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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 based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, and genetic affiliations. A variety of views circulated about the racial identity of the Egyptians and the source of their culture. These were typically identified in terms of a distinction between the "Black African" (Sub-Saharan African) and Caucasian (including European and Middle Eastern) racial categories. Some accounts argued that Egyptian culture emerged from more southernly African peoples, while others pointed to influences from the Middle East, and yet others proposed that at least the upper classes originated from Europe.

Since the second half of the 20th century, anthropologists have rejected the notion of race as having any validity in the study of human biology. Typological and hierarchical models of race have increasingly been rejected by scientists in favour of models of societal development based on geographical origin.

However, the question of the phenotypical characteristics (skin color, facial features, hair texture) and genetic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians remains a point of study, discussion, and debate.

History

The earliest examples of disagreement regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians occurred in the work of Europeans and Americans early in the 19th century. Napolean's invasion of Egypt in 1798 led to the discovery of extensive archeological finds that contradicted assumptions about the history of Africa and African peoples who had been assumed to be historically, mentally, and physically inferior and natural slaves. This led to early attempts to square the discovery of an African civilization with the assumptions of the inferiority of black African peoples that justified their slavery.

One early example of such an attempt was an article published in the New-England Magazine of October 1833 where the authors dispute a claim that that "Herodutus was given as authority for their being negroes." They state that: "Except as a matter of historical correctness, we care not whether or no the Egyptians were as black as the darkness that once invested their land." However, 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."

In his Principes Physiques de la Morale, Déduits de l'Organisation de l'Homme et de l'Univers, (18th century) Constantin-François Chassebœuf, Count Volney writes that "The Copts are the proper representatives of the Ancient Egyptians" due to their "jaundiced and fumed skin, which is neither Greek, Negro nor Arab, their full faces, their puffy eyes, their crushed noses, and their thick lips...the ancient Egyptians were true negroes of the same type as all native born Africans."

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, further noting: "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."

In 1839, Champollion's claims were disputed by his brother, Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac who blamed the ancients for spreading a false impression of Negro Egypt, stating that black skin and kinky hair were not sufficient to characterize the Egyptians as black: "The opinion that the ancient population of Egypt belonged to the Negro African race, is an error long accepted as the truth...Such was the effect of what the celebrated Volney published on the various races of men that he had observed in Egypt...He concludes that the ancient Egyptians were true negroes of the same species as all indigenous Africans. To support his opinion, Volney invokes that of Herodutus who, apropos the Colchians, recalls that the Egyptians had black skin and woolly hair. Yet these two physical qualities do not suffice to characterize the Negro race and Volney's conclusion as to the Negro origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization is evidently forced and inadmissible."

The debate intensified during the abolition movement to abolish slavery in the United States, as arguments relating to the justifications for slavery increasingly asserted the historical, mental and physical inferiority of black people. For example in 1851, John Campbell in Negro-Mania:Being an examination of the falsely assumed equality of the various races of man directly challenged the claims by Champollion and others regarding the evidence for a black Egypt by asserting the inherent inferiority and animal-like nature of black people, claiming only Caucasians could develop such a civilization: "The idea that the negro race ever civilized Egypt, is now exploded among learned men, but we have among us persons who spurn at history, who laugh at nature, who sneer at reason, and who say that the negro is one of God's creatures, and is therefore equal to the white...Why so are elephants, and dogs, and monkeys, and rattlesnakes God's creatures; but does any body ever compare any of these in intellect to even the negro, and yet there is as much difference between the lowest tribe of negroes and the white Frenchman, Englishman, or American, as there is between the monkey and the negro...There is one great difficulty, and to my mind an insurmountable one, which is that the advocates of the negro civilization of Egypt do not attempt to account for, how this civilization was lost...Egypt progressed, and why, because it was Caucasian."

The arguments regarding the race of the Egyptians became more explicitly tied to the debate over slavery in the United States as the United States escalated towards civil war. In 1854, Josiah Nott with George Glidden published an influential book, Types of Mankind (1854) which set out to prove: "that the Caucasian or white, and the Negro races were distinct at a very remote date, and that the Egyptians were Caucasians." Samuel George Morton, a physician and professor of anatomy that led an American school of polygenist thought as the debate over slavery became more vociferous, had preceded this with a study of 137 human skulls from ancient Egyptian monuments in Crania Aegyptica (1844), concluding that although "Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is , that of servants and slaves." Morton also found in ancient Egypt "an ancient historical precedent for a white society with black slaves."

In Europe, the classification of the race of the Ancient Egyptians was tied with attempts to justify colonialism during the Scramble for Africa. In this case, the most notable debates on the issue took place in Italy, which characterized the populations of the Horn of Africa countries of Ethiopia (not to be confused with Aethiopia, the historical general term for all areas south of the Sahara), Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti as superior to those of other regions of Africa classified as negroids. This also related to linguistic classifications, which classified the indigenous peoples of this area as Cushites (not to be confused with the Kushites of Nubia) and Semites as related linguistically with the Egyptians. These discussions of racial hierarchy led to a "Hamitic Hypothesis" of Egyptian civilization that ascribed its history to the populations of the Horn of Africa who were classified as predominately Caucasian and members of the Mediterranean race that had created all world civilization: "s early as 1897, Giuseppe Sergi had proposed that Mediterraneans and Hamites had the same origin, the first being a subset of the second and both being indigenous to the Horn of Africa," and all being progenitors of the Egyptian peoples. In 1900, Aldobrandino Mochi argued the inherent superiority of the peoples of the Horn of Africa compared to the black populations of Africa, claiming their role in creating Egypt, and defining the "Ethiopian type" as: "Very tall, brown or chocolate skin color with some narrow shade; long head; high but narrow forehead; black and not long hair, not curly like that of the Arabs but also not frizzy like that of the Negroes...just like the statues of ancient Egypt." This ascription of the peoples of the Horn of Africa with the history of Egypt allowed Italy, which did not have any African colonies at the time as compared to the other European powers of France, Britain, Portugal and Belgium, to claim superiority to other European countries in its attempts and any subsequent success in colonizing them.

Position of modern scholarship

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.

Since the second half of the 20th century, scholars have rejected the notion of race as having any validity in the study of human biology. Stuart Tyson Smith writes in the 2001 Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt that "Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the Egyptians as "blacks", while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans.” Frank M. Snowden asserts that "Egyptians, Greeks and Romans attached no special stigma to the colour of the skin and developed no hierarchical notions of race whereby highest and lowest positions in the social pyramid were based on colour." Additionally, typological and hierarchical models of race have increasingly been rejected by scientists in favour of models of geographical origin. Scholars such as Frank Yurco believe that Modern Egyptians are largely representative of the ancient population.

It is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area. About 5,000 years ago the Sahara area dried out, and part of the indigenous Saharan population retreated East towards the Nile Valley. In addition peoples from the Middle East entered the Nile Valley, bringing with them wheat, barley, sheep, goats and possibly cattle. Dynastic Egyptians referred to their country as "The Two Lands". During the Predynastic period (about 4800 to 4300BC) the Merimde culture flourished in the northern part of Egypt (Lower Egypt). This culture, among others, has links to the Levant in the Middle East. The pottery of the later Buto Maadi culture, best known from the site at Maadi near Cairo, also shows connections to the southern Levant as well. In the southern part of Egypt (Upper Egypt) the predynastic Badarian culture was followed by the Naqada culture. These people seem to be more closely related to the Nubians than with northern Egyptians.

Due to its geographical location at the crossroads of several major cultural areas, Egypt has experienced a number of foreign invasions during historical times, including by the Canaanites (Hyksos), the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedonian Greeks, the Romans (Byzantium in late antiquity/early Middle Ages), the Arabs, the Ottoman Turks, the French and the British.

At the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974, most participants concluded that the Ancient Egyptian population was indigenous to the Nile Valley and that Ancient Egyptians were much the same as modern Egyptians. The "Black Egyptian" theory was rejected by 90% of delegates, but none of the participants voiced support for earlier theories which claimed that Ancient Egyptians were dark skinned whites, and some participants agreed that at least 1/3 of the Ancient Egyptians were black. The arguments for all sides are recorded in the UNESCO publication General History of Africa, with the "Origin of the Egyptians" chapter being written by Diop.

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. While the contributors differed in some opinions, the consensus of the authors was that Ancient Egypt was a Northeast African civilization (although ethnic type was not mentioned), based on Egypt's geographic location on the African continent.

In 2008, S. O. Y. Keita wrote that "There is no scientific reason to believe that the primary ancestors of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast Africa.... The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range of evolutionary influences over time, although researchers vary in the details of their explanations of those influences."

Recent DNA Studies of Amarna and Ramesses III Lineages

Recent DNA studies of mummies of the Ramesses dynasty and the Armana dynasty of the New Kingdom state that these dynasties carried the Sub-Saharan African Haplogroup E1b1a. However many experts in the DNA field dispute these conclusions, and claim instead that DNA sequencing from ancient material is unreliable and prone to contamination.

Specific current-day controversies

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." The debate, therefore, takes place mainly in the public sphere and tends to focus on a small number of specific issues.

Tutankhamun

A few scholars (including Diop) 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". Evidence led Chancellor Williams to believe that King Tut, his parents, and grandparents were black.

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. Other experts have argued that neither skull shapes nor nasal openings are a reliable indication of race.

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."

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."

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."

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."

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. The Discovery Channel commissioned a facial reconstruction of Tutankhamun, based on CT scans of a model of his skull, back in 2002.

Scientific examination of the remains of Tutankhamun have revealed that the boy king was: 1) significantly dolichocephalic, or long-headed; 2) had enlarged incisors; and 3) had a pronounced alveolar prognathism, resulting in an overbite and a concomitant receding chin. Some people in the fields of forensic criminology and forensic anthropology still believe that these characteristics indicate a Negroid person. However various experts have pointed out that skull shapes etc. are not actually a reliable indication of ancestry.

Cleopatra VII

The race and skin color of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh following the Greek invasion of Egypt in 300 BCE, has also caused frequent debate, as described in an article from The Baltimore Sun. There is also an article entitled: Was Cleopatra Black? from Ebony magazine, and an article about Afrocentrism from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that mentions the question, too. Scholars generally suggest a Caucasian skin color for Cleopatra, based on the following facts: her Greek Macedonian family had intermingled with the Persian aristocracy of the time; her mother's identity is uncertain, and that of her paternal grandmother is not known for certain.

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."

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. Arsinoe IV and Cleopatra VII, shared the same father (Ptolemy XII Auletes) but had different mothers.

Great Sphinx of Giza

The identity of the model for the Great Sphinx of Giza is unknown. 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, such as DuBois, Diop, Asante, and Volney, 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"..." 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 along with French novelist Gustave Flaubert.

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."

Kemet

km in Egyptian hieroglyphs

km biliteral	kmt (place)	kmt (people)

Ancient Egyptians referred to their homeland as Kmt (conventionally pronounced as Kemet). According to Cheikh Anta Diop, the Egyptians referred to themselves as "Black" people or kmt, and km was the etymological root of other words, such as Kam or Ham, which refer to Black people in Hebrew tradition. A review of David Goldenberg's The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam states that Goldenberg "argues persuasively that the biblical name Ham bears no relationship at all to the notion of blackness and as of now is of unknown etymology." Diop, William Leo Hansberry, and Aboubacry Moussa Lam have argued that kmt was derived from the skin color of the Nile valley people, which Diop et al. claim was black. The claim that the Ancient Egyptians had black skin has become a cornerstone of Afrocentric historiography, but it is rejected by some Egyptologists.

Mainstream scholars hold that kmt means "the black land" or "the black place", and that this is a reference to the fertile black soil which was washed down from Central Africa by the annual Nile inundation. By contrast the barren desert outside the narrow confines of the Nile watercourse was called dšrt (conventionally pronounced deshret) or "the red land". Raymond Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian translates kmt into "Egyptians", Gardiner translates it as "the Black Land, Egypt".

At the UNESCO Symposium in 1974, Professors Sauneron, Obenga, and Diop concluded that KMT and KM meant black. However, Professor Sauneron clarified that the adjective Kmtyw means "people of the black land" rather than "black people", and that the Egyptians never used the adjective Kmtyw to refer to the various black peoples they knew of, they only used it to refer to themselves.

Ancient Egyptian art

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.

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. University of Chicago scholars assert that Nubians are generally depicted with black paint, but the skin pigment used in Egyptian paintings to refer to Nubians can range "from dark red to brown to black." This can be observed in paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Huy, as well as Ramses II's temple at Beit el-Wali. Also, Snowden indicates that Romans had accurate knowledge of "negroes of a red, copper-colored complexion...among African tribes." Conversely, Najovits states that "Egyptian art depicted Egyptians on the one hand and Nubians and other blacks on the other hand with distinctly different ethnic characteristics and depicted this abundantly and often aggressively. The Egyptians accurately, arrogantly and aggressively made national and ethnic distinctions from a very early date in their art and literature." He continues that "There is an extraordinary abundance of Egyptian works of art which clearly depicted sharply contrasted reddish-brown Egyptians and black Nubians."

However 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.

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. Among other things, it 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 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.

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. Yurco notes, instead, that plate 48 is a "pastiche" 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. (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.

Historical hypotheses

Black African hypothesis

Scholars such as Chancellor Williams, Cheikh Anta Diop, John G. Jackson, Ivan van Sertima, Martin Bernal Robert Bauval and more recently Segun Magbagbeola have supported the theory that the Ancient Egyptian society was indigenous to Africa and mostly Black. The oft criticized Journal of African Civilizations has continually advocated that Egypt should be viewed as a Black civilization. Supporters of the Black theory saw the Black Africans and Nubians as racially and culturally similar, while others felt that the Ancient Egyptians and Nubians were two ethnically distinct groups.

Some scholars state that, in Europe and especially in the Americas, the very origin of ethnology, anthropology and eugenics lay in the attempt to define the characteristics of race and how it applied to ancient Egyptian remains due to implications for historical justifications for the subjugation of African peoples based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, and genetic affiliations in the Americas. Some have argued that from the beginning, these studies of Egyptian remains were at the core of the ideas of race and the debates over racism and slavery in the Americas based on skin color, facial features, hair texture, and genetic affiliations.

Early advocates of the Black African model relied heavily on writings from Classical Greek historians, including Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Herodotus, and on the disputed translation of the Greek word “melanchroes”, which most authors translate as “black”. Snowden claims that Diop is distorting his classical sources and is quoting them selectively.

There is also dispute about the historical accuracy of the works of Herodotus. Some scholars support the reliability of Herodotus and provide corroboration regarding his Nile Valley observations, while other scholars regard his works as being unreliable as historical sources, particularly those relating to Egypt.

Other points used to support the Black Hypothesis included testing melanin levels in a small sample of mummies, arguing that the Ancient Egyptian language was related to Diop's native Wolof (Senegal), interpretations of the origin of the name Kmt, conventionally pronounced Kemet, used by the Ancient Egyptians to describe themselves or their land (depending on your point of view), biblical traditions, and interpretations of the depictions of the Egyptians in numerous paintings and statues. Other points of the hypothesis include claimed cultural affiliations, such as circumcision, matriarchy, totemism, hair braiding, head binding, and kingship cults. Artifacts found at Qustul (near Abu Simbel - Modern Sudan) in 1960-64 are seen as showing that ancient Egypt and A-group Nubia shared the same culture and were part of the greater Nile Valley sub-stratum,. More recent finds in Egypt indicate that the Qustul rulers may have adopted/emulated the symbols of Egyptian pharaohs.

The controversy was reignited in 1987 when Martin Bernal produced the work "Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization." In his work, Bernal claimed that the Egyptian civilization was fundamentally African and that the most powerful pharaohs could "usefully" be called black. More controversially, Bernal also stated that Western civilization arose almost entirely from precedents from Egypt, claiming that Socrates and other ancient Greeks were black people. While conceding the African roots of Egyptian civilization, the claims that Western civilization was developed almost entirely from Egyptian sources set forth in Black Athena, including claims that Socrates was a black man, were heavily questioned by Mary Lefkowitz in her book "Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History."

The findings from the UNESCO conference debated the points of agreement and disagreement concerning the Black hypothesis and other theories, and concluded that the ancient Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile Valley and of mixed race. The current position of modern scholarship is that the Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).

Asiatic Race Theory

The Asiatic Race Theory holds that the ancient Egyptians were the lineal descendants of the biblical Ham, through his son Mizraim. This theory was the most dominant view from the Early Middle Ages (c. 500 AD) all the way up to the early 19th century. 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. Thus, Diop cites Gaston Maspero "Moreover, the Bible states that Mesraim, son of Ham. brother of Chus (Kush)... and of Canaan, came from Mesopotamia to settle with his children on the banks of the Nile."

By the 20th century the Asiatic Race Theory and its various offshoots were abandoned but were superseded by two related 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. However, it is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area, in Africa.

Hamitic hypothesis

The Hamitic hypothesis developed directly from the Asiatic Race Theory which asserted the descendants of Ham through Mizraim were Caucasian. However it argued that Caucasians, which included the Ethiopid and Arabid populations of the Horn of Africa, specifically modern Ethiopia (not to be confused with Aethiopia, the historical general term for all areas south of the Sahara), Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti, were the inventors of agriculture and had brought all civilization to Africa, not only Egypt. As in racial typologies these peoples were defined as predominately Caucasoid, the hypothesis still asserted the non-Negroid element of Ancient Egypt. It also rejected any Biblical basis (despite using Hamitic as the hypothesis name). 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. However, it is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area, in Africa.

Caucasian race hypothesis

In 1844, Samuel George Morton, one of the pioneers of scientific racialism 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 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. George Gliddon in his book Ancient Egypt: Her monuments, hieroglyphics, history and archaeology (1844) wrote: "The Egyptians were white men, of no darker hue than a pure Arab, a Jew, or a Phoenician." However, it is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area, in Africa.

Eurafrican "brown" race hypothesis

The Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi (1901) believed that ancient Egyptians were the African (Hamitic) branch of the Mediterranean race, which he called "Eurafrican". 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. 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. 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."

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. Smith believed the ancient Egyptians were a dark haired "brown race", most closely "linked by the closest bonds of racial affinity to the Early Neolithic populations of the North African littoral and South Europe". 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". Smith’s "brown race" is though not synonymous or equivalent with Sergi’s Mediterranean race. However both Sergi and Smith agreed that the ancient Egyptians were brunet with "brown" complexions.

Turanid race hypothesis

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. He said "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." However, it is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area, in Africa.

Dynastic race theory

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 indigenous Badarian people, and become their rulers. This came to be called the "Dynastic Race Theory." The theory further argued that the Mesopotamian founded state or states 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. 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". Bernal proposed that the Dynastic Race theory was conceived by European scholars to deny Egypt its African roots.

Contemporary consensus suggests that Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).

See also

• Demographics of modern Egypt
• Dynastic race theory
• Négritude
• Archaeogenetics of the Near East
• Egyptomania
• Biological Anthropology
• History of Anthropology

Notes

1. Bruce R. Dain: A Hideous Monster Of The Mind: American race theory in the early republic, 2009. Oxford University Press. p. 59
2. Edith Sanders: The Hamitic hypothesis: its origin and functions in time perspective, The Journal of African History, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1969), pp. 521–532
3. ^ Statement On Race – by American Anthropological Association
4. ^ Biological Aspects of Race - by American Association of Physical Anthropologists
5. Nina G. Jablonski: Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color, 2012. Google E-Book pp 104-105
6. Patrizia Palumbo, A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture. As early as 1897, p. 66-67:"It was only with Napolean's invasion of Egypt and the subsequent archeological excavations that this interpretation was shaken. The discovery of a civilization that appeared sophisticated enough to compete with that of the Greeks and Romans left a question mark over the origin of the Egyptians: how was it possible that an African group could create such an advanced civilization?"
7. Patrizia Palumbo, A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture. As early as 1897, p. 66-67
8. "Original Papers: Ancient Egyptians". The New-England Magazine. 0005 (4): 273–280. October 1833.
9. Volney, Constantin-François. Principes Physiques de la Morale, Déduits de l'Organisation de l'Homme et de l'Univers. p. 131
10. Volney, C.F. (1787). Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte. pp. 74–77.
11. Champollion-Figeac, Egypte Ancienne. Paris: Collection L'Univers, 1839, p.27
12. John Milton et al., Agents of Translation (2009), p. 215, books.google.com/books?isbn=9027216908
13. John Campbell, Negro-mania:being an examination of the falsely assumed equality of the various races of man (1851), Philadelphia, books.google.com/books?id=hcELAAAAIAAJ p. 10-12
14. Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (2006), p. 105-108, books.google.com/books?isbn=0814798926
15. Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (2006), p. 108, books.google.com/books?isbn=0814798926
16. Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (2006), p. 105, books.google.com/books?isbn=0814798926
17. Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (2006), p. 105, books.google.com/books?isbn=0814798926
18. Patrizia Palumbo, A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture. As early as 1897, p. 69
19. Patrizia Palumbo, A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture. As early as 1897, p. 69
20. Stuart Tyson Smith,(2001) The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, Volume 3. Donald Redford, Oxford University Press. p. 27-28
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142. Fehling, in Travel Fact and Travel Fiction edited by Z. R. W. M. von Martels, pg 4-6, at http://books.google.co.za/books?id=ZZ5ZH-f38E4C&pg=PA1&dq=herodotus,+fehling&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FqcOUYrhJMOyhAe8yYHgDQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=herodotus%2C%20fehling&f=false
143. Herodotus: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide, by Emily Baragwanath, Mathieu de Bakker, pg 19, at http://books.google.co.za/books?id=pyjaXnWHAEIC&pg=PA21&dq=herodotus,+fehling&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FqcOUYrhJMOyhAe8yYHgDQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=egypt&f=false
144. Fehling, in Travel Fact and Travel Fiction edited by Z. R. W. M. von Martels, pg 13, at http://books.google.co.za/books?id=ZZ5ZH-f38E4C&pg=PA1&dq=herodotus,+fehling&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FqcOUYrhJMOyhAe8yYHgDQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=herodotus%2C%20fehling&f=false
145. Diop, Cheikh Anta (1974). The African Origin of Civilization. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill Books. pp. 236–243. ISBN 1-55652-072-7.
146. Alain Ricard, Naomi Morgan, The Languages & Literatures of Africa: The Sands of Babel, James Currey, 2004, p.14
147. Mokhtar, G. (1990). General History of Africa. California, USA: University of California Press. pp. 27, 38, 40. ISBN 0-520-06697-9.
148. Snowden, Frank (1983). Before Color Prejudice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-674-06380-5.
149. Mokhtar, G. (1990). General History of Africa. California, USA: University of California Press. pp. 27–28. ISBN 0-520-06697-9.
150. Diop, Cheikh Anta (1974). The African Origin of Civilization. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill Books. pp. 6–42. ISBN 1-55652-072-7.
151. Diop, Cheikh Anta (1974). The African Origin of Civilization. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill Books. pp. 112, 135–138. ISBN 1-55652-072-7.
152. Margo DeMello, Encyclopedia of Body Adornment (2007), books.google.com/books?isbn=0313336954, p. 150:"The ancient Egyptians practiced head binding as early as 3000 BCE,... the Mangbetu of the Congo also practiced head binding."
153. Williams, Bruce (2011). Before the Pyramids. Chicago, Illinois: Oriental Institute Museum Publications. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-1-885923-82-0.
154. University of Chicago Oriental Institute, at
155. Ancient Egyptian Kingship, by David O'Connor, David P. Silverman, pg 104-105, at
156. Diop, Cheikh Anta (1991). Civilization or Barbarism. Chicago, Illinois, USA: Lawrence Hill Books. pp. 103–105. ISBN 1-55652-048-4.
157. O'Connor, David (2011). Before the Pyramids. Chicago, Illinois: Oriental Institute Museum Publications. pp. 162–163. ISBN 978-1-885923-82-0.
158. #The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, by Ian Shaw,pg 63, at
159. The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, by David Wengrow , pg 167, at
160. African Connections: An Archaeological Perspective on Africa and the Wider World, by Peter Mitchell, pg 69, at -
161. Early Dynastic Egypt, by Toby A. H. Wilkinson, pg 39, at
162. Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region Between Ancient Nubia and Egypt - by László Török , Pg 42-44 , at
163. Daily Life Of The Nubians, by Robert Steven Bianchi, pg 38, at
164. Bernal, Martin (1987). Black Athena. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 242. ISBN 0-8135-1276-X.
165. Mokhtar, G. (1990). General History of Africa. California, USA: University of California Press. pp. 33–61. ISBN 0-520-06697-9.
166. ^ Early dynastic Egypt, by Toby A. H. Wilkinson, pg 15
167. ^ Prehistory and Protohsitory of Egypt, Emile Massoulard, 1949
168. ^ Frank Yurco, "An Egyptological Review" in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, eds. Black Athena Revisited. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. pp. 62–100
169. ^ Sonia R. Zakrzewski: Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state – Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton (2003)
170. "The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective", Edith R. Sanders, The Journal of African History, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1969, pp. 521–532.
171. The Origin of Egyptian Civilisation, Edouard Naville, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 37, 1907, p. 201.
172. Sanders, 1969, pp. 521–523.
173. Diop, Cheikh Anta (1974). The African Origin of Civilization. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill Books. pp. 5–9. ISBN 1-55652-072-7.
174. Sanders, 1969, pp. 524-527ff.
175. "The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective", Edith R. Sanders, The Journal of African History, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1969, pp. 524–529.
176. Sanders, 1969, pp.525–532.
177. Sanders, 1969, pp. 527–530.
178. Sanders, 1969, pp. 528–530.
179. Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. xliii, 1913.
180. The First Appearance of the Negroes in History, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 7, No. ¾, Oct.; 1921, pp. 121–132.
181. Sanders, 1969, pp. 531; MacGaffey, 1966, pp.5–9.
182. Trafton, Scott (2004). Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-century American Egyptomania. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3362-7.
183. "General Remarks on "Types of Mankind"". Chnm.gmu.edu. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
184. Morton, Samuel George (1844). "Egyptian Ethnography". {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
185. George Robins Gliddon Ancient Egypt: Her monuments, hieroglyphics, history and archaeology 1844, p. 46
186. In Sergi’s classification the "Eurafrican" or Mediterranean race was synonymous for Caucasians, as he rejected the traditional idea of the Meditterenean race being a sub type within the Caucasian race.
187. The Mediterranean Race: a Study of the Origins of European Peoples, 1901, pp. v–vi, ‘‘Preface’’.
188. Sergi, 1901, p. 45.
189. Sergi, 1901, p. 250.
190. "Concepts of Race in the Historiography of Northeast Africa" , Wyatt MacGaffey, The Journal of African History, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1966.
191. The Ancient Egyptians and the origin of Civilization, 1911, p. 69.
192. Smith, 1911, p. 25.
193. Smith, 1911, p. 58.
194. "Neither in Sergi’s nor in Elliot Smith’s scheme are Brown and Mediterranean equivalent terms." – MacGaffey, 1966, p. 4.
195. History of Egypt, 1846, Part I, p. 3 "The Asiatic Origin of the Race.
196. Black Athena revisited, by Mary R. Lefkowitz, Guy MacLean Rogers, pg65.
197. Epic encounters: culture, media, and U.S. interests in the Middle East – 1945–2000 by Melani McAlister
198. Black Athena revisited, by Mary R. Lefkowitz, Guy MacLean Rogers

References

• Bruce R. Dain, 2009 A Hideous Monster Of The Mind: American race theory in the early republic, Oxford University Press
• Scott Tafton, 2004: Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century American Egyptomania, Duke University Press
• Debbie Challis, 2013: The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton and Flinders Petrie, Google E-Book
• Nina G. Jablonski, 2012 : Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color, 2012. Google E-Book
• 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
• Anthony Noguera, 1976. How African Was Egypt?: A Comparative Study of Ancient Egyptian and Black African Cultures. Illustrations by Joelle Noguera. New York: Vantage Press.
• Shomarka Keita: "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", Egypt in Africa, (1996), pp. 25–27

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