Hi Joanne,

We know their color symbolism was quite different from our own, and we also know they loved the double meanings in words, if they could "hide" an abstract idea in a concrete picture.

Exactly!
We see the opposites in back and white, whereas the Egyptians saw the polarity in red and white, but paralleled red to yellow and black to green! The idea behind the use of a certain colour differs from ours… totally. This becomes blatantly clear by simply looking at the hieroglyphs and how they were coloured: each glyph had it’s own colour. For example the sickle was coloured green, probably because it was made of wood and hence used to have green leaves. Glyphs representing objects of clay were coloured blue like the wet clay they were originally made of. Whereas we would colour all of those items brown.
In other words, the ancient Egyptians’ conception of an object and it’s colour went further back than meets the eye and hence carried with it an entire conception not visible on the surface of the subject itself. Avry has written an excellent article, Out of the Green Sahara, about the hAst, axt and dw glyphs tracing the origin of the colours used and looking into the original idea behind those glyphs, and goes a long way to show that colour is not just colour as we understand it.

Now, this invisible concept behind the colour must also extend itself to the way the Egyptians pictured themselves and how they pictured their own country. Not only in their own eyes, but how they represented it to the surrounding cultures i.e. how they called their own land. Otherwise we are taking things out of their own context to satisfy own needs (whatever those may be).
Two very obvious things spring to mind directly. The first is the way the Egyptians “coloured” themselves: the men were red and the women were yellow. I don’t for one second agree with the Egyptologists about this reflecting the men having been outdoors more than the women. I personally think this refers to strength and beauty, but that’s another discussion. Why then would people picturing themselves as red and yellow call themselves the black people?
The second is the way they distinguished themselves from their neighbors and to their neighbors. Did they sail to Punt and say: “Hi, we are The Black People” just to hear the queen of Punt answer: “Heck, so are we!” Not a fine way to distinguish one’s own land, is it? But saying that we are the people of the Black Land, would be different, because they had something most of their neighbors didn’t: the fertile Nile Valley with the black silt!

Going back to the idea behind the colour and looking at their way of linking the conception of origin to the colours used, isn’t it true that Egypt only existed as it did due to the Nile Valley and the yearly inundation? The famous inundation bringing in the silt and colouring the valley black? The very origin of Egypt. This doesn't mean I'd dispute "kmt" meaning balck. It certainly did, but what did the word mean to the Egyptians is another story, one that those claiming "kmt" to mean Land of Black People obviously have not read.

OK, all this written I have to make something quite clear: I don’t personally give a rat’s behind about the colour of the ancient Egyptians. They could have been black, white, red, yellow or even green with polkadots (that would have been cool!) for all I care, because the colour of their skin does not change the magnificent culture they had. But I have to say, that to twist the meaning of their words and ideas behind those words, taking them completely out of context and making them serve agendas they don’t belong to is plain silly. And saying that I have put it mildly.


Oh, I forgot. here's a little Sunday morning entertainment about changing history. [www.youtube.com] Horus hawk and all!




Ritva



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2007 05:29AM by ritva.