Ancient Egyptian race controversy

Controversy surrounding the race of ancient Egyptians has been a persistent meme in Afrocentrism since the early years of the 20th century.

Today, the debate largely takes place outside the field of Egyptology. Scholarly consensus is that the concept of "pure race" is incoherent; that applying modern notions of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic; and that as far as skin colour is concerned, the ancient Egyptians were neither "black" nor "white" (as such terms are usually applied today)

1820 drawing of a fresco of the tomb of Seti I, depicting (from left): Libyan, Nubian, Asiatic, Egyptians.

Origins

The roots of Afrocentrism lay in the repression of blacks throughout the Western world in the 19th century, most particularly in the United States. At the turn of the century, however, came a rise in black racial consciousness as a tool to overcome oppression. Part of this reaction involved a focus on black history, and counteracting what was perceived as white, eurocentric history in favour of a historical narrative of Europe (and what was viewed as its founding culture, ancient Greece) that gave blacks a more prominent role. To a certain extent Afrocentrism also arose as a backlash against scientific racism (broadly speaking, a 19th-century phenomenon) which tended to attribute any advanced civilization to the immigration of Indo-Europeans.

Specifically, this attempted rewriting of the historical narrative of Europe developed into two main forms: the claim that European civilization was founded not by the Greeks, but by the Egyptians, whose culture and learning the Greeks allegedly stole, and that the Egyptians themselves were not only African but also black. Often, Afrocentrists link the two claims, as the following quote (by Marcus Garvey) displays:

“

Every student of history, of impartial mind, knows that the Negro once ruled the world, when white men were savages and barbarians living in caves; that thousands of Negro professors at that time taught in the universities in Alexandria, then the seat of learning; that ancient Egypt gave the world civilization and that Greece and Rome have robbed Egypt of her arts and letters, and taken all the credit to themselves.

”

Both memes were to survive Garvey and to continue throughout the 20th century and up to the present day, provoking debate both in academia and in more public spheres, such as mainstream media and the internet.

KMT Series: Race in Ancient Egypt

In academia

In academia, the meme continued throughout the 20th century in the works of George James, Cheikh Anta Diop, and even, to a certain extent, in Martin Bernal's Black Athena. All three have used the terms "black", "African", and "Egyptian" interchangeably, despite what Snowden calls "copious ancient evidence to the contrary".

Founded in 1979, the Journal of African Civilizations has continually advocated that Egypt should be viewed as a black civilization. Figures attached to the group centering around the journal include Ivan van Sertima and J.H Clarke (who has advanced further the "Cleopatra was black" meme). Other notable proponents of the meme include Chancellor Williams. Mainstream scholarship has generally been critical of the journal: J.D. Muhly describes it as "well-intentioned but quite unconvincing and lacking in the basic techniques of critical scholarship."

Diop was particularly attached to the "black Egyptians" idea. His thesis dedicated to the topic had been rejected by the University of Paris in 1951, but after it had been published in the popular press as a book titled Nations nègres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture) in 1955, he successfully defended it in 1960. At the University of Dakar, he tried to establish the skin colour by measuring the melanin content of the Egyptian mummies, stating

“In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin color and, hence, the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility.”

Diop's work was well received by the political establishment in the post-colonial formative phase of the state of Senegal under Léopold Sédar Senghor, whose politics of African socialism was inspired by the Pan-Africanist Négritude movement. Diop further attempted to link Egypt to Senegal by arguing that the Ancient Egyptian language was related to his native Wolof. The University of Dakar was renamed in Diop's honour after his death, to Cheikh Anta Diop University. Diop participated in a UNESCO symposium in Cairo in 1974 and he wrote the chapter about the "origins of the Egyptians" in the UNESCO General History of Africa.

In the public sphere

Debate in the public sphere has tended to focus more on the race of specific notable individuals from the history of Egypt, particularly Tutankhamun and Cleopatra VII. Attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features have encountered much Afrocentric protest over concerns that he has been represented as too white.

Cleopatra's race and skin colour have also caused frequent debate. Scholars generally suggest a light olive skin colour for Cleopatra, based on the facts that her Macedonian family had intermingled with the Persian aristocracy of the time, that her mother is not absolutely known for certain, and that her paternal grandmother may have been African (or indeed from anywhere at all) which is possible but not provable. Afrocentric assertions of Cleopatra's blackness have, however, continued.

Such claims by Afrocentrists have not been limited to Egyptians: Carthaginian general Hannibal and Roman Emperor Septimius Severus have also been claimed as black, despite limited or non-existent evidence.