| Revision as of 20:00, 27 January 2009 editMoreschi (talk | contribs)19,434 edits →npov← Previous edit | Revision as of 20:03, 27 January 2009 edit undoMoreschi (talk | contribs)19,434 edits →Does this article overstate the debate?Next edit → | ||
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| ::::As an example, that this debate is not restricted to Afrocentrism, ], who was not an Afrocentrist, was just as intrigued about the race of the Ancient Egyptians. In the ] he writes: | ::::As an example, that this debate is not restricted to Afrocentrism, ], who was not an Afrocentrist, was just as intrigued about the race of the Ancient Egyptians. In the ] he writes: | ||
| ::::"Thus Messrs. Nott and Gliddon ('Types of Mankind,' p. 148), state that Rameses II., or the Great, has features superbly European; whereas Knox, another firm believer in the specific distinctness of the races of man ('Races of Man,' 1850, p. 201), speaking of young Memnon (the same as Rameses II., as I am informed by Mr. Birch), insists in the strongest manner that he is identical in character with the Jews of Antwerp. Again, when I looked at the statue of Amunoph III., I agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, that he had a strongly-marked negro type of features; "'] (]) 15:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC) | ::::"Thus Messrs. Nott and Gliddon ('Types of Mankind,' p. 148), state that Rameses II., or the Great, has features superbly European; whereas Knox, another firm believer in the specific distinctness of the races of man ('Races of Man,' 1850, p. 201), speaking of young Memnon (the same as Rameses II., as I am informed by Mr. Birch), insists in the strongest manner that he is identical in character with the Jews of Antwerp. Again, when I looked at the statue of Amunoph III., I agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, that he had a strongly-marked negro type of features; "'] (]) 15:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC) | ||
| *Oh, come on. Yes, it may occasionally have cropped in 19th-century scientific racism, but the majority of 19th-century discussion concerned the origin of the Egyptians, not their race. It is Afrocentrism that has brought this issue to mainstream attention, Afrocentrism that has popularised the debate, Afrocentrism that has dominated the discussion for the last 90 years or so. Clearly this article is going to be about the Afrocentric debate: without Afrocentrism, this article wouldn't exist. ] (]) 20:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC) | |||
| ==npov== | ==npov== | ||
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Discomfort
I know I'm coming to this article after a long-extended controversy, which I certainly haven't tried to parse in all its glory, but I feel compelled to express a bit of discomfort with the current state. There is an actual, legitimate scientific question here that is lost in all the noise. In spite of the mixing of populations, modern genetic techniques, mainly based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes, have been able to work out an intricate tree-structure of human ancestry. It would be very interesting to know where the ancient Egyptians fit into that tree. It should be possible to work this out using DNA from mummies, but there isn't much data yet, mainly because the Egyptian government doesn't allow outsiders to have access to mummy tissue. It seems to me that this information really belongs in the article somewhere.
More generally, the deliberate exclusion of any actual facts relating to the question seems misguided to me -- it might be excusable if there were some other article on Misplaced Pages that dealt with this, but now that Race of ancient Egyptians has been redirected here, there isn't. This is all there is. Looie496 (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
- Don't worry. Your concerns are correct and appreciated. Origin of Egyptians is on the way - give me a month or so to produce a first draft - where the legitimate scientific questions will be dealt with. Race of ancient Egyptians will then be a disambig. Moreschi (talk) 17:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Recent Barlow Counter Edits
1) As a "critique" is quite obviously, an attempted re-assessment, re-interpretation or, a rebuke, of an argument or bit of information existent within an epistemological sphere, by what measure is the position of those who contest the historic categorization of the "race" of the ancient Egyptian not a "critique"? I can only fathom two explanations for your proposition of the above:
1) Either you pose the two critical positions as something other than a critique because you do not concur with the proposition -- or
2) Because you do not value the discordant propositions themselves.
Both explanations lack encyclopedic merit.
I neither agree nor, in any substantive manner, value, the prattle of the presumptuous and the ethnocentric; yet I recognize the varied positions of those who maintain such sentiments within an information/dialogue-based forum as "critiques", given the meaning of the word.
Further, this entire encyclopedia entry is premised on the examination/definition of critiques of the understood "race" of the ancient Egyptian as prescribed by traditional (or mainstream) Western scholarship. If you have an issue with the notion of divergent opinions (or those who opine -- Bernal, James, etc. -- on this matter) as "critiques", I suggest you call into question the very propriety of this entry in and of itself, rather than issuing arguments poorly grounded in semantics.
As to your later comment re: the original use of the term "stole" (which you link to a reference to George G.M. James' text); the passage itself was not referring to James' work, but I'll humor your preference for the more visceral term: as per the history of ancient Egypt (as chronicled in Stolen Legacy and in preceding and succeeding textual documents), the Macedonians indeed conquered Persia's holdings in North Africa and thereby gained access to Egypt's well of knowledge and culture. From a logistics standpoint, does the fact that the ancient conquering of Egyptian lands took place in "third-party" fashion mean that the well of information was acquired by means other than conquest? Obviously not, no more than we could/should discount the term "commerce" had the Greeks acquired this knowledge through "third-party" trade and barter (which they very well may have; the Persians, the Nubians, the Hebrews and the Bedouins certainly did).
In an overriding fashion, your suggested edits seem an attempt to deprecate positions on matters at hand within these encyclopedic entries (here and on the Race of Jesus). Such a discernibly skewed position on a defined/examined matter reveals an obvious Point-of-View that evidences disdain not only for the treated subject matter, but for the understood intellectual, heuristic, and epistemological purpose of an encyclopedia itself. Hence, I am undoing your recent counter edits in this entry forthwith. If you are able to generate some revision of the passages in question that you believe better expresses substantive meaning within these entries in a manner that is adherent to the encyclopedic construct, then please suggest them. Until then, my response will remain posted here at your talk page, & at the discussion section for the Ancient Egyptian race controversy entry. Best,
sewot_fred (talk) 02:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- This is hilarious stuff. However, I should note that there were no suggested counter-edits by me. They were restorations of phrasing written by other editors. What this mysterious "well of information" to which Ptolemy and chums gained access I don't know, and I doubt you do either. Do you think you could make some specific points rather than just proliferating turgid prose? Paul B (talk) 02:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- Does anyone understand what this guy is talking about?--Woland (talk) 04:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- I don't understand what he is talking about, but I do understand his "talking". Basically this is the talk of someone who has spent too much time in liberal arts academics and has lost the ability to discuss issues with clarity. LuxNevada (talk) 23:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
- And another one who assumes this article is about the 'race' of Ancient Egyptians, rather than about the controversy. --Doug Weller (talk) 06:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Obviously, I never expressed, nor did my edits suggest, that the article in question is about anything other than the Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptians. I offered "critique" as a less derogatory and concise stand-in for the skewed "attempted rewriting" and "splintered" as a less Point-of-View term for "devolved"; finally, I sought to correct what I read as a bombastic application of the positions of George G.M. James, Martin Bernal, Cheikh Diop and the like by replacing James' out of context "stole" with some variant of "appropriated via commerce and conquest".
In no way shape or form do the chronicled edits alter the subject matter at hand -- instead they afford a more encyclopedic tone to the entry. If that is the collective objective here, we can continue to discuss. If instead, the objective is to impose some adherence to a static perception of a particular proposition via the imposition of majority rules, then I have no argument for this group -- other than to wonder the very purpose of the encyclopedia entry itself.
sewot_fred (talk) 07:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- Sewot fred, could you please write in clear English rather than in pompous pseudo-academese? Thank you.
- To reply to your points: "critique" is far too mild a term to describe the views of Diop et al; "critique" implies merely "criticism of established views" - they went a hell of a lot further. And "stole" is perfectly appropriate here, given the long tradition of the "stolen legacy myth". "Stole" is the word the Afrocentrists themselves use, it's not something I've forced upon them. And what is the difference between "splintered" and "devolved"? They both mean the same thing...Moreschi (talk) 10:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I will not engage debate over an approach to prose in this realm. You obviously experienced not much in the way of difficulty in parsing meaning from that which was communicated. So your opening comment seems merely an unfortunate effort to denigrate and distract.
Instead I will respond to the content of your reply. If critique seems "too mild" given your reading of the Afrocentric theorists and your interpretation of their objectives, then I suggest "challenge" as an apt and accurate expression of their propositions. While avoiding classifications of those who claimed themselves as Afrocentric and those who took little note of the term, I will say that I am far more familiar with James & Bernal than Diop; nowhere do I read either scholar suggesting a " rewriting" (and thereby an erasure, or replacement) of that which is written into established history tracts. Their work instead offers studied alternatives bolstered by analysis of the objectives of those who guard "established knowledge" within institutional frameworks. Hence, they are proposing "critiques" or "challenges" of an otherwise static body of traditional knowledge.
2) My understanding of the current encyclopedic entry is that the article intends to chronicle the controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian: not dismiss the thesis of George G. M. James (aside using his propositions as a reference source) as "myth", nor do the same for Stolen Legacy, nor Afrocentrism (despite the superfluous and devious subsection on the latter). As Stolen Legacy applies to the entry's actual subject matter, it seems to me that the bombastic and sensationalist language of the book's title is applied in a manner that runs counter to the argument actually found within the text, and counter to the subject of the encyclopedia article. It was through "commerce and conquest" that James poses the Alexandrian Greeks acquired elements of the ancient Egyptian culture; it is through "commerce and conquest" that the modern construct known as race was "muddled" via human engagement. No different than the ethnic lineage of the post-Roman Brit or the race of the Medieval Spanish were thereby muddled, if assessed through this anachronistic lens. It is through multilateral bias and negligence that these ideas are misconstrued, mis-interpreted, mis-conveyed and thus, mis-chronicled. This is the history of a controversy.
3) "Devolve" and "splinter" do not share synonymous meaning, denotation nor connotation. To "devolve" in this context is to "grow worse": i.e., to "spiral" or "metastasize". To "splinter" is to "divide" or "break apart" -- note that the position of the so-called Afrocentric is divided into two subsets post the passage in question. Thus, "splinters" seems the appropriate verbiage for that which the text conveys.
Unless, again, the objective here is to craft an article that deprecates or dismisses non-mainstream positions within this so-called "Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptian". If this is the authors' (and/or the editors') true collective intent, I suggest a re-titling of the current article.
sewot_fred (talk) 14:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- sewot, I second Moreschi, your prose is a joke. Yes, I can parse it too, and the grammar is technically (mostly) correct, but it still makes you sound like an idiot. There is learned jargon, and then there is "pompous academese" empolyed to dodge the issue. We can discuss the semantics of "devolve", "splinter", or "metastasize", but this will only metastasize this talkpage into an unreadable, fragmented, offtopic mess. And yes, you are spot on, Misplaced Pages does in fact have the "collective intent" to "deprecate or dismiss non-mainstream positions", within WP:UNDUE. --dab (𒁳) 14:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
The edits in question involve the semantics underlying the following terms & phrases: "critique", "attempted rewriting", "stole", "commerce and conquest", "devolve" and "splinter". This is the subject matter at hand within this conversational stream. Why a good number of you seem so vexed in your attempts to assail extraneous matters within this "discussion" is a matter best left between you and your gods. Speed,
sewot_fred (talk) 15:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- Um, no, stole is entirely correct. This is not limited to Diop and James at all, and my use of the word stole is not limited to one person. For one thing, Bernal claimed that Greece was essentially an Egyptian colony (and how is that not a "attempted rewriting of the historical narrative") - getting its culture that way - and Afrocentrists (see Mary Lefkowitz's "History lesson: a race odyssey") have been claiming that Aristotle "stole" his philosophy from Alexandria, that Greek religion was an Egyptian copy/paste, and that Greek philosophy was also an Egyptian copy/paste from the Book of the Dead for a very long time now.
- And no, "devolved" does not mean "worsen". Please see devolution: this term is not a pejorative. Moreschi (talk) 15:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- Ok, now I don't understand you. In English, please? Moreschi (talk) 17:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
"English" as in the English language definition of "devolve" (see: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/devolve): 3: to degenerate through a gradual change or evolution <where order devolves into chaos — Johns Hopkins Magazine>. I propose that a summary manner of expressing this definition is to "grow worse".
You surely do not mean to intone Definition #1 in your usage of "devolve", and the link to Misplaced Pages's encyclopedic treatment of the term is inapplicable here. That leaves Merriam Webster's Definition #2 as your intent (to come by or as if by flowing down, or to "stem from"). I merely suggest that "splinter" is a more appropriate verb for that which the text describes.
As to the "Origin" portion of this entry, the works of Bernal, James, and the Afrocentrists who cite them as scholarly sources in debate, I merely sought to eradicate a discernible Point of View issued in this encyclopedia entry's original prose (a point of view that is further rendered manifest in the comments of multiple participant responders found at this page). Rather than affording any cogency to the standing tone of the article, I read the balance of these comments as a collective subversion of objectivity on behalf of some unknown, ulterior agenda. Yet, for the most part, I appreciate your civility, Moreschi. Best,
sewot_fred (talk) 18:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
By the way, the message originating from my IP address (commencing with "The edits in question," etc. . . .) was posted as a response to the commenter "dab": I presume that Moreschi and I were replying simultaneously, and thus, the communicative string reads as out-of-sequence. I am replacing that response after the message that it addresses. Best,
sewot_fred (talk) 20:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I am not sure, but perhaps we should close this section under WP:DFTT? I for one am mostly done assuming good faith here, this simply isn't the behaviour of someone who actually wishes to communicate. --dab (𒁳) 12:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
sewot_fred, could you please say succinctly exactly what change to the article you are proposing? Tom Harrison 12:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Tom, the changes executed in the article in question are to be found here: (http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy&oldid=236051046) in the second paragraph of the article's "Origin" section. I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole". It is my belief that my suggested phrasing corrects what appear to be a deprecation of the viewpoint the article itself uses as a springboard for a discussion of the Controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptian. In my reading, this deprecation, or attempted dismissal, seems to skirt Misplaced Pages's regulations as pertain NPOV. My edits intended merely to (re-?)establish a neutral tone within this portion of the entry, particularly if the subject matter discussed therein is to be used as a starting point for the entry's larger consideration.
sewot_fred (talk) 16:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks. Your proposal has been read, discussed, and rejected by a consensus of editors here on the talk page. Please accept that. Tom Harrison 17:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
The changes in word choices offered to the entry in question are "rejected" on what regulation- or content- relevant premise, Tom Harrison? Is the rejection in support of the position offered forth by one Dbachmann: ""Misplaced Pages does in fact have the "collective intent" to "deprecate or dismiss non-mainstream positions", within WP:UNDUE. (see above).
I have neither reservation nor qualm in "accepting" a rejected proposal from this contingent, particularly not on a matter such as this. I merely request civility in discourse and some content relevant support for rebuking the edits in question. Regards,
sewot_fred (talk) 18:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Your proposed changes were rejected because the other editors here don't think they improve the article, mostly because they give undue weight to a fringe view (they can correct me if I'm wrong). Civility is good. I have no plans to rebuke you. I will ban you from the page under Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist if you keep trying to slant the article toward your point of view, or keep beating a dead horse on the talk page. Tom Harrison 18:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
So, melanin?
I would have no inherent interest in the melanin content of Egyptians or anyone else, but the merry go-around finally makes me wonder. How much melanin did people find in mummies? Are there any respectable estimates? In other words, what was the skin type of Tutankhamun? Was he a VI? a IV? a V? Does anyone know? I don't mean to imply this has any significance beyond counselling Tutankhamun on his skin cancer risk, or, seeing that he is dead, none, but I'd love to be able to state, say, "King Tut had skin type V, case closed". --dab (𒁳) 12:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
- As far as I know, there is no reliable information about this. Diop claimed to have found lots of the stuff, his critics argued that chemical degredation and the process of mummification led to so many problems that no legitimate conclusions could be reached. There's much discussion of this deep in the Talk:Afrocentrism article archives, but extracting it would be painful. Regarding Tut, the reconstructions of his face were based on traditional police forensic methods. The three labs were given a computer generated 3D scan of his skull and asked to reconstruct it in the same way that police do with decomposed bodies. The choice of skin pigmentation was based on traditional racial anthropometrics. The US lab was not told whose the skull was, but identified it as North African. Skin pigment was chosen on that basis. No melanin was extracted from the mummy. Paul B (talk) 13:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Wording
Rande writes "I proposed several basic rephrasings: the noun "critique" in place of the phrase "attempted rewriting", the verb "splinters" in place of "devolves", the phrase "through commerce and conquest" for "stole"." I am a bit surprised at the persistent confusions that runs through Rande's posts. The meaning of the word "critique" is very different from "attempted rewriting". A "critique" is a appraisal, mostly negative, whereas "rewriting" is, well writing something differently! Also Rande actually replaced "allegedly stole" with "through commerce and conquest". The dropping of the word "allegedly" entirely changes the complexion of the sentence, giving support to an idea which the original sentence actually denigrated. LuxNevada (talk) 00:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, Lux, there is no "confusion" at all. It was my stated editorial objective to remove the very "denigration" read in the original phrasing. It is my belief that such phrasing affords a skewed point-of-view to what is (I presume) intended as an objective encyclopedic chronicle. It seems obvious that this article has been "tagged" as problematic, in dual fashion, for good cause. I also note there has been a project undertaken to comprehesively "rewrite" the piece. Grand idea. I only hope that the collected authors & editors approach their work in a balanced, civil, and objective fashion. This approach should take into account the distinction between a pejorative entry on "The History of the Controversy over the Origin of Western Civilization" (which the current entry seems to suggest as the topic at hand, given the subtext of the standing "Origin" section) and a wholly distinct and balanced "History of the Controversy over the Race of the Ancient Egyptian" (which the entry's current title promises yet does not quite deliver). Best,
sewot_fred (talk) 16:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Essay tag
Because it is naive essayish style, because many major statements which are opinions, not facts, are unreferenced and overgeneralized. They do connect well referenced facts, but the overall is loose synthesis.
- (1) Intro unreferenced and basically useless for understading.
- (2) "Today, the debate largely takes place outside the field of Egyptology." - dubious
- (3) "Origins" section which links afrocentrism to Kleopata is unreferenced (cited quote is a cited quote and not upport to the general text)
- (4) "In academia, the opinion about African/Egyptian roots of the European civilization continued throughout the 20th century" - says who?
- 5 - "Figures attached to the group centering around the journal include" - unusual style for wikipedia
- 6 "Mainstream scholarship has generally been critical of the journal" says who?
I may continue much more. I could have flooded the whole text with lots of local tags. The tags on top is a call to review the whole text critically, not to delete it in 5 seconds without much thinking. Mukadderat (talk) 15:24, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- That is not the appropriate tag. There is another tag for articles that read like essays.--Woland (talk) 15:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- The appropriate tag is:
. Not that I agree.--Woland (talk) 15:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
This article is written like a personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay that states a Misplaced Pages editor's personal feelings or presents an original argument about a topic. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (September 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message) - Thanks sorry. I used wrong tag. Please tell me whihc tag must be used for an article full of generalized unreferenced statements. Meanwhile I will place tags on all dubious phrases. Mukadderat (talk) 16:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- The appropriate tag is:
- Please don't use the essay tag in articles. It's inappropriate, and as much a statement of your opinion as what you're complaining about. Note too that "The Arbitration Committee has placed this article on probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be banned by an administrator from this and related articles, or other reasonably related pages." Tom Harrison 15:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- Yes it is a statement of my opinion and I am free to express it as long as I don't put it into the article content. Please explain how you see my edits disruptive. Mukadderat (talk) 16:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- I haven't said they were disruptive. I let you know the article is subject to arbcom probation. Please take that as an invitation to inform yourself and contribute constructively. Tom Harrison 19:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Citation template, essay template, etc
It seems to me that we no longer need the citation template ae there are plenty of footnotes and references. Also, I was reading through the article again and I think that developed might be a better word than the infamous devolved. I really really really hate to bring that up again (please don't throw stuff at me). Whats up with the guy adding the essay template? That is not for articles, dude.--Woland (talk) 15:27, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- "Plenty" does not mean enough. Since you both obviously look only at the external appearance, not at an essence, let me tag all statements which are opinions and beg for authorship. Mukadderat (talk) 16:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- Go for it. Do try to put them on the talk page first though. We're trying to walk softly on this one. This article was just rewritten, and as such it does have problems.--Woland (talk) 16:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, I didn't look into the page history. I may well understand that it could have been much worse. I also understand that a major rewriting may go in broad strokes to be polished and cracks filled later. I came to this article extremely accidentally and it just appeared to me as very poor. Please see my remarks above. In particular, I would point out to very poor first sentence: It says nothing about the essence of the topic. In must be rewritten to say clearly what is article going to be about. Unfortunately I cannot do it myself. But as an ignorant it the area I may say that the article is not very helpful. Mukadderat (talk) 16:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- If I could count the number of times I've stumbled into the same thing...in fact thats how I got started with this. The article is pretty bare bones right now, I agree.--Woland (talk) 17:11, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, I didn't look into the page history. I may well understand that it could have been much worse. I also understand that a major rewriting may go in broad strokes to be polished and cracks filled later. I came to this article extremely accidentally and it just appeared to me as very poor. Please see my remarks above. In particular, I would point out to very poor first sentence: It says nothing about the essence of the topic. In must be rewritten to say clearly what is article going to be about. Unfortunately I cannot do it myself. But as an ignorant it the area I may say that the article is not very helpful. Mukadderat (talk) 16:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- Go for it. Do try to put them on the talk page first though. We're trying to walk softly on this one. This article was just rewritten, and as such it does have problems.--Woland (talk) 16:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Ancient Egyptians
I also noticed there is no anthropological article called Ancient Egyptians (it is a redirect to "ancient Egypt", which does not discuss ethnicity). I don't see it normal. How you can have an article about a "controversy" without having an article about the subject? It violates the NPOV style of wikipedia. I would suggest to start "Ancient Egyptians" article and merge the "controversy" there. Mukadderat (talk) 16:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- As of now the plan has been to expand Origin of Egyptians into its own article, which should cover the aspects of ethnicity (though everything I've read within mainstream Egyptology would say that ethnically the Egyptians were Egyptian, though there are some fuzzy areas along with regional variations). Back when this was called Race of the ancient Egyptians I proposed the same thing. Summarize it in the main Ancient Egypt article. After doing some research I came to the conclusion (with the not-so-gentle help from other editors) that this subject does warrant it's own article. I guess we'll see what happens when the origin article is up. The whole system of related articles is a mess which is why I started an RfC awhile back, which got very few comments. Anyway, your help, fresh-eyes and comments are welcome.--Woland (talk) 17:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages:Summary style
I am sorry to be obnoxious, but I see another issue: the corresponding section, Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy has virtually nothing in common with the discussed article. Misplaced Pages:Summary style dictates that section Black people#Ancient Egyptian race controversy must be a summary of the "main" article, "Ancient Egyptian race controversy", rather than a fork of the content. Fortunately, it is curable by simple cut and paste/merge, since there is no POV conflict between the two texts. Mukadderat (talk) 16:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- IMO that section in Black people could just be deleted. Moreschi (talk) 18:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- It is kind of a non sequitur isn't it. --Woland (talk) 20:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Moreschi, are you referring to a deletion of the Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy subsection in the Black People entry, or a removal of the link to this article, as Mukaddaret's comment suggests?
I actually believe that the final paragraph in that subsection could serve as a lucid starting point for considerations regarding the construction of a revised Ancient Egyptian race controversy article. Give it a close read, perhaps.
sewot_fred (talk) 22:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
- Ugh. No, that whole section at Black people should just be deleted, it's off-topic. And no, I don't believe that paragraph is very good either. For one thing, it's simply wrong: ancient Egyptians in the media are generally represented as, well, Egyptian (and what does this term "Caucasian" mean, anyway? There is no quasi-essentialist Caucasian "type" as racialists like to thing, so the term is, like "Negroid", unhelpful anyway). Moreschi (talk) 08:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't just understand the position of Moreschi concerning the blackness of the ancient Egyptians. When it comes to color, they described themsleves as kmt, meaning black. Semitic people saw them as black (Misraïm son of Kush), Herodotus uses the same word black to speak of the skin of the Egyptians and Nubians. Those doing Egyptology know that the controversy surrounding the race and the origin of the ancient Egyptians did not start with Afrocentrism. This is a creation of Moreschi. The controversy belongs to Egyptology from the start. Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, refered to that in his books Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens and Lettres écrites d'Egypte et de Nubie en 1828 et 1829. He said that his research will help resolve the question of the origin of the Egyptians, if they came from the north or from the south. He concluded that they came from the south: Abyssinie (in Ethiopia) or Sennaar (in Sudan). He continued saying that the ancient Egyptians did not look like the Copts of today who are a mixture of different people who later on dominated in Egypt, but like the Kennous or Barabras, the actual inhabitants of Nubia. Those are words from Champollion! One can find this information in the Lettres.... In the Précis..., the father of Egyptology uses a very sharp reasoning. At the end of it he said that the ancient Egyptians belong to a race specific to Africa. Moreschi, according to you, what is the meaning the sentence: race specific to Africa? Not specific to Egypt, but to Africa? Champollion knew for sure that there was a controversy since Volney stated that he could not understand how people could say that Black people lack the faculty of reasoning while the ancient Egyptians who invented philosophy, mathematics were Blacks. Champollion Figeac, not to be confused with Jean-François Champollion, contradicted Volney saying that even if the Egyptians had Black skin, they were not part of the Black stock. Hegel who is a philosopher and who lived at the time of Jean-François Champollion, separated artificially Egypt from the rest of Africa. This hegelian mentality is still alive in some writings and, I am sorry to say so, is behind Moreschi's kind of reasoning. Even Adolf Erman and Hermann Ranke, who tried to trace the origin of the ancient Egyptian from outside of Africa came to admit that the Egyptians do not look like Semites or Lybians but like Nubians. What does it mean, Moreschi? Afrocentrism is only trying to revisit and prolong a controversy born really in the European 18th century, with people like Volney who questioned the enslavement of Africans. The introduction of the present article (I think from Moreschi's hand) is highly misleading and has to be rewritten.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 14:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- More misleading statements. Kmt does not mean "land of blacks", it means "black land", referring to the Nile-irrigated soil, as opposed to the "red desert". Anything to the contrary is sheer nonsense. The origin of the Egyptians is a legitimate scientific question that will shortly be dealt with at Origin of Egyptians: if you want the answer now, they were a Saharan and Nilotic mixture. Certainly they were African. And no, Champollion's other research is just outdated. Modern science shows that the Egyptian stock has been fairly continuous with little change for a very long time. Just because Champollion is a very important figure in Egyptology does not mean that everything he said was right. His research is going to be at archaic times: FFS, in his day people were enthusiastically pushing the "dynastic race theory" (something I will make very clear is fringe and racist in orgin when I do write the follow-up to this article). The undoubtedly African origins of the Egyptians does not mean they were black or white - they were neither - and despite occasional instances of earlier commentary, the "race" question (as opposed to an "origins" question) is indeed inseparable from Afrocentrism and 20th century racial politics. "Were the Egyptians African in origin or not" is something people have been asking for a very long time: this has been a bona fide scientific debate: current consensus is that the answer is "yes, they were". "Were the Egyptians black or white" is just modern silly Afrocentrist much ado about nothing. Moreschi (talk) 16:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Moreschi, maybe you don't know the Egyptian language. There are many kmt-words. I am not refering to kmt-N23 (in Erman and Grapow with the determinative of the irrigation canal) or to kmt-O49 ( with the determinative of the village with cross-roads. Cf Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, p. 498; Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, p. 288) but to kmt-A1 (with the determinative of people. Cf Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, p. 288; Lam, De l'origine égyptienne des Peuls, p. 262). I know exactly what I am talking about. Now on races in Africa. Can you tell people the race or the races which originally came out of Africa a part from the Black race? Are they other people originally from Africa who are neither Black nor White? In other words, people who do not fall into any category of races existing in the world? Is this case of absence-of-race applicable also to other ancient people like Romans, Greeks...or only to some Africans? Let us be finally objective!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 17:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Assuming this isn't just trolling...the ancient world was largely colour-blind. Ethnicity was judged on the basis of culture, not skin colour. So it's anachronistic to think in modern racial terms when we're discussing the ancient world. And two, as you really should know, there is no "white race", and there is no "black race": these terms have been comprehensively proven to be scientifically bankrupt and devoid of credence. But if you insist on applying the one drop rule to ancient Egypt...be my guest, but it has no place on Misplaced Pages except as a quaint object of analysis. Moreschi (talk) 17:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Moreschi, maybe you don't know the Egyptian language. There are many kmt-words. I am not refering to kmt-N23 (in Erman and Grapow with the determinative of the irrigation canal) or to kmt-O49 ( with the determinative of the village with cross-roads. Cf Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, p. 498; Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, p. 288) but to kmt-A1 (with the determinative of people. Cf Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, p. 288; Lam, De l'origine égyptienne des Peuls, p. 262). I know exactly what I am talking about. Now on races in Africa. Can you tell people the race or the races which originally came out of Africa a part from the Black race? Are they other people originally from Africa who are neither Black nor White? In other words, people who do not fall into any category of races existing in the world? Is this case of absence-of-race applicable also to other ancient people like Romans, Greeks...or only to some Africans? Let us be finally objective!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 17:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- So, I'll ask again, Moreschi, given your position & weighing the considerations & concerns raised by those who dissent from your position (from an informed station and within this field of study), what is the real objective of this article/entry which you, indeed, authored?
- It is fairly obvious that you do not seek to explore (nor chronicle, in any balanced and substantive fashion), the "Controversy over Race in Ancient Egypt" as the matter has been meted-out in modern and contemporary cultural spheres. Best, ] (talk) 15:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, but since I can't understand your mode of discourse, I can't reply to what you say. Moreschi (talk) 16:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Sefowt, Please do not point fingers at Moreschi as if he is pushing some POV. The structure and content of this article was discussed and and we came to a consensus, after which Moreschi stepped up and did a lot of the work. The objective of this article is to document this controversy, and it is a fair approximation of this. Does it need work? Sure. However, this is no reasson to abandon good faith. --Woland (talk) 11:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The race of the ancient Egyptians
- Woland, you know what? It seems to me that Moreschi focusing too much attention on Afrocentrism comes to ignore the history of Egyptology! I reminded him that the introduction of the article does not stand. The controversy about the race of the ancient Egyptians is an Egyptological topic from the time of Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology. Actually Champollion speaks of the past and says that his research is meant also to be a response to this debate. Please read his Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens (1828, pp. 455-460 (Elibron Classics)). For Jean-François Champollion, Nubians, Ethiopians, the Inhabitants of the Oasis and the Egyptians, form "une famille des peuples très anciennement civilisés dans le nord-est de l'Afrique". This familly is indigenous to Africa. Africa has never produced two or more races. Only the Black race with its variations from dark to light as one can still see it today. Everything else came from outside, the Egyptian did not. I was worried with the expulsion of Big-Dynamo mounted by Moreschi. Now Moreschi began targeting Sefowt and suspected me of trolling. That's going too far for a common work. According to me, there is a need to come back to the previous version of the article. The actual does not reflect accurately the Controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- 1) Race is not a valid biological concept. Racial categories are cultural constructs that are always changing(e.g. in the 19th century Italians and Irish weren't considered to be white). Taking todays culturally constructed racial categories and applying them to the past is inherently anachronistic. Talking about the genetics of a past population is something else entirely (btw, the genetic categories that we create don't match up with the racial categories, imagine that). 2)The previous version of the article was a bloviated sack of original research and pig vomit. 3) Through consensus, a number of users decided that this article would be about the controversy surrounding afrocentrist claims about the Egyptians. Thats what it is. In the future, hopefully, articles will be created that talk about the archaeogenetics and such but that is not what this article is about. --Woland (talk) 15:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Woland, I have to desagree with you. There will be anachronism in giving a race to ancient Egyptians from an actual point of view only if there were no elements of the past for making any racial construction. Those elements do exist: be they anthropological, linguistic or cultural. The truth is that people are behaving in an hypocritical manner. On one hand they say that race doesn't exist when dealing with the Egyptians, on the other hand they can tell you about the Nubians being Blacks, (thus about the Black pharaohs). But do not these Nubians belong to the same familly than the Egyptiansas pointed out by the father of Egyptology, I mean Jean-François Champollion? The article cannot simply deal with this controversy within Afrocentrism. The actual version can, at the most, be a section of the article but surely not the whole article, because this controversy belongs first and formost to the field of Egyptology itself as I have stated before. I can document that. I can't understand that people can write on this subject and yet ignore the existence of that documentation. Up to now we just cheating people taking the controversy out of its native field! The article as it stands is a nonsense. It can only make sense as a part of a wide article.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 16:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Well, you're wrong and as has been pointed out before the Origin of Egyptians article will focus on the things you talk about (to some extent). There is no scientific or historical need to talk about the "race" of a given people whether they be Nubian, Egyptian or Martian, and as I've said discussing the genetics is an entirely different topic and would be valid. I don't see anyone being hypocritical here, talking about the "race" of any discrete group is just not helpful in any scholarly way, especially when the races we arbitrarily identify do not line up with the genetic evidence. You should read about Race versus Ethnicity maybe. Yes, people in the 19th (and earlier) century were obsessed with a kind of scientific racism, that does not mean that we should 1) trust those sources or 2)give them any credence whatsoever.--Woland (talk) 16:20, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Woland, I have the impression that you forgot the title of the present article. It is about Ancient Egyptian race controversy. I am trying to remind people that the introduction is misleading in its attempt to confine the problematic within the field of Afrocentrism: Controversy surrounding the race of ancient Egyptians has been a persistent meme in Afrocentrism since the early years of the 20th century. This problematic is as old as Egyptology. The work of Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, deals boldly with it. My preoccupation is legitimate in as much as Misplaced Pages has to present the state of the matter not our ideas about the existence or the non existence of races or of something else. So I repeat myself, this article is concealing something: the literature about the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians within the field of Egyptology. It is misleading: making to believe that the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians is a fabrication of Afrocentrism.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 19:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Ok, give me 5 references (from mainstream peer reviewed journals) from the past ten years that discuss this controversy about race within Egyptology. --Woland (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Woland, I have the impression that you forgot the title of the present article. It is about Ancient Egyptian race controversy. I am trying to remind people that the introduction is misleading in its attempt to confine the problematic within the field of Afrocentrism: Controversy surrounding the race of ancient Egyptians has been a persistent meme in Afrocentrism since the early years of the 20th century. This problematic is as old as Egyptology. The work of Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, deals boldly with it. My preoccupation is legitimate in as much as Misplaced Pages has to present the state of the matter not our ideas about the existence or the non existence of races or of something else. So I repeat myself, this article is concealing something: the literature about the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians within the field of Egyptology. It is misleading: making to believe that the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians is a fabrication of Afrocentrism.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 19:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Please, Moreschi, try to answer to the preoccupation of Rande. He seems to me that he is raising the following questions: 1. What is the objective of the article. 2. Can we say that you do not want to write about the race of the ancient Egyptians in accordance with the morden literature? Even so, there will be a problem. Because Herodotus is ancient. He pointed out that the Egyptians are black colored. He said so also about the Nubians and the Indians who live far from the Persian Empire. The ancient knew the colors. Those colors are still the reference for us today to say who is who, that the Nubians and the southern Indians are Black. Why not the ancient Egyptians (before the invasion of the People of the Sea and the Semites (second millenium before our Era. At this time all that we know of Egypt was already in place for at least on millenium!))--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 18:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Oh, not the "misinterpreting Herodotus" meme. We're getting the full blast here, aren't we? You really do have no case. Well, might as well get this over with in one go.
- Well, you're wrong and as has been pointed out before the Origin of Egyptians article will focus on the things you talk about (to some extent). There is no scientific or historical need to talk about the "race" of a given people whether they be Nubian, Egyptian or Martian, and as I've said discussing the genetics is an entirely different topic and would be valid. I don't see anyone being hypocritical here, talking about the "race" of any discrete group is just not helpful in any scholarly way, especially when the races we arbitrarily identify do not line up with the genetic evidence. You should read about Race versus Ethnicity maybe. Yes, people in the 19th (and earlier) century were obsessed with a kind of scientific racism, that does not mean that we should 1) trust those sources or 2)give them any credence whatsoever.--Woland (talk) 16:20, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Herodotus did not say that the Egyptians were black. He said that they had non-white skin comparable to that of the Indians: certainly darker than the Greek somatic norm, but lighter than the Ethiopians, who he and others (notably Diodorus) viewed as the "blackest" of known races in the ancient world, and those with the most features we uselessly label "Negroid" today. The Ethiopian yardstick, FYI, keeps going all the way up to Shakespeare's Much ado about Nothing. "Ethiopian" literally means "sun-burnt peoples". Please also note that "intermediate phenotypes", as the Egyptians seems to have had, can occur naturally and need not be the result of intermarriage between "pure blacks" and "pure whites".
- Manilius's colour scheme, dating from roughly the 1st century AD, is also helpful here: from blackest to whitest: Ethiopians, Indians, Egyptians, Moors. Flavius Philostratus, another ancient commentator, described those living on the Ethiopian-Nubian boundary to be not fully black - not as black as the Ethiopians, but blacker than the Egyptians: Ammianus Marcellinus described the Egyptians as subfusculi (somewhat dark). Therefore, ancient evidence fully supports the lede of this article. And, as I have already pointed out, in the ancient world they simply didn't care about this stuff: it was not a racist place. Slavery was colour-blind, as were most other things. Moreschi (talk) 18:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Moreschi, first and foremost, this is not about trolling. It is about your misleading statements. I challenge you to tell me in which book Herodotus said that the Egyptians had non-white skin comparable to that of the Indians. I have the 9 books of Herodotus here in my room in two translations. My interventions have nothing to do with misinterpreting Herodotus. Herodotus said something about the skin color of the Egyptians, the Colchians, the Ethiopians and the southern Indians. He uses the same term black. It is about translations, not about interpretations. Maybe it you who is relying on interpretations. So give me the reference of Herodotus. By the way, even Aristotle, the father of natural sciences, spoke about people who are very black, and named the Ethiopians along with the Egyptians!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Your research seems selective. See . Doug Weller (talk) 06:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Moreschi, first and foremost, this is not about trolling. It is about your misleading statements. I challenge you to tell me in which book Herodotus said that the Egyptians had non-white skin comparable to that of the Indians. I have the 9 books of Herodotus here in my room in two translations. My interventions have nothing to do with misinterpreting Herodotus. Herodotus said something about the skin color of the Egyptians, the Colchians, the Ethiopians and the southern Indians. He uses the same term black. It is about translations, not about interpretations. Maybe it you who is relying on interpretations. So give me the reference of Herodotus. By the way, even Aristotle, the father of natural sciences, spoke about people who are very black, and named the Ethiopians along with the Egyptians!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- Manilius's colour scheme, dating from roughly the 1st century AD, is also helpful here: from blackest to whitest: Ethiopians, Indians, Egyptians, Moors. Flavius Philostratus, another ancient commentator, described those living on the Ethiopian-Nubian boundary to be not fully black - not as black as the Ethiopians, but blacker than the Egyptians: Ammianus Marcellinus described the Egyptians as subfusculi (somewhat dark). Therefore, ancient evidence fully supports the lede of this article. And, as I have already pointed out, in the ancient world they simply didn't care about this stuff: it was not a racist place. Slavery was colour-blind, as were most other things. Moreschi (talk) 18:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
- This is silly. What is this "Black race" nonsense? Sure, there's been lots of speculation in academia for years as to the origin of the Egyptians - Champollion et al. And attempts to deny the Egyptians an African orgin may well have been racially motivated. But the race controversy - as opposed to origin - really is Afrocentric furore and nothing but. Moreschi (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- I know, I've been trying to pound that into the skulls of people for too long.--Woland (talk) 20:40, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Well, there is sort of a valid point in there somewhere, although it's hard to make in a rigorous way. The basic point is that it seems that if you took an ancient Egyptian, dressed him in modern clothes and put him on an American street today, and asked people what race he was, most would say without hesitation that he was black. It's also hard to deny that modern paintings and drawings of ancient Egyptians, especially from the 19th century, tend to look more "Caucasian" than old Egyptian statues and paintings. Looie496 (talk) 21:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Egyptians do appear in moderm clothes on American streets. Some, no doubt would be called 'black'. Others would not. There's really little reason to suppose that the modern Egyptians are dramatically different from the ancient ones. It's also quite easy to deny that "modern paintings and drawings of ancient Egyptians, especially from the 19th century, tend to look more Caucasian than old Egyptian statues and paintings." See, for example Long's An Egyptian Feast, which depicts Egyptians with bronze skins, along with some paler and some darker ones . BTW, the 19th century scientist Thomas Huxley placed southern Europeans in a racial category he called "melanochroi". By Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka's logic this must mean he thought they were literally coloured black. Paul B (talk) 22:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Paul, if you go from the hypothesis that "the modern Egptians are (not) different from the ancient ones", you might be right that some look like Whites and others like Blacks. But that's far from the reality. Because of the successive invasions by Asians and Europeans starting basically from the 2 millennium BCE, Egypt went on dramatic changes. Thus according to Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, the ancient Egyptians do not look like the Copts, the inhabitants of today's Egypt (who are a mixture of indigenous Africans and immigrants or strangers from Asia and Europe), but like the Kennous or Barabras, the actual inhabitants of Nubia. Paul, if you want to have a more real picture of how looked the ancient Egyptians, you have to turn your eyes toward Nubia, toward the Soudan!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 23:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, I know this is Afrocentric dogma - ancient Egyptians must have looked different from modern Egyptians. But there's just not a great deal of evidence for that. Champollion was writing at the very beginning of modern scholarship of Egypt, and at a time when racial theories were filled with problematic scientific and ideological assumptions. It's as pointless quoting him as it would be to quote Gobineau. Paul B (talk) 11:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- Paul, if you go from the hypothesis that "the modern Egptians are (not) different from the ancient ones", you might be right that some look like Whites and others like Blacks. But that's far from the reality. Because of the successive invasions by Asians and Europeans starting basically from the 2 millennium BCE, Egypt went on dramatic changes. Thus according to Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology, the ancient Egyptians do not look like the Copts, the inhabitants of today's Egypt (who are a mixture of indigenous Africans and immigrants or strangers from Asia and Europe), but like the Kennous or Barabras, the actual inhabitants of Nubia. Paul, if you want to have a more real picture of how looked the ancient Egyptians, you have to turn your eyes toward Nubia, toward the Soudan!--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 23:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Egyptians do appear in moderm clothes on American streets. Some, no doubt would be called 'black'. Others would not. There's really little reason to suppose that the modern Egyptians are dramatically different from the ancient ones. It's also quite easy to deny that "modern paintings and drawings of ancient Egyptians, especially from the 19th century, tend to look more Caucasian than old Egyptian statues and paintings." See, for example Long's An Egyptian Feast, which depicts Egyptians with bronze skins, along with some paler and some darker ones . BTW, the 19th century scientist Thomas Huxley placed southern Europeans in a racial category he called "melanochroi". By Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka's logic this must mean he thought they were literally coloured black. Paul B (talk) 22:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Well, there is sort of a valid point in there somewhere, although it's hard to make in a rigorous way. The basic point is that it seems that if you took an ancient Egyptian, dressed him in modern clothes and put him on an American street today, and asked people what race he was, most would say without hesitation that he was black. It's also hard to deny that modern paintings and drawings of ancient Egyptians, especially from the 19th century, tend to look more "Caucasian" than old Egyptian statues and paintings. Looie496 (talk) 21:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- And, actually, Champollion was just wrong. All these "ethnicity-changing invasion" theories have been proven to pure nonsense, and in fact modern research shows that the Egyptians have been an ethnically unchanging bunch for a very, very long time. As in, they're still the same Saharan/Nilotic admixture they were in the predynastic era. And yes, if requested, I can produce refs for this. Moreschi (talk) 13:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Ancient Egyptians: Race, Origin and Ethnicity
Paul, maybe you don't know that Egyptology is born with Jean-François Champllion. Gobineau is not even an Egyptologist. My quote has nothing to do with Afrocentrism but everything to do with Egyptology. And this in Champollion's own words. If the man was contaminated by his time, he would have easily said that the ancient Egyptians were Whites, or at least the gorverning body was. Nothing of that kind in his writings. Champollion at the very beginning of Egyptology adopts a new paradigm. He speaks in his Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens about "des faits capitaux (importants fatcs) (p. 455)" which changes "les bases du système adopté jusqu'ici sur l'origine du peuple égyptien (the bases of the system agreed upon up to now about the origin of the Egyptian people) (p. 455)". "Dans cette hypothèse nouvelle, les Egyptiens seraient une race propre à l'Afrique(...). La constitution physique, les moeurs, les usages et l'organisation sociale des Egyptiens, n'avaient jadis, en effet, que des très faibles analogies avec l'état naturel et politique des peuples de l'Asie occidentale, leurs plus proches voisins (With this new hyptothesis, The Egyptians would be a race specific to Africa (...). The physical constitution, the habits, the uses and the social organization of the Egyptians had actually little analogies with the natural and the political state of people of Western Asia, their closest neighbours) (p. 456)". "Tout semble, en effet, nous montrer dans les Egyptiens un peuple tout-à-fait étranger au continent asiatique (Everything, in fact, show us in the Egyptians, a people absolutely stranger to the Asiatic continent (p. 456)". Did the actual research on the origin of the Egyptians find Champollion wrong. No as far as I know. In his Dictionnaire de l'Afrique. Histoire, Civilisation, Actualité published in Paris (2008 for the second edition), the French Bernard Nantet, who is not an Afrocentrist by the way, writes that the Egyptians came from the south (p. 104) following the Nile. People are obsessed with Afrocentrism and are loosing sight on Egyptology. We have to come back to Egyptology and ask to Egyptologists what they say about the origin and the race of the ancient Egyptians. If there is a controversy about it, we have to report it objectively.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 14:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- At most, your obsession with what Jean-François Champollion said about anything belongs in the article about him and perhaps as a brief mention in the future Origins article. You don't seem to understand the differences between what race, ethnicity, and origins are. And to get back to anachronisms. Did Herodotus mean the same thing by "black" that we do now? Did Champollion? The answer is, of course, no. Why? Because the meaning of the word has changed and will keep on changing. Especially since neither operationalized the term. --Woland (talk) 15:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, that's all about origin. Which will get its own separate article. Not, by and large, race. Which is something entirely different, with a different controversy. "Origin" is "where they came from". "Race" is "what skin colour where they". Race differs from ethnicity too in normal usage, something else you don't seem to get. Well done for exactly proving my point made above. At this point we're really getting into WP:TE territory. Moreschi (talk)
- P.S: why this fascination with the 19th century and the ridiculous veneration of Champollion? Yes, he was very clever, but no, he wasn't a god and a lot of his research was wrong and is outdated now. Moreschi (talk) 14:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- I mean, just to illustrate my point, Egyptologists have spent years trying to work out where the Egyptians came from. Diop tried to measure the melanin levels in mummies. One is concerned with origin, the other with race. Moreschi (talk) 14:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- P.S: why this fascination with the 19th century and the ridiculous veneration of Champollion? Yes, he was very clever, but no, he wasn't a god and a lot of his research was wrong and is outdated now. Moreschi (talk) 14:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Woland and Moreschi, you are right in accusing to be obsessed with Jean-Champollion. If you knew who the man is to Egyptology you could have been a bit humble, but...The point is that the subject of the present article is Ancient Egyptian race controversy. The word race is in the title. Please read carefully the title of the article. Race, not ethnicity or origin. Of cause, ethnicity and origin can be used in a discussion about race. I wanted to show that one cannot, without cheating or misleading people, speak about the race of the ancient Egyptians confining the discussion within Afrocentrism. The discussion belongs first of all to Egyptology. For a better dimonstration, I went back to the beginning of Egyptology to see if the discussion about the race of the ancient Egyptians had taken place. And who would you find, Woland and Moreschi, at the beginning of Egyptology? Gobineau? Please, let us be humble and try to accept facts! Can a discussion on origins help to clarify a discussion on races? Yes! Let us reason a bit. Are there people indigenous to Africa who are not today classified as Blacks? (I said indigenous to Africa) No! Now, if the ancient Egyptians are indigenous to Africa (Jean-François Champollion, the father of Egyptology and Bernard Nantet, the author of a new dictionary of Africa, agree with that) and if there were living today, wouldn't they have been called Blacks? I think they would. It is as simple as that. Everything else is ideology hiding itself behind pseudo-scientific statements like the non-existence of races, etc. There are plenty of Physical anthropology Journals in the scientific world. These African called ancient Egyptians are giving headache to a lot of people. The problem is that ancient Egyptians are indigenous Africans. Indigenous Africans? It is a scandal that some want to correct.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 16:44, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- Oh for heaven's sake. Of course we all know who Champollion was. If you knew anything about 18th-19th century history you would also know how primitive knowledge of ancient ethnicities was at that time. Try reading the writings of a scholar as important as Sir William Jones, for example. After all, Champollion died decades before Darwin published, and at a time when almost no ancient artefacts inscribed in non-classical languages could even be understood. He was a pioneer in the field. As for your rhetorical question "Are there people indigenous to Africa who are not today classified as Blacks? (I said indigenous to Africa) No!" The answer is absolutely "yes!" Even the Egyptians themselves depicted the Berbers/Libyans as pale-skinned. Paul B (talk) 16:52, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
What Paul just said. Essentially, Lusala is failing to comprehend a number of basic but important points.
1): The concept of "race" is totally bankrupt of scientific capital.
2): Applying the one drop rule to ancient Egypt is neither productive nor valid nor helpful. The Berbers are African but are certainly not black by any rational standard that is not a byproduct of years of US racism. Ditto for the ancient Egyptians.
3): There is a massive difference between an "origins" controversy and a "race" controversy.
4): Intermediate phenotypes can arise naturally and need not be the result of interbreeding between magically pure races (which is why this article very carefully avoids the misleading term "mixed race"). The Egyptians have actually been ethnically continuous - you know what I mean - for really a very long time. Whatever Champollion says to the contrary.
5): 19th century (and earlier) sources, no matter how venerable, are not always worthy of veneration.
Lusala, until you get all this, from this point we'll just have to treat your continued attempts to further your agenda here simply as talkpage disruption, which will consequently lead to a page-ban. We've civilly answered your questions and have dealt with your points. Now I, for one, am getting bored. Moreschi (talk) 17:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- Make that two.--Woland (talk) 17:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
- Woland and Moreschi, stop intimidating people. You cannot on one hand be involved in the redaction of this article and on the other hand try to ban those who do not share your views. I am aware of what you have done to Big-dinamo. You are abusing your power as administrators. I suppose that you know very well the rules of Misplaced Pages. This article is not a discussion on the existence of races. It is about the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians. The controversy does exist. According to you, only within the field of Afrocentrism. My position is that this controversy is also present in Egyptology starting from the work of the father of Egyptology, Jean-François Champollion. We have to look for a concensus to include this position. How can you think that only you are right? Why are you so pretentious? Do you realise that there are articles on White people and on Black people here in Misplaced Pages? The term People is an euphemism for race. Let's not be so hypocrite! To Paul, I will remind that there are a lot of studies about the formation of the Berber people. Read them and will notice that they are mixed (indegenous Black Africans plus White people from Europe and Asia). There are other cases. The Fulani/Peul for example are according to Aboubacry Moussa Lam, a mix from Egypt between Black Africans and White Asians. You people have to cool down, control your temper and accept a concensus to re-work this article which is, as it stands now, one sided. That's not good for the reputation of Misplaced Pages.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 21:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
- Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka, let me draw your attention to Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist . People have read what you have to say and rejected it. Your posts on this talk page are becoming disruptive. Tom Harrison 22:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
- Woland and Moreschi, stop intimidating people. You cannot on one hand be involved in the redaction of this article and on the other hand try to ban those who do not share your views. I am aware of what you have done to Big-dinamo. You are abusing your power as administrators. I suppose that you know very well the rules of Misplaced Pages. This article is not a discussion on the existence of races. It is about the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians. The controversy does exist. According to you, only within the field of Afrocentrism. My position is that this controversy is also present in Egyptology starting from the work of the father of Egyptology, Jean-François Champollion. We have to look for a concensus to include this position. How can you think that only you are right? Why are you so pretentious? Do you realise that there are articles on White people and on Black people here in Misplaced Pages? The term People is an euphemism for race. Let's not be so hypocrite! To Paul, I will remind that there are a lot of studies about the formation of the Berber people. Read them and will notice that they are mixed (indegenous Black Africans plus White people from Europe and Asia). There are other cases. The Fulani/Peul for example are according to Aboubacry Moussa Lam, a mix from Egypt between Black Africans and White Asians. You people have to cool down, control your temper and accept a concensus to re-work this article which is, as it stands now, one sided. That's not good for the reputation of Misplaced Pages.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 21:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
- Luka, I'm not an admin so I don't know what you're talking about. You really need to go back and read[REDACTED] policy, and possibly some science and history that was written after the 19th century. You have some serious misconceptions about the nature of race(e.g. there is no such thing as 'mixed-race,' I actually read modern physical anthropology articles, you should try it). You really need to take a step back, dude. We have really tried to be civil and address your concerns. --Woland (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, we have. If you persist in not getting it, then the article probation clause of this case will kick into play and you'll be sitting on the sidelines. Moreschi (talk) 20:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- There's really no value in continuing this discussion, but I'll just repeat one question, although the point has already been made: how do you imagine that the distinction between 'black people' and 'white people' came about? Has it occurred to you that there must have been transitional phenotypes for these distinctions to have emerged in the first place? In other words, there have to have been "non black and non white" people before there were "mixed race" people. And where do you imagine that these transitional types were most likely to have emerged? Surely at an ecologically transitional space between the origin of humanity and its expansion into the wider world. As for the Berbers, who live in just such an area, you know only too well tha they are depicted as 'white' by the Egyptians and that that's earlier than any known "invasion" from outside Africa. You just ignore that fact. Paul B (talk) 22:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Luka, I'm not an admin so I don't know what you're talking about. You really need to go back and read[REDACTED] policy, and possibly some science and history that was written after the 19th century. You have some serious misconceptions about the nature of race(e.g. there is no such thing as 'mixed-race,' I actually read modern physical anthropology articles, you should try it). You really need to take a step back, dude. We have really tried to be civil and address your concerns. --Woland (talk) 18:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Update
I've started the sister "factual" article to this one at User:Moreschi/OOET. Moreschi (talk) 18:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Citation for 'meme'!
Well, you know our standards. Lefkowitz speaks of "myths" or "mythology" (Black Athena revisted, p. 21), Shavit speaks of "universal history." (History in Black, p. vii) Do you want to search a reference for 'meme', and how much time would you need?Zara1709 (talk) 16:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
- "Myth" is, I suppose, applicable, although I cannot see how this differs from "meme". Perhaps "cultural myth"? "Universal history" is clearly a description of Afrocentrism as a whole and makes no sense applied to this article. Moreschi (talk) 14:14, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
- If you read wikt:meme, a "meme" described as a "self-propagating unit of cultural evolution having a resemblance to the gene (the unit of genetics)". I did not choose this term because it is occasionally used in a derogatory sense on the internet. I picked it carefully because the dictionary definition exactly describes the subject of the article (in the sense that the ROAE business has, in true meme-style, re-appeared in every generation of Afrocentrism, from Garvey to James to Diop to Bernal). I guess it's something of an original definition, but to criticize me for that is frankly an over-harsh interpretation of WP:NOR. But as, I say, I'm open to other suggestions. Moreschi (talk) 14:20, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
- You don't have a bad argument there: What some people have described as 'myth' might also be described as 'meme'. I would disagree, since 'meme' is more of a structuralist term and 'myth' more a functional one - but we don't need to discuss this here, anyway. As far as I am aware of it, Misplaced Pages:No original research is rather strict: " Synthesis occurs when an editor puts together multiple sources to reach a novel conclusion that is not in any of the sources. Even if published by reliable sources, material must not be connected together in such a way that it constitutes original research. If the sources cited do not explicitly reach the same conclusion, or if the sources cited are not directly related to the article subject, then the editor is engaged in original research."
- I recently came into a controversy about this at the Discrimination against atheists article. There are several studies that show that there is widespread disapproval of atheists in the U.S. The material about this was deleted from the discrimination against atheists article as original research, since the sources apparently didn't explicitly speak of discrimination. Surely one could ask whether this kind of disapproval doesn't automatically fall under the concept of discrimination; You might want to read Dbachmann's comment on Talk:Discrimination against atheists. But I actually think the concerns about OR are justified in this case, I only objected to the way in which the situation was handled. To avoid the whole question whether this would constitute discrimination against atheist I merged the material into Freedom of religion in the United States, where so far no one has objected. If you want, we can discuss whether wp:NOR is to strict, but we would have to do that at Misplaced Pages talk:No original research. With the policy as it stands, you need a citation that explicitly says that radical Afrocentric historiography (as I would term it, according to the literature I've read) can be described as a "meme". I am not going to simply remove this (as other editors have done at the discrimination against atheists article, but the citation-tag needs to stay in there. (Unless, of course, you find a source.) I've thought a little about an alternate lead for this article, but I first need to save the material from Discrimination against atheists article before I make substantial edits here. Zara1709 (talk) 16:42, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
- Well, I guess you could describe Afrocentrist historiography as a meme - probably valid but rather sweeping and certainly that would need citation - but all this article covers is a meme within radical Afrocentrist historiography, something much more limited. I'm still struggling to see how the "meme" label is OR. Lefkowitz and others have, in their scholarship, drawn a clear narrative of how the ROAE myth/meme began in Afrocentrism and survives until the present day. Sure, they may not have used the word meme, but the process of a self-perpetuating cultural unit of (mis)information surviving and growing that they describe is exactly what wikt:meme is talking about. This is not WP:SYNTH or WP:OR: it may be WP:USING-A-NEW-WORD-FOR-SOMETHING, and I suppose that isn't ideal, but frankly "myth" has far more chance of being viewed as pejorative than "meme" does. Moreschi (talk) 19:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
- I recently came into a controversy about this at the Discrimination against atheists article. There are several studies that show that there is widespread disapproval of atheists in the U.S. The material about this was deleted from the discrimination against atheists article as original research, since the sources apparently didn't explicitly speak of discrimination. Surely one could ask whether this kind of disapproval doesn't automatically fall under the concept of discrimination; You might want to read Dbachmann's comment on Talk:Discrimination against atheists. But I actually think the concerns about OR are justified in this case, I only objected to the way in which the situation was handled. To avoid the whole question whether this would constitute discrimination against atheist I merged the material into Freedom of religion in the United States, where so far no one has objected. If you want, we can discuss whether wp:NOR is to strict, but we would have to do that at Misplaced Pages talk:No original research. With the policy as it stands, you need a citation that explicitly says that radical Afrocentric historiography (as I would term it, according to the literature I've read) can be described as a "meme". I am not going to simply remove this (as other editors have done at the discrimination against atheists article, but the citation-tag needs to stay in there. (Unless, of course, you find a source.) I've thought a little about an alternate lead for this article, but I first need to save the material from Discrimination against atheists article before I make substantial edits here. Zara1709 (talk) 16:42, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
- I really don't see any problem with using meme here and I don't see the need for a citation. It is, in fact, a meme by definition. There is no more need for a citation than there would be for the word idea. That is, we don't need references for using common English (even if meme is a relatively new word).--Woland (talk) 21:21, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
- The Citation Needed tag has to stay. Misplaced Pages:No original research is definite and it is policy. Read the 'plagiarism' example provided there; Of course, you and I (and many other editors, I suppose) would easily be capable of applying most definitions, regardless of whether it is the definition of plagiarism from the Harvard manual of style or the definition of meme. But with wp:NOR as it stands, we need a source that explicitly states that the topic of this article can be considered a meme.
- And this is a serious issue, I still have to reply to the elaborate statement of User:Deeceevoice at Talk:Tutankhamun. She (he?) has argued that Tutankhamun is black with quite some effort, but I haven't had the time to check out the sources, yet. (Because I waste to much time with stupid discussions.) If she (he?) would add only one unreferenced sentence to the article about this, and wouldn't then at least accept a citation needed tag, there we would go with another edit war. As long as we don't even agree on the application of policy, there isn't any hope that we will be able to have an acceptable article on the topic at Misplaced Pages. Zara1709 (talk) 13:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- Deeceevoice is a she, and she's been banging on about this for years. There's no arguing with her. She uses models of "race" that belong in the 1920s, and she still has only the haziest of knowledge about Egyptian history (witness the comments about pyramids) despite years of obsession with this. On this topic, "meme" is a word. There is nothing in the OR policy which states that we have to cite individual words. There are guidelines on words to avoid (like calling a modern religious movement a "cult") and use of one word over another (eg "X notes Y" versus "X claims Y" etc) where there is dispute. Even if there a were a citation to someone using the word "meme", we could also find other people saying "idea" or "theory" or "fantasy", so a citation would not help, just escalate matters. p.s over on Berber people a statue of Rameses II has been placed among the images of famous Berbers on the basis of one French study that apparently says that he belonged racially to Berber populations, due to his light pigmentation. This silliness cuts both ways.Paul B (talk) 15:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- I think your reply illustrates my point. Articles on Misplaced Pages should be based on the most reputable academic sources available, and not on the personal views of editors. Editors could try to argue that their personal view is obvious, but most likely not everyone will agree with that and this would result in endless discussions, not leading to a better article. I mean, take a look at the history of this talk page. I acknowledge the concerns of other editors about original research, but then my concerns should be acknowledged, too. And unlike other editors I don't simply remove the material that I think violates policy. Now you appear to be saying that 'meme' is not an academic concept, but a common term that everybody is understand. Well, probably it is, but then, so is 'science'. Can you imagine the controversy if someone would add to the article that Radical Afrocentric historiography was a science? According to the best academic sources, that have a certain understanding of 'science', it is not. Personal understandings of such words can't be relevant. On the other hand, the most reputable academic sources describe Radical Afrocentric historiography as myth or as universal history, and they explain, what they mean by that.
- Deeceevoice is a she, and she's been banging on about this for years. There's no arguing with her. She uses models of "race" that belong in the 1920s, and she still has only the haziest of knowledge about Egyptian history (witness the comments about pyramids) despite years of obsession with this. On this topic, "meme" is a word. There is nothing in the OR policy which states that we have to cite individual words. There are guidelines on words to avoid (like calling a modern religious movement a "cult") and use of one word over another (eg "X notes Y" versus "X claims Y" etc) where there is dispute. Even if there a were a citation to someone using the word "meme", we could also find other people saying "idea" or "theory" or "fantasy", so a citation would not help, just escalate matters. p.s over on Berber people a statue of Rameses II has been placed among the images of famous Berbers on the basis of one French study that apparently says that he belonged racially to Berber populations, due to his light pigmentation. This silliness cuts both ways.Paul B (talk) 15:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- And this is a serious issue, I still have to reply to the elaborate statement of User:Deeceevoice at Talk:Tutankhamun. She (he?) has argued that Tutankhamun is black with quite some effort, but I haven't had the time to check out the sources, yet. (Because I waste to much time with stupid discussions.) If she (he?) would add only one unreferenced sentence to the article about this, and wouldn't then at least accept a citation needed tag, there we would go with another edit war. As long as we don't even agree on the application of policy, there isn't any hope that we will be able to have an acceptable article on the topic at Misplaced Pages. Zara1709 (talk) 13:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- I totally agree that the whole issue is silly. But precisely because it is such a silly issue, we would need a good article on it. The topic isn't any more silly than Nazi occultism, so it should be possible to have a halfway decent article on it.Zara1709 (talk) 15:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- The issue is that you are using the citation tag inappropriately. If you think "meme" has pejorative connotations (which in some contexts it does), then suggest another more neutral word or phrase, but this is not a citation issue. As soon as you start citing individual words you get madness ("it is a meme or idea or claim") etc Paul B (talk) 15:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- And this is not an article on radical Afrocentric historiography. Your point? Moreschi (talk) 15:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- My point? You should really ask yourself what your point is. Obviously we don't want an article about fringed theories about the Race of ancient Egyptians in general, because then we would also have to include the Nordicist view etc. I can accept that; But then, if you have read the literature, you know that (Radical) Afrocentrism does not only discuss Egypt, but also Greece. How are you going to warrant an article specifically about radical Afrocentric historiography concerning ancient Egypt, when the topic is entangled with discussions about Greece anyway. And don't tell me that we wouldn't need an article concerning radical Afrocentric historiography, because we already have an article on Afrocentrism. If you have read the introduction of Shavit's History in Black, you should know that there is a difference between radical (or 'wild', or 'extreme') Afrocentrism and the Afrocentric movement as a whole. Not all (and probably only <50%) of Afrocentrists really believe this pseudo-historic nonsense. Zara1709 (talk) 15:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- Argh. You are not getting the scope of this article. It is not an article on radical Afrocentrist historiography (another valid article that should be written). It is not an article on Afrocentrism as it pertains to Egypt and Greece (another valid article that should be written). It is not an article on Afrocentrism as it pertains to Egypt. It is an article specifically on Afrocentrist claims surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians. Clear? Moreschi (talk) 15:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
- There are different meanings to the word "Afrocentrism". Initially it mean centring ones values on Africa, and was not primarily about history as such. In fact the Africans-founded-great-empires version of history long predates the term. There is also a growth of black studies which looks at models of ethnicity, and which is paralled by the growth of other ethnicty based and post-colonial models of history, but does not necessarily label itself "Afrocentrist". Part of the problem here is one of definition, and of the relationship between pop versions of ideas and academic developments. Paul B (talk) 15:46, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
<undent> The only cite I can find that mentions both afrocentrism and meme from a quick google search is here. Zara, you're still not getting the point though. If I substituted the word meme with the word idea, would we be having this conversation? No, of course not. It is by definition an idea, its also by definition a meme. This has nothing to do with OR or NPOV policy. --Woland (talk) 16:41, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
One-sided View
This article as it stands seems to give only the Afrocentric views on the subject, and does not include any evidence to the contrary. Surely this creates a risk that a reader might be lead to believe that this minority viewpoint stands unchallenged? There is a notice on the edit page that this article should not include evidence for and against the POV, but that notice is not visible to readers, so an unbalanced point of view is created. As a result of this limitation, sections are being inserted into "factual" articles on related subjects, reporting on this race controversy in an unbalanced manner which is diluting the accuracy of those articles. Can this limitation be removed, and the evidence for and against the controversy be included, so as to give readers a rounded perspective? Wdford (talk) 18:06, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- No. The (pseudo)debate is notable for the fuss kicked up, so we have an article on that. You have clearly misread the article, which states that Afrocentric views on the subject are regarded as fringe by the scholarly community. But the debate itself does not need rehashing on Misplaced Pages. We tried that for years and it failed miserably. Moreschi (talk) 14:16, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Related article Tutankhamun
See the talk page discussion regarding the "race"/ethnicity of Tut -- if you're interested. deeceevoice (talk) 18:19, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- Discussion in progress over there. Moreschi (talk) 15:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
Does this article overstate the debate?
I'm just concerned a bit about the tone of the article, it seems to give the impression that there is currently some great ongoing dispute in historical circles over this issue when I'm not sure there is any evidence for that. From what I know, the majority of those who promote this theory are Melanin theorists, people who dabble in pseudoscience and pseudo-history and such. I've yet to see a serious academic declare that the Egyptians were black based on a scientific basis. Not that I've really actually looked.
I know this is pretty vague, its just my impressions and thoughts. --Pstanton (talk) 00:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- Yeah, that is basically the point of the article; that it is a minority opinion that is not accepted within mainstream circles. You should have seen it when it was called Race of the Ancient Egyptians. Since then its gone through a major rewrite and is far better. It would be welcome if you could be more specific, we could always use some fresh eyes. --Woland (talk) 01:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- I wouldn't necessarily agree that the article is better. Looking through the archives, there was a lot more information in previous versions, though the information contained was controversial. I think many of the administrators were sick and tired of the controversy and they decided the best way avoid controversy was to trim the article down and place it on probation. The threat of punitive sanctions has basically stymied any debate on the issue. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- There was certainly more POV material and original research in the last article. And it certainly gave the impression that there was some huge controversy within Egyptology about the "race" of the Ancient Egyptians (which there isn't). So, yeah, it was a dreadful article. If you would read through the archives you'll see that administrators had nothing to do with this. The stripping of unsourced material and the rewrite to reflect the majority scholarly view was based on the consensus of editors. --Woland (talk) 13:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- While I don't disagree that previous articles contained pov and OR material, the current version isn't about the ancient egyptians, it is more of a discussion of Afrocentrism. The article is poorly referenced, only two websites. Books are good references, but reliable websites are definitely preferable because one can easily verify the material.
- As an example, that this debate is not restricted to Afrocentrism, Charles Darwin, who was not an Afrocentrist, was just as intrigued about the race of the Ancient Egyptians. In the Descent of Man he writes:
- "Thus Messrs. Nott and Gliddon ('Types of Mankind,' p. 148), state that Rameses II., or the Great, has features superbly European; whereas Knox, another firm believer in the specific distinctness of the races of man ('Races of Man,' 1850, p. 201), speaking of young Memnon (the same as Rameses II., as I am informed by Mr. Birch), insists in the strongest manner that he is identical in character with the Jews of Antwerp. Again, when I looked at the statue of Amunoph III., I agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, that he had a strongly-marked negro type of features; "'Wapondaponda (talk) 15:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- There was certainly more POV material and original research in the last article. And it certainly gave the impression that there was some huge controversy within Egyptology about the "race" of the Ancient Egyptians (which there isn't). So, yeah, it was a dreadful article. If you would read through the archives you'll see that administrators had nothing to do with this. The stripping of unsourced material and the rewrite to reflect the majority scholarly view was based on the consensus of editors. --Woland (talk) 13:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- Oh, come on. Yes, it may occasionally have cropped in 19th-century scientific racism, but the majority of 19th-century discussion concerned the origin of the Egyptians, not their race. It is Afrocentrism that has brought this issue to mainstream attention, Afrocentrism that has popularised the debate, Afrocentrism that has dominated the discussion for the last 90 years or so. Clearly this article is going to be about the Afrocentric debate: without Afrocentrism, this article wouldn't exist. Moreschi (talk) 20:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
npov
"radical afrocentric historiography" is far from neutral. Wapondaponda (talk) 04:44, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- Agreed.--Woland (talk) 04:48, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- (sigh) Of course, this was not going to be undisputed. I should have warranted the phrase radical Afrocentric historiography previously, but considering my workload the last days, this was simply not possible.
- The usage of the term radical Afrocentric historiography is based on Yaacov Shavit's book History in Black. I think the book is quoted around here already somewhere. This is what he says in his preface:
- "Thus, if historical myths and legends, or an invented history, play such a major role in the founding of every national reconstruction, the question that should concern us here is the nature of the distinct 'style' in which black Americans imagine their past. The answer to this question is that radical Afrocentrism, the subject of this study, which plays a central role in shaping the modern historical world-view of a large section of the African-American (or Afro-American) community, is far more than an effort to follow the line taken by many ethnic groups and nations in modern rewriting, inventing or developing collective identity and national history. Rather, it is a large-scale historical project to rewrite the history of the whole of humankind from an Anthropometric point of view. The result is a new reconstruction of world history: it is a universal history." (Emphasis added)
- So, if you'd asked Shavit to write an article on the topic, how would he term it? My justified guess would be radical Afrocentric universal history. Of course, you can't put such a phrase on the cover of a book. History in black is shorter and draws more attention. The only thing I did was to replace "universal history" with "historiography", simply because the concept of universal history is already part of Shavit's analysis of the radical Afrocentric theories, and if the title of article would be based to such an extend on a single historian, that would be some sort of undue weight.
- You might be wondering what the prefix radical has to do there. In the version of the article I am working on, this would be included as follows: Yaacov Shavit, in his study History in Black takes up the distintion Wilson Jeremiah Moses has made between "African-American intellectual life" and "wild Afrocentrism." He emphasizes that serious African-American scholars, too, "felt compelled to criticize the popular, or wild works." To avoid misunderstandings that might arise from his book, Shavit decidedly explains that it does not deal with African American studies, Black Studies or Afrocentrism in general, but only with "some Afrocentric literature".
- That should do to justify the phrase radical Afrocentric historiography. There might be other literature that would suggest a different name for the whole topic, but I haven't read it. On the other hand, History in Black is one of the best and most reputable authoritative sources available, and if you only read the preface, you will see that to speak of radical Afrocentric historiography is warranted. You can't expect me to summarize this preface here completely. If you don't trust me to have understood it correctly, you'll have to get the book from the library yourself. If you would prefer to use a different name, based on another reputable source, of course we can discuss this here. Zara1709 (talk) 18:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- Reading the Misplaced Pages articles on Universal history and Historiography I realized, that it is probably the historiography- part of the phrase that is hard to justify. Well, we can also term it radical Afrocentric historical views or probably something similar radical Afrocentric mythology on the other hand, would already be too critical, I think, to be NPOV. Zara1709 (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- The problem I have is with carrying the epithet "radical" in the introduction as if that was the mainstream thought. You've done a good job demonstrating that at least one expert possibly considers it that way; it's a long way to saying this is the mainstream thought on the subject. I don't have a problem with "Afrocentric historiography", just the "radical" part which to my mind is dubiously presented as the mainstream opinion. Nothing is less certain.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- I have readded the npov tag, because the article as whole is about afrocentrism. From the comments made in the above section, even Charles Darwin was interested in the race of the Ancient egyptians. And he had nothing to do with Afrocentrism. From the very first sentence in the lead, Afrocentrism is introduced. In short the article is about Afrocentrism, and not about the Egyptians. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- The problem I have is with carrying the epithet "radical" in the introduction as if that was the mainstream thought. You've done a good job demonstrating that at least one expert possibly considers it that way; it's a long way to saying this is the mainstream thought on the subject. I don't have a problem with "Afrocentric historiography", just the "radical" part which to my mind is dubiously presented as the mainstream opinion. Nothing is less certain.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- I concur with Ramdrake that it's far more neutral sounding without "radical". Also, it's always interesting when someone says "there is no controversy" about what has obviously been a controversy - it makes me wonder if everyone who dissents was driven off, in order to achieve "consensus", which shouldn't be the way it is ideally achieved. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:40, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
- "Radical" is OK, I guess, but essentially tautologous, as Afrocentric historiography is nearly always radical by definition (Black Athena may not look it, but any classicist will tell you it is). At any rate, the lede works fine without radical, and since this is admittedly tautologous, we can safely do without it. Moreschi (talk) 20:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
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