Look the artwork from ancient Egypt and you will see what I mean. It isn't called Egyptianization, it is called the canon of Egyptian art, which defined how various figures should be represented. That is what I am talking about. Egyptian art was generalized, which means that any given image did not have to be 100% accurate for the individual being portrayed. Therefore, individual Egyptians did not have to be the same complexion in life as they were depicted in art. I don't disagree with that one bit. But that cuts both ways, because all populations vary in appearance and the ancient population of the Nile Valley was no different. Some were much darker than the portraits and some were lighter and most certainly many of the features were more idealized versions of what the person looked like in life. A good example of this is the fact that many 25th dynasty Kushite kings also portrayed themselves in the same reddish brown of the earlier dynasties. But none of that justifies trying to pretend that brown skinned Africans, including very dark brown Africans, were not the primary indigenous population along the Nile 5,000 years ago. Therefore, as I said earlier, Egyptian art does not give you a definitive view of all features in a given group to any degree of certainty. Just like some Egyptians varied in appearance from the way they were depicted in art, so too did some of the foreigners vary in appearance from the way they were depicted. The depictions of Libyans in Egyptian art only tells you generally that somewhere to the West of Egypt such populations existed. It does not say that all populations to the West of Egypt looked like this. That is stretching the evidence to cover more than can logically be supported. King Tut's face mask has nothing to do with it and neither did the fact that much Egyptian art was idealized. Egyptian art by itself does not tell you the precise geographic extent of ancient Libya or all the various peoples, customs and appearances for every group from the coast of Egypt to deep into the Sahara. I don't disagree that the Libyans existed to the west in the way they appeared in Egyptian art. My disagreement is against taking that fact and then extrapolating it to cover all populations to the West of Egypt in such a way to say that those depicted in any of the tombs from the Oases to the west of Egypt were actually the same as the Libyans in features and appearance and did not have their own separate identities and features separate from Libyans regardless of whether they are portrayed according to the rules of the Egyptian stylistic canon. More evidence in terms of archaeological and anthropological data is needed to determine this.


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