absence of or complete absorption of light; the opposite of white: black smoke her hair was black More example sentences 1.1(Of the sky or night) completely dark owing to nonvisibility of the sun, moon, or stars: the sky was moonless and black More example sentences Synonyms 1.2Deeply stained with dirt: his clothes were absolutely black More example sentences 1.3(Of a plant or animal) dark in color as distinguished from a lighter variety: Japanese black pine More example sentences 1.4(Of coffee or tea) served without milk or cream. Example sentences 1.5Of or denoting the suits spades and clubs in a deck of cards. Example sentences 1.6(Of a ski run) of the highest level of difficulty, as indicated by black markers positioned along it. Example sentences 2 (also Black) Of any human group having dark-colored skin, especially of African or Australian Aboriginal ancestry: black adolescents of Jamaican descent More example sentences 2.1Relating to black people: black culture More example sentences 3(Of a period of time or situation) characterized by tragic or disastrous events; causing despair or pessimism: five thousand men were killed on the blackest day of the war the future looks black for those of us interested in freedom More example sentences Synonyms 3.1(Of a person’s state of mind) full of gloom or misery; very depressed: Jean had disappeared and Mary was in a black mood More example sentences Synonyms 3.2(Of humor) presenting tragic or harrowing situations in comic terms: “Good place to bury the bodies,” she joked with black humor More example sentences Synonyms 3.3Full of anger or hatred: Roger shot her a black look More example sentences Synonyms 3.4 archaic Very evil or wicked: my soul is steeped in the blackest sin Synonyms NOUN
1Black color or pigment: a tray decorated in black and green a series of paintings done only in grays and blacks More example sentences 1.1Black clothes or material, often worn as a sign of mourning: dressed in the black of widowhood More example sentences 1.2Darkness, especially of night or an overcast sky: the only thing visible in the black was the light of the lantern More example sentences 1.3 (often Black) The player of the black pieces in chess or checkers. Example sentences 1.4A black thing, especially a ball or piece in a game. Example sentences 2 (also Black) A member of a dark-skinned people, especially one of African or Australian Aboriginal ancestry: a coalition of blacks and whites against violence More example sentences 3 (the black) The situation of not owing money to a bank or of making a profit in a business operation: the company just managed to stay in the black I managed to break even in the first six months—quite a short time for a small business to get into the black From the conventional use of black ink to indicate credit items More example sentences Synonyms VERB
[WITH OBJECT] 1Make black, especially by the application of black polish: blacking the prize bull’s hooves More example sentences 1.1Make (one’s face, hands, and other visible parts of one’s body) black with polish or makeup, so as not to be seen at night or, especially formerly, to play the role of a black person in a musical show, play, or movie: white extras blacking up their faces to play Ethiopians More example sentences Usage
Black, designating Americans of African heritage, became the most widely used and accepted term in the 1960s and 1970s, replacing Negro. It is not usually capitalized: black Americans. Through the 1980s, the more formal African American replaced black in much usage, but both are now generally acceptable. Afro-American, first recorded in the 19th century and popular in the 1960s and 1970s, is now heard mostly in anthropological and cultural contexts. Colored people, common in the early part of the 20th century, is now usually regarded as offensive, although the phrase survives in the full name of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. An inversion, people of color, has gained some favor, but is also used in reference to other nonwhite ethnic groups: a gathering spot for African Americans and other people of color interested in reading about their cultures. See also colored (usage) and person of color.
Phrases
1 black someone's eye Hit someone in the eye so as to cause bruising. Example sentences 2 look on the black side informal View a situation pessimistically. Example sentences 3 men in black Pronunciation: /ˌmen in ˈblak/ informal Anonymous dark-clothed men who supposedly visit people who have reported an encounter with a UFO or an alien in order to prevent their publicizing it. Example sentences 4 the new black A color that is currently so popular that it rivals the traditional status of black as the most reliably fashionable color: brown is the new black this season More example sentences 4.1Something that is suddenly extremely popular or fashionable: retro sci-fi is the new black More example sentences 5 not as black as one is painted informal Not as bad as one is said to be. Example sentences Phrasal verbs
1 black out (Of a person) undergo a sudden and temporary loss of consciousness: they knocked me around and I blacked out More example sentences Synonyms 2 black something out 1 (usually be blacked out) Extinguish all lights or completely cover windows, especially for protection against an air attack or in order to provide darkness in which to show a movie: the bombers began to come nightly and the city was blacked out More example sentences 1.1Subject a place to an electricity failure: Chicago was blacked out yesterday after a freak flood More example sentences 2Obscure something completely so that it cannot be read or seen: the license plate had been blacked out with masking tape More example sentences 2.1(Of a television company) suppress the broadcast of a program: they blacked out the women’s finals on local television More example sentences Derivatives
blackish Pronunciation: /ˈblakiSH/ ADJECTIVE Example sentences blackly Pronunciation: /ˈblaklē/ ADVERB Example sentences Origin
British & World English dictionary English synonyms US English synonyms What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
Most popular in the US fascism demagogue translate balayage compel = trending Different than, different from, or different to? 6 punctuation marks you might be using incorrectly Video: can literally mean figuratively? Affect or effect: a visual guide How good is your Northern Irish English? TEST YOURSELF Translating Americanisms 1) What is the British word for the American jetway? air bridge skyway Next 0/0 WORD OF THE DAY floatel Related Words
alder Black, Hugo Black, Joseph crowned crane black black–white Nearby words
blabber blabbermouth black black acre Black Act English (US)
Isnt the same argument made about Josephus's Jesus
“At that time also there appeared a certain man of magic power … if it be meet to call him a man, [whose name is Jesus], whom [certain] Greeks call a son of [a] God, but his disciples [call] the true prophet who is supposed to have raised dead persons and to have cured all diseases. Both his nature and his form were human, for he was a man of simple appearance, mature age, black-skinned (melagchrous), short growth, three cubits tall, hunchbacked, prognathous (lit. ‘with a long face [macroprosopos]), a long nose, eyebrows meeting above the nose, that the spectators could take fright, with scanty [curly] hair, but having a line in the middle of the head after the fashion of the Nazaraeans, with an undeveloped beard. (*Halōsis, ii.174).”[4]
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
The Jesus quote above me is commonly quoted by commentators who post "such and such were black" trivia. But the Josephus quote doesn't seem to exist. Which means, what? See my previous post. Playground of liars. Somebody is playing dirty as usual when certain interests get involved. Let's see which camp it is this time; Euronuts or unsavory elements within the "such and such was black" camp.
What seems to be the same text is quoted below. It has the same general structure but with parts that have been translated differently, as well as an attribution to a different author:
quote:"There appeared in these our days a man, of the Jewish Nation, of great virtue, named Yeshua [Jesus], who is yet living among us, and of the Gentiles is accepted for a Prophet of truth, but His own disciples call Him the Son of God- He raiseth the dead and cureth all manner of diseases. A man of stature somewhat tall, and comely, with very reverent countenance, such as the beholders may both love and fear, his hair of (the colour of) the chestnut, full ripe, plain to His ears, whence downwards it is more orient and curling and wavering about His shoulders. In the midst of His head is a seam or partition in His hair, after the manner of the Nazarenes. His forehead plain and very delicate; His face without spot or wrinkle, beautified with a lovely red; His nose and mouth so formed as nothing can be reprehended; His beard thickish, in colour like His hair, not very long, but forked; His look innocent and mature; His eyes grey, clear, and quick- In reproving hypocrisy He is terrible; in admonishing, courteous and fair spoken; pleasant in conversation, mixed with gravity. It cannot be remembered that any have seen Him Laugh, but many have seen Him Weep. In proportion of body, most excellent; His hands and arms delicate to behold. In speaking, very temperate, modest, and wise. A man, for His singular beauty, surpassing the children of men"
EDIT: I speculated that the red facial complexion mentioned in the English translations of this text could have been a translation of "melanchroes", but there is no support for this in older texts. Although it could still be in the earlier Greek text, there is little basis to entertain this given the fact that the dubious Josephus quote is the only one I see claiming this and it seems to be a mess.
I recall this from Rogers but never checked it out. Seems the Slavonic text Halosis as cited by 42 Tribes needs examining against Eisler for veracity of 42 Tribes' quote to arrive at an independent original view rather than willy nilly acceptance of a subjective hostile prejudgemental critique of Eisler, i mean if we really want to be fair, but keeping in mind the Halosis itself is s rewrite not directly from Josephus's hand though possibly containing material from a non-Xian Jewish composed edition of some Josephus work.
Bottom line in my opinion is it's not a 1st century eyewitness account. The closest we have are catacomb paintings which are fanciful and postdate by more than a century he whom they portray in fact showing only their renderer s belief.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Lentulus apparently dates to the 15th century when is the first anyone knows it exists.
According to the Catholic encyclopedia Publius Lentullus is a fictitious person.
Says another source Modern Apocrypha, Famous "Biblical" Hoaxes Edgar J. Goodspeed The Beacon Press, Boston, 1956 pg 91
"The 'Letter of Lentulus' is evidently a fiction, designed to give currency to the description contained in the printers' manuals about the personal appearance of Jesus. The varying accounts of its provenance are simply devices to explain its survival from antiquity until today. It is probably as old as the thirteenth century; but it was unknown to Christian antiquity, and has no claims to serious attention as throwing any light upon the personal appearance of Jesus." Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
While the Slavonic Halosis purports to be Josephus, the Lentulus has nothing to do with anything that's supposed to be Josephus and must not be confused as such. Not being an ancient work there is no 'Greek text' nor would a Roman official document his superiors in other than Latin.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
—Com. μελαγχρής, ές, Cratin.425, Eup.430, Antiph.135, Men.974, Anon.Iamb. in Gerhard Phoinix p.7, also PCair.Zen.76.9 (iii B. C.); μ. μᾶζα Polioch.2.2. p. 1094
Copyright Statement Contact tlg-support@uci.edu for inquiries. TLG®is a registered trademark of he Regents of the University of California.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Every melanchr- eentry is a black something or other, bile, sail, shoe, hair. Yet somehow supposedly does not mean the darkest of colours when applied to skin.
There's nothing inherent about race anymore than Black Americans and Aboriginee Australians are one race though both are black.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: you got a problem?
Do you?
No. what about you... You got a problem?
No I don't. As was mentioned before, the root word.
Definition of melan-
1 : black : dark <melanic> <melanin> 2 : melanin <melanophore>
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Every melanchr- eentry is a black something or other, bile, sail, shoe, hair. Yet somehow supposedly does not mean the darkest of colours when applied to skin.
There's nothing inherent about race anymore than Black Americans and Aboriginee Australians are one race though both are black.
Well searched.
Something seems off in this "prestige classical Greek" online dictionary, because this dictionary doesn't recognize the word: melanchroes.
Believe it or not I was looking for Tufts when I GOOGLED Scott Liddell out of memory. I used it extensively when first presenting Aeschylus, Herodotus, Manilius etc on Manansala's, W alker's, and Rashidi's YAHOO groups in the early 2000s
I'll check Tuft's now. I suspect they list the singular form of the word but we gonna see.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
But even without clicking the headword you can see black-skinned in the short definition column.
Black-skinned people have always been noted as such regardless of ethnicity, nationality, or race despite protest from Eurocentrics and their Negro apologist cronies.
The Oxford agrees seeing it lists two separate biologically unrelated national ethnic racial populations, African Americans and Australian Aborigenees, as black.
From the Greeks (Aeschylus' Suppliants) to the Latins (Manilius' Astronomica) to the Arabic speaking Zanj (al~Jahiz' 'Glory') which trio testimony I've been presenting on the 'net since 1998.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Also search for containing the word skinned which returns 6 entries for black-skinned and one for white-skinned. You may even want to do a containing search for tanned, sunburn, and negro.
Nothing esoteric about it nor different than current usage since the ancient Greeks are the West's first informants on black peoples.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Also search for containing the word skinned which returns 6 entries for black-skinned and one for white-skinned. You may even want to do a containing search for tanned, sunburn, and negro.
Nothing esoteric about it nor different than current usage since the ancient Greeks are the West's first informants on black peoples.
Good work.
Reposted for newcomers:
Melanin Dosage Tests: Ancient Egyptians
Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues
-- A-M Mekota1, M Vermehren2 Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7_/13 " Materials and Methods
Your subjective attempted distraction word usage feelings was anticipated but it can't cover up the objective referenced word usage facts and this thread is on the word melanchroes "μελάγχροες” an intellectual exercise not variant perceptions.
would it be correct to say that the cut off point for black is 1-5 ?
.
It is correct to say ancient Greeks knew and recognised black-skinned persons and peoples juxtaposed to white skin no different than today and Africa's Zanj a thousand years between Aeschylus and ourselves did too.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
This is an example of fraud that comes from certain quarters within this community. This is the full version of the infamous Angel quote:
quote:Against this background of disease, movement and pedomorphic reduction of body size (Table 2, 3) one can identify Negroid (Ethiopic or Bushmanoid?) traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters (McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers (Angel, 1972), probably from Nubia (Anderson, 1969) via the unknown predecessors of Badarians (Morant, 1935) and Tasians, and travelling in the opposite direction sicklemia and thalassemia (porotic hyperostotis) (Angel, 1967a; Caffey, 1937 ; Moseley, 1965) and hence also falciparum malaria (Carcassi, Cepellini & Pitzus, 1957) from Greece (perhaps also Italy) (Gatto, 1960) and Anatolia (Angel, 1966) to Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, and Africa.
See the bolded part of this sentence. Google this quote and see how certain website posted here conveniently cut the quote off where it stops telling them what they want to hear. We now know that evidence for the bolded part of that Angel quote is lacking. But even if it's false, this is how people here are doctoring quotes and you won't even know what the full text says until you read the full paper. This is not the only time I've seen it happen, either. Straight up setting lay people up for embarrassment when they communicate with people who really know these sources.
Anyway, I see the BS just doesn't stop. Since I see no one speaking up, I have no prob stepping up:
1) Historically, 'black' could refer to (a) jet-black skin (excluding brown skin), (b) a range of brown skin tones (including jet-black skin), (c) (one drop of blood from) a perceived race thought to epitomize African ancestry, (d) swarthy skin, etc.
2) The default interpretation of black of most western people, including Afro diasporans is 1c (i.e. the racialized meaning of the word).
3) The etymology of melas (black) and its occasional use as 'swarthy' by ancient Greeks is an irrelevant red herring when it comes to the AE. 'Melas' was clearly context dependent and at least when applied to Egypt, Colchians, Garamantes, etc is best read as 1b (range of brown and jet-black skin tones). We know this from Greek texts that liken Egyptian skin complexion to Indus Valley people (who were not as light skinned as today, but would have looked like the brown skinned Asiatics depicted by the Egyptians) as opposed to southern Indians or Central Sudanese(?).
"The people in the south are the same as the Aithiopians in color, but in regard to eyes and hair they are like the others (because of the moisture in the air their hair is not curly). Those in the north are like the Egyptians." —Strabo
4) Whenever the Greeks compared North Africans to Africans closer to the equator they always make it clear that 1b is the best translation of 'melas' for ancient Egyptians. In such texts the Greeks sometimes say or imply that "real" black people (by which they meant 1a) don't live in Egypt or even Nubia. I used to think only late Greeks (e.g. Manilius and Ptolemy) did this. But earlier Greeks (e.g. Hesiod) apparently did this, too.
Black people resided not in the Nile valley but in a far land, 'by the fountain of the sun', or where the sun 'goes to and fro' —Hesiod
5) Despite the observations summed up in point 2, 3 and 4, when some delusional ideologues come across Greek texts which apply 'melas' in reference to Egyptians, they insist that it should be translated to 'black' (usually meaning 1b). Their argument for this translation is that the etymology of 'melas' is 'black'. But this is a blatant red herring (see point 3) and makes little sense (see point 2). The idea that a translation to 'black' (1b) is justified because all Greeks subscribed to this concept is also dubious (see point 4). Moreover, what is the size of the public that is going to read 'black' as 1b vs the size that is going to read it as 1c? The former is clearly a minority even among Afro-diasporans who clearly don't see Indians and some brown Indonesians and Amerindians as 'black' in their use of the term. But then again, that's exactly what these liars want; deceive people, use suggestive language and manipulate what texts are saying to get 'the best end of the deal'.
Like I said, playground of liars.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Well, everyone outside a demagogues cult of personality is free to use Tufts' Greek language tools to for themselves see what each and every melas = ink derived word refers to or reverse words like tan or dark to see how many meals roots there are for them.
Either you have the will and brains to confirm or disconfirm independently or let your feelings and subjective biases default to accepting some old soft shoe shuffle in the face of the Oxford Dictionary and standard university Greek language tools based on acclaimed lexicons of Scott, Liddell, and Jones demonstrated and methodized in above posts. I will only accept the same likewise due diligence in rebuttal, and there ain't no one foolish enough to counter Scott, Liddell, and Jones is there?
And these tools yield more than dictionary definitions. Lexicons give book passages using the word under scrutiny with actual examples from the classic texts.
Objective to the core.
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: This is an example of fraud that comes from certain quarters within this community. This is the full version of the infamous Angel quote:
quote:Against this background of disease, movement and pedomorphic reduction of body size (Table 2, 3) one can identify Negroid (Ethiopic or Bushmanoid?) traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters (McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers (Angel, 1972), probably from Nubia (Anderson, 1969) via the unknown predecessors of Badarians (Morant, 1935) and Tasians, and travelling in the opposite direction sicklemia and thalassemia (porotic hyperostotis) (Angel, 1967a; Caffey, 1937 ; Moseley, 1965) and hence also falciparum malaria (Carcassi, Cepellini & Pitzus, 1957) from Greece (perhaps also Italy) (Gatto, 1960) and Anatolia (Angel, 1966) to Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, and Africa.
See the bolded part of this sentence. Google this quote and see how certain website posted here conveniently cut the quote off where it stops telling them what they want to hear. We now know that evidence for the bolded part of that Angel quote is lacking. But even if it's false, this is how people here are doctoring quotes and you won't even know what the full text says until you read the full paper. This is not the only time I've seen it happen, either. Straight up setting lay people up for embarrassment when they communicate with people who really know these sources.
I remember that quote being posted ad infinitum here ten years ago, before you even joined this community. I don't recall the exact context when someone first quoted it, but I know it was being cited as evidence of Neolithic-era movement from Africa into western Eurasia. Does anyone remember who was the first to post that quote here?
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:[504] Avoid the month Lenaeon [late January, early February], wretched days, all of them fit to skin an ox, and the frosts which are cruel when Boreas blows over the earth. He blows across horse-breeding Thrace upon the wide sea and stirs it up, while earth and the forest howl. On many a high-leafed oak and thick pine he falls and brings them to the bounteous earth in mountain glens: then all the immense wood roars and the beasts shudder and put their tails between their legs, even those whose hide is covered with fur; for with his bitter blast he blows even through them although they are shaggy-breasted. He goes even through an ox's hide; it does not stop him. Also he blows through the goat's fine hair. But through the fleeces of sheep, because their wool is abundant, the keen wind Boreas pierces not at all; but it makes the old man curved as a wheel. And it does not blow through the tender maiden who stays indoors with her dear mother, unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite, and who washes her soft body and anoints herself with oil and lies down in an inner room within the house, on a winter's day when the Boneless One [octopus or cuttle] gnaws his foot in his fireless house and wretched home; for the sun shows him no pastures to make for, but goes to and fro over the land and city of dusky men [the southern Aethiopians], and shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of the Hellenes. Then the horned and unhorned denizens of the wood, with teeth chattering pitifully, flee through the copses and glades, and all, as they seek shelter, have this one care, to gain thick coverts or some hollow rock. Then, like the Three-legged One [old man with walking-stick] whose back is broken and whose head looks down upon the ground, like him, I say, they wander to escape the white snow.
Your source is quoting 527-8, but look at the original text between 504 and 536. I'm not seeing a reference to Egyptians or the Nile here. Just a mention that the sun goes "to and fro" over Africa and moves more sluggishly over Greece.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^Looks like you're right. I can't find a reference to "the Nile Valley" in other translations either.
Nothing really surprises me anymore at this point. People are lying left and right when it comes these texts.
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: ^Looks like you're right. I can't find a reference to "the Nile Valley" in other translations either.
Nothing really surprises me anymore at this point. People are lying left and right when it comes these texts.
I nonetheless agree with your larger point that the ancient Greeks had different understandings of color as applied to human beings that wouldn't perfectly coincide with latter-day racialist constructs. So while ancient Greek and Roman descriptions might be useful in showing how they perceived their foreign contemporaries, they are as you said a red herring with regards to population affinities. Doubly so when we're talking Egyptians who lived centuries before Hesiod, Herodotus, and so on.
However, it's been my impression that "Aethiopia" commonly addressed the kingdom of Kush in particular. Would these have not been the same "Nubian" populations that so many osteological analyses have shown were closely related to the Egyptians. Kerma for instance was the original capital of Kush before Napata and Meroe, and in Keita's research they appear almost interchangeable with Upper Egyptians. If these were the original "Aethiopians" in traditional Greek usage, I would say scholars like Snowden are in error to equate the label with the later "sub-Saharan African" construct.
On the other hand, you can't deny certain Greek and Roman quotes also attribute stereotypically "sub-Saharan" characteristics to "Aethiopians". My best guess is that "Aethiopian" meant the very darkest Africans like you've said, with phrasing like "melanchroes" referring to other gradients of pigmented skin.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^Right. Can you access the source given for note 57 ? Want to know what specifically it's based on, but I can't get to the bibliography page.
The Greeks always seem to have spoken of a cline from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa. Keep in mind that it was mainly the predynastic Egyptians who were interchangeable with several lower and Upper Nubians samples (especially with the A-D group samples and the Kerma sample). Classical Greek era dynastic Egyptians would have looked somewhat different from their predynastic predecessors and these Nubians.
quote: Originally posted by Nodnarb: I remember that quote being posted ad infinitum here ten years ago, before you even joined this community.
It reminds me of that Cemetery T (Naqada) sample a certain member here seems to have lied about. This poster introduced this paper to Egyptsearch, claimed that he had access to it and said it proved that lower Nubians founded the first Egyptian proto-state. According to this poster, Cemetery T members were more like the included Nubians (a group) than any contemporary nearby Egyptian sample. When members asked him to share the PDF file he said (conveniently) that he only had a physical copy.
Fast forward years later (this was before I registered) to ~2012 when someone I was in touch with PMed me the full paper. Make a long story short, the authors and the cranio-facial results said the exact opposite. There was nothing in it that supported Bruce Trigger's hypothesis. Among other things, the paper simply reproduced results we're already familiar with: that Nubians and predynastic people looked like two variants of the same general population.
The results of what happened when I addressed this and went against this supposed evidence for Trigger's precious hypothesis in several threads may still be on online. Pure denialism. Very strange. Repugnant. How can one be in denial about the statistical realities presented an MMD table?
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: It reminds me of that Cemetery T (Naqada) sample a certain member here seems to have lied about. This poster introduced this paper to Egyptsearch, claimed that he had access to it and said it proved that lower Nubians founded the first Egyptian proto-state. According to this poster, Cemetery T members were more like the included Nubians (a group) than any contemporary nearby Egyptian sample. When members asked him to share the PDF file he said (conveniently) that he only had a physical copy.
Fast forward years later (this was before I registered) to ~2012 when someone I was in touch with PMed me the full paper. Make a long story short, the authors and the cranio-facial results said the exact opposite. There was nothing in it that supported Bruce Trigger's hypothesis. Among other things, the paper simply reproduced results we're already familiar with: that Nubians and predynastic people looked like two variants of the same general population.
The results of what happened when I addressed this and went against this supposed evidence for Trigger's precious hypothesis in several threads may still be on online. Pure denialism. Very strange. Repugnant. How can one be in denial about the statistical realities presented an MMD table?
Egyptians or Sudanese is a direct hit on the Lower Nile Valley.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Nodnarb
Maybe. Wasn't around back then to have a feel for when it first started to circulate.
Any luck with note 57 (see my previous post if you missed it)?
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Nodnarb
Maybe. Wasn't around back then to have a feel for when it first started to circulate.
Any luck with note 57 (see my previous post if you missed it)?
Sorry, I missed it. But after looking at the Notes section near the end, the relevant ones aren't available in the preview. Said notes would somewhere between p. 326-36 (since the original claim is on p. 154), but all I see is the purple message that they're not shown in the preview.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
Swenet
Thank you so much for your knowledge, objectivity and your insights. I agree that caution is required when ancient sources are evoked and that ancient colour concepts don't necessarily align with their modern counterparts.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:[504] Avoid the month Lenaeon [late January, early February], wretched days, all of them fit to skin an ox, and the frosts which are cruel when Boreas blows over the earth. He blows across horse-breeding Thrace upon the wide sea and stirs it up, while earth and the forest howl. On many a high-leafed oak and thick pine he falls and brings them to the bounteous earth in mountain glens: then all the immense wood roars and the beasts shudder and put their tails between their legs, even those whose hide is covered with fur; for with his bitter blast he blows even through them although they are shaggy-breasted. He goes even through an ox's hide; it does not stop him. Also he blows through the goat's fine hair. But through the fleeces of sheep, because their wool is abundant, the keen wind Boreas pierces not at all; but it makes the old man curved as a wheel. And it does not blow through the tender maiden who stays indoors with her dear mother, unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite, and who washes her soft body and anoints herself with oil and lies down in an inner room within the house, on a winter's day when the Boneless One [octopus or cuttle] gnaws his foot in his fireless house and wretched home; for the sun shows him no pastures to make for, but goes to and fro over the land and city of dusky men [the southern Aethiopians], and shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of the Hellenes. Then the horned and unhorned denizens of the wood, with teeth chattering pitifully, flee through the copses and glades, and all, as they seek shelter, have this one care, to gain thick coverts or some hollow rock. Then, like the Three-legged One [old man with walking-stick] whose back is broken and whose head looks down upon the ground, like him, I say, they wander to escape the white snow.
Your source is quoting 527-8, but look at the original text between 504 and 536. I'm not seeing a reference to Egyptians or the Nile here. Just a mention that the sun goes "to and fro" over Africa and moves more sluggishly over Greece.
I previously came across that false citation in a book and so I looked it up and I unsurprisingly could not find it in the original sources. That modern forgery was prominently cited in Eurocentric circles and by racist liars like Mathilda. Thanks, Nodnarb.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
@Tukuler
quote: White's footnote on dusky men says quote:
i.e., the dark-skinned people of Africa, the Egyptians or Aethiopians.
Egyptians or Sudanese is a direct hit on the Lower Nile Valley.
Useful. I think this came up in correspondence, where the academic concluded that the reference was to the Ethiopians. I did wonder whether an assumption had been made but didn't pursue it. Good find.
You might be interested in the following...first, an e-mail from Mary Lefkowitz to Joel Freeman:
quote:The more I look at Egyptian statues the more African they seem to me. As you say, skin color is the one thing we can't be certain about, and probably (as you say) there was a considerable variation...Herodotus (and Aeschylus) call the Egyptians "dark" (melas), which tells us that they didn't look like Europeans, but nothing about the hue of their faces, or the exact shade of their skin. Hesiod refers to Africans as the "blue" (kyanos) men, meaning very dark (Greek color words usually refer to intensity rather than hue)..."
You may/may not know I corresponded with Mary Lefkowitz, and we covered the meaning of melas and melanchroes. In the discussion she mentioned the term cyanoi/kyanos:
30/03/2015
quote: Homer talks about the Ethiopians as cyanoi, which we usually translate as dark blue, but must mean dark brown, or anyway really dark. Melas can mean dark as night, or just dark relative to something else (which is still how the term is used in modern Greek, according to a Greek friend of mine).
Interestingly, when I asked a Greek woman the meaning of melas, she instantly said 'black', and also said it can mean ink, as I think you mention upthread.
Cut a long story short, I was interested in seeing the Hesiod source describing Ethiopians as blue/black, so asked Mary Lefkowitz if she could provide it. (I wanted to know/had asked whether the Egyptians had been referred to kyanos.)She checked, and confirmed that actually melas and kyanos are interchangeable and that the Egyptians were referred to as kyanos:
19/06/2015
quote: I checked the Hesiod passage, see p. 3 of the attached, and the standard commentaries on the passage by M.L. West. West says that melas and kyanos are interchangeable, and cites Hesiod's other epic the Theogony line 406, also attached. In the note on the passage in the Works and Days, he cites a passage where Egyptians are called kyanoi.
I hadn't heard of ML West, so googled him:
quote:In the field of classical scholarship, as traditionally understood, Martin West is to be judged, on any reckoning, the most brilliant and productive Greek scholar of his generation, not just in the United Kingdom, but worldwide.
quote: The Greeks did distinguish between Aigyptoi and Aithiopes or the "burnt face" people who lived further south, but that doesn't mean that the Egyptians had lighter skin. Aithiops was a vague term that covered a lot of territory in Africa that Greeks had heard about but may not have seen.
Get in touch if you need any more info.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Sudaniya
Thanks. Some of that credit should also go to various places that got me started on this journey, including many insightful posts here.
Some people here discuss Manilius and put AE skin pigmentation on a cline sandwiched between Sudanese and other North Africans, but when they translate 'melas' many flip flop and INSIST that it should read 'black' to the point where they accuse you of being manipulative when you say that it should be a range of brown in the case of AE. But, leaving it at 'black', how are lay people not going to feel deceived/confused when they read Ptolemy, Manilius, etc. who explicitly locate "pure black" and fully "sunburnt" people away from Egypt and characterize Egyptians as more mildly complexioned?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Nodnarb
Noted.
Now people try to pin-point Hesiod's sunny area to the Nile Valley. It really doesn't stop, does it?
From intuition I'm a 97% certain that they did, but can someone familiar with Greek thought confirm that they considered the sun to rise and set along the equator (i.e. the southernmost territory of the eastern [Asiatic] and western Aethiopians known to Greeks) and NOT over Egypt?
quote: Originally posted by Nodnarb:
quote:And it does not blow through the tender maiden who stays indoors with her dear mother, unlearned as yet in the works of golden Aphrodite, and who washes her soft body and anoints herself with oil and lies down in an inner room within the house, on a winter's day when the Boneless One [octopus or cuttle] gnaws his foot in his fireless house and wretched home; for the sun shows him no pastures to make for, but goes to and fro over the land and city of dusky men [the southern Aethiopians], and shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of the Hellenes.
—Hesiod
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Remembered this...
I asked a Latinist if they could translate the following passage from Poenulus, or The Young Carthaginian:
sed mea amica nunc mihi irato obviam veniat velim: iam pol ego illam pugnis totam faciam uti sit merulea, ita replebo atritate, atrior multo ut siet, quam Aegyptini, qui cortinam ludis per circum ferunt.
quote:But I wish my girlfriend would run into me now as angry as I am: Indeed, by Pollux, I would rain blows all over her so that she is like a blackbird! I will so fill her with blackness (darkness?) that she will be much blacker (darker) than the little Egyptians who carry a kettle through the Circus (Maximus) at the games.
For me, what's more interesting than the reference to Egyptian darkness/blackness, is the fact that, to the Latinist's annoyance, a modern academic replaced Aegyptini with Ethiopians:
24/07/2015
quote: “You must try to get your hands on a translation by Amy Richlin (Richly, Amy. (2005) Rome and the Mysterious Orient. Berkeley: University of California Press.) …In the passage you inquire about, she changes “Aegyptini” to ETHIOPIANS!! She based this on an entry in a very obscure lexicon by a second century CE author, Sextus Pompeius Festus.”
Was the obvious reference suggestion to Egyptian blackness too much for Richlin?
I was cool with it though, since the substitution speaks to the interesting idea of the interchangeableness of Egyptians/Ethiopians; I’ve not read it, but the Sextus Pompeius Festus entry would seem to attest to this. It also chimes with something Sally-Ann Ashton said at the 2009 Manchester museum conference about the Greeks confusing the two groups – Tristan Samuels likened this to confusing Afro-Caribbeans and continental Africans on a day to day street level basis.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Yes. They are lying. That is why you rely on science. Like Archeology, Anthroplogy and ....genetics. Science cannot lie.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: ^Looks like you're right. I can't find a reference to "the Nile Valley" in other translations either.
Nothing really surprises me anymore at this point. People are lying left and right when it comes these texts.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Bottom line. Don't trust European translators
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
precision
Melas can mean dark as well as black. Ink is only a word derived from melas. It is not the root.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
It was claimed there was nothing in print specifically indicating the Nile Valley in Hesiod's passage but there is. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
Nor does my presenting it give it any endorsement. Mention of the sun's to and fro is an allusion to the sense of Aithiopia extending from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Based on other classic authors the understanding of Hesiod here is Greater Aithiopia, Eastern and Western Aithiopia, Asian and African blacks ('dusky' men) though he uses land singular.
"Homer alluded to the Ethiopians of two continents, noting that one division was situated towards the sunrise and another towards the sunset; for the Ethiopians are, says the poet:
A race divided, whom the sloping rays The rising and the setting sun surveys."
Hansberry 1977 p6
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: White's footnote on dusky men says
quote: i.e., the dark-skinned people of Africa, the Egyptians or Aethiopians.
Egyptians or Sudanese is a direct hit on the Lower Nile Valley.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Trops
Your Mary quotes remind me of the pioneering work against the Aryan Model of interpreting the classic.
Sergi 1901 pp 18-20 where he says "kyanos is black, blue-black, violet, in Homer sometimes blacker than melas ." on p19c also the derived kyanochaites used of Poseidon and connoting bluish blackish hair like deep dark ocean waves.
Once again your art of correspondence has added value to a concise previous exposure. It's good to learn from you.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Manilius' dark colour cline was brought up. Here's the old post where I made graphics.
= - =
Who has any idea what a cline is? At one end is the quantified extreme. At the other is its least expression.
No discrete abutted monocolor blocks. That would be a clineless bar graph.
I don't take Manilius to mean India had no one of Aethiopian darkness or vice versa but that there is always some interlap with some exclusion.
A cluster approach showing overlap
as best my tool allows no egg shape ovals or slanted ovals and no ovals I did make are absolute just a visual way to perceive Manilius' data.
Notice the Mauretania and Afrorum ovals and the delta part of the Egypt oval can be seen as a southern side of Mid-Earth cluster.
The Indian oval shows the Greco-Latin notion of south India like Aethiopia and north India like Egypt in complexion.
Overlap of Aethiopia and Egypt ovals reflects known settlement of "Nubians" in Egypt and Egyptians in Kerma.
One cluster including all the ovals would be the Tropical-MidEarth or dark/black section 4.724-4.730 of Manilius.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Gotta love the flip flops and blunders now obscured by surreptitious edits, the deliberate misinformation and the unashamed attempts to abandon and then try to lie about previous positions.
Moreover, there is no evidence that 'Aegyptini' refers to Egyptians. No matter how many Phds he tries to play against each other with misinformation. The person making that claim has been called out for that fabrication already. But good to have it in on record that this person just keeps on lying.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
^Do you mean me?
quote: Moreover, there is no evidence that 'Aegyptini' refers to Egyptians. The person making that claim has been called out for that fabrication already. But good to have it in on record that this person just keeps on lying.
Ahhh, your edit confirms that you do mean me.
quote: Moreover, there is no evidence that 'Aegyptini' refers to Egyptians. No matter how many Phds he tries to play against each other with misinformation. The person making that claim has been called out for that fabrication already. But good to have it in on record that this person just keeps on lying.
I post a translation from a classics professor and you say that I'm lying?
I can't help you with your obvious problems.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: [QB] Manilius' dark colour cline was brought up. Here's the old post where I made graphics.
= - =
Who has any idea what a cline is? At one end is the quantified extreme. At the other is its least expression.
No discrete abutted monocolor blocks. That would be a clineless bar graph.
I don't take Manilius to mean India had no one of Aethiopian darkness or vice versa but that there is always some interlap with some exclusion.
A cluster approach showing overlap
as best my tool allows no egg shape ovals or slanted ovals and no ovals I did make are absolute just a visual way to perceive Manilius' data.
Notice the Mauretania and Afrorum ovals and the delta part of the Egypt oval can be seen as a southern side of Mid-Earth cluster.
The Indian oval shows the Greco-Latin notion of south India like Aethiopia and north India like Egypt in complexion.
Overlap of Aethiopia and Egypt ovals reflects known settlement of "Nubians" in Egypt and Egyptians in Kerma.
One cluster including all the ovals would be the Tropical-MidEarth or dark/black section 4.724-4.730 of Manilius.
Manilius' poem is in no form or fashion "data" It's a poem, using words that have no measurement criteria whatsoever
quote:Originally posted by xyyman: That is why you rely on science. Like Archeology, Anthroplogy and ....genetics. Science cannot lie.
correct Tishkoff
As shown Indians, both East and American are closer genetically to Europeans than they are to Africans
Therefore the pontification on skin color as the primary element connecting people is merely a nostalgia and fondness for the pre-genetic old European "Classical" viewpoint based on external appearance and it's relation to obsolete 19th century racial "white" and "black" dichotomy paradigms and constructs
carry on.... back to our regularly scheduled program
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler:
A cluster approach showing overlap
section 4.724-4.730 of Manilius.
Your India oval includes the Arabian peninsula and the southern half of Iran yet the great white Manilius does not cover those regions in the text
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Bring in the clown.
Who can't see the graphics are meant to illustrate the colour scheme of the poem?
Who but the clown imagines it's supposed to represents biological relatedness?
When you're intellectually incapable of contributing to the topic try derailing it with strawmans.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: [QB] Bring in the clown.
Who can't see the graphics are meant to illustrate the colour scheme of the poem?
Your graphic is flawed. It's supposed to illustate a Manilius poem but includes Arabia and part of Iran which Manilius does not address in the segment quoted. Let us know when you correct it
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Bring in the clown who ignores the statement in the post with the cluster explicitly admitting the drawbacks of the tool I used and that the figure is not perfect as I'd like it to be.
quote:... my tool allows no egg shape ovals or slanted ovals and no ovals I did make are absolute just a visual way to perceive Manilius' data.
. . . .
The Indian oval shows the Greco-Latin notion of south India like Aethiopia and north India like Egypt in complexion.
.
Nor do I label other than what places Manilius named though classic and ancient Mideast texts have Arabia through Baluchistan to India as occupied by darks.
If you wanna discuss it further reply to it where it was originally posted.
Too bad you're not up to what it takes to discuss this thread's topic melan chroes the only I will respond to you about from this point forward.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
more accurate to text version
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Too bad you're not up to what it takes to discuss this thread's topic melanchroes because nowhere in the aforementioned Manilius' Astronimica segment does Manilius use the word melanchroes or any word for black. So people please ignore the name Manilius in regard to the thread topic as it is irrelevant Let's hope the digression ends here
thanks, lioness
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Bring in the clown yet again.
Swenet mentioned Manilius' cline. I reposted it so no one could go and confuse his view of Egypt's placement with what I actually detailed.
All you had to do was ask butt you'd rather show your ass.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
I don't see any scholarship here. We are on the second page an no one has even posted a portion of ancient text with the word "melanchroes" in it.
That was supposed to be in post 1
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Surely you are out your mind.
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Moreover, there is no evidence that 'Aegyptini' refers to Egyptians. No matter how many Phds he tries to play against each other with misinformation. The person making that claim has been called out for that fabrication already. But good to have it in on record that this person just keeps on lying.
For what it's worth, "Aegyptini" does read awfully like "Aegyptus", the Roman word for Egypt. If it doesn't have anything to do with Egypt, what do you propose it means instead?
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (English) entry Aegyptini: Aegyptīni : Aethiopes, Paul. ex Fest. p. 28
The standard says what Trops was told. But there's obviously mental easement on the part of the ancients to confuse one national for another such as mistakenly confusing Chinese for Korean or Japanese.
If the word literally breaks down into little Egyptian. Dwarves are noted in Egypt though ancient Sudan must have had some.
But the Latin suffix INI is in this instance the nominative masculine plural of -īnus and its use is to form names of 'tribes.'
Sso the type of literature may've made use of a related substitute for reasons of style.
How many examples of the word are available in which texts or is this a unique case?
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
Am I reading that correctly? Aegyptini translates to Aethiope?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nodnarb:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Moreover, there is no evidence that 'Aegyptini' refers to Egyptians. No matter how many Phds he tries to play against each other with misinformation. The person making that claim has been called out for that fabrication already. But good to have it in on record that this person just keeps on lying.
For what it's worth, "Aegyptini" does read awfully like "Aegyptus", the Roman word for Egypt. If it doesn't have anything to do with Egypt, what do you propose it means instead?
Compare with the usual forms. It doesn't strike you as a very peculiar way of saying 'Egyptians' in Latin? Especially knowing that Egyptians were definitely not thought of as restricted to Egypt in ancient times:
quote:A short excursus into family history will help us locate the genealogical rela-tionship of the family to a remote Greek origin and their parallel connection with Egypt, Libya and Phoenicia. Io, an Argive princess, becomes an object of Zeus’s desire. Hera’s inevitable jealousy pursues her through Europe and Asia until, upon reaching Egypt, a mere touch by Zeus is enough for her to give birth to Epaphos. Epaphos, her nearly parthenogenetic son, becomes the king of Egypt and marries a daughter of the Nile; their daughter is Libya whose sons are Agenor and Belos; Agenor reigns over Phoenicia and Belos remains in Egypt where he marries another daughter of the Nile and begets the twins Aigyptos and Danaos. Danaos is sent by his brother to reign over Libya, while Aigyptos keeps Arabia which he names after himself, Egypt, the country that thus far was called ‘the country of the dark—footed men’ ( Melampodon choran).
—Dark Skin and Dark Deeds Danaides and Aigyptioi in a Culture of Light — Efimia D. Karakantza
^BTW, this entire book is a useful as far as this discussion goes (i.e. how melas was used in ancient Greece).
See the lands labeled 'Mushri' in this map. As the map's legend explains, the place names of both 'Mushri' and 'Kush' in Arabia were inferred from ancient Assyrian documents (some of them are military records). Along with these Assyrian texts, the Greek 'Aegyptos' patriarch seems to be a Greek memory of Egyptian involvement (possibly political alliance, physical presence, etc) in this region. See the bible (Hagar and the Ishmaelites) for additional corroboration of this memory in this region.
Aside from this, there are also ancient records of 'Egyptian' settlements and cities in Sudan of refugees and other types of immigrants who, after a long presence there, wouldn't have been Egyptian nationals (in any useful sense of the word) anymore.
As the example of the Aegyptos myth shows, there is no apriori reason to assume that people with names resembling 'Egypt' in classical texts were Egyptian nationals.
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
@ Swenet I admit to not knowing all the grammatical conventions of Latin, so no, I couldn't tell either way whether that word was a strange way of rendering of " Egyptians". But on the other hand, given what I presently know, I can't rule out the scenario you suggest either. So fair enough.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Does anyone know if any latinists dispute that Aegyptini means Egyptians?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Nodnarb
I found this yesterday but didn't bring it up because I was still doing some legwork and already had enough reason to question this unsubstantiated reckless equation between Egyptians and Aegyptini:
quote:Aegyptini, People of Aethiope, marching on Aegypt.
This one is reportedly even older and is said to date to 1538. Of course, if the Aegyptini entry of one is inspired by the other it doesn't matter that there are two sources saying the same thing.
But if these dates pan out, and these entries are really in these texts as shown, they're hardly consistent with being examples of a modern Eurocentric conspiracy. And a mere resemblance of two ethnonyms is not reason enough to prove this, to begin with. All it proves is a bizarre case of paranoia on the part of those who are vehemently and repeatedly making these claims without any evidence.
And the person who keeps spamming this "email exchange with a latinist" has a track record of repeatedly making false accusations, even when they've already been falsified.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
That makes no sense, Aegyptini being people of Ethiope, Marchynge on Egypte??? Could that be a reference to Egypt being colonized by Southerners? Or am I reading too much into that?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
I'm not ruling out your suggestion (it's possible). See if you can find additional leads if you can. I'm not going to pursue this beyond this because the onus is on the accusers to present a coherent case if they're going to make hefty accusations of racism all the time.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
^Ok no prob and thanks for the reference. I wish I was fluent in Latin so I could read the original texts, very confusing though but interesting all the same.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
False accusations? Where? What was that about you referring to me as exhibiting behaviour akin to that of a paedophile. Sick. Sick. Sick.
@Punos I'm no latinist but 'marchyne' might be a reference to bordering on, as in 'marches', 'the welsh marches' being the border area between England and Wales. So 'aegyptini', rather than meaning 'little' or diminutive Egyptians, could reference those black individuals in the Poenulus quote as coming from the 'marches' or areas bordering Egypt. Thus lesser/pas Egypt, so Ethiopia/Nubia.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
The liar above me better shut up while he still can before I post conversations of academics saying how they feel about his deliberate manipulation of Kemp conversations and his marginalizations of said fraud. Yes, that's right. I can contact academics, too!
Keep pushing me. I have material for days.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Go ahead. What deliberate manipulation of what Kemp said? Can't wait to read this.
Did you tell them that you think I exhibit behaviour akin to a paedophile?
Thought I'd better quote this in case you mess around with ...
quote: The liar above me better shut up while he still can before I post conversations of academics saying how they feel about his deliberate manipulation of Kemp conversations and his marginalizations of said fraud. Yes, that's right. I can contact academics, too!
Keep pushing me. I have material for days.
So go on then. Post it all...it's a shame you forgot to cc me in, which is what I requested you do when you suggested this before.
Let's see what you said to them, what they said about me and who they are.
What deliberate misrepresentation of Kemp are you talking about?
Again, did you mention to them that you think I exhibit paedophile tendencies?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Thank god for screenshot technology. He keeps proving that he's a chronic liar. All the more evidence in the bag.
For those who don't know, a couple of months ago the chronic liar above me tried to smear Kemp's name, just like he was (and still is) smearing the names of the people who are translating Aegyptini to an ethnic group within Aethiopia. Specifically, he claimed that Kemp was of the mindset that Egyptians weren't indigenous Africans without any nuance.
When he was asked to back his accusations towards Kemp up, he deliberately omitted crucial portions of Kemp's email exchange so he could manipulate public perceptions. It's not sexy when someone you want to smear as a racist admits he's unsure and that he thinks that the Egyptians had a sizable indigenous component. So he conveniently posted only what he wanted the public to see.
This is what the chronic liar left out:
quote:you credit me with more knowledge and understanding of the subject than I have.
And this:
quote:Simply because of the geographical position of the Nile Valley, intuitively one would expect a shading from north to south of genetic mix.
And this:
quote:But what does that mean?
These preceding three sentences contextualize the following Kemp statement, but because they were tampered with, the meaning changes completely into a full fledged demic diffusion scenario in which southern indigenous communities aren't worth mentioning or don't even exist (after all, farmers are from the Middle East, right?).
quote:Ancient Egypt developed from a foundation of settled, farming communities whose way of life and, more particularly, style of farming originated in the Near East where it already had two or three thousand years of development behind it. Was this way of life brought by people or was it a set of practices that were adopted by indigenous communities? Its beginnings in Egypt are themselves not well documented. An early predynastic delta site, Tell el-Fara'in, has produced pottery that the experts say is Palestinian and it seems to belong to a northern culture that, in terms of its material culture, was somewhat separate from the south. But pots are not people, nor are they ideas, and so the significance remains obscure.
Watch on as this chronic liar tries to downplay his tampering with Kemp's words, right in front of everyone.
Watch also as he will now use his trademark "but you're hanging blacks" fallacious misdirection.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Awwww, not this again. You tried to say I manipulated Kemp's response back in September/October 2015, and then in December. It didn't fly then, it doesn't fly now.
It's interesting that you miss out the WHOLE of the email correspondence I posted, which highlighted my point on Kemp's demurring on whether indigenous African was an appropriate reference to the ancient Egyptians. That was the point of my prividing that email exchange and those three lines were superfluous regarding his prevarication later on in the emails on the term 'indigenous African'.
And what's the 'hanging blacks' crap?
Please quote me where I've made the accusation.
Now, on to the correspondence with those academics. You didn't cc me in, mind if I ask why not? I asked you at least twice.
So come on then, post the emails you sent about me, the responses and names of the academics.
I'm going to ask you again, did you mention to them that you thought I exhibit the behaviour of a paedophile? Yes or no, it's not hard.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
Swenet it would seem tropicals redacted has followed me to Historum under the alias "OldScroll". Trying everything under the sun to deAfricanize Egypt lol
quote:Swenet it would seem tropicals redacted has followed me to Historum under the alias "OldScroll". Trying everything under the sun to deAfricanize Egypt lol
Me trying to de-Africanize Egypt.How stupid. For the record I got banned from Historum several years ago for arguing for ancient Egyptian blackness, so please go away.
Now, back to the sick man who said I exhibited the behaviour of a paedophile...oh, before you go Punos, care to comment on his accusation?
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
If its not you its probably lioness in disguise(even though she/he has posted some good stuff in favor of African AE)or caveman, if so my apologies.
I've never once labeled you a pedophile and don't know you enough to level that charge
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
What made you think I've ever disputed that the AE's were African? Or did you just make a stupid, glib remark to keep in with your man?
On the paedophile question, I specifically asked you what you thought of his accusation. Come on, what do you think of his saying I exhibit the behaviour of a paedophile.... BTW the context in which he said this wasn't even sexual. It was just a nasty, rancid, cornered slur. But over to you, you thoughtlessly leapt in to support him, but now take some time think and answer.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Here is another gem demonstrating his chronic lies. Ever since 2014 this fraud spammed dozens of lies about me "doing a 180" on my views regarding the usefulness of terms like 'black'. I had proven him wrong several times by posting evidence that I had made my caveats known. Each time I posted proof, he ran with his tail between his legs, only to resurface in some other thread, repeating the same lies.
According to him, there was no evolution of my views on terms like 'black' over a long period. According to him, I never brought my issues with the term up before I did a "180 degree flip flop". In my conversations with him I can find plenty of times in which I explicitly and implicitly made it clear that the one-drop version of 'black' was a no no. Believe it or not, one of the times I made this clear was a couple of days in which he first started making this confused claim. Here is one of the times I made it clear that I had long moved on from a use of 'black' that had racial undertones:
quote:We especially need professionals who know their way around the pitfalls like Keita does; folks that they can't just write off as pseudoscientists, the way they're doing "afrocentrics". I haven't seen them corner Keita yet. That's because he's smart about the way he frames his language (e.g. Saharo-Tropical variants), focus[]es on what matters and how he approaches things so as to leave them with little to retort with, without making themselves look unreasonable
—Swenet
Even though this chronic liar (amicably) disagreed with this post in 2014, he would later lie and deny that I had made such posts and that I had moved away from racial language for sound and well-motivated reasons long before he had an emotional breakdown out of left field.
But it gets even stranger. A couple of days after I had made the post in which I rejected racial language (a post he acknowledged by disagreeing with it, so we know he'd seen it), the chronic liar was already lying about the fact that I had made post. According to him, I had never rejected racialized language:
quote:"It feels like something unprincipled has happened here over the last 24 hours, for what I don't know - saving face? I don't like the idea of contributing to a site where previously held beliefs are expediently abandoned, apparently for the sake of trying to win an argument."
SMH.
So, if this denial of his many smear attempts is not a filthy lie, I want to know what definition we're using:
quote:False accusations? Where?
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
You said that even if Hawass and Kemp were being racist, I was a revisionist to extend blackness to Ethiopians (so that it wasn't limited to a so-called 'bantu' stereotype), something you'd previously done...
When it became clear that we'd fallen out, you straight away lied by saying I'd stated the AE's were akin to West Africans, which was untrue and you know it.
I left.
Now...those e-mails you've been sending about me. Why didn't you cc me in? Let me see what you said about me...what did they say and who did you contact? I'm verrrrry keen to know....
Oh, did you tell them you think I exhibit the tendencies of a paedophile?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
No direct quotes (in context) of where I said that just further confirms that he is a filthy, disgusting liar. (Note that when/if the liar will post the quotes, it will become clear that I objected to HIS version of 'black' [which is tainted with one-drop connotations, race and some criteria he made up], not to the pigmentation-based version of 'black' that is scientifically justifiable to some extent).
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Do you now deny the above?
It's funny..earlier Punos said on that 'When to use black thread'
quote: I also refuse to entertain people calling the Nubians black and not the Egyptians. Not going to happen.
But when I said something similar on your Facebook group, you said it was reactionary...do you also deny this?
Now, where are those emails about me? It's strange, when you dared me to post the negative comments you made about Kemp, I did it in a heartbeat...a bluff was called and you got pissy about it...now I'm asking you to show what you got, and nothing's materialised. Go on. I want to see what you've written about me, who you contacted, how they replied...and find out why you didn't cc me in like I asked, and whether you told them you thought I behaved like a paedophile.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Punos, you've gone quiet.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:I don't think I'm being radical, or diverging from the evidence here, but I'm pretty confident that if you took every indigenous ancient Egyptian skull ever found, and where possible, subjected them to 'blind' reconstruction under the supervision of someone with Keita-like knowledge...then most of the reconstructions would evoke someone of black African descent.
This is the sort of false, self-serving lies he tells himself. This claim of his about being able to correctly identify most AE as recognizably "black African" based on cranial morphology is completely wrong. Aside from the fact that population assessments of cranial remains will typically reveal adaptations that can easily evolve elsewhere, the "black African" traits he's talking about are often only weakly or not at all manifested on the cranial remains of dynastic AE and other North Africans. Furthermore, the AE with such weak expressions could have easily been very dark skinned, but you wouldn't be able to tell this from their cranial remains. Reconstructions performed on these Egyptians would come out racially ambiguous looking and forensic scholars would have no basis of knowing whether to apply dark or light skin.
He made this obtuse post when people were critical of his use of 'black' and we picked up that his use of black had nothing to do with how people in this community with some sense are applying the term. It's preconceived, pseudo-scientific, denies African variability (both real and hypothetical) and is just a product of his epic hubris. I don't know where he gets off making such sweeping claims with his non-existent familiarity with this topic.
He references Keita, but the liar's posts smack of ignorance about his work. Keita 101:
quote:The crania from the northeast quadrant of Africa collectively demonstrate the greatest pattern of overlap with both Europeans and other Africans.
I don't one-drop the AE's, read upthread, there's no need.
So if my idea about the reconstructions is wrong, why did we (you, I and others) collect and post examples of ancient Egyptians that looked like black Africans?
Were you bullshiting about those emails? Go on, prove that you weren't lying, prove me wrong.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
Tropicals I am having problems with my connection as I'm limited to my phone at home. I have seen your posts before and have never thought you were a pedophile so hopefully that answers your inquiry. I am currently trying to deal with whoever that person is on Historum
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
..again, I'm asking you what you make of your mate's accusation...you're ducking because you don't want to get on the wrong side of him.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
This site. This is crap.
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
I have a hunch that Old Scroll fellow might be our old buddy Jake Speed/Atlantid/Krom. If so, he has no life.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
The chronic liar thinks the public isn't going to pick up on the fact that he's deflecting by not responding to the posts he invited when he demanded evidence of his track record of spamming false accusations.
Screenshot tech. It's a beautiful thing.
I think I've made my point. Nothing but attempts to deflect from the liar who was adamant that he didn't have a track record of making false accusations and deliberately smearing others' names.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Where are those emails? Oh, there aren't any.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Sudaniya, sorry that the derailed conversation. And Punos, I don't think that's the liar. I know who it is though.
Punos, thanks for not taking his bait. I never ask people to pick sides against him or what any of you think about his lies, so it's just pathetic move from a man who is nearing his 50s, but still acts like a toddler. He's trying to get 'leverage' on me by asking people he thinks are in some sort of 'conspiracy' with me, what they think about issues he knows I disagree with.
He tried to do it with both Sudaniya and Brandon.
That's how pathetic this liar is. I post facts about his lies and track record of falsely accusing people. The liar tries to use the beliefs and opinions of 'bystanders' against me. If that's not deflection and misdirection, I don't know what is.
This is also how he plays academics against each other with his misinformation. He uses misinformation to get academics to criticize a colleague he has a personal beef with. Then he uses those new criticisms to encourage other academics to criticize the same academics ("see, your colleague criticized him/her, see how right I am. I can't think for myself so I use others' views and hide behind their creditials"). By the time it comes out that the touted racism allegations weren't true, he's played these people and used them. In the words of the liar himself:
quote:If' we're going to burn bridges, then we'd need to be pretty sure that we're in a place where we no longer need them.
And BTW, I said he was engaging in pedo-ish behavior because he was googling me, stalking me on social media, saving my pictures, pdf documents, etc. Then he came on Egyptsearch and started making references to having saved my pictures. He's bringing up things out of context to make them sound as outlandish as possible (see how he did the same thing with the Kemp quote). It's just a part of his misdirection routine he engages in whenever people point out that he's a liar.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
Well whoever the hell he was he confessed to being a troll and departed from the forum. Wow.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Sudaniya
Thanks. Some of that credit should also go to various places that got me started on this journey, including many insightful posts here.
Some people here discuss Manilius and put AE skin pigmentation on a cline sandwiched between Sudanese and other North Africans, but when they translate 'melas' many flip flop and INSIST that it should read 'black' to the point where they accuse you of being manipulative when you say that it should be a range of brown in the case of AE. But, leaving it at 'black', how are lay people not going to feel deceived/confused when they read Ptolemy, Manilius, etc. who explicitly locate "pure black" and fully "sunburnt" people away from Egypt and characterize Egyptians as more mildly complexioned?
The ancient Egyptians had brown-dark brown skin and so I don't understand why anyone would rail against this irrefutable fact if the particular skin tone of the AE is raised.
I do think that translations should be as precise as possible. Lay people should be able to understand that scholars are being fastidious when they translate melanchroes and melas to mean 'black' and that this translation is reaffirmed by many authoritative institutions. Lay people should understand that 'black' comes in different shades; that the "pure black" people in Greek and Roman texts could be Nilotic tribes -- the few people that are almost literally 'black'.
As I understand it, North Sudanese and Nubians in Upper Egypt are the best representative of what the AE looked like, and so if people contrasted our skin tones to that of a Dinka, they would say that we are mildly complexioned, but this wouldn't necessarily detract from the use of 'black' on the more mildly complexioned populace.
'White' Italians, Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese are a few tones darker than Swedes and Norwegians but nobody would accuse one of dishonesty if they referred to these Mediterraneans as 'white'.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Sudaniya, sorry that the derailed conversation. And Punos, I don't think that's the liar. I know who it is though.
Punos, thanks for not taking his bait. I never ask people to pick sides against him or what any of you think about his lies, so it's just pathetic move from a man who is nearing his 50s, but still acts like a toddler. He's trying to get 'leverage' on me by asking people he thinks are in some sort of 'conspiracy' with me, what they think about issues he knows I disagree with.
He tried to do it with both Sudaniya and Brandon.
That's how pathetic this liar is. I post facts about his lies and track record of falsely accusing people. The liar tries to use the beliefs and opinions of 'bystanders' against me. If that's not deflection and misdirection, I don't know what is.
This is also how he plays academics against each other with his misinformation. He uses misinformation to get academics to criticize a colleague he has a personal beef with. Then he uses those new criticisms to encourage other academics to criticize the same academics ("see, your colleague criticized him/her, see how right I am. I can't think for myself so I use others' views and hide behind their creditials"). By the time it comes out that the touted racism allegations weren't true, he's played these people and used them. In the words of the liar himself:
quote:If' we're going to burn bridges, then we'd need to be pretty sure that we're in a place where we no longer need them.
And BTW, I said he was engaging in pedo-ish behavior because he was googling me, stalking me on social media, saving my pictures, pdf documents, etc. Then he came on Egyptsearch and started making references to having saved my pictures. He's bringing up things out of context to make them sound as outlandish as possible (see how he did the same thing with the Kemp quote). It's just a part of his misdirection routine he engages in whenever people point out that he's a liar.
There is absolutely no need to apologise because this exchange further solidifies what we already know to be true, that this man-boy (Carlos Coke) is mentally afflicted and we can see this in his never ending duplicity and admissions of blackmailing and his documented cases of distorting the views of others. People can only trust people with moral and intellectual integrity, calm and objectivity and you demonstrated this with the case of Aegyptini.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^He has a bias blindspot for his own manipulations. He's going to take your comments as being partial, no doubt. If he thinks it's partiality I would love for him to come out with his book so we can see what the wider academic establishment thinks about his tampering and smear campaigns. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he would see their reaction to his antics as somehow constituting bias or racism.
quote:Originally posted by sudaniya:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Sudaniya
Thanks. Some of that credit should also go to various places that got me started on this journey, including many insightful posts here.
Some people here discuss Manilius and put AE skin pigmentation on a cline sandwiched between Sudanese and other North Africans, but when they translate 'melas' many flip flop and INSIST that it should read 'black' to the point where they accuse you of being manipulative when you say that it should be a range of brown in the case of AE. But, leaving it at 'black', how are lay people not going to feel deceived/confused when they read Ptolemy, Manilius, etc. who explicitly locate "pure black" and fully "sunburnt" people away from Egypt and characterize Egyptians as more mildly complexioned?
The ancient Egyptians had brown-dark brown skin and so I don't understand why anyone would rail against this irrefutable fact if the particular skin tone of the AE is raised.
I do think that translations should be as precise as possible. Lay people should be able to understand that scholars are being fastidious when they translate melanchroes and melas to mean 'black' and that this translation is reaffirmed by many authoritative institutions. Lay people should understand that 'black' comes in different shades; that the "pure black" people in Greek and Roman texts could be Nilotic tribes -- the few people that are almost literally 'black'.
As I understand it, North Sudanese and Nubians in Upper Egypt are the best representative of what the AE looked like, and so if people contrasted our skin tones to that of a Dinka, they would say that we are mildly complexioned, but this wouldn't necessarily detract from the use of 'black' on the more mildly complexioned populace.
'White' Italians, Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese are a few tones darker than Swedes and Norwegians but nobody would accuse one of dishonesty if they referred to these Mediterraneans as 'white'.
I agree with most of your assessment. My only puny caveat is that as soon as you revert to 'black', without consistently defining your use (which is 1b, right?), the potential for confusion is going to creep in again and put you in the same messy situation.
Just read this post, for instance. Some people really have no clue and will take your translation of 'black' to mean 1a.
Then you have the people who will read your translation (if you don't specify that you mean 1b) and interpret it to mean 1c (see the thread Punos debated in).
For the people who feel nothing for abandoning 'black' in anthro discussions, a compromise might be to use something like I'm using right now (1a, 1b, 1c) to at least prevent confusion.
quote:but this wouldn't necessarily detract from the use of 'black' on the more mildly complexioned populace.
You may be right here in extending this to Greek thought. Something just now hit me. For some time I've been playing with the idea that melas corresponds with the range of brown described in 1b and that the Greeks would have called this range 'brown' (not 'black'). I was basing this on point 3 and 4. But now that I think about it, this is too simplistic. People don't necessarily label things according to what they see (or perhaps the other way around: they may see what they're conditioned to see):
Among Kel Ewey, the color red (wa zeggere) is not associated explicitly with blood; in fact, blood is often referred to as black (wa kawale). Spirit possession and personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg – Rasmussen (1995)
The more I think about it, the more complex I think it is. It seems to me that all we can know for sure is that melas used to describe tropically adapted populations doesn't differentiate much between various shades of dark skin (meaning, 1b) and that the Greeks were reluctant for some reason to differentiate different gradations when they used this word or its derivatives. Almost all the differentiation between various shades of 1b dark skin was expressed by the classicists in terms other than color (e.g. it's expressed in the varying degrees of sunburnt of Manilius, in the varying degrees of "pure Aethiopian" of Ptolemy, in the pigmentation clines of Strabo, etc.)
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
quote:I don't think I'm being radical, or diverging from the evidence here, but I'm pretty confident that if you took every indigenous ancient Egyptian skull ever found, and where possible, subjected them to 'blind' reconstruction under the supervision of someone with Keita-like knowledge...then most of the reconstructions would evoke someone of black African descent.
This is the sort of false, self-serving lies he tells himself. This claim of his about being able to correctly identify most AE as recognizably "black African" based on cranial morphology is completely wrong. Aside from the fact that population assessments of cranial remains will typically reveal adaptations that can easily evolve elsewhere, the "black African" traits he's talking about are often only weakly or not at all manifested on the cranial remains of dynastic AE and other North Africans. Furthermore, the AE with such weak expressions could have easily been very dark skinned, but you wouldn't be able to tell this from their cranial remains. Reconstructions performed on these Egyptians would come out racially ambiguous looking and forensic scholars would have no basis of knowing whether to apply dark or light skin.
He made this obtuse post when people were critical of his use of 'black' and we picked up that his use of black had nothing to do with how people in this community with some sense are applying the term. It's preconceived, pseudo-scientific, denies African variability (both real and hypothetical) and is just a product of his epic hubris. I don't know where he gets off making such sweeping claims with his non-existent familiarity with this topic.
He references Keita, but the liar's posts smack of ignorance about his work. Keita 101:
quote:The crania from the northeast quadrant of Africa collectively demonstrate the greatest pattern of overlap with both Europeans and other Africans.
I was looking for her yesterday to corroborate my post, but I couldn't find the original page that initially reported the skin color reconstructions of this Nile Valley woman.
On the page they had both a dark skin reconstruction and a light skin reconstruction and they didn't seem incongruent with her facial features. Which speaks to what I was saying re: his dubious use of "black African".
EDIT: i found the reconstruction with the three skin color renditions:
I guess she must not be "black African" then, or mixed, because her looks are not specifically and exclusively "black African" (whatever the hell that divisive phrase is supposed to mean). None of the three skin color renditions look out of place to me; her face would fit well in populations with all three pigmentation levels. Beyoku repeatedly tried to tell him this (using different arguments) but he was too dense and opinionated to learn from someone with much more experience than him. To this day he's in some form of delusion that he debunked Beyoku and that others "picked Beyoku's side" because he was "losing" the discussion. Aside from the fact that everyone was already in that (amicable) discussion, for others to disagree with such ulterior motives, you have to be in the right first, no?
He then ended up questioning our motives, created a melodramatic scene and started disrespecting people from out of nowhere that day. But now he looks like a jackass because no credible person (academic or otherwise) is going to agree with him on this. So he did it all for nothing. SMH.
That (racial essentialism) was one of my problems with the liar's dubious use of 'black'. Of course, he's now lying about it as usual.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
^Swenet what book is that page from? And great share. Though I'd also add a fourth dark brown skintone in between the medium brown and the near black so that the contrast isn't so stark
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
One thing for sure it doesn't mean little anything because the Latin suffix INI is taxonomic in nature indicating a tribe. It's in Italian that INI is diminutive.
Just search keying Latin suffix ini
Considering your quoted context and its hype, beating someone until they're blacker than, would seem to out do the yardstick and Sudanese were the ultimate measure of blackness.
But why EGYPTini instead of an AETHIOP variable? My guess is it's a literary device. For various reasons Latin authors subbed a similar ethny for another.
And this case appears unique Paul. ex Fest. p. 28 Müll. being the only hit Tufts Perseus tool returns
I'm no latinist but 'marchyne' might be a reference to bordering on, as in 'marches', 'the welsh marches' being the border area between England and Wales. So 'aegyptini', rather than meaning 'little' or diminutive Egyptians, could reference those black individuals in the Poenulus quote as coming from the 'marches' or areas bordering Egypt. Thus lesser/pas Egypt, so Ethiopia/Nubia.
It's behind a paywall but you're not missing that much. Mostly just your average forensic reconstruction report.
As far as the authors go, I suspect that one of the reasons they gave three levels of skin pigmentation is because they couldn't rule out Nubian ancestry (due to her grave goods and cranio-facial results). I don't think they would have been so 'impartial' if she was deemed to be exclusively Egyptian. Complaints aside, this approach is more scientific than the use of pale skin we see in many reconstructions.
quote:More recently Mark Mechan has produced three drawings of the reconstructed face, identical except for differing skin tones, which are based on the three typical skin tones used in art at Thebes around the time of the burial. One mimics the redder skin used for Egyptians; one mimics the yellower skin used to represent people from Libya and the Near East; and one mimics the browner skin used to represent people from Nubia (Figure 5). Nevertheless, there is still no firm scientific basis on which to decide which is the most accurate coloration. Although archaeology can reveal a lot about the cultural context in which this woman lived, and analyses of her skeleton allow us to model her face, it is not yet possible to establish her ethnic identity for sure, so a definitive reconstruction of her appearance in life remains elusive.
—Manley et al 2002
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler:
But why EGYPTini instead of an AETHIOP variable? My guess is it's a literary device. For various reasons Latin authors subbed a similar ethny for another.
And this case appears unique Paul. ex Fest. p. 28 Müll. being the only hit Tufts Perseus tool returns
Depends on the translator. Some use Egyptian. Some use Ethiopian.
Outside of this play, where else does it appear?
Anyway, the contextual but not literal, meaning Ethiopian goes back to a 2nd century Latin dictionary as cited by Lewis & Short
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: Does anyone know if any latinists dispute that Aegyptini means Egyptians?
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Surely you are out your mind.
That was indeed a funny argument by "the lioness".
quote:4. Why are Ethiopians and Egyptians bowlegged?6 Is it due to the heat, and just as planks are warped when they become dry, so too are the bodies of animals? Now their hair reveals this as well: for they have curlier hair, and curliness is like a crookedness of the hair.
quote:Too black a hue marks the coward as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians and so does also too white a complexion as you may see from women, the complexion of courage is between the two.
Why are the Ethiopians and Egyptians bandy-legged? Is it because the bodies of living creatures become distorted by heat, like logs of wood when they become dry? The condition of their hair supports this theory; for it is curlier than that of other nations, and curliness is as it were crookedness of the hair.
[62] Physiognomics, Vol. VI, 812a - Book XIV, p. 317
"the men of Egypt are mostly brown or black with a skinny desiccated look.” (Ammianus Marcellinus, Book XXII para 16)
I did find these:
quote:Now the men of Egypt are, as a rule, somewhat swarthy and dark of complexion, and rather gloomy-looking,268 slender and hardy, excitable in all their movements, quarrelsome, and most persistent duns. Any one of them would blush if he did not, in consequence of refusing tribute, show many stripes on his body; and as yet it has been possible to find no torture cruel enough to compel a hardened robber of that region against his will to reveal his own name.
quote:The inhabitants of Egypt are generally swarthy and dark complexioned, and of a rather melancholy cast of countenance, thin and dry looking, quick in every motion, fond of controversy, and bitter exactors of their rights. Among them a man is ashamed who has not resisted the payment of tribute, and who does not carry about him wheals which he has received before he could be compelled to pay it. Nor have any tortures been found sufficiently powerful to make the hardened robbers of this country disclose their names unless they do so voluntarily.
Reviewed Work: Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean by Michael Levin Review by: Lansana KEITA , Lansane Keita Présence Africaine Nouvelle série, No. 163/164 (2001), pp. 227-235 Published by: Présence Africaine Editions Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24352178 Page Count: 9
@Tukuler ^ I think I found it, it appears to be from Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilisation.
quote:Amiaus Marcellinus a Latin historian and friend of Emperor Julian came around, “+33 to +100” and stated, “the men of Egypt are mostly brown or black with a skinny and desiccated look” (Diop, 1989).
In the interim letting my recall work Diop gave a pretty full listing of Classical authors at the 1974 Cairo conference. Read his selections from ten Greek and Latin writers on p.36 of UNESCO v.2. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001842/184265eo.pdf
(a) Herodotus, ‘the father of history’, -480(?) to -425. ... the Colchidians are Egyptian by race ... ... because they have black skins and kinky hair (to tell the truth this proves nothing for other peoples have them too) ...
Thus to prove that the Greek oracle at Dodona in Epirus was of Egyptian origin, one of his arguments is the following: ‘. . . and when they add that the dove was black they give us to understand that the woman was Egyptian.'
(b) Aristotle, -389 to -332, scientist, philosopher and tutor of Alexander the Great. ... Those who are too black are cowards, like for instance, the Egyptians and Ethiopians.
(c) Lucian, Greek writer, +125(?) to +190 ... This boy is not merely black; he has thick lips and his legs are too thin ...
(d) Apollodorus, first century before our era, Greek philosopher ... ‘Aegyptos conquered the country of the black- footed ones and called it Egypt after himself.’
(e) Aeschylus, -525(?) to -456, tragic poet and creator of Greek tragedy ... Aegyptos with his sons, the Aegyptiads, ... ‘I can see the crew with their black limbs and white tunics.'
[To be concluded, my mobile device can't handle more edits to this post.]
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
.f) Achilles Tatius of Alexandria.
He compares the herdsmen of the Delta to the Ethiopians and explains that they are blackish, like half-castes.
Diop's remaining examples having quotes.
h) Diodorus of Sicily, about -63 to +14, Greek historian and contemporary of Caesar Augustus. territory) ... The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are one of their colonies which was led into Egypt by Osiris.
(j) Ammianus Marcellinus, about +33 to +100, Latin historian and friend of the Emperor Julian ... . . .the men of Egypt are mostly brown and black with a skinny and desiccated look.
Four years before the UNESCO v.2, Leo Hansberry's Africa and Africans as seen by Classical Writers is a full book full of eye opening material for those not pre-biased.
But Snowden 1970 was my first in depth exposure to the classics on Greek and Latin colour terms for Africans whom even the Lower Nile Valley inhabitants have a full cline of black to yellow/sallow complexions not just three or four categories. pp.2-5.
Though hostile to a black Egypt, and not because he deems black an inappropriate term for ancient usage, Snowden notes ethnonyms After, Indus, and Maurus in types of literature like poetry are used as equivalents of Aethiops.
I think this is the case of Aegyptini in Plautus' play where the meter makes a word of Aethiop derivation cumbersome. The literal Latin definition of Aegyptini is 'of Egypt.' Things of Egypt are Egyptian.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
In Greek, the name Aegyptus means - king of egypt, father of the danaides. The name Aegyptus originated as an Greek name. The name Aegyptus is most often used as a boy name or male name.
Aegyptīni : Aethiopes, Paul. ex Fest. p. 28 Müll. A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary. revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by. Charlton T. Lewis, Ph.D. and. Charles Short, LL.D. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1879.
A hostile witness can be an accused's best defense. To whit, Snowden:
quote: Ater: Plautus Poenulus 1290-1291, where the adjective is applied to Aegyptini , which has been interpreted as Aethiopes;
quote: A reference in the Poenulus to those blacker than the Aegyptini who carry buckets around at the circus suggests Ethiopians and has been so interpreted,
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Yes, as I posted earlier
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: a 2nd century Latin dictionary as cited by Lewis & Short]
whose author says Aegyptini was used probably because of the playwright's meter not allowing for an Aethiop derived word. The referenced Snowden explains why such equivalents appear in classic texts.
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor: Is anyone familiar with this work?
Aegyptīni : Aethiopes, Paul. ex Fest. p. 28 Müll. A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary. revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by. Charlton T. Lewis, Ph.D. and. Charles Short, LL.D. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1879.
suffuscŭlus (subf- ), a, um, I. [select] adj. dim. [suffuscus], somewhat brown, brownish (postclass.): “homines Aegyptii,” Amm. 22, 16, 23; so App. M. 2, p. 120, 18.
āter , tra, trum, adj. cf. αἴθω, to burn; Sanscr. idh; αἴθων αἰθήρ, Αἴτνη, Aetna, aether, aestus, aestas (pr. burnt black, black as a coal
maestus (moest- ), a, um, adj. maereo, q. v., I. [select] full of sadness, sad, sorrowful, afflicted, dejected, melancholy (class.)
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: suffuscŭlus (subf- ), a, um, I. [select] adj. dim. [suffuscus], somewhat brown, brownish (postclass.): “homines Aegyptii,” Amm. 22, 16, 23; so App. M. 2, p. 120, 18.
āter , tra, trum, adj. cf. αἴθω, to burn; Sanscr. idh; αἴθων αἰθήρ, Αἴτνη, Aetna, aether, aestus, aestas (pr. burnt black, black as a coal
maestus (moest- ), a, um, adj. maereo, q. v., I. [select] full of sadness, sad, sorrowful, afflicted, dejected, melancholy (class.)
The words above are also interpreted as dark. So it's starting to make sense.
Bumped for relevance to thread When to use black p.30 The following list add-on
quote: Ater: Plautus Poenulus 1290-1291, where the adjective is applied to Aegyptini , which has been interpreted as Aethiopes;
quote: A reference in the Poenulus to those blacker than the Aegyptini who carry buckets around at the circus suggests Ethiopians and has been so interpreted,
āter , tra, trum, adj. cf. αἴθω, to burn; Sanscr. idh; αἴθων αἰθήρ, Αἴτνη, Aetna, aether, aestus, aestas (pr. burnt black, black as a coal
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
^The darkest of dark complexion. These Greek dudes were philosofical.
Posted by Tiglath44 (Member # 23830) on :
MANY THANKS for this. I have seen the big 'copy/paste' list of '55 Classical and Medieval Writers Mistranslated Concerning Egypt', but haven't ever had time to wade through them all. The most obvious being Herodotus, of course.
quote:Originally posted by sudaniya: Herodotus, for example, referred to the Egyptians as melanchroes. That term is sometimes translated as “black-skinned,” but Herodotus typically used a different word to describe people from further south in Africa, suggesting that “dark-skinned” is more appropriate. Source:http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2014/12/ridley_scott_s_exodus_were_ancient_egyptians_white_black_or_brown.html
Several Ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians and Ethiopians were black or dark skinned,[94] with woolly hair,[95] which became one of the most popular and controversial arguments for this theory. The Greek word used is “melanchroes”. While scholars such as Diop, Selincourt and George Rawlinson translate the Greek word "melanchroes" as "black", Najovits states that "Dark-skinned is the usual translation of the original Greek melanchroes"[96] and he is followed by A.D. Godley and Alan B. Lloyd.
Afrocentric misreadings of classical texts
The meaning of melas and melanochroes
In their efforts to paint the ancient Egyptians "black," Afrocentrists rely heavily on misreadings of ancient Greek and Roman literature – many of which stem from a severe misunderstanding of the historical use of color terms. In many ages and many cultures, descriptions of human complexion as "white," "brown" or "black" would correspond in modern usage to "fair," "tan" or "swarthy." According to the anthropologist Peter Frost (*):
This older, more relative sense has been noted in other culture areas. The Japanese once used the terms shiroi (white) and kuroi (black) to describe their skin and its gradations of color. The Ibos of Nigeria employed ocha (white) and ojii (black) in the same way, so that nwoko ocha (white man) simply meant an Ibo with a lighter complexion. In French Canada, the older generation still refers to a swarthy Canadien as noir. Vestiges of this older usage persist in family names. Mr. White, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Black were individuals within the normal color spectrum of English people. Ditto for Leblanc, Lebrun, and Lenoir among the French or Weiss and Schwartz among the Germans.
In the same vein, the Greek words melas and leukos when applied to skin color were usually equivalent to "swarthy" and "fair" rather than the racial terms "black" or "white" as Afrocentrists would prefer (see definition of melas in the online LSJ lexicon). There are numerous examples of this usage in Greek literature – one unequivocal example describes an aged Odysseus magically regaining his youth (Homer Odyssey 16.172-176):
With this, Athena touched him [Odysseus] with her golden wand. A well-washed cloak and a tunic she first of all cast about his breast, and she increased his stature and his youthful bloom. Once more he grew dark of color [melanchroiês], and his cheeks filled out, and dark grew the beard about his chin.
In describing the skin tone of Odysseus, Homer used the word melanchroiês – a form of the same word that other Greeks sometimes chose to describe Egyptians, and one that is the source of much Afrocentric misunderstanding. If taken literally, the word would mean "black-skinned"; however, it is clear from the context that Homer means "of swarthy complexion" rather than racially "black," and intends to describe Odysseus regaining his youthful color. Otherwise we would have to assume that during the process of rejuvenation Odysseus transformed into a black African! This despite the numerous ancient artistic portrayals of Odysseus as Greek-looking and certainly not "black" in any modern racial sense.
Likewise, when the ancient writers described Egyptians as melas or melanchroes, they almost surely meant "dark-complected" rather than literally "black." Any ambiguity in such descriptions can be resolved by noting that other classical writers such as Manilius specifically identified the Egyptians as medium in complexion rather than "black," and that the Egyptians portrayed themselves as lighter and finer-featured than their African neighbors to the south. ]http://www.geocities.com/enbp/quotes.html
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ That's what I find hilarious-- all the so-called 'Classical' authors from Greece and Rome all concur that the Egyptians and most other North Africans were black. It was only in the 19th century with the new 'racial science' that the Egyptians were simply described as "dark skinned" as in dark skinned caucasians and then later after that Hollywood and British media began portraying them as tanned or olive skinned. LOL
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ That's what I find hilarious-- all the so-called 'Classical' authors from Greece and Rome all concur that the Egyptians and most other North Africans were black. It was only in the 19th century with the new 'racial science' that the Egyptians were simply described as "dark skinned" as in dark skinned caucasians
If an American is asked "what race are you?"
Many might say "white", "black", "brown" or Asian
But nobody will say "dark-skinned" as a race No one construes that alone as a race
But if someone said "I'm Caucasian" that is also a race word. If they said "dark-skinned Caucasian" saying "dark-skinned" would not be a race term it would just be a modifier of a race word "Caucasian". It's like someone saying "light-skinned black" which is not uncommon.
None of these we have to agree with but this is common usage in America and that term "light skinned black" also suggests the word "black" connotes more than just skin color.
So to just say "light-skinned" or "dark-skinned" alone are not races they need a third race word at the end to make the term racial, that is the race word
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Come to think of it, "black" in reference to skin tone is a hyperbolic term even in English. We all know even the darkest Africans are dark brown than literally black in the same way my Wacom tablet is black.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ Of course when the word 'black' is used to describe skin color it does not mean literally black as in jet black but simply deep dark complexions.
On the other hand, to translate melanchroes as "dark skinned" as Lioness does is off the mark since the word mela specifically means black and not simply dark whereas chroes means complexion. So the Greeks specified 'black' from simply dark. There are other words for darker complexion like kelainós (dark) or perknós (dusky). The word for tanned which is something Greeks like other Mediterraneans know about is maurizos which literally means 'browned' based on the root word 'maur'. So that they use the word for black complexion should tell us something.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Of course when the word 'black' is used to describe skin color it does not mean literally black as in jet black but simply deep dark complexions.
On the other hand, to translate melanchroes as "dark skinned" as Lioness does is off the mark since the word mela specifically means black and not simply dark whereas chroes means complexion. So the Greeks specified 'black' from simply dark. There are other words for darker complexion like kelainós (dark) or perknós (dusky). The word for tanned which is something Greeks like other Mediterraneans know about is maurizos which literally means 'browned' based on the root word 'maur'. So that they use the word for black complexion should tell us something.
And then of course there's Herodotus claiming that the "black doves" founding the Oracle of Dodona were really Egyptian priestesses. I don't know what the original Greek text says, but if the doves' black plumage was what indicated the priestesses' Egyptian heritage, I doubt Herodotus meant that the doves were really light brown. Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
The word used for the black doves are discussed on this web site
quote:“then the woman spoke what they could understand, and that is why they say that the dove uttered human speech; as long as she spoke in a foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could a dove utter the speech of men? The tale that the dove was black signifies that the woman was Egyptian
quote:the original 2.57 text above shows that the word used to describe the dove as Black is “μέλαιναν” (reads Melainan)
meaning of “Melainan” in Liddell Scott Johnes lexicon is “Dark” or “Black“
quote:As we can see, The passage in 2.57 is not saying the Egyptians were black, all that can be read from this passage is that Herodotus used ”black doves” symbolically, saying that the dove being black contrary to other doves means the dove was Egyptian, There is no mention of skin here,
Rem N Kemi Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
The same site goes on discussing different translations of melanchroes.
quote:when we search Dictionaries of Ancient Greek language (Lexicons) for the meaning of “Melanchroes” we find out there is an ambiguity concerning the exact meaning of “μελάγχροες“
For example, The Glasgow Lexicon , published 1835 translates “μελάγχροες” to [Dark Skinned], [Dark colored], [Dark Complexioned]
Whereas Henry and Robert Scott Lexicon 1843, translates “μελάγχροες” to (Black Skinned – Swarthy of sunburnt persons)
although newer versions of Henry Liddel Lexicon are more specific as shown below, (μελάγχροες) means (swarthy).
which can be easily verified through Middle Liddell Online Dictionary
while Liddell-Scott-Jones Online Greek-English Lexicon is still giving the multiple meanings of either (Black–skinned) or (Swarthy)
so now we have multiple meanings.
Either “μελάγχροες” meant Swarthy of tanned people, and in this case the ancient Egyptians looked just like modern Egyptians and other Middle Eastern / Mediterranean populations. Or “μελάγχροες” meant Black and the Ancient Egyptians were Black Africans like Sudanese, Nubians and other East African populations.
to determine the exact meaning of “μελάγχροες” we will need to examine the usage of the word “μελάγχροες” in other works of Ancient Greek literature and that in turn will explain to us whether the translation of “μελάγχροες” as “swarthy” in the modern translations of (The Histories) is justifiable or not.
Another way to determine the meaning of “μελάγχροες” is by examining other instances where it was used.
By doing so we find it was used to describe populations who weren’t black, like :
Syrians: Like in Plutarch‘s description of a Syrian mercenary.
Cypriots: Diogenes description of a native of Cyprus.
Greeks: Homer describing Odysseus in the Odyssey. ------ even though Odysseus was a fictional character, this doesn’t change the fact its a fictional character of a Greek man. thus a Greek man being described as “Melanchroes” indicates that “Melanchroes” certainly does not mean Black African.
Rem N Kemi Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
NGL, citing a website with "iwuzkangz" in the url is a pretty bright red flag.
This being the site's icon when you have it up in a tab is another:
Shame on Arch for citing such a transparently racist source. I have already reported their posts to the mods.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
^^ So the quotations in the site, or the different translations regarding the word melanchroes do not apply just because you do not like the site I took them from? Is not the most important thing if those translations are valid or not, not your opinion about that site?
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: ^^ So the quotations in the site, or the different translations regarding the word melanchroes do not apply just because you do not like the site I took them from? Is not the most important thing if those translations are valid or not, not your opinion about that site?
I wouldn't consider a blatantly racist website like that a reliable source. I will say that I find their argument about the doves unpersuasive though. They acknowledge that the dove in the legend of the oracle had to have represented an Egyptian woman due to being black "unlike other doves", yet deny that that had anything to do with her being dark-skinned. On what grounds, exactly? Any why choose "black" or "melas" to represent Egyptians?
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Yes their dove explanation did not say so much. I happened upon the site because I searched for the Greek word for black in that specific context.
One can wonder though where black started and brown continued in ancient Greek language. How dark was black in their terminology?
Here are one modern Egyptian and one modern Nubian.
Would Herodotus have called both of them melanchroes?
In todays world Will Smith is regarded as black. But would Herodotus have called him melanchroes?
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: The same site goes on discussing different translations of melanchroes.
quote:when we search Dictionaries of Ancient Greek language (Lexicons) for the meaning of “Melanchroes” we find out there is an ambiguity concerning the exact meaning of “μελάγχροες“
For example, The Glasgow Lexicon , published 1835 translates “μελάγχροες” to [Dark Skinned], [Dark colored], [Dark Complexioned]
Whereas Henry and Robert Scott Lexicon 1843, translates “μελάγχροες” to (Black Skinned – Swarthy of sunburnt persons)
although newer versions of Henry Liddel Lexicon are more specific as shown below, (μελάγχροες) means (swarthy).
which can be easily verified through Middle Liddell Online Dictionary
while Liddell-Scott-Jones Online Greek-English Lexicon is still giving the multiple meanings of either (Black–skinned) or (Swarthy)
so now we have multiple meanings.
Either “μελάγχροες” meant Swarthy of tanned people, and in this case the ancient Egyptians looked just like modern Egyptians and other Middle Eastern / Mediterranean populations. Or “μελάγχροες” meant Black and the Ancient Egyptians were Black Africans like Sudanese, Nubians and other East African populations.
to determine the exact meaning of “μελάγχροες” we will need to examine the usage of the word “μελάγχροες” in other works of Ancient Greek literature and that in turn will explain to us whether the translation of “μελάγχροες” as “swarthy” in the modern translations of (The Histories) is justifiable or not.
Another way to determine the meaning of “μελάγχροες” is by examining other instances where it was used.
By doing so we find it was used to describe populations who weren’t black, like :
Syrians: Like in Plutarch‘s description of a Syrian mercenary.
Cypriots: Diogenes description of a native of Cyprus.
Greeks: Homer describing Odysseus in the Odyssey. ------ even though Odysseus was a fictional character, this doesn’t change the fact its a fictional character of a Greek man. thus a Greek man being described as “Melanchroes” indicates that “Melanchroes” certainly does not mean Black African.
Melas, the prefix to Melanchroes, was used to describe the Ethiopians though.
quote:The uses of the terms ‘black’ and ‘white’ by Greeks could be classified into three distinctions of meaning: the literal, the figurative and their use to categorise humans (Christopoulos et al., 2010; Platnauer, 1921). The Greek word for black is ‘melas’. It was used literally by Aeschylus for waves, blood, water and land freshly ploughed, and by Hesiod for earth, hair, weapons, snake’s throat, grapes and blood. Figuratively, melas was used to characterise dark concepts such as evil, sorrow and death, and in general personifying the colour black as ‘kip’, the goddess of death(Price, 1883: 1). The word melas was also used to categorise non-Greeks, particularly Ethiopians, by reference to their skin colour. On the other hand, the Greek term for white is ‘leukos’. It was used literally by Homer to describe the calm sea, snow, tin, barley, water and the skin (Osborne, 1968; Platnauer, 1921). Figuratively, leukos was employed for ‘a veil white as the sun’, sunlight and its white glow; it was also used to symbolise the essence and expression of light and life (Price, 1883: 1).Furthermore, it was used as a device for categorising people in terms of skin colour (Byron, 2002; Hannaford, 1996; Snowden, 1971).
quote:The categorical use of the terms ‘black’ and ‘white’ was probably set in motion in the sixth century BCE by Xenophanes when he contrasted Ethiopians who were considered ‘black’ (melas) with Thracians who were seen as ‘white’ (leukos) (Bernal, 1987; Hannaford, 1996; Snowden, 1971, 1983). In any event, Greco-Roman literature as a whole is replete with the categorical use of black and white. According to Byron (2002), throughout ancient Greek literature the ‘white’ (leukos) and straight-haired Scythian of the north was contrasted with the ‘black’ (melas) woolly-haired Ethiopian of the south to indicate the extreme boundaries of the ancient world, both in terms of geography and skin colour. This claim is corroborated by Snowden (1971) when he asserts that the Ethiopian–Scythian formula began as early as the time of Hesiod and had been a frequent, if not a favourite, Hellenistic illustration of the boundaries of the north and south, as well as that of the environmental theory. This theory was used to demonstrate a correlation between geographical differences and differences in human features, including character and skin colour.
Source: Kwesi Tsri, Africans Are Not Black: The Case for Conceptual Liberation, 2016
quote:Thus, leukos symbolized for the Greeks: (1) the light of the sun associated with the gods; (2) the color white, which identified the gods and their achievements—the Roman god Jupiter, the god of the shining sky, was transported across the heavens in a chariot pulled by white horses; Zeus kidnapped Europa disguised as a white bull; (3) purity—hence the significance of white clothing for priests and many believers in religious cults—joy, and honor; (4) triumph and success. Melas meant: (1) the mysterious and warrior like Ethiopians; (2) black or dark; (3) masculinity; (4) certain emotions and internal organs.
Source: Robert E. Hood, Begrimed and black: Christian traditions on Blacks and blackness, 1994
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
There was mention of Ethiopians being in Cyprus as well. So the Cypriots being described as "Melanchroes" can't be easily dismissed as referencing groups with olive skinned nor would it invalidate the term's association with "Black", as those same Cypriots could've been Black themselves and reminiscent of the Ethiopian presence in Cyprus at the time.
quote:Ethiopians, according to Herodotus, were a component of the Cypriot population. Several opinions have been expressed with regard to their origin. According to one opinion they settled in Cyprus following the Egyptian occupation of the island shortly after 570 B.c. and may have been used in the civil and military service of the Egyptian rulers. But this correlation does not fit the date of the Ormidhia jug.According to another opinion the Ethiopians referred to by Herodotus were not African but Asiatic Ethiopians who were transferred to Cyprus from the Asiatic mainland during the period of Assyrian domination (709-570 B.c.).This would fit the date of our vase. In any case, Ethiopian mercenaries may have been employed in the armies of the Assyrians, and a few may have made an impression on Cypriots by their different facial characteristics.
Source: Vassos Karageorghis, Blacks in ancient Cypriot art, 1988
quote:It is to the period of Persian rule that we may most probably refer the settlement in Cyprus of Aethiopians. Cambyses made an expedition against the land of Cush, which was afterwards subject to Persia; for the Cushites are mentioned as subjects of Darius, and the Aethiopians are recorded by Herodotus as doing military service in the campaign of Xerxes. Thus it is by no means impossible that Aethiopians should have been settled in Cyprus in the sixth or early fifth century.
Source: George Hill, A History of Cyprus, Vol. 1, 1940
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Rem N Kemi
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: ^^ So the quotations in the site, or the different translations regarding the word melanchroes do not apply just because you do not like the site I took them from? Is not the most important thing if those translations are valid or not, not your opinion about that site?
I wouldn't consider a blatantly racist website like that a reliable source. I will say that I find their argument about the doves unpersuasive though. They acknowledge that the dove in the legend of the oracle had to have represented an Egyptian woman due to being black "unlike other doves", yet deny that that had anything to do with her being dark-skinned. On what grounds, exactly? Any why choose "black" or "melas" to represent Egyptians?
This might be a racist site but Tukuler used to say 'separate the wheat from the chaff', that there could still be some useful information. That site has a lot of book quote images etc. They claim there:
quote: During his travel to Egypt around 500 B.C, Herodotus made some remarks about the appearance of the the ancient Egyptians, describing their skin complexion as “Melanchroes” μελάγχρους, and their hair texture as oulotriches
in the west, early translations of Herodotus’s book (The Histories) had the word “μελάγχρους” (Melanchroes) translated into Black, and “Oulotriches” to wooly.
After Napoleon‘s campaign in Egypt 1798 A.D which aimed to rediscover Ancient Egypt, the discovery of the Rosetta stone led to the birth of Egyptology, as western contact with Egypt was increasing, and westerners having more exposure to Egypt, it didn’t take long before deducing that translating Melanchroes to Black must have been inaccurate.
that the Ancient Egyptians were not black as previously thought , thus previous notions derived from Herodotus book was reassessed, and the translation of μελάγχρους to Black were corrected, changed into Swarthy or Dark skinned. (as seen in the newer translations below)
The Histories – By Tom Holland
Another way to determine the meaning of “μελάγχροες” is by examining other instances where it was used.
By doing so we find it was used to describe populations who weren’t black, like :
The same site goes on discussing different translations of melanchroes.
• Syrians: Like in Plutarch‘s description of a Syrian mercenary.
• Cypriots: Diogenes description of a native of Cyprus.
• Greeks: Homer describing Odysseus in the Odyssey
Syrians ————————- 〈〈Plutarch〉〉 45 – 127 AD
In (Aratus, 18.2) Plutarch is telling a story about a Syrian mercenary called Diodes
(Plutarch – Aratus, 18.2)
He describes his appearance in (Aratus B20.1) as “Melanchroes” μελάγχρουν
Source —>> Plutarch – Aratus B20.1
which is translated to “Swarthy”
Plutarch Syrian 20.1
__________________________
Cyperiots ————————- 〈〈Diogenes〉〉 80 – 240 AD Diogenes uses “Melanchroes” to describe a native man of Cyprus called Zeno
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers Book 7, Ch 1
Translated to “Swarthy” .
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers Book 7, Ch 1
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:
Greeks ————————- 〈〈Homer〉〉 600 BC In his famous poem (the Odyssey), Homer uses “Melanchroes” μελαγχροιὴς to describe Odysseus appearance after Athena restored his youth.
(The Odyssey B16, Ch175) and the word is μελαγχροιὴς
(The Odyssey B16, Ch175)
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: The same site goes on discussing different translations of melanchroes.
quote:
Another way to determine the meaning of “μελάγχροες” is by examining other instances where it was used.
By doing so we find it was used to describe populations who weren’t black, like :
•Syrians: Like in Plutarch‘s description of a Syrian mercenary.
• Cypriots: Diogenes description of a native of Cyprus.
• Greeks: Homer describing Odysseus in the Odyssey. ------ even though Odysseus was a fictional character, this doesn’t change the fact its a fictional character of a Greek man. thus a Greek man being described as “Melanchroes” indicates that “Melanchroes” certainly does not mean Black African. Rem N Kemi
quote:Originally posted by Baalberith: Melas, the prefix to Melanchroes, was used to describe the Ethiopians though.
What text examples do you have?
The question would be why would Melas be applied to Ethiopians but not Melanchroes ?
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
Furthermore, as alluded earlier, there were ancient references to dark-skinned people in the Near East. The prefix "Melano" for Melanosyri, dark-skinned or "Black" Syrians, was used designate these specific populations, in contrast to "Leucosyri" or "white" Syrians, which used to designate lighter and fairer skinned populations. So the usage of Melanochroes for Syrian Mercenaries can't be easily dismissed as conjecture either.
quote:The name Syri seems to have extended of old from Babylonia to the gulf of Issus, and from the gulf of Issus to the Euxine (Strabo, p.737). Strabo also says that even in his time both the Cappadocian peoples, both those who were situated about the Taurus and those on the Euxine, were called Leucosyri or White Syrians, as if there were also some Syrians who were black; and these black or dark Syrians are those who are east of the Amanus. (See also Strabo, p.542.) The name Syria, and Assyria, which often means the same in the Greek writers, was the name by which the country along the Pontus and east of the Halys was first known to the Greeks, and it was not forgotten (Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, ii.948,964; Dionys. Perieg. v.772, and the comment of Eustathius).
Source: Robertino Solàrion, The White Syrians Of Aramaean Cappadocia, 2002
Case example, Syrian Arabs from the Shammar Tribe:
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:What text examples do you have?
The question would be why would Melas be applied to Ethiopians but not Melanchroes ?
The Physiognomonics, which is often mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, but is nevertheless an ancient work, describes both the Ethiopians and Egyptians as Black in the same text, which I take as meaning "Melanochroes". However, I haven't checked.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Baalberith: There was mention of Ethiopians being in Cyprus as well. So the Cypriots being described as "Melanchroes" can't be easily dismissed as referencing groups with olive skinned nor would it invalidate the term's association with "Black", as those same Cypriots could've been Black themselves and reminiscent of the Ethiopian presence in Cyprus at the time.
quote:Ethiopians, according to Herodotus, were a component of the Cypriot population. Several opinions have been expressed with regard to their origin. According to one opinion they settled in Cyprus following the Egyptian occupation of the island shortly after 570 B.c. and may have been used in the civil and military service of the Egyptian rulers. But this correlation does not fit the date of the Ormidhia jug.According to another opinion the Ethiopians referred to by Herodotus were not African but Asiatic Ethiopians who were transferred to Cyprus from the Asiatic mainland during the period of Assyrian domination (709-570 B.c.).This would fit the date of our vase. In any case, Ethiopian mercenaries may have been employed in the armies of the Assyrians, and a few may have made an impression on Cypriots by their different facial characteristics.
Source: Vassos Karageorghis, Blacks in ancient Cypriot art, 1988
quote:It is to the period of Persian rule that we may most probably refer the settlement in Cyprus of Aethiopians. Cambyses made an expedition against the land of Cush, which was afterwards subject to Persia; for the Cushites are mentioned as subjects of Darius, and the Aethiopians are recorded by Herodotus as doing military service in the campaign of Xerxes. Thus it is by no means impossible that Aethiopians should have been settled in Cyprus in the sixth or early fifth century.
Source: George Hill, A History of Cyprus, Vol. 1, 1940
^^ Unfortunately it does not seem that there are much DNA evidence from Cyprus which can tell us in detail about the composition of the Cypriot population during certain times. But an African presence at some times seem not impossible since we have a supposed Minoan presense (probably craftsmen) in Egypt during the 18th Dynasty) and a steady Greek presense in Naukratis in Egypt from about 570 BC. So an exchange of people between the Aegean and Egypt had been going on a rather long time, and Cyprus also had many international contacts from the Bronze age (and even earlier) and forwards.
Otherwise much Cypriotic art from the period discussed above looks not especially Ethiopian, but as in mainland Greece there can of course also be portraits of Black people. Head of a Bearded Man, 5th Century BC Art Initiative of Chicago https://www.artic.edu/artists/37559/ancient-cypriot
Terracotta head of a man, Cypriot, ca 600 BC https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/241013 ---- The question still stands how black was melanochroes? Today the designation Black is often used as a common denominator for people who are from relatively light skinned to very dark. Often it is used for people of African descent.
But in Egypt and the Middle East there are people who are brown but seldom are referred to as Black. One can wonder how it was used in ancient times, which hues were included in melanchroes?
Here are one modern Egyptian and one modern Nubian.
Would Herodotus have called both of them melanchroes?
How about this Yemenite Jew? Is he melanchroes? What is he called today? Some would maybe call him Black, others not.
And this Bedouin from Negev? Would the ancient Greeks called him melanchroes?
It seems the word melanchroes gives rise to some misunderstandings in modern times since black today can be interpreted differently. In many peoples thoughts black means Subsaharan or of Subsaharan descent. Many rather light skinned persons in USA are often called Black. It is more tricky with dark skinned Middle Easterners or Indians. They are not always referred to as Black, even if they can have the same skin tone.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
quote:The question still stands how black was melanochroes? Today the designation Black is often used as a common denominator for people who are from relatively light skinned to very dark. Often it is used for people of African descent.
But in Egypt and the Middle East there are people who are brown but seldom are referred to as Black. One can wonder how it was used in ancient times, which hues were included in melanchroes?
For me, it's rather a question of whether this term was used indiscriminately to reference the color spectrum of dark ranged skin tones as opposed to a specific dark skin tone. For instance, the photos of modern dark skinned Middle Easterners that you and I posted could've all conformed to what the Greeks saw as "Melanosyrians". Similarly, light-olive to fairer-white skin could have been what the skin tones of the "Leucosyrians" ranged from. So what you noted for Blackness, as being intersectional, could've been the case for both these ancient terminologies, but with an emphasis on skin tones as opposed to heritage, which tends to be a criteria for Blackness nowadays i.e. recent African heritage. But this is just my opinion.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
Also, regarding Odysseus being described as Melanochroes, it's more likely, as alluded earlier in my posts, that this description was figurative rather than literal. It's reflected the Greeks gendered stereotypes, where "dark, Black" or "melas" symbolized masculinity and "light, white" or "leukos" symbolized femininity. On the other hand, cases have been made for Odysseus' "Blackness" within this context to warrant its consideration. It's worth noting that Odysseus hair was also described as being "blue" in addition to "woolly" or "curly" in his encounter with the Goddess Athena, just showcasing this myth to be, well a myth.
quote:Let’s take another example, which will come as a surprise to those whose mental image of Homeric Greeks is marble-white. In the Odyssey, Athena is said to enhance Odysseus’ appearance magically: ‘He became black-skinned (melagkhroiēs) again, and the hairs became blue (kuaneai) around his chin.’ On two other occasions when she beautifies him, she is said to make his hair ‘woolly, similar in colour to the hyacinth flower’. Now, translating kuaneos (the root of the English ‘cyan’) as ‘blue’, as I have done here, is at first sight a bit silly: most translators take the word to mean ‘dark’. But given the usual colour of hyacinths, maybe – just maybe – he did have blue hair after all? Who knows; but here, certainly, is another example of just how alien the Homeric colour scheme is. To make matters worse, at one earlier point in the poem his hair is said to be xanthos, ie just like Achilles’; commentators sometimes take that to refer to grey grizzle (which is more evidence that xanthos doesn’t straightforwardly mean ‘blond’).
quote:And what of ‘black-skinned’? Was Odysseus in fact black? Or was he (as Emily Wilson’s acclaimed new translation renders it) ‘tanned’? Once again, we can see how different translations prompt modern readers to envisage these characters in completely different ways. But to understand the Homeric text, we need to shed these modern associations. Odysseus’ blackness, like Achilles’ xanthos hair, isn’t intended to play to modern racial categories; rather, it carries with it ancient poetic associations. At another point in the Odyssey, we are told of Odysseus’ favourite companion Eurybates, who ‘was round-shouldered, black-skinned (melanokhroos), and curly-haired … Odysseus honoured him above his other comrades, because their minds worked in the same way.’ The last part is the crucial bit: their minds work in the same way, presumably, because Eurybates and Odysseus are both wily tricksters. And, indeed, we find the association between blackness and tricksiness elsewhere in early Greek thought.
quote:‘Black’ (melas) and ‘white’ (leukos) are also – importantly – gendered terms: females are praised for being ‘white-armed’, but men never are. This differentiation finds its way into the conventions of Greek (and indeed Egyptian) art too, where we find women often depicted as much lighter of skin than men. To call a Greek man ‘white’ was to call him ‘effeminate’. Conversely, to call Odysseus ‘black-skinned’ might well associate him with the rugged, outdoors life he lived on ‘rocky Ithaca’
quote:Additionally, the contrast between whiteness and blackness in Greek thought also distinguished genders and defined their respective social functions. Because men worked outdoors, they were rough and hardy, and thus dark or black skin was a sign of manhood and virility. Conversely, because whiteness was associated with femininity and because women who worked in the home were soft and vulnerable, whiteness was also used as a sign of effeminate men. In Homers Odyssey Penelope wraps her white arms (pechee leuko) tightly around the neck of Odysseus{Odyssey 23.239-40), who is black or dark with woolly hair (Odyssey16.174-76).
quote:Classicists disagree whether these descriptions indicate a racial identity as African (Florence Elizabeth Wallace, Color in Homer and in Ancient Art, Smith College Classical Studies 9[1927]) or whether they are marks of beauty of the time, since Eurybates came from Ithaca, not Africa (Iliad. 2.183-84).
Source: Robert E. Hood, Begrimed and black: Christian traditions on Blacks and blackness, 1994
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
All this obfuscation and muddying the waters to the point that now people are questioning whether the Greek word for black-skinned (melanchroes) means black skinned! LOL
This is actually not surprising because such rewriting has been going on for decades as part of the effort to white-wash the Egyptians. Is anyone aware of that even the word 'Aethiopian' is now being questioned and changed. I even saw a video a month ago on Memnon in the Trojan War and they translated Aethopian from burnt-faced to "bright-faced" in an attempt to white-wash Memnon and his Elamite people despite Greek writings and artwork saying otherwise!
To Archaeopteryx, artwork from Cyprus during the 'Classical' period does not say much since Cyprus was already inhabited by Greeks by then. The one reference to Eteo-Cyprians (true Cyprians) being black comes from Aeschylus in his play 'The Suppliant Maidens' when the protagonists, the Danaide princesses of Libya seek refuge from the Argive king, the latter states:
quote: O stranger maids, I may not trust this word, That ye have share in this our Argive race. No likeness of our country do ye bear, But semblance as of Libyan womankind. Even such a stock by Nilus' banks might grow; Yea, and the *Cyprian* stamp, in female forms, Shows, to the life, what males impressed the same. And, furthermore, of roving Indian maids Whose camping-grounds by Aethiopia lie, And camels burdened even as mules, and bearing Riders, as horses bear, mine ears have heard; And tales of flesh-devouring mateless maids Called Amazons (of Tritonis in western Libya): to these, if bows ye bare, I most had deemed you like. Speak further yet, That of your Argive birth the truth I learn.
Cyprians are included in the list of black people but mind you the setting of the story takes place during the Bronze Age before Greek colonization of Cyprus.
To Baalberith in regards to black Arabs or Arabians I suggest you look here: Cushites in the Hebrew Bible Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
.
μελάγχροες
MELANCHROES
• Egyptians and Colchis(Georgia, Western Caucasus), - Herodotus
• Syrians: Plutarch‘s description of a Syrian mercenary.
• Cypriots: Diogenes description of a native of Cyprus.
• Greeks: Homer describing Odysseus in the Odyssey. _______________________________________
Is there any Classical text describing Africans other than Egyptians as Melanchroes? Is there a quote?
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
@ Djehuti
Unfortunately we have not so much aDNA from Cyprus so we do not know the exact composition of the people there over time. Seems they partly descended from Anatolian farmers who came there about 8000 BC.
quote:In their archaeogenetics study, Lazaridis et al. (2022) carried out principal components analysis (PCA), projecting the ancient individuals onto the variation of present-day West Eurasians. They discovered that Neolithic Cypriots genetically clustered with Neolithic Anatolians. Two main clusters emerge: an “Eastern Mediterranean” Anatolian/Levantine cluster that also includes the geographically intermediate individuals from Cyprus, and an “inland” Zagros-Caucasus-Mesopotamia-Armenia-Azerbaijan cluster. There is structure within these groupings. Anatolian individuals group with each other and with those from Cyprus, whereas Levantine individuals are distinct
In early Bronze age new immigrants from Anatolia seems to have arrived, followed by Mycaenean influence in the late Bronze age.
There can also have been Phoenician influence.
Later a more pronounced Greek influence can be seen.
Ancient writings always have it´s source critical problems so we actually do not know exactly what skin tone ancient Cypriots had. It probably varied over time.
As the Aeschylus quote above, it is not from Cypriot stone age or Bronze age but from the 500s BC so it is not an eye witness account. Much Greek literature about the Bronze age is written much later.
Older Cypriot art can often be quite stylized so it does not always give an exact picture of how people really looked either.
And some art is also imported which further can muddle the picture.
- Bronze figurine of the Ingot God, early 12th c. BC Cyprus
Flathead figure, Bronze Age 1450-1100 BC
Cypriot figurine, late bronze age
Horned "God" from Enkomi tomb, 12th century BC
Maybe ancient Cyprus is worth a thread of its own.
So still the question remains, exactly how black was melanchroes? Just like in todays world, exactly how black is Black, seems it can vary from light brown to nearly literally black.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Baalberith: So what you noted for Blackness, as being intersectional, could've been the case for both these ancient terminologies, but with an emphasis on skin tones as opposed to heritage, which tends to be a criteria for Blackness nowadays i.e. recent African heritage. But this is just my opinion.
Sounds reasonable that the expression could have covered a range of skin tones and that it was not connected with heritage as the word black often is nowadays (at least here in the west).
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ Unfortunately there there are few Neolithic samples that had their DNA tested not just Cyprus but other Aegean islands even though Neolithic skeletal remains show "negroid" features as noted with the Beachy Head Lady
Rem n Kemi noted here about Pseudo-Aristotle's writings..
“Too black a hue marks the coward as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians and so does also too white a complexion as you may see from women, the complexion of courage is between the two.” The original Greek word used is melanes (black). But some distorters would translate the word into "swarthy" or "dark". LOL
Pseudo-Aristotle also wrote:
“Why are the Ethiopians and Egyptians bandy-legged? Is it because the bodies of living creatures become distorted by heat, like logs of wood when they become dry? The condition of their hair supports this theory; for it is curlier than that of other nations, and curliness is as it were crookedness of the hair."
So curly is no longer curly then??
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Unfortunately there there are few Neolithic samples that had their DNA tested not just Cyprus but other Aegean islands even though Neolithic skeletal remains show "negroid" features as noted with the Beachy Head Lady
At the same time the DNA of the Beachy head woman seems to show her being Cypriot and not African. And the skin tone is hard to judge if one have not tested the alleles for skin tone, hair and similar. Sometimes skull shape can be misleading. And as shown, much of the later cypriotic art do not necessarily show cypriots with "negroid" features. So sometimes art, human remains and written accounts can differ.
Cyprus also received different migrations, from the oldest hunter gatherers, to Anatolian farmers, to some Minoans, to Mycaeneans to Greeks so their looks could have varied with time, and maybe also depending where on the island one met a certain person.
quote: Rem n Kemi noted here about Pseudo-Aristotle's writings..
“Too black a hue marks the coward as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians and so does also too white a complexion as you may see from women, the complexion of courage is between the two.” The original Greek word used is melanes (black). But some distorters would translate the word into "swarthy" or "dark". LOL
Pseudo-Aristotle also wrote:
“Why are the Ethiopians and Egyptians bandy-legged? Is it because the bodies of living creatures become distorted by heat, like logs of wood when they become dry? The condition of their hair supports this theory; for it is curlier than that of other nations, and curliness is as it were crookedness of the hair."
So curly is no longer curly then??
Curly hair in different variants is still rather common in the Middle East, it must not mean African heritage. I bet you heard about Jew-fros?
When it comes to Egyptians (and even in a higher degree Nubians and Ethiopians) many have still curly hair in todays world so there is hardly any discussion about that.
I do not mean that all these people were white as snow, I just point out that even today the word Black can mean a range of brown hues, and it is much possible that ancient authors also meant more than just one specific tone.
Because today Black mostly does not mean literal black and most of the people described as melanchroes are not black either in any literal sense. I wonder if an ancient Greek was asked to describe the skin color and the hair color of an Egyptian. Would he use the same word for both? In todays world most would say brown skin and black hair. So these color labels are not strictly logical and they were not in ancient times either. And especially careful we ought to be about descriptions written on hearsay or a long time after the time of the people described.
And as you know also today one can see dark tones among non African people like the Yemenite Jew I showed above, like some Arabs, and of course Pakistanis and Indians. In todays world the word Black is often interpreted as Black in the meaning of African descent.
About Cyprus DNA it is mentioned in a couple of studies, one from 2014 on ancient DNA and another study from 2017 based on DNA from todays Cypriots
Also todays Aegeans can have relatively dark skin color like this Cretan fisherman
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ Sorry for the late response but I've been busy.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: At the same time the DNA of the Beachy head woman seems to show her being Cypriot and not African. And the skin tone is hard to judge if one have not tested the alleles for skin tone, hair and similar. Sometimes skull shape can be misleading. And as shown, much of the later cypriotic art do not necessarily show cypriots with "negroid" features. So sometimes art, human remains and written accounts can differ.
Yes we discussed this in the original thread here. Not only her but the Lachish skulls also displayed "negroid" metric but the nonmetric and later genetic tests showed them to be non-African as well. My point however is that African ancestry did exist in the Aegean as well as Levant as genetics tests has confirmed. My point is not to say that the Cypriotes were Africans per say but that they may have had some African ancestry as such ancestry was discovered in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean including Greece and they date to Neolithic times these include Y-DNA and HbS.
quote:Cyprus also received different migrations, from the oldest hunter gatherers, to Anatolian farmers, to some Minoans, to Mycaeneans to Greeks so their looks could have varied with time, and maybe also depending where on the island one met a certain person.
Correct. Which is why it's not inconceivable there were changes in population and why later Cypriotes in so-called Classical times did not look like the Cypriotes described by the Argive king.
quote:Curly hair in different variants is still rather common in the Middle East, it must not mean African heritage. I bet you heard about Jew-fros?
Of course! The problem with the Jewish example is that many Jews do have African ancestry the Sephardim especially who have North Africans ancestry but even the Mizrahi Jews of the Levant possess African ancestry as well. Even the Ashkenazim who are the 'whitest' of all Jews still carry African ancestry in their paternal side...
as well as maternal side. M1 an N1 are African but Dr. Behar has found L21 (2004) that links Ashkenazi maternal lineage to the Levant even though L2 is Sub-Saharan in origin which makes wonder about the "Near Eastern" section of the pie chart.
Ironically Jewish people not only tend to have hair that's curly but frizzy as well and Jewish women like African American women have a stereotypical habit of going to salons to relax or straighten their hairs. Interestingly, so do many modern Egyptian women as you are aware of .
My point is that African genetic influence is not confined to to the African continent but to adjacent areas and populations who have been influenced by Africans such as ancient Jews, though I understand your point about curly hair.
Many Persians have curly hair also.
Whether this influence is do to pre-Persian ancestry such as from Elamites, even though the Elamites were black they were not African.
quote:When it comes to Egyptians (and even in a higher degree Nubians and Ethiopians) many have still curly hair in todays world so there is hardly any discussion about that.
I do not mean that all these people were white as snow, I just point out that even today the word Black can mean a range of brown hues, and it is much possible that ancient authors also meant more than just one specific tone.
Because today Black mostly does not mean literal black and most of the people described as melanchroes are not black either in any literal sense. I wonder if an ancient Greek was asked to describe the skin color and the hair color of an Egyptian. Would he use the same word for both? In todays world most would say brown skin and black hair. So these color labels are not strictly logical and they were not in ancient times either. And especially careful we ought to be about descriptions written on hearsay or a long time after the time of the people described.
And as you know also today one can see dark tones among non African people like the Yemenite Jew I showed above, like some Arabs, and of course Pakistanis and Indians. In todays world the word Black is often interpreted as Black in the meaning of African descent.
Yes, there is no disagreement with what you've stated above. 'Melanchroes' was used by the Greeks the same way 'black' is used by English speaking whites and others as a blanket description of much darker skinned populations to their south. Nothing more or less. The same was said about the Hebrew word kushim which they also applied to darker peoples both Egyptians as well as tribes to the south from the Negev to Arabia especially Yemen as here: Cushites in the Hebrew Bible. Arabia and especially Yemen are right next to Africa so genetic influence from that continent is no surprise.
Yemeni boy
Even lighter skinned Indians called their darker countrymen 'kalu' which means also means black. The word need not mean literally jet black.
quote:About Cyprus DNA it is mentioned in a couple of studies, one from 2014 on ancient DNA and another study from 2017 based on DNA from todays Cypriots
Also todays Aegeans can have relatively dark skin color like this Cretan fisherman
Interesting genetic findings, though the example of a deeply tanned Aegean was not the same as the Greek melanchroes since the Greeks being Aegeans noted a difference in being deeply tanned and 'black'.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Even among Greeks and Cretans of today the skin color and the degree of tanning can vary. Sometimes one can see differences which reminds of the sexual dimorphism which is represented in Minoan paintings.
Otherwise one can see rather dark Greeks but also blonde people (who often descend from Northern Greece). One Greek I spoke to looked like a Northern European with blue eyes and blonde hair. According to him his ancestors had always lived in (Greek) Macedonia as long as he had been able to trace them.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti Correct. Which is why it's not inconceivable there were changes in population and why later Cypriotes in so-called Classical times did not look like the Cypriotes described by the Argive king.
One must always take some of the written accounts with a grain of salt especially when they tell about events which took place many hundred years earlier.. For example Aeschylus lived c 525 Bc to 455 BC but the events he described in his play took place during the Bronze age.
There is an old book about Cypriot crania during different times where the author tries to sort them after certain racial traits. I will remember that he saw Asian, Caucasoid and Negroid features in the skulls, but I have to access the book for more details. I shall try to order it from the library.
Maybe you have read it?
Fischer, Peter M., 1986: Prehistoric Cypriot Skulls Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
just go to the Internet archive and sign up, it's simple and free. You can look at this book for an hour at a time, they have videos also
Prehistoric Cypriot skulls : a medico-anthropological, archaeological, and micro-analytical investigation by Fischer, Peter M
Publication date 1986
_______________________________
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti Ironically Jewish people not only tend to have hair that's curly but frizzy as well and Jewish women like African American women have a stereotypical habit of going to salons to relax or straighten their hairs. Interestingly, so do many modern Egyptian women as you are aware of
Also interesting that some Jewish women wear wigs, but it seems also to be out of religious reasons, and not so much because of looks like in the case of some African American women.
I do not know how well the connection between genetic inheritance and curly hair is researched. Curly hair does as you know exist in several non African populations too, some which are rather far from Africans genetically speaking.
Jarawa girl from the Andaman islands Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: just go to the Internet archive and sign up, it's simple and free. You can look at this book for an hour at a time, they have videos also
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
