Professor P. F. Ceccaldi, with a research team, studied some hairs from the mummy's scalp. Ramesses II was thought to be 87 years-old when he died, and his hair had turned white. Ceccaldi determined that the reddish-yellow color of the hair was due to a dye with a dilute henna solution. Many Egyptians dyed their hair, and this personal habit was preserved by the embalmers.
 |
| Red-haired Ramesses II |
However, traces of the hair's original color remained in the roots. Microscopic examinations showed that the hair roots contained natural red pigments, and that therefore, during his younger days, Ramesses II had been a red head. Analysis concluded that these red pigments did not result from the hair somehow fading, or otherwise being altered after death, but did represent Ramesses' natural hair color. Ceccaldi also studied the cross-section of the hairs, and determined from their oval shape, that Ramesses had been "cymotrich" (wavy-haired). Finally, he stated that such a combination of features showed that Ramesses had been a "leucoderm" (white-skinned person).
THE RED HAIRED RAMSES II - LAST SIGNIFICANT WHITE PHARAOH
Egypt's last display of national vigor came with the red haired Pharaoh Ramses II (1292 - 1225 BC). Ramses II managed to re-establish the already decaying Egyptian Empire by recapturing much land in Nubia.
After this king, Egypt entered into a steady period of decay, caused directly by the elimination of the original Egyptians, and their replacement with a mixed population made up of Black, Semitic and the remnant White population. This racially divergent nation was never again to reach the heights achieved by the First, Second or the first part of the Third Kingdoms. In these later years there were competing claimants to the pharaohs throne, many of whom, racially speaking, bore no resemblance to the original pharaohs at all.
The mummy of the wife of King Tutankhamen has auburn hair.
A mummy with red hair, red mustache and red beard was found by the pyramids at Saqqara.
Red-haired mummies were found in the crocodile-caverns of Aboufaida.
The mummies of Rameses II and Prince Yuaa have fine silky yellow hair. The
mummy of another pharaoh, Thothmes II, has light chestnut-colored hair.
An article in a leading British anthropological journal states that many mummies have dark reddish-brownhair. Professor Vacher De Lapouge described a blond mummy found at Al Amrah, which he says has the face and skull measurements of a typical Gaul or Saxon.
A blond mummy was found at Kawamil along with many chestnut-colored ones.
Chestnut-haired mummies have been found at Silsileh.
The mummy of Queen Tiy has "wavy brown hair."
Unfortunately, only the mummies of a very few pharaohs have survived to the 20th century, but a large proportion of these are blond.
A farm scene from around 2000 B.C. in the tomb of the nobleman Meketre shows redheads.
An Egyptian scribe named Kay at Sakkarah around 2500 B.C. has blue eyes.
The tomb of Menna (18th Dynasty) at West Thebes shows blond girls.
The god Horus is usually depicted as white. He is very white in the Papyrus Book of the Dead of Lady Cheritwebeshet (21st Dynasty), found in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
A very striking painting of a yellow-haired man hunting from a chariot can be found in the tomb of Userhet, Royal Scribe of Amenophis II. The yellow-haired man is Userhet. The same tomb has paintings of blond soldiers. The tomb of Menna also has a wall painting showing a blond man supervising two dark-haired workers scooping grain.
The Funerary stele (inscribed stone slab)of Priest Remi clearly shows him as having red hair.
The eye of Horus, the so-called Wedjat Eye, is always blue.
A very attractive painting is found on the wall of a private tomb in West Thebes from the 18th Dynasty. The two deceased parents are white people with black hair. Mourning them are two pretty fair-skinned girls with light blond hair and their red-haired older brother.
Queen Thi is painted as having a rosy complexion, blue eyes and blond hair. She was co-ruler with her husband Amenhotep III and it has been said of their rule. "The reign of Amenhotep III was the culminating point in Egyptian history, for never again, in spite of the exalted effort of the Ramessides, did Egypt occupy so exalted a place among the nations of the world as she had in his time."
Amenhotep III looks northern European in his statues.
Paintings of people with red hair and blue eyes were found at the tomb of Bagt in Beni Hassan. Many other tombs at Beni Hassan have paintings of individuals with blond and red hair as well as blue eyes.
Paintings of blonds and redheads have been found among the tombs at Thebes.
Blond hair and blue eyes were painted at the tomb of Pharaoh Menphtah in the valley of the Kings.
Paintings from the Third Dynasty show native Egyptians with red hair and blue eyes.
They are shepherds, workers and bricklayers.
A blond woman was painted at the tomb of Djeser-ka-ra-seneb in Thebes.
A model of a ship from about 2500 B.C. is manned by five blond sailors.
The god Nuit was painted as white and blond.
A painting at the tomb of Meresankh III at Giza, from about 2485 B.C., shows white skin and red hair.
Two statues from about 2570 B.C., found in the tombs at Medum, show Prince Rahotep and his wife Nofret. He has light green stones for eyes. She has
violet-blue stones.
A painting from Iteti's tomb at Saqqara shows a very Nordic-looking man with blond hair.
Grafton Smith mentions the distinctly red hair of the 18th Dynasty mummy Henutmehet.
Harvard Professor Carleton Coon, in his book THE RACES OF EUROPE, tells us that "many of the officials, courtiers, and priests, representing the upper class of Egyptian society but not the royalty, looked strikingly like modern Europeans, especially long-headed ones." (Note: Nordics are long-headed.) Long-headed Europeans are most common in Britain, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and northern Germany.
Time-Life books put out a volume called RAMESES II THE GREAT. It has a good picture of the blond mummy of Rameses II. Another picture can be found in the book X-RAYING THE PHARAOHS, especially the picture on the jacket cover. It shows his yellow hair.
A book called CHRONICLE OF THE PHARAOHS was recently published showing paintings, sculptures and mummies of 189 pharaohs and leading personalities of Ancient Egypt. Of these, 102 appear European, 13 look Black, and the rest are hard to classify. All nine mummies look like our Europeans.
The very first pharaoh, Narmer, also known as Menes, looks very Caucasion
The same can be said for Khufu's cousin Hemon, who designed the Great Pyramid of Giza, with help from Imhotep. A computer-generated reconstruction of the face of the Sphinx shows a European-looking face.
It was once painted sunburned red. The Egyptians often painted upper class men as red and upper class women as white; this is because the men became sun-burned or tanned while outside under the burning Egyptian sun. The women, however, usually stayed inside.
In 1902, E. A. Wallis Budge, the renowned Egyptologist, described the pre-dynastic Egyptians thus:
"The predynastic Egyptians, that is to say, that stratum of them which was indigenous to North Africa, belonged to a white or light-skinned race with fair hair, who in many particulars resembled the Libyans, who in later historical times lived very near the western bank of the Nile." [E. A. W. Budge, Egypt in the Neolithic and Archaic Periods (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, 1902), p. 49.]
Later, in the same book, Budge referred to a pre-dynastic statuette that: "has eyes inlaid with lapis-lazuli, by which we are probably intended to understand that the woman here represented had blue eyes." [Ibid., p. 51.]
In 1925, the Oxford don L. H. Dudley Buxton, wrote the following concerning ancient Egyptian crania:
"Among the ancient crania from the Thebaid in the collection in the Department of Human Anatomy in Oxford, there are specimens which must unhesitatingly be considered to be those of Nordic type. [L. H. D. Buxton, The Peoples of Asia (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, 1925), p. 50.]
The Scottish physical anthropologist Robert Gayre has written, that in his considered opinion:
"Ancient Egypt, for instance, was essentially a penetration of Caucasoid racial elements into Africa . . . This civilisation grew out of the settlement of Mediterraneans, Armenoids, even Nordics, and Atlantics in North Africa . . ." [R. Gayre of Gayre, Miscellaneous Racial Studies, 1943-1972 (Edinburgh: Armorial, 1972), p. 85.]
When English archaeologist Howard Carter excavated the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922, he discovered in the Treasury a small wooden sarcophagus. Within it lay a memento of Tutankhamen's beloved grandmother, Queen Tiye: "a curl of her auburn hair." [C. Desroches-Noblecourt, Tutankhamen: Life and Death of a Pharaoh (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 65.] (See mummy picture)
Queen Tiye (18th Dynasty), was the daughter of Thuya, a Priestess of the God Amun. Thuya's mummy, which was found in 1905, has long, red-blonde hair. Examinations of Tiye's mummy proved that she bore a striking resemblance to her mother. [B. Adams, Egyptian Mummies (Aylesbury: Shire Publications, 1988), p. 39.] (See mummy picture)
A painting of the mother of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (18th Dynasty), reveals that she had blonde hair, blue eyes and a rosy complexion. [W. Sieglin, Die blonden Haare der indogermanischen Völker des Altertums (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1935), p. 132.]
Princess Ranofri, a daughter of Pharaoh Tuthmosis III (18th Dynasty), is depicted as a blonde in a wall painting that was recorded in the 19th century, by the Italian Egyptologist Ippolito Rosellini. [Ibid., p. 132.]
In 1929 archaeologists discovered the mummy of fifty year-old Queen Meryet-Amun (another daughter of Tuthmosis III); the mummy has wavy, light-brown hair. [R. B. Partridge, Faces of Pharaohs (London: Rubicon Press, 1994), p. 91.]
American Egyptologist Donald P. Ryan excavated tomb KV 60, in the Valley of the Kings, during the course of 1989. Inside, he found the mummy of a royal female, which he believes to be the long-lost remains of the great Queen Hatshepsut (18th Dynasty). Ryan describes the mummy as follows:
"The mummy was mostly unwrapped and on its back. Strands of reddish-blond hair lay on the floor beneath the bald head." [Ibid., p. 87.]
Manetho, a Graeco-Egyptian priest who flourished in the 3rd century BC, wrote in his Egyptian History, that the last ruler of the 6th Dynasty was a woman by the name of Queen Nitocris. He has this to say about her:
"There was a queen Nitocris, braver than all the men of her time, the most beautiful of all the women, blonde-haired with rosy cheeks. By her, it is said, the third pyramid was reared, with the aspect of a mountain." [W. G. Waddell, Manetho (London: William Heinemann, 1980), p. 57.]
According to the Graeco-Roman authors Pliny the Elder, Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, the Third Pyramid was built by a woman named Rhodopis. When translated from the original Greek, her name means "rosy-cheeked". [G. A. Wainwright, The Sky-Religion in Egypt (Cambridge: University Press, 1938), p. 42.]
We may also note that a tomb painting recorded by the German Egyptologist C. R. Lepsius in the 1840s, depicts a blonde woman by the name of Hetepheres (circa 5th Dynasty). The German scholar Alexander Scharff, observed that she was described as being a Priestess of the Goddess Neith, a deity who was sacred to the blond-haired Libyans of the Delta region. He goes on to state that her name is precisely the same as that of Queen Hetepheres II, who is also shown as fair-haired, in a painting on the wall of Queen Meresankh III's tomb. He deduced from all of this, that the two women may well have been related, and he suggested that Egypt during the Age of the Pyramids, was dominated by an elite of blonde women. [A. Scharff, "Ein Beitrag zur Chronologie der 4. ägyptischen Dynastie." Orientalistische Literaturzeitung XXXI (1928) pp. 73-81.]
The twentieth prayer of the 141st chapter of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, is dedicated "to the Goddess greatly beloved, with red hair." [E. A. W. Budge, The Book of the Dead (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, 1901), p. 430.] In the tomb of Pharaoh Merenptah (19th Dynasty), there are depictions of red-haired goddesses. [N. Reeves & R. H. Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997), p. 149.]
In the Book of the Dead, the eyes of the god Horus are described as "shining," or "brilliant," whilst another passage refers more explicitly to "Horus of the blue eyes". [Budge, op. cit., pp. 421 & 602.] The rubric to the 140th chapter of said book, states that the amulet known as the "Eye of Horus," (used to ward-off the "Evil Eye"), must always be made from lapis-lazuli, a mineral which is blue in colour. [Ibid., p. 427.] It should be noted that the Goddess Wadjet, who symbolised the Divine Eye of Horus, was represented by a snake (a hooded cobra to be precise), and her name, when translated from the original Egyptian, means "blue-green". [A. F. Alford, The Phoenix Solution (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1998), pp. 266-268.] Interestingly, the ancient Scandanavians claimed that anyone who was blue-eyed (and therefore possessed the power of the Evil Eye), had "a snake in the eye," and blue eyes were frequently compared to the eyes of a serpent. [F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origins (London: David Nutt, 1892), pp. 58, 62.]
In the ancient Pyramid Texts, the Gods are said to have blue and green eyes. [Alford, op. cit., p. 232.] The Graeco-Roman author Diodorus Siculus (I, 12), says that the Egyptians thought the goddess Neith had blue eyes. [C. H. Oldfather, Diodorus of Sicily (London: William Heinemann, 1968), p. 45.]
A text from the mammisi of Isis at Denderah, declares that the goddess was given birth to in the form of a "ruddy woman". [J. G. Griffiths, De Iside et Osiride (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970), p. 451.] Finally, the Greek author Plutarch, in the 22nd chapter of his De Iside et Osiride, states that the Egyptians thought Horus to be fair-skinned, and the god Seth to be of a ruddy complexion. [Ibid., p. 151.]
 |
| Yuya (left), and to the right, Tjuyu |
Biblical Joseph Egyptian Prime Minister during 1400 BC.
Father of Tiy, Yuya's blonde hair and Caucasian facial struture have been well preserved by the embalming process.
Thuya, Wife of Yuya.
Equally blonde and caucasian. She was the great grandmother of Tutankhamen.
Mother of Tiy
Egyptian Female Pharaoh: Queen Hatshepsut, wife of Pharaoh Thutmosis II. She ruled Egypt after Thutmosis' death in 1520 BC. Her long blonde hair and facial structure has been well preserved by the embalming process of the time.
Source: Burlington News
No comments:
Post a Comment