Evidence shows they were North African BEFORE Roman conquest. Let's suppose however, that isn't the case. Suppose Ancient Egypt was 99% Sub-Saharan Nubian, for instance. Why is that no longer the case? You're talking about foreign invaders displacing several tens of millions of people with NO evidence of such migration, and they never took it back.
I think, using our modern day racial categories, that the Egyptians were a mixed-race people.
If you’re using “North African” to mean Berber, I have a hard time with accepting that they were of mostly Berber roots because, not even looking at DNA, if we were to look at their genealogies, which have been well recorded, we can see that this is not the case.
I can give you an example -
The 19th dynasty (The Ramessids) was founded by Ramesses I.
Before he was crowned Ramesses I, his name was Paremessu.
Originally called Pa-ra-mes-su, Ramesses I was of non-royal birth, being born into a noble military family from the
Nile Delta region, perhaps near the former
Hyksos capital of
Avaris. He was a son of a troop commander called
Seti.
His uncle Khaemwaset, an army officer, married
Tamwadjesy, the matron of the Harem of
Amun,
who was a relative of Huy, the viceroy of Kush, an important state post.
[4]
It says that Paramessu’s father was named Seti or Shuta (according to the Amarna letters) and that Seti’s brother was Khaemwaset.
We know that Khaemwaset was Nubian.
Khaemwaset was an important
ancient Egyptian under king
Tutankhamun. His main titles were
troop commander of Kush and
fan-bearer on the Right Side of the King.
As troop commander of Kush he was in charge of the military forces in Nubia (Kush is the Egyptian word for Nubia) at the end of the 18th Dynasty. He is known from a statue found at
Kawa, that shows him together with his wife
Taemwadjsy.
Khaemwaset’s wife was Taemwadjsy who was described as a relative of Amenhotep Huy, the Viceroy of Kush.
Amenhotep called Huy was
Viceroy of Kush under
Tutankhamen. He was the successor of
Tuthmosis, who served under
Akhenaten. He would later be succeeded by
Paser I.
[1
Who were the Viceroys of Kush?
The former
Kingdom of Kerma in
Nubia, was a province of
ancient Egypt from the 16th century BCE to eleventh century BCE. During this period, the polity was ruled by a viceroy who reported directly to the Egyptian
Pharaoh.
It is believed that the Egyptian 25th Dynasty were descendants of these viceroys, and so were the dynasties that ruled independent Kush until the fourth century CE.
The descendants of the Viceroys ascended to the 25th Dynasty of Egypt.
The
Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt (notated
Dynasty XXV, alternatively
25th Dynasty or
Dynasty 25), also known as the
Nubian Dynasty, the
Kushyte Empire, the
Black Pharaohs,
[2][3] or the
Napatans after their capital
Napata,
[4] was the last dynasty of the
Third Intermediate Period of Egypt that occurred after the
Nubian invasion.
So Taemwadjsy was Nubian, being related to the Nubian viceroy, who married Khaemwaset, who was Nubian, who was the brother of Seti (Shuta) who we can surmise was undoubtedly Nubian being the brother of Khaemwaset.
And Seti was the father of Paremessu (Ramesses I) the founder of the 19th Dynasty.
Ramesses I was the grandfather of Ramesses II.
But Egyptologist will claim that Ramesses II did not have any sub-Saharan blood because his mummy had apparently red hair. And so his reconstructions appear as such..
It says that Paramessu’s family were nobles from the Nile Delta, which means his Nubian derived family were in Lower Egypt at the time and not in Upper Egypt closer to the Nubian borders.
I just have a hard time believing the native population was primary “North African” without any substantial sub-Saharan genetic influence when you have a clearly Nubian derived family, who were nobility, living in lower Egypt (not upper Egypt), who eventually ascended to the throne before the 25th dynasty. There had to be a substantial sub-Saharan genetic population in Egypt for that to happen, at least to me.
Taemwadjsy also had connections to Yuya and Thuyu, who were the parents of Queen Tiye, the mother of Akhenaten, and grandmother of Tutankhamen, so they even had an immediate genetic connection to Nubia.
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