Today the issues regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians are "troubled waters which most people who write about ancient Egypt from within the mainstream of scholarship avoid." The debate, therefore, takes place mainly in the public sphere and tends to focus on a small number of specific issues.
Greco-Roman accounts of Ancient Egypt , the "father of history", wrote that Egyptians had dark skin and woolly hair. A range of scholars have cited the classical observations of prominent
Greeks and
Romans as forms of primary evidence to denote the physical appearance of the early Egyptians. Some historical accounts have drawn close physical and cultural resemblances between Egyptians and
Ethiopians whereas others have associated them more closely with
northern Indians. In the
fifth century BCE, Greek historian,
Herodotus, described the Egyptians as having “melanchrones skin and wooly hair and secondly, and more reliably for the reason that alone among mankind the Egyptians and the Ethiopians have practiced circumcision since time immemorial.” Herodotus also wrote that the Ammonians of
Siwa Oasis are "colonists from Egypt and Aethiopia and speak a language compounded of the tongues of both countries". In the
first century BCE, Greek historian
Diodorus Siculus, in his work
Bibliotheca Historica, reported that the Ethiopians claimed that
Egypt was an early colony, and that the Ethiopians also cited evidence that they were more ancient than the Egyptians as he wrote: {{Blockquote
Ammianus Marcellinus, (325/330-after 391) served as a Greco-Roman historian in
4th century CE, He described “the men of Egypt are mostly brown and black with a skinny and desiccated look.”
Arrian, Greek historian, wrote in the
1st-century AD 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". According to a passage sourced from
Strabo, Greek geographer,
1st-century AD, northern Indians held similar physical characteristics as the Egyptians: "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". Secondary interpretation of these historical descriptions have remained a source of academic contention. Professor of African Studies at Temple University,
Molefi Kete Asante has referenced other examples from Herodotus's primary account for which he interprets to describe the physical appearance of Egyptians as Africans. This has included the following sourced statements "the flooding of the Nile could not be caused by snow, because the natives of the country (Egypt) are black from the heat" and descriptions of an oracle as Egyptian based on Dodoneans "calling the dove black,[which] they indicated that the woman was Egyptian". However, Professor
Yaacov Shavit of Tel Aviv University, argued that "[t]he evidence clearly shows that those
Greco-Roman authors who refer to the skin color and other physical traits distinguish sharply between Ethiopians (Nubians) and Egyptians, and rarely do they refer to the Egyptians as black, even though they were described as darker than themselves.... [in addition,] Egyptians and Nubians were both clearly distinguished from the black Africans." Classical author
Frank Snowden argued that terms used by ancient Greek and Roman writers to describe the physical characteristics of other ancient peoples differed from contemporary racial terminology in the West. Keita and Boyce expressed caution on the use and reliability of primary accounts and instead favoured
population biology. Nonetheless, they found these descriptions on the origins of early Egyptians aligned with modern sources of anthropological data (cranial, limb proportion studies) which identified greater similarities between early Egyptians and North-East African populations (
Somalia, Nubia and
Kushites) that were "Ethiopians" in the Greek traditional sense. In a later chapter, Keita observed that some Greeks reported that Egypt was an Ethiopian colony but distinctions were made between Egyptians and Ethiopians in ancient accounts, but it remained unclear whether these distinctions were made on cultural rather on biological grounds.
Ta netjer and the location of ancestral homeland carrying gifts, tomb of Rekhmire Older literature maintained that the label "God's Land", when interpreted as "Holy Land" or "Land of the gods/ancestors", meant that the ancient Egyptians viewed the Land of Punt as their ancestral homeland.
Flinders Petrie believed that the
Dynastic Race came from or through Punt and that "Pan, or Punt, was a district at the south end of the Red Sea, which probably embraced both the African and Arabian shores." Moreover,
E. A. Wallis Budge stated that "Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt...". James Breasted in 1906 argued that the term Ta netjer was not only applied to Punt, located southeast of Egypt, but also to regions of
Asia east and northeast of Egypt, such as
Lebanon, which was the source of wood for temples. Modern scholars have noted that the term was applied to the Land of Punt, the exact location had historically been a subject of scholarly debate with a spectrum of views associating Puntland with regions extending from Ethiopia to southern
Arabia. Recent consensus has now located the region in modern northeast Africa due to the prevalence of indigenous goods and animals which are reflected in Egyptian reliefs and paintings. In the view of British Africanist,
Basil Davidson, the land of gods and ancestors of Egyptians was discussed in reference to lands south and west of their civilisation. British archaeologist, Jacke Phillips, argued that the term "Ta Netjer" (God's Land) was applied to regions south and west of Egypt, which included not only Punt but other regions entitled
"Irem" and
"Am(am)", with the latter regions accessible through Punt and Nubia. Phillips further argued that
Irem was most likely the same location accessed by
Harkhuf through his expeditions into inner Africa during the Old Kingdom period. {{multiple image According to Senegalese Egyptologist,
Aboubacry Moussa Lam, the Egyptians considered the Land of Punt as being their ancestral homeland.
Stuart Tyson Smith, Egyptologist and professor of anthropology at
University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote in 2001 that "The scene of an expedition to
Punt from Queen Hatshepsuis mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahri shows Puntites with red skin and facial features similar to Egyptians, long or bobbed hair, goatee beards, and kilts". In 2006, Tanzanian archaeologist,
Felix Chami, had drawn on established scholarly interpretations of Egyptologists,
Jean Leclant, Timothy Kendall and
Kenneth Kitchen, in reaching the view: “The most interesting part of the Egyptian knowledge about Sub-Saharan Africa is in relation to Punt and God’s Land, or the lands of the gods. These lands had traded with Egypt since 2500 BC or even before. The Egyptians are not known to have had any war with the people of Punt, probably due to the fact that the land was not near enough to wage wars of conquest (kitchen, 1999: 174). These were lands of semi-mythical “horizon dwellers”. Egyptians also considered their gods or ancestors to have originated from these lands thought to be in eastern and southern Africa (Whicker, 1990) and hence “God’s land” (
Kitchen, 1993:592). The records of the last Millennium BC show that Osiris and Isis, the most powerful Egyptian god and goddess, were “Ethiopians”/Black originating from countries in the south of Africa (
Leclant, 1997: 157; Kendall, 1997: 171; Waterfield, 1967).” Africana professor, Aaron Kamugisha, reviewed the historiography and cultural debates concerning the ethnic status of the Ancient Egyptian population in 2003. He was critical of Kathryn Bard's views that Ancient Egyptians were a "Mediterranean peoples" and could not be classified as Sub-Saharan Blacks. In particular, her argued her views lacked wholesale consistency as she later stated that Egyptian artistic representations which depicted of Ancient Puntites' facial features looked "more Egyptian than "black". In Kamguisha's view, this overlooked the fact that Punt is now generally regarded to be located in Somalia. UNESCO scholar, Alan Anselin, observed that a conclusive view on the relations between Egypt and Punt remain tentative until further textual and archaeological evidence can confirm the full nature of their historical connections. Tanzanian archaeologist, Felix A. Chami, also maintained that cultural relationship between Egypt and Punt along with its precise location in
Eastern Africa still remained an ongoing area of scholarly debate. Chami noted that Punt was referred to as "God's Land" from which Egyptian religious deities,
Osiris and
Isis were described to originate in the land of the south, yet observed that Egyptian trading missions had historically been perceived to trigger cultural diffusion and domestication throughout wider Africa.
Tutankhamun Several scholars have claimed that
Tutankhamun was black, and have protested that attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features (as depicted on the cover of
National Geographic magazine) have represented the king as "too white". Among these writers was
Chancellor Williams, who argued that King Tutankhamun, his parents, and grandparents were black. Forensic artists and physical anthropologists from Egypt, France, and the United States independently created busts of Tutankhamun, using a
CT-scan of the skull. Biological anthropologist Susan Anton, the leader of the American team, said the race of the skull was "hard to call". She stated that the shape of the cranial cavity indicated an African, while the nose opening suggested narrow nostrils, which is usually considered to be a European characteristic. The skull was thus concluded to be that of a North African. Other experts have argued that neither skull shapes nor nasal openings are a reliable indication of race. Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy, based on CT data from his mummy, determining his skin tone and
eye color is impossible. The clay model was therefore given a coloring, which, according to the artist, was based on an "average shade of modern Egyptians"., grandmother of Tutankhamun Terry Garcia,
National Geographics executive vice president for mission programs, said, in response to some of those protesting against the Tutankhamun reconstruction: The big variable is skin tone. North Africans, we know today, had a range of skin tones, from light to dark. In this case, we selected a medium skin tone, and we say, quite up front, 'This is midrange.' We will never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the color of his eyes with 100% certainty.... Maybe in the future, people will come to a different conclusion. When pressed on the issue by American activists in September 2007, the Secretary General of the Egyptian
Supreme Council of Antiquities,
Zahi Hawass stated "Tutankhamun was not black." In a November 2007 publication of
Ancient Egypt magazine, Hawass asserted that none of the facial reconstructions resemble Tut and that, in his opinion, the most accurate representation of the boy king is the mask from his tomb. The
Discovery Channel commissioned a facial reconstruction of Tutankhamun, based on CT scans of a model of his skull, back in 2002.
Stuart Tyson Smith, Egyptologist and professor of anthropology at
University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2008 expressed criticism of the forensic reconstruction in a journal review, noting that "Tutankhamun's face" was "very light-skinned" which reflected a "bias" among media outlets. He further added that "Egyptologists have been strangely reluctant to admit that the ancient Egyptians were rather dark-skinned Africans, especially the farther south one goes". In 2011, the genomics company iGENEA launched a Tutankhamun DNA project based on genetic markers that it indicated it had culled from a Discovery Channel special on the pharaoh. According to the firm, the
microsatellite data suggested that Tutankhamun belonged to the
haplogroup R1b1a2, the most common paternal
clade among males in Western Europe. Carsten Pusch and Albert Zink, who led the unit that had extracted Tutankhamun's DNA, chided iGENEA for not liaising with them before establishing the project. After examining the footage, they also concluded that the methodology the company used was unscientific with Putsch calling them "simply impossible". A 2020 DNA study by Gad, Hawass et al., analysed mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups from Tutankhamun's family members of the 18th Dynasty, using comprehensive control procedures to ensure quality results. They found that the Y-chromosome haplogroup of the family was
R1b, which
originated in Europe and which today makes up 50–90% of the genetic pool of modern western Europeans. The mitochondrial haplogroup was K, which is most likely also part of a Near Eastern lineage. The profiles for Tutankhamun and Amenhotep III were incomplete and the analysis produced differing probability figures despite having concordant allele results. Because the relationships of these two mummies with the KV55 mummy had previously been confirmed in an earlier study, the haplogroup prediction of both mummies could be derived from the full profile of the KV55 data. The 20th Dynasty pair of Ramesses III and his son were found to have the haplogroup E1b1a, which has its highest frequencies in modern populations from West Africa and Central Africa, but which is rare among North Africans and nearly absent in East Africa. In 2022, S.O.Y. Keita analysed 8
Short Tandem loci (STR) data published as part of these studies by Hawass et al., using an algorithm that only has three choices: Eurasians, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Using these three options, Keita concluded that the majority of the samples, which included the genetic remains of Tutankhamun, showed a population "affinity with "
sub-Saharan" Africans in one affinity analysis". However, Keita cautioned that this does not mean that the royal mummies "lacked other affiliations" which he argued had been obscured in typological thinking. Keita further added that different "data and algorithms might give different results" which reflects the complexity of biological heritage and the associated interpretation. According to historian William Stiebling and archaeologist Susan N. Helft, conflicting DNA analysis conducted by different research teams on ancient Egyptians such as the Amarna royal mummies, which included the remains of Tutankhamun, has led to a lack of consensus on the genetic makeup of the ancient Egyptians and their geographic origins. In 2025, biochemist Jean-Philippe Gourdine reviewed genetic data on the Ancient Egyptian populations in the international scholarly publication, General History of Africa Volume IX. Expanding on a previous STR analysis, performed on the Amarna mummies which included Tutankhamun, Gourdine stated the analysis had found “that they had strong affinities with current sub-Saharan populations: 41 per cent to 93.9 per cent for sub-Saharan Africa, compared to 4.6 per cent to 41 per cent for Eurasia and 0.3 per cent to 16 per cent for Asia (Gourdine, 2018).” He also referenced comparable analysis conducted by DNA Tribes, which specialized in genetic genealogy and had large datasets, with the latter having identified strong affinities between the Amarna royal mummies and Sub-Saharan African populations.
Cleopatra The race and skin color of
Cleopatra VII, the last active
Hellenistic ruler of the
Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, established in 323 BC, has also caused some debate, although generally not in scholarly sources. For example, the article "Was Cleopatra Black?" was published in
Ebony magazine in 2012, and an article about
Afrocentrism from the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch mentions the question, too.
Mary Lefkowitz, Professor Emerita of
Classical Studies at
Wellesley College, traces the main origins of the black Cleopatra claim to the 1946 book by
J. A. Rogers called ''World's Great Men of Color'', although noting that the idea of Cleopatra as black goes back to at least the 19th century. The black Cleopatra claim was further revived in an essay by afrocentrist
John Henrik Clarke, chair of African history at Hunter College, entitled "African Warrior Queens." Lefkowitz refutes Rogers' and Clarke's hypotheses, on various scholarly grounds. , 1st century BC Scholars identify Cleopatra as essentially of
Greek ancestry with some
Persian and
Sogdian
Iranian ancestry, based on the fact that her
Macedonian Greek family (the
Ptolemaic dynasty) had intermingled with the
Seleucid aristocracy of the time. Michael Grant states that Cleopatra probably had not a drop of Egyptian blood and that she "would have described herself as Greek." To contrary, Joyce Tyldesley highlights that while "Ptolemies were culturally Hellenistic Macedonians", they also "believed themselves to be a valid Egyptian dynasty" and that "Cleopatra defined herself as an Egyptian queen" accepted as such by her subjects and contemporaries. She also admits possibility of Cleopatra having Egyptian mother that could potentially explain Queen's proficiency in Egyptian language. However, Tyldesley notes that even if this theory is true, it might not be helpful in determination of Cleopatra's racial heritage and her phenotype, as population of Egypt during Ptolemaic times had "diverse range of racial characteristics, with red-haded, light-skinned Egyptians living alongside curly haired, darker-skinned neighbours". Duane W. Roller notes that "there is absolutely no evidence" that Cleopatra was racially black African as claimed by what he dismisses as generally not "credible scholarly sources," although he speculates Cleopatra may have been one-fourth Egyptian. Part of Roller's argument rests on a speculated earlier marriage between Psenptais II and a certain "Berenice", once argued to possibly be a daughter of
Ptolemy VIII. However, this speculation was refuted by Egyptologist Wendy Cheshire. Cleopatra's official coinage (which she would have approved) and the three portrait busts of her which are considered authentic by scholars, all match each other, and they portray Cleopatra as a Greek woman. Polo writes that Cleopatra's coinage presents her image with certainty, and asserts that the sculpted portrait of the "
Berlin Cleopatra" head is confirmed as having a similar profile. Similar to the Berlin Cleopatra, other Roman sculpted portraits of Cleopatra include diadem-wearing marble heads now located in the
Vatican Museums and
Archaeological Museum of Cherchell, although
the latter may instead be a depiction of her daughter
Cleopatra Selene II. Aside from
Hellenistic art,
native Egyptian artworks of Cleopatra include the
Bust of Cleopatra in the
Royal Ontario Museum, as well as
stone-carved reliefs of the Temple of
Hathor in the
Dendera Temple complex in Egypt depicting Cleopatra and Caesarion as ruling pharaohs providing
offerings to Egyptian deities. In his (2006), Bernard Andreae contends that this Egyptian basalt statue is like other idealized Egyptian portraits of the queen, and does not contain realistic facial features and hence adds little to the knowledge of Cleopatra's appearance. In 2009, a
BBC documentary speculated that Cleopatra might have been part North African. This was based largely on the claims of Hilke Thür of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences, who in the 1990s had examined a headless skeleton of a female child in a 20 BC tomb in
Ephesus (modern
Turkey), together with the old notes and photographs of the now-missing skull. Thür hypothesized the body as that of Arsinoe, half-sister to Cleopatra. Arsinoe and Cleopatra shared the same father (
Ptolemy XII Auletes) but may have had different mothers, with Thür claiming the alleged African ancestry came from the skeleton's mother. Furthermore,
craniometry as used by Thür to determine race is based in
scientific racism that is now generally considered a
pseudoscience that supported "exploitation of groups of people" to "perpetuate racial oppression" and "distorted future views of the biological basis of race." When a DNA test attempted to determine the identity of the child, it was impossible to get an accurate reading since the bones had been handled too many times, and the skull had been lost in Germany during
World War II. Numerous studies have shown that cranial variation has a low correlation with race, and rather that cranial variation was strongly correlated with climate variables.
Mary Beard states that the age of the skeleton is too young to be that of Arsinoe (the bones said to be that of a 15–18-year-old child, with Arsinoe being around her mid twenties at her death). In 2025, it was definitively proven that the skeleton does not belong to Arsinoe IV, when genetic research was able to assess that the skeleton belongs to a teenage male. The 2023
Netflix documentary series
Queen Cleopatra, which appears to depict Cleopatra as black, spurred a lawsuit in Egypt claiming that the documentary was distorting the reality in order to promote Afrocentrism, and that Netflix's programs were not in line with Egyptian or Islamic values. Similarly, an article published by
The Telegraph criticized the Netflix documentary, stating that "Cleopatra was Greek, not a tool in Netflix's war on real history". Classics scholar
Rebecca Futo Kennedy contends that discussing whether someone was “black” or “white” is anachronistic, and that asking this question says "more about modern political investments than attempting to understand antiquity on its own terms."
Great Sphinx of Giza The identity of the model for the
Great Sphinx of Giza is unknown. Most experts believe that the face of the Sphinx represents the likeness of the
Pharaoh Khafra, although a few Egyptologists and interested amateurs have proposed different hypotheses. An early description of the Sphinx, "typically negro in all its features", is recorded in the travel notes of a French scholar,
Volney, who visited Egypt between 1783 and 1785 along with French novelist
Gustave Flaubert. A similar description was given in the "well-known book" by
Vivant Denon, where he described the sphinx as "the character is African; but the mouth, the lips of which are thick." Following Volney, Denon, and other early writers, numerous Afrocentric scholars, such as
Du Bois,
Diop and
Asante have characterized the face of the Sphinx as Black, or "
Negroid". American geologist
Robert M. Schoch has written that the "Sphinx has a distinctive African,
Nubian, or
Negroid aspect which is lacking in the face of Khafre", but he was described by others such as
Ronald H. Fritze and
Mark Lehner of being a "pseudoscientific writer". David S. Anderson writes in
Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices that
Van Sertima's claim that "the sphinx was a portrait statue of the black pharaoh
Khafre" is a form of "
pseudoarchaeology" not supported by evidence. He compares it to the claim that
Olmec colossal heads had "African origins", which is not taken seriously by Mesoamerican scholars such as
Richard Diehl and Ann Cyphers.
Kemet (km.t) (Egypt) The hieroglyph
km in ancient Egyptian means the color black and in some cases "completion" or "conclusion". In Gardiner's Sign List, it is categorized as I6 and its phonetic representation is "km." The Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache ("Dictionary of the Egyptian Language") identifies at least 24 compound forms of km, often describing black objects such as stone, metal, wood, hair, eyes, animals, and occasionally even being linked to personal names as well as descriptions of 'coming to an end', terminating, or "an item of completion". Why the km hieroglyph looks the way it does is unknown. Gardiner's Sign List describes it as resembling "a piece of crocodile-skin with spines." It falls under section I, which includes symbols representing "amphibious animals, reptiles, etc." This section also contains other hieroglyphs, such as I5, which is the symbol for a crocodile. Another common theory is that the km hieroglyph depicts a piece of charcoal. Most scholars hold that means "the black land" or "the black place", and that this is a reference to the fertile black soil that was washed down from Central Africa by the annual
Nile inundation. By contrast the barren desert outside the narrow confines of the Nile watercourse was called (conventionally pronounced
deshret) or "the red land". Raymond Faulkner's
Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian translates
kmt into "Egyptians",
Gardiner translates it as "the Black Land, Egypt".' At the UNESCO Symposium in 1974, French Egyptologist
Serge Sauneron stated that in Egyptian km meant 'black', the masculine plural was Kmu (Kemou) and the feminine plural Kmnt and that the form Kmtyw could mean 'those of Kmt', 'the inhabitants of Kmt' ('the black country'). It was a derived adjective (nisba) derived from a geographical term which had become a proper name; it was not necessarily 'felt' in its original meaning (cf. Frank, France, French). To indicate 'black people', the Egyptians would have said Kmt or Kmu, not Kmtyw, they never used this adjective to designate the black people of the African hinterland whom they knew about from the time of the New Kingdom onwards and, in general, nor did they use names of colours to categorize people. In the 11th-12th dynasty Ancient Egypt came to be called by the Egyptians Kemet ( 'km.t' ) (kemet) a derivative of km and also Ta-meri (“The Beloved Land”) (tꜣ-mrj). km.t is a feminine derivative of km in the ancient Egyptian language.
Cheikh Anta Diop, a Senegalese scholar and author, argued that the ancient Egyptians referred to themselves using a term that, when translated literally, meant "the negroes". Diop also said , the etymological root of other words such as Kam or Ham refer to Black people in Hebrew tradition. Diop,
William Leo Hansberry, and Aboubacry Moussa Lam have argued that
kmt was derived from the skin color of the Nile valley people, which Diop claimed was black. In their own art, "Egyptians are often represented in a color that is officially called dark red", according to Diop. Arguing against other theories, Diop quotes Champollion-Figeac, who states, "one distinguishes on Egyptian monuments several species of blacks, differing...with respect to complexion, which makes Negroes black or copper-colored." Regarding an expedition by King Sesostris, Cherubini states the following concerning captured southern Africans, "except for the panther skin about their loins, are distinguished by their color, some entirely black, others dark brown. in his war chariot charging into battle against the Nubians.
New Kingdom reliefs as seen in Rameses II temple,
Beit el-Wali, represented Nubians with dark reddish brown and jet black skin tones. University of Chicago scholars assert that Nubians are generally depicted with black paint, but the skin pigment used in Egyptian paintings to refer to Nubians can range "from dark red to brown to black". This can be observed in paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Huy, as well as Ramses II's temple at Beit el-Wali. Also, Snowden indicates that Romans had accurate knowledge of "negroes of a red, copper-colored complexion ... among African tribes". Conversely, in 2003 Najovits wrote that "Egyptian art depicted Egyptians on the one hand and Nubians and other blacks on the other hand with distinctly different ethnic characteristics and depicted this abundantly and often aggressively. The Egyptians accurately, arrogantly and aggressively made national and ethnic distinctions from a very early date in their art and literature." He continues, "There is an extraordinary abundance of Egyptian works of art which clearly depicted sharply contrasted reddish-brown Egyptians and black Nubians."
Barbara Mertz in 2011 wrote in
Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: "The concept of race would have been totally alien to them [Ancient Egyptians] ...The skin color that painters usually used for men is a reddish brown. Women were depicted as lighter in complexion, perhaps because they didn't spend so much time out of doors. Some individuals are shown with black skins. I cannot recall a single example of the words "black," "brown," or "white" being used in an Egyptian text to describe a person." She gives the example of one of
Thutmose III's "sole companions", who was Nubian or
Kushite. In his funerary scroll, he is shown with dark brown skin instead of the conventional reddish brown used for Egyptians.
"Table of Nations" controversy in scenes from the Book of Gates and 3)Tomb of
Ramesses III ), "Nehesu" (
Nubians), and "Themehu" (
Libyans); second row: a deity, "Reth" (Egyptians), "Aamu" (
Asiatics) Manu Ampim, a professor at
Merritt College specializing in African and African American history and culture, claims in the book
Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret, that many ancient Egyptian statues and artworks are modern frauds that have been created specifically to hide the "fact" that the ancient Egyptians were black, while authentic artworks that demonstrate black characteristics are systematically defaced or even "modified". Ampim repeatedly makes the accusation that the Egyptian authorities are systematically destroying evidence that "proves" that the ancient Egyptians were black, under the guise of renovating and conserving the applicable temples and structures. He further accuses "European" scholars of wittingly participating in and abetting this process. Ampim has a specific concern about a wall painting depicting in a scene from the
Book of Gates identified as the 4th Division, 5th Hour. an Egyptian funerary text the in the Tomb of
Ramesses III (
KV11). The Book of Gates is a funerary text appears in a number of New Kingdom tombs, and they were usually provided for the guidance of the soul of the deceased. The Egyptians did not assign a name to this text; it was later termed 'Livre des Portes' (Book of Gates) by the French Egyptologist
Gaston Maspero. This particular scene (4th division, 5th hour) was also not titled by the Egyptians. It depicts Egyptians and three other ethnic groups being led to the afterlife by Horus. Some, in modern times call it the "Table of Nations" a phrase sometimes used by biblical scholars referring to the unrelated genealogical record in Genesis 10. Others in modern times, such as
E.A. Wallis Budge 9in 1906), have called the scene "The Four Races of Men" In 1913, after the death of Lepsius, an updated reprint of the work was produced, edited by
Kurt Sethe. This printing included an additional section, called the "Ergänzungsband" in German, which incorporated many illustrations that did not appear in Lepsius' original work. One of them, plate 48, illustrated one example of each of the four "nations" as depicted in KV11, and shows the "Egyptian nation" and the "Nubian nation" as identical to each other in skin color and dress. Ampim has declared that plate 48 is a true reflection of the original painting, and that it "proves" that the ancient Egyptians were identical in appearance to the
Nubians, even though he admits no other examples of this "Table of Nations" scene in the Book of Gates in other tombs where it appears show this similarity. Another inconsistency with other tombs in the depiction of the scene in the Tomb of
Ramesses III (
KV11) that Ampim does not mention is while the Asiatic and Libyan are in consistent 2nd and 4th position at both Seti I and Merenptah's tombs the figure types switch position at the tomb of Ramesses III while the hieroglyphs do not. At Seti I and Merenptah tombs the Asiatic in the second position is depicted as is typical in much other art of the period, a bearded figure with a cloth headband with two excess pieces of the headband hanging down. Additionally at these two tombs, Seti and Merenptah, a Libyan is at the end of the row, at the 4th position and is depicted with typical Libyan features of the period, a side lock of hair and a long gown-like garment that is worn somewhat openly and with one or both shoulders exposed. However, while all the hieroglyphs in all three tombs remain in the same position left to right, at Ramesses III, these two figures Asiatic and Libyan, have switched position in comparison to the other tombs. The figures may have been created after a separate artisan had first rendered the hieroglyphs. The only figure at Ramesses III that is in the same position as the figures at Seti I and Merenptah tombs is the Nubian in the third position. The hieroglyph position have no irregularities in type or sequence between each tomb. Ampim has further accused "Euro-American writers" of attempting to mislead the public on this issue. The late Egyptologist
Frank J. Yurco visited the tomb of Ramesses III (KV11), and in a 1996 article on the Ramesses III tomb reliefs he pointed out that the depiction of plate 48 in the Ergänzungsband section is not a correct depiction of what is actually painted on the walls of the tomb. Yurco notes, instead, that plate 48 is a "pastiche" of samples of what is on the tomb walls, arranged from Lepsius' notes after his death, and that a picture of a Nubian person has erroneously been labeled in the pastiche as an Egyptian person. Yurco points also to the much more recent photographs of
Erik Hornung as a correct depiction of the actual paintings. (Erik Hornung,
The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity, 1990). Yurco later concluded that Egyptian iconography reflected "various complexions" and that "current scholarship in Egyptology, not acknowledged often by Afrocentrists, has demonstrated that the Egyptians were most closely related to Saharan Africans, culturally and linguistically, and that such Mesopotamian influence can be inferred, came through the Nile Delta town of Buto, as part of long-distance trade". He also noted that the Egyptians made distinctions between groups from Nubia, such as "Nhsy" and "Mdja" with the former group described as "darker, with frizzy hair and wore a distinctive dress". The dental morphology of the mummies align more with the indigenous North African population than Greek or other later colonial European settlers.
Black queen controversy The late 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." of the 18th Dynasty
Ahmose-Nefertari is an example. In most depictions of Ahmose-Nefertari, she is pictured with black skin, while in some instances her skin is blue or red. In 1939
Flinders Petrie said "an invasion from the south...established a black queen as the divine ancestress of the XVIIIth dynasty" In 1981 Michel Gitton noted that while in most artistic depictions of the queen she is pictured with black complexion, there are other cases in which she is shown with a pink, golden, blue, or dark red skin color. Barbara Lesko wrote in 1996 that Ahmose-Nefertari was "sometimes portrayed by later generations as having been black, although her coffin portrait gives her the typical light yellow skin of women." In 2003, Betsy Bryan wrote in
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt that "the factors linking Amenhotep I and his mother with the necropolis region, with deified rulers, and with rejuvenation generally was visually transmitted by representations of the pair with black or blue skin – both colours of resurrection." In 2004
Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton recognized in a later depiction of the queen, "the black skin of a deity of resurrection" in connection to her role as a patron goddess of the Theban necropolis. Singer recognizes that "Some scholars have suggested that this is a sign of Nubian ancestry." In 2014, Margaret Bunson wrote that "the unusual depictions of Ahmose-Nefertari in blue-black tones of deification reflect her status and cult." In a wooden votive statue of Ahmose-Nefertari, currently in the Louvre museum, her skin was painted red, a color commonly seen symbolizing life or a higher being, or elevated status. == Historical hypotheses ==