Inside the ancient citadel of the Black Pharoahs which has pyramids to rival Egypt

[xenon54 out]

Ya, indeed he is. A blight on the nation!

btw, if you want, start a pyramids thread, not the usual stuff, but discussions on it's base, foundations, build techniques. I'll contribute and hopefully learn something new as well.

I would be most interested in debate how many ancient civilizations decided on this building type, even when separated by time and seemingly inpassable oceans.

I would love to but google only spits the usual stuff, either things that are already known or some mystery stuff.

 

[Belew_Kelew]

Yes, the area of Southern Egypt (صعيد مصر) is quite mixed from what I recall. Arabs, Copts, Nubians and Beja people live there. Of course all Afro-Asiatic speaking peoples but nevertheless interesting.

Yes you are correct. Also The beja of south east Egypt are regarded as being the "big uncle" for eritreans since the majority of Eritreans are descendents of the Beja and Afar people who used to be one group thousands of years ago. In 1999 The bisharin Beja were the only group in Egypt to be officially recongnised as being the direct descendents of the new kingdom ancient egypt dynasty mainly the 18th and 19th dynasties. (ramses, thutmose, tut amun etc).

 

[denel]

I visited here back in the 90s. It is amazing to see how many pyramids there. From there drove up north into Egypt via Aswan. It is not to the scale of Giza but they are all over the place. A lot have also been lost to Nile floods as well. Sometimes when you are flying over Sudan, you can spot them from the sky.
They are distinctive different and cannot be compared.
Ethiopia is another treasure house of archeological sites - Lalibela is one such site and a miracle just to get there. Axum is another spectacular place to see.

 

[livingdead]

Were not egyptian pharohs black too. There were no arabs in north africa in bronze and iron age.

 

[Saif al-Arab]

Were not egyptian pharohs black too. There were no arabs in north africa in bronze and iron age.

Pre-Islamic Egypt was inhabited by Semites (Arabs were/are one of the many Semitic peoples) and Hamitic peoples who are related to Semitic peoples and who all to this day speak Afro-Asiatic languages (the oldest language family in the world). DNA tests confirm all of this. All the peoples of the Arab world are closely related and were that millenniums before Islam.

Pharaohs were part of many different dynasties (family lineages basically) and ethnic groups but the vast majority of them looked like your average Arab looks today. Meaning Middle Eastern/North African. Which is actually where Egypt is located, surprise, surprise and how most Egyptians look like.

The Pharaohs of the Kingdom of Kush in most likelihood also looked like modern-day Northern Sudanese who are a mixture of indigenous Cushitic peoples (Beja), Arabs and Nubians (Sudanic peoples) and obviously Copts.

In relation to Arabs we have most in common with Copts. Besides Beja people and Nubians don't number more than 10 million people in total.

See post 4.