Modern scholars such as W.E.B. DuBois,[75] Chancellor Williams,[76] Cheikh Anta Diop,[77][78][79] John G. Jackson,[80] Ivan van Sertima,[81] and Martin Bernal[82] all supported the theory that the Ancient Egyptian society was indigenous to Africa (or Afro-Asiatic in the case of Bernal) and a mostly Black civilization.[83] The oft criticized Journal of African Civilizations[84] has continually advocated that Egypt should be viewed as a Black civilization.[85][86]
Queen Ahmose-Nefertari
The debate was popularized throughout the 20th century by the aforementioned scholars, with many of them using the terms "Black," "African," and "Egyptian" interchangeably,[87] despite what Snowden calls "copious ancient evidence to the contrary."[88] In the mid 20th century, the proponents of the Indigenous and Black African theory presented, in the words of one author, "extensive"[89] and "painstakingly researched"[90] evidence[77][78][79] to support their views, which contrasted sharply with prevailing views on Ancient Egyptian society. Diop and others believed the prevailing views were fueled by scientific racism and based on poor scholarship.[91] Donald Redford notes that
The race and origins of the Ancient Egyptians have been a source of considerable debate. Scholars in the late and early 20th centuries rejected any considerations of the Egyptians as black Africans by defining the Egyptians either as non-African (i.e Near Easterners or Indo-Aryan), or as members of a separate brown (as opposed to a black) race, or as a mixture of lighter-skinned peoples with black Africans. In the later half of the 20th century, Afrocentric scholars have countered this Eurocentric and often racist perspective by characterizing the Egyptians as black and African.
—[92]
One of the most popular indicators of race is skin color and thus the Ancient Egyptian race controversy often focused on the Ancient Egyptian's skin color. The Indigenous and Black African model relies heavily on writings from Classical Greek and Egyptian historians, as well as Hebrew and Biblical traditions. Several Ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians and Ethiopians were black or dark skinned,[93] with woolly hair,[94] which became one of the most popular and controversial arguments for this theory. The Greek word used is “melanchroes”. While scholars such as Diop, Selincourt and George Rawlinson translate the Greek word "melanchroes" as "black", Najovits states that "Dark-skinned is the usual translation of the original Greek melanchroes",[95] as do Frank M Snowden and Alan B Lloyd. Snowden states that “Diop not only distorts his classical sources, but also omits reference to Greek and Latin authors who specifically call attention to the physical differences between Egyptians and Ethiopians.”[96] Snowden also states that Herodotus distinguished the Ethiopians from the Egyptians based on differences in their language, customs and physical characteristics.[97] Alan B Lloyd states that “melanchroes could denote any colour from bronzed to black”. He interprets the Herodotus description as “dark-skinned and curly haired”, and states that “there is no linguistic justification for relating this description to negroes”.[98]
Some of the most often quoted historians are Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Herodotus.[99] Herodotus states in a few passages that the Egyptians were black/dark (depending on the translation used.) Herodotus states that a Greek oracle was known to be from Egypt because she was "black/dark", that the natives of the Nile region are "black/dark with heat", and that Egyptians were "black/dark skinned with woolly hair".[100] Lucian observes an Egyptian boy and notices that he is not merely black/dark, but has thick lips.[101] Diodorus Siculus mentioned that the Ethiopians considered the Egyptians a colony. Appollodorus, a Greek, calls Egypt the country of the black/dark footed ones.[101] Aeschylus, a Greek poet, wrote that Egyptian seamen had "black/dark limbs."[102] Strabo mentions that the Ethiopians and Colchians (predecessors to modern Georgians of the Caucasus) are of the same race.[102] Gaston Maspero states that "by the almost unanimous testimony of ancient [Greek] historians, they [Ancient Egyptians] belonged to the African race, which settled in Ethiopia."[103]
The British Africanist Basil Davidson stated "Whether the Ancient Egyptians were as black or as brown in skin color as other Africans may remain an issue of emotive dispute; probably, they were both. Their own artistic conventions painted them as pink, but pictures on their tombs show they often married queens shown as entirely black, being from the south (from what a later world knew as Nubia): while the Greek writers reported that they were much like all the other Africans whom the Greeks knew."[104]
While at the University of Dakar, Diop used microscopic laboratory analysis to measure the melanin content of skin samples from several Egyptian mummies (from the Mariette excavations). The melanin levels found in the dermis and epidermis of that small sample led Diop to classify all the Ancient Egyptians as "unquestionably among the Black races."[105] At the UNESCO conference, Diop invited other scholars to examine the skin samples.[106][107] The other scholars at the symposium however rejected Diop’s Black-Egyptian theory.
Diop used a multi-faceted approach to counteract prevailing views on the Ancient Egyptian's origins and ethnicity. Diop and Obenga attempted to linguistically link Egypt and Africa, by arguing that the Ancient Egyptian language was related to Diop's native Wolof (Senegal).[108] Diop's work was well received by the political establishment in the post-colonial formative phase of the state of Senegal, and by the Pan-Africanist Négritude movement, but was rejected by mainstream scholarship. Diop claimed that the name (KMT, or Kemit) used by Egyptians to describe themselves, or their land (depending on your point of view), meant "Black."[109]
Diop attempted to culturally link Ancient Egypt and Africa. In biblical traditions, it is agreed that Ham (son of Noah) fathered Kush, which is also the name that the Egyptians used to refer to the Blacks in Nubia.[110] Diop notes that Ham's other offspring, Mezraim (Egypt) and Canaan, share many cultural and ethnic ties with their siblings, Kush and Phut.[111]
Diop also points to the depictions of the Egyptians in certain paintings and statues,[112] and to the cultural traits that are shared with Black Africa, such as circumcision,[113] matriarchy, totemism, and kingship cults.[77] According to Diop, historians are in general agreement that the Ethiopians, Egyptians, Colchians, and people of the Southern Levant were among the only people on Earth practicing circumcision, which confirms their cultural affiliations, if not their ethnic affiliation.[113]
In 1987 Martin Bernal produced the work "Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization", in which he argued inter alia that the society of Ancient Greece was heavily influenced by Ancient Egypt, and that the roots of Ancient Greece were thus "black". The claims made in Black Athena were heavily questioned by Mary Lefkowitz, Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. The criticisms were further developedinter alia in Black Athena Revisited (1996), a collection of essays edited by Mary Lefkowitz, and her colleague Guy MacLean Rogers.[114][115] Other vocal critics include Egyptologist John D. Ray,[116] and Egyptologist James Weinstein.[117] In 2001 Bernal published "Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to Critics" as a response to criticism of his earlier works.
Several anthropologists who study the biological relationships of the Ancient Egyptian population call for a recognition of Africa's genetic diversity when considering the racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians.[118]
Position of modern scholarship
Main article: Population history of Egypt
See also: Race in ancient history
Modern scholars who have studied Ancient Egyptian culture and population history have responded to the controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptians in different ways.
Since the second half of the 20th century, most (but not all) scholars have held that applying modern notions of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic.[119][120][121] The 2001 Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt states that "Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study.”[122] The focus of some experts who study population biology has been to consider whether or not the Ancient Egyptians were primarily biologically North African rather than to which race they belonged.[123]
It is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area. About 5,000 years ago the Sahara area dried out, and part of the indigenous Saharan population retreated East towards the Nile Valley. In addition Neolithic farmers from the Near East are known to have entered the Nile Valley, bringing with them their food crops, sheep, goats and cattle.[124][125] Fekri Hassan and Edwin et al. point to mutual influence from both inner Africa as well as the Levant.[126]
Dynastic Egyptians referred to their country as "The Two Lands". During the Predynastic period (about 4800 to 4300BC) the Merimde culture flourished in the northern part of Egypt (Lower Egypt).[127] This culture, among others, has links to the Levant in the Near East.[128] The pottery of the later Buto Maadi culture, best known from the site at Maadi near Cairo, also shows connections to the southern Levant.[129] In the southern part of Egypt (Upper Egypt) the predynastic Badarian culture was followed by the Naqada culture. These people seem to be more closely related to the Nubians and North East Africans than with northern Egyptians.[130][131]
Due to its geographical location at the crossroads of several major cultural areas, Egypt has experienced a number of foreign invasions during historical times, including by the Canaanites (Hyksos), the Libyans, the Kushytes (Nubians) the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedonian Greeks, the Romans, Byzantium, the Arabs, the Ottoman Turks, the French and the British.
UNESCO convened the "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974. At that forum the "Black Egyptian" theory was rejected by 90% of delegates,[132][133] and the symposium concluded that Ancient Egyptians were much the same as modern Egyptians. The arguments for all sides are recorded in the UNESCO publication General History of Africa,[132] with the "Origin of the Egyptians" chapter being written by Diop.
In 1996, the Indianapolis Museum of Art published a collection of essays, which included contributions from leading experts in various fields including archaeology, art history, physical anthropology, African studies, Egyptology, Afrocentric studies, linguistics, and classical studies. While the contributors differed in some opinions, the consensus of the authors was that Ancient Egypt was a North African civilization (although ethnic type was not mentioned), based on Egypt's geographic location on the African continent.[134]
In 2008, S. O. Y. Keita wrote that "There is no scientific reason to believe that the primary ancestors of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast Africa.... The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range of evolutionary influences over time, although researchers vary in the details of their explanations of those influences."[135]
