Ancient Egypt Race and Ethnicity Discussions! ❌
Here will be information and quotes and research from a number of historical and more contemporary researches as to the long lasting controversy of the issue of the Egyptian race. Included as well will be depictions of Ancient Egyptians, or figures associated with the civilization as rendered by their contemporaries.
References by Greco-Roman Writers:
Hesiod wrote: "Black people resided not in the Nile valley but in a far land, by the fountain of the sun’, or where the sun ‘goes to and fro'"
🔗https://books.google.co.tz/books/about/History_in_Black.html?id=VlNkzTO6IecC&redir_esc=y
References by Greco-Roman Writers:
Hesiod wrote: "Black people resided not in the Nile valley but in a far land, by the fountain of the sun’, or where the sun ‘goes to and fro'"
🔗https://books.google.co.tz/books/about/History_in_Black.html?id=VlNkzTO6IecC&redir_esc=y
“The Aethiopianss say that their gods have flat noses and black skins, while the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.”
🔗Xenophanes, c. 550 BC
Herodotus remarked on the shared cultural practices between Egyptians and Ethiopians as he states: “I myself guessed it to be so, partly because they are dark-skinned and curly/wooly-haired; though that indeed goes for nothing, seeing that other peoples, too, are such; but my better proof was that the Colchians and Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only nations that have from the first practised circumcision."
🔗LacusCurtius • Herodotus — Book II: Chapters 99‑182 (uchicago.edu)
🔗The Histories - Herodotus - Google Books
Herodotus commented that the people dwelling on the Nile are dark skinned because of the burning heat.
🔗Xenophanes, c. 550 BC
Herodotus remarked on the shared cultural practices between Egyptians and Ethiopians as he states: “I myself guessed it to be so, partly because they are dark-skinned and curly/wooly-haired; though that indeed goes for nothing, seeing that other peoples, too, are such; but my better proof was that the Colchians and Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only nations that have from the first practised circumcision."
🔗LacusCurtius • Herodotus — Book II: Chapters 99‑182 (uchicago.edu)
🔗The Histories - Herodotus - Google Books
Herodotus commented that the people dwelling on the Nile are dark skinned because of the burning heat.
🔗
Herodotus commented that: "The country above Elephantine now begins to be inhabited by Ethiopians: half the people of the island are Ethiopians, and half Egyptians. Near the island is a great lake, on whose shores live nomadic Ethiopians. After crossing this, you come to the stream of the Nile, which empties into this lake.”
🔗Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, chapter 29, section 4 (tufts.edu)
Achilles Tatius described the complexion of the Egyptian herdsmen near Alexandria as "dark-coloured (yet not absolutely black like an Indian, but more like a bastard Ethiopian)."
🔗Achilles Tatius : Achilles Tatius : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
When it came to Egypt's neighbour, Ancient Libya, Herodotus wrote: "One thing I can add about this far country [Libya]: so far as one knows, it is inhabited by four races, and four only, of which two are indigenous and two not. The indigenous peoples are the Libyans and Ethiopians, the former occupying the northerly, the latter the more southerly parts; the immigrants are the Phoenicians and Greeks. (Book IV, 196).
Positions of 18th-19th Century Scholars:
In the 18th century, French philosopher and abolitionist count Constantin de Volney made a set of comments regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians through his travels in Egypt and Syria. He wrote 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." Volney further commented that the Sphinx gave him the key to the riddle as to why all the Egyptians he saw across the country "have a bloated face, puffed-up eyes, flat nose, thick lips-in a word, the true face of the mulatto." He wrote he was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but upon visiting the Sphinx, its appearance gave him the answer; "seeing that head, typically negro in all its features." Volney saw it as the "true solution to the enigma (of how the modern Egyptians came to have their 'mulatto' appearance)". He goes on to postulate, "the Copts were 'true negroes' of the same stock as all the autochthonous peoples of Africa" and they after some centuries of mixing must have lost the full blackness of its original color. However, it is important to note that once viewing the Mummies, Constantin de Volney would backtrack considerably on his initial position, abandoning his ideas. Other scholars noted, that more exposure, and experience and study has allowed him to correct many errors.
🔗Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785: avec ... - Comte Constantin François de Chasseboeuf de Volney - Google Books
🔗Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, chapter 29, section 4 (tufts.edu)
Achilles Tatius described the complexion of the Egyptian herdsmen near Alexandria as "dark-coloured (yet not absolutely black like an Indian, but more like a bastard Ethiopian)."
🔗Achilles Tatius : Achilles Tatius : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
When it came to Egypt's neighbour, Ancient Libya, Herodotus wrote: "One thing I can add about this far country [Libya]: so far as one knows, it is inhabited by four races, and four only, of which two are indigenous and two not. The indigenous peoples are the Libyans and Ethiopians, the former occupying the northerly, the latter the more southerly parts; the immigrants are the Phoenicians and Greeks. (Book IV, 196).
🔗Herodotus, The Histories, Book 4, chapter 197 (tufts.edu)
“In the Delta of Egypt,” said Critias, “where, at its head, the stream of the Nile parts in two, there is a certain district called the Saitic. The chief city in this district is Sais—the home of King Amasis, - the founder of which, they say, is a goddess whose Egyptian name is Neith, and in Greek, as they assert, Athena. These people profess to be great lovers of Athens and in a measure akin to our people here.
🔗https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0180%3Atext%3DTim.%3Asection%3D21e
Physiogomonics (Pseudo-Aristotle), a Greek treatise traditionally attributed to Aristotle, but now of disputed ownership made an observation on the physical nature of the Egyptians and Ethiopians with the view that: "Those who are too swarthy are cowards, like for the instance, the Egyptians and Ethiopians.
🔗ARISTOTLE, Physiognomics | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
“In the Delta of Egypt,” said Critias, “where, at its head, the stream of the Nile parts in two, there is a certain district called the Saitic. The chief city in this district is Sais—the home of King Amasis, - the founder of which, they say, is a goddess whose Egyptian name is Neith, and in Greek, as they assert, Athena. These people profess to be great lovers of Athens and in a measure akin to our people here.
🔗https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0180%3Atext%3DTim.%3Asection%3D21e
Physiogomonics (Pseudo-Aristotle), a Greek treatise traditionally attributed to Aristotle, but now of disputed ownership made an observation on the physical nature of the Egyptians and Ethiopians with the view that: "Those who are too swarthy are cowards, like for the instance, the Egyptians and Ethiopians.
🔗ARISTOTLE, Physiognomics | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
Aeschylus wrote,
🔗https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/aeschylus/suppliantwomenhtml.html
Diodorus said that
🔗https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/aeschylus/suppliantwomenhtml.html
Diodorus said that
🔗
“Now the men of Egypt are, as a rule, somewhat swarthy and dark of complexion, and rather gloomy-looking, slender and hardy, excitable in all their movements, quarrelsome, and most persistent duns. Any one of them would blush if he did not, in consequence of refusing tribute”
🔗AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, History | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
Strabo discussed migrations between Egypt and Ethiopia in his book, Geography, and noted that "Egyptians settled Ethiopia and Colchis". With regard to the Egyptians and Ethiopians, Strabo indicates that they looked similar to Indians, remarking "those who are in Asia (South India), and those who are in Africa, do not differ from each other." He stated that "the inhabitants of the south resemble the Ethiopians in colour, but their countenances and hair are like those of other people. Their hair does not curl, on account of the humidity of the atmosphere. The inhabitants of the north resemble the Egyptians."
🔗Strabo, Geography, BOOK XV., CHAPTER I., section 13 (tufts.edu)
Similarly, Arrian wrote that: "The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically".
🔗ARRIAN, Indica | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
Manilius, a Roman poet wrote in his Astronomicon: "The Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness; less sun-burnt are the natives of India; the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it is a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone."
🔗MANILIUS, Astronomica | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
Philostratus had written in his journeys and life of Appolonios of Tyana, he had at one point arrived at "the crossing point between Ethiopia and Egypt, which is called Kaminos", where at a marketplace the Ethiopians and Egyptians would trade and barter products. It was seen that "those who live at the border of the two countries are not quite black, but of the same color as each other, since they are less black than the Ethiopians, but more so than the Egyptians."
🔗PHILOSTRATUS OF ATHENS, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
(Notice: Some of the terms used by Greco-Roman writers, are not the same as they are understood in the modern day, they must be used in their original cultural and historical contexts. With the term 'melanchrous', it was used describe variety of complexions and peoples, full stop! 🔗https://books.google.com.eg/books?id=UrR848g3gp8C&pg=PA320&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=melanchroes&f=false)
References by Egyptians:
Papyrus Deir el-Medina 1
"Look, she is like a star goddess arising at the beginning of a happy new year; brilliantly white, bright skinned; with beautiful eyes for looking,
with sweet lips for speaking; she has not one phrase too many. With a long neck and white breast, her hair of genuine lapis lazuli; her arm more brilliant than gold; her fingers like lotus flowers, with heavy buttocks and girt waist."
🔗https://iwuzkang.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/descriptions-by-the-egyptians-themselves/
“Now the men of Egypt are, as a rule, somewhat swarthy and dark of complexion, and rather gloomy-looking, slender and hardy, excitable in all their movements, quarrelsome, and most persistent duns. Any one of them would blush if he did not, in consequence of refusing tribute”
🔗AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, History | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
Strabo discussed migrations between Egypt and Ethiopia in his book, Geography, and noted that "Egyptians settled Ethiopia and Colchis". With regard to the Egyptians and Ethiopians, Strabo indicates that they looked similar to Indians, remarking "those who are in Asia (South India), and those who are in Africa, do not differ from each other." He stated that "the inhabitants of the south resemble the Ethiopians in colour, but their countenances and hair are like those of other people. Their hair does not curl, on account of the humidity of the atmosphere. The inhabitants of the north resemble the Egyptians."
🔗Strabo, Geography, BOOK XV., CHAPTER I., section 13 (tufts.edu)
Similarly, Arrian wrote that: "The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically".
🔗ARRIAN, Indica | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
Manilius, a Roman poet wrote in his Astronomicon: "The Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness; less sun-burnt are the natives of India; the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it is a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone."
🔗MANILIUS, Astronomica | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
Philostratus had written in his journeys and life of Appolonios of Tyana, he had at one point arrived at "the crossing point between Ethiopia and Egypt, which is called Kaminos", where at a marketplace the Ethiopians and Egyptians would trade and barter products. It was seen that "those who live at the border of the two countries are not quite black, but of the same color as each other, since they are less black than the Ethiopians, but more so than the Egyptians."
🔗PHILOSTRATUS OF ATHENS, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana | Loeb Classical Library (loebclassics.com)
(Notice: Some of the terms used by Greco-Roman writers, are not the same as they are understood in the modern day, they must be used in their original cultural and historical contexts. With the term 'melanchrous', it was used describe variety of complexions and peoples, full stop! 🔗https://books.google.com.eg/books?id=UrR848g3gp8C&pg=PA320&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=melanchroes&f=false)
References by Egyptians:
Papyrus Deir el-Medina 1
"Look, she is like a star goddess arising at the beginning of a happy new year; brilliantly white, bright skinned; with beautiful eyes for looking,
with sweet lips for speaking; she has not one phrase too many. With a long neck and white breast, her hair of genuine lapis lazuli; her arm more brilliant than gold; her fingers like lotus flowers, with heavy buttocks and girt waist."
🔗https://iwuzkang.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/descriptions-by-the-egyptians-themselves/
Positions of 18th-19th Century Scholars:
In the 18th century, French philosopher and abolitionist count Constantin de Volney made a set of comments regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians through his travels in Egypt and Syria. He wrote 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." Volney further commented that the Sphinx gave him the key to the riddle as to why all the Egyptians he saw across the country "have a bloated face, puffed-up eyes, flat nose, thick lips-in a word, the true face of the mulatto." He wrote he was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but upon visiting the Sphinx, its appearance gave him the answer; "seeing that head, typically negro in all its features." Volney saw it as the "true solution to the enigma (of how the modern Egyptians came to have their 'mulatto' appearance)". He goes on to postulate, "the Copts were 'true negroes' of the same stock as all the autochthonous peoples of Africa" and they after some centuries of mixing must have lost the full blackness of its original color. However, it is important to note that once viewing the Mummies, Constantin de Volney would backtrack considerably on his initial position, abandoning his ideas. Other scholars noted, that more exposure, and experience and study has allowed him to correct many errors.
🔗Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785: avec ... - Comte Constantin François de Chasseboeuf de Volney - Google Books
🔗https://books.google.co.tz/books/about/Volney_s_Ruins_Or_Meditation_on_the_Revo.html?id=0YM-AAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y
In 1839 (However Champollion passed away in 1832, so this may be misattributed?) Jean Francois Champollion suggested that: "The first tribes that inhabited Egypt that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataracts and the sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. The ancient Egyptians belonged to a race quite similar to the Kennous or Barabras, present inhabitants of Nubia. 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 have successively dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race." This memoir was made in the context of the initial Neolithic groups that would have inhabited Egypt, his opinion was noted after his return from Nubia. Champollion considered the Barbara Arabs, or Sudanese Nubians, to have been the original settlers of the Nile River Valley. He would also use the Coptic language to translate the Rosetta stone, and found it to be the last form of the Egyptian language.
In 1839 (However Champollion passed away in 1832, so this may be misattributed?) Jean Francois Champollion suggested that: "The first tribes that inhabited Egypt that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataracts and the sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. The ancient Egyptians belonged to a race quite similar to the Kennous or Barabras, present inhabitants of Nubia. 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 have successively dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race." This memoir was made in the context of the initial Neolithic groups that would have inhabited Egypt, his opinion was noted after his return from Nubia. Champollion considered the Barbara Arabs, or Sudanese Nubians, to have been the original settlers of the Nile River Valley. He would also use the Coptic language to translate the Rosetta stone, and found it to be the last form of the Egyptian language.
🔗Égypte ancienne - Champollion-Figeac (M., Jacques-Joseph) - Google Books
🔗THE VERDICT OF JEAN-FRANÇOIS CHAMPOLLION: COPTIC IS THE MOST PERFECT AND THE MOST RATIONAL LANGUAGE KNOWN | DIOSCORUS BOLES ON COPTIC NATIONALISM (wordpress.com)
Champollion's and Volney's claims were later disputed by French Archeologist Jacques Joseph Campollion Figeac, who blamed a misunderstanding of the ancients for spreading a false impression of a "Negro" Egypt, stating the two physical traits of dark skin and curly hair are not enough to stamp a race as Negro. Volney's conclusion as to the Negro origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization was considered evidently forced and inadmissible.
🔗Ref32341f43543
Samuel George Morton (1844), a physician and professor of anatomy, concluded that: "Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and slaves." He believed that the Nile Valley in both Egypt and Sudan was originally populated by a branch of the Caucasian race. Furthermore, he considered the Copts as being a mixed community, derived from the Caucasian and Negro and a large proportion of them can be regarded as mullatos. Morton further wrote that Fellahs are the lineal and least mixed descendants of the ancient Egyptians, while the modern Nubians are a mixed race of Arabs and Negroes.
🔗Crania Aegyptiaca: Or, Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from ... - Samuel George Morton - Google Books
In 1847, George Robbins Gliddon similarly wrote: “The modern Nubians, with a few exceptions are not the descendants of the monumental Ethiopians, but a variously mixed race of Arabs and Negroes.”
🔗Ancient Egypt: Her Monuments, Hieroglyphics, History and Archæology, and ... - George Robins Gliddon - Google Books
Around 1854, Josiah Nott and George R. Gliddon noted that according to majority of ethnographers and Morton's own anthropological works, "the Fellahs of Upper and Middle Egypt, at the present day, continue to be an unmistakable race, and are regarded by most travelled authorities as the best living representatives of the ancient population of Egypt." They would also take the position that, "the iconographic monuments of the IVth, Vth, and VIth dynasties, is closely analogous to the predominant type of that day; which fact serves to strengthen our view that the Egyptians of the early dynasties were rather of an African or Negroid type-resembling the Bishari in some respects, and in others the modern Fellah, or peasantry of Upper Egypt."
🔗Types of Mankind Or, Ethnological Researches: Based Upon the Ancient ... - Josiah Clark Nott, George Robins Gliddon, Samuel George Morton - Google Books
https://ia601302.us.archive.org/0/items/typesofmankindor01nott/typesofmankindor01nott.pdf
Christian Missionary David Livingstone in 1858, visited Luanda in Angola, and gave the opinion that many of the tribes he saw, with the diversity of skin tones amongst the Khoisan and Bantu tribes, made him consider similarities with their features and the Ancient Egyptians. He personally considered the idealized form of these groups to be similar to some monuments, than any of the works of ethnology that he encountered. Livingstone also noted similarities in weaving techniques with what he saw depicted on one Egyptian wall relief in comparison to methods being practiced amongst a tribal group making cotton in the region.
🔗Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; Including a Sketch of ... - David Livingstone - Google Books
George Rawlinson a historian wrote in 1881 on the historiography of Egypt, that in form the Egyptian most resembled the modern Arab. They were amongst the darkest of races that the Greeks came into contact with, but considered Herodotus to have made extreme exaggerations. Based on his viewing of monuments, he asserted the real complexion of the ordinary Egyptian man was brown-with a tinge of red, which he observed was not very different from the Copts. Later, in a collaborative work with Arthur Gilman, he would also claim the Egyptians were not negroes, but bore a resemblance to the negro, and the Egyptian people were beyond all question a mixed race, showing diverse affinities. Being a product of Ethiopians from the south, Libyans from the west, Semites from the north-east, where Africa adjoined on Asia.
🔗History of Ancient Egypt - George Rawlinson - Google Books
🔗Ancient Egypt - George Rawlinson, Arthur Gilman - Google Books
In the early 20th century, Sir Flinders Petrie, professor of Egyptology at the University of London, became a proponent of the dynastic race theory of the ancient Egyptians. He believed that a different race of invaders from the east (i.e. Mesopotamia), was responsible for imposing a higher civilization on the other indigenous Egyptians, while intermixing with them. He based his conclusion, on the abundance of foreign artifacts during the Naqada and Badarian phases of Egyptian history, as well as changes in the burials, architecture, cultural facets (cylinder seals, motifs, artifacts...etc) and anthropological shifts, which lead him to postulate an incursion of Mesopotamian settlers into the Nile Valley. In his earlier conclusions in 1895, Petrie had also written; "the Egyptians were largely formed from Libyan immigrants to begin with, the basis of the race apparently being a mulatto of Libyan-negro mixture judging from the earliest skeletons at Medum."
🔗Naqada and Ballas. 1895 - Six Temples at Thebes, Naqada and Ballas (cambridge.org)
🔗https://books.google.co.tz/books?redir_esc=y&id=nTcWAAAAYAAJ&q=libyan#v=snippet&q=libyan-negro&f=false
Nature Magazine in 1901, were disconcerted with some statements made by the Egyptologist Randall-Maciver, as he had suggested: "It is well worth considering whether the pre-dynastic race of Egypt is not in the main a blending in various proportions of Semite and Negro."
🔗The New Basis of Geography A Manual for the Preparation of the Teacher | Nature
n1670.indd (nature.com)
M. Ernest Chantre (1904), an archeologist and anthropologist, had his position and work verified and referenced in a large study in 1992 by Alain Froment, who's exhaustive investigation discovered: "The morphological analysis carried out on extinct populations can also be done on the living. A data bank even more important than the one used for the skulls, has been established on 1300 peoples of the world. The results, too long to detail here, show that the position of contemporary Egypt, in relation to neighboring populations, is similar to that of ancient Egypt. There are therefore good reasons to believe that the fellah of the twentieth century is the direct descendant of the one whose representations adorn the tombs of the pharaohs, as thought by ancient authors."🔗THE VERDICT OF JEAN-FRANÇOIS CHAMPOLLION: COPTIC IS THE MOST PERFECT AND THE MOST RATIONAL LANGUAGE KNOWN | DIOSCORUS BOLES ON COPTIC NATIONALISM (wordpress.com)
Champollion's and Volney's claims were later disputed by French Archeologist Jacques Joseph Campollion Figeac, who blamed a misunderstanding of the ancients for spreading a false impression of a "Negro" Egypt, stating the two physical traits of dark skin and curly hair are not enough to stamp a race as Negro. Volney's conclusion as to the Negro origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization was considered evidently forced and inadmissible.
🔗Ref32341f43543
Samuel George Morton (1844), a physician and professor of anatomy, concluded that: "Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and slaves." He believed that the Nile Valley in both Egypt and Sudan was originally populated by a branch of the Caucasian race. Furthermore, he considered the Copts as being a mixed community, derived from the Caucasian and Negro and a large proportion of them can be regarded as mullatos. Morton further wrote that Fellahs are the lineal and least mixed descendants of the ancient Egyptians, while the modern Nubians are a mixed race of Arabs and Negroes.
🔗Crania Aegyptiaca: Or, Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from ... - Samuel George Morton - Google Books
In 1847, George Robbins Gliddon similarly wrote: “The modern Nubians, with a few exceptions are not the descendants of the monumental Ethiopians, but a variously mixed race of Arabs and Negroes.”
🔗Ancient Egypt: Her Monuments, Hieroglyphics, History and Archæology, and ... - George Robins Gliddon - Google Books
Around 1854, Josiah Nott and George R. Gliddon noted that according to majority of ethnographers and Morton's own anthropological works, "the Fellahs of Upper and Middle Egypt, at the present day, continue to be an unmistakable race, and are regarded by most travelled authorities as the best living representatives of the ancient population of Egypt." They would also take the position that, "the iconographic monuments of the IVth, Vth, and VIth dynasties, is closely analogous to the predominant type of that day; which fact serves to strengthen our view that the Egyptians of the early dynasties were rather of an African or Negroid type-resembling the Bishari in some respects, and in others the modern Fellah, or peasantry of Upper Egypt."
🔗Types of Mankind Or, Ethnological Researches: Based Upon the Ancient ... - Josiah Clark Nott, George Robins Gliddon, Samuel George Morton - Google Books
https://ia601302.us.archive.org/0/items/typesofmankindor01nott/typesofmankindor01nott.pdf
Christian Missionary David Livingstone in 1858, visited Luanda in Angola, and gave the opinion that many of the tribes he saw, with the diversity of skin tones amongst the Khoisan and Bantu tribes, made him consider similarities with their features and the Ancient Egyptians. He personally considered the idealized form of these groups to be similar to some monuments, than any of the works of ethnology that he encountered. Livingstone also noted similarities in weaving techniques with what he saw depicted on one Egyptian wall relief in comparison to methods being practiced amongst a tribal group making cotton in the region.
🔗Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; Including a Sketch of ... - David Livingstone - Google Books
George Rawlinson a historian wrote in 1881 on the historiography of Egypt, that in form the Egyptian most resembled the modern Arab. They were amongst the darkest of races that the Greeks came into contact with, but considered Herodotus to have made extreme exaggerations. Based on his viewing of monuments, he asserted the real complexion of the ordinary Egyptian man was brown-with a tinge of red, which he observed was not very different from the Copts. Later, in a collaborative work with Arthur Gilman, he would also claim the Egyptians were not negroes, but bore a resemblance to the negro, and the Egyptian people were beyond all question a mixed race, showing diverse affinities. Being a product of Ethiopians from the south, Libyans from the west, Semites from the north-east, where Africa adjoined on Asia.
🔗History of Ancient Egypt - George Rawlinson - Google Books
🔗Ancient Egypt - George Rawlinson, Arthur Gilman - Google Books
In the early 20th century, Sir Flinders Petrie, professor of Egyptology at the University of London, became a proponent of the dynastic race theory of the ancient Egyptians. He believed that a different race of invaders from the east (i.e. Mesopotamia), was responsible for imposing a higher civilization on the other indigenous Egyptians, while intermixing with them. He based his conclusion, on the abundance of foreign artifacts during the Naqada and Badarian phases of Egyptian history, as well as changes in the burials, architecture, cultural facets (cylinder seals, motifs, artifacts...etc) and anthropological shifts, which lead him to postulate an incursion of Mesopotamian settlers into the Nile Valley. In his earlier conclusions in 1895, Petrie had also written; "the Egyptians were largely formed from Libyan immigrants to begin with, the basis of the race apparently being a mulatto of Libyan-negro mixture judging from the earliest skeletons at Medum."
🔗Naqada and Ballas. 1895 - Six Temples at Thebes, Naqada and Ballas (cambridge.org)
🔗https://books.google.co.tz/books?redir_esc=y&id=nTcWAAAAYAAJ&q=libyan#v=snippet&q=libyan-negro&f=false
Nature Magazine in 1901, were disconcerted with some statements made by the Egyptologist Randall-Maciver, as he had suggested: "It is well worth considering whether the pre-dynastic race of Egypt is not in the main a blending in various proportions of Semite and Negro."
🔗The New Basis of Geography A Manual for the Preparation of the Teacher | Nature
n1670.indd (nature.com)
🔗https://www.persee.fr/doc/linly_1160-641x_1904_num_23_1_16455
Thomson and David Mac Iver (1905) who examined skulls from Upper Egypt (most of which were of dynastic date) concluded that since early predynastic and till Roman times, two racial stocks were recognized among the ancient Egyptians. They were differentiated from each other according to their facial characters, being either Negroid or non-Negroid. The early predynastic Negroid was represented by 24% in the Males and 19.5% Females. The non-Negroid was numerically stronger at 48.5% in the Males, and 44% Females. In the late predynastic, Negroid Males were 24.5% and Negroid Females 28%, compared to 44.5% non-Negroid Male specimens, and 38.5% non-Negroid Females. In the 1st Dynasty, the females are equally divided between both stocks at 28%, while in the Males the non-Negroid is predominant. There were also specimens that could not be categorized because of having contradictory forms, with other remains indicating stable forms of intruders of alien origin, and others being hybrids of these.
🔗The Earliest Inhabitants of Abydos: A Craniological Study - David Randall-MacIver - Google Books
🔗The Ancient Races of the Thebaid: Being an Anthropometrical Study of the ... - Arthur Thomson, David Randall-MacIver - Google Books
In 1907, it was written that Egyptologist Carl Richard Lepsius position was for an Asiatic origin of the Egyptians. He had been very much struck by the fact that the oldest known monuments in his time were the pyramids and the tombs around them, while in Ethiopia, as far as the province of Fazoql, he found nothing but very late monuments, the conclusion he drew from what he saw was that the Egyptians had come through the isthmus of the Suez, and after having settled first at Memphis, the had extended in the valley of the Nile, the civilization going up the river towards the South.
Thomson and David Mac Iver (1905) who examined skulls from Upper Egypt (most of which were of dynastic date) concluded that since early predynastic and till Roman times, two racial stocks were recognized among the ancient Egyptians. They were differentiated from each other according to their facial characters, being either Negroid or non-Negroid. The early predynastic Negroid was represented by 24% in the Males and 19.5% Females. The non-Negroid was numerically stronger at 48.5% in the Males, and 44% Females. In the late predynastic, Negroid Males were 24.5% and Negroid Females 28%, compared to 44.5% non-Negroid Male specimens, and 38.5% non-Negroid Females. In the 1st Dynasty, the females are equally divided between both stocks at 28%, while in the Males the non-Negroid is predominant. There were also specimens that could not be categorized because of having contradictory forms, with other remains indicating stable forms of intruders of alien origin, and others being hybrids of these.
🔗The Earliest Inhabitants of Abydos: A Craniological Study - David Randall-MacIver - Google Books
🔗The Ancient Races of the Thebaid: Being an Anthropometrical Study of the ... - Arthur Thomson, David Randall-MacIver - Google Books
In 1907, it was written that Egyptologist Carl Richard Lepsius position was for an Asiatic origin of the Egyptians. He had been very much struck by the fact that the oldest known monuments in his time were the pyramids and the tombs around them, while in Ethiopia, as far as the province of Fazoql, he found nothing but very late monuments, the conclusion he drew from what he saw was that the Egyptians had come through the isthmus of the Suez, and after having settled first at Memphis, the had extended in the valley of the Nile, the civilization going up the river towards the South.
According to the English Egyptologist Sir E. A. Wallis Budge in 1925, he said about the Egyptians that “no amount of alien blood has so far succeeded in destroying the fundamental characteristics, both physical and mental, of the ‘dweller of the Nile mud,' i.e. the fellah, or tiller of the ground who is today what he has ever been." He would rephrase that: "the physical type of the Egyptian
fellah is exactly what it was in the earliest dynasties. The
invasions of the Babylonians, Hyksos, Ethiopians (including negro races), Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs,
and Turks, have had no permanent effect either on their physical or mental characteristics."
Based on his studies of Egyptian crania from Prehistoric to Roman times, Morant (1925) explained that there were two types that existed in Egypt, a Lower Egyptian and Upper Egyptian respectively. He noted that overtime: “The Upper Egyptian type was slowly transformed and by the Late Dynastic times, the population of Upper Egypt was of almost pure Lower Egyptian type.”
In 1927, famous scientist Eugene Pittard said that based on his anthropological examinations which included measuring cephalic indexes, and considerations of world history, the Egyptian Coptic Christians and Muslim Fellaheen are essentially, and can be considered to be the anthropological image, and modern physical representations of the Ancient Egyptians.
🔗https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.7930
In 1939, professor of anthropology, Charleston S. Coon said: "Ancient Egypt must remain the most outstanding example yet known in the world of an important, naturally isolated region in which native racial types were permitted to develop their own way for several thousand years completely uninfluenced by foreign contacts. Modern Copts, who probably represent the ancient Egyptian type more faithfully than the Moslem population, have diverged from the earlier types only in a reduction of the skull length from about 183 mm. to 177 mm. Therefore, evolutionary change in Egypt consisted entirely of a slight reduction of head length, and in places of a lengthening of the face, and a narrowing of the nose; but the change has not been notable." With regards to describing the populations that existed throughout the history of Egypt, he wrote that the Tasians, have heavy browridges, being dolicophalic with some brachycephals, square orbits and projected chins, being orthognathous and mesorrhine. They seemed to belong to a purely white category, and may have represented an Upper Palaeolithic strain of Afalou or Early Natufian type. The Fayum people and the Merimdians of the Delta, were said to be dolichocephalic and Mediterranean in form. There was no trace of negroid influence, and the skulls are said to be larger than those of predynastic Egyptians. He wrote the Badarians had skin that was apparently brunet white, while the hair was black or dark brown in color, thick, of fine texture, and usually wavy in form. The Badarian type represents a small branch of the Mediterranean racial group. The Badarian skulls are more prognathous than those of their successors, and have higher nasal indices. The nasal index is just on the line between mesorrhiny and chamaerrhiny. He references Morant who, "shows that the Badarian cranial type is closely similar to that of some of the modern Christians of northern Ethiopia - who incidentally do not show negroid characteristics in the skull - and also to the crania of Dravidian-speaking peoples of southern India. One might add that living Somalis show a close approximation to this physical type in most respects, and the extremely narrow jaw in which the Badarians seem to reach a world extreme may be duplicated among both Somalis and the inhabitants of southern India. In Europe, the closest parallel to the Badarian type is found among modern Sardinians, but this is not as close as their relationships to other and later Egyptians." Coon commented that in predynastic Egyptian times, the inhabitants of Lower Egypt, that is the region around Memphis and the modern Cairo, were physically and culturally distinct from those of Upper Egypt, with he two types from Upper and Lower Egypt representing the extremes of a purely native Egyptian population. In describing the Naqada peoples, he said they resembled the Badarians, but had narrower noses and less prognathism. At this time in Lower Egypt, the Naqada group was contemporary with another group of Mediterranean predynastic people who differed from the Upper Egyptians by lower nasak indexes and broader faces higher cranial indices. He writes: "The racial history of Egypt in the course of three thousand years was simply the gradual replacement of the Upper Egyptian type by that of Lower Egypt."
🔗https://archive.org/details/racesofeurope031695mbp/page/95/mode/2up?fbclid=IwAR2EqPUg6dKIROOo7uk9s7NKT0A9fo1W5oPejs9VCDPqKNj0XmpSvp0RAHM
In a review of previous work included in his own study of 2861 skulls, anthropologist Raymond Dart (1939) included the conclusions of former bioanthropologists in his field. He noted that: "Elliot Smith (1923) demonstrated the persistence of the fundamental, indigenous Brown (or Mediterranean) type in Egypt from the earliest predynastic times (circa 5000 B.c.) down to the present day. Morant (1925) however went far and beyond this standpoint when he stated that: "As examples of types which were entirely unaffected for several thousand years by any influence foreign to their country, the ancient Egyptians may well be unparalleled in the history of the world." Based on his studies and strong statement, the Ancient Egyptians showed continuity for thousands of years to the present day populations. In his study, he noted that the true Negroe type, only reached Egypt in recognizable numbers in Roman times. To the Romans, the authentic true Negroe was not well known. He posited that a Mediterranean race had entered Egypt long before the Badarian period, and also concluded that the Nubians, were a mix of this Mediterranean stock, and Negroes from further south.
🔗POPULATION FLUCTUATION OVER 7000 YEARS IN EGYPT: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa: Vol 27, No 2 (tandfonline.com)
🔗https://www.jstor.org/stable/2844513
In 1967,
🔗https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.7930
In 1939, professor of anthropology, Charleston S. Coon said: "Ancient Egypt must remain the most outstanding example yet known in the world of an important, naturally isolated region in which native racial types were permitted to develop their own way for several thousand years completely uninfluenced by foreign contacts. Modern Copts, who probably represent the ancient Egyptian type more faithfully than the Moslem population, have diverged from the earlier types only in a reduction of the skull length from about 183 mm. to 177 mm. Therefore, evolutionary change in Egypt consisted entirely of a slight reduction of head length, and in places of a lengthening of the face, and a narrowing of the nose; but the change has not been notable." With regards to describing the populations that existed throughout the history of Egypt, he wrote that the Tasians, have heavy browridges, being dolicophalic with some brachycephals, square orbits and projected chins, being orthognathous and mesorrhine. They seemed to belong to a purely white category, and may have represented an Upper Palaeolithic strain of Afalou or Early Natufian type. The Fayum people and the Merimdians of the Delta, were said to be dolichocephalic and Mediterranean in form. There was no trace of negroid influence, and the skulls are said to be larger than those of predynastic Egyptians. He wrote the Badarians had skin that was apparently brunet white, while the hair was black or dark brown in color, thick, of fine texture, and usually wavy in form. The Badarian type represents a small branch of the Mediterranean racial group. The Badarian skulls are more prognathous than those of their successors, and have higher nasal indices. The nasal index is just on the line between mesorrhiny and chamaerrhiny. He references Morant who, "shows that the Badarian cranial type is closely similar to that of some of the modern Christians of northern Ethiopia - who incidentally do not show negroid characteristics in the skull - and also to the crania of Dravidian-speaking peoples of southern India. One might add that living Somalis show a close approximation to this physical type in most respects, and the extremely narrow jaw in which the Badarians seem to reach a world extreme may be duplicated among both Somalis and the inhabitants of southern India. In Europe, the closest parallel to the Badarian type is found among modern Sardinians, but this is not as close as their relationships to other and later Egyptians." Coon commented that in predynastic Egyptian times, the inhabitants of Lower Egypt, that is the region around Memphis and the modern Cairo, were physically and culturally distinct from those of Upper Egypt, with he two types from Upper and Lower Egypt representing the extremes of a purely native Egyptian population. In describing the Naqada peoples, he said they resembled the Badarians, but had narrower noses and less prognathism. At this time in Lower Egypt, the Naqada group was contemporary with another group of Mediterranean predynastic people who differed from the Upper Egyptians by lower nasak indexes and broader faces higher cranial indices. He writes: "The racial history of Egypt in the course of three thousand years was simply the gradual replacement of the Upper Egyptian type by that of Lower Egypt."
🔗https://archive.org/details/racesofeurope031695mbp/page/95/mode/2up?fbclid=IwAR2EqPUg6dKIROOo7uk9s7NKT0A9fo1W5oPejs9VCDPqKNj0XmpSvp0RAHM
In a review of previous work included in his own study of 2861 skulls, anthropologist Raymond Dart (1939) included the conclusions of former bioanthropologists in his field. He noted that: "Elliot Smith (1923) demonstrated the persistence of the fundamental, indigenous Brown (or Mediterranean) type in Egypt from the earliest predynastic times (circa 5000 B.c.) down to the present day. Morant (1925) however went far and beyond this standpoint when he stated that: "As examples of types which were entirely unaffected for several thousand years by any influence foreign to their country, the ancient Egyptians may well be unparalleled in the history of the world." Based on his studies and strong statement, the Ancient Egyptians showed continuity for thousands of years to the present day populations. In his study, he noted that the true Negroe type, only reached Egypt in recognizable numbers in Roman times. To the Romans, the authentic true Negroe was not well known. He posited that a Mediterranean race had entered Egypt long before the Badarian period, and also concluded that the Nubians, were a mix of this Mediterranean stock, and Negroes from further south.
🔗POPULATION FLUCTUATION OVER 7000 YEARS IN EGYPT: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa: Vol 27, No 2 (tandfonline.com)
🔗https://www.jstor.org/stable/2844513
In 1967,
Biologist John Baker in 1974, summarized some of the general thoughts by anthropologists (Morant, Smith, Sergi...etc) from the findings of select historic works with regards to Egypt's population history: "From predynastic times onwards a principal part of the population of Egypt appears
to have been composed of a section of the Aethiopid subrace, but with this
stock there coexisted for a time an 'Aeneolithic' (Chalcolithic) people that disappeared
before the beginning of the First Dynasty. The skulls of the latter people show that they were related to the main population, but distinct from it." He continues: "Although the inhabitants of Egypt throughout the dynastic period were
similar to one another in many respects, they were differentiated at first into two local forms, one of them occupying the Fayum and parts of the country in the vicinity of the lower Nile, and the other living far upstream in the region, called the Thebaid. In anthropological studies the former region is referred to
as 'Lower Egypt', though it does not correspond exactly with the modern province of that name; the other is called 'Upper Egypt'. The Upper Egyptians
had narrower skulls, and consequently somewhat lower cranial indices (commonly about 73.5, in comparison with 75.0 or rather more among the Lower Egyptians) and one may condense a very large body of statistical data into a
few words by saying that in all the six criteria by which Egyptian skulls can be
distinguished from Negroid ones, the Upper Egyptian skulls approximated at
fit a little more closely towards the Negriod condition than did those from
Lower Egypt. This differentiation did not persist, however. Extremely gradually, as one dynasty succeeded another, over an immense period, the skulls of the Upper Egyptians changed, until at last they were scarcely distinguishable from
those of the Lower Egyptians, even by the most refined statistical techniques. Morant considers two possible causes of the change: either miscegenation in Upper Egypt on a very large scale, with eventual predominance
of the Lower Egyptian element, or an independent evolutionary change in the
Upper Egyptian population. He does not decide the question, but the former
possibility seems much the more probable of the two. Eickstedt maintained a third opinion, that the Upper Egyptians were pushed out of the country towards the south by their relatives from downstream. Whichever
hypothesis is correct, the population of the whole country became almost
homogeneous, with attenuation of the Negroid element. The Fellahin and Copts of modern Egypt are regarded as scarcely modified descendants of the Egyptians of later dynastic times."
Modern Egyptian Perspectives:
🔗Herakles Killing Busiris, 480 BCE
🔗Red Attic Figure, Herakles and Busiris, 470 BCE
🔗Archeological Museum in Athens, King Busiris, 460 BCE
🔗Busiris Slaying Hercules, 425 BCE
🔗Dinos with Hercules and Busiris, 340 BCE
🔗Nile Mosaic from 2nd Century CE
🔗Race - By John R Baker (archive.org)
In 1974, based on some of the anthropological conclusions of the population history of Egypt at the Cairo symposium, researchers noted that during the Upper Paleolithic (12,000-10,000 BCE), a dolichocephalic population inhabited the region that had some similarities to remains in North Africa (Mechta-Afalou) and Europe (Cromagnon), but could not be classified as "Negroid" or "Non-Negroid". In the Neolithic (8,000-5,000 BCE), the region in Lower Egypt was inhabited by groups (based on the limited evidence) who were different from the later predynastic populations of Upper Egypt. During the Pre-Dynastic period (5,000-3,300 BCE), both the Nubian and Egyptian groups would have been mixed, between groups such as "Negroids", Mediterraneans, Cro-Magnons, and Mixed Races expressing traits from all three groups. According to the writers, the heterogeneity in physical types does not dismiss the notion of an "Egyptian Race", as they could be variation within a related population. Moreover, they noted that the word "Negro" and "Negroids" are ambiguous, with it denoting characteristics rather than that of being. Continuing, during the protodynastic period, the variation in remains is identical to the pre-dynastic, but with the "Mediterranean" component, being stronger than the "Negroid", as seen in the royal tombs of Abydos. In the Predynastic, as in the Protodynastic, a few brachycephalic individuals appeared, but they did not become relatively numerous until the later Pharaonic era.
🔗https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000192572
Positions of Contemporary Scholars:
In 1974, based on some of the anthropological conclusions of the population history of Egypt at the Cairo symposium, researchers noted that during the Upper Paleolithic (12,000-10,000 BCE), a dolichocephalic population inhabited the region that had some similarities to remains in North Africa (Mechta-Afalou) and Europe (Cromagnon), but could not be classified as "Negroid" or "Non-Negroid". In the Neolithic (8,000-5,000 BCE), the region in Lower Egypt was inhabited by groups (based on the limited evidence) who were different from the later predynastic populations of Upper Egypt. During the Pre-Dynastic period (5,000-3,300 BCE), both the Nubian and Egyptian groups would have been mixed, between groups such as "Negroids", Mediterraneans, Cro-Magnons, and Mixed Races expressing traits from all three groups. According to the writers, the heterogeneity in physical types does not dismiss the notion of an "Egyptian Race", as they could be variation within a related population. Moreover, they noted that the word "Negro" and "Negroids" are ambiguous, with it denoting characteristics rather than that of being. Continuing, during the protodynastic period, the variation in remains is identical to the pre-dynastic, but with the "Mediterranean" component, being stronger than the "Negroid", as seen in the royal tombs of Abydos. In the Predynastic, as in the Protodynastic, a few brachycephalic individuals appeared, but they did not become relatively numerous until the later Pharaonic era.
🔗https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000192572
Positions of Contemporary Scholars:
Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. a historian of Egypt and professor of Middle East history in 1988, would write: "Of all the peoples of the ancient near east, only the Egyptians have stayed where they were and remained what they were, although they have changed their language once and their religion twice. In a sense, they constitute the world’s oldest nation."
Frank J. Yurco outlined in a 1989 article that: "The ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of varying complexions of color, from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti), to the light brown of Middle Egypt, to the darker brown of Upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan and the First Cataract region, where even today, the population shifts to Nubian." [...] "Ancient and modern Egyptian hair ranges from straight to wavy to woolly; in color, it varies from reddish brown to dark brown to black. Lips range from thin to full. Many Egyptians possess a protrusive jaw. Noses vary from high-bridged-straight to arched or even hooked-to flat-bridged, with bulbous to broad nostrils. In short, ancient Egypt, like modern Egypt, consisted of a very heterogeneous population." He further suggested a historical, regional and ethnolinguistic continuity, asserting that "the mummies and skeletons of ancient Egyptians indicate they were similar to the modern Egyptians and other people of the Afro-Asiatic ethnic grouping." In Black Athena Revisted, Frank Yurco would note that: "Two seminal studies of Egyptian skeletal material reported continuity from the ancient down to the modern population (Batrawi 1945, 1946). Certainly there was some foreign admixture in Egypt, but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times.” Yurco would also note that the earliest pre-dynastic populations, already showed a range of features and types similar to contemporary Egypt stating: "The resulting Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (and to this day)."
🔗Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White? - The BAS Library (biblicalarchaeology.org)
🔗Black Athena Revisited - Google Books
In 1991, Henry Louis Gates the African American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, criticized Afrocentrism in relation to African American identity stating: "too many people still regard African-American studies primarily as a way to rediscover a lost cultural identity-or invent one that never quite existed. For our field to survive, we need to encourage a true proliferation of rigorous methodologies, rather than to seek ideological conformity [...] Bogus theories of "sun" and "ice" people, and the invidious scapegoating of other ethnic groups, only resurrects the worst of 19th-century racist pseudoscience-which too many of the pharaohs of "Afrocentrism" have accepted without realizing."
🔗https://www.newsweek.com/beware-now-pharaohs-203474
In 1992, Sheldon Peck considered the Sphinx to represent a Black African, and said Pharaoh Khafre/Chefren was having facial proportions of a European, and could not be the image on the Sphinx. He also said the peopling of Ancient Egypt was formed by the ancestral mixing of these Mediterraneans and Black Africans.
🔗https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/18/opinion/l-sphinx-may-really-be-a-black-african-408692.html
A faculty head of anthropology, Bernard R. Ortiz De Montellano wrote in 1993: "The claim that all Egyptians, or even all the pharaohs, were black, is not valid. Most scholars believe that Egyptians in antiquity looked pretty much as they look today, with a gradation of darker shades toward the Sudan."
🔗Melanin, afrocentricity, and pseudoscience - De Montellano - 1993 - American Journal of Physical Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
Since 1995, biological anthropologist SOY Keita maintains the position of geoarcheologist Fekhri A. Hassan: "The peopling of what is now the Egyptian Nile Valley, judging from archaeological and biological data, was apparently the result of a complex interaction between Coastal Northern Africans, Neolithic Saharans, Nilotic Hunters, and Riverine Proto-Nubians with some influence and migration from the Levant (Hassan, 1988)." His collective works in studying the anthropometrics of Pre-Dynastic to Dynastic Egyptian crania, made him recognize "Northern" and "Southern" patterns in the Ancient Egyptians, with the former overlapping more with Coastal Maghrebi populations, and the latter Sudanese and Horn of Africans. In 2005, he stated that from the genetic documentation, the modern inhabitants of the Nile-Valley, are the main and sole descendants of the Pre-Neolithic regional inhabitants of the region, but with some additional admixtures based off the frequency of Near-Eastern haplotypes and lineages, and it varies based on geography. Keita would clarify, and go on to discuss in 2008, that Northern Egypt would have been more likely to have incurred an influx of foreign admixture, as it was more cosmopolitan throughout Egypt's long history. In 2019, professor Keita was featured in a video (🔗https://youtu.be/V1T7Tu2v2Ic) by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He said the Egyptian identity emerged and took place on the African soil, and any mixing that took place, happened in Africa. SOY Keita took the position of speaking in terms of human population groups, rather than race. He went on that the Egyptians did not come from any other place, but the Nile Valley. Their identity and any other ancestry they may have had was forged together in Africa, and that there were people with diverse phenotypic and physical traits. In 2022, Keita would say that when it comes to the body of anthropological works: "The results of the papers on the cranium, when viewed overall, indicate that the Egyptian Nile Valley populations show variability among themselves and primary affinities in varying degrees to populations from Nubia and Sudan, the Holocene Sahara, and the early Maghreb, and Southwest Asia-none of which is surprising and places them in Nile Valley Africa." To finalize, he states that even with migration and borrowing from various regions, the "Sudano-tropical origins" of the Ancient Egyptian culture and emergence in Northeast Africa would not have changed, their grounding and civilization emerged in Africa and not anywhere else.
Frank J. Yurco outlined in a 1989 article that: "The ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of varying complexions of color, from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti), to the light brown of Middle Egypt, to the darker brown of Upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan and the First Cataract region, where even today, the population shifts to Nubian." [...] "Ancient and modern Egyptian hair ranges from straight to wavy to woolly; in color, it varies from reddish brown to dark brown to black. Lips range from thin to full. Many Egyptians possess a protrusive jaw. Noses vary from high-bridged-straight to arched or even hooked-to flat-bridged, with bulbous to broad nostrils. In short, ancient Egypt, like modern Egypt, consisted of a very heterogeneous population." He further suggested a historical, regional and ethnolinguistic continuity, asserting that "the mummies and skeletons of ancient Egyptians indicate they were similar to the modern Egyptians and other people of the Afro-Asiatic ethnic grouping." In Black Athena Revisted, Frank Yurco would note that: "Two seminal studies of Egyptian skeletal material reported continuity from the ancient down to the modern population (Batrawi 1945, 1946). Certainly there was some foreign admixture in Egypt, but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times.” Yurco would also note that the earliest pre-dynastic populations, already showed a range of features and types similar to contemporary Egypt stating: "The resulting Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (and to this day)."
🔗Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White? - The BAS Library (biblicalarchaeology.org)
🔗Black Athena Revisited - Google Books
In 1991, Henry Louis Gates the African American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, criticized Afrocentrism in relation to African American identity stating: "too many people still regard African-American studies primarily as a way to rediscover a lost cultural identity-or invent one that never quite existed. For our field to survive, we need to encourage a true proliferation of rigorous methodologies, rather than to seek ideological conformity [...] Bogus theories of "sun" and "ice" people, and the invidious scapegoating of other ethnic groups, only resurrects the worst of 19th-century racist pseudoscience-which too many of the pharaohs of "Afrocentrism" have accepted without realizing."
🔗https://www.newsweek.com/beware-now-pharaohs-203474
In 1992, Sheldon Peck considered the Sphinx to represent a Black African, and said Pharaoh Khafre/Chefren was having facial proportions of a European, and could not be the image on the Sphinx. He also said the peopling of Ancient Egypt was formed by the ancestral mixing of these Mediterraneans and Black Africans.
🔗https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/18/opinion/l-sphinx-may-really-be-a-black-african-408692.html
A faculty head of anthropology, Bernard R. Ortiz De Montellano wrote in 1993: "The claim that all Egyptians, or even all the pharaohs, were black, is not valid. Most scholars believe that Egyptians in antiquity looked pretty much as they look today, with a gradation of darker shades toward the Sudan."
🔗Melanin, afrocentricity, and pseudoscience - De Montellano - 1993 - American Journal of Physical Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
Since 1995, biological anthropologist SOY Keita maintains the position of geoarcheologist Fekhri A. Hassan: "The peopling of what is now the Egyptian Nile Valley, judging from archaeological and biological data, was apparently the result of a complex interaction between Coastal Northern Africans, Neolithic Saharans, Nilotic Hunters, and Riverine Proto-Nubians with some influence and migration from the Levant (Hassan, 1988)." His collective works in studying the anthropometrics of Pre-Dynastic to Dynastic Egyptian crania, made him recognize "Northern" and "Southern" patterns in the Ancient Egyptians, with the former overlapping more with Coastal Maghrebi populations, and the latter Sudanese and Horn of Africans. In 2005, he stated that from the genetic documentation, the modern inhabitants of the Nile-Valley, are the main and sole descendants of the Pre-Neolithic regional inhabitants of the region, but with some additional admixtures based off the frequency of Near-Eastern haplotypes and lineages, and it varies based on geography. Keita would clarify, and go on to discuss in 2008, that Northern Egypt would have been more likely to have incurred an influx of foreign admixture, as it was more cosmopolitan throughout Egypt's long history. In 2019, professor Keita was featured in a video (🔗https://youtu.be/V1T7Tu2v2Ic) by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He said the Egyptian identity emerged and took place on the African soil, and any mixing that took place, happened in Africa. SOY Keita took the position of speaking in terms of human population groups, rather than race. He went on that the Egyptians did not come from any other place, but the Nile Valley. Their identity and any other ancestry they may have had was forged together in Africa, and that there were people with diverse phenotypic and physical traits. In 2022, Keita would say that when it comes to the body of anthropological works: "The results of the papers on the cranium, when viewed overall, indicate that the Egyptian Nile Valley populations show variability among themselves and primary affinities in varying degrees to populations from Nubia and Sudan, the Holocene Sahara, and the early Maghreb, and Southwest Asia-none of which is surprising and places them in Nile Valley Africa." To finalize, he states that even with migration and borrowing from various regions, the "Sudano-tropical origins" of the Ancient Egyptian culture and emergence in Northeast Africa would not have changed, their grounding and civilization emerged in Africa and not anywhere else.
🔗https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MVFSDCPt9WFScHqnvFzx5dEXkJGpOnW7/view
According to more conservative scholars like Mary Leftowirtz (1996) who argues for the need for historical truths and standards in cultural education and academia, and being against in particular Afrocentric revisionism, she wrote: "On the basis of the available evidence, we believe it can be shown that ancient Egyptians regarded themselves as ethnically distinct from other African peoples, as well from the people of Middle East and Europe: that although they are 'people of colour' by modern definition, in their own mind and in the minds of ancient Greeks, they were a different nation from Ethiopians." Leftowirtz would also state that, in this context, "if you go by the American 'one-drop-rule' the Egyptians would be considered black."
According to more conservative scholars like Mary Leftowirtz (1996) who argues for the need for historical truths and standards in cultural education and academia, and being against in particular Afrocentric revisionism, she wrote: "On the basis of the available evidence, we believe it can be shown that ancient Egyptians regarded themselves as ethnically distinct from other African peoples, as well from the people of Middle East and Europe: that although they are 'people of colour' by modern definition, in their own mind and in the minds of ancient Greeks, they were a different nation from Ethiopians." Leftowirtz would also state that, in this context, "if you go by the American 'one-drop-rule' the Egyptians would be considered black."
Linguist Christopher Ehret (1996), would say "Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots. The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt". In a presentation in, and in 2023, he would
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In 2000, during a republication, professor Frank M. Snowden Jr would say: "There is, however, insufficient evidence to estimate precisely either the size of Nubian element in population of ancient Egypt or the extent Nubian-Egyptian racial admixture. It would be inaccurate to describe the United States either as black or a predominantly black nation. It would be equally inaccurate to describe ancient Egypt as black or predominantly black when much less is known about the Nubian element in population. Three important points relevant to the blackness of Africans in the ancient world emerge from the examination of the copious ancient iconographic and written evidence. First, Egyptians and their southern neighbors were perceived as distinctly different physical types. Second, it was inhabitants of Nubia, not the Egyptians, whose physical type most closely resembled that of Africans and people of African descent referred in the modern world as blacks. Third, the Bernal-Afrocentric practice of describing Egyptians as Black overlooks crucial distinctions made in antiquity between the physical characteristics of Egyptians and Nubians, and actually equates the two physical types - an equivalence not supported by modern evidence."
🔗https://ia801903.us.archive.org/24/items/TrueHistoryOfMacedonia/Black%20Athena%20Revisited%20%28edited%20by%20Mary%20R.%20Lefkowitz%29.pdf
In 2001, Stuart Tyson Smith wrote 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 'black', while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans." In 2020 he would further comment that: “It has always struck me as odd that Egyptologists have been reluctant to admit that the ancient (and modern) Egyptians were rather dark-skinned Africans, especially the farther south one goes,” Smith continued; “As Bruce Williams pointed out years ago, an ancient Egyptian transported to the American South in the days of segregation would not be allowed to sit at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, would have to go to the back of the bus, would be barred from facilities reserved for whites. The same applies to most of the modern Nubians, Sudanese and Egyptians that I know and have worked with.” In his video in the same year (🔗https://youtu.be/4QK7P0Bdpj0?t=3131), Stuart admitted that what he means is strictly under the system of American classifications, both ancient and modern Egyptians would be considered "black." He also acknowledges that Sa'idis (and other Modern Egyptians) do not consider themselves to be Black Africans, and he is approaching it from an American perspective.
In 2001, Stuart Tyson Smith wrote 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 'black', while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans." In 2020 he would further comment that: “It has always struck me as odd that Egyptologists have been reluctant to admit that the ancient (and modern) Egyptians were rather dark-skinned Africans, especially the farther south one goes,” Smith continued; “As Bruce Williams pointed out years ago, an ancient Egyptian transported to the American South in the days of segregation would not be allowed to sit at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, would have to go to the back of the bus, would be barred from facilities reserved for whites. The same applies to most of the modern Nubians, Sudanese and Egyptians that I know and have worked with.” In his video in the same year (🔗https://youtu.be/4QK7P0Bdpj0?t=3131), Stuart admitted that what he means is strictly under the system of American classifications, both ancient and modern Egyptians would be considered "black." He also acknowledges that Sa'idis (and other Modern Egyptians) do not consider themselves to be Black Africans, and he is approaching it from an American perspective.
🔗The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: A-F - Google Books
🔗The African Egypt | The Current (ucsb.edu)
Historian Clarence E. Walker in 2001, refers to Afrocentrism as “therapeutic mythology." Walker wrote that ancient Egyptian society was not black and Afrocentrism substitutes a feel-good myth of the past. The problem he found is modern black American identity is the product of centuries of real history, but Afrocentrism replaces this complex history with a dubious claim to distant glory. Afrocentrism offers not an empowering understanding of black Americans’ past, but a pastiche of ‘alien traditions’ held together by simplistic fantasies. More to the point, this specious history denies to black Americans the dignity, and power, that springs from an honest understanding of their real history. He also specified that: "In 1976, a group of French scientists working with the permission of the Egyptian government examined the mummy of Ramses II and concluded that the dead king was a 'leucoderm,' that is, a fair-skinned man, like prehistoric or ancient Mediterraneans, or, perhaps, the Berbers of Africa. The only Egyptian dynasty that could be called black without qualification, in the modern sense of the word, is the 25th Dynasty, 747-656 BCE."
🔗We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument About Afrocentrism - Clarence E. Walker - Google Books
Ian Shaw wrote in 2003: "Anthropological studies suggest that the predynastic population included a mixture of racial types (Negroid, Mediterranean, and European), but it is the question of the skeletal evidence at the beginning of the pharaonic period that has proved to be most controversial over the years. Whereas the anthropological evidence from this date was once interpreted, by Bryan Emery and others, as the rapid conquest of Egypt by people from the east whose remains were racially distinct from the indigenous Egyptians, it is now argued by some scholars that there may have been a much slower period of demographic change, probably involving the gradual infiltration of a different physical type from Syria-Palestine, via the eastern Delta. The iconography of the Egyptians' depictions of foreigners suggests that for much of their history they saw themselves as midway between the black Africans and the paler Asiatics. It is also clear, however, that neither Nubian nor Syro-Palestinian origins were regarded as particularly disadvantageous factors in terms of individuals' status or career prospects, particularly in the cosmopolitan climate of the New Kingdom, when Asiatic religious cults and technological developments were particularly widely accepted. Thus the demonstrably Negroid features of the high official Maiherpri did not prevent him from attaining the special privilege of a burial in the Valley of the Kings at about the time of Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC). In the same way, a man called Aper-el, whose name indicates his Near Eastern roots, rose to the rank of vizier (the highest civil office below that of the king himself) in the late 18th Dynasty."
🔗The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt - Google Books
Archaeologist and Egyptologist, Prof. Barry J. Kemp wrote in 2007 that the black/white argument, though politically understandable, is an oversimplification that hinders an appropriate evaluation of the scientific data on the ancient Egyptians since it does not take into consideration the difficulty in ascertaining complexion from skeletal remains. It also ignores the fact that Africa is inhabited by many other populations besides Bantu related ("Negroid") groups. He wrote that in reconstructions of life in ancient Egypt, Modern Egyptians would therefore be the most logical and closest approximation to the Ancient Egyptians.
🔗Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation - Barry J. Kemp - Google Books
Robert Morkot (2005) in his chapter on what the Ancient Egyptians would have looked like, stated that they were not "White" in any European sense, nor were they "Caucasian". He highlighted that much of the literature from Afro-Americans promotes the view that Egyptian were like themselves. He considered it both extreme and racist to say Modern Egyptians are only Arabs who came later. Morkot specified that the Arab conquest was just an elite takeover, rather than mass population movement. Furthermore, he commented that both views which posit some original founder population be it "Black" or other are wrong. He summarized that the earliest populations would have been African people from the Upper Nile, some from the Sahara, Libya, and smaller numbers of people from Western Asia, and by the time of unification, all these peoples were indigenous. Moreover, he emphasized that there was no major movements that replaced the original population.
🔗The Egyptians: An Introduction - Robert Morkot - Buku Google
Egyptologist Barbara Mertz wrote in 2011 that the "Egyptian civilization was not Mediterranean or African, Semitic or Hamitic, black or white, but all of them. It was, in short, Egyptian."
🔗Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz - Google Books
Professor of Archeology and Classical Studies, Kathryn A. Bard wrote in 2014: "Egyptians were the indigenous farmers of the lower Nile valley, neither black nor white as races are conceived of today."
🔗Black Athena Revisited - Google Books
🔗The African Egypt | The Current (ucsb.edu)
Historian Clarence E. Walker in 2001, refers to Afrocentrism as “therapeutic mythology." Walker wrote that ancient Egyptian society was not black and Afrocentrism substitutes a feel-good myth of the past. The problem he found is modern black American identity is the product of centuries of real history, but Afrocentrism replaces this complex history with a dubious claim to distant glory. Afrocentrism offers not an empowering understanding of black Americans’ past, but a pastiche of ‘alien traditions’ held together by simplistic fantasies. More to the point, this specious history denies to black Americans the dignity, and power, that springs from an honest understanding of their real history. He also specified that: "In 1976, a group of French scientists working with the permission of the Egyptian government examined the mummy of Ramses II and concluded that the dead king was a 'leucoderm,' that is, a fair-skinned man, like prehistoric or ancient Mediterraneans, or, perhaps, the Berbers of Africa. The only Egyptian dynasty that could be called black without qualification, in the modern sense of the word, is the 25th Dynasty, 747-656 BCE."
🔗We Can't Go Home Again: An Argument About Afrocentrism - Clarence E. Walker - Google Books
Ian Shaw wrote in 2003: "Anthropological studies suggest that the predynastic population included a mixture of racial types (Negroid, Mediterranean, and European), but it is the question of the skeletal evidence at the beginning of the pharaonic period that has proved to be most controversial over the years. Whereas the anthropological evidence from this date was once interpreted, by Bryan Emery and others, as the rapid conquest of Egypt by people from the east whose remains were racially distinct from the indigenous Egyptians, it is now argued by some scholars that there may have been a much slower period of demographic change, probably involving the gradual infiltration of a different physical type from Syria-Palestine, via the eastern Delta. The iconography of the Egyptians' depictions of foreigners suggests that for much of their history they saw themselves as midway between the black Africans and the paler Asiatics. It is also clear, however, that neither Nubian nor Syro-Palestinian origins were regarded as particularly disadvantageous factors in terms of individuals' status or career prospects, particularly in the cosmopolitan climate of the New Kingdom, when Asiatic religious cults and technological developments were particularly widely accepted. Thus the demonstrably Negroid features of the high official Maiherpri did not prevent him from attaining the special privilege of a burial in the Valley of the Kings at about the time of Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC). In the same way, a man called Aper-el, whose name indicates his Near Eastern roots, rose to the rank of vizier (the highest civil office below that of the king himself) in the late 18th Dynasty."
🔗The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt - Google Books
Archaeologist and Egyptologist, Prof. Barry J. Kemp wrote in 2007 that the black/white argument, though politically understandable, is an oversimplification that hinders an appropriate evaluation of the scientific data on the ancient Egyptians since it does not take into consideration the difficulty in ascertaining complexion from skeletal remains. It also ignores the fact that Africa is inhabited by many other populations besides Bantu related ("Negroid") groups. He wrote that in reconstructions of life in ancient Egypt, Modern Egyptians would therefore be the most logical and closest approximation to the Ancient Egyptians.
🔗Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation - Barry J. Kemp - Google Books
Robert Morkot (2005) in his chapter on what the Ancient Egyptians would have looked like, stated that they were not "White" in any European sense, nor were they "Caucasian". He highlighted that much of the literature from Afro-Americans promotes the view that Egyptian were like themselves. He considered it both extreme and racist to say Modern Egyptians are only Arabs who came later. Morkot specified that the Arab conquest was just an elite takeover, rather than mass population movement. Furthermore, he commented that both views which posit some original founder population be it "Black" or other are wrong. He summarized that the earliest populations would have been African people from the Upper Nile, some from the Sahara, Libya, and smaller numbers of people from Western Asia, and by the time of unification, all these peoples were indigenous. Moreover, he emphasized that there was no major movements that replaced the original population.
🔗The Egyptians: An Introduction - Robert Morkot - Buku Google
Egyptologist Barbara Mertz wrote in 2011 that the "Egyptian civilization was not Mediterranean or African, Semitic or Hamitic, black or white, but all of them. It was, in short, Egyptian."
🔗Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz - Google Books
Professor of Archeology and Classical Studies, Kathryn A. Bard wrote in 2014: "Egyptians were the indigenous farmers of the lower Nile valley, neither black nor white as races are conceived of today."
🔗Black Athena Revisited - Google Books
🔗https://uncpress.org/book/9780807845554/black-athena-revisited/
In 2017, Professor Steven Quirke warned that "there has been this very strong attempt throughout the history of Egyptology to disassociate ancient Egyptians from the modern Egyptian population." He added that he was "particularly suspicious of any statement that may have the unintended consequences of asserting-yet again from a Northern European or North American perspective-that there's a discontinuity there between ancient and modern Egyptians." While there have been a number of influxes of people from outside Egypt, he suggested that the impact is over-stated, as thousands of soldiers had taken part in the Arab Invasion of Egypt in the 7th century, but they were still vastly outnumbered by the resident population of about six million.
🔗Ancient Egyptians more closely related to Europeans than modern Egyptians, scientists claim | The Independent | The Independent
In 2018, with some negative response to those who saw a rather “European-looking” Nefertiti bust, British Egyptologist Dylan Bickerstaffe made his case that: “I'm astonished to see people complaining that this likeness is too ‘white’. It’s a shade darker than the Berlin bust. True, Egypt is currently a mixed race - and colour shades of the present population vary enormously - but what evidence is there that Amenhotep III had any black ancestry? What evidence is there of foreign queens being the mothers of kings? A lot of people are so desperate to avoid upsetting the growing lobby of people who have decided that ‘the Egyptians were black’ (because the Egyptians were black!) that they pass over any evidence to the contrary in silence. It is not just the Nefertiti bust that shows pale skin, so does the tomb of Nefertari, and numerous depictions in New Kingdom tombs."
🔗Bust of Contention: Nefertiti’s sculpture raises issues of Race and Color—Part II | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
Senior Lecturer in Egyptology Nicky Nielsen wrote in 2020: "Ancient Egypt was neither black nor white, and the repeated attempt by advocates of either ideology to seize the ownership of ancient Egypt simply perpetuates an old tradition: one of removing agency and control of their heritage from the modern population living along the banks of the Nile."
🔗Egyptomaniacs: How We Became Obsessed with Ancient Egypt - Nicky Nielsen - Google Books
In 2020, Egyptologist Kara Cooney would release a commentary video (🔗https://youtu.be/fRI0N2f0Te0) on the issue of the race of the Egyptians. She summed up that based on the genetic evidence she has seen, the modern population of Egypt is not Arab, and the Arab invasion of Egypt during the 7th Century as recognized by many other scholars was an elite takeover and not a replacement of the entire native population. She explained that Egypt exists at the crossroads of three different cultural/ethnic worlds, in Africa and Nubia towards its south, West Asia with Levantine influences, and the Mediterranean of North Africa, and the people there today are North Africans, with Egyptians living on a gradient, that is some people being light skinned and others fairly dark skinned. Cooney would further comment that many Ancient Egyptians would have looked like the modern Sa'idi people of Luxor and Minya, being quite pigmented in skin tones, but also acknowledged and pointed out that in contrast the Nile Delta region has always had more connections to the Levant. However, she does initially state that before the gains made by the civil rights movement, they would have been at the back of the bus, and can be considered "people of colour". Ultimately, she concluded that Egypt does not fit into either category and cannot be forced into it. She denounced Eurocentrists misusing genetic studies and misleading reconstructions, and she criticized Ancient Egypt being used as a tool of power by the opposite side, whom are the Afrocentric Sub-Saharan African communities.
In 2017, Professor Steven Quirke warned that "there has been this very strong attempt throughout the history of Egyptology to disassociate ancient Egyptians from the modern Egyptian population." He added that he was "particularly suspicious of any statement that may have the unintended consequences of asserting-yet again from a Northern European or North American perspective-that there's a discontinuity there between ancient and modern Egyptians." While there have been a number of influxes of people from outside Egypt, he suggested that the impact is over-stated, as thousands of soldiers had taken part in the Arab Invasion of Egypt in the 7th century, but they were still vastly outnumbered by the resident population of about six million.
🔗Ancient Egyptians more closely related to Europeans than modern Egyptians, scientists claim | The Independent | The Independent
In 2018, with some negative response to those who saw a rather “European-looking” Nefertiti bust, British Egyptologist Dylan Bickerstaffe made his case that: “I'm astonished to see people complaining that this likeness is too ‘white’. It’s a shade darker than the Berlin bust. True, Egypt is currently a mixed race - and colour shades of the present population vary enormously - but what evidence is there that Amenhotep III had any black ancestry? What evidence is there of foreign queens being the mothers of kings? A lot of people are so desperate to avoid upsetting the growing lobby of people who have decided that ‘the Egyptians were black’ (because the Egyptians were black!) that they pass over any evidence to the contrary in silence. It is not just the Nefertiti bust that shows pale skin, so does the tomb of Nefertari, and numerous depictions in New Kingdom tombs."
🔗Bust of Contention: Nefertiti’s sculpture raises issues of Race and Color—Part II | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)
Senior Lecturer in Egyptology Nicky Nielsen wrote in 2020: "Ancient Egypt was neither black nor white, and the repeated attempt by advocates of either ideology to seize the ownership of ancient Egypt simply perpetuates an old tradition: one of removing agency and control of their heritage from the modern population living along the banks of the Nile."
🔗Egyptomaniacs: How We Became Obsessed with Ancient Egypt - Nicky Nielsen - Google Books
In 2020, Egyptologist Kara Cooney would release a commentary video (🔗https://youtu.be/fRI0N2f0Te0) on the issue of the race of the Egyptians. She summed up that based on the genetic evidence she has seen, the modern population of Egypt is not Arab, and the Arab invasion of Egypt during the 7th Century as recognized by many other scholars was an elite takeover and not a replacement of the entire native population. She explained that Egypt exists at the crossroads of three different cultural/ethnic worlds, in Africa and Nubia towards its south, West Asia with Levantine influences, and the Mediterranean of North Africa, and the people there today are North Africans, with Egyptians living on a gradient, that is some people being light skinned and others fairly dark skinned. Cooney would further comment that many Ancient Egyptians would have looked like the modern Sa'idi people of Luxor and Minya, being quite pigmented in skin tones, but also acknowledged and pointed out that in contrast the Nile Delta region has always had more connections to the Levant. However, she does initially state that before the gains made by the civil rights movement, they would have been at the back of the bus, and can be considered "people of colour". Ultimately, she concluded that Egypt does not fit into either category and cannot be forced into it. She denounced Eurocentrists misusing genetic studies and misleading reconstructions, and she criticized Ancient Egypt being used as a tool of power by the opposite side, whom are the Afrocentric Sub-Saharan African communities.
Renown Egyptologist and Chairman of the Ministry of Antiquities Zahi Hawass in 2021 said the claims of the Egyptians being black are completely false and unfounded. Hawass rejected Afrocentrism and sourced its origins to Shiekh Anta Diop. Zahi Hawass proclaimed that: “We believe that the origin of Ancient Egyptians was purely Egyptian based on the discovery made by British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie at Naqada, and this is why the Ancient Egyptian civilization did not occur in Africa, it occurred only here.” He took a similar perspective in 2015, with saying: "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it." In 2023, he was featured in a brilliant documentary about Cleopatra (🔗https://youtu.be/zdGThahx5sE) by Curtis Ryan Woodside (his 🔗YouTube). In it, he rephrased his original position, and especially that he has nothing against black African people, and if the Egyptians were indeed black, he would have said it himself. Likewise, because of the controversy that year, he emphasized that Queen Cleopatra was not black either. In a BBC interview, Zahi Hawass also said for anyone to make a final decision as to the ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians, they will need to make a very comprehensive DNA study that samples the entire region of Egypt, with genomes derived from all historic periods, being more representative of the general population. Dr. Zahi Hawass' overall view is Egyptians were uniquely Egyptian, and in the southern regions would have been darker (however, he repeats that having dark/pigmented skin does not make one a "black" African), while those in northern areas like the Nile Delta would have been fairer skinned.
🔗Tutankhamun was not black, says Hawass - Dailynewsegypt
🔗Claims that Ancient Egyptians were black untrue: Zahi Hawass - Dailynewsegypt
Also in 2021, Egyptologist and Assyriologist, Marc Van de Mieroop said: "Some scholars have tried to determine what Egyptians could have looked like by comparing their skeletal remains with those of recent populations, but the samples are so limited and the interpretations so fraught with uncertainties that this is an unreliable approach". He concluded that ancient Egypt's "location at the edge of northeast Africa and its geography as a corridor between that continent and Asia opened it up to influences from all directions, in terms of both culture and of demography."🔗Claims that Ancient Egyptians were black untrue: Zahi Hawass - Dailynewsegypt
Population geneticist Razib Khan in 2022, based on the current genomic evidences wrote: "Science, archaeology and history are converging on a clear conclusion: the ancient Egyptians are still with us, their direct descendants navigating Cairo’s bustling streets on their way to air-conditioned offices, while others till the Nile Valley’s eternally rich soil as their forebears have for millennia. Ideologically motivated arguments by American Afrocentrists, that ancient Egyptians were black and replaced later by invaders from the Arabian peninsula abound, while recently a British tabloid trumpeted the headline 'Ancient Egyptians more closely related to Europeans than modern Egyptians, scientists claim.' But the genetic reality is a bit more complicated (or perhaps boring?) than either of these suspiciously dramatic caricatures. Unsurprisingly, if you dig into the actual abstruse statistics, and caveats in said paper, they rather undermine such glitzy conclusions. Contra the headline, the people of the pharaohs are surprisingly little changed in the intervening millennia and they are right where you’d expect them." Razib Khan would also mention the issues with radical Hoteps being in opposition to the scientific conclusions coming from archeogenetic research. He would elaborate on these problems in one of the genetics podcast which hosted him, called 'The Insight'. He was additionally later featured in an interview, where he went into brief detail on why Cleopatra was not a black, and neither were the Ancient Egyptians (🔗https://youtu.be/I862ksIkEtE?t=4604).
🔗Eternal as the Nile - Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
🔗The Insight: Ancient Egyptian genetics (libsyn.com)
From a 4th edition publication on Near Eastern history in 2023, according to historian William Stiebling and archaeologist Susan N. Helft, when discussing the various viewpoints based on data, they wrote: "In this view, Egypt is essentially an African culture that developed many ties to the Mediterranean and the rest of the Near East over the course of its history. It follows that ancient Egyptians are the same original population group as Nubians and other Saharan populations, with some genetic input from Arabian, Levantine, North African, and Indo-European groups who have known to have settled in Egypt during its long history. This is borne out by studies of cranial measurements to determine biological relationships between populations. One such recent study concluded that Predynastic Egyptians are most closely aligned with Nubian populations rather than with samples from the Levant. On the other hand, genetic studies of North African populations generally suggest a big influx of Near Eastern populations during the Neolithic Period or earlier." They also argued that more Ancient Egyptian DNA and genetic sampling from the region will be needed to fully answer these questions. When commenting specifically on the race issue, they stated that the physical appearances would have varied along a continuum from the Delta to the Nile’s source regions in the south. The authors specified that; “Modern Egyptians have a mixed genetic admixture and also show considerable variation in skin color and physical characteristics. We can expect the same to have been true in the past. In Egypt today, skin color gradually changes from predominantly tan or olive in the Delta to an almost blue-black near the Nile's sources in the south. Other physical features vary along the same continuum. Therefore, some ancient Egyptians looked more Middle Eastern and others looked more Sudanese or Ethiopians of today, and some may even have looked like other groups in Africa”. The authors reached the view that, “Egypt was a unique civilization with genetic and cultural ties linking it to other African cultures to its south and west and to Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures to its north."
🔗The Insight: Ancient Egyptian genetics (libsyn.com)
From a 4th edition publication on Near Eastern history in 2023, according to historian William Stiebling and archaeologist Susan N. Helft, when discussing the various viewpoints based on data, they wrote: "In this view, Egypt is essentially an African culture that developed many ties to the Mediterranean and the rest of the Near East over the course of its history. It follows that ancient Egyptians are the same original population group as Nubians and other Saharan populations, with some genetic input from Arabian, Levantine, North African, and Indo-European groups who have known to have settled in Egypt during its long history. This is borne out by studies of cranial measurements to determine biological relationships between populations. One such recent study concluded that Predynastic Egyptians are most closely aligned with Nubian populations rather than with samples from the Levant. On the other hand, genetic studies of North African populations generally suggest a big influx of Near Eastern populations during the Neolithic Period or earlier." They also argued that more Ancient Egyptian DNA and genetic sampling from the region will be needed to fully answer these questions. When commenting specifically on the race issue, they stated that the physical appearances would have varied along a continuum from the Delta to the Nile’s source regions in the south. The authors specified that; “Modern Egyptians have a mixed genetic admixture and also show considerable variation in skin color and physical characteristics. We can expect the same to have been true in the past. In Egypt today, skin color gradually changes from predominantly tan or olive in the Delta to an almost blue-black near the Nile's sources in the south. Other physical features vary along the same continuum. Therefore, some ancient Egyptians looked more Middle Eastern and others looked more Sudanese or Ethiopians of today, and some may even have looked like other groups in Africa”. The authors reached the view that, “Egypt was a unique civilization with genetic and cultural ties linking it to other African cultures to its south and west and to Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures to its north."
🔗Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture - William H. Stiebing Jr., Susan N. Helft - Google Books
In 2023 as well, Egypt expert Alejandro Jimenez-Serrano in commenting on the diverse features found in an Egyptian ruling family from historic Lower Nubia at Elephantine Island in Aswan, wrote that: "It is notable that Egyptians were not defined by their ethnic features. In general terms, we might assume an Egyptian was someone who behaved as an Egyptian, dressed like an Egyptian, and spoke Egyptian. Sarenput II's family members are depicted as Egyptians in this way, so the color of their skin was merely a personal feature, not an ethnically differentiating element. Egypt then, as now, was diverse from the point of view of the different human groups living there and, as today, all consider themselves and are considered by the rest-to be Egyptians, whether or not their personal features, dialect, or specific manners might suggest a different origin."
In 2023 as well, Egypt expert Alejandro Jimenez-Serrano in commenting on the diverse features found in an Egyptian ruling family from historic Lower Nubia at Elephantine Island in Aswan, wrote that: "It is notable that Egyptians were not defined by their ethnic features. In general terms, we might assume an Egyptian was someone who behaved as an Egyptian, dressed like an Egyptian, and spoke Egyptian. Sarenput II's family members are depicted as Egyptians in this way, so the color of their skin was merely a personal feature, not an ethnically differentiating element. Egypt then, as now, was diverse from the point of view of the different human groups living there and, as today, all consider themselves and are considered by the rest-to be Egyptians, whether or not their personal features, dialect, or specific manners might suggest a different origin."
In 2024, Egyptologist Camila Di Blase-Dyson, was featured in an interview (🔗https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOoFuBK94X8&t=870s), she said, there has always been people of various skin tones living in Egypt, in the past and today. It always has, and it does now, Middle East and Sudan. It has a population that reflects that plurality of cultures. An Egypt that has always looked this way.
Peter Brand, stated in an interview (🔗https://youtu.be/dAsE_2aK8DI?t=1155) that: "Just the fact that when you walk around Egypt today, you'll see people that look like the Ancient Egyptian statues, the idea that the Ancient Egyptian population has completely disappeared from the Modern Egyptian bloodline is complete nonsense, so i have no reason to believe that the population of Egypt has changed that much, these Modern Egyptians like the ancient came in variety of skin tones."Other!
The Royal Ontario Museum Stated: "The ancient population of Egypt has never been extinguished nor replaced, but is in fact ancestral to most of the modern population of Egypt. Ancient Egyptians looked very much like modern Egyptians; the faces on the walls of tombs and temples can be matched by the faces to be seen on the streets of modern Cairo. It's good to keep this in mind when watching movies set in Ancient Egypt, such as The Ten Commandments, Stargate or the Mummy. The actors in such films are usually Americans or Europeans, and seldom give a good idea of what Ancient Egyptians looked like."
The Royal Ontario Museum Stated: "The ancient population of Egypt has never been extinguished nor replaced, but is in fact ancestral to most of the modern population of Egypt. Ancient Egyptians looked very much like modern Egyptians; the faces on the walls of tombs and temples can be matched by the faces to be seen on the streets of modern Cairo. It's good to keep this in mind when watching movies set in Ancient Egypt, such as The Ten Commandments, Stargate or the Mummy. The actors in such films are usually Americans or Europeans, and seldom give a good idea of what Ancient Egyptians looked like."
Keita says in an interview 🔗https://youtu.be/qw_Nf_5aIMM?t=1051 that Sheikh Anta Diop said the Naqada period experienced migration from White Palestinians and that there was a Eurasian back migration, but it did not change the identity of Egyptians. He also says to better understand Diop, we need to read his works in the French language. Furthermore, the meaning of "Negro" is not meaning in the sense of the "true Negro" concept. He also says Sheikh Anta Diop was a man of his time, and wrong about a lot, and criticized the times as the European scholars were all about pushing a diffusionist narrative.
In a video from 2009 (🔗https://youtu.be/aZssWb4MmGM), he would say that; "it can be imagined that the modern diversity to be found in Egypt in terms of craniofacial features skin colour what have you, would likely have been very similar to that found in the past.”
🔗https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/what-dr-keita-actually-says-about-the-race-of-the-ancient-egyptians/
🔗https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/what-dr-keita-actually-says-about-the-race-of-the-ancient-egyptians/
Modern Egyptian Perspectives:
An article from 2023 showed the Egyptian nation's frustration with people appropriating their ancestral history, and touched on issues of supposed racism.
Depictions of Egyptians by Foreign Powers:
Assyrians ~8 Century BCE
Assyrians ~8 Century BCE
🔗Assyrian Ivory Panels of Youth Dressed as Egyptian Kings
Achaemenid (Persian) ~6th Century BCE
This depiction of an Egyptian comes from the Tomb of Xerxes I, it is very detailed in that it includes many different ethnicities whom were under the Persian Empire of the time.
Egyptian (Centre), Next to an Arab (Left) and Armenian (Right) from the🔗Tomb of Xerxes I
These cylinder seals show the subjugation and killing of a rebel Egyptian King of the Saite line, whom was said to be a descendant of the last native ruling dynasty in Egypt.
Cylinder Seals of Rebel Egyptian King (26th Dynasty) and Captives Being Smited by Darius the Great
Ancient Greeks ~5th Century BCE
King Busiris was a fictional ruler associated with a province in the Nile Delta. This figure is a consistent theme in Greek comic stories fighting Herakles, but I personally think ultimately he cannot (and should not) be used to prove anything, especially with the way he (and his priests and warriors) were so drastically portrayed on the vases ranging from different periods.
🔗Busiris and his Priests 540 BCE
🔗Late Archaic Depiction of Hercules and Busiris, 525 BCE
🔗Herackles and Busiris 490 BCE
🔗Herakles Killing Busiris, 480 BCE
🔗Red Attic Figure, Herakles and Busiris, 470 BCE
🔗Archeological Museum in Athens, King Busiris, 460 BCE
🔗Busiris Slaying Hercules, 425 BCE
🔗Dinos with Hercules and Busiris, 340 BCE
Ancient Romans ~100 BCE
🔗Nile Mosaic from 2nd Century CE
Other More Recent Depictions!
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