Has anyone seen this book re ancient Druids?

[RonLoving]

In the 60's I found a book. The author was "anonymous". It told a legend of a time people lived in the north at the pole area. The ice started and they migrated southward. Each place they settled temporarily, they taught the locals as much lore as they could . The book said in the area of what is today Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England their work was called (later) "Druid". It described how the group moved on through Persia and when they ended up in India their leader was known as "Ram". (Rama?) Tibetans also have legend of such a migration and they time it as around 18-20,000 years ago.
Has anyone seen this book? If so does anyone know the title? I'd like to re-read it. Oh, they also talked of a preparation made from Mistletoe known to them as "All Heal". Anyone know of such a concoction?
Blessings,
Ron

[Nightfalls]

Ive been reading a book lately and it mentions Mistletoe as "All Heal". I have not heard of the book you are referencing but yes i believe you are referencing ancient druid culture.

[DaRC]

it sounds like a story about the legendary Atlantis like place call Thule or Ultima Thule. You might want to search for that.

The reference to Mistletoe and the Celtic / Druid name I think originates from the Roman author Pliny the Elder.

[Corwen]

sounds bonkers.

[Scylla]

Hi

It may sound bonkers, Crowen, but I read time ago that the researchers on the genealogy of the ancient Pharaos discovered their genealogic background was northern european, probably a group of people that migrated from the ice that covered Europe and went to the mediterranean looking for more favourable lands, so why not? they based their theory on the fact that the pharaos of the Old Kingdom and until the arrival of the black pharaos, where all tall, white skinned and faired-red haired. Rameses II responds to this type, if you ever travel to Egypt and see his mummy you´ll see his hair is red, and it is the natural colour, not dyed or result of the mummification.

If you find any trace of that book please let us know, it may be worth a reading.

[Dendrias]

Ancient pharaohs from Europe? Like [url]http://www.druidry.org/board/dhp/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=36491]this here[/url]!
I wonder why somebody knows the skin colour of pharaohs. When he died, I read, he was at about 80 something - I know a lot of people with grey hair in that age.

Didn't bwt all people come 1. from the garden of eden and 2. from bable?

P.S. Just found this page, by chance.

BTW: Are there books by anonymous authors from modern times? From 16th century, okay, but from modern times? That's quite dubious, isn't it?

[verum]

Didn't bwt all people come 1. from the garden of eden and 2. from bable?

That would depend on what beliefs you hold.

[John T. Folden]

the fact that the pharaos of the Old Kingdom and until the arrival of the black pharaos, where all tall, white skinned and faired-red haired

Since when did this become a "fact"? It sounds like someone was trying, unsuccessfully, to white-wash Egyptian history.

[DJ Droood]

Since when did this become a "fact"? It sounds like someone was trying, unsuccessfully, to white-wash Egyptian history.

Is that the theme this month? White like me?


Actually, it reminds me of the song by the scholar and historian Steve Martin:

He coulda won a Grammy,
Buried in his Jammies,
Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia,
He was born in Arizona, got a condo made of stone-a,
King Tut!

Buried with a donkey (funky Tut)
He's my favorite honkey!
Born in Arizona,
Moved to Babylonia (king Tut)

[Scylla]

the fact that the pharaos of the Old Kingdom and until the arrival of the black pharaos, where all tall, white skinned and faired-red haired

Since when did this become a "fact"? It sounds like someone was trying, unsuccessfully, to white-wash Egyptian history.

Since they were represented like that in their own tombs, and in their statues they have blue, green or grey eyes. Quite different form the usual african eye colour.

Other facts come from laboratories, are they good enough?

[mwyalchen]

It may sound bonkers, Crowen, but I read time ago that the researchers on the genealogy of the ancient Pharaos discovered their genealogic background was northern european, probably a group of people that migrated from the ice that covered Europe and went to the mediterranean looking for more favourable lands, so why not? they based their theory on the fact that the pharaos of the Old Kingdom and until the arrival of the black pharaos, where all tall, white skinned and faired-red haired. Rameses II responds to this type, if you ever travel to Egypt and see his mummy you´ll see his hair is red, and it is the natural colour, not dyed or result of the mummification.

they were represented like that in their own tombs, and in their statues they have blue, green or grey eyes. Quite different form the usual african eye colour.

I'm not as well up on this as I used to be; but your comments here sent me back to my books.

I have in front of me reproductions of two wall paintings depicting Rameses II. Both show him with reddish-brown skin and dark brown eyes.

Another image shows queen Ahmose-Nefertari, wife of Ahmose, the first pharoah of the 18th dynasty, some 300 years before Rameses II. Her skin and eyes are both shown as black. She is presumably an ancestor of the remaining pharoahs of the 18th dynasty.

The back panel ofTutankhamun's throne shows him and his wife, Ankhesenamun. Both have red-ochre skin and black eyes.

The sculpted head of Queen Tiy, wife of Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaten: dark brown skin (this could just be the colour of the wood, but I think this is unlikely, as another band of wood, formerly covered by her (black) wig, is distinctly lighter.) The eyes are inset (I can't tell from the picture whether they are ceramic or stone) and the pupils are distinctly black.

And, going back far earlier, to the 4th dynasty, we have the statue of prince Rahotep and his wife Nofret. Rahotep's skin is ochre-red; though in this case his eyes, and those of Nofret, are indeed shown as grey.

Most other early statues have lost their pigment; but I have to say that, looking at the Narmer palette, or many of the statues of early pharoahs, their features do not seem Indo-European to me.

Now, that's quite a list; but I'd still be reluctant to draw the most obvious conclusion, because (despite the striking elements of realism in so much Egyptian portraiture) Egyptian art was highly stylised. The most obvious example is the contrasted depiction of men and women. In the statue of Rahotep and his wife Nofret which I described above, Nofret's skin is very light. Does this mean she is of a different race from Rahotep? No, this is just a standard way of showing men and women. It's not always the case (in the depiction of Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun from the throne-back, both have ochre skin) but in many scenes from many periods men are depicted with dark skin and women with light skin. It's simply an artistic convention.

Come to that, another image from the temple of Rameses II shows a kneeling woman with blue skin! And a famous image of the female pharoah Hatsheput depicts her as a man!

But there are a number of images from the New Kingdom in which Egyptians are contrasted with Asiatics and Nubians; and these may tell us something. A quote for you:

The iconography of the Egyptians' depictions of themselves and foreigners suggests that for most of their history, they saw themselves as midway between the black wooly-haired Africans and the pale, bearded Asiatics. Scenes in the tombs of the New Kingdom pharoahs Seti I and Ramesses III in the Valley of the Kings specifically depict the various human types in the universe over which the sun-god Ra presided. These types included reddish-brown Egyptians whose skin colour contrasts equally starkly buth with the black-skinned Kushites (Nubians) and with the paler-skinned Libyans and Asiatics. Although partly based on skin colour and other physical characteristics, these ancient ethnic types were also based on varieties in hairstyles and costume, and their function was apparently to allow the Egyptians to define themselves as a national group, relative to the rest of the world. Such depictions, however, would have been recognised by the Egyptians themselves as stereotypes, given that the thousands of portrayals of individual Egyptians show that the population as a whole ranged across a wide range of complexions, from light to dark brown and black.

Ian Shaw, "Ancient Egypt - A Very Short Introduction", p105

Unfortunately this whole question is highly politicised. Martin Bernal, in volume 1 of "Black Athena", gives an excellent history of the attempts in 19th and 20th century Europe to deny both any African origins to Egypt, and any Egyptian origins to Greek culture. More recently, there have been Afrocentric attempts to claim Egypt as a culture completely of Black African origin.

Because of this, there is a lot of very unreliable "information" floating around!

So, Scylla, if you seriously want to maintain this thesis about Indo-European origins for the Pharoahs, (over a 2000-year period, it seems!) I think you need to present your case in much greater detail, and provide links to a large number of images which we can judge for ourselves.

Otherwise, I see no reason not to be satisfied with the more obvious assumptions:

1) that ancient Egyptian culture was originally the creation of peoples indigenous to the part of North-East Africa we now call Egypt, and

2)that over a long history, through movements of people fostered by trade links and empire, by the period of the New Kingdom Egypt had absorbed and assimilated a diverse, multiracial population.

[DJ Droood]

I read somewhere that Napoleon's troops shot the nose off the sphinx with a cannon because it was obviously "African" looking, and they couldn't accept that such marvels were created by the locals...maybe I just made that up.

Anyway, it is remarkable that there are currently two threads going on here arguing that the Egyptian royals were really named Angus and Rory.

[mwyalchen]

I read somewhere that Napoleon's troops shot the nose off the sphinx with a cannon because it was obviously "African" looking, and they couldn't accept that such marvels were created by the locals...maybe I just made that up.

Well, I can't say about that one; but I've got another just as good: when British colonialists got to Great Zimbabwe, they were so convinced the place could not have been built by Africans that they had a think, remembered the round stone hut bases and compound walls found at some ancient sites nearer home, and decided that Great Zimbabwe must have been built by Welsh immigrants!

(While, just down the road were African villages composed of round huts within compound walls...)

Later on, the African origins of Great Zimbabwe became a campaigning point for the African movements against colonialism. By this time the "Welsh" theory was clearly ridiculous and could not be seriously maintained; so the Rhodesian administration passed a law making it illegal to discuss the origins of Great Zimbabwe at all.

[Dendrias]

And there is, DJ Drood, a thread about druids/Celts/Welsh/white-like-You people in north America.
The interest in an Atlantian-like spread of (superior, perhaps?) Celtic/Indo-European culture, whatever that may be, is quite common in certain groups. I wonder why. For people from the so called new world, I can imagine that relocation from their ancestors' country went together with a certain loss of identity that has to be restored, today. Maybe. Once you detect fondness of your personal ancestors, maybe you want the whole world, or the elite of the whole world, to share these great ancestors of yours. Or you can't even imagine, that because Welsh settlers came to north American in modern times, they couldn't have been there during antiquity or the middle ages. The mormons have come to some perfection in this.
I say that to distinguish it from the racist impetus outlined in mwyalchen's last post, because I don't want to insinuate racism on anyone. People will know where their motivation comes from, by themselves.

RonLoving's account of this book becomes even more dubious to me, as I began to think where abouts in the north pole region these people were thought to have been living. The closes island is Greenland, isn't it? Or was it in fact ... Atlantis?

[Oneonine]

I suspect white supremecist forums might be able to tell you a lot of books with similar plots. Explains why a modern author would remain anonymous too. Trying to salt folklore with faked up myths.