Race of ancient Egyptians

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Race and ancient Egypt is a subject that has attracted some controversy in the Western world. The debate usually occurs outside the field of Egyptology today, and it has centered around the question of whether the Egyptians have been significantly affected by foreign admixture or migration during their long history. Mainstream Egyptologists maintain that Egyptians were, and still are, simply Egyptians, and that ancient Egypt was a diverse society that sometimes integrated non-Egyptian peoples in its fold if they adopted native Egyptian customs and language. Afrocentrists and some members of the African American community contend that ancient Egyptians were "black". They believe that this black trait was strongest in early Egyptian history and that Egypt remained essentially a black, African civilization throughout the dynastic era.

Traditional depictions of ancient Egypt in the Western world have been rife with contradictions. At a time when many European nations were actively engaged in the Atlantic slave trade, notions of white supremacy and inherent black inferiority were the norm. 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 art and in film. In American cinema, white actors typically played the roles of Egyptians, while black actors were usually cast as Nubian slaves.

Defining race

Main article: Race

In biology, some people use race to mean a division within a species. Thus, in certain fields it is used as a synonym for subspecies or, in botany, variety. In the case of honeybees, for instance, it stands as a synonym for subspecies. In this usage, race serves to group members of a species that have, for a period of time, become geographically or genetically isolated from other members of that species, and as a result have diverged genetically and developed certain shared characteristics that differentiate them from the others. Although these characteristics rarely appear in all members of the group, they are more marked in or appear more frequently than in the others.

The analysis of most social scientists conclude that the common notions of race are social constructs. These definitions of race are derived from custom, vary between cultures, and are described as imprecise and fluid. Often these definitions rely on phenotypic characteristics or inferred ancestry. The analysis of human genetic variation also provides insight into human population history and structure. The recent spread of humans from Africa has created a situation where the majority of human genetic variation is found within each human population. However, as a result of physical and cultural isolation of human groups, a significant subset of genetic variation is found between human groups. This variation is highly structured and therefore useful for distinguishing groups and placing individuals into groups for some scientists. Admixture and clinal variation between groups can be confounding to this kind of analysis of human variation. The relationship between social and genetic definitions of race is complex. Phenotypic racial classifications do not necessarily correspond with genotypical groups; some more than others. To the extent that ancestry corresponds to social definitions of race, groups identified by genetics will also correspond with these notions. Whether human population structure warrants the distinction of human 'races' is a matter of debate, with the majority of opinions varying between disciplines. Today, most biologists and anthropologists prefer the term population to race, avoiding the scientific stigma of predefined racial constructs.

Origins

Genetics and Anthropology

Some genetic studies suggest that modern Egyptians don't have very close relations to most tropical Africans. Populations from throughout the world were compared using extensive genetic data. The North African populations grouped with West Eurasian (European, Middle East) populations rather than sub-Saharan Africans. However, extensive studies have also been carried out to determine the origins of the Egyptians.

A 2004 study of the mtDNA of 58 native inhabitants from upper Egypt performed to indicate origins found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa, and another study links Egyptians in general with people from modern Eritrea and Ethiopia.

The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population.

A 2007 study suggests overall population continuity over the predynastic and early dynastic periods with high levels of heterogeneity but concludes that Egyptian civilization was predominantly indigenous in development, with some, but limited migration from elsewhere.

Biological anthropologist Shomarka Keita also believes population variation in Egypt to be primarily indigenous, and not necessarily the result of significant intermingling of widely divergent peoples. He identifies northern and southern patterns in the Egyptian population of the early predynastic period, which he describes as "northern-Egyptian-Maghreb" and "tropical African variant" (overlapping with Nubia/Kush) respectively. He shows that a progressive change in Upper Egypt toward the northern Egyptian pattern takes place through the predynastic period, though the southern pattern continues to predominate in Abydos in Upper Egypt by the First Dynasty:

The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is "southern" (tropical African variant)... However, lower Egyptian, Maghrebian, and European patterns are observed also, thus making for great diversity... The centroid values of the various upper Egyptian series viewed collectively are seen to vary over time. The general trend from Badari to Nakada times, and then from the Nakadan to the First Dynasty epochs demonstrate change toward the northern-Egyptian centroid value on Function I with similar values on Function 11. This might represent an average change from an Africoid (Keita, 1990) to a northern-Egyptian-Maghreb modal pattern.... This northern modal pattern, which can be called coastal northern African, is noted in general terms to be intermediate, by the centroid scores of Function I, to equatorial African and northern European phenotypes.

Material Culture

Located in the extreme corner of Northeast Africa, Egyptian society was at a crossroads between African and Near Eastern regions. Over the years, archaeologists and Egyptologists have drawn from a variety of different disciplines in order to shed light on the question of the ultimate origins of ancient Egyptian civilization. Earlier theories such as the "Dynastic race", which proposed an external source from the north, has today generally been disregarded by mainstream Egyptology.

During the Naqada phase, the predynastic Egyptians of Upper Egypt shared an almost identical culture with A-group peoples of the Lower Sudan. In fact, the cultures were so similar, as indicated by royal tombs at Qustul, along with the earliest examples of what was thought to have been distinct Egyptian iconography, some scholars have even proposed an Egyptian origin in Nubia among the A-group. Indeed, in 1996, Lovell and Prowse published a paper in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology citing evidence for endogamy. They reported the presence of individual rulers buried at Naqada in what was designated as elite, high status tombs, showing them to be related morphologically to populations in Northern Nubia, more so than those in Southern Egypt. While others find this prospect intriguing, however, many scholars are not swayed by the evidence and cite the presence of royal tombs that are contemporary with that of Qustul and just as elaborate, while also addressing what they see as difficulty with the dating techniques.

Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. There is some speculation that this culture is likely to be the predecessor of the Egyptians, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom.

Toby Wilkonson, in his book "Genesis of the Pharaohs", proposes an origin for the Egyptians somewhere in the Eastern Desert. He presents evidence that much of predynastic Egypt was representative of the traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today. In addition, Wilkonson cites the iconography on rock art in the region as depicting what he suggests to be the first examples of the royal crowns, even pointing to Qustul in Nubia as a likely candidate for the origins of the white crown, being that the earliest example of it was discovered in this area.

Genetics and demographics

A 2003 Y chromosome study was performed by Lucotte on modern Egyptians, with haplotypes V, XI, and IV being most common. Haplotype V is common in Berbers and has a low frequency outside Africa. Haplotypes V, XI, and IV are all supra/sub-Saharan horn of Africa haplotypes, and they are far more dominant in Egyptians than in Near Eastern or European groups.

A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ‘‘racially’’ different, with ‘‘racially’’ implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004) This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions based on current data (Underhill, 2001).

A 2006 bioarchaeological study on the dental morphology of ancient Egyptians by Prof. Joel Irish shows that a continuity extends from the dynastic to the post-dyanstic periods, and that the Egyptians exhibit dental traits characteristic of indigenous North Africans, and Southwest Asians to a lesser extent. A sample from the western desert from Nubia was also compared with the Egyptian samples and were found to be significantly different, with the exception of predynastic and early dyanstic samples.

Demographic influences

There were several theories regarding the effects and types of demographic influence on ancient Egypt. All of these theories aimed to explain why ancient Egyptians cluster the way they do in regards to genetics, cranial affinities, and languages/culture. One theory is that the ancient Egyptians belong to a primarily African group, with relatively little significant outside influences from the Near East. Other theories postulated that the ancient Egyptians received significant demographic influence from the Near East, and with minor demographic effects from regions further south.(SeeDynastic Race Theory)

Recent demographic analysis and work done by various anthropologists has led many scholars to conclude that there was in fact overall population continuity stretching from the Neolithic, right into dynastic times with small amounts of possible miscegenation with foreigners, placing Egyptian society with in a localized NorthEast African and Nile Valley context.. As University of Chicago Egyptologist Frank Yurco points out:

Certainly there was some foreign admixture , but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... 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 (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990; Brace et al., this volume)... The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic (i.e. Nile River) continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions (Trigger 1978; Bard, Snowden, this volume). Language research suggests that this Saharan-Nilotic population became speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages... Semitic was evidently spoken by Saharans who crossed the Red Sea into Arabia and became ancestors of the Semitic speakers there, possibly around 7000 BC... In summary we may say that Egypt was a distinct North African culture rooted in the Nile Valley and on the Sahara.

In 2000, spanish geneticist Antonio Arnaiz-Villena ignited a controversy by claiming that Modern Greeks showed genetic affinities to Sub-Saharan Africans. He stated that this admixture could have taken place by interactions with African Egyptians during the pharonic era. However, his study remains controversial and his hypothesis has not been accepted in the scientific community.

Crania

A craniofacial study by C. Loring Brace et. al. concluded that "The Predynastic of Upper Egypt and the Late Dynastic of Lower Egypt are more closely related to each other than to any other population. As a whole, they show ties with the European Neolithic, North Africa, modern Europe, and, more remotely, India, but not at all with sub-Saharan Africa , eastern Asia, Oceania, or the New World."

Keita and Kittles (1997) criticize the study due its alleged contradictions, and selective approach in pigeon holding biohistorical Africans within a fixed archetype, in effect, "deafricanizing" groups such as Egyptians, Nubians, and Somali people. They write:

Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True Negro' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data.

A 2005 study by Keita of Badarian crania in predynastic upper Egypt in comparison to various European and tropical African crania found that the predynastic Badarian series clusters much closer with the tropical African series.

Body Plans

Another reliable source of skeletal data is limb proportions, which tends to vary with different climatic belts. The early Nile Valley populations possessed more tropical body proportions, suggesting that the Egyptian Nile Valley was not primarily settled by cold-adapted peoples, such as Europeans. A 2003 paper appeared in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled 'Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions', where she confirmed the results of previous studies, indicating that the Ancient Egyptians had tropically adapted body plans.

The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations.

Diop's melanin tests

Cheikh Anta Diop performed a series of the tests on Egyptian mummies to determine melanin levels and concluded that Egyptians were dark-skinned and part of the "Negro race". Diop notes criticisms of these results that argue that the skin of most Egyptian mummies, tainted by the embalming material, are no longer susceptible of any analysis. Diop contends the position that 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". However, Diop does not describe any tests that verify his claims that melanin is "non-existent" among the "white-skinned races", nor provide evidence supporting his assertion that the absence of melanin in the epidermis is due to embalming techniques. Diop innovated the development of the melanin dosage test which was later adopted by forensic investigators to determine the "racial identity" of badly burnt accident victims.

Language

The Ancient Egyptian language (a language most closely related to Berber, Semitic, and Beja) is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Initially, it was believed that Semitic languages originated in the near east, however, linguists soon began to reveal a connection between them and several African Languages, it was found that they were more related to languages in Africa than to languages in most parts of Asia and Europe. Joseph Greenberg, based on these observations proposed the term Afro-Asiatic(formerly known as Hamito-Semitic) to encompass all of these languages. The origin of Proto-Afro-Asiatic languages is still debated. An African origin is often proposed since five of the six Afro-Asiatic subfamilies are spoken on the African continent and only one in the middle east. Furthermore, some scholars have proposed Ethiopia, because it includes the majority of the diversity of the Afro-Asiatic language family and has very diverse groups in close geographic proximity, often considered a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin. Hence, many scholars cite this as evidence of a primarily African origin for the Ancient Egyptians as opposed to a near eastern origin.

Kmt

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km in Egyptian hieroglyphs

km biliteral

km.t (place)

km.t (people)

One of the many names for Egypt in ancient Egyptian is km.t (read "Kemet"), meaning "black land". More literally, the word means "something black". The use of km.t in terms of a place is thought generally to be in contrast to the "deshert" or "red land", e.g. the desert west of the Nile valley. Egypt for millennia depended on the flooding of the Nile to bring fertility to the land, and the resulting soil was very black. Likewise, the word kmt could also refer to the people when followed by the people determinatives, as shown on the far right. Raymond Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian translates it into "Egyptians", as do most sources. However, scholar Aboubacry Moussa Lam prefers what he considers to be a more literal translation and suggests that Km.t should be translated as meaning, "land of the black/s" or "black nation" when it applies to the country, and as meaning "the Blacks" when it applies to the population, a view rejected by most Egyptologists.

Accounts by ancient writers

Many ancient writers commented of the 'racial affinities' of ancient Egyptians. While some held them to be people with 'black skins and woolly hair' similar to 'Kushites', others described them as 'medium toned' or similar to that of northern Indians. Greek historian Herodotus commented on a perceived relationship between the Colchians (from the modern Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus) and the Egyptians, he justifies this through his observation that these people had "black skins and kinky hair":

Several Egyptians told me that in their opinion the Colchians were descended from soldiers of Sesostris. I had conjectured as much myself from two pointers, firstly because they have black (melanchros) skins and kinky hair and secondly, and more reliably for the reason that alone among mankind the Egyptians and the Ethiopians have practiced circumcision since time immemorial.

However, some scholars point out that Egyptians were not described as Aethiopes, thus distinguishing between Egyptians and black Africans. According to Classicist Frank M. Snowden, Jr., Herodotus seems to have been following a Graeco-Roman practice of describing people darker than themselves as melanchros, which did not mean that the people they described were black. Other interpretations have pointed out that Herodotus could have been speaking in relative terms, since the Colchians were noted as residing near the Black Sea, close to modern day Russia where there are virtually no dark skinned, woolly haired people today; There are also others who question whether or not Herodotus ever visited the Black Sea region in the first place.

Other ancient writers testify however, that there indeed was an ancient population of dark skinned, woolly haired people residing in Colchis, giving at least some support to Herodotus' claim that they were left there by the armies of the legendary Sesostris after initial campaigns in the region. Indeed, there is further description from ancient writers describing the populations of Colchis in this fashion. A Greek poet named Pindar described the Colchians, whom Jason and the Argonauts fought, as being "dark skinned". Also around 350 to 400 AD, Church father Saint Jerome and Sophronius referred to Colchis as the "second Ethiopia" because of its 'black-skinned' population.

Aristotle, who some have questioned whether or not he visited Egypt, makes his observation on the physical nature of the Egyptians and Ethiopians, be it through hearsay or actual contact. Here, Aristotle makes claim that skin color is somehow correlated to courage, and also gives his impression on why the Egyptians and Ethiopians are bowlegged and 'curly haired'.

Too black a hue marks the coward as witness Egyptians and Ethiopians and so does also too white a complexion as you may see from women, the complexion of courage is between the two.

Why are the Ethiopians and Egyptians bandy-legged? Is it because the bodies of living creatures become distorted by heat, like logs of wood when they become dry? The condition of their hair supports this theory; for it is curlier than that of other nations, and curliness is as it were crookedness of the hair.

Strabo wrote that the Egyptians resembled the people of northern India.

Ammianus Marcellinus (325/330-after 391) was a Greco-Roman historian who also gave his own brief observations.

the men of Egypt are mostly brown and black with a skinny and desiccated look.

In fact, Ammianus Marcellinus described the Egyptians as lighter than the Moors, saying "the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields."

Ancient writers have also made comparisons between ancient Egyptians and northern Indians of the time.

Strabo (c. 64 BC – AD 24):

As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in colour, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Aegyptians.

Arrian (c. 86 - 146 AD) (Indica 6.9):

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.

The above writings of Strabo and Arrian were drawn from the earlier accounts of Nearchus (c. 360 - 300 BC), Megasthenes (c. 350 - 290 BC) and Eratosthenes (276 - 195 BC).

Keita and Boyce confront this issue in a 1996 article entitled, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians". As anthropologists, they point out the danger in relying on ancient interpretation to reveal for us the biological make up of a population. In any case they contend, the relevant data indicates greater similarity between Egyptians and Ethiopians than the former group with the ancient greeks.

The descriptions and terms of ancient Greek writers have sometimes been used to comment on Egyptian origins. This is problematic since the ancient writers were not doing population biology. However, we can examine one issue. The Greeks called all groups south of Egypt "Ethiopians." Were the Egyptians more related to any of these "Ethiopians" than to the Greeks? As noted, cranial and limb studies have indicated greater similarity to Somalis, Kushites and Nubians, all "Ethiopians" in ancient Greek terms.

Mummy reconstructions

King Tutankhamun

File:National Geographic - King Tut face.jpg

A controversial rendering of Tutankhamun exhibiting hazel eyes, "mid-range" skin tone, and elongated features, as shown on the cover of National Geographic in 2005.

King Tutankhamun is the most famous of the pharaohs, and his mummy is estimated to be about 3000 years old. In 2005, three teams of scientists (Egyptian, French and American), in partnership with the National Geographic Society, developed a new facial likeness of Tutankhamun. The Egyptian team worked from 1,700 three-dimensional CT scans of the Pharaoh's skull. The French and American teams worked plastic molds created from these – but the Americans were never told whom they were reconstructing. All three teams created silicone busts of their interpretation of what the young monarch looked like. In the end, they identified the skull as:

that of a male, 18 to 20 years old, with Caucasoid features.

Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice president for mission programs, said, in response to criticism of the King Tut reconstructions:

The big variable is skin tone. North Africans, we know today, had a range of skin tones, from light to dark. In this case, we selected a medium skin tone, and we say, quite up front, 'This is midrange.' We'll never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the color of his eyes with 100 percent certainty. ... Maybe in the future, people will come to a different conclusion.

The French team's reconstruction specifically however, has sparked considerable criticism. Afrocentrists criticize the French team's claim that they selected the skin tone by taking a color from the middle of the range of skin tones found in the population of Egypt today. They claim that these features do not reflect the prevalent eye or skin color of either ancient dynastic Egypt or present-day Egyptians . They further argue that many representations of Tut portray him with red-brown to dark-brown skin and dark eyes, and that the teams should have used these as references in assigning eye and skin color.

Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has stated that: "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it,". Hawass made this statement in light of calls from U.S. black activists demanding egyptologists to recognize that King Tug was black. Hawass also stated that "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa,". Hawass was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia where protesters demanded a bust of King Tug be removed because it portrayed him as white.

In comparison to the 2005 reconstruction, the earlier 2002 Discovery Channel reconstruction showed a darker skin tone, among other differences.

Difficulties of forensic reconstruction

File:Tutblack.jpg

King Tut

Although their methodologies are objective, forensic anthropologists agree that attempts to apply criteria from craniofacial anthropometry sometimes can yield seemingly counterintuitive results, depending upon the weight given to each feature. For example, their application can result in finding some East and South Indians to have "Negroid" cranial/facial features and others to have "Caucasoid" cranial/facial features. While many East Africans for instance, have "Caucasoid" skulls, and many of the Khoisan who inhabit southwestern Africa have cranial/facial traits that are distinct from many other sub-Saharan Africans and resemble "Mongoloid" characteristics. A recent study of ancient Nubian crania was critical of assigning the traditional racial labels to skeletal remains. The study concluded:

"The assignment of skeletal racial origin is based principally upon stereotypical features found most frequently in the most geographically distant populations. While this is useful in some contexts (for example, sorting skeletal material of largely West African ancestry from skeletal material of largely Western European ancestry), it fails to identify populations that originate elsewhere and misrepresents fundamental patterns of human biological diversity."

These seeming contradictions, however, are related to the vagaries of racial classification, particularly of ethnically diverse or miscegenated populations, as exist in Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Cranial analysis is still used by some forensic scientists to determine the identity and geographic ethnic origin of human remains, even though the accuracy of ethnicity-related conclusions drawn from cranial analysis is not absolute -- particularly when treating populations possessing varying degrees of "racial", or ethnic, admixture. Though modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy based on CT data from his mummy, but due to lack of facial tissue and embalming issues, correctly determining his skin tone, nose width, and eye color is nearly impossible. The problem is not a lack of skill on the part of Ancient Egyptians. Egyptian artisans distinguished accurately among different ethnicities, but sometimes depicted their subjects in totally unreal colors, the purposes for which aren't completely understood. Thus no absolute consensus on the skin tone and various other features of reconstructed mummies such as Tutankhamun is possible.

The Great Sphinx of Giza

Over the centuries, numerous writers and scholars have recorded their impressions and reactions upon seeing the Great Sphinx of Giza. French scholar Constantin-François de Chassebœuf, Comte de Volney visited Egypt between 1783 and 1785 . He is one of the earliest known Western scholars to remark upon what he saw as its "typically Negro" countenance.

"... all have a bloated face, puffed up eyes, flat nose, thick lips; in a word, the true face of the negro. 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. ...'".

Upon visiting Egypt in 1849, French author Gustave Flaubert echoed de Volney's observations. In his travel log chronicling his trip, he wrote:

We stop before a Sphinx; it fixes us with a terrifying stare. Its eyes still seem full of life; the left side is stained white by bird-droppings (the tip of the Pyramid of Khephren has the same long white stains); it exactly faces the rising sun, its head is grey, ears very large and protruding like a negro’s, its neck is eroded; from the front it is seen in its entirety thanks to great hollow dug in the sand; the fact that the nose is missing increases the flat, negroid effect. Besides, it was certainly Ethiopian; the lips are thick….

In his work The Negro, published in 1915, W.E.B. Du Bois observed:

The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so familiar to all the world, the Sphinxes of Tanis, the statue from the Fayum, the statue of the Esquiline at Rome, and the Colossi of Bubastis all represent black, full-blooded Negroes and are described by Petrie as "having high cheek bones, flat checks, both in one plane, a massive nose, firm projecting lips, and thick hair, with an austere and almost savage expression of power."

and:

Blyden, the great modern black leader of West Africa, said of the Sphinx at Gizeh:"Her features are decidedly of the African or Negro type, with 'expanded nostrils.' If, then, the Sphinx was placed here—looking out in majestic and mysterious silence over the empty plain where once stood the great city of Memphis in all its pride and glory, as an 'emblematic representation of the king'--is not the inference clear as to the peculiar type or race to which that king belonged?"

In 1992, the New York Times published a letter to the editor submitted by then Harvard professor of Orthodontics Sheldon Peck in which he commented on a study of the Giza sphinx conducted by New York City Police Department senior forensics artist Frank Domingo. Peck Wrote:

The analytical techniques…Detective Frank Domingo used on facial photographs are not unlike methods orthodontists and surgeons use to study facial disfigurements. From the right lateral tracing of the statue's worn profile a pattern of bimaxilliary prognathism is clearly detectable. This is an anatomical condition of forward development in both jaws, more frequently found in people of African ancestry than in those from Asian or Indo-European stock. New York Times

Alleged whitening of the Egyptians by Eurocentric Egyptologists

Egyptology performed during the colonial eras is regarded by Egyptologists today as having had a racial prejudice against dark-skinned Africans.

In the book Nations Nègres et Culture. De l'antiquité nègre égyptienne aux problèmes culturels de l'Afrique Noire d'aujourd'hui, Cheikh Anta Diop, denounced colonial Egyptology as prejudiced against black historical accomplishments. Diop himself has come under criticism by mainstream scholars for having distorted some of his sources and as a result falsifying history. Diop claims that Egyptologists "knew" that ancient Egyptian were "black". But the fact that Africans were colonized, he argued, made it difficult to admit that they were the creators of the Egyptian civilization. He quoted, for example, Champollion-Figeac who said that “black skin and wholly hair don’t make someone to belong to the Black race”. In his book, Egitto e Nubia, Maurizio Damiano-Appia wrote that for many Egyptologists of the past, and even of today, Egypt was the creation of a "white race." Appia alleges that Eurocentrism, mainly of Anglo Saxon orientation, was at the base of this false idea. Aboubacry Moussa Lam, in his book L’affaire des momies royales. La vérité sur la reine Ahmès-Nefertari, argued that Egyptian mummies were falsely described as belonging to Caucasians.

As to their origins, Basil Davidson cites evidence that the Egyptians were primarily from the south, then joined by people fleeing the desertification of the Sahara; and as to the color of their skin, the same. Davidson firmly believes that they were "Black people".

Discarded hypotheses

Hamitic hypothesis

Complications have also cropped up in the use of linguistics as a basis for racial categorization. The demise of the famous "Hamitic Hypothesis", which purported to show that certain African languages around the Nile area could be associated with "Caucasoid" peoples is a typical case. Such schemes fell apart when it was demonstrated that so-called 'Negroid' tribes far distant also spoke similar languages, tongues that were supposedly a reserved marker of 'Caucasoid' presence or influence. For work on African languages, see Wiki article Languages of Africa and Joseph Greenberg. Older linguistic classifications are also linked to the notion of a "Hamitic race", a vague grouping thought to exclude 'Negroes', but accommodating a large variety of dark skinned North and East Africans into a broad-based 'Caucasoid' grouping. This "Hamitic race" is sometimes credited with the introduction of more advanced culture, such as certain plant cultivation and particularly the domestication of cattle. This has also been discredited by the work of post WWII archaeologists such as A. Arkell, who demonstrated that predynastic and Sudanic 'Negroid' elements already possessed cattle and plant domestication, thousands of years before the supposed influx of 'Caucasoid' or 'Hamitic' settlers into the Nile Valley, Nubia and adjoining areas. Modern scholarship has moved away from earlier notions of a "Hamitic" race speaking Hamito-Semitic languages, and places the Egyptian language in a more localized context, centered around its general Saharan and Nilotic roots.(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996) Linguistic analysis (Diakanoff 1998) places the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai.

Dynastic race theory

The Dynastic Race Theory was the earliest thesis to attempt to explain how predynastic Egypt developed into the Pharonic monarchy. It argued that the presence of many Mesopotamian influences in Egypt during the late predynastic period and the apparently foreign graves in the Naqada II burials indicated an invasion of Mesopotamians into Upper Egypt, who then conquered both Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty

The Dynastic Race Theory is no longer the dominant thesis in the field of Predyanstic Archaeology, and has been largely replaced by the theory that Egypt was a Hydraulic empire, on the grounds that such contacts are much older than the Naqada II period, the Naqada II period had a large degree of continuity with the Naqada I period, and the changes which did happen during the Naqada periods happened over significant amounts of time.

Cleopatra

The claim that Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, was of African origin has been espoused by several Afrocentric academics, and has enjoyed a notable degree of acceptance within the African-American community. Cleopatra, however, was of Hellenistic origin. Mary Lefkowitz argues that Afrocentric scholars are to blame for the proliferation of this myth. However, according to Professor of African American Studies at Temple University, Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, this is but one of many trivial issues and he states:

I think I can say without a doubt that Afrocentrists do not spend time arguing that either Socrates or Cleopatra were black. I have never seen these ideas written by an Afrocentrist nor have I heard them discussed in any Afrocentric intellectual forums. Professor Lefkowitz provides us with a hearsay incident which she probably reports accurately. It is not an Afrocentric argument.

Lefkowitz actually does cite examples of Afrocentric scholars who have made such claims. One such example she supplies is a chapter entitled "Black Warrior Queens" published in 1984 in Black Women in Antiquity, part of the Journal of African Civilization series. It draws heavily on the work of J.A. Rogers. In any event, Afrocentrists strongly contend that this matter is of inane interest and is not an argument often pursued, most concede to the fact that Cleopatra was not of native Egyptian descent.

Nordic Egypt

The hypothesis that the ancient Egyptians were a predominantly "Nordic" civilization was viable in the heyday of European colonialism, but is today regarded as (racist) pseudoscience. However, several neo-Nazi and racist groups such as Stormfront still hold this myth to be true, holding that ancient Egypt was a "Nordic desert empire." This view enjoys no support whatsoever among researchers of ancient Egypt for the simple reason that there is no evidence for it, and enormous evidence against it.

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