Was the Carthaginian general Hannibal black? Were the ancient Egyptians?
Hannibal was from North Africa, an area that was then and still is inhabited by relatively light skinned people, Carthage was originally part of the Phoenician empire and became an empire of it’s own. There would no doubt have been people of Semitic, Aegean, North African and black African origin mingling there. Hannibal could have been black African but probably wasn’t. In ancient Egypt, like modern Egypt, the inhabitants get darker skinned as you move southwards. Egyptians are Hamitic Arabs, which means they are North Eastern Africans in a place that has had an influx of Arab speaking people, whose presence has obviously altered the language, but whether or not it had a big impact on the gene pool I don’t know. From the art of ancient Egyptians they seem to show themselves as a different race to the black Africans – the Egyptian men are often given a rich red/brown colour with women a lighter yellowish shade, whereas black Africans are portrayed as being much darker with bigger lips,
