To clear one point up, just because the IVth Dynasty individuals may not
be as dark as those of Dynasties I-III, does not make of them white
people!!! As Shomarka Keita has noted, in northern Africa environmental
factors developed a different variety of Africans than those of
sub-Saharan Africa, but nonetheless, those people were still Africans.
So the notion that some pharaohs were "white" is utter nonsense. They
were not Caucasians!!! To this day, northern Egyptians are lighter in
complexion and southern ones, are darker. This partly reflects the
original diversity of the population, and no, this was not a mixed race
as so many have asserted, another piece of old racist argument. What
helped this diversity was a slow steady inflow of Canaanites and other
Semitic peoples from the northeast, and Nubian-Kushites people in the
south. In no period did these slow migrations become a flood as some
have asserted that utterly transformed the Egyptian people. Yes, in
some periods there was heavier immigration, and in the Ptolemaic Era,
many Greeks and Jews settled in Egypt, but very few Romans.

Again even in the Muslim Period, sure there were Arabs who settled in
Egypt, but most settled around Cairo, save for a few tribes imported into
Middle Egypt. All the political action was in Cairo, and that's where
the society was awash with all sorts of foreigners, Kurds, Turks, and
all the other ethnic types these brought with them. The rulers though
disdained the fellahin as the peasantry were known and never even dreamed
of intermingling with them. The overwhelming mass of Egyptian people
derive from the peasantry. Note that the Copts, who have not intermingled
also come light to dark. Copts from Luxor and Aswan look exactly like
their Muslim neighbors in that part of Egypt, dark brown.

That is the real history of Egypt and its people.

Most sincerely,

Frank J. Yurco
University of Chicago

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Frank Joseph Yurco fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu