Italy (c. 1150) Found in the Vatican Library, Rome. Artist: Unknown Manuel I Komnenos was a Byzantine Emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean. His reign saw the last flowering of the Komnenian restoration, during which the Byzantine Empire had seen a […]
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Baronness Cecile de Massy, wife of Baron Christian Louis de Massy, son of the late Princess Antoinette of Monaco, and cousin of Prince Albert of Monaco. Cecile is the highest ranked black person in Monaco. She is the patroness of Ladies Lunch Monaco. Among its activities, she is also Vice-President of the Night Associations Monaco […]
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One of the two life sized statues guards Tutankhamen, which stood on each side of the sealed entrance to the burial chamber of the tomb 3,000 years ago. – Egyptian Pharaoh In 2008, a team began DNA research on Tutankhamen and the mummified remains of other members of his family. The results from the DNA […]
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She is a beauty queen and a favorite of many museum visitors, her tranquil demeanor and introspective gaze expressing what the Yoruba people consider a person’s inner spirituality. Crowned by a simple ridged headdress, this royal portrait head was part of a larger figure now lost. Her neck is creased as though with fat, a […]
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Pepi I’s reign was marked by aggressive expansion into Nubia, the spread of trade to far-flung areas such as Lebanon and the Somalian coast, but also the growing power of the nobility. One of the king’s officials named Weni fought in Asia on his behalf. Pepi’s mortuary complex, Mennefer Pepy, eventually became the name for […]
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Did a highly advanced civilization exist in prehistory? Is the Giza Pyramid a remnant of their technology? Then, what was the power source that fueled such a civilization? –Egyptian Pharaoh by Chris Ducas Ancient Egyptian art is the painting, sculpture, architecture and other arts produced by the civilization of ancient Egypt in the lower Nile […]
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In antiquity, Nubians believed that gold was a sacred material with protective powers, so jewelry makers used the metal frequently. Double Hathor head earring, Nubian, Meroitic Period, 90 AD. This is only a fraction of the ancient Nubian accessories. Gold earring Nubian, Meroitic Period Thousands of years ago, Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt made up […]
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Some Nubians self-identify as Africans, Afro-Arabs, Nubian-Egyptians, or simply Nubians Nubians are descendants of the ancient African civilization of Kush, which was situated between what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan, known for its famed “Black Pharaohs” and pyramids. Nubians in Egypt today are still influenced by the changes of the initial Arab invasions, […]
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Historian David Olusoga uncovers a history that is as surprising as it is revealing. The English had one of their great bursts of fascination with this continent and its people ultimately it wasn’t the Portuguese the English had to win over but the local (African) kings. We know that the first English traders who […]
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The jewel in the African civil engineering crown. They enclose an area the size of Greater London, or 30 times bigger than Manhattan. One of the largest monuments in sub-Saharan Africa: a 100-mile-long wall and moat whose construction began a millennium ago. Darling says that tropical landscapes are littered with ancient earthworks that dwarf more famous ancient mega-structures […]
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Ancient Egyptians Depiction In Art –No comment on this subject matter Genetic similarities of Africans and African descendants found in 2016? Source: This was Published on Aug 21, 2016 by Al Jazeera news Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi reports from a new settlement area in northern Uganda. Sudan, once the largest and one of the most geographically diverse states in […]
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This might explain why some Scandinavian genes are showing up in a few DNA test results of African descendants. –Sea expeditions of the Viking Age Three burials from early medieval Britain that have been identified as those of African women on the basis of an examination of their skeletal remains. One of the burials in […]
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The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BCE) to around 50 BCE. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw is translated as “Book of Coming Forth by Day”. Another translation would be “Book of emerging […]
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Queen Ati, wife of King Perahu of Punt, depicted on Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri. Somalia is among the most probable locations of the fabled ancient Land of Punt. Ancient pyramidical structures, mausoleums, ruined cities and stone walls, such as the Wargaade Wall, are evidence of an old civilization that once thrived in the […]
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According to this 1992 documentary produced by Penn Museum , Nubian Princes Were Educated At The Egyptian Royal Court. Nubia was important in Egyptian economic life. The relationship between Egypt and Nubia hinged upon the gold supply and the Nubian soldiers that were recruited for the Egyptian army. Another Nubian state was centered at Napata located near the […]
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The Queen is sitting in a beautiful throne chair. Beside her on the table is a great large Bible. She is wearing a royal gown, including the Queen’s crown. –University of Southern California Libraries The picture is taken in ca. 1890 in Tananarive. Ranavalona III was the last sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar. She […]
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The Walls of Benin were a combination of ramparts and moats, called Iya in the local language, used as a defense of the defunct Kingdom of Benin, which is present-day Benin City, the capital of present-day Edo, Nigeria. It was considered the largest man-made structure lengthwise and was hailed as the largest earthwork in the […]
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The reign of Arrakkamani (c. 280 BCE) when the royal burial ground was transferred to Meroë from Napata (Jebel Barkal). In the fifth century BCE, Greek historian Herodotus described Meroë as “the mother city of the other Ethiopians”. A photo of the Oba’s Pyramid before the 19th century in Benin, Nigeria Their connection to many major […]
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Gilded silver mask of Nubian Queen Malakaye who wears a striated wig and broad collar. Findspot: Nubia (Sudan), Nuri, Pyramid 59. Napatan Period, reign of Tanwetamani 664–653 B.C. From Nuri, pyramid 59 (tomb of Quen Malakaye). There are 200+ pyramids in Sudan. Most of the rulers were Nubian Queens. 1918: excavated by the Harvard […]
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Ancient Nubia In November 2011, Museum Curator Alex de Voogt, Postdoctoral Fellow Vincent Francigny, and Research Associate William Harcourt-Smith set out on a Constantine S. Niarchos Expedition to Sudan. Over the course of two weeks, the team traveled some 2,000 kilometers and visited about 20 archaeological sites dating from the ancient kingdom of Meroë. Beautiful […]
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Cultural Similarities: Libation was part of ancient Egyptian society where it was a drink offering to honor and please the various divinities, sacred ancestors, humans present and not present, as well as the environment. It is suggested that libation originated somewhere in the upper Nile Valley and spread out to other regions of Africa and […]
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Funi Aziri Bangwe is a historic open space in the city of Ikoni on Ngazidja Island, located in the Comoros in the Indian Ocean between the African continent and Madagascar. Named after the young crown prince of Hambu, it is a remarkable example of a seventeenth-century bangwe, or public square. Today it is used primarily […]
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What is a pendant ? It’s a piece of jewelry that hangs from a chain worn around the neck hanging downward. This ancient gold ram’s-head was made during the Kushite Period. Representations show these pharaohs wearing a ram’s-head amulet tied around the neck on a thick cord. Rams were associated with the god Amun, particularly in Nubia, […]
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Archaeologists excavated a sprawling temple complex dedicated to the god Amun at the Sudanese site of Dangeil. Egypt’s most important and enduring relationship was, arguably, with its neighbor to the south, Nubia, which occupied a region that is now in Sudan. The two cultures were connected by the Nile River, whose annual flooding made civilization […]
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There are two different kinds of Yoruba monarchs: The kings of Yoruba clans, which are often simply networks of related towns (for example, the oba of the Egba bears the title “Alake of Egbaland” because his ancestral seat is the Ake quarter of Abeokuta, hence the title Alake, which is Yoruba for Man of Ake. […]
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Roman; Thyreatis, Greece (c. 170 C.E.) –Tom Ljevar This marvelous bust is one of the very few documents of an actual black person from Greek and Roman antiquity. Memnon was a pupil and protégé of the well-known Athenian entrepreneur and philosopher Herodes Atticus. It was found more than a century ago in one of several […]
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Jan Gossaert was one of the first painters of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting to visit Italy and Rome, which he did in 1508-09, and a leader of the style known as Romanism, which brought elements of Italian Renaissance painting to the north, sometimes with a rather awkward effect. Beautiful intricate design gold breastplate / […]
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The occasion was front-page news in Britain, in Ghana, and many other countries. Coverage in newspapers around the world ranged from the hostile to skeptical to admiring. He was born in Kumasi to Nana James Appiah and Nana Adwoa Akyaa, members of the Ashanti imperial aristocracy. Joe Appiah, a Ghanaian political figure and former diplomat […]
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The back story: The Chief of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now known as Botswana) Seretse Khama & his English wife, Ruth Williams that he married in 1948. It was a whirlwind romance. Seretse didn’t seek consent from his uncle because he knew it would be denied, but Ruth had to ask her father George, who argued that […]
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The Colossi of Memnon (locally known as el-Colossat or es-Salamat) are two massive stone statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who reigned in Egypt during Dynasty XVIII. For the past 3,400 years (since 1350 BC), they have stood in the Theban Necropolis, located west of the River Nile from the modern city of Luxor. The […]
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Ras Mäkonnen Wäldä-Mika’él (May 8, 1852 – March 21, 1906), or simply Ras Makonnen, was a general and the governor of Harar province in Ethiopia, and the father of Tafari Mäkonnen (later known as Emperor Haile Selassie I). His father was Fitawrari Woldemikael Gudisa of Shewa. Makonnen was a grandson of Negus Sahle Selassie of Shewa through his mother, Leult Tenagnework […]
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To the ancient Greeks, the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa were known collectively as Ethiopians, literally ‘those with burnt faces’. Theirs was a fabled land connected to the Greek world in myth. For example, there is the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, rescued by Perseus, and Memnon, who led the Ethiopians in the Trojan War. –Black-figured amphora. Greek, […]
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