A whole history was lost? Not at all. The area surrounding the Mediterranean has always had high variance in skin color even within a particular region. That be

A whole history was lost? Not at all. The area surrounding the Mediterranean has always had high variance in skin color even within a particular region. That being said, my guess is that the average “native” Egyptian was tan far before the 7th century when Arabs arrived. The population of the Levant (Syria, Lebanon…) was/is on average lighter than that of Egypt since one of the genes for “whiteness” originated there, but Egypt traded a lot with the Levant and there was some population mixture. The notion posited by other commenters of a lighter Coptic population being more representative of the skin color of the average ancient Egyptian is dubious, though they obviously mixed less with Arabs - those two statements are not mutually exclusive. It’s also worth noting that the average Egyptian is quite ethnically Egyptian. Arabs did not just come in and massively displace Egyptian DNA. For starters there were many more Egyptians than Arabs. People in the West can say that any non-Muslim minority in the Middle East is more representative of the “real” natives of the land because of less mixture with Arabs (e.g. Assyrians). Isn’t that too convenient and somewhat ridiculous of a narrative, given the common bias against Muslims?