This image and the "supposed" meaning has been heavily reinterpreted and manipulated by Afrocentrists. I would not rely on their sites.

here is an old posting by our own Katherine Griffis, the image links are gone I think.

From: grifcon@mindspring.com (Katherine Griffis)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,soc.culture.african.american,sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: The egyptians were black
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 15:20:41 GMT
Organization: GRIFFIS CONSULTING

On Sun, 16 May 1999 10:30:40 -0400, Kristopher/EOS
<eoslives@net-link.net> wrote:

>Truth teller wrote:
>>
>> The question of the race of the egyptians should be mute,
>> they themselves said that they were black, ancient
>> eyewitnesses, such as the greeks ,Italians, ethiopians,
>> described them as being black, they even left evidence of
>> this in thier art.
>
>A) Learn to spell, learn to type.
>
> I could have sworn I'd seen Egyptian artwork that depicted
>in a manner differing from "blacks." ("Black" being a fairly
>meaningless term for purposes of heritage, for reasons that
>should be well known on at least some of these newsgroups.)

Hello Kristopher:

Yes, the ancient Egyptians did have specific ways of distinguishing
themselves from the Nubians, as well as all other groups. In the Tombs
of Seti I and Ramses III, they noted this as part of the so-called "four
races" motif, which in reality defined the peoples to the North, east,
west and south of Egypt.

Minutoli, in 1820, showed the rendering from the Seti I tomb, which can
be viewed as follows:

[www.geocities.com]

For the _actual view_ of the Seti I Tomb drawings, one may see
the Harry Burton photographs from 1921 at

[www.geocities.com]

with Hornung's commentary from his 1991 book, _The Tomb of Pharaoh Seti
I/Das Grab Sethos I_, [Zurich, 1991] at

[www.geocities.com]

There is a tendency by many Afrocentrists to rely upon a 1913 edition
of Lepsius' Erganzungsband, pl. 48 rendering of the Ramses III motif,
which was incorrectly rendered. As Frank Yurco pointed out in an
earlier discussion on this same topic

"...To make matters worse, the hieroglyph texts between these figures
were garbled. The original scenes both in Sety I's tomb and in Ramesses
III's tomb showed the Egyptians and the Kushites as distinctly
different. Also, the hieroglyphs on the real walls are distributed
between each of the four figures depicting each type. You can now view
the real photographs of both the Sety I and Ramesses III walls in
Hornung's volumes on the Valley of the Kings. I have been inside both
tombs myself and have seen these scenes and their texts, and on the
basis of this, the depiction in the Erganzungsband is not a real
depiction of what is on the walls but rather a pastische, arranged from
Lepsius' notes and garbled in the process. It is unfortunate that so
many people have depended on this depiction as reality, when a look at
the walls in both tombs shows that patently it is not reality."
%%%%%%%%

here is an old post from Frank Yurco (sadly now deceased)
From: fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu (Frank Joseph Yurco)
Subject: Re: WESTERN(WHITE)CIVILIZATION IS FOUNDED ON A BLACK AFRICAN CIVILIZATION.
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: howard-nfs.uchicago.edu
Message-ID: <ErIo60.2At@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: FJYurco

Dear Paul,

Those figures in the Lepsius Erganzungsband, pl. 48 are actually not
Lepsius' work, but a re-edition done in 1913, as I showed in my article
in Egypt in Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997).
To make matters worse, the hieroglyph texts between these figures were
garbled. The original scenes both in Sety I's tomb and in Ramesses III's
tomb showed the Egyptians and the Kushites as distinctly different.
Also, the hieroglyphs on the real walls are distributed between each
of the four figures depicting each type. You can now view the real
photographs of both the Sety I and Ramesses III walls in Hornung's volumes
on the Valley of the Kings. I have been inside both tombs myself and have
seen these scenes and their texts, and on the basis of this, the depiction
in the Erganzungsband is not a real depiction of what is on the walls but
rather a pastische, arranged from Lepsius' notes and garbled in the
process. It is unfortunate that so many people have depended on this
depiction as reality, when a look at the walls in both tombs shows that
patently it is not reality.

Most sincerely,

%%%%%%%%

Yurco's paper is:

Frank Yurco 1996. “ Two Tomb-Wall Painted Reliefs of Rameses III and Sety I and Ancient Nile Valley Populaition Diversity,” In T. Celenko, ed Egypt in Africa 109-111 Bloomington: Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Erik Hornung’s recent publication of Ramesses III’s tom scene of this relief demonstrates that, just as in the tomb relief of Sety I, four depictions each—of Egyptians, Rmt; Kushites, Nhsyw; Libyans, Tjhnw; and Syro-Palestinians, ‘Aamw, are shown, with one hieroglyph for each ethnic name written between every two figures. Each ethnic type was depicted with a distinctive complexion and in representative dress. Egyptians regularly were depicted as red-brown, distinctly lighter than the black Nhsy (Kushites).
. . . .

Current scholarship I Egyptology, not acknowledged often by Afrocentrists, has demonstrated that Egyptians were most closely related to Saharan Africans, culturally and linguistically (Hoffman 1991), and that such Mesopotamian influence as can be inferred, came through the Nile Delta town of Buto, as part of long-distance trade.


Bernard