DISCLAIMER:

The views presented in the following text are independent and not reflective of views presented
by the University of California, Berkeley, or the Badé Museum of Biblical Archaeology

https://www.thethinkingrepublic.com/fulcrum/dirty-hands
March 21, 2021

THE DIRTY HANDS OF EGYPTOLOGY-Assessing Egyptology’s

Racist Past in the Age of Black Lives Matter
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, with catalysts often traumatic,
unconscionable, and profound, has pushed our country to climb towards a peak of
tension which will (hopefully) be surmounted to create lasting, positive change
regarding race relations, systematic racism, and police brutality. Fighting the good
fight, as they say, requires a deeper level of engagement, not just combatting present-
day thinking but also the entrenched and dismal traditions of our country’s history.
The longitudinal and latitudinal fight against the many dubious facets of U.S. history
creates countless corners around which issues such as racism may hide. Similarly,
many academic disciplines are rooted in their founders’ societal enculturation.
Operating within such disciplines, or absorbing knowledge disseminated from such
fields, means that we must grapple with the racist, power-struggling, and
intellectually-deceiving pillars upon which this country’s academia is grounded.

Egyptology, the study of the language, history, art, and civilization of ancient
Egypt, is a discipline rooted in European and American colonialism. It is a discipline
built by those in power, originally founded by white males, and often warped to fit
their agendas. Founder Egyptologists defined ancient Egypt through its relationship to
the West. The West, during the early formation of Egyptology as a discipline,
included France, Germany, and Britain; these were the colonial powers at the time. I
suggest that Western scholars were influenced by their countries’ colonialist agendas
and their cultural baggage to emphasize the separation of ancient Egypt from Africa.
(If you find yourself subconsciously realizing that Egypt is a country located on the
continent of Africa, you are not alone). Ancient Egypt was established by European
imperial powers as their direct ancestor. This was in stark contrast to then-modern
Egypt being characterized by Imperial powers as uncivilized, ‘less than,’ or lowly.
This sets up a dichotomy: when Europe was the direct inheritor of Egypt, it was
successful. Now having been estranged by its Middle Eastern (or ancient African)
influence, it has devolved. Maintaining this image was justification for the presence
of European imperial powers in Africa. Fields like Egyptology were used to
romanticize the Egyptian past and consequently brought about the birth of
Egyptomania, the increased reception and popular interest of ancient Egypt in the
West, which has only recently been explored by current scholars. One rationale given
for European colonization was that it gave Africa (then-modern Egypt) the influence,
money, and leadership it needed to ‘revive’ its glory days. [1].

I would like to be able to say that time has broken down or corrected the unseemly
traditions from early Egyptology. Unfortunately, this statement is partially false, as
shown by the following example. I am an Egyptologist and my department is titled
“Near Eastern Studies.” The example of my department’s title (which they have
elected to change this year) reaffirms that not all the euro-centric stipulations of
Egyptology as a discipline have been corrected. BLM has cultivated an atmosphere
where we question the why of how we feel and what we do. Egyptologists must adopt
this critical lens and fully disconnect our discipline from its colonial past. Although
current work is slowly accomplishing this goal, the founding fathers of Egyptology
and their harmful biases continue to live on in the scholarship of modern, American
Egyptologists. I, as a multi-racial, African American woman in the year 2021, now
find myself tracing the lasting tendrils of racial bias in my discipline from its
foundation through America’s more recent history. I would suggest that the initial
separation of ancient Egypt from Africa by European scholars not only advanced the
colonialist agenda of denying Egypt’s “African-ness,” but also bolstered the
justification of slavery in the United States by implicitly countering the idea that the
ancient culture of Egypt was an African culture. The cultural framework within which
early Egyptology existed has created a foundation from which its perception could
continue to impact scholarship. American scholars adopted European definitions of
the relationship between Egypt and the West and used this mentality to support an
atmosphere conducive to slavery.

The decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822 prompted even more European interest in

ancient Egypt, although European interest began earlier. This is concurrent with the
spread of European colonialism across Africa. The question of ancient Egyptians’
racial identity was central to these discussions. This discourse was linked to the
development of prejudiced ideas of racial hierarchy. The chauvinistic belief that
human “races” compete --like predator and prey --with one another for success and
fall into a strict social hierarchy is drawn from social Darwinism as well as obsolete
pseudo-sciences, like craniometry and anthropometry.

In the early 20th century, the foundational English Egyptologist and archeologist Sir
William Flinders Petrie directly engaged with the question of ancient Egyptian race by
proposing what is now called the “Dynastic Race Theory.” This theory suggested that
skeletal remains from Predynastic (pre-3100 BCE) sites in the south of Egypt
indicated the presence of two different races. He claimed that one race possessed
noticeably larger (read: Caucasian) skeletal structures and cranial capacities than the
other. Petrie equated larger skulls with higher intelligence. He concluded that this
proved the existence of a ruling elite that invaded Egypt from Mesopotamia.
According to Petrie, the conquering of Egypt by this ruling elite also ensured Egypt’s
future prosperity; the elites exposed the Egyptian population to advanced culture like
architecture, writing, and religious systems. By implying that ancient Egyptian culture
would not have developed successfully without a Mesopotamian influence, Petrie’s
theory denied any African origin to the civilization of Egypt. Therefore, the success of
ancient Egyptian culture was ascribed to be outside of Africa; and so ancient Egypt
was removed from an African context. Such academic frameworks, which divorced
Egypt from its African context, justified the imperialist and colonialist agenda of the
19-20th century English and other European scholars. These models or theories used
the same racial hierarchy drawn from European institutional practices, including
settler colonialism and slavery, to justify how a culture like ancient Egypt could have
prospered despite being located on the continent of Africa. This separation from
Africa also made the study of Egypt, identified in Europe since the time of the Greeks
as a birthplace for (Western) civilization, more palatable for European scholars [2].
Again, it should be noted that early Egyptologists placed Western society (Europe &
the U.S.) as the direct inheritor of Egyptian culture. Manipulating a historical context
to justify (then) contemporary thinking to the point of establishing the superiority and
inferiority of certain cultures also provided a basis for American studies of ancient
Egypt.

Petrie's English perspective on issues of race is somewhat softer than that of his
American contemporaries. American Egyptologist George Glidden and American
surgeon and anthropologist Josiah C. Nott drew strongly upon 19th-century American
ideas surrounding a racially-designated society. Glidden supplied Egyptian skulls to
U.S. physician Samuel Morton, the founder of craniometry. Glidden urged Morton to
determine whether the ancient Egyptians were African. In a 2020 lecture at the
Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, modern Egyptologist Dr.
Stuart Tyson Smith referenced a quotation from correspondence between Glidden and
Morton. Glidden wrote, “I am hostile to the opinion of the African origin of the
Egyptians…In any rate, they are not and never were Africans, still less negros.”
Together Nott and Glidden authored the 1854 text Types of Mankind which was
largely based on Morton’s theory, which asserted a racial hierarchy through biology,
bolstering the notion of scientific racism. Nott echoed the sentiments of his
colleagues. A slavery advocate himself, Nott held the notion that any racial mixing
between ancient Egyptians and the inferior African civilizations, such as the Nubian
Kingdom, resulted in the decline of ancient Egyptian civilization. In 1844, before the
publication of Types of Mankind, Samuel Morton used the skull measurements
provided to him by Glidden to concluded that “negroes were numerous in Egypt but
their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and
slaves.” Glidden, Nott, and Morton used scientific means to support ancient Egyptian
civilization having a racially-designated society. This historical foundation aided in
justifying the same societal constructs that were being supported in a pre-civil war
United States.

Likewise, the then-contemporary racist biases in the antebellum United States

permeated all aspects of American life, including Egyptology. Although racism and
slavery would have undoubtedly still existed in America, Egyptology was indeed
influenced by and used to justify the biases of the time. Glidden and Nott exemplified
the manipulation of scholarship to fit contemporary needs by defining ancient Egypt
as a successful society that abided by a racial hierarchy. By creating a historical
example that justified and reinforced scientific racism, Glidden and Nott bolstered
American pre-civil war thinking through history and science. The work of Glidden and
Nott was also used by others who may have benefited from maintaining American
racialized biases. Physicians like Henry Patterson or Samuel Adolphus Cartwright
used the publication Types of Mankind to prove the inferiority of Black people and
their predisposition to enslavement. These points exemplify an argument that was
utilized to historicize and naturalize a world that included slavers and enslaved.
Finding historical or scientific means to justify the inferiority of Black people
contributed to the support of institutions like slavery.

Types of Mankind is a glaring example of how American historical scholarship was

influenced by then-contemporary beliefs and society. Re-contextualizing the idea that
Egypt is indeed a part of Africa and that separating the two is inextricably linked with
historically racist acts like slavery will allow us to begin to understand how those
entrenched ideals still affect our modern understanding of ancient cultures. In the
February 2008 issue of National Geographic, there is a picture of an African-looking
man wearing ancient Egyptian-looking garb overlaid with the heading “The Black
Pharaohs: conquerors of ancient Egypt.” The article goes on to discuss a series of
kings from the kingdom of Kush located in ancient Nubia (Nubia was located directly
south of ancient Egypt) who came to rule ancient Egypt during the Third Intermediate
Period (1070-712 BCE). The term “Black Pharaohs'' is presented as a celebration of
black culture being found within a successful historical context. Opposingly, it calls
into question why these specific Kushite pharaohs are black and not…. all other
pharaohs? This implicit opposition reinforces the position that ancient Egyptians were
not in themselves black (from Africa). The term “Black Pharaohs” reveals an
Egyptological bias that still exists today that has framed Kush as black within the
context of ancient Egypt, and ancient Egypt as well, not black. Aside from engaging
with the actual question of whether ancient Egyptians can have dark skin or be
continentally African, “Black Pharaohs'' engages with the modern concept of racism
and presupposes it onto an ancient context, implying that the Kushite pharaohs are an
acceptably black version of the implied not-black ancient Egyptians. This unconscious
association diminishes blackness through comparison and its dubious origins can be
traced right back to the Petries, Gliddens, and Notts of the Egyptological world.

A team of international scientists led by the University of Tubingen and the Max
Planck Institute for the Science of Human History published a study in 2017. The
study analyzed DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals radiocarbon
dated to roughly between 1388 BCE to 426 CE. The mummies were recovered from a
site located near the Faiyum Oasis, near modern Abusir el-Meleq in Egypt. The study
revealed that most of the DNA showed high levels of affinity with populations of the
Middle East. Only one DNA sample showed an affinity with North African
populations. Although this study set out to scientifically ascertain the racial origins of
ancient Egyptians, their sample pooling fails to account for the roughly 2,000 years of
ancient Egyptian history that existed outside of the dates on which the sample site was
occupied. Additionally, the study fails to include any other Nile Valley individuals for
comparisons, or any sampled DNA from other Northern Egyptian locations. Even so, I
am only enumerating a few of the problems with the study’s argumentation.

Clearly, there are some glaring holes in the foundations of such a study, but the biases
that the results support are clear and haunting. Mainstream scholars, with the present
conversation in mind, protest that ancient Egyptians were neither black nor white and
that the idea of race as we now know it may not have existed in ancient times.
Overlaying the modern notion of race onto an ancient civilization only strives to seize
ownership of ancient Egypt and perpetuate the tradition of any divide. Any
characterization of the race of the ancient Egyptians is the product of modern cultural
definitions, not of scientific studies. By American standards, yes, ancient Egyptians
could be ‘Black.’ But the ideology, pain, and history that comes with being ‘Black’ in
the U.S. do not hold true for ancient Egyptians. We should understand the historical
connotations of what the imposition of modern cultural terms has done for our
interpretations of history and adjust accordingly [2]. We should instead understand the
interaction between disciplines like Egyptology and history without imparting modern
notions onto history itself.

This discussion is not meant to re-appropriate ancient Egyptian culture for black
Africans or African Americans. The objectives of this piece are 1) to understand how
history is interpreted through the lens of cultural baggage; 2) to explore whether the
intent to separate ancient Egypt from Africa was malicious or otherwise; and 3) to
assess the extent to which that intent permeated into other facets of culture and
history. These are facts that we now need to grapple with and strive to counteract. The
question of race in ancient Egypt stems from Egyptology’s central and disturbing role
in the creation of theories related to racial hierarchies and scientific racism that led to
the justification of discriminatory thinking and acts like those in the United States.
Many early Egyptologists failed to ignore their cultural baggage when interpreting
ancient Egyptian culture. Understanding the role that Egyptology and many other
academic institutions played in disseminating racial viewpoints requires us to go back
and assess what we consider facts in and of themselves. Additionally, such
shortcomings require us to determine how their thinking has influenced our
interpretations and scholarship. If this had been done and current scholarship had
worked to correct the unjust distinction between ancient Egyptians and their neighbors
like the Nubians, it is entirely possible that titles like “The Black Pharaohs” would be
nonexistent.

Because of its location, the country of ancient Egypt was a crossroads between many
of the ancient civilizations that surrounded it, but it should not be isolated or
separated. Re-contextualizing the past allows us to understand how biases unfamiliar
to the ancient cultures have affected how we see them, their people, and how they
have been used in place of how we see ourselves and our own. In that same lecture
mentioned above, Dr. Smith mentioned fellow Egyptologist Dr. Bruce Williams who
pointed out that an ancient Egyptian transported to the American South in the days of
segregation would not be allowed to sit at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, would have
to go to the back of the bus and would be barred from facilities reserved for whites.

Lastly, I am not a deconstructionist. The field of Egyptology has somewhat awoken to

the ties that bind and advances are being pursued. The scholarship of Dr. Stuart Tyson
Smith previously mentioned aims to continuously engage in the conversation of
relations between ancient Nubia and ancient Egypt. Dr. Stacy Davidson recently
formed an entirely independent group of Egyptologists who have created a survey to
collect data that directly addresses the challenges, inequalities, and lack of diversity
presenting in the field. Dr. Vanessa Davies is engaging with the integration of
previously ignored black colleagues into mainstream Egyptology. Ventures such as the
American Sudensese Archaeological Resource Center (https://amsarc.org/), the
William Leo Hansberry Society (https://hansberrysoc.org/), and the Nile Valley
Collective (nilevalleycollective.org) are all creating organizational spaces for
minority voices to be expressed. Also inspiring is the newly formed diversity
committee created by the American Research Center in Egypt, one of the most
important professional organizations for Egyptologists. Such efforts help Egyptology
to shed its colonialist past and reframe future research. The work still left to be done
in de-racist-ifying Egyptology may not always belong at the forefront of modern
contentious issues, but it is one problem that can be dismantled in support of the
grueling climb that movements like BLM are pushing this country to overcome.
FOOTNOTES

[1] Henceforth, by the terms “Africa” and “African” I am referring to the continent
and the peoples of all credence who live upon it.

[2] Ancient Egypt also plays a large role in the revival of and interest in Black
diaspora culture in the United States. A subculture of Afrocentrism, Hotep culture, is
a relatively new phenomenon in the U.S. that utilizes ancient Egyptian history as a
symbol of Black pride. Ideologies like this have sparked contention between a
perceived “ownership” of Egyptian history by Black Americans or modern Egyptians.
The backlash to the Hotep movement points to a seizing of history and culture from
modern Egyptians who argue they have a (more direct) historical ownership of ancient
Egyptian culture. Ideally, history belongs to anyone with whom they identify. This
piece offers no opinion in support of either side of this debate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED/SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER

READING:

Baum, Bruce David. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: a Political History of
Racial Identity. New York: New York University Press, 2008.

Davies, Vanessa. “Egyptological Conversations on Race and Science.” Rockefeller

Archive Center Research Reports, 2018, 1–12.
https://www.academia.edu/43587339/Egyptological_Conversations_on_Race_and_Sci
ence.

Derry, D. E. “The Dynastic Race in Egypt.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 42

(1956): 80–85. https://doi.org/10.2307/3855126.

Gourdine, Jean-Philippe, Shomarka Keita, Jean-Luc Gourdine, and Alain Anselin.

2018. “Ancient Egyptian Genomes from Northern Egypt: Further Discussion.” OSF
Preprints. August 16. doi:10.31219/osf.io/ecwf3.

Lefkowitz, Mary, and Guy Maclean Rogers. Black Athena Revisited. Chapel Hill, NC:
Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Mokhtar, G., ed. General History of Africa II: Ancient Civilizations of Africa. Paris:
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Culture Organization, 1981.
https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/file%20uploads%20/general_history_a
frica_ii.pdf.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books, 2019.

Smith, Stuart Tyson. “Black Pharaohs? Egyptological Bias, Racism and Egypt &
Nubia as African Civilizations.” Hutchins Center for African & African American
Research. Lecture. Accessed February 22, 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QK7P0Bdpj0&ab_channel=HutchinsCenter.

Smith, Stuart Tyson. “People.” Essay. In Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt 3,

edited by Donald B Redford, 3:27–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Wilkinson Toby A.H. Early Dynastic Egypt. London: Routledge, 2001.

Young, Robert. “Egypt in America: Black Athena, Racism and Colonial Discourse,”
July 21, 2007. http://robertjcyoung.com/Egypt.pdf.

BIO

Jess Johnson is a multi-racial Ph.D. student in the Near Eastern Studies department at
UC Berkeley. She received her B.A in Art History from New York University in 2013
and her M.A in Egyptian Art History and Archaeology and a Graduate Certification in
Museum Studies from the University of Memphis in 2015-16. Her M.A thesis focused
on the synecdochical relationship between Gate Guardians and the demon Ammit in
New Kingdom Books of the Dead. Jess's interests include Art History, Demonology,
and iconographic constructions within religious texts, tombs, and temple wall
decorations. Jess is also interested in the museological well-being of Egyptian
collections and their public outreach ability. She has over ten years of experience
working in the museological field within university settings, galleries, and auction
houses. She hopes to continue both her Egyptological and Museum Studies passions
interchangeably through pursuing a career as a Curator.

(c) 2021 Jess Johnson

HASHTAGS

#egyptology #black #africans #racism #history #BLM