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There is considerable controversy revolving around the race of ancient Egyptians. Traditional depictions of ancient Egypt in the Western world have been rife with contradictions. Since the modern age of archaeologiclal exploration, which began in the mid 19th century, a variety of images have been produced purporting to depict ancient Egyptians and their artifacts. In an era when many European nations actively were engaged in the Atlantic slave trade, notions of white supremacy and inherent black inferiority, even bestiality, were the norm. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the images of dynastic Egypt made available to the general public were Europeanized. The black presence in ancient Egypt was treated as a footnote, and the commonly purveyed notion of blacks in pharaonic Egypt was that they were Nubian slaves of very European-looking Egyptian masters and mistresses.
With the excavation of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt in 1922, a wave of what has been called "Egyptomania" swept the Western world, triggering renderings of ancient Egyptians in consumer goods, decorative arts and in film. While some of these images were more Negroid or Semitic in appearance, again, the overriding general tendency was to portray Egyptians as Caucasoid and fair-skinned. In the American cinema, particularly, white actors typically played the roles of ancient Egyptians. When black actors were cast, again, they generally appeared in the classic stereotypical role—that of the Nubian slave.
Today, the modern Western view holds that ancient Egypt was a multi-racial society, with many modern historians reluctant to make definitive claims about the skin color of Ancient Egyptians. Many Afrocentrists, however, insist that ancient Egyptians were black African peoples. They often emphasize that this black identity was strongest in early Egyptian history, and waxed and waned over time. Still, they maintain, Egypt remained essentially a black, African civilization throughout the dynastic era.
Obstacles in ascertaining race
Deciding the race of Ancient Egyptians is rife with difficulties. Race itself is an unscientific concept; skin color varies over a continuous spectrum of shades, rather than the handful listed on government census forms. No genetic test can classify an individual as black or white, and, likewise, using genetic markers, the world population can be divided into as many "races" as desired, be it five or five-hundred. For historical reasons, blackness and whiteness are particularly difficult concepts to concretely describe in western societies. Racist remnants of earlier times, such as the one-drop theory still influence the racial categorization of multiracial individuals, and the question over whether non-African dark-skinned individuals are "black" is answered differently in different circumstances. See Black (people).
But, assuming that any given individual alive today could be placed into one racial category, the problems in assigning race to Ancient Egyptians still remain. The few Ancient Egyptian corpses available are thousands of years old and do not permit the sort of I'll-know-it-when-I-see-it racial categorizations common in everyday experience. Their bones and skin have often deteriorated and their bodies have been subjected to extensive embalming. Physiological tests provide some clues, but none conclusive. Forensic reconstructions have produced images and castings of what Pharaoh Tutankhamun might have looked like, but critics charge that some of these efforts have been politically influenced and have produced politically affected representations. Lost in the noise was the determination of the lead United States scientist on the project that any racial assignment to Tut was "equivocal".
Even if researchers could conclusively determine the ethnicity of a single Pharoah -- and there is significant agreement that several are black and that several are not -- determinations about the remainder of Egyptian society under his rule would remain speculative, to say nothing of the rules and subjects that lived in the thousands of years outside his reign. Much of the importance of Egypt lies in the contributions of its philosophers, artists, scientists, priests, farmers, merchants, local leaders, engineers, and artisans, their skin color is perhaps more informative than that of a handful of royalty. Though non-royal remains have been unearthed, researchers stand little chance of unearthing a true cross-section of Egyptian society, but in any case, most high-profile bickering has centered around the most logical icons of Ancient Egypt -- the Pharaohs.
Geographical and linguistic evidence hold some clues, but Egypt being on the border of Africa and the Middle-East diminishes their power, which would be more powerful were Egypt surrounded by peoples of a single race.
Objects of art depicting Ancient Egyptians would seem to hold tremendous promise. Paintings from many other eras serve as near-photographs. Unfortunately for the question of race in Ancient Egypt, the Egyptians seem to have been rather unconstrained in their use of color for skin tones. As with modern marble and bronze statues, Egyptian artists often seem to have valued the nature of the base media over the color of the subject. Many renditions of skin tone are a red ochre, which does little but frustrate any hypothesis. Additionally, color was often used in clearly symbolic fashion, as in the guardian statues in Tutankhamun's tomb. However, in some recovered objects, artists seem to have depicted skin tones in a lifelike manner. Compounding problems is the elite and religious nature of much art in ancient Egypt. Expensive carvings in temples and crypts may not reflect the reality of the majority of the Ancient Egyptian populace.
Beyond the scientific difficulties are the political roadblocks. Different factions have various motivations, some wholesome, some not, for claiming Ancient Egyptian heritage as either solely their own, or as the result of a multi-ethnic society. As illustrated in the uproar over the recent reconstruction of Tuankhamun, these forces can tinge debate and research.
Kemet -- "black land"
Among Afrocentrist authors, it is common to refer to Egypt as "Kemet," the indigenous term for the country, which means "black land." Traditionally, mainstream scholars contend this term refers to the dark, fertile soil beside the Nile, in contrast to the desert beyond it, labelled the "red land" by Egyptians. Afrocentrists, however, associate the term with Egyptian racial identity, pointing out that ancient Egyptians also called themselves "Kmemeu", or "the black people" and their subjects "Kemetu", or "the blacks' people". They also cite the archaeological evidence, particularly that of temple statuary, and the writings of Herodotus and other ancient authors, who refer to the dark skin and woolly hair of Egyptians.
Others argue that indigenous Egyptian terminology is best translated as "people of the black land", and that Western classical writers usually described Egyptians as a mid-tone between black Ethiopians and pale Europeans. Herodotus himself is clear that Egyptians look different from Ethiopians. Marcus Manilius states that "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."
Linguistic arguments
Both Afrocentrists and mainstream scholars typically connect the ancient Egyptian language with those of various other African peoples. However, most linguists consider Egyptian a typical example of an Afro-Asiatic (otherwise called "Hamito-Semitic") language - a language group, most probably native to Africa, that covers North Africa, the Horn of Africa, much of Chad and Nigeria and most of the Middle East. As a result, speakers of Afro-Asiatic languages are multi-ethnic and possess a wide range of skin colors.
In contrast, Afrocentrists commonly link ancient Egyptian with languages of the Niger-Congo family, virtually all the speakers of which are blacks. For example, Cheikh Anta Diop claims that the ancient Egyptian language has vocabulary in common with Wolof, while Théophile Obenga links it with Mbochi. However, mainstream scholars contend it is inadequate to list similar-sounding or possibly related terms in different languages; only a rigorous investigation using the methodology of historical linguistics, in particular the comparative method, suffices.
In either case, sharing a language does not prove that members of different societies had the same skin color or culture. For example, Spanish is spoken widely throughout South America, yet Spanish and American culture evolved in isolation and remain fairly distinct.
Geographic arguments
Opponents of Afrocentrism often argue that Egyptians belong among the Semitic peoples of the Middle East, pointing to the fact that Egypt is at the extreme north eastern edge of the African continent, close to both Israel and the Arabian Peninsula. However, rather than being comprised of a singular people, Egypt also extends south into areas occupied by undeniably black-skinned people. Complicating the discussion, "Semitic" also defines a language group that also includes many black African peoples.
It is commonly accepted that the population of Egypt was, at least in later dynasties, a mixture of black African, Mediterranean, Semitic and, even later, European peoples. However, these very categories are disputable and indeterminate.
However, skin color among various populations of indigenous Africans differs naturally. Today, a brown-skinned Fula is generally considered no less a black African than a very dark-skinned Nubian. Afrocentrists argue that the same can be said of Nubians and Egyptians. In fact, prognathism— a forward-slanting facial profile— is a key indicator used by forensic experts today to determine racial identity.
It is important to note, however, that all aspects of the standard Africoid phenotype of coarse, curly hair; broad, flat noses and full lips do not apply to all black peoples, many of whom have relatively straight hair and narrower facial features. Paradoxically, while these peoples posses a range of skin tones and some diverge from the classically Africoid phenotype, they are considered no less "Negro", no less black, than other autochthonous peoples of the African continent— many of the Nilotic and Cushitic peoples of both North East Africa and East Africa being examples. Further, these indigenous, black, African peoples of the Nile Valley all comprised in part—and Afrocentrists believe in predominant part—the ethnically diverse kingdoms of ancient dynastic Egypt.
Artistic arguments
Artistic renderings of the human form in dynastic Egyptian art were produced using a variety of pigments, including stark white, yellow, brown, red-brown, inky black and even blue. In some instances, the selection of skin tones was symbolic and meant to convey vitality, strength, feminity, permanence, and even death.
In typical portrayals of Egyptians in their own art, from the Old Kingdom onwards they appear brown-skinned, using a red ochre pigment. The tomb of Tutankhamun contained a box on which the pharaoh was depicted riding a chariot over black-skinned people, presumably representing Nubia. There were also walking sticks, the handles of which depicted both black-skinned and pale-skinned conquered adversaries, representing defeated Nubian and Asiatic enemies.
There are numerous representations in Egyptian sculpture and murals spanning more than three millennia of individuals with dark skin, of faces which are broad across the cheekbones, with full lips and pronounced prognathisms. Such features are characteristic of a "Negroid", or Africoid, phenotype. The Great Sphinx of Giza, thought to be a rendering of the likeness of the pharaoh Khufu, is striking in its facial angularity, displaying prominent maxillary and alveolar prognathisms.
According to Diop in The African Origin of Civilization, French scholar Count Constantin de Volney (1757-1820) visited Egypt between 1783 and 1785 and expressed astonishment upon seeing everywhere the monumental images of blacks and the "Negro" face of the Great Sphinx:
"... all have a bloated face, puffed up eyes, flat nose, thick lips; in a word, the true face of the mulatto. I was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but when I visited the Sphinx, its appearance gave me the key to the riddle. On seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remembered the remarkable passage where Herodotus says: 'As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black with woolly hair. ...'" In other words, the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Romans and Greeks, must have lost the intensity of its original color, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold. We can even state as a general principle that the face is a kind of monument able, in many cases, to attest or shed light on historical evidence on the origins of peoples.
Ethnographic murals
There are numerous images in which Egyptians are contrasted with non-Egyptian peoples. Like other peoples throughout history, the Egyptians seem to have identified themselves as an ideal or norm of sorts among other populations. Further, there is evidence the ancient Egyptians thought in terms of national identity and ethnicity; the modern Western concept of "race" was alien to them. During the New Kingdom, Egyptian suzerainty extended to the north as far as the Hittite empire and into Nubia to the south. At this time, Egyptian sacred literature and imagery commented systematically on differences based on these two criteria. This is evident in Akhenaton's "Great Hymn to the Aten", in which it is said that the peoples of the world are differented by Aten: "Their tongues are separate in speech/And their natures as well;/ Their skins are distinguished./The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,/ You set every man in his place."
This differentiation of peoples is later refined in the Book of Gates, a sacred text that describes the passage of the soul though the underworld. This contains a description of the distinct peoples known to the Egyptians: Egyptians themselves, plus Asiatics, Nubians and Libyans. These peoples are illustrated in several tomb decorations, in which they are differentiated by skin-color and clothing. These depict Egyptians ("Ret," or "men," often used as "ret na romé," meaning "we men above mankind"); Asiatics/Semites ("AAMW" or "Namu,": "travelers" or "wanderers," often used as "namu sho," or "people who travel the sands," meaning nomads or Bedu/Bedouin); other Africans ("Nahasu," or "strangers"); and, finally, Libyans, ("TMHHW", or Tamhu," a term for which several etymologies have been proposed). In all but one cases, the Egyptians are depicted as red-brown, wearing loincloths. Uniquely, in the tomb of Ramesses III a label identifies a figure identical to Nubians as Egyptian, the image of the Ret and the Nahasu are identical in every way, including dress. Afrocentrists use this as evidence that Egyptians were identical to other Africans. Other Egyptologists take the view that the artists mislabelled the images because the labels are reversed for TMHHW (Libyans) and AAMW (Asiatics/Semites) as well.
Analysis of mummified remains
Melanin tests
Afrocentrists also cite the results of Cheikh Anta Diop's forensic tests of melanin content in Egyptian mummies and of forensic reconstruction of skulls to prove their contention that the early dynastic Egyptians were black Africans and remained so in predominant part for millennia. Supporters of Diop's claims assert that similar tests for determining the melanin content in bones have been used by police departments in the gathering of forensic evidence around the world, albeit using remains thousands of years younger.
The importance of Diop's work cannot be dismissed. Melanin content alone is not definitive evidence of ethnicity, but when placed in the context of the possible Nile Valley populations of the time, many consider Diop's findings compelling. Detractors argue that relatively few examples of well-preserved human remains of the era exist, and that the degradation of melanin over time and in the presence of ancient embalming fluids is a phenomenon that has not been widely studied. Diop himself addressed the subject in Origin of the Ancient Egyptians:
Melanin (eumelanin), the chemical body responsible for skin pigmentation, is, broadly speaking, insoluble and is preserved for millions of years in the skins of fossil animals. There is thus all the more reason for it to be readily recoverable in the skins of Egyptian mummies, despite a tenacious legend that the skin of mummies, tainted by the embalming material, is no longer susceptible of any analysis. Although the epidermis is the main
site of the melanin, the melanocytes penetrating the derm at the boundary between it and the epidermis, even where the latter has mostly been destroyed by the embalming materials, show a melanin level which is
non-existent in the white-skinned races....
Either way let us simply say that the evaluation of melanin level by microscopic examination is a laboratory method which enables us to classify the ancient Egyptians unquestionably among the black races.
Cranial analysis and forensic reconstruction
The ancient Egyptians themselves traced their origin to a land they called "Punt," , or "Ta Nteru" ("Land of the Gods"). Punt is thought to have been in either southern Sudan or Eritrea. The ancient Puntites commonly were described as black peoples with "Negroid" features and elongated, or dolichocephalic, heads. In fact, an elongated skull is considered a racial trait of the black African populations of the region, and of certain Africoid populations, generally. In the classic "Negroid" phenotype, the skull is typically significantly longer than that of the Caucasian phenotype. Long heads are not unique to Africans, as some Nordic populations also are known to have long heads; but they do provide a significant clue in determining the ethnicity of skeletal remains.
Wrote historian Drusilla Houston in her 1926 work The Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire:
In the inscriptions relative to the campaigns of Pepi I, Negroes are represented as immediately adjoining the Egyptian frontier. This seems to perplex some authors. They had always been there. This was the Old Race of predynastic Egypt—the primitive Cushite type. This was the aboriginal race of Abyssinia. It was symbolized by the Great Sphinx and the marvelous face of Cheops. Take any book of Egyptian history containing authentic cuts and examine the faces of the first pharaohs, they are distinctively Ethiopian. The "Agu" of the monuments represented this aboriginal race. They were the ancestors of the Nubians. and were the ruling race of Egypt. Petrie in 1892 exhibited before the British Association, some skulls of the Third and Fourth Dynasties, showing distinct Negroid characteristics. They were dolichocephalic or long skulled. The findings of archaeology more and more reveal that Egypt was Cushite in her beginning and that Ethiopians were not a branch of the Japheth race in the sense that they are so represented in the average ethnological classifications of today.
Comparison to modern-day Africans
An interesting aspect of the recent reconstructions is their somewhat bucktoothed appearance. This form of facial projection, called an alveolar prognathism, with large incisors, is a trademark physical characteristic of many Sudanese, Somalis and other indigenous peoples of the region.
Scientific examination and analysis of skulls of royal Egyptian mummies across several dynasties confirm a predominance over time of sloping and dolichocephalic cranial structures and/or significant alveolar prognathisms and receding chins. Further, these characteristics, common to "mesolithic Nubians" as well as modern-day Nubians, were prominent features in royal mummies of the late 17th and 18th Dynasties: Queen consort Ahmose-Nefertari, Amenhotep I, Queen Meryetamon, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Tjuyu (mother of Queen consort Tiye), and an "Elder Lady" thought likely to be Queen Tiye among them. The controversial fair skin and hazel eyes of the French team's reconstruction of King Tutankhamun notwithstanding, Tutankhamun's prominent alveolar prognathism, large front teeth, receding chin and dolichocephalic cranium , evidence extremely strong Nilotic— that is to say, black African— characteristics. In fact, according to facio-cranial analysis, King Tutankhamun shared precisely the same distinctive racial characteristics specific to the Nilotic and Cushitic blacks of the region as his fellow royals of the 17th and 18th Dynasties noted above.
Reconstruction of King Tutankhamun likeness
1500 years after the founding of the first dynasty and after centuries of miscegenation of the population of Egypt among various ethnic groups, Akhenaten and others of the 18th dynasty show facio-cranial characteristics which are in conformity with an Africoid phenotype (see image of Queen Tiye above). Documentaries in 2002 and 2003 aired on the Discovery Channel in the United States provided strikingly Africoid images of both Tutankhamun and Nefertiti based on forensic reconstruction of mummified remains.
In the most recent attempt to put a face on the long-dead monarch, three separate teams of Egyptian, French and American investigators each produced a reconstruction of what they determined to be an accurate likeness of King Tutankhamun. The Egyptian and French teams knew the identity of the subject whose face they were reconstructing, the Egyptians working from CT scans of the skull itself, the French and American teams working from identical plastic reproductions. The American team, however, did not know the identity of the specimen.
According to a widely publicized press release dated May 10, 2005, Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), announced that "Based on this skull, the American and French teams both concluded that the subject was Caucasoid (the type of human typically found, for example, in North Africa, Europe and the Middle East)."
In a telephone interview with the Washington Post, Susan Antón, a member of the American team, described the specimen as "somewhat equivocal" and, contrary to Hawass' pronouncement, did not use the term "Caucasoid", or any other racial term, to describe the skull of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. An image of the American reconstruction is available here
"The decidedly masculine jaw was the giveaway, she said, although the rounded forehead, the sharp brow and the prominent eyes suggested a woman. Age was easy, she said. The third molars were in the process of coming in, something that happens between the ages of 18 and 20. Race was "the hardest call." The shape of the cranial cavity indicated an African, while the nose opening suggested narrow nostrils — a European characteristic. The skull was a North African."
The French team's reconstruction has sparked considerable criticism. Detractors criticize the French team's decision to arbitrarily assign skin and eye color to the young king based on characteristics of present-day, somewhat Arabic, Egyptians. They contend these features do not properly reflect the eye or skin color of the average citizen of ancient dynastic Egypt or of today's rural Egypt. Arabs did not occupy Egypt until the 7th century AD. Critics further contend that most, if not all, Egyptian artifacts which portray the Tutankhamun depict him with considerably darker skin, fuller lips, dark eyes, and a broader nose, and that foreknowledge of their subjects identity biased the French towards lighter skin tones.
Afrocentrists long have charged Hawass and the Arab Egyptian government with mounting a campaign to destroy and appropriate black African Egyptian culture.
The highly pronounced expressions of the classic Nilotic phenotype exhibited by the skull of Tutankhamun and the complete absence of any physical incongruity which might indicate the presence of another ethnic bloodline—such as a flattening or rounding of the skull (extremely dolichocephalic in the case of King Tutankhamun), which is evident in some royal mummies across the millennia— are strong indicators that the dark brown pigments used in most of the contemporaneous renderings of the young king likely closely approximated the monarch's natural skin tone.