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Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

artsy.net

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Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#101

Post by RmDen »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #40

The computer geniuses here at Hacker News have decided the main argument of this article are wrong. But among archaeologists ritual defacement is understood to be a regular thing that happens to art all over the world. Roman coins defaced: https://www.coinsweekly.com/en/Defacing-the-past-damnation-a... Teotihuacan icons demolished and destroyed by fire: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/sep/24/teotihu...

Same with postage stamps, here are stamps of Bosnia defaced after WW I http://www.stampio.org/2019/01/the-revenge-of-yugoslavia-on-...

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#102

Post by benj111 »

peteretep wrote: post #31
reaperducer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see this in India at every temple that was raided by Muslims. The logic being that breaking the nose would make the "idol" unfit for worship. I find that interesting because when I was in Turkey it was common to see the ancient depictions of Jesus Christ on church walls with the eyes scratched off. The explanation given by the locals was the same as what you state for the statues in India.

Let's double-down on this and point out that the marauding Burmese desecrated temples of their neighbours -- knocking heads off Buddhas -- and they were of identical religions!

I believe Muslims recognise Jesus as a prophet [1], so there was more going on there than different religions.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#103

Post by fromthestart »

novacole wrote: post #57
aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and they didn't mention other crackpot theories either, like ancient aliens destroying the statue's faces with zero-point energy weapons. I wonder why?

Why would it be a crackpot theory to suggest that for Western Europeans, whose civilization as we know it starts in the late 1400s, who convinced themselves of African inferiority for the purpose of justifying their theft, rape, and murder of those people, upon seeing Black looking people in Egypt from thousands of years before their civilization started, would want to erase signs of it? Sounds just about right to me…

>who convinced themselves of African inferiority for the purpose of justifying their theft, rape, and murder of those people

The Africans they encountered had virtually no technology and no government, and looked like different creatures. It wasn't something that required rationalization. There's far less malice in this than you'd like to see.

As far as I am aware, there is no credible evidence that Egyptians strongly represented south African phenotypes or had the same shade of skin. It is a modern internet meme. Lay off the propaganda.

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#104

Post by eslaught »

asveikau wrote: post #97
soneca wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to collapse about 8 threads to find the first comment of someone doubting the argument (in a polite way). Your comment is popular because you are fighting a "easy-to-hate" minority that is only relevant because you made it so. You make fun of a kind of HN commenter that you find typical. But if your comment is the most popular (#1 now), and assuming that people are upvoting you because they agree that it is ind…

The character of a comment thread can change quickly here. I don't doubt the possibility that it was an overwhelming opinion when the parent decided to comment on it , even if no longer the case. So maybe the flaw is to over generalize the gist of the thread early in its history.

And on top of that, if GP didn't post this comment, then it might still be the prevailing sentiment in the comment threads. This is a case where making the observation that something is the prevailing sentiment can change what that prevailing sentiment is.

I don't know if this is true in this case, but I've seen it happen in the past. In some ways what you'd really like is a feature to go "back in time" in the comment thread and see how it developed, otherwise it can be difficult to appreciate coming in later.

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#105

Post by snambi »

poeji wrote: post #98
danans wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same language, rituals, stories, music, food, imagery used, are all pretty much alive outside and inside thousands of temple even today. Technically, it's not the same language, culture, etc. The living culture has changed considerably over the centuries both organically and via outside influences, including Islam. The surprising thing about India is that it has kept around so much of the really ancient stuff w…

This is a bit of a rosy view of acceptance. Buddhists thats painstakingly built the Ajanta and Ellora cave complexes weren't accepted. They were wiped out by the Hindu Priesthood that felt threatened. Human beings are capable of great stupidity irrespective of what culture they have preserved. There are great lessons in both, what they got right and what they got wrong.

There is no war or destruction caused by the Hindu Priests in the entire history of Hindus. They were neither trained in warfare nor they were taught to destroy/kill others. Most of these priests don't even touch meat or can stand the smell of meat. There is no way the priests can unleash violence.

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#107

Post by krapp »

fromthestart wrote: post #100
novacole wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the sickness of the people and culture of said people who would put people in zoos. If you can do that, you can’t put anything past that person/culture.

White man bad! I think the sickness is in our own very recent culture's push to deface historic European culture, and rationalize all sorts of interpretations of evilness by, ironically, dehumanizing Europeans, as you're doing here.

But.. Europeans did put Africans into zoos and freak shows and display them, and European culture did consider them subhuman. Just study the history of Sarah Baartman, for an example. Mentioning that is neither dehumanizing nor defacing European culture, it's a statement of literal historical and cultural fact.

That said, I don't really buy into the theory being presented here. I would need to see some documentary evidence supporting it first, such as a common cultural association at the time of "broad noses" with "Africans" or an attempt to portray ancient Egypt as a Caucasian society. People knew where Egypt was. The pyramids, temples and other signs of civilization were still there. Knocking the noses off of the statues wouldn't hide anything.

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#108

Post by danans »

poeji wrote: post #98
danans wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same language, rituals, stories, music, food, imagery used, are all pretty much alive outside and inside thousands of temple even today. Technically, it's not the same language, culture, etc. The living culture has changed considerably over the centuries both organically and via outside influences, including Islam. The surprising thing about India is that it has kept around so much of the really ancient stuff w…

This is a bit of a rosy view of acceptance. Buddhists thats painstakingly built the Ajanta and Ellora cave complexes weren't accepted. They were wiped out by the Hindu Priesthood that felt threatened. Human beings are capable of great stupidity irrespective of what culture they have preserved. There are great lessons in both, what they got right and what they got wrong.

I don't think that the process I described happened peacefully, or that nobody was wronged or injured in the process - I just observed that the result is a greater state of preservation of what preceded.

But even in the case of Buddhism, one outcome of the repression of Buddhism was the coopting of large parts of it, at least the parts that didn't threaten the Hindu social structure. Whether or not it is widely known today, Buddhism had a major reformatory impact on what we call Hinduism today.

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#109

Post by novacole »

fromthestart wrote: post #100
novacole wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the sickness of the people and culture of said people who would put people in zoos. If you can do that, you can’t put anything past that person/culture.

White man bad! I think the sickness is in our own very recent culture's push to deface historic European culture, and rationalize all sorts of interpretations of evilness by, ironically, dehumanizing Europeans, as you're doing here.

Putting people in Zoos is a good thing? It dehumanizes Europeans to say that it is sick to put people in Zoos?

Also, I never said anything about white people. I was talking specifically about the Western Europeans who put people in Zoos.

I think your comment perfectly illustrates the lengths people will go to and the ways in which they will contort their minds in order to uphold an strange idea that is dear to their hearts, however...

Re: Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

#110

Post by povertyworld »

Geimfari wrote: post #67
povertyworld wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting though that Arabs are not native to North Africa, so ancient Egyptians wouldn't necessarily look like many people today. They colonized the Maghreb around the 7th century. The indigenous people of that region are the Amazigh in the west and Copts in Egypt. Egypt today also has very light skinned people descended from European slaves the Turks brought in to aid their military.

Genetic testing on ancient Egyptian mummies showed they were most similar to modern day Arabs. Sub-Saharan African genes made up 6-15%, which is much lower than today's Egyptians. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controve...

Interesting. I had mostly thought about the region in terms of language groups probably due to coming from a history background, which relies on written sources, rather than anthropology or archaeology.

Looking at the sources for that wiki article, this appears to be one of the largest and most recent DNA studies on ancient Egyptian remains: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694.

Edit: To stay on topic, my textbook in a two semester art history survey ("Janson's") said that the defacement of Egyptian statues was due to religious iconoclasm without further specifics. I'm going to accept this as the mainstream academic consensus in the early 21st century. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this matches the general thesis of the parent article.

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