The question of the race of ancient Egyptians was raised historically as a product of the scientific racism of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was linked to models of racial hierarchy. A variety of views circulated about the racial identity of the Egyptians and the source of their culture.[1] These were typically identified in terms of a distinction between "Negro" and "Caucasian" racial categories. Some accounts argued that Egyptian culture emerged from more southerly African peoples, while others pointed to influences from the north east (Asia Minor), and yet others proposed that at least the upper classes were "Caucasian".
Since the second half of the 20th century, scholarly consensus has held that applying modern notions of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic. Frank M. Snowden asserts that "Egyptians, Greeks and Romans attached no special stigma to the color of the skin and developed no hierarchical notions of race whereby highest and lowest positions in the social pyramid were based on color.".[2][3] Additionally, typological and hierarchical models of race have increasingly been rejected by scientists.
In the late 20th century, the typological model was revived in the domain of Afrocentric historiography and Black nationalism which tends to insist that Ancient Egypt was a "black civilization", with particular focus on links to southern African cultures and on the race of specific notable individuals from Dynastic times, including Tutankhamun,[4] Cleopatra VII,[5][6][7] and the king represented in the Great Sphinx of Giza.[8][9]
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The earliest examples of disagreement in modern times, regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians, occurred in the work of Europeans and Americans early in the 19th century. For example, in an article published in the New-England Magazine of October 1833, the authors dispute a claim that the Ancient Egyptians “were adduced, affirmed to be Ethiopians.” Among other things, they point out (at pg 275), with reference to tomb paintings: “It may be observed that the complexion of the men is invariably red, that of the women yellow; but neither of them can be said to have anything in their physiognomy at all resembling the Negro countenance.” And (at pg 276) they state, with reference to the Sphinx: “The features are Nubian, or what, from ancient representations, may be called Ancient Egyptian, which is quite different from the Negro features.”[10]
In his Principes Physiques de la Morale, Déduits de l'Organisation de l'Homme et de l'Univers, Constantin-François Chassebœuf writes that "The Copts are the proper representatives of the Ancient Egyptians" due to their "jaundiced and fumed skin, which is neither Greek nor Arab, their full faces, their puffy eyes, their crushed noses, and their thick lips."[11] Volney further stated that the Sphinx was "typically Negro in all its features" and the Ancient Egyptians were "true Negroes of the same type as all native born Africans." [12]
Just a few years later, in 1839, Champollion states in his work "Egypte Ancienne" that the Egyptians and Nubians are represented in the same manner in tomb paintings and reliefs and that "The first tribes that inhabited Egypt, that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataract and the sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. In the Copts of Egypt, we do not find any of the characteristic features of the Ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with all the nations that successfully dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race."[13]
From the Early Middle Ages (c. 500 AD) all the way up to the early 19th century the most dominant view was that the ancient Egyptians were the lineal descendants of Ham, through his son Mizraim.[14] A theory which subsequently became known as the "Asiatic Race Theory".[15] The native Egyptians, by a literal interpretation of Biblical chronology, were believed to have arrived in Egypt from South-West Asia, usually between the 4th or 3rd millennium BC after the flood and dispersal of man at the Tower of Babel.[16] The descendants of Ham were traditionally considered to be the darkest skinned branch of Humanity, either because of their geographic allotment to Africa or because of the Curse of Ham.[17] However it became disputed at least by the 18th century whether Mizraim’s descendants, the Egyptians, were Negroid or in contrast a dark skinned Caucasian race.[18]
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a proponent of the Asiatic (Biblical) origins of the Egyptians in 1776 argued that the ancient Egyptians were "degenerated" (darkened) Caucasians, a theory also supported by Georges Cuvier who in 1811 conducted one of the first scientific analyses of Egyptian mummies:
| “ | "I have examined, in Paris, and in the various collections of Europe, more than fifty mummies, and not one amongst them presented the characters of the Negro".[19] | ” |
Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian who became one of the earliest experts on mummies also agreed with Cuvier that the ancient Egyptian mummies were Caucasian, showing "not the slightest approximation to the Negro character".[20] Very few Egyptologists or scholars of the 19th century argued against the Caucasian identification of the Egyptians through the Asiatic Race Theory,[21] among them however was the anthropologist James Cowles Prichard who although agreed the ancient Egyptians were not 'proper' Negroid, maintained they were a "black race", more connected to the Negroid than the Caucasian race.[22]
The Caucasian racial identification of (Biblical) Mizraim and the ancient Egyptians was popularized outside scholarly literature, for example in travel books e.g. by William George Browne in his Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria (1806).[23] Theological proponents of the Asiatic Race Theory such as John Kitto further argued that the Curse of Ham only afflicted Canaan, not Mizraim, asserting the Egyptians were racially dark Asiatic Caucasians and not Negroid.[24] The leading Egyptologist of the Asiatic Race Theory in the 19th century was John Gardner Wilkinson who argued for a literal Asiatic Caucasian ancestry for the Egyptians from Mizraim.[25] The "Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany" notes in review of Wilkinson’s book Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (1837) that the Asiatic Race Theory was the most popular view held at that time:
| “ | "In common with other writers, this gentleman considers that the ancient Egyptians were not of African extraction, but, like the Abyssinians, and other inhabitants of the Nile, of Asiatic origin. This fact he thinks demonstrated by the formation of the skull, which is decidedly Caucasian; and it will explain many points of resemblance, in manners, language, and religion between the Egyptians and Asiatics.[26] | ” |
Other notable proponents of the Asiatic Race Theory from the 19th century included Charles Lenormant (1842) and Reginald Stuart Poole (1851). After the 1850s the theory still was widely supported by Egyptologists but was modified to fit an earlier Asiatic migration during prehistory falling outside of a literal interpretation of Biblical chronology. Jens Lieblein (1866), Franz Joseph Lauth (1869), George Rawlinson (1881), Archibald Sayce (1891) and Heinrich Karl Brugsch (1891) were later proponents of the Asiatic Race Theory but were not strict Biblical literalists like Wilkinson but nonetheless still believed the Old Testament was historically accurate, but began to theorise that the Asiatic Egyptians may have not been the first to arrive in Africa.[27] Karl Richard Lepsius writing in 1853, considered the Egyptians (and Abyssinians) to have been a 'reddish-brown' branch of the Caucasian, but sharply distinguishable from the Negroid.[28] Wilkinson, after analysing several ancient Egyptian crania concluded: "the formation of the skull, which is decidedly of the Caucasian variety, must remove all doubt of their valley having been people from the East."[29] Rawlinson after studying the hair texture of several ancient Egyptian mummies considered them to be non-Negroid, writing in his History of Egypt: "The hair was usually black and straight. In no case was it ‘woolly’, though sometimes it grew in short crisp curls." [30] He further proclaimed that the ancient Egyptians were culturally Asiatic in origin.[31]
The Asiatic Race Theory was only first seriously challenged as late as 1894 by the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, who wrote: "the hypothesis of an Asiatic origin however attractive it may seem, is difficult to maintain."[32] In response to the increasing skepticism of the Asiatic Race Theory, various alternatives were proposed, albeit related. In his treatise Der babylonische Ursprung der ägyptischen Kultur ('The Babylonian Origin of Egyptian Culture') published in the 1890s, the Professor of Semitic languages Fritz Hommel argued that the ancient Egyptians were the descendants of the Akkadians and Babylonians. Hommel’s Babylonian theory was not popular,[33] but received some support by the archaeologist Jacques Rougé, the son of the Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé who argued the ancient Egyptians were Chaldeans.[34] By the 20th century the Asiatic Race Theory and its various offshoots were abandoned but were superseded by two new theories: the Hamitic Hypothesis, asserting that a Caucasian racial group moved into North and East Africa from early prehistory subsequently bringing with them all advanced agriculture, technology and civilization and also the Dynastic Race Theory, proposing that Mesopotamian invaders were responsible for the dynastic civilization of Egypt (c. 3000 BC). In sharp contrast to the Asiatic Race Theory neither of these theories propose that Caucasians were the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt, as the traditional (Biblical) Asiatic Race proponents (such as Wilkinson) maintained.[35]
The Hamitic hypothesis developed directly from the Asiatic Race Theory which asserted the descendants of Ham through Mizraim were Caucasian.[36] However it argued that Caucasians were the inventors of agriculture and brought civilization to East Africa, not only Egypt. It also rejected any Biblical basis (despite using Hamitic as the hypothesis name).[37] The Hamitic Hypothesis was influenced by certain Asiatic Race Theory proponents who were less strict with their Biblical interpretation such as George Rawlinson and subsequently could push back the arrival of the Caucasians into Egypt to an earlier date, such as the Neolithic.[38] John Hanning Speke is widely considered to have been an early predecessor of the Hamitic Hypothesis, while Daniel Garrison Brinton’s Races and Peoples (1890) was also an influential work, but the theory was not fully developed until the early 20th century.[39]
Among the earliest proponents was the British ethnologist Charles Gabriel Seligman, who put forward the first scientific argument for the Hamitic Hypothesis in article printed in 1913.[40] Seligman argued in his Races of Africa (1930) that the ancient Egyptians were Caucasian "Nilo-Hamites" who had arrived in Egypt during early prehistory and introduced technology and agriculture to primitive natives they found there. The archaeologist Hermann Junker another notable proponent of the Hamitic Hypothesis argued that these primitive natives were Bushmen (Capoids) and not Negroids.[41] The renowned linguist Carl Meinhof also supported the Hamitic theory.
The Hamitic Hypothesis was still popular in the 1960s and late 70’s and was supported notably by Anthony John Arkell and George Peter Murdock.[42]
In the early 19th century, slavery in the United States was still being justified, based in part on the assumption that black people were intellectually inferior, and pro-slavery advocates were thus unreceptive to any suggestion of advanced black civilizations. In 1844, Samuel George Morton, a proslavery supporter and one of the pioneers of scientific racism and polygenism, published his book Crania Aegyptica with the intention of “proving” that the Ancient Egyptians were not black.[43] In 1855 George Gliddon and Josiah C. Nott published Types of Mankind with the same intention.[44] All three authors concluded that Egyptians were intermediate between the African and Asiatic races. They acknowledged that Negroes were present in ancient Egypt but claimed they were either captives or servants.[45]
The Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi (1901) believed that ancient Egyptians were the African (Hamitic) branch of the Mediterranean race, which he called "Eurafrican".[46] According to Sergi, the Mediterranean race or "Eurafrican" contains three varieties or sub-races, which evolved "in accordance of differing telluric and geographic conditions": the African (Hamitic) branch, the Mediterranean "proper" branch and finally the Nordic (depigmentated) branch.[47] Sergi split the African branch into two further groups: Eastern Hamites and Northern Hamites - the ancient Egyptians of whom he classified as Eastern African Hamites.[48] The Copts, Sergi considered being examples of modern Eastern Hamites, and the closest modern living group affiliated with the ancient Egyptians. Sergi maintained in summary that the Mediterranean race (excluding the depigmentated Nordic or 'white') is: "a brown human variety, neither white nor Negroid, but pure in its elements, that is to say not a product of the mixture of Whites with Negroes or Negroid peoples."[49]
Influenced by Sergi’s identification of the ancient Egyptians as the African branch of the Mediterranean race, Grafton Elliot Smith modified the theory in 1911.[50] Smith believed the ancient Egyptians were a dark haired "brown race",[51] most closely "linked by the closest bonds of racial affinity to the Early Neolithic populations of the North African littoral and South Europe".[52] This "brown race" was not Negroid, as according to Smith the hair of the "Proto-Egyptian was precisely similar to that of the brunet South European" and "presented no resemblance whatever to the so-called ‘wooly’ appearance and peppercorn-like arrangement of the Negro’s hair".[53] Smith’s "brown race" is though not synonymous or equivalent with Sergi’s Mediterranean race.[54] However both Sergi and Smith agreed that the ancient Egyptians were brunette with "brown" complexions.
The Egyptologist Samuel Sharpe (1846) proposed the ancient Egyptians belonged to the Turanid race, linking them to the Tatars, because some ancient Egyptian paintings depict Egyptians with sallow or yellowish skin:
| “ | "From the colour given to the women in their paintings we learn that their skin was yellow, like that of the Mongul Tartars, who have given their name to the Mongolian variety of the human race…The single lock of hair on the young nobles reminds us also of the Tartars"[55] | ” |
In the early 20th century, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, one of the leading Egyptologists of his day, noted that the skeletal remains found at pre-dynastic sites at Naqada (Upper Egypt) showed marked differentiation. Together with cultural evidence, such as architectural styles, pottery styles, cylinder seals, and numerous rock and tomb paintings, he deduced that a Mesopotamian force had invaded Egypt in predynastic times, imposed themselves on the local Badarian (African) people, and become their rulers. This came to be called the “Dynastic Race Theory.”[56][57] The theory further argued that the Mesopotamians then conquered both Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty.
In the 1950s, the Dynastic Race Theory was widely accepted by mainstream scholarship, and the Ancient Egyptians were, therefore, considered to be “Asiatic” or “Semitic” rather than "African" or "Hamitic." Scholars, such as the Senegalese Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop, fought against the Dynastic Race Theory with their own "Black Egyptian" theory and claimed, among other things, that European scholars supported the Dynastic Race Theory "to avoid having to admit that Ancient Egyptians were black".[58] Bernal proposed that the Dynastic Race theory was conceived by so-called Aryan scholars to deny Egypt its African roots[59] and modern Afrocentrists continue to condemn the alleged dividing of African peoples into racial clusters as being new versions of the Dynastic Race Theory and the Hamitic hypothesis.[60]
The Dynastic Race Theory had suggested that the original people of Ancient Egypt were "of predominantly Negroid type," but that the "civilization" was inspired by outsiders.[61] Contemporary consensus tends to suggest that Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).[57][62][63][64]
Modern scholars such as W.E.B DuBois,[65] Chancellor Williams,[66] Cheikh Anta Diop,[67][68][69] John G. Jackson,[70] Ivan van Sertima,[71] Martin Bernal,[72] and Marcus Garvey reviewed the available evidence and concluded that the Ancient Egyptian society was indigenous to Africa (or AfroAsiatic in the case of Bernal) and consequently a mostly Black civilization.[73] Recent archaeological evidence (e.g. Incense burners with Egyptian iconography in Lower A-group Nubian burial sites) supports the theory that the Ancient Egyptian civilization was indigenous to Africa and contemporaneous with the A-group Nubian culture.[74][75][75][67][76][77] The oft criticized Journal of African Civilizations[78] has continually advocated that Egypt should be viewed as a Black civilization.[79][80]
The debate was popularized throughout the 20th century by the aforementioned scholars, with many of them using the terms "Black," "African," and "Egyptian" interchangeably,[81] despite what Snowden calls "copious ancient evidence to the contrary."[82] In the mid 20th century, the proponents of the Indigenous and Black African theory presented "extensive" [83] and "painstakingly researched" [84] evidence[67][68][69] to support their views, which contrasted sharply with prevailing views on Ancient Egyptian society. Diop and others believed the prevailing views were fueled by Scientific racism and based on poor scholarship.[85]
The Indigenous and Black African model relies heavily on writings from Classical Greek and Egyptian historians, as well as Hebrew and Biblical traditions. Proponents of this model were swayed by the broad agreement among Classical Greek historians that the Ancient Egyptians were Black and Black skinned.[86] Some of the most often quoted historians are Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Herodotus.[87] Herodotus affirms in numerous passages that the Egyptians were Black. Herodotus states that a Greek oracle was known to be from Egypt because she was Black, that the natives of the Nile region are "Black with heat", and that Egyptians were "Black skinned with woolly hair".[88] Lucian, a Greek, observes an Egyptian boy and notices that he is not merely Black, but has thick lips.[89] Diodorus Siculus mentioned that the Ethiopians considered the Egyptians a colony. Appollodorus, a Greek, calls Egypt the country of the black footed ones.[89] Aeschylus, a Greek poet, wrote that Egyptian seamen had "black limbs."[90] Strabo mentions that the Ethiopians and Colchians are of the same race.[90] According to Diop, historians are in general agreement that the Ethiopians, Egyptians, Colchians, and people of the Southern Levant were among the only people on Earth practicing circumcision, which confirms their cultural affiliations, if not their ethnic affiliation.[91] Gaston Maspero states that "by the almost unanimous testimony of ancient [Greek] historians, they [Ancient Egyptians] belonged to the African race, which settled in Ethiopia."[92]
One of the most popular indicators of race is skin color and thus the Ancient Egyptian race controversy often focused on the Ancient Egyptian's skin color. The British Africanist Basil Davidson summarized the issue as follows:
Whether the Ancient Egyptians were as black or as brown in skin color as other Africans may remain an issue of emotive dispute; probably, they were both. Their own artistic conventions painted them as pink, but pictures on their tombs show they often married queens shown as entirely black, being from the south (from what a later world knew as Nubia): while the Greek writers reported that they were much like all the other Africans whom the Greeks knew.[93]
Diop and others refer to the color used in Egyptian paintings as "dark red", which they claimed is well within the bounds of Black racial homogeneity. To expand, the skin pigment used in Egyptian paintings to refer to Nubians can range "from dark red to brown to black."[94] Thus, the dark red color most often used to depict Egyptians was, at times, also used to depict Nubians. This can be observed in paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Huy, as well as Ramses II's temple at Beit el-Wali.[95]
While at the University of Dakar, Diop used microscopic laboratory analysis to measure the melanin content of skin samples from several Egyptian mummies (from the Marietta excavations). The melanin levels found in the dermis and epidermis allowed Diop to classify the Ancient Egyptians as "unquestionably among the Black races."[96] At the UNESCO conference, Diop invited other scholars to examine the skin samples[97][98] In the words of Diop, "The fact that Egyptians had black skin was for Herodotus an evident truth that he posits, like a mathematician, as an axiom to lead subsequently to the demonstration of more complex facts."[99]
Diop used a multi-faceted approach to counteract prevailing views on the Ancient Egyptian's origins and ethnicity. Diop and Obenga attempted to linguistically link Egypt and Africa, by arguing that the Ancient Egyptian language was related to Diop's native Wolof (Senegal).[100] Diop's work was well received by the political establishment in the post-colonial formative phase of the state of Senegal, and by the Pan-Africanist Négritude movement. Diop highlighted that the name (KMT, or Kemit) used by Egyptians to describe themselves, or their land (depending on your point of view), meant "Black."[101] Diop attempted to culturally link Ancient Egypt and Africa. In biblical traditions, it is agreed that Ham (son of Noah) fathered Kush, which is also the name that the Egyptians used to refer to the Blacks in Nubia.[102] Diop notes that Ham's other offspring, Mezraim (Egypt) and Canaan, share many cultural and ethnic ties with their siblings, Kush and Phut.[103] Diop also points to the depictions of the Egyptians in certain paintings and statues,[104] and to the cultural traits that are shared with Black Africa, such as circumcision,[91] matriarchy, totemism, and kingship cults.[67]
Modern scholars who have studied Ancient Egyptian culture and population history have responded to the controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptians in different ways.
UNESCO convened the "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974. At that forum Professors Diop and Obenga presented their "Black Egyptian" theory, which was largely rejected by the other delegates.[105][106] However, Diop was invited to write the "Origin of the Egyptians" chapter in UNESCO's publication and the arguments for all sides are recorded in the UNESCO General History of Africa.[105]
Dr. Zahi Hawass, the former Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, has stated that "The portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it;" and that "Ancient Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa." [107][108] Other academics in various fields contend that Ancient Egypt was fundamentally an African civilization, with cultural and biological connections to Egypt's African neighbours.[109][110] For example, Professor Vercoutter remarks that "Egypt was African in its way of writing, in its culture, and in its way of thinking."[111] Several anthropologists who study the biological relationships of the Ancient Egyptian population call for a recognition of Africa's genetic diversity when considering the racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians.[112]
The focus of some experts who study population biology has been to consider whether or not the Ancient Egyptians were primarily biologically African rather than to which race they belonged.[113]
In 1996, the Indianapolis Museum of Art published a collection of essays, which included contributions from leading experts in various fields including archaeology, art history, physical anthropology, African studies, Egyptology, Afrocentric studies, linguistics, and classical studies. Among the contributors were Chike Aniakor, Molefi Kete Asante, Robert Steven Bianchi, Arthur P. Bourgeois, Shomarka Keita, Christopher Ehret, Chapurukha M. Kusimba, Frank M. Snowden, Jr., and Frank J. Yurco. While the contributors differed in some opinions, the consensus of the authors was that Ancient Egypt was and should be considered to be an African civilization, based on Egypt's geographic location on the African continent.[114]
Since the 1970s, the issues regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians have been "troubled waters which most people who write (in the United States) about ancient Egypt from within the mainstream of scholarship avoid."[61] The debate, therefore, takes place mainly in the public sphere and tends to focus on a small number of specific issues.
Scholars, such as Diop, and Afrocentrists have claimed that Tutankhamun was black, and have protested that attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features (as depicted on the cover of National Geographic Magazine) have represented the king as “too white”.[115] Evidence led Chancellor Williams to believe that King Tut, his parents, and grandpartents were Black.[116]
Forensic artists and physical anthropologists from Egypt, France, and the United States independently created busts of Tutankhamun, using a CT-scan of the skull. Biological anthropologist Susan Anton, the leader of the American team, said the race of the skull was “hard to call.” She stated that the shape of the cranial cavity indicated an African, while the nose opening suggested narrow nostrils, which is usually considered to be a European characteristic. The skull was thus concluded to be that of a North African.[117] Other experts have pointed out that neither skull shapes nor nasal openings are a reliable indication of race,[118] as in the case of Dravidian Blacks with narrow noses.
Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy, based on CT data from his mummy,[119][120] determining his skin tone and eye color is impossible. The clay model was therefore given a flesh coloring which, according to the artist, was based on an "average shade of modern Egyptians."[121]
Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice president for mission programs, said, in response to some of those protesting against the Tutankhamun reconstruction:
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 will never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the color of his eyes with 100% certainty. ... Maybe in the future, people will come to a different conclusion.[122]
When pressed on the issue by American activists in September 2007, the current Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass stated that "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it;" Hawass further observed that "[Ancient] Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa." [107][108] Many modern scholars disagree with the assertion that the Ancient Egyptians were not Africans.[123][124]
Ahmed Saleh, the former archaeological inspector for the Supreme Council of antiquities stated that the procedures used in the facial re-creation made Tut look Caucasian, "disrespecting the nation's African roots."[125]
In a November 2007 publication of Ancient Egypt Magazine, Hawass asserted that none of the facial reconstructions resemble Tut and that, in his opinion, the most accurate representation of the boy king is the mask from his tomb.[126] The Discovery Channel commissioned a facial reconstruction of Tutankhamun, based on CT scans of a model of his skull, back in 2002.[127][128]
Cleopatra's race and skin color have also caused frequent debate, as described in an article from The Baltimore Sun.[5] There is also an article entitled: Was Cleopatra Black? from Ebony magazine,[6] and an article about Afrocentrism from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that mentions the question, too.[7] Scholars generally suggest a light olive skin color for Cleopatra, based on the following facts: her Macedonian family had intermingled with the Persian aristocracy of the time; her mother's identity is uncertain,[129] and that of her paternal grandmother is not known for certain.[130] Afrocentric assertions of Cleopatra's blackness have, however, continued.
The question was the subject of a heated exchange between Mary Lefkowitz, who has referred in her articles to a debate she had with one of her students about the question of whether Cleopatra was black, and Molefi Kete Asante, Professor of African American Studies at Temple University. In response to Not Out of Africa by Lefkowitz, Asante wrote an article entitled Race in Antiquity: Truly Out of Africa, in which he emphasized that he "can say without a doubt that Afrocentrists do not spend time arguing that either Socrates or Cleopatra were black."[131]
In 2009, a BBC documentary speculated that Arsinoe IV, the half-sister of Cleopatra VII, may have been part African and then further speculated that Cleopatra’s mother, thus Cleopatra herself, might also have been part African. This was based largely on the claims of Hilke Thür of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who in the 1990s had examined a headless skeleton of a female child in a 20 BC tomb in Ephesus (modern Turkey), together with the old notes and photographs of the now-missing skull.[132][133] Arsinoe IV and Cleopatra VII, shared the same father (Ptolemy XII Auletes) but had different mothers.[134]
The identity of the model for the Great Sphinx of Giza is unknown.[135] Virtually all Egyptologists and scholars currently believe that the face of the Sphinx represents the likeness of the Pharaoh Khafra, although a few Egyptologists and interested amateurs have proposed several different hypotheses.
Numerous scholars of good faith, such as DuBois[8][136][137], Diop, and Volney,[138] have characterized the face of the Sphinx as Black, or "Negroid." Around 1785 Volney stated, "When I visited the sphinx...on seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remembered...Herodotus says: "...the Egyptians...are black with woolly hair"..."[139] Another early description of a "Negroid" Sphinx is recorded in the travel notes of a French scholar, who visited in Egypt between 1783 and 1785. Constantin-François Chassebœuf[140] and French novelist Gustave Flaubert.[141] Flaubert traveled to Egypt in 1849 and recorded the following observation:
We stop before a Sphinx ; it fixes us with a terrifying stare. Its eyes still seem full of life; the left side is stained white by bird-droppings (the tip of the Pyramid of Khephren has the same long white stains); it exactly faces the rising sun, its head is grey, ears very large and protruding like a negro’s, its neck is eroded; from the front it is seen in its entirety thanks to great hollow dug in the sand; the fact that the nose is missing increases the flat, negroid effect. Besides, it was certainly Ethiopian; the lips are thick….[142]
American geologist Robert M. Schoch has written that the "Sphinx has a distinctive African, Nubian, or Negroid aspect which is lacking in the face of Khafre."[9]
| km biliteral | km.t (place) | km.t (people) |
The meaning of "km.t." is a matter of great controversy. According to scholars, such as Diop, the Egyptians referred to themselves as "Black" people, or "km.t", and "km.t" was the etymological root of other words, such as Kam or Ham, which refer to Black people in Hebrew tradition.[143][144] According to others, one of the many names for Egypt in ancient Egyptian is km.t (read Kemet), meaning 'the black land' or 'the black place.' Some believe, 'Kemet' is taken to be a reference to the fertile black soil which was washed down from Central Africa by the annual Nile inundation, and which made Egypt habitable and successful in contrast to the barren desert outside the narrow confines of the Nile watercourse - which the ancients called the 'red land'.[145][146] The use of the word kmt when referring to people is thought to be derived from the name of the land, meaning literally "those people who live in the black, fertile country."[145] Raymond Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian translates it into "Egyptians," as do most sources.[147]
Cheikh Anta Diop[145] William Leo Hansberry,[145] and Aboubacry Moussa Lam[148] have argued that km.t was derived from the skin color of the Nile valley people, which Diop and most Ancient Greek historians claim was black.[149][150] Diop believed the Greek historians when they observed and wrote that Egyptians were black skinned.[150] Diop and others do not differentiate between black and brown skinned people of the Nile valley, as they are all culturally, ethnically, and linguistically linked. The claim that the Egyptians have black skin has become a cornerstone of Afrocentric historiography,[145] but it is rejected by a strong majority of Egyptologists.[151]
Ancient Egyptian tombs and temples contained thousands of paintings, sculptures, and written works, which reveal a great deal about the people of that time. However, their depictions of themselves in their surviving art and artifacts are rendered in sometimes symbolic, rather than realistic, pigments. As a result, ancient Egyptian artifacts provide sometimes conflicting and inconclusive evidence of the ethnicity of the people who lived in Egypt during dynastic times.[152][153][154][155]
Manu Ampim, a professor at Merritt College specializing in African and African American history and culture, claims in the book Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret, that many ancient Egyptian statues and artworks are modern frauds that have been created specifically to hide the “fact” that the ancient Egyptians were black, while authentic artworks which demonstrate black characteristics are systematically defaced or even "modified." Ampim repeatedly makes the accusation that the Egyptian authorities are systematically destroying evidence which “proves” that the ancient Egyptians were black, under the guise of renovating and conserving the applicable temples and structures. He further accuses “European” scholars of wittingly participating in and abetting this process.[156][157]
Ampim has a specific concern about the painting of the "Table of Nations" in the Tomb of Ramses III (KV11). The “Table of Nations” is a standard painting which appears in a number of tombs, and they were usually provided for the guidance of the soul of the deceased.[152][153][158] Among other things, they described the "four races of men," as follows: (translation by E.A. Wallis Budge:[158]
The first are RETH, the second are AAMU, the third are NEHESU, and the fourth are THEMEHU. The RETH are Egyptians, the AAMU are dwellers in the deserts to the east and north-east of Egypt, the NEHESU are the black races, and the THEMEHU are the fair-skinned Libyans.
The archaeologist Richard Lepsius documented many ancient Egyptian tomb paintings in his work Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien. In 1913, after the death of Lepsius, an updated reprint of the work was produced, edited by Kurt Sethe. This printing included an additional section, called the “Ergänzungsband” in German, which incorporated many illustrations that did not appear in Lepsius’ original work. One of them, plate 48, illustrated one example of each of the four “nations” as depicted in KV11, and shows the "Egyptian nation" and the "Nubian nation" as identical to each other in skin color and dress. Professor Ampim has declared that plate 48 is a true reflection of the original painting, and that it “proves” that the ancient Egyptians were identical in appearance to the Nubians, even though he admits no other examples of the "Table of Nations" show this similarity. He has further accused “Euro-American writers” of attempting to mislead the public on this issue.[159] The late Egyptologist, Dr. Frank Yurco, visited the tomb of Ramses III (KV11), and in a 1996 article on the Ramses III tomb reliefs he pointed out that the depiction of plate 48 in the Erganzungsband section is not a correct depiction of what is actually painted on the walls of the tomb. Dr Yurco notes, instead, that plate 48 is a “pastische” of samples of what is on the tomb walls, arranged from Lepsius' notes after his death, and that a picture of a Nubian person has erroneously been labeled in the pastiche as an Egyptian person. Yurco points also to the much-more-recent photographs of Dr. Erik Hornung as a correct depiction of the actual paintings.[160] (Erik Hornung, “The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity”, 1990). Ampim nonetheless continues to claim that plate 48 shows accurately the images which stand on the walls of KV11, and he categorically accuses both Yurco and Hornung of perpetrating a deliberate deception for the purposes of misleading the public about the true race of the Ancient Egyptians.[159]
The ancient Egyptians viewed the Land of Punt (Pun.t; Pwenet; Pwene) as their ancestral homeland.[161][162][163] In his book “The Making of Egypt” (1939), W. M. Flinders Petrie stated that the Land of Punt was “sacred to the Egyptians as the source of their race.” E.A. Wallis Budge stated that “Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt…”[164]
According to Ian Shaw in the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt:
| “ | There is still some debate regarding the precise location of Punt, which was once identified with the region of modern Somalia. A strong argument has now been made for its location in either southern Sudan or the Eritrean region of Ethiopia, where the indigenous plants and animals equate most closely with those depicted in the Egyptian reliefs and paintings.[165] | ” |
The placement of Punt in eastern Africa is based on the fact that the products of Punt were abundantly found in East Africa but were less common or absent in Arabia. These products included gold, aromatic resins such as myrrh, ebony and elephant tusks. The wild animals depicted in Punt include giraffes, baboons, hippopotami, and leopards. Says Richard Pankhurst, in his book “The Ethiopians”: “[Punt] has been identified with territory on both the Arabian and African coasts. Consideration of the articles which the Egyptians obtained from Punt, notably gold and ivory, suggests, however, that these were primarily of African origin. This leads us to suppose the term Punt likely applied more to African than Arabian territory.”[166][167][168][169]
Other scholars disagree with this view and point to a range of ancient Egyptian inscriptions which unambiguously locate Punt in Arabia. Dimitri Meeks has written that “Texts locating Punt beyond doubt to the south are in the minority, but they are the only ones cited in the current consensus about the location of the country. Punt, we are told by the Egyptians, is situated – in relation to the Nile Valley – both to the north, in contact with the countries of the Near East of the Mediterranean area, and also to the east or south-east, while its furthest borders are far away to the south. Only the Arabian Peninsula satisfies all these indications.”[170]
In 2003 a newly discovered text was found in a tomb in El Kab, a small town that is located about 50 kilometres south of Thebes. The tomb belonged to the local governor, Sobeknakht II, and dates to the 17th dynasty (c.1600-1550 BC). Newspaper articles reported that the inscription mentions “a huge attack from the south on Elkab and Egypt by the Kingdom of Kush and its allies from the land of Punt.”[171][172]
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