What did the Ancient Egyptians look like?

[Albionist Great Britain]

I’m mostly certain most or at least half of Egypt is primarily of descent from Arab invaders that came with the spread of Islam. This comes after centuries of intermixing between natives and other peoples of the Mediterranean and the surrounding region, so really there’s not much if anything left of the original Egyptians AFAIK. But Cleopatra herself was largely Macedonian so she’d look like a Greek IIRC, so I don’t see any reason why a person of colour in particular should play the role, less so if they’re unreasonably far from what we know about Cleopatra’s features and looks. Plus you can easily find a role for a POC to play given how diverse Egypt was.

But overall I will always personally prefer historical accuracy over this kind of controversy.

Thats not what the genetic studies suggest. They show that modern Egyptians are mostly indigenous in origin.

https://medium.com/@aiminguyen7/its-tim ... 4fd0866e96

Ah, I see. Thanks for the article, it was quite informative.

[Baltenstein]

Thats not what the genetic studies suggest. They show that modern Egyptians are mostly indigenous in origin.

https://medium.com/@aiminguyen7/its-tim ... 4fd0866e96

Ah, I see. Thanks for the article, it was quite informative.

Rest assured, one can assume that most places that were conquered by some foreign empire at one point or another may have seen their main language, system of government and religion replaced by that of the conqueror, but not their main demographic, simply because the idea of genociding one's newly-subjugated future tax payers and laborers and shipping in replacements from the distant mother land for no other reason than ethnic identity would have seemed as both a logistical impossibility and utterly absurd to probably all conquerors prior to the advent of 20th century-style eliminatory racism.
Thus, the bulk of Egypt's population stayed the same under Pharaonic as under Hyksos, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Ottoman and British (damn, that's one impressive list of foreign oppressors if you think about it) rule.

[Hurdergaryp]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the article, it was quite informative.

Rest assured, one can assume that most places that were conquered by some foreign empire at one point or another may have seen their main language, system of government and religion replaced by that of the conqueror, but not their main demographic, simply because the idea of genociding one's newly-subjugated future tax payers and laborers and shipping in replacements from the distant mother land for no other reason than ethnic identity would have seemed as both a logistical impossibility and utterly absurd to probably all conquerors prior to the advent of 20th century-style eliminatory racism.
Thus, the bulk of Egypt's stayed the same under Pharaonic as under Hyksos, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Ottoman and British (damn, that's one impressive list of foreign opressors if you think about it) rule.

That's what you get for existing several millenniums.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I remember when my mom visited Egypt as a young woman, she stayed in this small inn somewhere just outside of Cairo, and the inn keeper told her he had a daughter who looked just like her.

Considering that modern Egyptians are mostly indigenous in descent, if the inn keeper's daughter looked like my mom, I have a very hard time believing everyone in ancient Egypt looked like what Lord Jamar thinks they looked like. Then again Lord Jamar thinks all native Americans and hispanic people are black so he's weird and we should avoid him like he's named corona.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Thats not what the genetic studies suggest. They show that modern Egyptians are mostly indigenous in origin.

https://medium.com/@aiminguyen7/its-tim ... 4fd0866e96

Ah, I see. Thanks for the article, it was quite informative.

I sometimes fantasize about the native peoples of the region reverting to their old ways, like a new zoroastrian Persian empire. One could hope I guess.

[The Archregimancy]

I finally have a bit of time to sit down and address the main points in this thread.

For those of you who don't know what I do for a living, I have a PhD (well, technically a DPhil) in archaeology, used to teach the subject at a British University, have worked extensively in heritage management in the Middle East over the last 7 years, and until last month I was working here.

So perhaps I flatter myself, but I'm likely in more of a position to offer an opinion on this topic than most people posting in this thread.

A basic problem is that the question in the thread title regarding what ancient Egyptians looked like and the main query in the thread OP regarding Gal Gadot and Cleopatra are two entirely different subjects.

Let's focus on Cleopatra first. As several people posting in this thread have pointed out, Cleopatra VII was a member of a external Hellenistic ruling dynasty famous for keeping things in the family (though there was a fine tradition of this in Egyptian history; many of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty - including Tutankhamun - married their sisters) and kept themselves apart from the indigenous population; Cleopatra was not only almost the last ruler of her dynasty (her son Caesarion was technically the last Ptolemaic pharaoh, surviving his mother by a few days), she was also the first to bother to learn Egyptian. And we also know what she looked like. There are both busts and coins of Cleopatra VII. While they don't show her precise skin tone - which, is frankly, a silly topic to be arguing over - they do show that she was an entirely typical Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean royal of the Classical world. Ms Gadot's family are Ashkenazi, but her father's family have been in what's now Israel for at least six generations, so I don't really see what the problem is. If I was going to criticise anything about the casting, it would be that Ms Gadot is far too attractive. Cleopatra VII seems to have had charisma in abundance, but the evidence indicates that she wasn't really a great beauty by the standards of her time.


Now the second question on what ancient Egyptians looked like. This is a far more complex topic. It's also one that's very difficult to discuss neutrally since so many people interested in the topic insist on looking at the question through the lens of modern concepts of race and ethnicity that would have been meaningless to Egyptians. And then there's the basic and very common fallacy that almost everyone posting in this thread is making of considering the more than 3000 years of Egyptian civilisation as a single, static whole. Egyptian civilisation was, in many aspects, remarkably conservative, but this doesn't mean it was consistent and unchanging across more than three millennia. The periodisation of Egyptian history between the early dynastic period, the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom, the Third Intermediate Period, and the Late Period may be largely based on political phenomena, but it also reveals real differences in society and culture. How many of you realise, for example, that the classical literary Egyptian language is mainly based on the Middle Egyptian of the Middle Kingdom, which had significant differences from the spoken language of the preceding and succeeding periods? Let's try and put things into a little more historical context... As much time - some 2500 years - separates Cleopatra VII from Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, as separates me from the prehistoric British Iron Age. And while differences in the rate of technological change perhaps make that an invidious comparison, it does help to get across the timescales involved. So it's unrealistic to pick an example from, say, the New Kingdom to back up an assertion about Ancient Egypt and automatically assume that it applies to the totality of Egyptian history and culture.

There are also problems with using Ancient Egyptian art to discuss this topic. For most of its history, Egyptian art didn't set out to be a realistic portrayal of its subjects, but rather to assert a sociocultural worldview. Skin tones in Egyptian art are likewise not necessarily supposed to be an accurate representation of the totality of Ancient Egyptians, but rather to use certain conventions to identify specific social groups. Individual pharaohs could be represented with a range of skin tones depending on the message that an image or statue was trying to convey. This is particularly true before the Ptolemaic period. For example, Middle Kingdom founder Montuhotep II, is represented as brown or as black depending on context. These are not carvings designed to show us what Montuhotep looked like, but rather reflect specific religious and political messages. So I would be very, very careful about anyone who claims that individual representations from Egyptian Art 'prove' what Egyptians looked like before the Ptolemaic period; it can be used as supplementary evidence when the context is properly understood (which we'll return to in a moment), but not as definitive proof about the totality of Egyptian civilisation across more than 3000 years.

All of that said, insofar as we can offer an answer to the question 'what did the Ancient Egyptians look like', the most likely answer is 'much as they look today'. So North Africans with a range of gradations of skin tone, but getting darker the further south you go. Anyone who's been to both Cairo and Luxor will appreciate the latter point. DNA tests on Egyptian mummies further corroborate that most Ancient Egyptians were North African/Middle Eastern. However, notes of caution are necessary here. That this was true for most Ancient Egyptians doesn't necessarily mean that it was true for all of them. The Egyptians did draw a strong artistic distinction in their art between brownish-red Egyptians and black Nubians, but this doesn't necessarily mean that all Egyptians were brownish-red, only that this was the artistic convention to represent men and women who were fully part of Egyptian civilisation regardless of what modern 21st century humans would call 'ethnic background'. It does strongly indicate that the brownish-red/black conventions for Egyptians and Nubians reflected a reality based on what was most common among the two population groups when those conventions were first formed, but it doesn't mean that it represents a consistent totality of either all Egyptians or all Nubians across 3000 years. And as you went south, especially as you went south of Luxor/Thebes, the transition from brownish-red Egyptian to black Nubian was - as it is today - most likely a matter of gradation rather than a point where 'Middle Eastern' Egyptians sharply and suddenly become 'African' Nubians. So this is something that primarily mattered to the Egyptians to denote a set of cultural conventions via art rather than anything that we'd today recognise as distinctions narrowly based on race.

From much later in Egyptian civilisation - indeed, its closing centuries - we have the Fayum Mummy Portraits. These are the only realistic portraits of Egyptians surviving from the ancient or Classical worlds. A strong note of caution is necessary in considering the portraits as representative of Egyptian civilisation since they mainly date from Roman Egypt and the final decline of a distinct Egyptian civilisation. Nonetheless, we again see a mix, from individuals who appear 'white' by modern standards through to individuals who wouldn't have been allowed to ride on the front of the bus in 1950s Alabama. There's no real sense, however, that skin tone and hair in any way mattered to the Egyptians of the Roman Empire.

The entire question was therefore functionally meaningless to the Egyptians themselves. There's more than enough evidence to show that Egyptian civilisation wasn't sub-Saharan in origin, that it was an autochthonous development of the Nile valley between (roughly) Luxor and the Delta, and that Ancient Egyptians looked much like modern Egyptians - but the latter are hardly homogenous between the coast and the Sudanese border, and this is ultimately a pointless discussion since it insists on classifying ancient populations by modern sociocultural contexts.

But you should have seen the arguments we had over picking the skin tone for the forthcoming new forensic reconstruction of Tutankhamun's head. As much as it didn't matter to the Ancient Egyptians, it clearly matters a lot to many people today; many of whom should really know better.

[Baltenstein]

But you should have seen the arguments we had over picking the skin tone for the forthcoming new forensic reconstruction of Tutankhamun's head. As much as it didn't matter to the Ancient Egyptians, it clearly matters a lot to many people today; many of whom should really know better.

Is this meant to say that there are unironic Hoteps and/or Nordicists among your on-site scholarly colleagues? If so, well, that sucks, I guess.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I finally have a bit of time to sit down and address the main points in this thread.

For those of you who don't know what I do for a living, I have a PhD (well, technically a DPhil) in archaeology, used to teach the subject at a British University, have worked extensively in heritage management in the Middle East over the last 7 years, and until last month I was working here.

So perhaps I flatter myself, but I'm likely in more of a position to offer an opinion on this topic than most people posting in this thread.

A basic problem is that the question in the thread title regarding what ancient Egyptians looked like and the main query in the thread OP regarding Gal Gadot and Cleopatra are two entirely different subjects.

Let's focus on Cleopatra first. As several people posting in this thread have pointed out, Cleopatra VII was a member of a external Hellenistic ruling dynasty famous for keeping things in the family (though there was a fine tradition of this in Egyptian history; many of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty - including Tutankhamun - married their sisters) and kept themselves apart from the indigenous population; Cleopatra was not only almost the last ruler of her dynasty (her son Caesarion was technically the last Ptolemaic pharaoh, surviving his mother by a few days), she was also the first to bother to learn Egyptian. And we also know what she looked like. There are both busts and coins of Cleopatra VII. While they don't show her precise skin tone - which, is frankly, a silly topic to be arguing over - they do show that she was an entirely typical Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean royal of the Classical world. Ms Gadot's family are Ashkenazi, but her father's family have been in what's now Israel for at least six generations, so I don't really see what the problem is. If I was going to criticise anything about the casting, it would be that Ms Gadot is far too attractive. Cleopatra VII seems to have had charisma in abundance, but the evidence indicates that she wasn't really a great beauty by the standards of her time.


Now the second question on what ancient Egyptians looked like. This is a far more complex topic. It's also one that's very difficult to discuss neutrally since so many people interested in the topic insist on looking at the question through the lens of modern concepts of race and ethnicity that would have been meaningless to Egyptians. And then there's the basic and very common fallacy that almost everyone posting in this thread is making of considering the more than 3000 years of Egyptian civilisation as a single, static whole. Egyptian civilisation was, in many aspects, remarkably conservative, but this doesn't mean it was consistent and unchanging across more than three millennia. The periodisation of Egyptian history between the early dynastic period, the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom, the Third Intermediate Period, and the Late Period may be largely based on political phenomena, but it also reveals real differences in society and culture. How many of you realise, for example, that the classical literary Egyptian language is mainly based on the Middle Egyptian of the Middle Kingdom, which had significant differences from the spoken language of the preceding and succeeding periods? Let's try and put things into a little more historical context... As much time - some 2500 years - separates Cleopatra VII from Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, as separates me from the prehistoric British Iron Age. And while differences in the rate of technological change perhaps make that an invidious comparison, it does help to get across the timescales involved. So it's unrealistic to pick an example from, say, the New Kingdom to back up an assertion about Ancient Egypt and automatically assume that it applies to the totality of Egyptian history and culture.

There are also problems with using Ancient Egyptian art to discuss this topic. For most of its history, Egyptian art didn't set out to be a realistic portrayal of its subjects, but rather to assert a sociocultural worldview. Skin tones in Egyptian art are likewise not necessarily supposed to be an accurate representation of the totality of Ancient Egyptians, but rather to use certain conventions to identify specific social groups. Individual pharaohs could be represented with a range of skin tones depending on the message that an image or statue was trying to convey. This is particularly true before the Ptolemaic period. For example, Middle Kingdom founder Montuhotep II, is represented as [url]brown[/url] or as black depending on context. These are not carvings designed to show us what Montuhotep looked like, but rather reflect specific religious and political messages. So I would be very, very careful about anyone who claims that individual representations from Egyptian Art 'prove' what Egyptians looked like before the Ptolemaic period; it can be used as supplementary evidence when the context is properly understood (which we'll return to in a moment), but not as definitive proof about the totality of Egyptian civilisation across more than 3000 years.

All of that said, insofar as we can offer an answer to the question 'what did the Ancient Egyptians look like', the most likely answer is 'much as they look today'. So North Africans with a range of gradations of skin tone, but getting darker the further south you go. Anyone who's been to both Cairo and Luxor will appreciate the latter point. DNA tests on Egyptian mummies further corroborate that most Ancient Egyptians were North African/Middle Eastern. However, notes of caution are necessary here. That this was true for most Ancient Egyptians doesn't necessarily mean that it was true for all of them. The Egyptians did draw a strong artistic distinction in their art between brownish-red Egyptians and black Nubians, but this doesn't necessarily mean that all Egyptians were brownish-red, only that this was the artistic convention to represent men and women who were fully part of Egyptian civilisation regardless of what modern 21st century humans would call 'ethnic background'. It does strongly indicate that the brownish-red/black conventions for Egyptians and Nubians reflected a reality based on what was most common among the two population groups when those conventions were first formed, but it doesn't mean that it represents a consistent totality of either all Egyptians or all Nubians across 3000 years. And as you went south, especially as you went south of Luxor/Thebes, the transition from brownish-red Egyptian to black Nubian was - as it is today - most likely a matter of gradation rather than a point where 'Middle Eastern' Egyptians sharply and suddenly become 'African' Nubians. So this is something that primarily mattered to the Egyptians to denote a set of cultural conventions via art rather than anything that we'd today recognise as distinctions narrowly based on race.

From much later in Egyptian civilisation - indeed, its closing centuries - we have the Fayum Mummy Portraits. These are the only realistic portraits of Egyptians surviving from the ancient or Classical worlds. A strong note of caution is necessary in considering the portraits as representative of Egyptian civilisation since they mainly date from Roman Egypt and the final decline of a distinct Egyptian civilisation. Nonetheless, we again see a mix, from individuals who appear 'white' by modern standards through to individuals who wouldn't have been allowed to ride on the front of the bus in 1950s Alabama. There's no real sense, however, that skin tone and hair in any way mattered to the Egyptians of the Roman Empire.

The entire question was therefore functionally meaningless to the Egyptians themselves. There's more than enough evidence to show that Egyptian civilisation wasn't sub-Saharan in origin, that it was an autochthonous development of the Nile valley between (roughly) Luxor and the Delta, and that Ancient Egyptians looked much like modern Egyptians - but the latter are hardly homogenous between the coast and the Sudanese border, and this is ultimately a pointless discussion since it insists on classifying ancient populations by modern sociocultural contexts.

But you should have seen the arguments we had over picking the skin tone for the forthcoming new forensic reconstruction of Tutankhamun's head. As much as it didn't matter to the Ancient Egyptians, it clearly matters a lot to many people today; many of whom should really know better.

So regardless of what they Egyptians look like, do you think that it's a little ridiculous for certain African Americans to try and claim their culture as "their ancestors"?

[San Kalungsod Saludong]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

They should have cast Rami Malek as cleopatra. Don't @ me lmfao.

[Greed and Death]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

Modern day Macedonians aren't the same ethnicity as Macedonians then.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

Modern day Macedonians aren't the same ethnicity as Macedonians then.

Actually much of their DNA does originate from the indigenous people of the area. Not surprised since I live in an area with alot of macedonians and they look indistinguishable from Greeks.

https://www.nature.com/articles/jhg200754

[Baltenstein]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

16 pages elaborating on how Cleopatra was Macedonian royalty and the complexities of Egypt's cultural and ethnic makeup throughout the millenia

"Guys, Cleopatra was an Egyptian national, she should be played by an Egyptian national"

I honestly wonder, if Steven Spielberg would have made Schindler's List today, would people have complained about the 3 main roles being played by 3 Brits?

[Ifreann]

So regardless of what they Egyptians look like, do you think that it's a little ridiculous for certain African Americans to try and claim their culture as "their ancestors"?

Is Egypt not on the continent of Africa? Have African Americans not been robbed of any more specific heritage than "African"?

[Baltenstein]

Modern day Macedonians aren't the same ethnicity as Macedonians then.

Actually much of their DNA does originate from the indigenous people of the area. Not surprised since I live in an area with alot of macedonians and they look indistinguishable from Greeks.

https://www.nature.com/articles/jhg200754

Slavomacedonians tend to be a bit fairer and blonder than your average Greek (just like Albanians), but very marginally so. Inside Greece, people with roots from Asia Minor or the islands (especially Crete) tend to have a darker complexion than people from the Peloponnes and Northern Greece.

[The Two Jerseys]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

It's inauthentic to cast anyone other than Cleopatra as Cleopatra.

"It's called acting, dear boy." -Laurence Olivier

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Actually much of their DNA does originate from the indigenous people of the area. Not surprised since I live in an area with alot of macedonians and they look indistinguishable from Greeks.

https://www.nature.com/articles/jhg200754

Slavomacedonians tend to be a bit fairer and blonder than your average Greek (just like Albanians), but very marginally so. Inside Greece, people with roots from Asia Minor or the islands (especially Crete) tend to have a darker complexion than people from the Peloponnes and Northern Greece.

Yeah to be fair, the farther north you go in Europe, the lighter the skin and hair. And there's no sharp cutoff as much as a gradual transition.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

So regardless of what they Egyptians look like, do you think that it's a little ridiculous for certain African Americans to try and claim their culture as "their ancestors"?

Is Egypt not on the continent of Africa? Have African Americans not been robbed of any more specific heritage than "African"?

Theyre west African in origin, heavily of nigerian extract.

[Rusozak]

As far as painters are concerned, Egyptians are brown.

[The Archregimancy]

But you should have seen the arguments we had over picking the skin tone for the forthcoming new forensic reconstruction of Tutankhamun's head. As much as it didn't matter to the Ancient Egyptians, it clearly matters a lot to many people today; many of whom should really know better.

Is this meant to say that there are unironic Hoteps and/or Nordicists among your on-site scholarly colleagues? If so, well, that sucks, I guess.

No, it meant the Egyptians themselves were arguing over whether Tutankhamun should look more like someone from Cairo or more like someone from Luxor. I can't really say more; I think the outcome is likely covered by my confidentiality agreement.

[The Two Jerseys]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

16 pages elaborating on how Cleopatra was Macedonian royalty and the complexities of Egypt's cultural and ethnic makeup throughout the millenia

"Guys, Cleopatra was an Egyptian national, she should be played by an Egyptian national"

I honestly wonder, if Steven Spielberg would have made Schindler's List today, would people have complained about the 3 main roles being played by 3 Brits?

I'm offended because Spock and Worf aren't played by an actual Vulcan and Klingon.

[Genivaria]

Why don't they use a real modern Egyptian for the movie? Why cast Gal Gadot? I like her but it's inauthentic to cast other nationalities asides from the original intended one.

16 pages elaborating on how Cleopatra was Macedonian royalty and the complexities of Egypt's cultural and ethnic makeup throughout the millenia

"Guys, Cleopatra was an Egyptian national, she should be played by an Egyptian national"

I honestly wonder, if Steven Spielberg would have made Schindler's List today, would people have complained about the 3 main roles being played by 3 Brits?

I remember when people in the west threw a fit about Scarlett Johansson playing Motoko Kusanagi in the Ghost in the Shell movie, but did the Japanese care? Not a bit.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

16 pages elaborating on how Cleopatra was Macedonian royalty and the complexities of Egypt's cultural and ethnic makeup throughout the millenia

"Guys, Cleopatra was an Egyptian national, she should be played by an Egyptian national"

I honestly wonder, if Steven Spielberg would have made Schindler's List today, would people have complained about the 3 main roles being played by 3 Brits?

I'm offended because Spock and Worf aren't played by an actual Vulcan and Klingon.

Why weren't actual Martians used to play the invaders in war of the worlds?

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Is this meant to say that there are unironic Hoteps and/or Nordicists among your on-site scholarly colleagues? If so, well, that sucks, I guess.

No, it meant the Egyptians themselves were arguing over whether Tutankhamun should look more like someone from Cairo or more like someone from Luxor. I can't really say more; I think the outcome is likely covered by my confidentiality agreement.

Imagine if they found Amelia Earhart's body and an argument broke out about whether she looked more like a new Yorker or more like a Detroiter.

[Baltenstein]

Is this meant to say that there are unironic Hoteps and/or Nordicists among your on-site scholarly colleagues? If so, well, that sucks, I guess.

No, it meant the Egyptians themselves were arguing over whether Tutankhamun should look more like someone from Cairo or more like someone from Luxor. I can't really say more; I think the outcome is likely covered by my confidentiality agreement.

That's...oddly localist.