THE PREDOMINANT AND ORIGINAL POPULATION OF

ANCIENT EGYPT ACCORDING TO EUROPEAN

SCHOLARS AND HISTORIANS Edited by
Dana Marniche
THE PREDOMINANT AND ORIGINAL POPULATION OF ANCIENT EGYPT ACCORDING
TO EUROPEAN SCHOLARS AND HISTORIANS
Quote from 1867 by Egyptologist Champollion-Figeac The first tribes that
inhabited Egypt that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataracts and the
sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. The ancient Egyptians belonged to a
race quite similar to the Kennous or Barabras, present inhabitants of Nubia.
In the Copts of Egypt we do not find any of the characteristic features of the
ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with
all the nations that have successively dominated Egypt . It is wrong to seek
in them the principal features of the old race. From Letters published by
Champollion-Figeac (Founding Egyptologist).
Also written by Jean Francois Champollion
Dr. Larrey investigated this problem in Egypt; he examined a large number
of mummies, studied their skulls, recognized the principle characteristics,
tried to identify them in the various races living in Egypt, and succeeded in
doing so. The Abyssinian seemed to him to combine them all, except for the
black race. The Abyssinian has large eyes, an agreeable glance.prominent
cheekbones; the cheeks form a regular triangle with prominent angles of the
jawbone and mouth; the lips are thick without being everted as in Blacks; the
teeth are fine, just slightly protruding ; finally, the complexion is merely
copper-colored: such are the Abyssinians observed by Dr. Larrey generally
known as Berbers or Barabras, present-day inhabitants of Nubia. quoted in
the African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality published by Lawrence Hill,
1974 by Cheikh Anta Diop.
1886 The fundamental character of the Egyptians in respect of
physical type, language and tone of thought, is Negritic. The Egyptians were
not negroes, but they bore resemblance to the negro which is
indisputable. Found in Ancient Egypt by George Rawlinson and Arthur
Gilman, London, 1886, p. 24.
1911 Anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith the physical characteristics of
the present day Nubian, Beja, Danakil, Galla, and Somali populations are if
we leave out of account the alien negro and Semitic traitsare an obvious

token of their undoubted kinship with the proto-Egyptians. . Found on

page 75 in The Ancient Egyptians and the Origin of Civilization (London/New
York, Harper & Brothers).
The Egyptians, though healthy, large and robust were clumsy in their forms
and course in their features. Like other African tribes they were woolly
haired, flat-nosed and thick lipped, and if not absolutely black were very near
it in color. Found in Specimens of Ancient Sculpture Society of Dilettanti, Vol
1. quoted by J.A. Rogers, Nature Knows No Color Line p. 41, 1952.
1939 the type of certain Pharaohs, like Ramses II, appears related to the
Abyssinian type. Quote found in, The Races of Europe, Macmillan, 1939 p.
96 by anthropologist and racist Carleton S. Coon of the University of
Pennsylvania (a supporter of the eugenics movement in America).

European Historians On the Fellaheen of Egypt and Sinai in Contrast to the

Turks and Copts until the 19th Century
Up until the 19th century, and in the centuries previous, European visitors to
Egypt commonly contrasted the dark brown, half-naked and
indigenous Fellaheen agriculturalists with the fair or palecomplexioned Turkish-originated population of Egypt dressed in robes
and furs that had entered the country in large numbers. Today most natives
of the United Arab Republic of Eygpt consider themselves (thanks to
European colonials) representative of the indigenous people of ancient Egypt
. However, it is clear that less than a century ago this was not the case. Most
of the agriculturalists in Egypt had absorbed for centuries the incoming
Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula who were according to most accounts
dark or brown and the same color as the indigenous Egyptians, as well as
large numbers of slaves in early days from Asia and later mostly African and
Slavic slaves. Descendants of Byzantines made up a significant number of
the early Copts during the Muslim era. On the other hand Turks in the
18th through 20th centuries made up a rather significant portion of Egypt
s major cities and their descendants remain representative of the upper
class of Egypt as well as other regions of North Africa.
1845 A traveling lawyer from the mid 19th century Dawson Borrer wrote of,
gaunt brown fellahs half unclad, women wrapped up in scanty unwashed
garments with their faces daubed in curious devices of blue paint and
naked children from A Journey from Naples to Jerusalem, by Way of
Athens, Egypt and the Peninsula of Sinai p. 90 by Dawson Borrer,
Esquire translation by M. Linant de Bellefonde.

1860s Lucie A. Duff Gordon wrote of the appearance of Turkish Mamluk

soldiers in Egypt that were fair and blue-eyed who contrast curiously
with the brown Fellaheen. Gordon In Letters from Egypt 1863-1865 by p.
351-352 published by Elibron Classics in 2001.
1861 William Henry Bartlett The streets swarm with Turks in splendid
many-coloured robes, half naked brown skinned Arabs The Nile Boat,
Or Glimpses of the Land of Egypt by William Henry Bartlett 1861 p. A. Hall,
Virtue and Co.
1870 Samuel Sharpe on city of Alexandria in 1870, the poor of
the city, as of old are the half naked brown-skinned Fellahs. in The History
of Egypt : From the Earliest Times Til the Conquest of the Arabs Vol. II, p.
386, London : George Bell and Sons 1885.
1878 On the nile at Farshut the swarms of brown Fellaheen are
described in A Thousand Miles Up the Nile by Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards
Vol. I 1878. p. 150 published by
1875 The Fellaheen are described chocolate brown in the text,
Contributions to the Ethnology of Egypt in the Journal of Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 4, 1875, pp. 223-254
1879 If you have no wind you lie in the river and watch the idle
flapping of the sail and the crowd of black and brown fellahs howling for
baksheesh from Around the World with General Grant : A Narrative of
the Visit of General U.S. Grant, Ex-President of the United States to Various
Countries in Europe , Asia and Africa in 1877, 1878, 1879 published by John
Russell Young, Volume I 1879.
1899 With regard to the city of Cairo with its fair-skinned Turks and
its native Arab fellaheen east of this line 500,000 brown skinned Arabs
are living in the quaintest and most delightful, but at the same time dirtiest
and most dilapidated streets.. Cairo has a population of some 600,000
inhabitants p. 74 from The Redemption fo Egypt by William Basil Worsfold
published in 1899 by G. Allen.

Contemporary news article 14 August 2002, Issue No. 598, Cairo , AL -AHRAM
2002 The Muslim News Online concerning upper class in Egypt and
continued treatment of the dark-skinned or brown Egyptians:

racial prejudice is not exclusively directed at those from sub-Saharan Africa.

Upper class Egyptians, often fairer than their poorer compatriots, invariably
look down on lower class Egyptians who tend to be darker in complexion.
There is a subtle correlation between lower income and darker complexion.
The Egyptian upper classes and elites tend to be noticeably lighter in
complexion than their poorer and working class compatriots. They labour in
the sun, is sometimes the cynical explanation. Retrieved two August 27,
2008.
Edited by
Dana Marniche
September 7, 2008
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