What Ancient Egyptians Looked Like...?

[Gorgon]

Well, there was a significant influx of new genes when the Islamic invasion came through Egypt, so chances are their appearance changed somewhat. But essentially, I guess you are right, that people then looked like people now in a particular region where the "race" stayed more or less the same.

New genes rarely make dramatic changes in the phenotype of an entire country. There's certainly some influence that may be traceable, but in general terms it doesn't change the "looks" substantially. I don't know much about Islamic history of Egypt, patterns of settlement, gene influx, etc, but I'd say that modern egyptians aren't that different from the "old" ones.

There's unfortunately a lot of misconceptions even in the cientific comunity. You can certainly see misconceptions in the illustrations in our beloved ancient history books. Grab a copy of, say, Osprey's Rome's Enemies 4 - Spanish Armies, with illustrations by the late Angus McBride, or Greece and Rome at War by Peter Conolly; the Romans always tend to look somewhat like anglo-saxons, with light rosed-skin, etc. The ancient Spanish are always portrayed in these books as if the illustrators used a stereotyped version of a mexican for inspiration. The Greeks are somewhat better portrayed in my opinion than the other two, at least they don't tend to look like anglo-saxons in disguise. And let's not even start looking at Holywood cinema...

A curious thing is that in genetic terms and according to some studies I've read, the genetic make-up of the Greeks has more in common with the genetic make-up of modern Turks than with other "europeans". They don't look that different too, although there are certainly differences. The thing is that you ask an illustrator to paint a group of ancient Greeks and a group of ancient "Turks" and you'll end up with the Greeks looking "european" (with dark to blond hair, dark to light skin, etc) while the "Turks" will end up, most often than not, completely stereotyped with only dark skin, dark thick hair, etc, just like the Spanish in Angus McBride's Spanish Armies book. Again, Holywood doesn't help much (I don't think they care for the most part) and sometimes I wonder how much of the imagery used by these illustrators is culled, consciously or uncosciously, from there.