I have a lot of friends who've become black nationalists recently and they talk a lot about the Egyptians being black. I've looked it up and there doesn't seem to be much written on it. What I have read basically says that it is impossible to attach modern motions of race to an ancient peoples but that seems like a cop out to me. If that is true, then why? What makes it impossible?
Because that would destroy the foundation upon which western civilization was built; that Europe was the cradle of civilization, and that her peers, particularly Africans, had accomplished little to nothing in comparison. But we know Egyptians were dark skinned persons with an absolute certainty at this point:
modern anthropological studies that the genetic mutation that birthed "white skin" occurred only within the last 7000 years.
Genetic analysis of pharaohs from the Amarna period confirm African ancestry.
Persons of the Arabian peninsula were dark complected up to the emergence of Muhammed.
Egyptians referenced the land of punt as their ancestral homelands, a region that lyes deeper in the Nile River Valley, south of modern Egypt encompassing Sudan, Ethiopia, & Eritrea.
The indigenous populations of Egypt have dark complected skin to this day.
Etc.