Talk:Ancient Egyptian race controversy/Archive 8

Sphinx section
Sorry to have blundered in here; I realise this article has been contentious, and I don't know all the history. However, the Sphinx section was empty, with a tag asking for expansion; I found some material that had been used elsewhere in the past, tidied up the sourcing, and while it only illustrates one side of the argument at the moment, I believe it is better than what there was. As for the Sphinx image, the quote by the Harvard orthodontist directly refers to the Sphinx's profile, as seen from the right, which is precisely the view this picture illustrates, thus giving the reader an appreciation of the argument. By all means, let us represent the views and reasoning of those who support a different view, but what is there now is part of the debate. Is that okay? Cheers,  JN 466  21:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal of a three-step-program
Today I received afriendly advise that I "will find it a more congenial editing environment" here, if I'd like to continue to work on this article. For the record: I would really like to continue to work on this article, however, I am currently caught up in another controversy. As the situation currently is, I am not feeling prepared for another polemical controversy here. So, before we are turning to the actual issues of this topic, I would like to make a suggestion on the way we should handle the issue. I personally think that our policies and guidelines are very specific. It aren't the views of the editors, that should determine the content of an article, but the views of reliable sources. As long as we don't bother with reading the academic works on the topic, we will not be able to solve the controversies surrounding it. I, too, originally made the mistake of editing here without having read a few books on the topic, but I've realized my mistake by now. I think that out policies, especially wp:rs, would suggest the following order of business:


 * Step 1: Identify reliable sources on the topic, searching the most reputable academic ones.
 * Step 2: Discuss, and find an agreement, on the scope of the article and write a preliminary lead section.
 * Step 3: Discuss what material needs to be included in the article, what sections there need to be; e.g., should we include a section on the "Ancient views" or one section on "Language" or not.

If there is sufficient support for this 3-step-program, then I think we can have the controversy solved, to a great part, within 2-4 months. This topic is highly controversial, and there will always be a few editors with whom no compromise is possible, but since I can be sure that there are good, reliable sources on the topic and that there are still more editors who are interested in writing articles than in pushing partisan views (of either side), the controversy on Wikipedia is solvable. For step 1, everyone would be able to suggest the sources he knows on the topic. Even those editors who are currently banned from this talk page can suggest the sources they know on my user talk page and I will add their suggestion here. We can then discuss the reliability of the sources, which should not take more than two weeks, I hope, and then we can go to the next step.

This discussion is not a vote, but if you endorse this proposal, please write Support, if you wish to decline it, please write Oppose. Zara1709 (talk) 12:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Zara i think the parameters that should should be addressed first is what should "not" be in this article,so as not have a return to the previous article and the previous one before that that will inevitably get reset from scratch again for pushing fringe theory and just waste alot of time, wdford was just in the process of re adding everything from the previous article before you did a revert--Wikiscribe (talk) 16:26, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Let me add that is reliable sources take divergent views on the same topic, they must all be represented in the same article. But if differnt sources address different questions or issues, there may be a need for mor than one article (this would be a "content fork").Slrubenstein   |  Talk 23:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * support Slrubenstein  |  Talk 23:47, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Step 2: Scope and Lead of the article
We could have allowed some more time for the finding of reliable sources, but considering the recent unilateral action by Wdford, we have to proceed to step two now. Wdford's ban from the article and this talk page was lifted just today, and he immediately went ahead with editing. Hey, we've already had this before: There is no point in adding new sections to this article when we don't even know how reliable secondary sources define the scope of the topic. What can't talk about what is relevant or not when we haven't even looked at some sources. Specifically, I object to the removal of the mentioning of 'Afrocentrism' from the lead of the article; Although the topic is not exhausted by discussion Afrocentrism, it is essential to cover the movement, because otherwise one could not understand why this is a current and ongoing "controversy". Let's that we get some quotes from the literature, and then we can discuss how to word the lead. Zara1709 (talk) 16:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Zara i think the parameters that should should be addressed first is what should "not" be in this article,so as not have a return to the previous article and the previous one before that, that will inevitably get reset from scratch again for pushing fringe theory and just waste alot of time, wdford was just in the process of re adding everything from the previous article before you did a revert, a few things to leave out of the article are random art galleries and genetic studies and also any scientiffic studies that does not have a direct tie to an over all controversey reateing to this subject--Wikiscribe (talk) 16:40, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably I have not made myself clear enough: We can't address anything here, if we don't know what reliable sources have to say on the topic. If editors simply add whatever they personally think is relevant for the article, then we are not getting an encyclopaedic article, but an expression of whatever viewpoints the editors have. As soon as I'm done with checking 4 history books on this, I can tell you, why we need to mention Afrocentrism (and also Black Athena) in the lead. Zara1709 (talk) 16:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually I didn't change the scope of the article, I just deleted all the unsubstantiated material. I also didn't add back the entire content of the previous version, I mostly referenced existing sections to existing main articles. Do a comparison and see the difference. I have no objection to mentioning Afrocentrism in the lead, provided its referenced and provided the Afrocentrists don't try to hijack the controversy as their own. However we can't leave the article crippled for the next few months while Zara gets around to finding sources she personally approves of - feel free to add your sources when you have the time. Its also not acceptable for everyone else to have to stand around while Zara decides what she thinks the article should be about – that is article ownership as well as personal POV of the worst kind. The comments I added are referenced, neutral, balanced and substantiated by reliable sources. If anybody deletes referenced, neutral, balanced and substantiated material because of personal content POV then that constitutes disruptive editing. Wdford (talk) 16:58, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Just because something is sourced does not mean it belongs in the article,particulary a article like this that is prone to original research and fringe--Wikiscribe (talk) 17:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. However, nothing I added is original research or fringe, so its fine then. If you object to any particular sentence then please point it out, and we can discuss and correct as appropriate.
 * AND ZARA - YOU DON'T NEED TO FIRST SEEK CONSENSUS IN ORDER TO DELETE UNSUBSTANTIATED MATERIAL - I'M SURE YOU KNOW THAT. Don't start an edit war based on your long-standing desire to own the article - the scope is still exactly the same as it ever was, and you are the one who needs to achieve consensus to change it. Your little survey achieved a single response, at a time when those many editors who disagree with you were banned from commenting, so it means nothing has changed. If you can find reliable sources to substantiate the material I deleted, then by all means add it back in, however it can’t stay there indefinitely while you get around to it.
 * Wdford (talk) 17:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Let's see: Among other, Wdford added a section on Ancient Egyptian art. Unless we have reliable secondary sources that also discuss "Ancient Egyptian art", it is highly doubtful that we need such a section. Adding this section certainly won't help readers to understand why this is such a controversial topic. Probably the article can have such a section, probably not. But before we add such a section, I really think that we need to see the reliable secondary sources that explain, why this needs to be included in the article. Zara1709 (talk) 17:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The article has been protected for 48 hours based on this new edit war. Please reach a consensus on these new edits - if one is reached before the protection expires, I'm happy to remove it, and I'm happy for any other admin to do the same. ~ mazca  talk 17:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't see how adding the Art section constitutes a BOLD edit, but I agree to leave out that one section in order to restore the rest of the many corrections and removed the OR. If Zara wants to be constructive, then surely she can't object to that. Can she? Wdford (talk) 18:10, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

On editor conduct
Wdford, here is a suggestion: I know that my little survey didn't achieve a lot of response. But before you accuse me of having a "long-standing desire to own the article", remember that I gave up on this article after you and your friends (of whom some were sockpuppets) repeatedly ignored my objection to their edits. I've read some academic books on the issue, and I would gladly help to write a good (or at least an acceptable) article on it for Wikipedia. However, I am under the assumption that Wikipedia highly regards WP:Reliable sources, which, I presume this article needs. If you want to write this article together with me, then you have the chance to bring forward your reliable sources now, and you should use this chance. Because otherwise it is doubtful whether you are adding actually relevant and verifiable content to the article, or whether you are simply pushing your personal point-of-view. Zara1709 (talk) 17:36, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, all the content I have added is verifiable, as you could clearly see just by following all the references I supplied. If you have specific reasons for questioning any single sentence, then by all means point it out. However its not appropriate to leave the article stuffed with unsubstantiated OR while you wallow around in your academic books - how come you are not concerned about all that existing OR? And its not appropriate to ground the entire article while one editor (you or anybody else) decides what is or is not appropriate content. Please contribute constructively any time you see the opportunity, but you don't have the right of veto here whatever you might think. Wdford (talk) 18:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

i think zara is on the right path she has put foward a rational plan on how to try and proceed with this article, also what was stated by the admin on the admin incident notice board fits here,the admin something to the fact that this is not the time nor a good idea to  WP:BEBOLD at this point, this is not an article that is going to be put together in a day,this is tedious work--Wikiscribe (talk) 18:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Apparently you failed to see my point, Wdford. It is not only verifiability, it is also about relevance. You have included a reference in your "ancient Egyptian art" section, but we don't know why we would need such a section. Certainly one could find verifiable information on how the ancient Chinese depicted themselves in their art, but that would certainly not be sufficient to justify an article 'Ancient Chinese race controversy'. This article purports that there is some kind of "Ancient Egyptian race controversy". We currently even lack basic information on this controversy. Who started the debate, for example. I really doubt that it was Jean-François Champollion, as the article currently implies. Before we turn to such specific questions as to what extent a reference to Ancient Egyptian art has been used as an argument in the controversy, we need to find out some basics facts. I was just about to do that. I could appreciate your help, but I would also be able to figure that out on my own. Zara1709 (talk) 18:23, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * In studying and trying to understand who the Ancient Egyptians were, wouldn't their art and depictions of themselves be a useful tool? Isn't it discussed as such in many sources? Why would a culture's own artwork be excluded from archeological studies of who they were? ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:01, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

We are not here to figure out who the Ancient Egyptians were or present a case of what race they were--Wikiscribe (talk) 19:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The controversy is about their race ie. who they were. And the artwork plays a role in providing evidence. Isn't that correct? ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I suggest working on a Draft version, rather than the main article. Since this article is under a heavy spotlight, we don't want to give any excuses, for protections, blocks and bans. There is a draft Talk:Ancient Egyptian race controversy/Draft. A good start would be to list all the sources that could be used in the article, vet which sources are reliable and directly relevant and eliminate those which aren't. We also need an agreement on the scope of the article, because the subject is quite large. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

And in the meanwhile the article is a "hideous mess of unsourced statements, maintenance tags, original resource and synthesis", to quote from ANI. Surely there must be enough maturity to agree to fix that, before we descend yet again into the process of finding consensus on the scope? And if we agree on a consensus scope and rebuild the article in draft, will the article move forward, or will Dab simply reappear to happily stomp on it again? I agree that the current situation is far from perfect, but the controversy is real, and I would rather help all the knowledge-seekers by having a properly balanced article that addresses half the topic, than by having a bunch of Afrocentrist POV or having no article at all. Seeing as how this repair job is going to take months and will inevitably result in some non-neutral admins simply repeating the loop yet again, can we perhaps find a majority of mature adults who are willing to agree to first fix the existing article within the existing scope? If we can just fix what is patently broken, then Zara can have her extended period to dig up her sources and explain her POV, and we can spend months working on a draft to nowhere - but in the meanwhile good-faith readers are being given some unsubstantiated babble about Hollywood and the Jews - how could that possibly be appropriate? Wdford (talk) 20:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The article is not about what race the AE were, it is meant to be about the history of the controversy - when it started, who the main participants were, etc. If there was a major issue which involved artwork, perhaps the artwork should be featured. I think CoM has a different view of what this article is about. Wdford, attacking another editor is not a good idea when you have just been unbanned, is it? Dougweller (talk) 20:41, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Isn't the controversy over who the Ancient Egyptians were? So in covering the controversy won't the points of view and investigational techniques including the artwork be discussed?  Is there another article covering who the Ancient Egyptians were?  Maybe that's the solution. Get rid of the word "race" in the title, and come up with a title that covers the notable and ongoing investigations into who the Egyptians were. ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:39, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Dougweller, only some editors think that the scope should be limited, and the title of the article itself does not support any such limitation. At the moment this is the root of much of the problem, as different camps are contesting over scope limitations which should not actually exist. I have proposed before that the article be divided into different streams, each with a different scope, but certain nameless camps don't want to solve the scope issue, as the current mess seemingly suits them better. And as for attacking people, I have been attacked much more severely than anything I have written today, and yet my attackers were condoned. Once again, why the double standard? Wdford (talk) 21:00, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Why we don't need a section on "Ancient Egyptian art"!
There is an easy way and a hard way to find an agreement on this article: The 3-step-program which I have suggested is the easy way. In step one we searched for reputable sources on the topic. In step 2 we should find an agreement on the scope (and probably the title) of the article and write as lead paragraph for it. In step 3 we can discuss what sections the article needs. Currently, Wdford is actually forcing us to take the 3rd step before the 2nd. We don't yet know what this article is actually be supposed to be about, and yet we have to decide whether the article needs a section "Ancient Egyptian art". Wdford, I am not saying that we should limit the scope. I am saying that we first need to define the scope of the article, before we continue to expand it. I've said the same thing last January, and if you had followed my suggestion then, you would have saved yourself a lot of work. If you insist on expanding the article know, and then it would turn out that that, what the academic secondary literature discusses as "Ancient Egyptian race controversy" doesn't actually include a discussion of ancient Egyptian art, you would have wasted quite a lot of work. If it should turn out that there aren't "multiple reliable sources" on the topic of this article, then it should be deleted. Even if every single information in it is verifiable, the article as a whole would constitute original research. I am actually thinking of proposing it for deletion right now, there should be enough editors who have grown tired of the controversy to give this afd a chance to succeed. And then, if I'd like, I could write an article on the Black Athena controversy or the Bernal-Lefkowitz or on Radical Afrocentrism or on Afrocentric historiography or on Racist historiographies or else. All those topics are rather easy to define, whereas it is still unclear what this ncient Egyptian race controversy is.

Anyway, based on the literature I've read I don't think that we need a section on "Ancient Egyptian art". This is what Wilson J. Moses has to say about this:


 * "...General Colin Powell, although whiter than most of the self-portrayals of Egyptians in most surviving paintings, can remember a day when he would have been banned from the University of Alabama. And yet many of the same Americans who once denied Ralph Bunche admission to restaurants and tennis courts can become apoplectic at the idea that the Pharaohs were Negroes by the American definition. It was in the face of this illogic that the mulatto author J.A.Rogers classified his Pharaohs as black. John G. Jackson was more Caucasian in appearance than most Egyptians, ancient or modern, and many of the Pharaohs, if transplanted across time and onto the Chattanooga Choo-Choo in 1945, would have had difficulty obtaining a Pullman berth or being seated in a dining car." (Afrotopia, p. 37)

I am fully siding with the (not radical) Afrocentrists here. The ancient Egyptians were black, however, as Wilson J. Moses points out with a very good reason "...by the American definition". The problem is not determining the colour of the Egyptians on the surviving paintings; If the literature bothers with that issue, I haven't found the particular passages yet. Actually, I suspect that the historians (at least those I've read) would find it quite boring to look at the Ancient Egyptian paintings or to measure the 'blackness' of skin colour of the contemporary Egyptians. Instead they look for the people who themselves looked at the Ancient Egyptian paintings and whatever other arguments there are to say that the ancient Egyptians were 'black' (by the American definition). The historians localize these people in their intellectual contexts, and by doing this they manage to say something about the US-American society. I strongly assume that many readers of Wikipedia would be interested in what these historians have to say, because Ancient Egypt and "Black people" is a topic that appears to be discussed intensively in the U.S. Or at least, some people have strong views on this - they don't necessarily talk to the people with the other view.

In short, I want to have an article on the controversy. I want to know which people have argued that the ancient Egyptians were "Negroes by the American definition", probably based on a look at Ancient Egyptian art; I don't want to have a section that talk about "the ancient Egyptians depict[ing] themselves in a wide variety of colors, but the predominant color used for Egyptian men was reddish-brown, while the Egyptian women are usually portrayed with much lighter skin pigmentation," diff unless it should somehow turn out that this was used as an argument in the controversy. Zara1709 (talk) 17:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Since Zara has offered a framework for progress, I suggest we follow it, reputable sources, scope and content. I do believe that art is important, since much of what we know about how the Egyptians may have looked like comes from art. I disagree with Editors searching for specific images to support one position or another, unless there are reliable sources that back up such interpretations. The public has been influenced by images of Egyptian art, and it is very much part of the controversy, the task is making it relevant to the topic. The scope of the article is really important. I think different editors approach this controversy from different perspectives. Some think it should only be about the controversy, only about Afrocentrism or even only about African American Afrocentrism. The population history of Egypt article was created as a Fork because of such views and we need to decide whether or not it should be reincorporated into the main article. The historical development is also controversial. Some editors only want contemporary studies and don't want sources from the 19th century. The language section has also been the subject of dispute. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

19th century publications
I guess we need to decide whether any of this is relevant, important or necessary for the article. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Modern sources about 19th century scholars
 * General Remarks on "Types of Mankind"
 * Modern sources about 19th century scholars
 * General Remarks on "Types of Mankind"
 * Modern sources about 19th century scholars
 * General Remarks on "Types of Mankind"
 * General Remarks on "Types of Mankind"

Scope and name of article
There was a decision by a small number of editors to reduce the scope of the article to only cover the Afrocentrism controversy. The Afrocentrism controversy is just one part of the subject and there is sufficient evidence from some of the above sources that there is interest in the subject beyond Afrocentrism. In light of this a name change may be necessary. Possible names include: Wapondaponda (talk) 07:11, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Race of the Ancient Egyptians
 * Race of the Ancient Egyptians (theories and controversies)


 * I was about to prepare a more elaborate reply; before we discuss the name, we would have to discuss the scope and write a lead for the article. If I was to make a suggestion for the name, I would go with


 * Ancient Egypt in historiographies of race


 * but I think it is to early for a discussion of the name yet. First we need to agree on the scope, and discuss such questions as how important Afrocentrism is for the topic. Because I think, based on the literature I've read, that although the topic is well not exhausted by referring about Afrocentrism, an understanding of core theses of Afrocentrism is essential to understand why this is a controversial topic in the first place. Probably more than half of the article should ultimately deal with Afrocentrism. And I don't think that we need any article Race of Ancient Egyptians/Chinese/Germans/ ... or whatever, simply because the concept of 'race' is totally outdated. Yes, there were historically enough historiographies of race, but the more popular versions of these are all pseudo-scientific, and we must not refer them as sciences on Wikipedia. What you want to discuss is, speaking politically correct, not the race of the Ancient Egyptians, but the origins of the Ancient Egyptians (we already have a redirect Origin of Egyptians). You could even mention the work of Bernal there. However, you would have to make it abundantly clear that theses like those of Bernal are much more than purely a scientific hypotheses. They are part of a cultural/intellectual movement, and actually there is a contrary intellectual movement, which is why this topic is discusses so controversially, and, to point that out, the important discussion is not the one in the sciences, but the one in the public sphere. Zara1709 (talk) 09:12, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that we need to mention the Afrocentrism movement as part of the context of the controversy, and I also agree that the controversy is not a scientific discussion. However Afrocentrism already has its own article, including an existing section on Egypt, so we certainly don't need to dedicate half of this article to Afrocentrism. I would resist any attempts to hi-jack this article to further expound the Afrocentrism viewpoint, because that article already exists and anything that needs to be added can be added there.
 * The "Race of the Ancient Egyptians" is also already dealt with elsewhere, more or less adequately, and there is mention that some people believe different things and that a controversy exists. Dbachmann split that material off more or less intact into the Population history of Ancient Egypt article, and although we need to enhance the material, the various "scientific" arguments can be made there. Those of Whom We Dare Not Speak have already warned that they will use the size of the article against us if we add that material back in, so rather leave that material there and just link it. I already linked it, but a certain editor mass-reverted it along with a lot of other stuff.
 * Those of Whom We Dare Not Speak have several times already reverted months of work because we deviated from their preferred POV of the "history of the controversy". There is no valid basis for this scope limitation, but I am nonetheless concerned that any outcome that is not confined to the "history" will once again be happily reverted, however inappropriately, and that this discussion is thus going down a blind alley.
 * I strongly suggest that we accept the scope limitation, provided we change the title of the aticle to "History of the Ancient Egyptian race controversy." That way certain people get their twisted little triumph, but wikiusers who genuinely want to know more about the controversy will not be mislead by the title of one poor and limited article into believing that there is no controversy, and that it was all just a figment of the imagination. Once that is accomplished then padding out the article with the sources mentioned above becomes appropriate, and any further work done will at least not be wasted.
 * The Tutankhamun / Cleopatra etc race issues are what the majority of wikiusers really want to read about - "which race built the Pyramids?" These existing articles can then each have one section mentioning that a controversy exists, briefly and in line with WP:UNDUE, with the necessary bunch of links to the Afrocentrism article and elsewhere as appropriate to provide the full detail for those wikiusers who want to know more. This is the stuff that is really important to explain the controversy properly, and I am concerned that it should not be submerged among 200 years of academic pontification.
 * Provided all the articles are properly cross-linked, any wikiusers who genuinely want to know more about the details of the controversy will be able to find what they need by reading a number of complete articles in combination, rather than be tricked into relying on one damaged and censored article whose scope has been perverted away from that promised by its title.
 * Lastly, I propose that as soon as the article is unprotected, the huge amount of unsubstantiated OR be deleted. Keeping massive amounts of blatant OR on the article makes the article look ridiculous, which I suspect is exactly why Those of Whom We Dare Not Speak allow it to stand there while ruthlessly crushing much less serious comments. We don't have to first discuss in depth the relevance of Bernal et al before unsubstantiated OR can be removed. If any editor really wants to keep all that unsubstantiated OR in the article, please could they substantiate their reasons here today.
 * Wdford (talk) 11:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wdford, in a side note: Obviously we have different views on the topic, and of course you don't need to like me, but if you want to express your distance, then it is sufficient to simply address me in the 3rd person. I am doing the same; And while Wdford is now lamenting about "months of work" being reverted, he is forgetting that it was me who desperately tried to start a discussion on the scope here last February or so. If we had discussed this back then, then obviously one could have done useful work in the meantime. The notion that one should have a consensus on the scope of an article on a controversial issue, which one is writing in a collaboration, isn't that hard to get, or is it?
 * Probably it is possible to have an article on the racial typology/population characteristics (or similar) of the ancient Egyptians, but such an article must not be called "Race of the Ancient Egyptians" - simply because nobody who is interested in a purely scientific debate would use the word "race" any more. I've looked at the sources that we've got here: the closest is one article that speak of "racial identity". I have to admit, I haven't studied all the sources in detail and there are certainly more sources out there, but, with the current sources at least, there is no way to justify a title like "Race of the Ancient Egyptians" that would be about a purely scientific debate. If you want to have an article on the views of physical anthropology or that like, I think, the old Origin of the Nilotic peoples would have been a good start.
 * Really, there is to be an article about the ancient Egyptian population on a purely factual basis, this article should not have the word "race" in its title. The question: Where did the people who build the pyramids come from?" is a a valid one and worthy of an encyclopaedia. As far as we know, mankind didn't evolve in the Nile valley, so the ancient Egyptians must have migrated there at some point in time. The question "which race built the Pyramids?" is less valid. Certainly, you are not asking what the ancient Egyptians looked like, or are you? I can tell you one thing: They were human, and that has to be enough. Is the physical appearance of the people who built the pyramids relevant for Wikipedia? If we actually had media images of the pyramids being built, would you choose an image that shows the people at work or one where you could see the colour of their eyes? Physical appearance is actually not interesting and I don't think that we need an article for that. About a century ago many historians thought that they could understand questions of pre-historical migrations better by looking at physical appearance. As far as I know, Genetics has largely replaced that notion. In short: If you want, you can write an article like "Origins of the ancient Egyptians" or that like. There is already a lot material on that, and I would help to gather it from the old edit histories; Just don't make it an article about 'race'.
 * Most likely you will now be saying that in some cases physical appearance does make a difference and is relevant. I myself have quoted a passage from a book that would illustrate the relevance. The Egyptians were rather dark-skinned, if compared to people from Europe, but this is only relevant because skin colour has historically carried a social significance in the 19th and 20th century. Guess why Wilson J. Moses explains for almost half a page (the quote is about twice as long in the original) what it meant to 'be black' in mid 20th century America! The European people of that time often had the notion that people with a dark skin were inferior to them, which in turn led authors like Joel Augustus Rogers point to the example of the ancient Egyptians as Black people in this sense who clearly weren't inferior. This is a topic that is somehow about "ancient Egypt" and "race". But you only need a very few facts about ancient Egypt for a corresponding article - and a lot of facts about the 19th and 20th century United States. Zara1709 (talk) 20:28, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Kathryn A. Bard: Ancient Egyptians and the Notion of Race; Black Athena Revisited, pp. 103-111
As first part to writing a new lead paragraph (one without any fact-tags) I took a look at the source referred. Reference 2 checks out ok, but because it is not entirely clear what is meant by anachronistic, I added the quote in the refs. However, reference no. 3 is highly problematic. The sentence currently reads: "Scholarly consensus at the end of the 20th Century is [...] that that as far as skin colour is concerned, the ancient Egyptians were neither "black" nor "white" (as such terms are usually applied today)." If Kathryn A. Bard says that, I can't find it. What she says is: "The evidence cited here strongly suggests that the ancient Egyptians were North African peoples, distinct form Sub-Saharan blacks." I don't think that I need to bother to explain to most readers here that there is a difference between 'Sub-Saharan black' and '"black"'. The main reason for the Afrocentric Egyptocentrism (i.e. the Afrocentric preoccupation with ancient Egypt) is that according to the notion of 'black' (as in "black race" or "Negro") which was common until the 1960s or so the ancient Egyptians would have to classified as 'black'. And Lefkowitz et al. are taking a heavy polemic beating because they are completely oblivious to this fact. The article by Kathryn A. Bard is technically correct, because she only speaks of "Sub-Saharan blacks". However, by neglecting the social circumstances in which the intellectual position which she opposes has arisen, authors like her aren't helping to establish a dialogue with the other position. Anyway, I am going to fix that sentence. Since it is not clear what is meant by "usually applied today", I'll simply use, as Bard does, the terms "Sub-Saharan blacks" and "Caucasian whites". Zara1709 (talk) 13:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * On the subject of "months of work wasted", those who were not participating at the time should please note that a number of editors spent those months working out a consensus for a scope and a lead section, and then got banned for our efforts. In fact, the very process of suggesting and debating different possible lead sections on the talk page was held against me by ICB, although fortunately some admins of integrity showed up at AE and set the record straight. Half a dozen of us did in fact achieve a consensus on the scope of the article, but then Dbachmann reappeared with his own special POV, and the rest is history.


 * I agree that this controversy is not a scientific debate. However the controversy is about “race” as ordinary humans understand it and are affected by it, so while it is certainly appropriate that we point out that “race” is not a valid scientific concept, we cannot hide from the fact that billions of humans are acutely aware of the concept as it affects their daily lives (and not just the African-Americans.) We can argue here that “race” is a non-concept, and that its enough that “they were human”, but millions of people want to know for real – “were they Black like me?” Many claim that “they” were indeed Black, others claim they were not Black, and so we have a controversy. To many of those millions, the physical appearance of the ancient Egyptians is actually very interesting indeed, and they are actually very interested in what race were Tut and Cleopatra etc.


 * PS: The debate on physical anthropology is currently incorporated at the Population history of Egypt, and everything seems to be going smoothly. That includes covering “Where did the people who build the pyramids come from?" although only in a very circumspect manner, as the debate is “scientific” and the “hard” evidence is inconclusive.


 * PPS: I fully agree with Zara’s new lead sentence quoting Bard. If I recall correctly the original sentence was from the Cairo Symposium, not from Bard, and the accurate referencing was lost when this drivel was reinstated during the Four Month Rollback.


 * PPPS: Rather than trying to tweak an article full of unsubstantiated OR, I strongly suggest that the first step after the lock-down is lifted be to clean up all the unsubstantiated statements. If the original editor is sitting out there stewing impotently behind a topic ban with a ream of references ready and waiting, please pass them on to me on my user page.


 * Wdford (talk) 09:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Use of Images
I think we need to obtain a consensus on the use of images in this article. The uploading of images can obviously be abused by persons trying to "prove" the race of the Egyptians through sheer weight of images, and that is clearly inappropriate. However wikipolicy does encourage the use of images that clarify the subject matter of the article, and it seems foolish to write a paragraph about e.g. the features of Ahkenaten without including a picture so that readers can see what is being described. I am also concerned about editors deleting images on the basis that they are "not neutral" - if the image is verifiable and relevant to the controversy then deleting it is a form of POV in itself. Wdford (talk) 07:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I heartily agree. We should feature such images as have been put forward by either side of the debate.  JN 466  08:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think that I would he helpful to go into a debate about the use of images at this point. First we would need to know whether we actually need a section on the Sphinx, e.g., and I really would like to reserve the discussion about that for Step 3. First we need to write an acceptable lead paragraph. Zara1709 (talk) 15:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Article full protected for three days
Due to the ongoing edit war, I have full-protected the article.

The behavior of all sides in the content / edit warring has been unacceptable. If you cannot work it out while the article is in this protected state, long duration blocks of the most abusive edit warriors will follow. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:12, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Towards an acceptable lead parapgraph
So Wdford removed several sentences that were flagged with "citation needed" (and one that wasn't flagged) diff. I suppose this doesn't make any difference, because we can simply restore the two or three statements that are verifiable. Because Wdford's edit left the article without a meaningful lead, I started with that. I would give you a full quote from Shavit on this talk page, now, if only I'd had more time a.t.m. Right now it should be sufficient to say that the Eurocentric considerations (at least) were already developed in the 19th century (p.43) and that Shavit explicitly describes this as the "Eurocentric point of view" (p.44).Zara1709 (talk) 16:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The one line that wasn't flagged was still unsubstantiated OR.


 * I have reverted the blatantly Afrocentric opening sentence, as absolutely no attempt was made to discuss this, far less establish a consensus.


 * I propose as a lead section, the following:
 * Scholarly consensus at the end of the 20th Century is that the concept of "pure race" is incoherent, and that applying modern notions of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic.


 * The most recent specific conference on the race of the ancient Egyptians was at UNESCO’s international Cairo Symposium in 1974, where more than 20 recognised international scholars debated inter alia the race of the founders of ancient Egyptian civilization. The majority view was that the ancient Egyptians were neither black nor white as per current terminology.


 * However the issue of the race of the ancient Egyptians continues to be debated in the public arena, with particular focus on the race of specific notable individuals from Dynastic times, including Tutankhamun, Cleopatra VII  and also the model for the Great Sphinx of Giza.


 * As far as skin colour is concerned, some modern scholars believe the ancient Egyptians were "Mediterranean peoples, neither Sub-Saharan blacks nor Caucasian white but peoples whose skin was adapted for life in a subtropical desert environment." Other scholars disagree, and have made various contrary inferences from biological, cultural and linguistic data.




 * Comments?
 * Wdford (talk) 18:47, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Wdford, you are disappointing me. For a moment I had thought that you'd actually learned something in the meantime: You can't hold it against me that I did not seek consensus first; you have already been informed about wp:brd, one bold edit is very well acceptable. You can then revert IF you have a reason to disagree with the edit. You did not actually state WHY you disagree with my edit. If you want to add the statement from the Cairo conference, there is not reason why you shouldn't to that - but you don't have to remove my edit to do this. Anyway, what are your arguments for removing the (sourced!) statement about Eurocententrism? I really need to see an argument here, but please, don't argue with me, argue with Yaacov Shavit:


 * "Far from trying to conceal these cultural sources [from ancient Egypt], they [the ancient Greeks] took pride in what the received from Egypt. For centuries thereafter Western historians too made no attempt to conceal this debt [of ancient Greece to ancient Egypt]; only in the nineteenth century did Grecophiles or Philhellenes, under the sway of Western racism, reject the idea that the sublime culture they so admired was not original or, worse, was not of Indo-European (Aryan) origin. The mere thought that Greece had been influenced by second-rate Egyptians or, perish the thought, by African, made them break out in a mental rash. They resorted to every trick in the book in the book to hide the truth and disseminate a perverted history with unmistakeably racist overtones. [...] For the African-American authors, reconstruction of the ancient world thus means liberation from the shackles of the racially distorted picture of the past and redemption of the historical truth. It means discarding the Eurocentric point of view in favor of a fresh description of the ancient world's history and its cultures - a description in which Europe has neither primacy, exclusivity nor supremacy."

We haven't yet gotten to the point that Shavit is discussing here, the influence of ancient Egypt on ancient Greece. But you can believe me that this point is central for the "controversy"; after all, the book which sparked the debate in the 1990s was called Black Athena. I don't understand Wdford's objection at this point, and I don't see any argument why the existence of the "Eurocentric point of view" should not be mentioned in the lead paragraph. So I think I am going to revert his revert, risking another edit war. Probably, and I actually assume this, Wdford is then going to call me a disruptive editor and will asked that I should be banned from this article. Well, so what? I have nothing to loose. Even if he would get through with it, currently all I get from working on this issue is some unnecessary anger and a desk that is stuffed even more full by 5 books on this topic. I've spend probably an hour looking through the literature today - if you would pay someone do to that that would be about 15-25€. (Academics have high hourly rates.) I'm doing this for free because I like working on articles, but I don't like the game Wdford currently appears to be playing. Before I have every single sentence I write being reverted, I'd rather get myself banned from this article. So, unless someone else has done this in the meantime, I'm going to restore my sentence.Zara1709 (talk) 19:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Of course we can hold a unilateral edit to be disruptive – this is not just a small inconspicuous sentence, it is the opening sentence of the lead section – probably the most important sentence in the article. To forge ahead with one’s own POV in the opening sentence of the lead section of an article under probation is beyond bold, it is clearly disruptive.
 * Also, a lot of constructive work was recently mass-reverted (and a lot of unsubstantiated OR reinstated in the process) purely because no consensus was first obtained, so why now the double standard?


 * My specific objections to the content of this opening sentence are the following:
 * We have not achieved a consensus on the scope and direction of the article, but yet this sentence establishes an Afrocentric paradigm, despite there having been a lot of contrary opinion on this in the last few months.
 * I am quite happy that the existence of the "Eurocentric point of view" should be mentioned somewhere. However a number of editors spent many months demonstrating that the controversy goes beyond merely Eurocentrists vs Afrocentrists, and that it started much earlier than Black Athena. Therefore this opening sentence is not neutral nor balanced, and while it is correct in itself, it is far from complete. It is therefore not appropriate to use this sentence as the opening sentence of the lead section.
 * The work of Shavit is valuable here and certainly deserves to be included in the article, but he is just one author among many, and his views are not necessarily representative of the rest of the controversy. As an opening sentence this statement is therefore neither neutral nor balanced.


 * Please don’t froth on about edit wars – just work professionally with other editors on the talk page to achieve a consensus, and then we can go forward yet again until the next Rollback.


 * I look forward to seeing constructive comments on my proposed lead section. If anybody wants to mention Afrocentrism specifically in the lead then please go ahead and suggest an appropriately neutral and balanced modification to the proposal currently on the table.


 * Wdford (talk) 08:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Wdford, your objections are still not making sense. I am not trying to establish an "Afrocentric paradigm", Yacoov Shavit is not an Afrocentric writer, he isn't even an African-American (he is neither African nor American). If you had read wp:brd, you would know that "consensus" is not a valid reason for a revert. If you look at the sentence I proposed or the passage I quoted, you will see that the "Eurocentric considerations" go back to the 19th century (however, according to Shavit, not further). And although the sentence we are talking about is the first sentence of the article, I had to start there because your removal of tagged statements left the article without a meaningful lead paragraph. It is is not just Shavit, "one author among many," who is saying this. Here is the corresponding statement from Stephen Howe. After Howe has given a summary of the Hamitic Hypothesis and its wide acceptance in the 19th century, he continues:


 * "In a younger generation, even Basil Davidson, among the most passionate pro-African and antiracist of all European writers on Africa, put forward a version of the Hamitic hypotheses in his book Old Africa Rediscovered (Davidson 1959:29-31) - at least to point of believing that there was an identifiable racial group in Africa called Hamites; though he took pains to repudiate the racist assumptions usually developed from that belief. And a substantial number of African and other black writers, as we shall see, adopted versions of the Hamitic idea - at least after it had been decoupled from the originally associated biblical 'curse of Noah' legitimating slavery. Subsequently, the idea of successive waves of Hamitic invaders and culture-carriers has been entirely abandoned by serious scholars. Perhaps its last gasp was in John R. Bakers massive, anachronistic and frankly racist 1974 book "Race", where the elderly anthropologist Baker still cast around desperately for scraps of outdated 'evidence' showing that supposed African achievements actually came from almost anyone other than 'Negroes' (Baker 1974: esp. 401-17). Only among radical Afrocentrists has a revised version of the myth gained new life today; though some of them also still devote considerable energy to assailing the older Eurocentric version, despite its moribund state (e.g.Reynolds-Marniche 1994)." (Howe 1998: p. 116)


 * Even if you don't bother with reading the books I quote, you can take a look at the article on "Hamitic". If necessary, I can quote from (Howe 1998: 115) to explain what this has to do with Egypt and "Race", but I hope that this will be obvious. Howe describes here an Eurocentric and an Afrocentric version of the Hamite hypothesis; Actually Afrocentrism developed not only as opposition to Eurocentrism, but some threads of Afrocentrism also took over elements from Eurocentrism. Now, we don't need to discuss how we can incorporate the Hamitic hypothesis in the article at this point. In light of the literature that explicitly describes such 'theories' as Eurocentric, we can simply mention 'Eurocentric considerations' in the first sentence.
 * Wdford, I have the impression that you are playing a game called 'POV-pushing' here. Since in your point-of-view the "Eurocentric considerations" have no place, you are trying to push their mentioning out of the article. Unfortunately for you I am well-prepared and can keep up with quoting and excerpting the literature for weeks. However, since nobody is paying me to do this, I will speed things up a little and escalate this into another edit war. Let's see what the admins have to say about this. Zara1709 (talk) 12:19, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Fascinating - a few days ago you reverted a lot of perfectly valid work based solely on failure to obtain consensus, but now suddenly the rules are exactly the opposite. I said specifically that I believe the "Eurocentric viewpoint" has a place in the article, just not in the opening sentence. And now you openly brag about starting an edit war, just because you can't have your own way. Since the admins were handing out 6 month bans to editors who were working constructively on the talk page, you should be banned for life. But that would require that justice be done, and justice is an old-fashioned concept. Anyway, based on the new rules, on with the article. Wdford (talk) 12:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I opposed your edit because you added a whole section on ancient Egyptian art which I think we don't actually need, whereas I limited myself to proposing one single sentence. Whereas you could not provide a single source that illustrates that relevance of a section on ancient Egyptian art for this article, I have provided two quotes so far that illustrate the relevance of mentioning Eurocentrism or "eurocentric considerations". Instead of explaining why you don't think that Eurocentrism should be mentioned in the lead paragraph, you are trying to evade the issue by pushing us into discussing to such questions as whether Tutankhamun or Cleopatra VII should be mentioned in the lead. To revert you is simply the only way to get you to actually look at the sources I provided. I've tried discussions with people like you without reverting the article at the same time - they went on for months and didn't produce any result. If you have an argument why "Eurocentric considerations" should not be mentioned in the lead, let's hear it. If you don't, I would like to move on to the next sentence. Zara1709 (talk) 13:00, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * (note - I think i agree with Zara about the artwork). Zara, you seem to be really hung up on a few disagreements with Wdford.  While you may view him as obstinate, his comments here seem to be made in good faith and I would BEG you to step back, breath, and see if you can reboot your discussions with her.  She writes, "We have not achieved a consensus on the scope and direction of the article" and I think she is right that establishing such clairtyis essential for moving on.  You may have a clear idea in your mind, but can it hurt to articulate it and spend a few more days talking about it with Wdford?  Also, Wdford wants the opening to make clear that most scholars view race as a concept that does not apply to ancient Egyptions.  I understand the value of this account - it makes it clear why debates over the race of ancient Egyptians has more to do with the ideologies of debators, not the evidence from ancient Egypt. Wdford, I do not see how this is incompaable with the intro Zara favors.  I think it would be awkward to open with this, because it is more on what the article isn't than what the article is.  That said, I think it has a valuable role to play in this article, I am just not sure where.  So here we have a few specific questions.  Can't the two of you address them one at a time to ty to reach a compromise for each before moving on? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 00:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Slrubenstein, I have been in several edit wars by now, and my attitude is a result of these. If someone describes a statement correctly attributed to a reliable source as blatant POV, as Wdford has done it here, then this means that the respective editor has a strong view on the topic and will disregard the reliable sources that disagree with this view. At this point I can either force Wdford to admit that "Eurocentric considerations" are one side of the controversy, or I can give up working on the article. If I don't break through his veil of ignorance now, I'll never break through it. To break through I need to counter his evasion tactic. Have you noticed how he managed to avoid actually discussing the significance of the "Eurocentric point of view" for the topic? To counter the evasion tactic I need to use the same confrontational tactics as he does; If I hadn't reverted him, he would simply have ignore my arguments. At this point this shouldn't be possible any more. Wdford will have to elaborate an argument why the "Eurocentric considerations" should not be mentioned in the lead, or have to accept that they are mentioned there. However, all the stress of getting to this point wasn't worth it. I should have quit the article instead, so that in a few months you will have the usual debates about ancient Egyptian art and the racial characteristics of the Sphinx etc., none of which actually contributes to an understanding of the controversy. Zara1709 (talk) 01:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Re Zara's repeated complaints about her “Eurocentric” sentence – I have stated more than once on the talk page that I accept the accuracy of the quote, but that I object to using it as the opening sentence of the lead section as I feel that it mis-defines the controversy. I hear and agree with Slrubenstein’s comment that lead sections must introduce the controversy as a whole, and that is specifically why I feel that this particular wording is misleading and inappropriate.

I did however include Zara’s sentence in my last attempt at correcting the lead section, but not as the opening sentence, and I reworded it slightly to better clarify the context – namely that some authors indeed hold that opinion, but that this is not solely what the controversy is all about.

Re the ancient Egyptian art, my intention was to address the conspiracy theory of Prof Manu Ampim that artwork showing the ancient Egyptians as black people has been systematically destroyed, while fake artwork has been inserted into museums etc to deliberately misrepresent the ancient Egyptians as being lighter-skinned than he believes they really were. (See e.g. http://www.raceandhistory.com/manu/book.htm for a taste, and there are many better references available.) I think such a conspiracy theory would qualify as controversial, and it is a widely disseminated theory. However this initiative was instantly reverted by Zara before any progress was made. I let it go at the time with the intention of following a consensus process, but I still believe it is a valid component of the controversy.

As regards her non-existent POV, I point to Zara’s statements about helping the Americans to find a truce in their cultural war. I’m sure some Americans could benefit from such a truce, but I can’t accept that this article should be written toward that particular objective. If that is considered to be a notable topic, then by all means write a specific article on America’s Cultural War.

I am happy to work on a collaborative basis, but there needs to be a single set of rules that apply to all. I am not going to be happy if I am to be forced to seek consensus but Zara is free to redefine the article at will. I also think poorly of statements Zara made at AN/I to the effect that “it is rather unlikely that there will be another editor who could write a balanced article on the controversy” – this is inaccurate as well as uncivil to the other editors who have made valuable contributions.

Wdford (talk) 02:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

No, you didn't have a problem to "accept the accuracy of the quote". You just called it "blatantly Afrocentric opening sentence" in you first post. The disputed sentence was part of a previous revision and you removed it in the first place because there wasn't a reference for it. I found a reference, restored it, and then you deleted it again, with that unsuited justification. If you take a look at the quotes I provided, you should see that "Eurocentric considerations" are indeed central to the topic. The Afrocentric views about ancient Egypt developed in opposition to them, and also sometimes took over elements from them. The works on the Hamitic hypothesis alone would probably fill a small library. Unless you want to mention the Hamitit hypothesis, the Dynastic race theory and probably some more Eurocentric 'considerations' all separately in the lead parapgrah, you have to use the word "Eurocenentric" there. And I am right when I say that I am the only editor I know who could write a balanced article. For example, until very recently nobody here had the idea of doing a search for reputable secondary sources on the topic. The reason that it is so difficult to write a balanced article on the topic is that it could be described as the battleground of a cultural war. If you want to understand what that means, read a postmodernist like Mahgan Keita: There is no scientific, objective account of the "Race of the ancient Egyptians". There are only different "epistemologies". The goal of each side in the cultural war is to bring his view in the dominant position. That's Keita. Now, I am not a postmodernist. I think that there are some objective things that can be said about the ancient Egyptians. But I know, whatever these objective things are, they are buried under the rubble of a two-century ideological struggle. Before I can say anything objective about the physical appearance of the ancient Egyptians, I need to take this ideological struggle apart. I need to know how the sides called themselves, who the main proponents of either view were, etc. And I am not going to start looking at the ancient Egyptian art until I have found this out. There must probably be hundreds of radical Afrocentric writers who are trying to "prove" that the ancient Egyptians were black. (The not-so-radical Afrocentrists are only trying to prove that they were not white.) There must also probably be hundreds of Eurocentric writers who are trying to prove that the Afrocentrists are pseudo-scientific crackpots. That would be certainly true of some Afrocentrists, but if we'd start to count the crackpot writers of each side, I don't know which side would have more. I mean, the Eurocentrist have the whole original Hamitic hypothesis. No academic takes that seriously anymore, but if you'd count everyone who once did, you'd probably get several hundred writers. In short, if you want to debunk the African Professors "what's-his-name" theory of ancient Egypt art, you should wait a few months. Because you have also editors here who would, say, like to debunk Caucasian Professors "what's-his-name" theory of ancient Egyptian skull shapes. You are all just pawns in a so-called cultural war. Because you have no way to related you individual views to each other, you are never going to be able to write a meaningful article. If you would give me a few months, I could write at least an outline of the battleground, and then you could probably contribute something useful. But since I apparently don't get a few months, there is not much point in trying. Zara1709 (talk) 12:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I do not like butting in here, but I have some advice i sincerely hope both of you can benefit from and I apologize in advance if I sound patronizing. First, I assume both of you already know that you cannot just write an e-mail as if you were talking to someone - lacking visual cues, or the tone of voice, such e-ails are almost inevitably misread.  When writing an e-mail you have to be very explicit about what you mean, and also very very careful not to say anything (e.g. a joke) that could be interpreted as an insult.  Well, then you have to understand that here you have to be ten-fold more careful with what you write.  I am not going to name names so please, no one respond defensively.  If one of you really feels that you haven't lost your cool yet, well, you probably will, soon enough.  So please I beg of you to read your comments over before you hit the "save page."  Communicate what you think and why but bend over backwards to be courteous and unemotional.  And when it comes to edits to the article, including deletions or rearrangement, well, when there is such a history of edit-warring, the only way out is to bring up EVERY edit you wish to make on the talk page first and seek agreement.  You may think this is tedious but it will eventually build trust.


 * I propose this advice - really just two simple suggestions - because my view as an outsider who knows little about ancient Egypt but a lot about the ancient Nears East, archeology, and debates about race, is that both of you have something valuable to contribute to this article and Wikipedia will benefit when you two learn how to work together. This will happen not when you have a mediator to whom each of you can run any time you feel injured or in need of support (although this may be necessary and halpful right now), but when both of you ar trully ready to assume good faith on part of the other.  AGF does not mean you think that person will always do what you like, or never do what you hate.  It simply means that when that person does what you hate or doesn't do what you like, you believe that in their own mind they think they are improving the article or trying to help.  When you genuinely believe this, you will start finding ways to compromise and collaborate.  I think, I really do think, this is possible between the two of you and like I said i think that the result will be a better article. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 13:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In a good faith attempt to promote understanding, here goes:

I consider the proposed opening sentence to be unacceptable as an opening statement, because the current wording limits the controversy to “Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations in the 19th and 20th Century.” Firstly this leaves out the 21st Century, which is a problem because clearly the controversy still rages. Secondly, in light of the definitions of “Eurocentric” as defined in Wikipedia and Wiktionary, the work of some important people who have been part of the controversy hardly fits comfortably into either the Eurocentric or the Afrocentric ideological “camps” - for example the work of scholars like Petrie and Frank Yurco, just off the cuff. Thirdly, not all aspects of the controversy fit into one or other of these categories. For example the Dynastic Race Theory is a part of the controversy, but it was not an attempt to establish European superiority as per the definition of Eurocentrism, it was an objective deduction supported by many scholars of integrity based on the archaeological evidence that was available at the time. The fact that more recent additional evidence has since undermined it does not make the Dynastic Race Theory "Eurocentric". Undoubtedly Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations do feature here, and undoubtedly many credible authors personally believe that this is the most important issue ever. However in reality the controversy is not limited only to Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations, and to pretend otherwise would be dishonest. IMO the proposed wording is thus too limiting to be used as an opening sentence.

With regard to Zara’s statement that “I am right when I say that I am the only editor I know who could write a balanced article”, please refer to WP:TIGERS. Many other editors who have worked on this article have backed up their various contributions with perfectly reputable sources. Also to note is that articles are written by teams of editors, who balance each other, so we don't need to wait for an editor who can write the entire article alone.

I don’t need to read up on postmodernism to understand what a cultural war is – I live in South Africa, and I see cultural wars in action every day.

I am also not interested in debunking crackpots in this article; the objective is to explain the controversy.

I personally don’t believe that we need to investigate the “ideological struggle” before we can write a useful article on the topic of the history of the controversy. Perhaps some editors are “not going to start looking at the ancient Egyptian art until [they] have found this out”, but I don't think this constraint applies to everyone - especially not to the many millions of us who don’t live in America.

I hope that explains my standpoint a little better.

In the interests of promoting understanding, please could Zara explain her various objections to the sourced content I added to the lead section?

Is everyone prepared to accept the suggested ground rule that every proposed edit must first be discussed on the talk page? Some of us have worked on this basis before, and it worked pretty well.

For those that want to learn more about the “ideological struggle” specifically, I would suggest having a separate article. What do other editors think?

If have proposed adding a notification to the top of the article, warning users that the scope of this article is currently limited more severely than the title implies, so that users are not mislead. Nobody has objected thusfar, although it still got reverted when I added it in good faith. If anybody has an objection to being transparent about the current scope, please could you explain your objections so that we can all understand?

Wdford (talk) 22:04, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The sentence, in the way I restored it, says: "The Controversy surrounding the race of ancient Egyptians involved Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations in the 19th and 20th Century." It doesn't say that the controversy is limited to these considerations, nor that there isn't any 'uncontroversial' research on the origins and appearance of the ancient Egyptians, e.g. Yurco. However, I think, the quotes I have provided illustrate that it is not possible to understand why this topic is controversial in the first place if you don't mention the Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations. And I obviously didn't mention the 21st century, because we don't even have the first decade of it full and there simply isn't much to say on it. I think the debate on Black Athena calmed down a little after the 1990s.


 * The problem with your suggestions, on the other hand, Wdford is not only that you made at least three suggestions at the same time, instead of one, like me. More specifically, most of your so-called "content to the lead section" isn't actually relevant for the lead, certainly less so then the mentioning of Eurocentrism. I mean, there was a significant public debate about Tutankhamun, but Cleopatra VII is only relevant because Lefkowitz had a debate about this with one of her students, so I wouldn't mention Cleopatra VII in the lead paragraph, but rather Lefkowitz. You are referring to "Afrocentrism, by Stephen Howe" (without a page number) for the "UNESCO’s international Cairo Symposium in 1974." Do you know what Howe has to say on that symposium?


 * "... as the UNESCO volume's rapporteur admits, the argument 'often took the form of successive and mutually contradictory dialogues." (p. 183)


 * The point that Howe highlights is not that the "majority view was that the ancient Egyptians were neither black nor white as per current terminology". Howe rather summarizes:


 * "Abdelgadir M. Abdalla [whoever that is] scorned the idea that there was any importance in establishing whether ancient Egyptians were black, negroid or whatever."


 * I haven't double-checked everything Howe writes about the Cairo symposium, but I think if you want to use him as reference as you did, that would be a misquotation. This is kind of hard to say without a page number, which brings us to the last problem (for now) with that edit. Previously, I had fixed the quote from Kathryn A. Bard: "As far as skin colour is concerned, the ancient Egyptians were 'Mediterranean peoples, neither Sub-Saharan blacks nor Caucasian white but peoples whose skin was adapted for life in a subtropical desert environment.'" And you now are saying that "Other scholars disagree, and have made various contrary inferences from biological, cultural and linguistic data.", with 4 references (one is not working). What do these other scholars say? As the sentence stands, it only says that the skin colour of the ancient Egyptians wasn't as dark as the skin of Sub-Saharan blacks nor as white as the skin of Caucasian whites. None of your working references actually says something about skin colour. Bard's article is a little older and doesn't take into account newer results from genetics like fancy studies on Y-chromosome variation. But I strongly doubt that a study on Y-chromosome variation can say anything on skin colour.


 * That only leaves me to make a note on tigers . The reason I have strong views in this discussion is not that I am trying to advance any particular point-of-view (other than that of the sources I quote). The reason I am feeling frustrated and angry by this discussion is that I don't see any editorial reason that speaks against my edit. The reason I returned to this article in the first place was, that as an encyclopaedic article, it is a joke. I mean, how come that this article purports to be about the controversy, but then doesn't even mention W. E. B. Du Bois, although it has a whole section on the Sphinx. (I think in one of my previous version of the Sphinx section du Bois was at least mentioned in a footnote, but I suppose you deleted that one, Wdford.) Writing an article on the topic would be a nice intellectual challenge; I am not studying African-American studies or anthropology, but I like working a completely new topic which I otherwise wouldn't even noticed. If I do something for Wikipedia, why shouldn't I start at the place were someone with my capabilities can be most helpful. Apparently it is easier for me to get an American history book on Afrocentrism then it is for those editors who are living in the Unites States.
 * The reason this article is in such a bad shape is obviously that it is the subject of a cultural war, especially in the United States, but likely in South African, too. I've previously tried to work on topics that are controversial in the United States. In the other cases I didn't actually know that I was working on a topic which is controversial in the United States - until one editor came a long and described a statement that was based on a reliable source as "blatant POV", like you have been doing it here. So I suppose that you are one of the editors who that essay describes as tigers, and I would need to play the animal tamer - which explains why I had to use some confrontational tactics. Being nice I would achieve nothing here. However, I don't like being an animal tamer - I never set out to be one - which explains why I am so frustrated. I have either the option of pushing this through or leaving the article. And actually I am one of the nice guys for trying to push this through. Our veterans fighting against fringe theories like Dbachmann would rather wait until enough evidence has accumulated that Wdford is indeed a 'tiger', then revert/reduce/delete the article an topic ban the involved editors. Wdford was actually topic-banned, too. User:Ice Cold Beer apparently thought that he had learned something in the meantime, but I wonder would he would say about the current situation. Zara1709 (talk) 01:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Zara, your calling yourself one of the nice guys and your calling Wdford a tiger is not going to help improve the situation and as one who has been supportive of you know that I say this with good intentions: it does not make you look good. I am not sue I get the reference to Ice Cold Beer at the end, how is this designed to improve your working relationship with Wdford?  Wdford seems to be taking a conciliatory tone in that he is not saying anything negative against you personally.  Surely you can disagree with him without making it personal, can't you?


 * Advice for both of you (and others): stop these long e-mails in which you cover several issues. Such an approach has never in my experienced help resolve a conflict.  Make a list of your major disagreements - if there are tenty items in it, try to get them down to five, just for starts.  And address them one at a time.  If you focus on one specific edit at a time and seek a compromise (compromise = neither of you happy, but both of you within spitting distance of satisfied) and then move on, you will start improving the article.  Lengthy statements despite your best intentions usually come off as attempts to justify yourselves to general audiences.  That is not the path to collaboration. I urge you to break it down.  And like I said, I would leave the introduction for last.  This is what most professional writers do and for good reasons, and there are even more good reasons at Wikipedia. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 03:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think Wdford was the first one to bring up WP:TIGERS (maybe I'm wrong, I'm not going to comb through every post above). But it's certainly not the case that Wdford's posts aren't saying anything negative about Zara. Neither editor is covering themselves with glory here.


 * As far as the substantive issues involved, I agree with Slrubenstein that the amount of posting here is creating obscurity, not clarity.


 * I don't really think it's going to work to leave the intro for last, because one of the contentious issues here is the scope of the article, and the wrangling over the intro springs directly from that. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Akhilleus, I think everyone needs to agree on the general scop of the article, but I continu to believe that if people focus on the precise wording of the introduction before the body is written they will continue to get bogged down in frustrating and unnecessary debates that will postpone any progress. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 13:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Probably the style of my writing is not helping, but I can't help it any more. When I started to edit Wikipedia, I used to think that when people reverted my edits, it would only be a question of explaning more elaboretaly what the sources say etc. However, in the last two or three years I realizied that many editors are simply not interested in writing articles from a neutral point of view, and even many of those who usually are often have strong views that disturb their editorial judgement. Probably I just picked the wrong topics, but that is because I don't simply search myself an unvontroversial field of expertise, but try to fix those articles that need it badly, and those articles are in a bad shape with a reason. (I could tell you what articles I am referring to, but I won't do that here, you'd have to look at my list of contributions.) Wdford's behaviour is consistent with what I have seen from other editors at other articles. When someone calls a properly sourced statement a "blatant POV", and then tries to make me look like a POV-Pusher, then this user usually has a hidden agenda or strong views on the subject that disqualify him as an editor, of this particular topic at least.
 * Describing these editors as what I think they are might not be the best strategy. But I don't know any other, and this way I can at least deal with my frustration. Thinking about this, I am somehow myself shocked of what I have become, but I think that this was unavoidable after I started editing at Wikipedia. I should do myself a favour an simply leave the article alone. Zara1709 (talk) 03:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The lead I proposed is based on Ancient Observer's suggestion, I think it is the most comprehensive, as it goes beyond Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism.
 * Wapondaponda (talk) 08:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Wapondaponda (talk) 08:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Well that’s a big step forward. I don’t however agree that the controversy is only controversial because of the Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations. According to his Wikipedia article, Shavit is a specialist in Jewish history and American Afrocentrism, but it says nothing about anthropology or Egypt, so again I am concerned about using a Shavit quote to introduce the article.

I think we should have a whole section about the UNESCO Symposium, as this is the most recent occasion (that I am aware of) that reputable scholars actually debated the race of the ancient Egyptians. More recently authors have published various individual theories, but without any process that could result in a "mainstream opinion". We can’t quote every statement made at the Symposium, as the article would then be the size of the original UNESCO report. However, if you take the time to sift through the report of that section of the conference, the sentence I put into the lead is an accurate summation of the majority of the opinions put forward in the debate, as per WP:QUOTE – (“a contributor should try to avoid quotations when a summary of a quote would be better”.) This was thus never intended as a direct quote, merely as references for an interested person who might want to know about the considerable detail of the actual dialogue that underlies the summary provided. Abdalla indeed said he didn’t think establishing race had any value, and Diop gave him a tongue-lashing for his trouble. In short, it was controversial, as Howe sort-of admits, and thus I think it is a good reference.

My various references on the last sentence refer to the fact that various scholars hold various other opinions based on various criteria. They were all working when I last checked.

I am happy to work on the basis of one sentence at a time, provided everyone else sticks to the same rules.

I am also happy to write the body of the article first, but currently whatever gets added is immediately reverted because “we don’t know yet if we want to include that material.” A consensus on the scope would certainly help, and hopefully that is what we are working toward.

I am generally happy with Wapondaponda’s suggested lead. However, as a compromise to other editors, would everyone be happy to include as the opening sentence the wording: "The on-going controversy surrounding the race of ancient Egyptians involves, but is not limited to, Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations dating back to the 19th Century."

Comments please?

Wdford (talk) 16:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Some more sources
A couple more sources I came across:  JN 466  00:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Afrotopia By Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Cambridge University Press (makes a useful distinction between egyptocentrism and afrocentrism)
 * Black folk here and there By St. Clair Drake, Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California

Scope Restriction
To ensure no users are mislead I would suggest adding the following to the top of the article, as this reflects the content restriction imposed by the admins, until such time as we have a new scope.

Comments please?

Wdford (talk) 08:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * This sounds like a positive step forward. While I can foresee some overlap among the articles, they do seem to address different things and thus constitute a valid content fork. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 00:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I second Slrubenstein's opinion. -- FayssalF  -  Wiki me up®  00:52, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The hatnote doesn't need to refer readers to Ancient Egypt--it's unlikely that someone will come to an article titled "Ancient Egyptian race controvery" thinking they're going to find a general history of ancient Egypt, and the first paragraph will wikilink to that article. So I think the following would suffice:


 * --Akhilleus (talk) 03:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Splitting the article has been attempted before unsuccesfully, there used to be an article entitled Appearance of the ancient Egyptians and population history of ancient Egypt. Which were re-merged later on. In my opinion, it is impossible to separate the two concepts. Wapondaponda (talk) 07:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I would also prefer to have all the relevant material together in one article, but the de facto reality is that a particular group of admins simply won't allow it. The material is currently split into two full articles and, provided the two articles are cross-referenced and provided the readers are warned that the scope of this article is different to the title, I think we should live with it and build on the existing foundation. Trying to merge them is merely going to provide ammunition for yet another Great Rollback. Ideally, the article should be renamed to match the limited scope. Wdford (talk) 17:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * No options are closed at this stage. The problem is when we limit the scope of the article, to exclude objective science, we are left with only the most extreme POVs, Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism. The objective scientific material is the only content that even Afrocentrists and Eurocentrics agree upon. Furthermore the current population history of Egypt will have a lot of redundancy with articles such as predynastic Egypt, History of Egypt, History of Ancient Egypt. Population history of Egypt was written with race in mind, rather than a general discussion of population movements in the region. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I wish I could share your optimism. I clearly remember how a number of us went through a long process of achieving consensus to broaden the scope, but yet the admins reimposed their scope restriction with impunity, and then accused us of disruption, rolled back four months, protected the article and started banning people. Where do you get your optimism from?
 * The scientific material is now present in the Population history of Egypt article, so we can achieve part of the objective over there - I don't have a problem with that actually, as long as the material is available and linked, and we can make cross-references to it. My main objective now as far as this article is concerned is to ensure interested readers are not mislead into believing this controversy is simply an academic spat between two parties of over-educated racists. If that is achieved then I am happy to focus on the "scientific" material, even if it is housed at another article. Wdford (talk) 07:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Always wondered why Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism are classified as to opposing forces, in regard to the “race” of AEs? Is there today any driving force in proving that the AEs were original Europeans? Has there ever been in a large sense? Just because researchers, archeologist, casual observers in the 17th to start 20th century was largely from Europe / USA, does that automatically make them force a Eurocentrism view? And what view is that? Even better what exactly is Eurocentrism in regards to the race of the AEs? My own view, maybe incorrect, on Afrocentrism in regards to the “race” AEs, is, of course grossly narrowed down, that the AEs are undeniable black, coming from Nubian, Ethiopia or the Sudan. This is a pre-defined conclusion, and all work is done solve to support this already made conclusion. Where is the opposing force in Eurocentrism to this?  Even believing in an influx of people, they hardly would be European, but rather from the Middle East. Should it not be Afrocentrism vs. MiddleEastism (is that even a word?) Twthmoses (talk) 12:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Apparently Eurocentrism is involved here as part of the ideological battlefield of the American Cultural War. Maybe some American editors can clarify it for us? Wdford (talk) 13:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it is more a British thing, or British Commonwealth - Grafton Elliot Smith was from Wales, edicated at the University of Sydney, and then I think University College London. He proposed a theory that all elements of civilization were invented in Egypt and spread from there.  Apparently this theory was very popular with Europeans - in the 1960s or 1970s a European adventurer (Danish? Swedish?) Thor Hyerdaal set out on a trip using neolithic materials to make a raft and sail from Africa to South America, his point was to prove that it was possible, and this would explain how S. Americans like the Maya learned to make pyramids, from Egyptians.  I can tell you that in the US Academe this theory has not had any credibility since the turn of the twentieth century.  As far as the US is concerned though, Arab-Americans are classified as Caucasian.  Cairo certainly has for a very long time been an important city in Islamic civilization, so maybe there are some who would wish to classify most Egyptians as Arabs, this is the only way I could see a US connection.  Unless by American editors you meant people from other parts of the Americas. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 17:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Eurocentricism isn't solely American; its name should make that fairly obvious. The term could be applied to attempts to deny the "African" nature of the Egyptians, when motivated by a belief that (black) Africans were incapable of creating a complex civilization. In this case the Eurocentrism would not be a straightforward privileging of white people (for whatever value of "white" makes sense here), but a frame of reference in which black Africa couldn't be responsible for the great art, architecture, etc. of Egypt. Note that "Eurocentrism" is a term used by critics, rather than advocates of this viewpoint. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

"Eurocentric" and "Cultural war"
Incredibly, I've got Wdford's attention. He is actually asking what I mean with "Eurocentric", and all I needed to do for that was to quote 3 different reliable source that use the term, make a long note at the ANI and get this article under full-protection for 3 days, although the last thing wasn't probably necessary. At this pace, it would only take about 2 years of intensive discussion with Wdford to agree on an article - and unfortunately I don't have this kind of time, so I won't bother with any more contributions here. However, at the rare occasion of Wdford actually asking for further arguments (instead of simply reverting), I can say something more on the term "Eurocentric" and "Cultural war". Of course, this is then going to be another long "Email". But then, again, I couldn't simply add more information on these terms to the article; even if the article wasn't protected, I would suppose that Wdford would revert me even instantly. So, what does the literature understand as "Eurocentric"? Stephen Howe understands the original "Hamitic Hypothesis" as Eurocentric. I could provide another long quote, but since Wdford used Howe as a reference in on of his edits, I shall assume that this is not necessary. Howe starts part two of his book "Afrocentrism" with a summary of the Hamitic hypothesis. (p.115) After he has summarized the hypothesis' development in the 19th and 20th century, he describes how some Afrocentric writers adopted 'their version' of it, an in this context he calls the original Hamitic hypothesis "Eurocentric". And by the way, Twthmoses, my version of the lead does not classify "Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism [...] as to opposing forces",and neither does Howe. Although an understanding of the issue as based on "Afrocentrism vs. Eurocentrism" does help a little, on a closer look it turns out that Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism are quite intervened.

Well, that's Howe. Then I also have August Meier, whom I have quoted previously at the noticeboard:


 * "Not out of Africa" is an effective polemic. [...]Not recognizing that Afrocentric views are rooted in a long a respected tradition, she simply fails to answer the question raised in this books subtitle . To argue with the claims of the Afrocentrists is one thing, but to overlook or ignore the work of the band of Afro-American intellectuals and popularizers who enunciated a line of thought that was deeply rooted among rank-and-file Negroes would, I believe, reveal an essential Eurocentric orientations in this study. Thus, as a work of scholarship "Not out of Africa" is deeply flawed." (Emphasis added)

This is from the December 1996 issue of the Journal of American History: (stable link). Meier describes "Not out of Africa: How Afrocentrism became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History" by Mary Lefkowitz as Eurocentric, because Lefkowitz almost completely neglects the African-American literature of the 19th and 20th century. She fails to take the African-American experiences into account, to the extend that she "fails to answer the question raised in this books subtitle". Because of a negligence of the African (-American) view, Meier can describe Lefkowitz book as Eurocentric. So, the Hamitic Hypthesis and Lefkowitz book are both Eurocentric, but in quite different ways. Both a relevant for the topic of our article. Speaking of Eurocentric and Afrocentric considerations appears to be the best way to get this into the article, until we can work out the details.

So much for this. Now a little on cultural wars. Keita writes intensively about this, but I think that Howe gets the point better. He distinguishes 3 clusters of controversies surrounding ancient Egypt. About the third cluster he says, that these are "controversies which have been especially salient in relation to the United States, have interacted heavily with sensitive issues of current public policy, and involve questions both wide and fundamentally about the United States ." (Howe, Afrocentrism, p. 2; Emphasis added.) This explains why it is so difficult to write an article on the topic at Wikipedia. There are many people, especially in the United States, who have an opinion in this controversy. And, it explains why you shouldn't look for Egyptology or Anthropology sources on the topic, but, if you want to understand the controversy, for books on African-American intellectual live in the 19th and 20 century.

Keita is more direct, and explains the controversy using the term cultural war. For Keite, there are certain "epistemologies" warring with each other, one of them is an "epistemology of blackness". These epistemologies fight for "hegemony"; or, less abstract. For Keita, there are certain "ways of knowing" about ancient Egypt, and, as far as I understand him at this point, he wouldn't ask: Which is the scientifically correct one? He would ask: What social practice does this way of knowing legitimize? Which interest does this view serve?

The whole controversy is not a scientific debate. It is not a gradual approximation of the truth, and paradigms aren't discarded because of new evidence. Rather there are certain epistemologies (I'd rather say 'ideologies') warring with each other. Those views don't develop like scientific debates. In a very rough version: The Hamitic hypothesis was not discarded because of new evidence, but because the practice it could be used to legitimize, the denial of civil rights to black people in the United States, disappeared. You usual contemporary anthropology article wouldn't need to mention that, because it can be assumed that the usual audience of that article is already aware of the controversy surrounding the issue; In some Anthropology articles there were passing remarks that indicate this. However, if we want to have a Wikipedia article on the topic, then we need to explain to the reader the "epistemologies" involved. If you try to write a Wikipedia article without this, then at best you'd get something barely comprehensive (like the old "Origins of the Nilotic people"-article). More likely, however, you'd fail to distinguish between those few actually scientifically-objective articles and the partisan sources. Then you will have an article that purports to objective, but in reality is an amalgam of various biased sources. Then your article falls under wp:fringe, and will be dealt with accordingly. Zara1709 (talk) 20:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Zara brings up a few very valuable quotes. To which article they should go in, is a matter for discussion.  I have two commernts: First, we do not mention "intelligent design" in the evolution article, precisely because it is a fringe view within science.  But there is an entire article on creationism.  Why? Because creationism is not a fringe view outside of science.  This is the difference between a POV fork and a content fork.  I suggest that what we have hee is a content fork, and we leave the view of mainstream scientists researching the population hisotry of Egypt for another article.  Second, Zara suggests that there is a scientific view that is always right.  In our articles on race and race andintelligence we point out that there is a trend of scientific racism, i.e.,that scientists themselves were at times influenced by their cultures.  This is an analogy, I am not accusing ANY scientists here of racism.  My pointis simply that sometimes debates among scientists better illustrate a trend within society than a trend within science.  That means that it is possible - possible' - to incloude scientists in this article, if we are clear that thse scientists themselves have become marginal (fringe) within science, and are best remembered as expressing a dominant cultural view. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 07:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, but if we agree to leave the science out of the article, then the article is only covering part of the controversy - in which case I propose that the article be renamed accordingly. Secondly, I propose that the Epistemologies of the American Culture War be created as a content fork outside of science, with appropriate cross-links. Third, I propose we create another article called The ancient Egyptian race controversy in popular culture, as a content fork outside of science, to cover the modern debates about Cleopatra and Tut etc without drowning in Diop and Davidson. We can then have four separate articles covering the four main thrusts of the controversy about the controversy, which should see an end to the heat, the sensitivity and the repeated Rollbacks. Are there any objections? Wdford (talk) 11:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes. That's way too many articles. Two is enough. This article is a history of thinking about the race of the ancient Egyptians, and that's going to include scientific and non-scientific attempts (never mind that the demarcation between science and non-science is not a simple affair, especially when you're dealing with things like physical anthropology). The fully developed version will no doubt include a number of 19th century figures.
 * Population history of ancient Egypt (or whatever it should be called) should be an article on contemporary scientific thinking on the race of the ancient Egyptians. This should be a snapshot of current research, with no need to cover the history or pop-culture debate. --Akhilleus (talk) 12:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, but in which article would we then cover the pop culture debate? Much less notable pop culture issues have been approved to have their own articles - see Wdford (talk) 13:44, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, two is enough. I am not sure what "American culture wars" is, and if it is what I think it might posibly be, "epistemology" played no role in it.  The culture wars in the US involved a coming together of a kind of reactonary modernism in the arts, as well as a commitment to that old-fashioned (non-revisionist) triumphalist history conceived of ias "the march of progress" and that wierd mixture of social conservativism and neo-liberalism that became popular under Reagan.  Since it was against any kind of revisionist history, it automaticlaly trashed books like Black Athena.  But if this had any impact on discussions about Ancient Egyptian history among academics, I have never heard anything about it. If Zara is saying Keita and Howe's views are fringe, I am inclined to agree. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 16:49, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Makes sense - perhaps then the Culture War should be part of the existing Afrocentrism article. However, in which article would we then cover the pop culture debate? Wdford (talk) 18:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Population history of Egypt
Problems are brewing on this article. It seems that after this article was protected, some may have decided to let off some steam at population history of Egypt. The article is currently being racialized and input from the community may be needed to stabilize the article. Wapondaponda (talk) 07:44, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I made some edits there. The line really is a little blurry.  I think that as this article grows, with a clearer focus on "the controversy" and "controversial" matters, it will be easy to know what content there belongs here.  May I suggest that if you see any clear-cut cases, just cut it from there and paste it into this article? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 16:42, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Wapondaponda is quite right. I just deleted controversial material from that article.  I am putting it here until someone can figure out where best to put it in this article:
 * Rock paintings from Algeria at Tassili n'Ajjer reveal that some of the Saharan population were black Africans  . It is unclear when the ancestors of present day Caucasoid populations, such as the ancestors of some Berber speakers, first arrived in North Africa from Eurasia. There are two theories, one is that the ancestors of the Berbers have been present in North Africa since paleolithic times, the other theory is that the Caucasoid populations only reached North Africa during the Neolithic, when the introduction of domesticated cereals and animals from the Near East. Though some North African Berbers are sometimes referred to as "caucasoid", their predominant Y-Chromosome haplotype,E1b1b1b or E3b2 is a subclade of E1b1b which originated in East Africa.
 * The problem of course is not the sourcing but the original research to promote gringe views. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 08:45, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Algeria is a long way from Egypt, even today, and is much closer to the populations of West Africa and Timbuktu. If the crops and animals came from the Near East to the expanse of North Africa then they almost certainly passed through Egypt, and probably were brought by Near Eastern migrants. However it is also possible that these items were merely traded across many indigenous communities without Near Eastern people crossing the Sinai, so its not really helpful either. The same also applies to the East African cattle found later in the Nile Valley - they might have been brought there by East African migrants, or perhaps they were merely traded to the local Egyptians who then adopted cattle farming on their own. I'm not sure why this paragraph exists at all, other than to perhaps mention that there were Berbers in the picture somewhere, but that nobody is clear where these people came from, or what sort of influence they had on the population at what time. Wdford (talk) 09:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. But I removed it from the other article (on Ancient Egyptian populations) and someone put it back, which gives you some sign of just how contentious and confusing all this gets.  We have to agree that the difference between the two articles is a content fork.  We need to agree that the only content that goes into the article on Egyptian populations is mainstream or significant minority science - and no violations of NOR, we can't just add scientificy-sounding information to make our own argument, we need to rely on books and articles that are explicitly addressing the population structure of ancient Egypt.  And we need to agree that the material that goes into this article is explicitly describing or analyzing a controversy or set of linked controversies, ideally drawing on books and articles on intellectual history and sociology of science as well as others of course. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 11:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

This should best be discussed at Talk:Population history of Egypt. I agree that racial stuff should be confined to an extremely brief WP:SS summary pointing back here. This seems to be ok in the current revision. --dab (𒁳) 14:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Rename the Article
Based on the long debates on the talk page over the last month or so, and taking due cognisance of the insistence by some people that the scope of the article be limited to discussing only the history of the controversy and not the substance thereof, I propose that the article be renamed “History of the Ancient Egyptian race controversy.”

Are there any objections?

Wdford (talk) 09:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I likeit. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 11:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I fail to see the point. A "History of the Ancient Egyptian race controversy" article would only make sense in the presence of a separate "Ancient Egyptian race controversy" article. Obviously the article cannot discuss any "substance" that does not in fact exist, but such "substance" as this thing has, it definitely belongs in the article. I take it that the "substance" of this thing is mostly limited to the development of racial consciousness in the United States, but that depends entirely on what the WP:RS can be shown to say on the question. --dab (𒁳) 14:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't even understand Wdford's division of substance and history. This article is about the history of attempts to label the ancient Egyptians black, white, or whatever. If there's any "substance" to this it's arguing that the Egyptians are white, black, or whatever, and that's something that Wikipedia shouldn't do. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * By "substance" I am referring to Keita bringing forward "evidence" that the bones of the ancients indicates xyz skull shapes, and Diop bringing forward "evidence" that the melanin levels of mummies indicate xyz, and the teams that reconstructed Tutankhamun's face came up with xyz based on whatever "evidence", and the scholars who think they found Cleopatra's sister's tomb think they have found "evidence" which proves xyz, and Prof A accuses Prof B of participating in a conspiracy to destroy the "evidence" and replace it with forged "evidence", etc etc etc. This is not the history of the academic debate, rather it is a fair and rounded discussion of the substance underlying such breaking news and current interest items (some people use the term pop culture - I don't know if that is correct usage.) It is not always necessarily academic, but it is very real and very notable. I suspect that a lot of people would look for an article like this to confirm or refute what they heard that morning at the water cooler or what their kids heard on the school bus that evening. Please can we clarify this, as if this can be included here it would be much easier. Wdford (talk) 05:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

current-day "controversy"
Five years of trolling, sock-puppeteering and edit-wars should be sufficient to show that there is a real-life "controversy" today, even though it has nothing to do with academia, let alone Egyptology. It is true that the "black or white Egypt" question was discussed in 19th century Egyptology. Big deal. The problems with this article are obviously not due to disputes over how to present 19th century scholarship. The actual issue is the role of "black Egypt" in current-day Afrocentric ideology. This is what made this article a battleground, and this is what the article needs to discuss. It is nice to have the lead stating that there is not, in fact, any controversy in scholarship, but this isn't enough. The article lead should not just state what the article isn't about, it needs to state what it is about. --dab (𒁳) 15:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I would agree that the actual issue of the article 'should be' the role of "black Egypt" in current-day debates, and not only in the Afrocentric ideology but also in general society. For example, there is a huge amount of general interest in issues such as the skin colour of the Tut reconstruction, or the remains of the sister of Cleopatra, or the translation of the name "Kemet" etc. Maybe it doesn't happen in every workplace, but where I live many people in the street are aware of these issues and freely share opinions.
 * However its really wonderful that Dab has come to the party on this, because a number of admins have been insisting for years that there is actually no controversy, with other admins insisting that the article should be limited only to the History of the controversy, and both parties using their POV as the basis(?) for their frequent reverts and rollbacks.
 * Its however not true to say there is not any controversy in scholarship, because many of the most passionate participants are recognised scholars - Diop, Asante, Keita and others, just off the cuff. The lead only makes this statement now because Dab just inserted that sentence a moment ago to get the ball rolling - but its not borne out by the literature. However, its an excellent start. Wdford (talk) 15:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * People should know that this is not a pissing contest. You have to provide evidence like images and other drawings. I personally think they are black-to-brown people. 5 years of dispute is pretty ridicilous. Bear in mind the fact that Egyptians or Arabs in general that are from that region don't like to be associated with black people like sub-saharan. They consciously don't want themselves to be interpreted as a "black" person. That is probably racism and ethnocentricity. The dispute about this is probably from those brown/arab people trying to say that they are not "black," but we are little better than blacks and therefore ancient egyptians are not black because they can't be black. I have seen plenty of images that suggest that there were black people. Let's keep it simple people. My understanding is: 1) there were black people 2)commoners were mostly black looking at the tomb drawing images that were once in the article 3)royalty was more brown looking 4) south they go they lighten 5)north they go the darken. These are the facts. Whether people want to consider themselves black or white in the present day is pointless. Just seek the simple truth. Trueshow111 (talk) 07:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Use of Images
While I agree that images are helpful in an article such as this, we agreed previously that wiki policy requires that images only be used where they contribute to or clarify the content of the article. I don't think these particular images are even relating to the content at all - there are many other images which directly illustrate the controversy, but these appear to be merely random choices. Wdford (talk) 17:16, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Images helps this article. If there are images that is contradictory feel free to put that image. The images that were there was not made up by the inserter. That is a factual images that was painted during the time. The issue of POV is pointless in this discussion. Those pictures are the appearance of the people. People should be open minded about inserting pictures. Pictures speak thousand words. That was not cooked up by anyone. Random as it may be, feel free to put Cleopatra image. That cleopatra image is obviously western based. Since not any image is allowed, I will delete that Egyptian people image. Trueshow111 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:42, 20 August 2009 (UTC).


 * What are editors' view on the Sphinx images that user:AnwarSadatFan keeps deleting every week or so, with the rationale that the article should have no pictures at all in order for it to be neutral? I have reinserted them a couple of times, since they seemed to go with the text, but this is getting a bit tedious. Is anyone apart from AnwarSadatFan bothered one way or the other? -- JN 466  15:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I support you. I think we need images. Anyone inserting images is POV is ridicilous. Trueshow111 (talk) 23:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I fully support using images to illustrate the issues of the controversy. If the article was about "identifying the race of the ancient Egyptians" then we would need to choose images showing all races so as to be neutral. However the article is actually about the "controversy about the race of the ancient Egyptians", so we need to choose images which illustrate the controversial issues. For example the controversy about Tut is currently focused around the facial reconstruction and the NatGeo cover - that is the most logical image to illustrate that element of the debate. When reporting about the controversy re the alleged forgery of statues and paintings to create a false impression of the original race who painted them, it would be useful to the reader to be able to view images of the disputed statues etc. To deliberately leave out images which illustate the subjectivity of the controversy would be POV in itself. This does not mean it is acceptable to load the article with an array of arbitrary images in an attempt to "convince" the reader of any particular POV, so some discretion (and maturity) will be required here. Wdford (talk) 10:24, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Tutankhamun
The current section for Tutankhamun is almost non-existent, while in the Tutankhamun article there is now a lot of material on the race controversy. Should we start to rebuild the Tut section by moving the race debate from the Tut article to this article? Wdford (talk) 19:14, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Tut's appearance is obviously western/white people based bust representation. That section should stay there. Tut construction is obviously biased/POV image. The better image is to put the mummy of Tut and Ramses to illustrate the appearance of ancient Egyptians. People should not get so sentimental about this controversy. If they were black, state that they are black. If they are white, state that they are white. If they are brown, state that they are white. Facts are more important that whether you consider them white, brown or black. State the simple fact. Images help in this regard. Show the mummy, if you think the images that was once they are biased and make the look black. This is not a pissing contest. You have to prove one way or the other. My position is they are definitely brown-to-black looking people. More south they go there are mostly brown and more north they go they are more black. Probably the royalty looked more browner.Trueshow111 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Actually its not any kind of contest, and editors specifically are not allowed to try to "prove" anything here. This article is to document the controversial issues and the various positions taken by reliable sources, but not to "prove" anything. The Tut reconstruction image is controversial, which is why it specifically is relevant here. Showing mummies does not prove the race of the person necessarily, but where there is a controversy about a specific mummy etc then certainly we should include it (e.g. Ramses II?) The controversy about Tut does not appear to relate to the mummy, but if you happen to have an image of the mummy of Tut then please post it here. Wdford (talk) 18:06, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm suggesting putting all the different images in the article and leave it there as it is. Put couple of black looking image, put couple of brown looking image, put little bit white looking image. Make it 2 each to be fair. My suggestion of mummy is, if people think that any picture that is inserted into the article is POV and deliberate attempt to be subjective to make them look brown or black, just show the mummy. That is not a drawing. Reasonable people will make their own assumptions about the actual appearance of the people by trying to understand the mummy. Most reasonable people can tell what race a mummy is by just looking at it. It is common sense and not that hard. Put the Ramses mummy in there and don't say anything. If any image is biased. Even if someone thinks that the Egyptian cave drawings are biased and subjective view of ancient egyptians, put the actual mummy to be neutral. We don't have to imply anything. Just show their face and leave the article out. I personally don't think all the tomb drawings are biased drawing of ancient egyptians because they are the ones that drew it. If someone tries to recreate the appearance of Egyptians now like the face of Tut by National Geographic, it is reasonable to think twice. Trueshow111 (talk) 11:07, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. Do you perhaps have a photo of the Tut mummy, that we could use? Wdford (talk) 11:22, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Unprotection?
Can this talk page be unprotected now so that unregistered users can make comments? We can quickly restore protection if necessary. --TS 20:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That was me. I can no longer recall why I did it, and it should probably have been time-limited anyway. I've removed the semi William M. Connolley (talk) 20:34, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian art

 * I would like to include the following as a new section in the article, as I believe it is highly controversial as well as very relevant to the article:

The ancient Egyptian tombs and temples contained thousands of works of writing, painting and sculpture, which reveal a lot about the people of that time. However their depictions of themselves in their surviving art and artifacts are rendered in sometimes symbolic, rather than realistic, pigments. As a result, ancient Egyptian artifacts provide sometimes conflicting and inconclusive evidence of the ethnicity of the people who lived in Egypt during dynastic times.

Professor Manu Ampim is an historian and researcher specializing in African and African American history and culture. He has taught at Morgan State University in Baltimore, San Francisco State University, and Merritt College in Oakland, California. He has been published extensively, including a six-part essay on “The Vanishing Evidence of Classical African Civilizations.” He has also produced a book called “Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret”, in which he makes the claim that many ancient Egyptian statues and artworks are modern frauds that have been created specifically to hide the “fact” that the ancient Egyptians were black, while authentic artworks which demonstrate black characteristics are systematically defaced or even "modified". Professor Ampim repeatedly makes the accusation that the Egyptian authorities are systematically destroying evidence that “proves” that the ancient Egyptians were black, under the guise of renovating and conserving the applicable temples and structures. He further accuses “European” scholars of wittingly participating in and abetting this process.

Professor Ampim has a specific concern about the painting of the "Table of Nations" in the Tomb of Ramses III (KV11). The “Table of Nations” is a standard painting which appears in a number of tombs, and they were usually provided for the guidance of the soul of the deceased. Among other things they described the "four races of men", as follows: (translation by E.A. Wallis Budge: "The first are RETH, the second are AAMU, the third are NEHESU, and the fourth are THEMEHU. The RETH are Egyptians, the AAMU are dwellers in the deserts to the east and north-east of Egypt, the NEHESU are the black races, and the THEMEHU are the fair-skinned Libyans." The archaeologist Richard Lepsius documented many ancient Egyptian tomb paintings in his work “Denkmaler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien”. In 1913, after the death of Lepsius, an updated reprint of the work was produced, edited by Kurt Sethe. This printing included an additional section, called the “Erganzungsband” in German, which incorporated many illustrations that did not appear in Lepsius’ original work. One of them, plate 48, illustrated one example of each of the four “nations” as depicted in KV11, and shows the "Egyptian nation" and the "Nubian nation" as identical to each other in skin color and dress. Professor Ampim has declared that plate 48 is a true reflection of the original painting, and that it “proves” that the ancient Egyptians were identical in appearance to the Nubians, even though he admits no other examples of the "Table of Nations" show this similarity. He has further accused “Euro-American writers” of attempting to mislead the public on this issue. The late Egyptologist Dr. Frank Yurco visited the tomb of Ramses III (KV11), and in a 1996 article on the Ramses III tomb reliefs he pointed out that the depiction of plate 48 in the Erganzungsband section is not a correct depiction of what is actually painted on the walls of the tomb. Dr Yurco notes instead that plate 48 is a “pastische” of samples of what is on the tomb walls, arranged from Lepsius' notes after his death, and that a picture of a Nubian person has erroneously been labled in the pastiche as an Egyptian person. Yurco points also to the much-more-recent photographs of Dr. Erik Hornung as a correct depiction of the actual paintings. (Erik Hornung, “The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity”, 1990). Ampim nonetheless continues to claim that plate 48 shows accurately the images which stand on the walls of KV11, and he categorically accuses both Yurco and Hornung of perpetrating a deliberate deception for the purposes of misleading the public about the true race of the Ancient Egyptians.


 * Does anybody have any suggestions, or proposed amendments, before I upload the above material into the article? Wdford (talk) 22:37, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Ahkenaton
This section currently contains nothing of relevance to the article. Although the Armana family is certainly controversial for many reasons, I am not aware of any controversy that relates to race. Does anybody want to fill in the details here, or shall we delete this section for the time being? Wdford (talk) 14:41, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Great Sphinx
Most of that section should be deleted or re-written, it was already debunked and discredited on the Greta Sphinx article but the material seems to have been copied over here, see Talk:Great_Sphinx_of_Giza/Archive_4. Green Cardamom (talk) 04:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Accurate worldview: very USA-centric
This is just my reflection, but it seems that this article is very much a United States-oriented subject and seems to be the pet project of persons with an American-style Afrocentric agenda. Its mere existence appears to be a cause for contention, and it is not translated into any other language. I'm in favor of marking it as an American-centric topic. Anyone else concur?--Noopinonada (talk) 15:07, 23 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately this article is indeed being heavily influenced by a few persons with an African-American POV, although some of us who are not American are struggling against the tide to widen the scope and the perspective. Its not an easy article to fix, but we are moving as fast as the repeated mass-reverts and article-protections allow. Wdford (talk) 17:59, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Should this article be re-named "Modern American race controversy about the Ancient Egyptians"?--Alchemist Jack (talk) 10:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Um, I am sorry, but this is an American controversy. You very rarely find any actual African writers quibbling about the race of the ancient Egyptians, mostly because "race" is a problem of America, not African. Moreschi (talk) 11:04, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Removal of Neutrality Tag
I placed this tag on the article a few months ago, when it was ravaged by edit warring and mindless roll-backs. It has now been stable for a while, and the content has been upgraded to include the basic minimum necessary to cover the major points of controversy. I am happy to remove the tag. If anybody believes more is needed to achieve neutral coverage of the subject matter, please advise. Wdford (talk) 22:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This is terrible. It sucks. Admittedly the version I originally wrote, most of which survives, was incomplete and lacking in coverage of some major points, but at least it got the basics. The "ancient egyptian art" section is disgracefully biased, as is the "land of punt" bit. I am going to totally rewrite this based on the version I originally wrote, with a much bigger focus on the 19th-century origins of the meme and how it entered Afrocentrism via black Freemasonry. In addition, the focus was too narrow: George James wasn't as important as I made out, and I didn't have enough on van Sertima, Asante, Williams, etc. The best book on Afrocentrism currently available is clearly not Lefkowitz, whose focus in Not out of Africa ultimately too narrow for an article of this scope, but Stephen Howe's work, which has clearly been much better researched (in fact, he rarely contradicts Lefkowitz, but criticizes her for not getting the bigger picture). This and Black Athena Revisited are the two key sources to base this on. Moreschi (talk) 11:02, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * And around we go again. This is not an article on Afrocentrism, and I'm sure everyone knows that we already have an article on Afrocentrism, and that there is no need for the Afrocentrists to repeat all that Afrocentric material here yet again. This article has been expanded to cover the main elements of the controversy, in line with the article title. If anybody wishes to add more material to improve the "balance" of the discussion on the elements of the controvesy then by all means do so, but please remember that the article is about the controversy, not about Afrocentrism. Wdford (talk) 11:35, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, this is a WP:SS article of Afrocentrism, because there is no ROAE dispute outside of American Afrocentrism, with the sole exception of Diop. In fact, it seems that in general the claims of the American Afrocentrists enjoy little support inside Africa. This is an American dispute with American terminology from start to finish. It always has been and, Diop and Bernal (though he's only tangentially related here), always will be. Moreschi (talk) 11:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Its true that relatively few African people have become famous for debating the current position of the African-American Afrocentrists on a global stage, but that doesn’t mean Africans don’t debate this at all. There were (are) some active participants on both sides of the current debate who are not American – other than Diop – such as Theophile Obenga (who stood alongside Diop in those days), Ivan van Sertima and Zahi Hawass. I am generally supportive of the work of Howe, who I understand is not American either. Very importantly, though, is that the Afrocentrist theory of Black Egyptians was not the first racial controversy in the field – before Afrocentrism got into its stride, the main Ancient Egyptian race controversy revolved around the Dynastic Race theory, which held that the Egyptian culture came from Arabia. This theory was proposed and supported by Europeans like Petrie, and was eventually toppled by scholars outside the Afrocentrist camp. Even today the Arabian-origin theory is defended by Europeans like Dmitri Meeks, who has gathered a lot of inscriptions which point to the Land of Punt being in Arabia. So please, the controversy is not solely restricted to Afrocentrism, as much as some Afrocentrists would like to claim it as their own.
 * BTW, please would you clarify what objections you have to the existing section on the Land of Punt, which is fully referenced, gives both sides of the story, and states the mainstream position clearly as such?
 * Furthermore, I am surprised at your description of the “ancient Egyptian art” section as “disgracefully biased”, as once again it states the facts with references and gives both sides of the story. If there is more to that particular controversy then please add it in, but this incident of an Afrocentrist calling a recognized expert in the field a racist liar, and accusing a whole range of people of defacing artifacts and faking artworks for racist reasons, is undoubtedly controversial. Likewise, if there are other notable art-related race-controversies around, then by all means add them in – I’m not currently aware of any. Specific works such as this one (http://wysinger.homestead.com/kemsit.jpg) are certainly interesting, but I’m not sure that there is controversy about it – perhaps its not that well known.
 * Finally, I don’t mind which terminology is used, and I look forward to learning about Black Freemasonry - I always understood that Freemasonry was non-racial.
 * Wdford (talk) 16:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright, this is clearly not unsolvable. The "dynastic race theory" wasn't really a "race" theory as such. It was an "origins" theory proposing that the egyptians originated in mesopotamia (wrongly, as it turned out) and though it may at times have been tinged with "racial" issues Petrie etc were not trying to prove that the Egyptians were black or white in the manner of modern Afrocentrists. It is of course entirely notable and interesting but a bit of a red herring as far as this article is concerned. In the phrase "dynastic race theory", "race" simply means "ethnic group, people, volk", and not a skin colour band.


 * As regards the "Land of Punt", this is where the Egyptians thought they came from. A people, of course, generally don't understand where they did come from, and it may be that Meeks etc are simply trying to establish Arabia as the place where the Egyptians thought they came from. If so - and I would need to check this - this is another red herring here, being a minor academic dispute over what the Egyptians thought their origins were, not an actual "origins" dispute like the DRT, let alone an "OMG they were BLACK" Afrocentrist controversy. Re-reading this, it looks perfectly valid stuff, just out of place here. At Land of Punt, of course, it is very good.


 * As regards the "art" section, to my - perhaps oversensitive ears - this is written like it gives far too much respect to the Afrocentrist viewpoint, particularly the extensive list of this guy's credentials, which just seems unnecessary. I apologise if this was not the intention. Perhaps I'm just getting paranoid in my old age.


 * In general, all I am asking for here is refocusing. Material relating to Punt and the dynastic race theory ultimately doesn't have any place in an article on the Afrocentrist controversy, which is what this is supposed to be, and the "dynastic race theory" just wasn't a "race" theory in the modern sense of the word (which is of course anachronistic as applied to ancient Egypt). The Afrocentrist controversy is notable (stupid, but notable), the dynastic race theory is notable, and the Punt controversy is notable. But these are all separate from each other, and we shouldn't just ram them together. The more I look at this, the more it seems like you have written very good stuff on the dynastic race theory and Punt. I just don't see how they belong here, when this whole stupid controversy is, unfortunately, a matter of black and white. The DRT and Punt controversies are on a totally different level to the Afrocentrist stupidity, and ultimately they are also unrelated to it. Best, Moreschi (talk) 17:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * In that case, we are on exactly the same page, except for the "refocusing". The reason why I first got involved with this article, was precisely my disagreement with the paradigm that wants to limit the article to Afrocentrism. I don't see the controversy as being only black vs white, as the West Asian team deserves a look in at least, and maybe there actually was a “Mediterranean race” after all. The Cairo Symposium concluded that the Ancient Egyptians were neither black not white, which must surely open the door a little?
 * I therefore don’t see the Dynastic Race Theory as a red herring – to my mind (and to everyone around me here in Southern Africa) race and ethnicity are the same thing. I can't say exactly what Petrie was trying to prove at the time, but the clear consequence of the DRT was that the people who created the Ancient Egyptians' mighty civilisation were Mesopotamian, and all the evidence available at the time backed up his theory. The racial implications are obvious - Mesopotamian does not equal either black or white. Similarly, the more modern work of Meeks and others re the "Arabian Origin Theory" has similarly serious implications for the "race" of the Ancient Egyptians, as Arabians are not black or white either. Contrast the work of Keita, who is an Afrocentrist and who argues for a Cushite "origin".
 * I agree that the Punt and DRT controversies are on a different level to the Afrocentric claims, but I don’t agree yet that we should have separate articles for each of these different Ancient Egyptian race controversies. It seems especially dangerous to make it exclusively a black vs white issue, as the AE’s where not white, so what does that leave? By including the Punt and DRT controversies, a much more balanced picture is created. Don’t you think?
 * I think we can trust the Egyptians to remember where they came from – most cultures will remember something like a migration – especially if it was only a few hundred years earlier.
 * I am not trying to pump up Ampim at all, I was merely being "balanced". Apparently some university has indeed given this guy a chair in this field, which makes him a "notable" source. I think his theories themselves, and the refutation thereof by actual experts, are clear enough indication of his credibility - its not for us to question further.
 * Wdford (talk) 18:06, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Excellent, this is getting more productive by the minute. Alright, here we go. Since we are not in dispute over the facts, now I can start talking how to apply policy and style guidelines to them, and I don't have to waste my time re-educating yet another clueless ethno-nationalist. Believe me, that's some relief!

Ok, the problem here is WP:N and WP:SYN. Wikipedia articles are based on reliable secondary sources: notability is based significant coverage in multiple RS. Right? The problem is that we don't have any sources that conflate the DRT, Punt, and the Afrocentrists in the way that you have done; this is essentially your personal synthesis. It may be a synthesis I have sympathy for, but it's still not allowed. Pretty much everything available deals with just one aspect of all this. Together, you and I could take the respective available sources and write very good articles on the Afrocentrist silliness, and on the dynastic race theory, and on Punt. But nowhere could we find a source that deals with all of these as aspects of the same phenomenon: if we did so, that would be our synthesis. Of course, if we could find such a source...

A few other, minor points: it is only the Afrocentrists who want to make this a black versus white issue; as mainstream scholarship says, it is perfectly possible (indeed likely) that the Egyptians were neither: certainly not white, and not black either. Have a look at the Berbers as an example of a people who are both African and non-black and non-white, as it seems mostly likely the Egyptians were. Moreschi (talk) 18:23, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with you re the Berber example - I have worked on that article myself. I understand about WP:SYN, but I am sure I've seen sources that conflated the DRT with the black-white race debate. The UNESCO Symposium itself discussed this for days, and the general consensus (excluding Diop and Obenga) was that the AE's were not black and were not white either, and I'm sure some of them mention Asian migrations. I don't have my own personal copy of that report, so please give me a few days before you start deleting stuff. Petrie himself conflated Punt with the DRT, on the basis that an Arabian Punt was a stepping stone on the sea-route from Mesopotamia to the Red Sea border of Egypt, and David Rohl researched the most likely migration route itself quite convincingly. I will search out some sources on this matter, and if I don't find any then agreed we will need to edit stuff out. Wdford (talk) 11:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think describing Egyptians as "non-black" or "non-white" is somewhat simplistic. Even today some Egyptians and some Berbers would be identified as black. Many Tuareg berbers are indeed very dark skinned, File:Tuareg 3.JPG. And so too were some egyptians such as Maiherpri. OTOH some berbers have significant Iberian ancestry and are indistinguishable from Europeans . I would probably describe North Africans as a heterogeneous population with Eurasian and Sub-Saharan influences. The initial settlement of the Nile Valley was by Sub-Saharan Africans, but later migrations into the region were predominantly from Eurasia. As a result the North African sub-stratum is predominantly of sub-saharan origin, as evidenced by the language, but post LGM migrations from Eurasia have overwhelmed, but not completely erased, much of the initial sub-saharan gene pool of North Africans. So it is true that North Africans, have had at various times, varying degrees of "black" ancestry, making the issue the issue of whether they were/are black or non-black somewhat complicated. Wapondaponda (talk) 12:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Muntuwandi, this is not egyptians. This is an article on the controversy surrounding the race of the ancient Egyptians, which various sources say we can usefully regard as one ethnic group that didn't change much over time. And a more or less homogenous ethnic group, at that, with a small quantity (a couple of percent) of Nubian presence. The predynastic population of Egypt by migrations from the Sahara is documented at Sahara pump theory (see also Hoffman's book on this). If you have relevant sources surrounding the Afrocentric controversy and the skin colour of the ancient Egyptians then please present them. Otherwise most of your post was offtopic.


 * Wdford - sure, that's fine. This article has had problems (thank you Enriquecardova and about 20 socks) for years, it can wait a little longer before we really try to get something good. I wasn't aware of a connection between Punt and DRT but it sounds perfectly logical. There is of course a tenuous connection between the DRT and the Afrocentrists in that Afrocentrists will frequently bring up the DRT as an example of European racism in denying the African nature of ancient Egyptian civilization, and these same Afrocentrists are usually the ones claiming the blackness of the ancient Egyptians (though it's worth noting that Martin Bernal is very weaselly about doing so, and clearly knows he's on shaky ground with "Pharoaohs whom one can usefully call black"). But the connection is tenuous, and while DRT should be mentioned here right now I think it's afforded way too much space. Just so long as we remember that even if the DRT might be undergoing something of a revival, per Hoffman its essential lack of accuracy is not in dispute among mainstream academics. Moreschi (talk) 14:10, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have consistently disagreed with the notion that the subject of the race of the Ancient Egyptians is only restricted to Afrocentrism, I believe that is your own original research. If there are any reliable sources that deal with the race of the ancient Egyptians, regardless of whether or not they are related to Afrocentrism, then they are eligible for discussion and inclusion in the article. As has already been demonstrated time and again, there was adequate inquiry into the race of the Ancient Egyptians from the 18th Century, mostly from European writers not Afrocentric scholars. Wapondaponda (talk) 14:33, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There was certainly discussion of the origins of the Egyptians in European scholarship of the 18th century forward, yes. There was occasional mention of race, but I have yet to see any significant coverage of the race of the ancient Egyptians in the literature of this period. Of course you are welcome to present it, along with modern coverage in reliable sources of such discussion to establish notability. Moreschi (talk) 14:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Plus, 18th and 19th century Egyptology do not qualify as a reliable sources. Neither, of course, do Diop and crew, but since their theories are eminently notable, we write articles about them, based on the scholarly literature discussing them (Howe, Lefkowitz, etc). Moreschi (talk) 14:55, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I have listed some of these before but I will relist

I wouldn't say that race was "occasionally" mentioned. According to this review, Types of Mankind was a best-selling book in the 19th Century and it dealt primarily with race in Ancient Egypt. Information from the 18th and 19th Century is dated so it is not reliable in terms of contemporary views on race, but it is reliable as part of the historical development of the subject. The topic race of the Ancient Egyptians didn't emerge spontaneously in the 20th century, but has its roots in some of these early studies. The main point being it is not and has not been a subject restricted to Afrocentrism. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Good. Howe, I think, deals with some of this, but Trafton looks like another plausible option if we wanted an RS dealing with the Egypt-related scientific racism of the 19th century. We cannot, of course, synthesize an analysis of these sources: any description of them needs itself to be reliably sourced. Anything else that might help with that? Moreschi (talk) 15:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Having skimmed what's available of Trafton from gbooks, it looks like a very solid analysis of "American Egyptomania" of the 19th century. Howe, of course, analysizes this as well from the point of view of someone looking at the precursors of 20th-century Afrocentrism (he has a substantial couple of chapters on this). This is without doubt a valid topic that I didn't pay enough attention to when writing the September 08 version of this page, mostly because I hadn't read Howe at the time and Lefkowitz, frankly, isn't very good when it comes to the 19th-century debates. It is worth noting, however, that in both the 19th and 20th centuries, the impression you get from both Howe and Trafton is the debate has always revolved around American racial politics, and has only occasionally intruded into serious Egyptology (once serious Egyptology gets going, which isn't until quite a late date). Moreschi (talk) 15:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Its true that the Black Egyptian debate doesn't get much airtime in "serious" Egyptology, but the Dynastic Race Theory was fully mainstream for many decades. Wdford (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This is true, but, as I have argued extensively above, material relating to the dynastic race theory primarily (though not totally exclusively) belongs at, well, dynastic race theory (which could certainly use some expansion). Moreschi (talk) 15:48, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't have much interest in classical Afrocentrism theories as some of the arguments presented by classical Afrocentrists are either ambiguous or unconvincing. The origins of the Egyptians is nonetheless an interesting topic. It is for this reason that I have argued for a much broader scope of the article. Currently much of the material I worked on has been shifted to population history of Egypt, and is somewhat less controversial. However I think it is still very much related to content in this article. "Serious Egyptology" had hit a road block when it came to solving the problem of the origins of the Egyptians. Recent studies from population genetics have provided some new information. Basically "serious Egyptologists" may be handicapped when it comes to determining the racial origins of the Egyptians because their only tool was archeology. Fortunately, but unfortunately for this article, population geneticists don't publish information from a racial perspective, so it is not easy to make a case to incorporate their information into this article. Otherwise I believe that population geneticists, not serious Egyptologists, are close to resolving the problem of the "racial" origins of the Egyptians and other North Africans. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, fine, but while population history of Egypt could use a little work it is, fundamentally, a reasonable account of the history of scholars trying to solve a genuine scholarly issue concerning the origin of the ancient Egpyptians: where they came from and how the ethnic group has changed over time (or hasn't). This is notable and important and interesting. It is also totally unrelated to the Afrocentric furore, which is not concerned with origin, ethnicity and so on but purely with skin colour. There is no basis for conflating the two. Moreschi (talk) 16:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I have now minimised the Dynastic Race Theory section to a stub with links, and added some extra material which links the DRT with Afrocentric-related controversies. Although it has been subsequently disproved, and thus does not belong in the "current controversies list", it was certainly controversial towards the end of its day and its needs to at least be mentioned in the history outline. Wdford (talk) 21:28, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, looks fine. I've done a few minor copyedits and have fiddled a little with a lede, but over the next couple days I will start adding much more substantial content, so start holding your breath!


 * I'm still distinctly unhappy with the layout. A really good article should flow, it should tell a story. Well, telling a story has POV connotations, but what I mean is that the page should lead the reader on logically from one topic to another. This still feels like it's throwing together a group of loosely related topics and while the connections are there, the order is wrong and the connections just aren't made clear enough. Say what you like about the incompleteness and inadequacies of my Sept 08 version, but at least it was coherent and had a logical order.


 * I actually feel this is the major problem with the article: in terms of NPOV it's more or less OK, I think. The neutrality tag should really be replaced by suckylayoutandincoherent, or something similar. Moreschi (talk) 19:40, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the efforts - and I look forward to the extra content. However I don't think the layout is all that bad - it describes the origins of the controversy in fair detail, and in chronological order, up to date. It then outlines the various elements of the controversy that are still in play today. As these are all still current, I'm not sure if changing the order will make much difference, although I am happy to rearrange them if somebody has a specific preference. Maybe the Afrocentrism section could be trimmed down and made more coherent, especially as Afrocentrism already has a detailed article of its own, but you are aware of the background to this article. I do also think the UNESCO conference should appear at least in the Origins section, since that was a global conference dealing directly with the issue, before nationalistic priorities and political correctness closed the door and frightened scholars away from the topic. I have no problem with quoting Bard in the lead, but she hardly has the same status as a UNESCO conference of 20 boffins? Wdford (talk) 20:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, UNESCO will go back in. However, anything UNESCO related needs to be treated with caution: it has a long tradition of cultural relativism taken to extremes: these are the people who asked Diop to write their piece on the "origin of the Egyptians" in their African history. Howe, I think, has something on this. I understand it's improved in recent years, though.


 * The real problem is that most of what I wrote in Sept 08 has been retained, with a lot of extras thrown all over the top. The extras were needed but to due edit-wars and suchlike their structure has been a little haphazard. I admit I don't have anything to replace the current structure immediately in mind, but I'm sure I'll think of something. Moreschi (talk) 20:22, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The most obvious thing that jumps out at me is Punt. The rest of the "specific controversies" are memes in popular culture (as intended), but Punt just isn't. As Wford showed above, there is a valid link between the Punt controversy and the DRT - why then does one not follow the other in the article? Moreschi (talk) 20:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Wdford put the Punt material under "Specific Controversies" and the DRT under the "Origins" section, because the DRT debate has been settled and is now "old history" whereas the Punt argument still continues today. Perhaps we could rename "Specific Controversies" as "Current controversies" or "Unsettled controversies" or some such, to clarify this further? Alternately, in keeping with the Afrocentric flavour of the "Specific Controversies" section, I could move the Punt material into the DRT section under Origins, although this element of the argument is not yet "history".Wdford (talk) 21:32, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm. Moreschi still isn't happy. Have to see what that other half of my personality that I seem to need to talk about in the 3rd person comes up with :) Moreschi (talk) 00:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There is indeed a valid link between Punt and the DRT, because Punt is a part of the DRT! While the question of Punt’ location predates the DRT, the very notation that Punt is view by the AE as their ancestral homeland comes directly from the DRT. It’s a key component as to how Mesopotamians conquered Upper and Lower Egypt, without leaving too many traces in the North – the obvious place to conquer from. The conquest began in the south and they came from Punt, a place they sailed to, thus later Egyptians regard Punt as their ancestral homeland. Just as Flinders Petrie tells it. There is not a single AE source that makes a statement that Punt is the ancestral homeland of the Egyptians. Indeed reading the dozen or so AE sources concerning Punt, one should find it pretty hard to support such a far reaching claim, on its own. That is because the claim (or rather idea) comes as part of a larger theory, the DRT. It’s an interpretation, made to support the DRT as a whole, of the term “Land of the Gods”, never mind that not all AE sources speak of Punt as lying in the Land of the Gods. Example in Hatshepsut’s account Puntites is specific mention as living south of Gods Land. The really funny thing is that while the DRT as a whole has been discontinued, the Punt claim has not, regardless that the claim is made to support this theory.  Of course the claim also works for any theory that regards the AEs origin as laying somewhere in the south. Ex, if you believe Nubians’ founded AE, what better support exists in a claim that the AEs viewed Punt as their ancestral homeland!   It is a common neighborhood to place the locations of Punt in. Too bad the AEs never actually wrote it.Twthmoses (talk) 11:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Certainly Punt and the DRT are related, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Asian location of Punt influenced the formulation of the DRT - although Petrie & Co had stacks of other Mesopotamian evidence to work with as well. However, I can't easily accept the contention that the AE's never wrote that Punt was their ancestral homeland - if authorities such as Budge and Petrie have interpreted the inscriptions in that light, we will need a powerful reference or three from very notable sources to contradict them. Interesting also is that the Asian Punt hypothesis is based on a number of actual inscriptions, whereas the Somali Punt hypothesis is based only on an interpretation of the wildlife seen in the paintings of the Hatshepsut temple - while those same experts generally underplay the "accuracy" of ancient Egyptian art. Wdford (talk) 14:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)