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Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

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Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#21

Post by iguy »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #15
wernercd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's now commonly suggested" a lot of things are commonly suggested today that have no basis in reality or no representation in real history. This is no different than Ancient Aliens where all of history is changed to be full of Aliens. Creating what you want to see out of scant evidence to support the claim. "Connecting the dots" to say what you want. Taking history and deciding that "race" is the reason something…

So how do we have a 7000 word essay which sidesteps that claim without providing a better explanation. One of the claims in this essay is that noses were removed by early Christians to discourage polytheism - if so, then why do ancient Greek gods still have their noses? Whatever academic reason you can come up with, noses were ultimately targeted because someone with political power or some group of people specifical…

Lots of greek & roman statues have lost their noses too.

Also, you may be thinking that because Egypt is in Africa, its people in 2000BC were African in the colloquial sense of today. That's far from obvious, the Sahara is wide. Although the upper Nile reaches some way across it.

I am lazy to dig for references, but IIRC the status from ancient DNA was that the fraction of sub-saharan african descent in north africa has increased slowly over the last 2000 years or so, to maybe 10% today? I don't know whether such DNA tends to represent the elite (as you might expect statues to do) or not.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#23

Post by joosters »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #6

This article gives reasons why the statues were broken but doesn't give a convincing reason why the noses are particularly targeted (sure, you breathe through the nose - but you also breathe through the mouth). It's now commonly suggested that the statue's noses most obviously indicated African heritage: that they were representing Black Africans - and white Christians wanted to erase that heritage. I find it surpris…

Presumably: 1) the damage to statues can be dated - so we know roughly who did it, and 2) some of the damage is specifically targeted (like the article mentions, the left/right hand damage would have meaning to Egyptians, but has far less context to supposed Christian attacks)

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#24

Post by klyrs »

ordu wrote: post #18
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

Interesting. A thing I had heard over the years is that noses were kind of phallic (which seems pretty obvious), so if you were interested in a symbolic neutering, taking the nose off was both physically simple to do and symbolically potent.

I'm not sure that the obviousness of this kind could be trusted. The idea of "phallic" was popularized by Freud. It is understandable that we are now have phallic symbols and see them in any prolonged object, either it is because of our nature, or it is because Freud made us to see them. But I'd rather not to apply this very idea to people of ancient Egypt. Or at least I wouldn't trust it's obviousness. Obvious is no…

This is so weird to me. Some noses are kinda triangular; some are broad and flat... I can't think of a nose shape that even remotely looks like a phallus. Freud had an obsession with phalluses, and saw them in everything. Are eyelashes phallic? Are necks phallic? Is the upper lip phallic? What about chins? I think chins are at least as phallic as noses. Freud was a dang weirdo.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#25

Post by yizaa811 »

wernercd wrote: post #9
throwaway2245 wrote: post #6

This article gives reasons why the statues were broken but doesn't give a convincing reason why the noses are particularly targeted (sure, you breathe through the nose - but you also breathe through the mouth). It's now commonly suggested that the statue's noses most obviously indicated African heritage: that they were representing Black Africans - and white Christians wanted to erase that heritage. I find it surpris…

"it's now commonly suggested" a lot of things are commonly suggested today that have no basis in reality or no representation in real history. This is no different than Ancient Aliens where all of history is changed to be full of Aliens. Creating what you want to see out of scant evidence to support the claim. "Connecting the dots" to say what you want. Taking history and deciding that "race" is the reason something…

Their conclusion is that "research shows the statues were defaced to deactivate the life form believed to be within them."

Which is to say it hinges on the idea that the statues were not destroyed by racist western colonialists at all, because they found ancient texts mentioning defacement of noses. They don't actually prove anything, the standards of this kind of research are incredibly low.

The problem is that western egyptologist are unlikely to go out of their way to put effort into researching what particular crimes colonialists committed. The victor writes the history books, and they probably didn't even think to write prominently anything about the countless artifacts they destroyed, to them it was all just the work of godless subhumans so why bother.

They have a very good motive to do it, and that today the decedents of the racists will go out of their way to deny it isn't surprising at all.

The whole ancient alien thing comes from a different direction, its whole foundation lies in the disbelief that african people could've ever possibly built the pyramids, even aliens is a more plausible theory to them.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#29

Post by taneq »

stanrivers wrote: post #12

Part of me, completely without data and gut feel, thinks if I was going to smash a statue, I’m going for the head. A lot of these statues have broken heads too ... not all though. When I hit the head, I’m also a terrible person, meaning I’m definitely going for the face, no? What’s the part that I am likely to hit on the face first because it sticks out? What’s the part most likely to break on the head? Just a no-dat…

I'm interested in the assumption that if you're going to whack a statue around the head, hitting the face makes you an even more terrible person.

Like, what is bad about hitting a statue? And what is worse about hitting its face?

Can you talk more about that?

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