I just started a part-time egyptology course and interestingly enough, the instuctor refered to egypt as being part of western Asia.

Your right about it being a melting pot though. Native egyptians, Nubians, Asiatics who didn't overun egypt, as the ancients would have us believe, but slowly integrated themselves into society through trade.

I think the only people who would have been of a lighter complextion would have been the Ptolemaic line as we know the were not egyptian and there line was constantly inbred so they remained Macedonian-Greek, with a bit of Syrian:-)

Okay, the picture hasn't loaded yet, but I have something to say.

Well, I don't know why people think that the Egyptians weren't darker colored. I mean, come on! And don't we have proof that Tutankhamen had dark skin?

Queen Tye was the daughter of Yuya and Thuya, I read somewhere that they were Nubian. If they were, they would have had dark skin, right? Well, that would mean that Akhenaten was at least half-dark. Did anybody ever realize that in Akhenaten's statues and images he has features of the Africans? And if Tutankhamen was Akhenaten's son, then he would have been part-Nubian, also (And we don't know if his mother, Kiya, was Egyptian or not!)

Okay, that probably doesn't make much sense, but I have thought this for along time and can't figure out why people NEVER think that the Egyptians could have had dark skin.

Hey, the picture loaded. Pretty cool.

-Akhenaten-

One speculation about Kiya was that she was a Mitanni princess originally called 'Tudakhepa' and then given an Egyptian name. What was the Mitannis' skin colouring.

I think it is safe to say that the Egyptians were a dark race. People who say anything else are probably very old school in there ways of thinking and the thought of a civilisation as powerful as Egypt being lead by black people would be hard for them to swallow.

Slave masters used to think we couldn't function on our own, we had to be lead. Some people still have that mentality.

I think we shouldn't get ahead of our selves as Black people. Yes many Egyptian rulers were Black, but lets not forget that many different nations had conquered Egypt and they were not all as Black as West Africans and African Americans. We can safely say though that Egypt probably looked like a New York inner city with mainly Blacks and Latinos, and Europeans here and there. Greeks confirm Egypts origin regardless. Lets not forget that more than Likely the 12 tribes of Israel that left Egypt according to the Old testament had more African Blood than Semitic blood by the time they arrived in Israel. Its all relative to teaching what the words actually say and not interpretation. There is no Middle East, that is strictly politics. Africa has been split by land movement and plates shifting, this is science. Middle Eastern people are themselves a melting pot of land split off from Africa.

Maybe I'm just wierd, but I'd always pictured the Egyptians to be tanned and Middle-Eastern looking. That's probably just me though.

But I can promise that they didn't have blonde hair and blue eyes (unless they were like albino or something...)