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The Race of the ancient Egyptians is a subject that has attracted some controversy. The ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as having a different appearance to the other nations around them. The modern mainstream opinion is that the ancient Egyptians were the product of a complex population history, and were neither "black" nor "white" as per current terminology. However Afrocentrists tend to insist that Ancient Egypt was a "black civilization".

The definition of race

The scholarly consensus is that the concept of biologically distinct races isn't applicable to modern humans. Human populations do differ in phenotypic traits and gene frequencies, but most human variation is found within populations rather than between populations.

It has also become evident that modern racial classifications are often social constructs based on arbitrary criteria. Criteria for racial classification differ from region to region and also criteria can change with time. Consequently, many scholars agree that it is misleading to apply modern notions of race to the Ancient Egyptians.

Historically whenever different human populations have come in close contact for extended periods of time, they have interbred freely. Human phenotypes thus vary in clines, whereby populations that live closer to each other are likely to be more similar genetically than populations that live farther apart. A population that lives in between two populations is likely to share traits with both neighboring populations. In addition to gene flow, environmental factors such as climate also influence the variation in human phenotype. Most notably, human skin color on average varies clinally with the intensity of sunlight (i.e. with latitude,).

Modern Egyptians, thousands of years after dynastic times, demonstrate clinal patterns in phenotypic traits such as skin color and craniofacial morphology, with modern Southern Egyptians on average having darker skin and facial features more consistent with tropical Africans than modern Northern Egyptians, whose coloring and features are more Eurasian.

There is however much disagreement over the extent to which these modern features are reliable indicators of the appearance of the ancient Egyptians. Afrocentrists such as Ivan van Sertima argue that the Egyptians were primarily Africoid before the many conquests of Egypt diluted the Africanity of the Egyptian people.. Others believe that Modern Egyptians are a good indicator of what the ancient people looked like.

Origins of the debate

The classical observers

Some modern commentators have reviewed the writings of classical historians (from the Greco-Roman period) for clues about the appearance of the Ancient Egyptians. These eye-witness accounts were recorded right at the end of the Egyptian civilisation, and give varying descriptions of the physical appearance of Ancient Egyptians.

• Herodotus travelled to Egypt around 450 BC, about 2000 years after the Pyramid Age and when Egypt was part of the Persian Empire. Some interpretations of his writings hold that he described the Egyptians as having "black skins and woolly hair". However a number of scholars hold that the word used by Herodotus – “Melanchroes” – should be interpreted as “dark skinned” or “swarthy” rather than “black”, and that Herodotus usually used the word “Aithiopsi” to described black-skinned people.
• The Greek playwright Aeschylus , (also at the time of the Persian Empire) mentioning a boat seen from the shore, declared that its crew are Egyptians, because of their black complexions.
• Josephus regarded the Egyptians in his day (1st century) as descendants of Mizraim, son of Ham on the basis of Genesis 10, which remained the basis for most scholarship in the Middle Ages.
• Strabo, (c. 64 BC – AD 24), the Roman historian and geographer, wrote in his work Geographica that “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.” (Strabo, Book XV, Chapter 1, Section 13.)
• Marcus Manilius (1st Century AD) classified the Ethiopians as the darkest of the dark-skinned peoples, the Indians as “less sun-burned”, and the Egyptians as being of a “medium tone”.
• Arrian, (c. 86 AD – 146 AD), one of the main ancient historians of Alexander the Great, wrote in his work Indica that “the southern Indians resemble the Ethiopians a good deal, and are black of countenance, and their hair black also, only they are not as snub-nosed or so woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; but the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians in appearance."
• The Persian author Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, the Egyptian Ibn Abd-el-Hakem (9th century), Sibt ibn al-Jawzi in his Mir’at al-Zaman (c. 1250), and Muhammad Khwandamir all mentioned the existence of a mediaeval Arabic tradition that the great pyramids had been built by an antediluvian race.
• Aristotle in some of his works made correlations between the physical appearance and moral character of human populations. In his book Physiognomica he wrote, "Those who are too black are cowards, like for instance, the Egyptians and Ethiopians. But those who are excessively white are also cowards as we can see from the example of women, the complexion of courage is between the two."

The colonial period

In 1798 Constantin Francois de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney, published his book Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785, in which he documented his experiences. In the book he states that in his opinion the Great Sphinx has "negroid" facial characteristics. He also describes the modern-day Egyptians he encountered as appearing to be of mixed race.

The Egyptian pyramid used in the Great Seal of the USA and the Washington monument indicate that American society of the colonial period held the Ancient Egyptian culture in high regard. The industrialized west, being predominantly Caucasian, had historically held a low regard for black people, many of whom were slaves. In the early 19th century slavery was still legal in the United States, and was being justified in part on the assumption that Black people were intellectually inferior. The anti-slavery movement was gaining momentum, and pro-slavery advocates were thus unreceptive to any suggestion of advanced Black civilizations that would undermine this rationale. 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. In 1855 George Gliddon and Josiah C. Nott published Types of Mankind with the same intention. All three authors acknowledged that Negroes were present in ancient Egypt, but claimed they were either captives or servants. However, they also concluded that the Egyptians were intermediate between the African and Asiatic races.

In England, Charles Darwin and others concluded that a statue of Amunoph (Amenhotep III) had strongly marked Negro-type features. In 1886, George Rawlinson wrote that the physical type, language and tone of thought of the modern Egyptians is “Nigritic”. Though he believed the modern Egyptians were not Black, he stated that they bear an “indisputable” resemblance to Black Africans.

In 1905 David Randall-MacIver analysed the remains of at least 1560 individuals from Thebes (in Upper Egypt) to determine the race of the deceased. Based on the elaborateness of the graves, he concluded that during predynastic periods Negroid people were the social equal of others, and were equally represented among the lower and higher classes. According to McIver's study, the Negroid element in Upper Egypt was very pronounced in predynastic periods, but had significantly diminished by Roman times.

Afrocentrism

Afrocentrism is a world view that emphasizes the contributions of African people through history. Afrocentrism has contributed considerably to the controversy by claiming that the Ancient Egyptians were Black.

Modern scholarship

Since race is not considered to be a valid scientific concept by most scientists, some experts have focused instead on examining the biological origin of the Ancient Egyptians.

The race of the ancient Egyptians was addressed at UNESCO’s international Cairo Symposium in 1974, where more than 20 of the world’s top Egyptologists debated inter alia the race of the founders of ancient Egyptian civilization. The majority view was that the ancient Egyptians were a mixed race, being neither black nor white as per current terminology. However a few scholars before and since have continued to assert otherwise, and have variously proposed that the ancient Egyptians were black, Asian, Mediterranean, Atlantean or even aliens from space.

In 1996 Indianapolis museum of art curator Theodore Celenko held an exhibition titled Egypt in Africa in order to present works of art that emphasized Egypt’s cultural connection to the rest of the African continent. He also arranged for experts in various fields to submit essays on the subject, including 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. This collection of essays was then published under the title Egypt in Africa. While the contributors differed in some opinions the scholarly consensus was that Ancient Egypt was and should be considered a Classical African Civilization, along with Numidia and Nubia (Kerma / Kush / Meroe). They also contend that Egypt had cultural and biological connections with its African neighbors.

Some Egyptian Egyptologists such as Zahi Hawass insist that the Ancient Egyptians did not fit neatly into a racial group and that Ancient Egypt was not even an African Civilization.

Ancient Egyptian material

The ancient tombs and temples contained thousands of works of writing, painting and sculpture, which reveal a lot 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.

Meaning of 'Kemet'

km in Egyptian hieroglyphs

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

One of the many names for Egypt in ancient Egyptian is km.t (read Kemet), meaning 'the black land' or 'the black one'. Generally, '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 prosperous in contrast to the barren desert or 'red land' outside the narrow confines of the Nile watercourse. 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." Raymond Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian translates it into "Egyptians", as do most sources.

The claim that Kemet referred to the fact that the people of the land were black, as argued by Cheikh Anta Diop, William Leo Hansberry, Yaacov Shavit or Aboubacry Moussa Lam has become a cornerstone of Afrocentric historiography. This view is rejected by most Egyptologists.

Ancient Egyptian texts and inscriptions

There are a number of surviving copies of a sacred text from Dynastic times called the Book of Gates. These were usually carved and/or painted inside tombs, for the guidance of the soul of the deceased. Among other things they described the "four races of men", as follows: (translation by E.A. Wallis Budge):

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 Land of Punt

The ancient Egyptians viewed the Land of Punt (Pun.t; Pwenet; Pwene) as their ancestral homeland. 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…” Per Emmet John Sweeney: “The Horus Kings of the First Dynasty insisted their ancestors came from the Land of Punt.”

The exact location of Punt remains a mystery. The mainstream view is that Punt was located to the south-east of Egypt, most likely in the Horn of Africa.

However some scholars disagree with this view and point to a range of ancient inscriptions which 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.”

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 which were common in East Africa but are less frequent or completely absent in Arabia. Says Richard Pankhurst, in his book “The Ethiopians”: “ 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 that the term Punt probably applied more to African than Arabian territory.”

In 2003 reports emerged of a tomb that was discovered at El Kab (near Thebes) dating to the 17th dynasty (1575-1525 BC). It contained an inscription describing a huge attack from the south "by the Kingdom of Kush and its allies from the land of Punt". Encyclopaedia Britannica describes Punt as follows: “in ancient Egyptian and Greek geography, the southern coast of the Red Sea and adjacent coasts of the Gulf of Aden, corresponding to modern coastal Ethiopia and Djibouti.”

The consensus view among the majority of Egyptologists is summed up by Ian Shaw from 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.

Ancient Egyptian art

In the many surviving tomb paintings, papyri and statues, the ancient Egyptians depicted themselves in a wide variety of colors, but the predominant color used for Egyptian men was reddish-brown, while the Egyptian women are usually portrayed with much lighter skin pigmentation. The Egyptians often distinguished themselves from the neighboring populations. Generally, Egyptians depicted themselves as darker than Asiatics, and Libyans but lighter than the Nubians. However, Egyptian artists also depicted both themselves and non-Egyptians in other colors, as well as sometimes using unrealistic colors such as blue and green. The use of all these colors is presumed to sometimes have symbolic meaning, but is not completely understood.

Specific modern controversies

There have been numerous controversies regarding the race of specific notable individuals from the history of Egypt, particularly the Great Sphinx, Tutankhamun, Ramses the Great and Cleopatra VII.

Language

The ancient Egyptian language has been classified as a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia (including some 150 million speakers of Arabic dialects). Afro-Asiatic also includes several ancient languages, such as Ancient Egyptian, Biblical Hebrew, and Akkadian (the language of the Babylonians and Assyrians).

The Afro-Asiatic language family is believed by most linguists to have originated in Northeast Africa with a minority postulating an origin in the Levant (ancient Canaan).

Of the six subfamilies of Afro-Asiatic, the Semitic languages form the only Afro-Asiatic subfamily that exists in both Africa and Asia. The other five of the six Afro-Asiatic subfamilies are restricted to the African continent. The majority of the diversity in the Afro-Asiatic language family is found in Ethiopia, where diverse languages exist in close geographic proximity.

UCLA Professor of African history, Christopher Ehret, claims that the Ancient Egyptians are descended from speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic who migrated from further south to the Nile Valley. According to Ehret archeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the speakers of the earliest Afroasiatic languages occupied lands between Nubia and northern Somalia around 15,000-13,000 B.C. before the formation of the Ancient Egyptian state.

In Black Athena, Martin Bernal argues that the phylum may instead have emerged around the Great Rift Valley in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya.

On his part, Théophile Obenga writes that the Egyptian language and the Negro-African languages derive from a common pre-dialectal ancestor he names “négro-africain ”. According to him, the Afro-Asiatic language family has no scientific base and was created with the purpose of cutting off culturally the Egypt-Nubian Nile Valley from the rest of Africa.

The Great Sphinx of Giza

A number of writers have described the face of the Sphinx as having features that are Ethiopian, Nubian, African or Negro, as opposed to Grecian, Coptic or Arab (Semitic). These writers include the French philosopher Constantin-François Chassebœuf, Gustave Flaubert, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The exact identity of the model for the Sphinx is unknown as there are no known written records that proclaim its identity. Many Egyptologists and scholars currently believe that the face of the Sphinx represents the likeness of the Pharaoh Khafre, whose statues have been located near the Sphinx and who is held to be the creator of the statue. A few Egyptologists and interested amateurs have made several conflicting hypotheses regarding the identity of the Sphinx, but at present, no definitive proof exists.

Forensic artist Frank Domingo, a retired detective for the NYPD, drew a profile sketch of both The Sphinx and Khafre's statue in order to compare the dimensions of the faces to determine whether or not they depicted the same person. Domingo concluded that The Sphinx had a significantly greater degree of prognathism (forward projection of the jaw) than Khafre's statue, suggesting that the statues did not depict the same person. In 1992, the New York Times published a letter to the editor submitted by Sheldon Peck, a Harvard professor of orthodontics, who noted of the Sphinx that it shows “an anatomical condition of forward development in both jaws, more frequently found in people of African ancestry than in those of Asian or Indo-European stock." Other authors have pointed out that the face of the Sphinx is angled upwards, and that if the face is angled vertically then the jaw appears very similar to that of the statues of Khafra.

Tutankhamun

Supporters of Afrocentrism 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”.

Forensic artists and physical anthropologists from Egypt, France, and the United States independently created busts of Tut, using a CT-scan of the skull. Based on Tut's cranial features, specifically his narrow nose opening, he was classified as racially Caucasoid. Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy based on CT data from his mummy, 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."

Biological anthropologist Susan Anton, the leader of the American team, said that 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; a European characteristic. The skull was a North African."

Other biological anthropologists point out that narrow noses are a common trait among indigenous Northeast Africans, and a product of adaptation to the hot-dry climate of the region. Therefore the shape of Tut's nose does not necessarily reflect European ancestry nor rationalize classification as a Caucasian.

Other experts point out that dolichocephalic skull shapes are a common trait among European and Middle Eastern indigenous populations, and that skull shapes are therefore not a reliable indicator of Tut's race or ancestry.

In a press release of May 2005, the current Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, said that: “The three reconstructions (French, America and Egyptian) are all very similar in the unusual shape of the skull, the basic shape of the face, and the size, shape and setting of the eyes … In my opinion as a scholar, the Egyptian reconstruction looks the most Egyptian, and the French and American versions have more unique personalities.

When pressed on the issue by American activists Zahi Hawass in September 2007, stated that "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it …. Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa."

Ahmed Saleh, the former archaeological inspector for the Supreme Council of antiquities, disagrees with many of Hawass' statements, stating that the procedures used in the facial re-creation made Tut look Caucasian, "disrespecting the nation's African roots".

In a November 2007 publication of "Ancient Egypt Magazine", Hawass asserted that none of the facial reconstructions resemble Tut, claiming for example that the French reconstruction ended up with a person that looked French, whose features do not resemble any known Egyptians. He asserted instead that in his opinion, the most accurate representation of the boy king is the mask from his tomb.

The Discovery Channel commissioned a facial reconstruction of Tutankhamun's golden mask back in 2002.

Rameses the Great

Several commentators have noted that the mummy of Rameses the Great (of the 19th Dynasty) has red or blond hair. Frank Yurco describes the mummy of Rameses as having “fine, wavy hair, a prominent hooked nose and moderately thin lips.” Yurco also describes Rameses as being “a typical northern Egyptian”. Although Rameses ruled from Thebes in Upper Egypt, he was originally from the extreme north-east of the country.

In 1975 the mummy of Rameses the Great was taken to Paris for conservation and the treatment of fungal infestations. A detailed examination of the mummy showed that his hair had been grey at the time of his death, and had been dyed red using plant extracts, but scientific analysis showed that the original natural color of the hair before going grey was also red. In a dispute over nuance however, others have described the color as auburn (or brownish-red) who according to Spindler and others, have lead some to reach "far-flung conclusions"..Tyldesley sites, that neither red or auburn hair was common in dynastic Egypt and that "Ramses would have looked conspicuous among his dark-haired companions". Given many other peculiarities, it has been stated by some scholars that Ramses II may have been the product of intermarriage, citing Asiatic characteristics and that he and his predecessors Seti I and Merenptah appeared less typically Egyptian than that of the 18th Dynasty Pharaohs.

Cleopatra VII

Some Afrocentric scholars and supporters have claimed that Cleopatra, the last of the pharaohs, was Black. In her book Not Out of Africa, Professor Mary Lefkowitz points out that Cleopatra’s ancestors, the rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty, were Macedonian Greeks descended from Ptolemy I, one of Alexander the Great's generals. Lefkowitz states that:

• it was their practice to marry close relatives – brother with sister or uncle with niece, etc.
• the only possibility that Cleopatra VII might not have been a full-blooded Macedonian Greek arises from the fact that we do not know the precise identity of her grandmother on her father's side, as this lady was the mistress (not the wife) of her grandfather, Ptolemy IX.
• because of the incestuous custom of the Ptolemy family it is generally assumed that this grandmother was also a relative, but it is possible that she might have been of another race - no evidence has ever arisen either way.

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 and thus Cleopatra herself might also have been part African. This was based largely on the claims of Hilke Thuer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who in the 1990s had examined a headless skeleton of a female child in a 20BC tomb in Ephesus (modern Turkey) together with the old notes and photographs of the now-missing skull.

However, a writer from the London Times described the identification of the skeleton as “a triumph of conjecture over certainty”.

The assumption of the skeleton's identity was based on the shape of the tomb (octagonal, like the Lighthouse of Alexandria), the timing of the death (around 20BC), the gender of the skeleton, and the age of the child at death (although some commentators consider the age of the child to be rather young, considering what Arsinoe is described by history as having accomplished in her life.)

The recent cranial analysis was done based measurements, notes and photographs made before the skull itself was lost during World War 2. Boas, Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard and others have demonstrated that skull measurements are not a reliable indicator of race.

Arsinoe IV was actually the half-sister of Cleopatra VII, sharing a father (Ptolemy XII Auletes) but having a different mother.

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References

• Mary R. Lefkowitz: "Ancient History, Modern Myths", originally printed in The New Republic, 1992. Reprinted with revisions as part of the essay collection Black Athena Revisited, 1996.
• Kathryn A. Bard: "Ancient Egyptians and the issue of Race", Bostonia Magazine, 1992: later part of Black Athena Revisited, 1996.
• Frank M. Snowden, Jr.: "Bernal's "Blacks" and the Afrocentrists", Black Athena Revisited, 1996.
• Joyce Tyldesley: "Cleopatra, Last Queen of Egypt", Profile Books Ltd, 2008.
• Alain Froment, 1994. "Race et Histoire: La recomposition ideologique de l'image des Egyptiens anciens." Journal des Africanistes 64:37-64. available online: Race et Histoire Template:Fr icon
• Yaacov Shavit, 2001: History in Black. African-Americans in Search of an Ancient Past, Frank Cass Publishers
• Shomarka Keita: "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", S.O.Y. Keita & A. J. Boyce. Egypt in Africa, pp. 25–27 (1996)
• Aaron Kamugisha: "Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko", Race & Class, Vol. 45, No. 1, 31-60 (2003) available online: Finally in Africa
• Richard Poe: “Black, White or Biologically African?” Black Spark, White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? pp. 466–471 (1998)

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