Comments on When We Were Kings

I want my Jew to build me one of those pyramids.

Uh, right. Because Egypt and Kenya are exactly similar, and 3,000 years ago is exactly like today.

I saw this last month when my copy arrived in the mail. I thought one of two things. 1. Since February's Black History Month this is a great piece to give to parents and teachers as one more important thing to teach their kids. 2. NG's for Obama and it was released a couple of weeks before Super Tuesday.

In that article, they basically say that racism is a European thing due to the fact that Egytians didn't see a person's skin color as a factor and how European researchers in the 1800s dismissed the fact that blacks could've built the pyramids in southern Egypt and Sudan.

well stated Fnarf!

is this the most recent issue of N.G.? i mean it is black history month, so it could just be a coincidence that Obama-mania is still in effect during Feb.

i also get the sense that Charlie is complaining about Obama-mania and the black pharoahs cover. there just is no pleasing some people....

It's all clear to me now, as foretold by Ben Harper in "I'll Rise."

"You may write me down in history
With your bitter twisted lies
You may trod me down in the very dirt
And still like the dust I'll rise."

Go Obama.

Talk about the bling on that black guy.

@5: Those are Maya Angelou's words, not Ben Harper's. Isn't she in Hillary's camp?

And there's a border collie on the cover of my current Nat'l Geographic. It's black and white.

I doubt your Jew will build you a pyramid, poe.

But if you're lucky, you might be able to get him to part the red sea with his staff.

Your people were never kings... Jesters maybe... boring ones

my staff is busy making pizza and burgers, but i'll see what i can do.

I'm with the commenters who observed that it's Black History Month. National Geographic continues to be a great classroom resource, and I'd be interested to see past February covers. (I looked for an archive online but couldn't find one.)

What's up with the pyramids in the background? Were there ones so steep? Maybe I'm flaunting my lack of ancient-Egypt knowledge, but I don't remember building those in the computer game Pharaoh.

oh me oh my. I should have said as Ben Harper fortold in the song "I'll Rise" with lyrics from a poem by Maya Angelou.

Which just gets me to this

"Does my happiness upset you
Why are you best with gloom."

Go Barak

@11. Buy the issue and read the article. You'll learn that there are pyramids in Sudan that were engineered and built by the Nubian pharaohs. The article explains why it's not considered common knowledge thanks to European archeologists/Egyptologists who dismissed the idea that blacks were intelligent to ever build pyramids.

or big daddy kane's entrance into the modeling world?

Yeah, wasting millions of man-hours of slave labor to build something as vain and idiotic as a pyramid sure qualifies as "intelligent" in my book. Not.

Those pyramids are super-steep. I'm pretty sure that the maximum angle used was about 54 degrees.

The nubian pyramids were also a lot smaller--about 30' high.

Egyptian pyramids used an angle of 43 degrees (google the "bent pyramid" for an example of an early engineering attempt...)

@13 - Awesome!

Heh. In the computer game Pharaoh, from which I draw 90% of my Egypt knowledge, the Nubians were definitely the Other, the savage hordes of mindless attackers set to destroy all the theaters and schools in my peaceful, well-paid, life-loving, pyramid-building monarchy.

So when are the colonizing ancestors of the Pharoahs going to apologize for slavery and pay reparations? It's funny how some people who are still bitter and demanding compensation for European colonizalism/imperialism/ racism say they were once princes in Egypt... which is no different than bragging about being the decendents of slave owners

you're way behind-that issue has been out for weeks!

#19: I guess the only difference is: descendants of American slaves were legally discriminated against in housing and employment and barred from hotels and restaurants about 40 years ago, instead of 4000 years ago.

21: Ah, but you're assuming the crytpo-racists around here are smart enough to make that distinction.