Talk:Race and ancient Egypt (controversies)/Draft

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Race and ancient Egypt is a topic that has been mired in controversy in the Western world. The debate usually occurs outside the field of Egyptology today, and it has centered around the question of whether the Egyptians have been significantly affected by foreign admixture or migration during their long history. Mainstream Egyptologists maintain that Egyptians were, and still are, simply Egyptians, and that ancient Egypt was a diverse society that sometimes integrated non-Egyptian peoples in its fold if they adopted native Egyptian customs and language. Afrocentrists and some members of the African American community contend that ancient Egyptians were "black". They believe that this black trait was strongest in early Egyptian history and that Egypt remained essentially a black, African civilization throughout the dynastic era.

Traditional depictions of ancient Egypt in the Western world have been rife with contradictions. At a time when many European nations were actively engaged in the Atlantic slave trade, notions of white supremacy and inherent black inferiority were the norm. The black presence in ancient Egypt was treated as a footnote, and the commonly purveyed notion of blacks in pharaonic Egypt was that they were Nubian slaves of very European-looking Egyptian masters and mistresses.

With the excavation of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt in 1922, a wave of what has been called "Egyptomania" swept the Western world, triggering renderings of ancient Egyptians in consumer goods, decorative art and in film. In American cinema, white actors typically played the roles of Egyptians, while black actors were usually cast as Nubian slaves.

Contents 1 Ancient view 2 Defining race 3 Egyptian reaction 4 Mummy reconstructions 4.1 King Tutankhamun 4.2 Difficulties of forensic reconstruction 5 Research 5.1 Anthropology 5.2 Genetics 6 Art and architecture 6.1 Language 6.1.1 Kmt 6.2 Egyptians and foreigners 7 Ancient writers 7.1 On modern use of ancient evidence 7.2 Herodotus 7.3 Other writers 8 Afrocentric writers 9 The Great Sphinx of Giza 10 Discarded hypotheses 10.1 Hamitic hypothesis 10.2 Dynastic race theory 10.3 Cleopatra 10.4 Nordic Egypt 11 References 12 Bibliography 13 External links 14 See also

[edit] Ancient view

The ancient Egyptians considered themselves a distinct ethnicity from their Syrian, Libyan and Nubian neighbors – a view echoed by modern-day Egyptologists who consistently point out that ancient Egyptians were Egyptian not "black" or "white".^[1][2][3] The dynastic race theory, which argues for a Mesopotamian origin of Egyptian civilization, has fallen out of favor in Egyptology as new research shows that Egyptian state formation was primarily an indigenous process, rather than the result of significant Lavantine and Mesopotamian immigration. To what extent Egypt has been generally influenced by its eastern neighbors is debated.^[4][5][6][7]

[edit] Defining race

Main article: Race

In biology, some people use race to mean a division within a species. Thus, in certain fields it is used as a synonym for subspecies or, in botany, variety. In the case of honeybees, for instance, it stands as a synonym for subspecies. In this usage, race serves to group members of a species that have, for a period of time, become geographically or genetically isolated from other members of that species, and as a result have diverged genetically and developed certain shared characteristics that differentiate them from the others. Although these characteristics rarely appear in all members of the group, they are more marked in or appear more frequently than in the others.

The analysis of most social scientists conclude that the common notions of race are social constructs. These definitions of race are derived from custom, vary between cultures, and are described as imprecise and fluid. Often these definitions rely on phenotypic characteristics or inferred ancestry. The analysis of human genetic variation also provides insight into human population history and structure. The recent spread of humans from Africa has created a situation where the majority of human genetic variation is found within each human population. However, as a result of physical and cultural isolation of human groups, a significant subset of genetic variation is found between human groups. This variation is highly structured and therefore useful for distinguishing groups and placing individuals into groups for some scientists. Admixture and clinal variation between groups can be confounding to this kind of analysis of human variation. The relationship between social and genetic definitions of race is complex. Phenotypic racial classifications do not necessarily correspond with genotypical groups; some more than others. To the extent that ancestry corresponds to social definitions of race, groups identified by genetics will also correspond with these notions. Whether human population structure warrants the distinction of human 'races' is a matter of debate, with the majority of opinions varying between disciplines. Today, most biologists and anthropologists prefer the term population to race, avoiding the scientific stigma of predefined racial constructs.

See also: Race (historical definitions)

[edit] Egyptian reaction

See also: Egyptians

In 1989, the Dallas Museum of Natural History sponsored an Egyptian exhibit showcasing Egyptian culture at the time of Ramesses II. When the local Blackology Speaking Committee threatened to boycott the exhibit because Ramesses II was not depicted as "black", the Director of the Cultural Office in the Egyptian Embassy, Latif Aboul-Ela, complained that the event was being disrupted by an American form of racial politics.^[8] In an Associated Press release, Aboul-Ela said, "Ramesses II was neither black nor white but Egyptian.... This is an Egyptian heritage and an Egyptian culture 100 percent. Egypt of course is a country in Africa, but this doesn't mean it belongs to Africa at large.... We cannot say by any means we are black or white. We are Egyptians."^[9] Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass has expressed similar reservations with respect to Afrocentric views.^[10]

[edit] Mummy reconstructions

[edit] King Tutankhamun

King Tutankhamun is the most famous of the pharaohs, and his mummy is estimated to be about 3000 years old. In 2005, three teams of scientists (Egyptian, French and American), in partnership with the National Geographic Society, developed a new facial likeness of Tutankhamun. The Egyptian team worked from 1,700 three-dimensional CT scans of the pharaoh's skull. The French and American teams worked plastic molds created from these – but the Americans were never told whom they were reconstructing.^[11] All three teams created silicone busts of their interpretation of what the young monarch looked like. In the end, they identified the skull as:

that of a male, 18 to 20 years old, with Caucasoid features.^[11]

Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice president for mission programs, said, in response to criticism of the King Tut reconstructions:

The big variable is skin tone. North Africans, we know today, had a range of skin tones, from light to dark. In this case, we selected a medium skin tone, and we say, quite up front, 'This is midrange.' We'll never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the color of his eyes with 100 percent certainty. ... Maybe in the future, people will come to a different conclusion.^[12]

The French team's reconstruction specifically however, has sparked considerable criticism. Afrocentrists criticize the French team's claim that they selected the skin tone by taking a color from the middle of the range of skin tones found in the population of Egypt today.^[13] They claim that these features do not reflect the prevalent eye or skin color of either ancient dynastic Egypt or present-day Egyptians . They further argue that many representations of Tut portray him with red-brown to dark-brown skin and dark eyes, and that the teams should have used these as references in assigning eye and skin color.

In comparison to the 2005 reconstruction, a 2002 Discovery Channel reconstruction showed a darker skin tone, among other differences.^[14]

[edit] Difficulties of forensic reconstruction

Although their methodologies are objective, forensic anthropologists agree that attempts to apply criteria from craniofacial anthropometry sometimes can yield seemingly counterintuitive results, depending upon the weight given to each feature. For example, their application can result in finding some East and South Indians to have "Negroid" cranial/facial features and others to have "Caucasoid" cranial/facial features, for example, while Ethiopians, Somalis, and some Zulus have "Caucasoid" skulls, and the Khoisan of southwestern Africa have skulls distinct from many other sub-Saharan Africans that resembles "Mongoloid" skulls.

These seeming contradictions, however, are related to the vagaries of racial classification, particularly of ethnically diverse or miscegenated populations, as exist in Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Cranial analysis is still used by some forensic scientists to determine the identity and geographic ethnic origin of human remains, even though the accuracy of ethnicity-related conclusions drawn from cranial analysis is not absolute -- particularly when treating populations possessing varying degrees of "racial", or ethnic, admixture. Though modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy based on CT data from his mummy, but due to lack of facial tissue and embalming issues, correctly determining his skin tone, nose width, and eye color is nearly impossible.^[15] The problem is not a lack of skill on the part of ancient Egyptians. Egyptian artisans distinguished accurately among different ethnicities, but sometimes depicted their subjects in totally unreal colors, the purposes for which aren't completely understood. Thus no absolute consensus on the skin tone and various other features of reconstructed mummies such as Tutankhamun is possible.

[edit] Research

[edit] Anthropology

Many craniofacial and skeletal studies on the Egyptians has been conducted as early as the 19th century. The latest research suggests that the Egyptians overall have maintain biological continuity throughout their history. A 2006 bioarchaeological study on the dental morphology of ancient Egyptians by Prof. Joel Irish shows that a continuity extends from the dynastic to the post-dyanstic periods, and that the Egyptians exhibit dental traits characteristic of indigenous North Africans, and Southwest Asians to a lesser extent. A Nubian sample from the Western Sahara was also compared with the Egyptian samples and was found to be significantly different, but closer to the predynastic and early dyanstic samples.^[16]

A 2007 study concludes similarly that:

overall population continuity [extends] over the Predynastic and early Dynastic, and high levels of genetic heterogeneity, thereby suggesting that state formation occurred as a mainly indigenous process. Nevertheless, significant differences were found in morphology between both geographically-pooled and cemetery-specific temporal groups, indicating that some migration occurred along the Egyptian Nile Valley over the periods studied.^[17]

African American biological anthropologist Shomarka Keita believes population variation in Egypt to be primarily indigenous, and not necessarily the result of significant intermingling of widely divergent peoples.^[18] He identifies northern and southern patterns in the Egyptian population of the early predynastic period, which he describes as "northern-Egyptian-Maghreb" and "tropical African variant" (overlapping with Nubia/Kush) respectively. He shows that a progressive change in Upper Egypt toward the northern Egyptian pattern takes place through the predynastic period. While the southern pattern continues to predominate in Abydos in Upper Egypt by the First Dynasty, Keita indicated that "lower Egyptian, Maghrebian, and European patterns are observed also, thus making for great diversity."^[19]

A craniofacial study by C. Loring Brace et. al. concluded that the "Predynastic of Upper Egypt and the Late Dynastic of Lower Egypt are more closely related to each other than to any other population. As a whole, they show ties with the European Neolithic, North Africa, modern Europe, and, more remotely, India, but not at all with sub-Saharan Africa [except for Somalia], eastern Asia, Oceania, or the New World."^[20]

Keita and Kittles (1997) criticize the seeming exclusion of some African populations, such as East Africans from the definition of "Africanity":

Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True Negro' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data. ^[21]

A 2005 study by Keita of Badarian crania in predynastic upper Egypt in comparison to various European and tropical African crania finds that the "Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4). ^[22]

Another study by Brace et al.^[23] published in 2006 found that samples from Naqada II Bronze age Egypt clustered primarily with modern Somalis, Nubians, Arabic-speaking Fellaheen farmers of Israel, and more remotely with some Niger-Congo speaker, while adding that a "Sub-Saharan African element" was not found in the historical North African or Egyptian samples.^[24]

A 2003 paper appeared in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled 'Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions', where she found that the ancient Egyptians had tropically adapted body plans, similar to other African and Indian peoples:

The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations. ^[25]

University of Chicago Egyptologist Frank Yurco confirms these findings of historical and regional continuity, stating:

Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt], but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... [the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990; Brace et al., this volume)... The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic (i.e. Nile River) continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions (Trigger 1978; Bard, Snowden, this volume). Language research suggests that this Saharan-Nilotic population became speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages... Semitic was evidently spoken by Saharans who crossed the Red Sea into Arabia and became ancestors of the Semitic speakers there, possibly around 7000 BC... In summary we may say that Egypt was a distinct North African culture rooted in the Nile Valley and on the Sahara.

[edit] Genetics

Some genetic studies suggest that Egyptians do not have very close relations to most tropical Africans.^[26] Populations from throughout the world were compared using extensive genetic data. The North African populations grouped with West Eurasian (European, Middle East) populations rather than sub-Saharan Africans.^[27] A 2003 Y-chromosome study performed by Lucotte and Mercier on modern Egyptians found haplotypes V and XI to be especially predominant.^[28] Haplotype V is common in Berbers and has a low frequency outside Africa. ^[29] They are characteristic of North and East African populations than of Near Eastern or European groups.

A 2004 study of the maternal ancestry of 58 native inhabitants from the Gurna area of upper Egypt found a genetic ancestral heritage to Ethiopia and Western Asia,^[30] and another study links Egyptians in general with people from modern Eritrea and Ethiopia such as the Tigre.^[31]

[edit] Art and architecture

Egyptian art is not considered a very reliable source for what ancient Egyptians looked like for several reasons:

• Egyptian art is often very faded and/or eroded.
• Egyptians are often portrayed in impossible shapes and colors. For example, in some paintings they are green.
• The skin color of a single individual varies widely from one portrayal to the next. For example, Tutankhamen is jet black in one rendering, and medium brown in another.
• Skin color was not such a significant political or social factor in that time as it is now.
• It is sometimes difficult to know if the artist is aiming for realism, or is actually painting an original or mythical conception.
• There is sometimes debate over whether it is an Egyptian, a slave, or a foreigner that is being portrayed.
• Even if an individual portrayal was known to be accurate (there is no such case), even that would do nothing to indicate the appearance of the ancient Egyptian populace as a whole.
• According to archaeologist Kathryn Bard, it was conventional in Egyptian art to paint men in a dark-red ochre and women in a light-yellow ochre to distinguish them.

A wooden statue head of Queen Tiye, thought to be Tutankhamun's Grandmother, part of the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin collection.	Seated scribe, 4th-5th Dynasty, Antiquité égyptienne du musée du Louvre	Fragmentary statue of Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's father. On display at the Cairo Museum.	Plaster face of a young Amarna-era woman, thought to represent Queen Kiya, the likely mother of Tutankhamun. On display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
Keti, Seventh Dynasty c. 2350 - 2200, Louvre Museum	Canopic jar depicting an Amarna-era Queen, usually identified as being Queen Kiya. On display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.	Bust of Nefertiti, the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin collection.	Statue of an unnamed Amarna-era princess, a likely sister (or step-sister) to Tutankhamun. Part of the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin collection.

[edit] Language

The Egyptian language is an Afro-Asiatic language most closely related to the Berber, Semitic, and Beja languages. The origin of Proto-Afro-Asiatic languages is still debated. An African origin is often proposed since five of the six Afro-Asiatic subfamilies are spoken on the African continent and only one in the middle east. Furthermore, some scholars have proposed Ethiopia, because it includes the majority of the diversity of the Afro-Asiatic language family and has very diverse groups in close geographic proximity, often considered a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin. Hence, many scholars cite this as evidence of a primarily African origin for the Ancient Egyptians as opposed to a near eastern origin.^[32]

[edit] Kmt

km in Egyptian hieroglyphs

km biliteral	km.t (place)	km.t (people)

One of the many names of Egypt in ancient Egyptian is km.t (read "Kemet"), meaning "black land". More literally, the word means "something black". The use of km.t "black land" in terms of a place is thought generally to be in contrast to the "deshert" or "red land": the desert west of the Nile valley. Likewise, one of the names the Egyptians used for calling themselves is rmT n km.t, which translates into "People of Egypt" or "Egyptians".^[33]. Many Afrocentristic scholars translate it literally into "the Blacks"^[34], a view rejected by Egyptologists.^[35]

[edit] Egyptians and foreigners

The ancient Egyptians considered themselves simply as Egyptian people, distinct and separate from their neighbors.^[36] In their wall paintings, they distinguished themselves from Nubian, Libyan, Semitic, Berber, and Eurasian peoples. Egyptologist Ann Macy Roth^[37] writes:

As we know from their observant depictions of foreigners, the ancient Egyptians saw themselves as darker than Asiatics and Libyans, and lighter than the Nubians, and with different facial features and body types than any of these groups. They considered themselves, to quote Goldilocks, "just right." These indigenous categories are the only ones that can be used to talk about race in ancient Egypt without anachronism. Even these distinctions may have represented ethnicity as much as race: once an immigrant began to wear Egyptian dress, he or she was generally represented as Egyptian in color and features.^[3]

According to Senegalese scholar Aboubacry Moussa Lam, the Egyptians considered the Land of Punt as being their ancestral homeland.^[38] Punt, was an ancient land south of Egypt accessible by way of the Red Sea. Its exact location has not been identified, but it is thought to have been somewhere in eastern Africa, probably including northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, and east-northeast Sudan (southern Beja lands).^[39] Temple reliefs at Deir el Bahari in W Thebes depict an Egyptian expedition to Punt in the reign of Hatshepsut.

[edit] Ancient writers

Many ancient writers commented on the 'racial affinities' of ancient Egyptians. Egyptians were described variously as having 'dark skin' and 'woolly hair', and as being 'medium toned' and similar in appearance to northern Indians.

[edit] On modern use of ancient evidence

According to professor Yaacov Shavit, "[t]he evidence clearly shows that those Graeco-Roman authors who refer to the skin color and other physical traits distinguish sharply between Ethiopians (Nubians) and Egyptians, and rarely do they refer to the Egyptians as black, even though they were described as darker than themselves.... [in addition,] Egyptians and Nubians were both clearly distinguished from the black Africans."^[40]

African American Classicist Frank Snowden cautions us that terms used by ancient Greek and Roman writers to describe the physical characteristics of other ancient peoples were different in meaning from modern-day racial terms in the West. He writes:

....the Afrocentrists are mistaken in assuming that the the terms Afri (Africans) and various color adjectives for dark pigmentation as used by Greeks and Romans are always the classical equivalents of Negores or blacks in modern usage.... Not all the peoples described by such color terms were blacks or Negroes in the modern sense, but only the inhabitants of the Nile Valley south of Egypt and of the southern fringes of northwestern Africa.... That the pigmentation of the Egyptians was seen as lighter than that of Ethiopians is also attested by the adjective subfusucli {"somewhat dark") which Ammianus Marcellinus (22.16.23) chose to describe the Egyptians.... There was also a mixed Egyptian-Nubian element in the population of Egypt at least a early as the middle of the third millennium B.C.E....^[41]

[edit] Herodotus

Greek historian Herodotus commented on a perceived relationship between the Colchians (from the modern Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus) and the Egyptians, he justifies this through his observation that these people had "dark skin" and "wooly hair":

Several Egyptians told me that in their opinion the Colchians were descended from soldiers of Sesostris. I had conjectured as much myself from two pointers, firstly because they have dark (melanchros) skin and wooly hair and secondly, and more reliably for the reason that alone among mankind the Egyptians and the Ethiopians have practiced circumcision since time immemorial.^[42]

Herodotus used the term melanchros to describe Egyptians, and not Aethiopes, thus distinguishing between Egyptians and black Africans.^[43] He seems to have been following a Graeco-Roman practice of describing people darker than themselves as melanchros, which did not mean that the people they described were black.^[44] Herodotus was also comparing Egyptians and Colchians, not Egyptians and Ethiopians or Colchians and Ethiopians – the physical characteristics of the Ethiopians were radically different from those of the Egyptians.^[45]

Some interpretations have pointed out that Herodotus could have been speaking in relative terms, since the Colchians were noted as residing near the Black Sea, close to modern day Russia where there are virtually no dark skinned, woolly haired people today. There are also others who question whether or not Herodotus ever visited the Black Sea region in the first place.^[46]

A Greek poet named Pindar described the Colchians, whom Jason and the Argonauts fought, as being "dark skinned". Also around 350 to 400 AD, Jerome and Sophronius referred to Colchis as the "second Ethiopia" because of its 'black-skinned' population.^[47]

[edit] Other writers

Aristotle made comments about the appearance of the Egyptians, even though he had never visited Egypt. Pseudo-Aristotle wrote^[48]:

Too dark a hue marks the coward as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians and so does also too white a complexion as you may see from women, the complexion of courage is between the two...Why are the Ethiopians and Egyptians bandy-legged? Is it because the bodies of living creatures become distorted by heat, like logs of wood when they become dry? The condition of their hair supports this theory; for it is curlier than that of other nations, and curliness is as it were crookedness of the hair.^[49]

Ammianus Marcellinus was a Greco-Roman historian who described the Egyptians as lighter than the Moors, saying "the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields."^[50]

Strabo (c. 64 BC – AD 24):

As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in colour, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Aegyptians.^[51]

Arrian (c. 86 - 146 AD) (Indica 6.9) wrote: "The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically."^[52]

The above writings of Strabo and Arrian were drawn from the earlier accounts of Nearchus (c. 360 - 300 BC), Megasthenes (c. 350 - 290 BC) and Eratosthenes (276 - 195 BC).^[53]

It is important to note however, that phenotypes differ among populations and skin color varies and is highly adaptive, therefore alone, they're not good indicators of any concept of 'race'.^[54]

[edit] Afrocentric writers

Leading Afrocentric scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, who has been criticized by mainstream scholars for falsifying history and distorting some of his sources^[55][56], performed a series of the tests on Egyptian mummies to determine melanin levels and concluded that Egyptians were dark-skinned and part of the "Negro race".^[57] Diop notes criticisms of these results that argue that the skin of most Egyptian mummies, tainted by the embalming material, are no longer susceptible of any analysis. Diop contends the position that although the epidermis is the main site of the melanin, the melanocytes penetrating the derm at the boundary between it and the epidermis, even where the latter has mostly been destroyed by the embalming materials, show a melanin level which is non-existent in the "white-skinned races".^[58] However, Diop does not describe any tests that verify his claims that melanin is "non-existent" among the "white-skinned races", nor provide evidence supporting his assertion that the absence of melanin in the epidermis is due to embalming techniques. Diop innovated the development of the melanin dosage test which was later adopted by forensic investigators to determine the "racial identity" of badly burnt accident victims.^[59]

In an interview delivered in Guadeloupe in 1983, Cheikh Anta Diop, denounced colonial Egyptology as prejudiced against black historical accomplishments. But the fact that Africans were colonized, he argued, made it difficult to admit that they were the creators of the Egyptian civilization. He quoted, for example, Champollion-Figeac who said that “black skin and wholly hair don’t make someone to belong to the Black race”.^{[citation needed]} Diop also claims that Breasted and Maspero falsified intentionally, along with Champollion-Figeac, the history of Egypt.^{[citation needed]} In his book, Egitto e Nubia, Maurizio Damiano-Appia wrote that for many Egyptologists of the past, and even of today, Egypt was the creation of a "white race." Appia alleges that Eurocentrism, mainly of Anglo Saxon orientation, was at the base of this false idea. ^[60]. Fellow Senegalese scholar Aboubacry Moussa Lam, in his book L’affaire des momies royales. La vérité sur la reine Ahmès-Nefertari, argued that Egyptian mummies were falsely described as belonging to people with white skin.^[61].

Basil Davidson believes that the Egyptians were black ^{[citation needed]} and originated from the south and the west.^{[62] [63]}

[edit] The Great Sphinx of Giza

Over the centuries, numerous writers and scholars have recorded their impressions and reactions upon seeing the Great Sphinx of Giza. French scholar Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney visited Egypt between 1783 and 1785 . He is one of the earliest known Western scholars to remark upon what he saw as its "typically Negro" countenance.

"...[The Copts] all have a bloated face, puffed up eyes, flat nose, thick lips; in a word, the true face of the negro. I was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but when I visited the Sphinx, its appearance gave me the key to the riddle. On seeing that head, typically negro in all its features, I remembered the remarkable passage where Herodotus says: 'As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black with woolly hair. ...'".^[64]

According to professor Yaacov Shavit, "most of the European travelers and scholars reject Volney's views, including British Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge who wrote that '...all attempts to prove that the Egyptians are of the Negro race are overthrown at the outset by facts which cannot be controverted... the fact, however, remains that the Egyptian fellah is exactly what he was in the earliest dynasties.'"^[65]

In 1992, the New York Times published a letter to the editor submitted by then Harvard professor of Orthodontics Sheldon Peck^[66], in which he commented on a study of the Giza sphinx conducted by New York City Police Department senior forensics artist Frank Domingo. Peck Wrote:

The analytical techniques....Detective Frank Domingo used on facial photographs are not unlike methods orthodontists and surgeons use to study facial disfigurements. From the right lateral tracing of the statue's worn profile a pattern of bimaxilliary prognathism is clearly detectable. This is an anatomical condition of forward development in both jaws, more frequently found in people of African ancestry than in those from Asian or Indo-European stock. The carving of Chephren in the Cairo Museum has the facial proportions expected of a proto-European.^[67]

[edit] Discarded hypotheses

[edit] Hamitic hypothesis

Complications have also cropped up in the use of linguistics as a basis for racial categorization. The demise of the famous "Hamitic Hypothesis", which purported to show that certain African languages around the Nile area could be associated with "Caucasoid" peoples is a typical case. Such schemes fell apart when it was demonstrated that so-called 'Negroid' tribes far distant also spoke similar languages, tongues that were supposedly a reserved marker of 'Caucasoid' presence or influence.^[68] For work on African languages, see Wiki article Languages of Africa and Joseph Greenberg.

Older linguistic classifications are also linked to the notion of a "Hamitic race", a vague grouping thought to exclude 'Negroes', but accommodating a large variety of dark skinned North and East Africans into a broad-based 'Caucasoid' grouping. This "Hamitic race" is sometimes credited with the introduction of more advanced culture, such as certain plant cultivation and particularly the domestication of cattle. This has also been discredited by the work of post WWII archaeologists such as A. Arkell, who demonstrated that predynastic and Sudanic 'Negroid' elements already possessed cattle and plant domestication, thousands of years before the supposed influx of 'Caucasoid' or 'Hamitic' settlers into the Nile Valley, Nubia and adjoining areas.^[69]

Modern scholarship has moved away from earlier notions of a "Hamitic" race speaking Hamito-Semitic languages, and places the Egyptian language in a more localized context, centered around its general Saharan and Nilotic roots.(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996)^[70] Linguistic analysis (Diakanoff 1998) places the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai.^[71]

[edit] Dynastic race theory

The Dynastic Race Theory was the earliest thesis to attempt to explain how predynastic Egypt developed into the Pharonic monarchy. It argued that the presence of many Mesopotamian influences in Egypt during the late predynastic period and the apparently foreign graves in the Naqada II burials indicated an invasion of Mesopotamians into Upper Egypt, who then conquered both Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty

The Dynastic Race Theory is no longer the dominant thesis in the field of Predyanstic Archaeology, and has been largely replaced by the theory that Egypt was a Hydraulic empire, on the grounds that such contacts are much older than the Naqada II period,^[72] the Naqada II period had a large degree of continuity with the Naqada I period,^[73] and the changes which did happen during the Naqada periods happened over significant amounts of time.^[74]

[edit] Cleopatra

The claim that Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, was of African origin has been espoused by several Afrocentric academics, and has enjoyed a notable degree of acceptance within the African-American community.^[75][76][77] Cleopatra, however, was of Hellenistic origin. Mary Lefkowitz argues that Afrocentric scholars are to blame for the proliferation of this myth. However, according to Professor of African American Studies at Temple University, Molefi Kete Asante, this is but one of many trivial issues and he states:

I think I can say without a doubt that Afrocentrists do not spend time arguing that either Socrates or Cleopatra were black. I have never seen these ideas written by an Afrocentrist nor have I heard them discussed in any Afrocentric intellectual forums. Professor Lefkowitz provides us with a hearsay incident which she probably reports accurately. It is not an Afrocentric argument.^[78]

Lefkowitz actually does cite examples of Afrocentric scholars who have made such claims, for example, a chapter entitled "Black Warrior Queens" published in 1984 in Black Women in Antiquity, part of the Journal of African Civilization series. It draws heavily on the work of J.A. Rogers.

[edit] Nordic Egypt

The hypothesis that the ancient Egyptians were a predominantly "Nordic" civilization was viable in the heyday of European colonialism, but is today regarded as pseudoscience. However, several Eurocentric and White supremacist groups such as Stormfront still hold this myth to be true. They claim that ancient Egypt was a "Nordic desert empire."^[79] Like Afrocentric views, these views enjoy no support among Egyptologists.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• James P. Allen. "Middle Egyptian : An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs". Cambridge University Press (November 4, 1999). ISBN 0521774837

• Borgognini-Tarli, S. M., and G. Paoli, 1982. Survey on Paleoserological studies. Homo 33(2), 69-85

• Bosch, E. et al. 1997. Population history of North Africa: evidence from classical genetic markers. Human Biology. 69(3):295-311.

• Brace, C. L., D. P. Tracer, L. A. Yaroch, J. Robb, K. Brandt, and A. R. Nelson. 1993. Clines and Clusters Versus "Race": A Test in Ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on the Nile. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 36:1-31. Also appears in Lefkowitz and Rogers, 129-164.

• Brothwell, D. R. and B. A. Chiarelli, B. A., eds. 1973. Population Biology of the Ancient Egyptians. New York.

• Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., P. Menozzi, and A. Piazza. 1994. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Raymond Faulkner. "Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian". Griffith Institute; Rep edition (January 1, 1970) ISBN 0900416327

• Froment, A. 1992. Origines du Peuplement de l'Egypte Ancienne: l'Apport de l'anthropobiologie. Archéo-Nil 2:79-98.

• Froment, A. 1994. Race et Histoire: La recomposition ideologique de l'image des Egyptiens anciens. Journal des Africanistes 64:37-64.

• Howells, W. W. 1989. Skull Shapes and the Map. Craniometric Analyses in the Dispersion of Modern Homo. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

• Howells, W. W. 1995. Who's Who in Skulls. Ethnic Identification of Crania from Measurements. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

• Howe, Stephen 1998. Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. London: Verso.

• Hrdy, D. B. 1978. Analysis of hair samples of mummies from Semma South (Sudanese Nubia). American Journal of Physical Anthropology 49(2):277-82.

• Irish, J. D. 1997. Characteristic high- and low-frequency dental traits in sub-Saharan African populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 102(4):455-67.

• Irish, J. D. 1998a. Ancestral Dental Traits in Recent Sub-Saharan Africans and the Origin of Modern Humans, Journal of Human Evolution 34:81-98.

• Irish J. D. 1998b. Diachronic and synchronic dental trait affinities of late and post-Pleistocene peoples from North Africa. Homo. 49(2) 138-155.

• Krings M, et al. 1999. mtDNA Analysis of Nile River Valley Populations: A Genetic Corridor or a Barrier to Migration? American Journal of Human Genetics 64(4):1166-1176

• Lefkowitz, Mary, and G. M. Rogers, eds. 1996. Black Athena Revisited. Chapel Hill, NC.

• Lam, Aboubacry Moussa, Les chemins du Nil. Les relations entre l’Egypte ancienne et l’Afrique Noire, Paris : Présence Africaine / Khepera, 1997

• Noguera, Anthony (1976). How African Was Egypt?: A Comparative Study of Ancient Egyptian and Black African Cultures. Illustrations by Joelle Noguera. New York: Vantage Press.

• Parks, Lisa. 2000. Ancient Egyptians Wore Wigs. Egypt Revealed Magazine (www.egyptrevealed.com), May 29.

• Shavit, Yaacov (2001). History in Black: African-Americans in Search of an Ancient Past. London: Frank Cass Publishers.

• Snowden, Jr., F. Bernal's "Blacks," Herodotus and Other Classical Evidence. Arethusa, Special Issue: The Challenge of Black Athena. Fall, 1989: 97-109.

• Titlbachova, S., and Z. Titlbach. 1977. Hair of Egyptian mummies. Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 104:79-85

• Vercoutter, Jean. 1976. The Iconography of the Black in Ancient Egypt. In J. Vercoutter, J. Leclant, F. Snowden and J. Desanges (eds.) The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA.

• Yurco, F. J. 1996. Two Tomb-Wall painted reliefs of Ramesses III and Seti I and Ancient Nile Valley Population diversity. In Theodore Celenko (ed.) Egypt in Africa , Indiana University Press.

[edit] External links

• "The evolution of human skin coloration",Department of Anthropology, California Academy of Sciences
• American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race"
• Ann Roth: "Building Bridges to Afrocentrism"
• Professor Ibrahim Sundiata: "Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having"
• Online Videos by Historian Basil Davidson
• BBC World Service Audio: Africa & the Nile Valley

[edit] See also

• Egyptians
• Afrocentrism
• Origin of the Nilotic peoples
• Race of Jesus
• List of DNA tested mummies
• Races of Craniofacial Anthropology
• Who Built Great Zimbabwe?

Category:Ancient Egyptians| Category:Egyptology Category:Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination Category:Controversies Category:Pan-Africanism|Egypt

fr:Origine des anciens Égyptiens