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Bentresh t1_izu4xsm wrote

Reply to comment by TeacherAdorable4864 in Egypt: Portraits of Egyptian Mummies Discovered in Ancient Philadelphia by IslandChillin

Not necessarily. Many Egyptians, especially members of the elite, chose to represent themselves in a Greek or hybrid Greco-Egyptian style. As Lorelei Corcoran noted in Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt,

>It is futile to classify the subjects of the portraits in ethnic groups, as "Romans," "Greeks," or "Egyptians." For their part, "Romans" seem only to have made up one percent of the population of Roman Egypt (Steenken 1987, p. 14), certainly not enough to justify the numbers and geographic diversity of portrait burials. The ethnic or racial distinctions between "Greeks" and "Hellenized Egyptians" appear, moreover, by this period to have blurred (Shore 1972, p. 17). The patrons of the portrait mummies can be characterized as members of the wealthy sector of society of Roman Egypt that was at the time ethnically diverse, but culturally homogeneous, maintaining a strong indigenous tradition that critically "absorbed, modified and rejected foreign influences" (Ritner 1986, p. 243). The reassignment of the portrait mummies to the Egyptian sphere, however, raises an important question, "Where and how were those 'Greek and Roman' settlers in Roman Egypt buried?" Some must have become assimilated to this sector of society. The persistence of native burial customs might have been partially due to the intermarriage of foreign men with native Egyptian women who transmitted the traditions to their children (Pomeroy 1984, pp. 122-23). Other foreigners were either shipped home or buried (or cremated) in Egypt according to their own native fu- nerary traditions.

People of Greek descent made up a relatively small percentage of the population even in the Greco-Roman period.

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TeacherAdorable4864 t1_izu5c6m wrote

I qualified it with “most likely” but regardless my point remains - these images shouldn’t be seen as representations of indigenous Egyptian people or indigenous Egyptian culture. This is the result of colonial invasion by the Ptolemaic Dynasty/Alexander. It’s important to name that because there’s a long history of trying to make Egypt an extension of the Mediterranean without attaching the history behind it.

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MeatballDom t1_izu72jr wrote

> there’s a long history of trying to make Egypt an extension of the Mediterranean

What do you mean by this?

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TeacherAdorable4864 t1_izu7bly wrote

It means Ancient Egypt was colonized by Mediterranean cultures but was most influenced in its earliest days and founded on African + Near East cultures. Cleopatra and her family (as depicted similarly to these images) are not Ancient Egyptians. They are Ancient Greeks in Egypt. Hence the art work.

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MeatballDom t1_izu8jzs wrote

Egypt is both Mediterranean and African though, and Egypt had long been influenced by other cultures, commuities, and networks and trades long before the Ptolemies. These communities never existed in vacuums. And while yes, Cleopatra's family was Greek/Macedonian in origin, you have to also consider the scope of the time. We're talking three hundred of year between Alexander becoming pharaoh and Cleopatra dying. At this point the family was also Egyptian. Even though Europeans forcefully took control of the Americas we wouldn't say that Tom Englishman who's family came to the Americas 300 years ago is English, not American.

And as Bentresh has already pointed out, you cannot judge by the appearances in the art as to whether those people had Greek origins or not. These things, as is often the case, are more complicated than they appear.

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TheFamousHesham t1_izv3vqb wrote

Your understanding of culture is so shallow it’s frustrating. Culture is this constantly evolving thing. Cultures mix and transform and create something new.

Part of the reason why the Ptolemies kept a hold of Egypt for the best part of 300 years is their willingness to adopt the traditions of their new homeland. By the time Cleopatra VII was Queen no one (including Rome and her own subjects) saw her as anything but an Egyptian Queen. As for the local Egyptians, the vast majority seem to have been on board these changes and many adopted Greek customs themselves.

Modern DNA analysis suggests that Fayyoum (where these new mummies were found) is actually very homogeneously Egyptian, indicating that throughout its history it was relatively immune to waves of migration.

Whether you like it or not, “ancient Egypt” has been dramatically influenced by waves of its early invaders. These include the Greeks and Romans, but also the Nubian kingdoms in ~1000 BC. The Hittites and the Hixos. The Persians from the east and the Libyans from the west. That’s just how these things work.

As others have said, Egypt is culturally African, Mediterranean, and Arab.

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TeacherAdorable4864 t1_izu7upa wrote

It’s akin to some future civilization uncovering portraits of the US president and describing it as the “Ancient Americans” when there are earlier, truly Indigenous cultures - who are not from Europe.

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Electrical_Court9004 t1_izwfeu0 wrote

Well if you think that native Americans are an indigenous culture to North America then that would be incorrect because they descended from ancient paleo Siberian’s ( in fact some DNA evidence suggests they may also have been European... https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceshot-native-americans-were-mix-asian-and-european ) so they aren’t indigenous either according to your metric. You see how silly your hypothesis is?

As someone said, your understanding of culture isn’t very well developed or cogent. Just stop with the silly indigenous stuff, cultural osmosis is a thing and there is no ‘definitive’ culture in any given area on earth. It’s all a constant adaptation to and amalgamation of various cultures intermingling over time. A future civilization discovering a US president and describing it as an ancient American would be entirely true relative to the time period from when they discover it.

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