Lots of greek & roman statues have lost their noses too.
Also, you may be thinking that because Egypt is in Africa, its people in 2000BC were African in the colloquial sense of today. That's far from obvious, the Sahara is wide. Although the upper Nile reaches some way across it.
I am lazy to dig for references, but IIRC the status from ancient DNA was that the fraction of sub-saharan african descent in north africa has increased slowly over the last 2000 years or so, to maybe 10% today? I don't know whether such DNA tends to represent the elite (as you might expect statues to do) or not.
> Lots of greek & roman statues have lost their noses too.
Where "lots" is a much smaller percentage.
> you may be thinking that because Egypt is in Africa, its people in 2000BC were African in the colloquial sense of today.
I don't have to think this any more than I think every Roman emperor had perfect abs.
If (some) statue's noses were modelled after Black Africans, and (some) people took a conscious or subconscious dislike to this, then the consequences can be fast, or develop as a more general tradition over time, with multiple pseudo-academic cultural explanations.
Also, you may be thinking that because Egypt is in Africa, its people in 2000BC were African in the colloquial sense of today. That's far from obvious, the Sahara is wide. Although the upper Nile reaches some way across it.
I am lazy to dig for references, but IIRC the status from ancient DNA was that the fraction of sub-saharan african descent in north africa has increased slowly over the last 2000 years or so, to maybe 10% today? I don't know whether such DNA tends to represent the elite (as you might expect statues to do) or not.