Frizzy Red Hair in Ancient Egypt

I promised a bite-sized post at the end of that last article. However, this one will also be a little long. It's a passage from a publication titled The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland - Volume 18 (1889) and I didn't want to clip it down. Some of the language is a little dated, so apologies. It concerns the melting pot that was ancient Egypt though, so it follows on quite neatly from yesterday.

Beginning page 215:

"Khama. The ancient name of Soleb on the Nile in Nubia, where there is a celebrated temple of Thothmes III. Here we have the chief of Khama making his offering with the commander of Kush and another. 

One of the most important figures in this tomb is that of an Ethiopian Queen, in a chariot drawn by two oxen, white, pied or clouded with black, a kind still found in Abyssinia, as Mr Houghton remarks in the "Bible Educator." The Queen's complexion is reddish brown. Her face is now injured, but from the engravings it appears to have been well formed with regular profile. In these pictures Hui is receiving the subjects of his province, and, as Mariette says, "People of every shade of complexion and of every race present themselves before him. Some are Negroes with distinctive features strongly marked; others are of the Negro type, but brown in colour; others, also copper-coloured, have more northerly features; there are also men of a red tint like the Egyptians, mingled with white-complexioned women."

Mr Petrie's notes of colour are most carefully discriminated and very valuable. It is very curious to find in the paintings blacks with red hair. It is hard to suppose that this does not prove red hair in the original, and it reminds us of a strange race in Nubia, whom Miss Edwards describes as black in complexion, but with "light blue eyes and frizzy red hair," at Derr, the captial of Nubia; and higher up "fair" families, whose hideous light hair and blue eyes (grafted on brown-black skins) date back to Bosnian forefathers of 300 years ago. These people are "immensely proud of their alien blood, and think themselves quite beautiful".

Now I think there must have been red-haired blacks, and perhaps blonde-haired, in old Pharaonic days. As to blue eyes, in the painting, we have grey-eyed blacks, but not (I think) with red hair. In photo. 790 we have five negroes on ship-board of whom three are black with red hair, dotted with black (? "frizzy red hair,") and two are red-skinned with yellow hair.

Apart from blue eyes, however, we must take into account the dyeing of hair, and General Haig has kindly written to me: "I observed that you remark upon the curious fact of some of the Pun races being depicted with red hair, or brown, which there seems at first no way of accounting for. The Somalis constantly dye their hair these colours, I think, by plastering it with lime. This peculiarity strikes one much on arriving at Aden, where there are some thousands of these people. The hair is frizzly, and no doubt black by nature, and I suppose the colours mentioned are esteemed a beauty among them and obtained as described."

The custom described by General Haig may be as old as the use of antimony for the eyes, or henna for red staining. I think caustic alkali has been used in this country for brightening the colour of dark brown hair. Of course, it will not account for the light-blue eyes of Miss Edwards' hideous dandies. Mr. Villiers Stuart says that he has "seen red-haired mummies in the crocodile-caverns of Abou-faida." Mr. Petrie suggests that this hair may be white stained in some way."

A slightly long read, but worthy of record nonetheless (perhaps the next one will be nice and short).