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Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses?

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

#121

Post by dang »

Zelmor wrote: post #27
legohead wrote: post #23

Sounds like a lot of guessing. Apparently nothing is written in stone as to why they did this. The explanation reminds me of english teachers trying to interpret poems. It's also odd they mention removing the left arm has significance, but show pictures of statues with the right arms removed... My guess is it is related to some common speech, like a saying, or a gesture of some sort. Like flicking of the nose is a 'f…

Because religion is the drug of the unwashed masses, and there is a lot of those around everywhere.

Religious flamewar is not allowed on HN. Please don't post like this, or like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19389868, here.

In addition, would you please stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments? You've done it repeatedly, and eventually we ban accounts for that too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#122

Post by mcguire »

laurent123456 wrote: post #93
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…

It's quite common that the top comment asks "why is everybody saying X", as if X was a widespread opinion. But then you have to scroll three pages down to find the comments being referred too, and they are usually heavily downvoted.

...because somebody pointed out that the opinion didn't make a damn lick of sense.

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

#123

Post by dang »

altern8 wrote: post #50
fwip wrote: post #32

I'm surprised that the article didn't mention another popular theory: that many of the Egyptian statues taken by Europeans had their noses deliberately broken to obscure their blackness. As the theory goes, in order to make the statues seem like high art, it was necessary to make the culture seem more like the ancient Greeks and Romans. Removing their noses made it so the viewer could more easily read the statues as…

> [...] rather than the "primitive" countries of black people that Europe was busy exploiting. I smell a gender studies degree!

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing this a lot, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#124

Post by fromthestart »

novacole wrote: post #112
fromthestart wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 strongl…

>and looked like different creatures These are your words. These are your thoughts.

Great contribution. Allow me to expand.

The known world to you consists of various tribes of humans who all share rather similar physical phenotypes (white skin, soft, slightly curly to straight hair, similar facial features), with reasonably similar technology (metalworking, beasts of burden, farming, government of some sort, written language, the wheel) and suddenly you discover a group of beings with none of these things - no written language, no cultivated land, no domesticated animals, no wheel, no metalworking, and on top of all this, they look totally different from anyone you've ever seen.

It did not take evilness or malice of any kind on the part of medieval Europeans to reason that these beings, if they were human, were less human than they were. Morality is cultural and relative, you cannot demonize historic cultures through your enlightened lense.

So no, these are more than just "my words," this is a rational sentiment for a medieval European in the historic context. Globalization is a modern phenomenon. Why do you think there was incentive to put these people in zoos?

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

#125

Post by danans »

novacole wrote: post #78
danans wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's another interpretation, and I agree that the notion of a single "black" phenotype is fundamentally incorrect, which is why I qualified it. Anyways, the theory would be easily tested by finding examples of statues with the supposedly unacceptable noses that survive today, and see if they can be correlated with the ones Europeans took. The other thing that doesn't make sense about the theory is that if the…

The only reason there is any confusion about this is because the modern day Egyptian looks non African. And the only reason for this is because the indigenous population was displaced by Arab people during the spread of Islam. Whether or not the noses were intentionally destroyed or not it is most parsimonious to believe that the indigenous people of Egypt were African people. Thinking they werent would be like looki…

> Whether or not the noses were intentionally destroyed or not it is most parsimonious to believe that the indigenous people of Egypt were African people.

Of course, Egypt is part of the African continent. But I suspect that what you mean by African here is a set of physical phenotypical features that we sometimes pin on that term today.

There no evidence to suggest that was the only phenotype in ancient Egypt. If anything, artifacts seem to suggest that the population was multiethnic, comprised of a variety of phenotypes. That shouldn't be surprising - it was the central metropolis and power of the ancient western world, like NYC or London today, so it attracted people from everywhere.

> But this is only because of the displacement of the indigenous population serval centuries earlier.

As referenced in another comment, recent genetic analysis of ancient egyptian remains have disproved this, and demonstrated that they weren't so different from other modern middle eastern populations, and were also related to sub-saharan populations.

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

#126

Post by kharms »

novacole wrote: post #51
danans wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This theory doesn't hold up not the least because the surviving representations of noses in statuary don't look particularly "black" (interpreted very narrowly as the west sub-saharan facial phenotype), which is the image of Africans around which most Eurocentric racism is built. Look the statue in the article with an intact nose, and also the statues of the seated pharoahs at Abu Simbel. To my eyes, they just look a…

> the surviving representations of noses in statuary don't look particularly "black" I think this says the exact opposite of what you want it to say. The fact that they survived, may be that they were sufficiently non-"black" looking to leave them alone. Phenotypes come in ranges especially for black people, so a "black" nose is anything from the nose of a random Scandinavian to that of a Sudanese persons.

I read that as saying the nose holes on the broken statues don't look "black."

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

#127

Post by z3phyr »

Bartweiss wrote: post #84
dalbasal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We kind of don't have a word for "art" either. Historically/etymologically, art means "skilled work" or just "stuff made by people" (as in artifact). The word/concept seems to have evolved gradually to its current meaning with all its complex connotations of beauty, metaphorical depth and existing for its own sake. Even early modern and Renaissance art was probably seen differently to how we see it. A lot of the best…

> A lot of the best statues and paintings had religious purposes, kind of like Egyptians. I think it's worth distinguishing religious works from religious tools . As I understand it, religious works were generally made to glorify God in a cultural sense - mostly as commissioned works to make churches and cathedrals more impressive. That's substantially different than pieces with intrinsic religious significance, whet…

If you think it from a non-abrahmic perspective, most of the religious works were actually practical tools or stages to perform worship or sacrifices. Most of the statues were actively used for worship (albeit vanity must have played a role)

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

#128

Post by rodionos »

Not having a nose is ok compared to having a half of the head attached from another sculpture. This was the case in imperial Rome when the sculptors had to quickly retrofit works in progress to fit the new emperor. In some periods you had three emperors succeed each other, most certainly involuntarily, within a period of three years.

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

#129

Post by adictator »

fdloo3 wrote: post #41
throwaway434234 wrote: post #5

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. There probably are a lot of examples in the North (they are now part of some "secular" Mosque complex), but it's very apparent in some of the Hoysala temples that were partially/fully destroyed (esp. Halebidu), and in Vijayanagara. It's really quite sad. Then again, I suppo…

Well the other side of the coin is, Indian civilization survives. The same language, rituals, stories, music, food, imagery used, are all pretty much alive outside and inside thousands of temple even today. Those aspects of culture have somehow weathered invasion, natural disasters, famine, and drought. You can't say the same about Egyptian civilization.

Yep. India is the longest surviving civilization in the world. Indian civilization (& Hindus) survived despite numerous onslaughts from Islamic hordes & despite the 250+ British rule.
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