Note : this article was initially linked to on May 23, 2001, though, as this was a low priority project, I dawdled a bit, and didn't complete it until June 12, 2001. (Later than that, if you count little touch-up efforts here and there).


The links coming after the next three are to the articles that I was replying to. This thread has since been "shut down" by the board monitor, so I've linked to a copy of the thread in the Internet Archive for verification purposes (and held onto a copy of said thread just in case Stephanie Cass continues her censorious ways). The material I'm responded to has been placed in yellow text for clarity.




Where : House of Netjer Message boards
Section : Third Intermediate, Late, and Greco-Roman Periods 1
Thread : Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity 2

On 5/18/00 at 4:45 PM, Neppy wrote :

"The Assyrian invasion of 871 B.C. drove the Kushite forces to the south ..."



Really? Let's look this one up. Something tells me that we're not going to need a trip to the library for this one, so I refer the reader to the introductory level book, The Ancient World, Hamlyn Publishing, ISBN 0-89009-263-X.

871 BC puts us prior to the reign of Shalmaneser III. The reference that I am looking at does not list the coronation date of Assur-nasir-pal II, Shalmanesers's father and predecessor on the throne of Assyria. However, the Assyrian Empire was expanding during this period, so let's see where it stood under Assur-nasir-pal. On p.37, we read

"He did not try to impose his rule west of the Habur River"

which, I believe one will find is a tributary of the Euphrates located in Syria. It is added that

"Moreover, his march to the Mediterranean, acknowledged by gifts from distant Phoenician cities, was no more than a propoganda enterprise ..."

In fact, it is not until 674 BC that the Assyrians are able to take the delta, and 671 BC that the pharaonic capital of Memphis is taken. (Yes, I know that's the western name for the city). Thus, somebody is off by 200 years, as much time as stretches between the start of G.W. Bush's presidency, and the Jefferson administration. He wasn't even close.

Further, the kingdom of Kush is listed as having been destroyed prior to the rise of the Nubian king Pianki in 730 BC, who became pharaoh as a result of a successful invasion of Egypt. Thus, there were no Kushites to expel, and had been none for about 70 years, when Memphis fell to the Assyrians.

Note : Nubian rule was to last for about 70 years. Pharaonic Egypt existed for about 2,400 years. (That is, even if we don't count the Ptolomeys as pharoahs, while we do count the equally non-native Hyksos because ... oh, there must be a reason somewhere). Hence, the occasional Afrocentric characterization of Egypt as being a Nubian kingdom seems curious on arithmetical grounds, if no other. While we may joke that some of the older faculty knew Alexander personally, may I trust that we do know that this doesn't really come close to being true? 70 years, is not 2,400, by any means.


"and began the harshness and misrule that destroyed the grandeur that once was Egypt".

So, apparently, the Assyrians are supposed to be "white", I take it? However, the Assyrians did not succeed in adding Egypt to their empire, and the pharoah Psammetichus expelled the Assyrian garisons some time after 658 BC. (About 13 years later). Hardly a long period, by Egyptian standards.


"Egypt continued to decline while a young nation on the other side of the Mediterranean Greece began to gather, its power around 500 B.C."

Young compared to Egypt, maybe. However, Greece was never unified during antiquity, except when it was conquered and made into a province. It was a collection of city-states.

It ended up being conquered by Macedonia, which was not considered to be a part of Greece at that time, any more than Thrace was. Somebody is projecting 20th/21st century ethnic affiliations, back on antiquity.


"In the year 332 B.C. Alexander the Great, a student of Aristotle, invaded Egypt."

No, he continued his invasion of the Persian Empire, which had occupied Greek cities on the Aegean coast of Asia minor, and had repeatedly attacked Macedonia and the Greek city states alike. Persia was not an innocent victim, but an imperialistic power which this time, had picked on the wrong neighbors. Egypt was not an independent country, but a brutalised Persian satrapy at this point. One which gave its Persian occupiers no support whatsoever.


"This was the first purely European invasion of Africa."

Really? What about the Ionian Greek city-states, vassals of Macedonia (that's Alexander's kingdom)? Greece was partially located in Asia at the time. Culturally, it has never been "purely European", either in ancient or modern times.


"The aftermath of this invasion, and the new European interest in dominating the trade of the Mediterranean world, led to the Punic Wars and the invasion by the Romans."

Um ... how? The principals were Rome, which was hardly an ally of Macedonia, and Carthage, a colony of Phoenicia. (The Phoenician city states had already lost their independence back home, and were out of the picture). Egypt wasn't even involved - the prizes for the first Punic war were Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, none of which are especially close to, or tied to Egypt.

It is interesting to note, though, that here we see the usual Afrocentric fixation on an imaginary European monolith. This is a convenient point of view for those favoring modern notions like "Affirmative Action", because it allows one to sidestep inconvenient questions like how does one deal with members of "European" or "white" ethnic groups that have a history of encountering discrimination themselves. One simply legislates the problem out of existence by declaring the "Europeans" (whoever they might happen to be) to be a single, monolithic group. It is, however, absurdly bad history and ethnography, with a more than faintly paranoid tinge. ("Oh, ignore those silly Westerners when they pretend to be fighting. They're really secretly acting in concert with each other").

A sort of Affirmative Action is what we are seeing here, I would maintain. Instead of guaranteeing a certain percentage of the jobs to the members of a particular "race" (ie. ethnic group), regardless of what an unbiased examination of the credentials of each applicant would lead one to conclude, one has a politically motivated insistence on reserving a certain percentage of the world's civilizations and history's accomplishments for the members of a particular race, regardless of what the evidence says on the matter. In other words, we have history being rewritten on an entitlement basis.

A unified European agenda in Roman, and Pre-Roman times? Please, let's get serious. These states were at war with each other almost on a constant basis.


"In Egypt a strong and shrewd young girl tried to deal with the plight of her country ... Her name was Cleopatra. More nonsense has been written about Cleopatra than about any other African queen."

Mostly by Afrocentrists, who are more concerned with grinding a political axe than with historical reality.


"mainly because it has been the desire of many writers to paint her white."

I believe that would be, the ancient artists who did her portrait, but let's not trouble ourselves with facts. It wouldn't be the postmodern thing to do.


"She was not a white woman, she was not a Greek."

... and the evidence for this assertion would be what? The fact that she was born on the African continent? So were the Afrikaaners. Am I to understand that Botha is a black man, and that whole nasty apartheid business in South Africa was just a mass hallucination, given that there were no white people there?


"Let us dispose of this matter before explaining the more important aspects of her life. Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color."

Except by those who did her portraits, it would seem. Note the lack of substantiation for Neppys' claim. S/he cites two sources, neither of which will stand scrutiny, and neither of which even pretends to be a general survey of the subject. "For example" is not a proof.


"Shakespeare in the opining line of "Anthony and Cleopatra" calls her "tawny."

Compared to an Englishwoman, I should think so. However, how did Shakespeare become a contemporary of Cleopatra? It is difficult to picture the two of them meeting outside of Elysium, as the bard wasn't even born until the middle of the second millenium AD, and Cleopatra failed to live into the first millenium AD.

How does one justify using his alleged testimony to overrule those who actually saw Cleopatra?


Now, let's look up the opening line of Anthony and Cleopatra. Philo is delivering the dialogue. He does refer to the "tawny front" that Anthony's eyes are gazing upon, but he adds "to cool a gipsy's lust (sic)" (Shakespeare was a great poet, but no geographer). Gypsies are indeed, "tawny", as are Arabs, to take a more familiar example. Neither, however, are Black.



"In his day, mulattos were called "tawny Moors."

In his day, mulattos would have been exceedingly scarce in England, and most unlikely to have a special name.

"The word "Moor" came into the European languages meaning black or blackamoor.

No, the name "Moor" referred to the North Africans from the Maghreb (what is now Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). They are still very much with us, and are hardly black.


"In the Book of Acts, Cleopatra describes herself as "black."

Really? Where? The Book of Acts is an account of the actions of the early Christian fathers. Cleopatra committed suicide after Anthony's defeat at Actium in 31 BC. This means that she has been dead for over 60 years, when the Book of Acts starts.

And yet she's speaking up in it? How did she pull that one off? May I assume that a medium was involved?


"After Julius Caesar was murdered, Cleopatra, still in her early twenties, met Mark Anthony ..."

Actually, she was in her late 30s.


"After Cleopatra's death, Egypt became a Roman colony and the harsher aspects of Roman rule settled over Egypt and the Middle East. To the south, in the lands untouched by Rome, new proud civilizations were rising."

Such as? Mero� was already in existence. If somebody is referring the Yoruba speaking cultures, they were still centuries in the future at this point.


"The more ruthless aspects of Roman rule made African and Middle Eastern people question old gods and search for new ones."

Ruthless compared to the Assyrian Empire, with its fondness for mass impalings? Where was the mass conversion during that period?


"This led to the development of Christianity and subsequently Islam."

Again, vagueness and a lack of substantiation. How did this alleged causation occur?


"From the beginning these were religions of the oppressed."

Oppression was not in short supply in Pre-Roman times. Note that neither Christianity nor Islam rose then. What did change, was that Classical Philosophy was disseminated, and created a favorable environment, for the reception of Christianity.


"When the oppressor, the Romans, stopped killing Christians and became "Christian" the religion was dramatically changed."

How?


"Their misuse of this religion and widespread dissatisfaction in the Roman colonies of North Africa and the Middle East facilitated the rise of Islam."

Small, inconvenient detail : Rome fell a few centuries before Mohammed was born. Unless Nepthys wishes to declare the Byzantine Greeks to be "Romans" for the sake of her discussion.




Sylvie replied on 5/31/00 at 4:58 PM :

"As I mentioned before my mother is Jewish. My family was from around the area that was regarded as Macedonia."

Not in the time of Cleopatra, they weren't. The Diaspora didn't occur until the reign of Hadrian, in the wake of the Bar Kocheba rebellion (AD 132-135), over 160 years after the death of Cleopatra. That is more time than that which seperates our own from that of the American Civil War.


"The people of that area were all types of colors black, white, and a great many brown (as in the Arabs of today). So there is really no way to be sure what color she was".

Unless one counts still-existing portraits. I must say that I envy somebody's longevity, though, if Sylphmacha's mother was around in the time of Alexander - that would make her over 23 centuries old. I'm afraid that very few of my relatives have made it past even their fifteenth century of life.

If she wasn't around then, though, the relevance of "my mom is a Macedonian" becomes a little questionable.

No, sorry. The Macedonia of Alexander's time was anything but cosmopolitan. The assimilationist "Brotherhood of man" was a product of the Hellenistic age, not the Classical.

Click here to continue.

(1) The "Third Intermediate, Late, and Greco-Roman Periods" section has since been cancelled. At the time of this writing, nothing can be seen at the old url one would have found this thread in, in the Internet Archive, because, as expected, Stephanie Cass did continue her censorious ways, and inserted a robots.txt file in order to keep people from being able to see this material. Not before I downloaded a copy of it for my own records, I'm glad to say.

To the reader, I would pose the question - if the House has nothing to hide, then why are they putting so much effort into hiding it?

(2) The House courageously deleted this thread a few weeks after the Egyptian electrification argument was deleted. Let it not be said that Stephanie Cass is anything less than thorough, when she decides to play "censor".