Ancient Greco-Roman descriptions of Egyptians

Egyptians had a "medium tone"

The Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness; less sun-burnt are the natives of India; the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it it a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone.
– Manilius, Astronomica 4.724

Here the term Ethiopians (= Greek "burnt face", denoting very dark skin) refers to Africans inhabiting latitudes south of Egypt (Snowden, 1989).  The term "Ethiopian," in that it was a broad category encompassing diverse ethnic groups of tropical Africa, was similar to a modern-day "racial" designation and roughly corresponded to what early anthropologists would have called "Negro."  Yet classical writers, as exemplified by Manilius' quote above, clearly differentiated the Egyptians from "Ethiopians."  Philostratus, for example, noted that a people living near the Nubian border were lighter than Ethiopians, and that Egyptians were lighter still.

Egyptians resembled Northern Indians

There are cases of Greco-Roman authors likening Egyptians' appearance to that of northern Indians, who generally do not look like black Africans.  According to Arrian (Indica 6.9):

The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically.

Strabo confirms in Geography 15.1.13, in almost identical wording:

As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in color, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Egyptians.

Arrian and Strabo concur that the Egyptians resembled northern Indians – who are usually straight-haired and occasionally as light-skinned as southern Europeans – rather than the dark Dravidian types of southern India. Furthermore, although Arrian and Strabo differentiate Ethiopians from South Indians in terms of facial form and hair texture, they cite no such differences between the Egyptians and northern Indians.

Afrocentric misreadings of classical texts

In their efforts to paint the ancient Egyptians "black," Afrocentrists rely heavily on misreadings of ancient Greek and Roman literature – many of which stem from a severe misunderstanding of the historical use of color terms.  In many ages and many cultures, descriptions of human complexion as "white," "brown" or "black" would correspond in modern usage to "fair," "tan" or "swarthy."  According to the anthropologist Peter Frost (*):

This older, more relative sense has been noted in other culture areas. The Japanese once used the terms shiroi (white) and kuroi (black) to describe their skin and its gradations of color. The Ibos of Nigeria employed ocha (white) and ojii (black) in the same way, so that nwoko ocha (white man) simply meant an Ibo with a lighter complexion. In French Canada, the older generation still refers to a swarthy Canadien as noir. Vestiges of this older usage persist in family names. Mr. White, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Black were individuals within the normal color spectrum of English people. Ditto for Leblanc, Lebrun, and Lenoir among the French or Weiss and Schwartz among the Germans.

In the same vein, the Greek words melas and leukos when applied to skin color were usually equivalent to "swarthy" and "fair" rather than the racial terms "black" or "white" as Afrocentrists would prefer (see definition of melas in the online LSJ lexicon).  There are numerous examples of this usage in Greek literature – one unequivocal example describes an aged Odysseus magically regaining his youth (Homer Odyssey 16.172-176):

With this, Athena touched him [Odysseus] with her golden wand. A well-washed cloak and a tunic she first of all cast about his breast, and she increased his stature and his youthful bloom.  Once more he grew dark of color [melanchroiês], and his cheeks filled out, and dark grew the beard about his chin.

In describing the skin tone of Odysseus, Homer used the word melanchroiês – a form of the same word that other Greeks sometimes chose to describe Egyptians, and one that is the source of much Afrocentric misunderstanding.  If taken literally, the word would mean "black-skinned"; however, it is clear from the context that Homer means "of swarthy complexion" rather than racially "black," and intends to describe Odysseus regaining his youthful color.  Otherwise we would have to assume that during the process of rejuvenation Odysseus transformed into a black African!  This despite the numerous ancient artistic portrayals of Odysseus as Greek-looking and certainly not "black" in any modern racial sense.

Likewise, when the ancient writers described Egyptians as melas or melanchroes, they almost surely meant "dark-complected" rather than literally "black."  Any ambiguity in such descriptions can be resolved by noting that other classical writers such as Manilius specifically identified the Egyptians as medium in complexion rather than "black," and that the Egyptians portrayed themselves as lighter and finer-featured than their African neighbors to the south.

The Herodotus quote

Perhaps the most frequently cited Greek quote among Afrocentrists is that of Herodotus (Histories 2.104.2) describing Egyptians as well as Colchians of the Caucasus as "dark-skinned and woolly-haired."  That the Egyptians were dark relative to Greeks is not surprising, considering that the same is true today.  But Herodotus' description of Egyptian hair would, at first glance, appear to conflict with the physical evidence left by the Egyptians themselves – numerous mummies with hair still attached to the skulls showing more straight, wavy, or lightly curled hair types than "woolly."   The only way to make the evidence consistent is to assume Herodotus spoke in a relative rather than absolute sense.  That is, Egyptian hair was on average curlier than Greek hair, and the tightly-curled ("woolly") hair type was found more often in Egyptians than in Greeks – as is true today.  There is no reason to assume on the basis of Herodotus' words that all or even most Egyptians had "woolly" hair, nor that such hair found in Egyptians was as "woolly" as that of tropical Africans.  Indeed, Herodotus himself mentions only "Ethiopians" – not Egyptians – as having the "woolliest hair of all men" (Herodotus Histories 7.70.1).  Moreover, Herodotus' explanation that being melanchroes or oulotriches "indeed counts for nothing, since other peoples are, too" suggests that these adjectives did not apply exclusively to any one "race" of people.

An analogous example of a stereotype based on relative comparison comes from the medieval Arab scholar Ibn Butlan, who noted the Greeks as having "straight blond hair" and "blue eyes."  Does this mean that all medieval Greeks had a Nordic appearance?  Certainly not: it merely suggests that the blond-haired, blue-eyed type is more common among Greeks than Arabs and stood out more as a salient characteristic worthy of mention.  The Arabs, like the Greeks, noted characteristics that were unusual in their own population and used these traits to typify the foreigners.

Interestingly, Herodotus mentions the Colchians as another group having "dark skin and woolly hair."  Considering that the Colchians inhabited what is roughly modern-day Georgia in the Caucasus, it would seem that the vast majority of Colchians were most likely – and quite literally – Caucasian.  Of course Afrocentric diehards might claim that Colchians too were black Africans, but such a theory runs into trouble when one considers the observations of Hippocrates, who wrote that the Colchians in Phasis "are large and corpulent in body. Neither joint nor vein is evident. They have a yellow flesh, as if victims of jaundice" (Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places 15).  Nothing in Hippocrates' description suggests that Colchians look anything like sub-Saharan Africans and this further weakens the Afrocentric argument that Egyptians and Colchians must have looked like "blacks" on the basis of Herodotus' words.

Other ancient quotes cited by Afrocentrists

There are certain other quotes that some Afro-Egyptocentrists interpret in such a way as to conflict with other descriptions such as the ones at the top of this page.  The interpretations have similar failings as the Herodotus quote.  That is, (1) misconstruing melas and its variants as meaning racially "black"; (2) assuming certain traits mentioned in quotes are found in all or even most of the Egyptian population; and (3) assuming that when Egyptians do possess such traits, they are expressed nearly as strongly as in tropical Africans to the south.  Using similar faulty methods, Afrocentrists might as well say Jews in the Middle Ages were "black" because Joseph ben Nathan in the 13th century quoted his father as saying "we Jews come from a pure, white source, and so our faces are black."  Of course to do this would be to ignore the fact that in medieval Europe as in ancient Greece, black often meant "swarthy."  Likewise, Afrocentrists could insist that 12th-century Turks were "black" on the basis of their being exaggerated as "blacker than pitch or ink" in the epic Chanson d'Aspremont.  But we know on the basis of physical remains and ample pictorial evidence that neither the Jews nor Turks were actually "black" in medieval times.