ABSTRACT
The ancient Egyptians distinguished sharply between themselves and foreigners, i.e. non-Egyptians. In art – apart from representations of ‘the Nine Bows’, discussed below – there is no such thing as a generic foreigner. Every representation of a foreigner can be identified, via his or her distinctive skin tone, hair treatment, dress and accoutrements, as the inhabitant of a specific, named region, such as Nubia or various parts of the Levant, the Aegean or Libya. Egyptian texts are also often very specific about foreigners in terms of their land of origin, but do use generic terms for foreign lands and peoples in general. In contrast, the Egyptians were usually identified as the people of Kmt, ‘the Black Land’, meaning the fertile flood plain of the Egyptian Nile Valley.
