What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[S'mon]

This thread is making me very uncomfortable. There is a long history of western scholars drawing a line through the Mediterranean in order to elevate the importance of ancient greece and selectively claim it for (white) "European" identity and dismiss the importance of geographically African or middle eastern civilizations, often attributing the achievements of the latter to the the former. The aim was to retroactively apply a notion of race to suggest that important developments in philosophy, arts, or technology were the sole inheritance of white Europeans. Combined with race science this led to claims that white Europeans were more suitable to rule over other cultures. Those were the stakes of suggesting that pharaohs were a blonde-haired ruling class, for example

IRL of course seas are (were) much easier to traverse than land, so the north south & east coasts of the Mediterranean were much more integrated than the areas beyond. So Greece & Egypt had more contact than (eg) Greece & Germany. OTOH that does mean that white people could sail the sea too.

I do think it's quite funny how NW Europeans claim to be the heirs of ancient Greece, when really our history of civilisation is very recent and ancient Greeks would have seen us as ignorant savages.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

If I had to bet, I'd bet against any pre-Ptolemaic Pharoah ever having been blond. I think it's impossible to know for sure, but AFAICT the Sea Peoples never ruled Egypt (just been Googling) having been defeated by Rameses III, and AFAICT they were the only possibly-blond folk in the region pre-Alexander.

Edit: OTOH I do think many Pharoahs didn't look a million miles from Adam Driver.

View attachment 277222

A minor quibble, the Sea Peoples winning is not the only route to a blonde sitting on a north African or Middle Eastern throne.
The slave trade, I would be awfully surprised if there was not a black sea slave trade into the Eastern Med/Levant from way back and Sea People as captives.

 

[Mesero]

IRL of course seas are much easier to traverse than land, so the north south & east coasts of the Mediterranean were much more integrated than the areas beyond. So Greece & Egypt had more contact than (eg) Greece & Germany. OTOH that does mean that white people could sail the sea too.

I do think it's quite funny how NW Europeans claim to be the heirs of ancient Greece, when really our history of civilisation is very recent and ancient Greeks would have seen us as ignorant savages.

Very much so. For Romans getting from Italy to north Africa took the same time than going the east coast to the west coast. (Imo many fantasy RPGs should feature river or sea travel much more prominently.)

The claim of being "descendent" from Greece is more of an ideological one. Greece (actually Macedonia) produced Alexander and later Roman emperors were quite the fans of Alexander. Heck they even argued about naming a country Macedonia in the 1990, partly because of the association with Alexander

Macedonia naming dispute - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And later when after (western) Rome fell, many European kingdoms claimed, or tried to claim, being the inheritor of Rome. Not to mention the huge influence Rome had, including the spread of Christianity and still being the seat of power of the pope.

 

[Scribe]

This thread is making me very uncomfortable. There is a long history of western scholars drawing a line through the Mediterranean in order to elevate the importance of ancient greece and selectively claim it for (white) "European" identity and dismiss the importance of geographically African or middle eastern civilizations, often attributing the achievements of the latter to the the former. The aim was to retroactively apply a notion of race to suggest that important developments in philosophy, arts, or technology were the sole inheritance of white Europeans. Combined with race science this led to claims that white Europeans were more suitable to rule over other cultures. Those were the stakes of suggesting that pharaohs were a blonde-haired ruling class, for example

A story as old as time it seems.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

BTW Ovid in The Aeneid describes Queen Dido of Carthage as blonde. She's a Phoenician colonist. The Romans seem to have seen blonde hair as something that existed, but rare enough to be noteworthy.

I'm not sure whether Ovid Virgil was inventing Dido's appearance from whole cloth, or whether he was drawing on some earlier tradition.

Mythologically, Dido is probably an historicized version of the goddess Tanit - the tutelary deity of Carthage. And Tanit is Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna/Aphrodite - who has golden hair. This emphasis is really about the precious nature of gold; its beauty and value is applied to the goddess.

Which just serves to remind me again that our tendency to divide the Bronze Age/Iron I milieu into "Semitic-speaking" and "Greek-speaking" spheres is kind of stupid. It was a huge, swirling entrepot of ideas and cultural exchange.

 

[Thomas Shey]

While it's far from clear, I get the impression the Sea People invaders were probably Indo-European speaker (trad: 'Aryan') types related to the Ionian Greeks et al, so pretty fair, so related to Celts & Nordics but likely darker.

Most Egyptian dynasties seem to have resembled, or been, Semitic peoples. The Semitic peoples evolved in NE Africa, but descended from European migrations into Africa, and would mostly be considered white or mixed by typical modern standards.

The earliest Egyptian self-representations don't look to me like any extant human race, but most closely resemble beefier Khoi-San of southern Africa, and seem likely to have been a people indigenous to Africa.

That's the issue; its not the color I'm having a problem with per se (the blonde situation is, as been referenced, controversial once Greeks get into the mix) but the feature types; as far as I can tell (and there's some limits on this as really representational depictions of the Egyptians came in pretty late) don't resemble what I'd expect ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks, or really anyone from that part of the world to look like.

 

[Thomas Shey]

BTW Ovid in The Aeneid describes Queen Dido of Carthage as blonde. She's a Phoenician colonist. The Romans seem to have seen blonde hair as something that existed, but rare enough to be noteworthy.

Coloration probably wandered across the ancient world, especially once you had far-reaching imperial cultures, far more than we give it credit for. Its why I roll my eyes when certain people get soggy about what appears to be black people in a story set in Roman Britain. Given the use of auxilia by the Romans, I would be willing to put substantial money on their having been Africans in Britain in at least small numbers during that period, and it seems unlikely that all of them left when the Romans did (heck, not all the Romans left when the Romans did...)

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think he said 'golden' hair. Certainly there's a cline; Italian blondes tend to be fairly dark compared to the lightest Scandinavians. OTOH even in Scandinavia brunette hair is most common AFAIK.

Hair genetics has a lot to do with that, honestly.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Coloration probably wandered across the ancient world, ....

 

[Thomas Shey]

My mother and I disagreed on my hair color; she said it was blond but I say brown.

Well, its not like "light brown" and "dirty blonde" are not things.