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Black Pharoahs


The Skeptic's CircleThis comes in part from an email I was sent over a month back about the National Geographic cover with Tutankhamen on the front. The author was upset that Tutankhamen was white and asking me to take a stand. I wrote back that I wouldn’t on the grounds that the issue in question hadn’t been released in the UK, though it has in the past couple of weeks. Was she a crank? That’s the easy answer but there were a couple of comments that made me think we should think seriously about the issue of race and recontruction of ancient peoples.

Well, what do we expect from a people who still represent God as a Caucasian man and angels as obese Caucasoid children?

…Also check out the April, 2005, National Geographic Magazine where the Neanderthals are now Negroid but King Tut and of course God-Jesus, are Caucasoid.

Well I don’t think that Tutankhamen was negroid. The faces were reconstructed using methods that are good enough to be used in murder investigations. Further the evidence is that when the Nubians took control of the Egyptians and were deciding what would pass as art they did see a difference in skin color between them and the land they occupied.

I think there are two issues. It is true mistakes are made and I am wondering if the mistakes are tending to be towards one side. The other issue is why do some people feel they have to insist that the Egyptians were black?

According to the art in the Vatican, Adam was a white guy. I can’t be certain I wasn’t paying too much attention. I’m not a fan of Christian art and I can’t imagine there are many people who’ve jogged through the Sistine chapel without looking up*, but certainly in mainstream society Adam and Eve are white. A Black Jesus is seen as a PC gimmick. There are very few pictures I’ve seen of him where he looks Jewish, or as if he’s been working much outdoors. I don’t think his skin was as dark as Jackson 5 era Michael Jackson, but I don’t think he was as pallid as Invincible era Michael Jackson either. Yet the fictional ancient past we construct is white. What about the Romans on Hadrians Wall? They tend to be depicted as rather white English types, despite many of them coming from the Middle East. I’m told historical records suggest that in parts of London at the end of the nineteenth century Blacks made up 5% of the population. You wouldn’t know it from the reconstructions.

Similarly I was thinking we now recognise that Neanderthals were a lot more sophisticated than we realised. The reconstructions also seem to be getting whiter more often to me. I think in this case it’s not simply a case of “they’re more intelligent therefore they must be white”. I think its that modern illustrators are not working under the more subconsciously racist assumptions of the previous generation, and so don’t unthinkingly equate savage with Black. We tend to say these new reconstructions are different because we have more data and appreciate more subtlety in ancient peoples. There also has to be a recognition that they’re different because archaeologists are less racist in their assumptions than they used to be. Primitive ancients were modelled by analogy on the primitive of America and Africa. Now we recognise that American and African hunter-gatherers are actually intelligent human beings and our new analogical models are updated accordingly. I know the archaeologists of previous eras were working within a different social environment and so I probably would have made the same errors if I’d been working then. Nevertheless it might actually be helpful to say that archaeologists did get it wrong, and that’s there’s still a lot that cannot be said about race in ancient times.

I think we must accept there is a problem and something needs to be done because when people feel disenfranchised this happens.

…Legrand Clegg, a historian and prosecutor of the Los Angeles area city of Compton, is demanding that the bust of King Tut be removed from the show because its rendition of his face is a “distortion of reality.”
“They have depicted King Tut as white, but the ancient Egyptians were black people,” he told AFP.

The picture above shows the ancient Egyptians could recognise a black person when they saw one.

It saddens me to hear someone say something like this. It saddens me twice over. Once because it doesn’t solve the problem of misappropriation of history. It’s simply one group taking the past of another. What place for the Berbers in a Black Africa? Not only that, by taking Egyptian history as black, it rejects black history and the archaeology of sub-saharan Africa as being meaningful. It’s as if some black people have decided that they need a prestigious history and Great Zimbabwe or Sungbo just don’t cut it. It has to be a white-style history. It robs everyone, black people included of a chance to show there are other pasts to be valued than what was accepted by white elites of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By rejecting the incredible past that does exist within Africa they risk losing their heritage for future generations. The result is so much is being lost because no-one values it. Take this report on illegal excavations of artefacts in Mali, to produce ‘art’ for western auction houses.

…45 per cent of the 834 sites registered in an inventory of archaeological sites bear witness to excavation by looters. 17 per cent of looted sites have been destroyed by large-scale excavations (2 per cent of these sites are irreparably damaged because of more than 70 per cent destruction) (Dembélé et al. 1993).

The destruction caused by the neglect of these sites is devastating. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone genuinely did treasure Africa’s place in humanity’s history?

Incidentally if anyone knows of a better website for Sungbo or Great Zimbabwe could they list it in the comments?

UPDATE: 7/4/2007 The photo was replaced by another. See here for details.

*I was in there to see the Museum of Profane Art. I found the Christian art quite dull. There were stacks of people being killed and looking glum about about. So I wanted to get out and found you can get a fair turn of speed through the Vatican. If you shout “Scusi! Scusi!” and flap your notes in your hand you’re waved through by the attendants.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2005 and is filed under Politics, The Past. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Athena
    Hi Alun, looks like you've encountered the "Black Egypt" lot, there's plenty of web pages on the topic and it's quite frankly, pseudo-science. The movement seems to have been given a push by Bernal's "Black Athena".

    As to Vatican-type art, well art is reproduced in a social context. The saints and the rest didn't wear pretty, foofy dresses either...

    Re Neanderthal reconstructions... Yesterday, Nik van der Merwe showed a couple of "artistic" pieces done for hmmm Time or Newsweek I think, 80s stuff, showing wildly fantastic reconstructions of early hominids. One picture nearly killed me. An australopith woman, with an apeish face and perfect silicone-type boobs. The Jordan of her day, one might say... She was busy cooking (of course), her stupid child (who looked more like a baboon) was busy screaming his head off, and daddy dearest was wrestling an acacia tree of sorts, the type with looooong thorns...

    I don't have website refs for Great Zimbabwe, but have plenty of good references if you're interested. The Man, who's much more knowledgeable on things African than I am, can't recall a good one. Anyways, if you want the refs, give a shout.
  • black is first
    most white people are confused about the truth or they do not want to accept the truth. i will say it for you. black people were the first people to walk this earth.this will forever be the truth. africa civilizes everything that has been transformed to white supremecy. white people have caused destruction all around the world every since they have stepped foot on the earth about.., what? 6000yra. we'll my people hve been here for millions of years and created everything from math,building,sciece...ect..but, lets not forget even white people. so you do not want to put egypt in its original land..AFRICA..we'll i am so sorry but it is and will forever be in the great land that all truth resides in..africa. you don't have to believe me, just look it up or even ask the vatican who worships the great black gods behind closed doors.
  • You know, I can't even follow half of what Rick has written there. All I can glean is that he is mis-understanding, wilfully or otherwise, most of what you've said, Alun! How sad - makes me sad that someone who sees himself as advocating a better understanding of the history of Africa, in all its many and varied forms (at least, I'll presume that that's what he's like to do), is only capable of seeing Egypt as that history, rather than the other areas pointed out and, to mis-quote him a little, the rest of the continent! Pretty sure the genuine scholars out there would be cringing and disowning him right fast. Contempt and froth-mouthed mud-throwing aren't even acceptable in the school yard....
  • azeb
    Human ancestors migrated from ethiopia
  • I think it would be more correct to say that some Egyptians were black and others were brown. We do know that Ham (or Cham)=burnt or black, and that Kemet (a derivative of Cham) also means burnt or black. Further, Cush (aka Ethiopia) also means burnt or black (and so does Ethiopia btw). It makes sense to me that this term refers to both the black soil of the region and the people who inhabited it.
  • Alun, I just discoverd your blog today while searching for information on the Nubian pharoahs of Egypt. I think your writing (what I have been able to quickly scan today) is wonderful. Keep it up, please.

    We are presently doing a blog project on the history of Africans in Europe and some of the research of course takes us back to the Antiquity. I lead the project but am by no means a historian or involved with any of the related fields (archaeology, anthropology, etc.). Nonetheless some very fine academics in the humanities are lending us a hand. All of this just to say that I have found this post useful in discussing how racism and politics has unfortuantely distorted history and art down through the ages.

    With your permission I will cross-post this entire article and/or use excerpts from what you have written. Good luck with your career and again keep up the good work at Archaeoastronomy.
  • Sophia
    I am so relieved I've come across this site! I've been feeling incredibly angry after reading a fictitious article on wikipedia about Berbers and certain Southern Mediterranean/North African countries that try shamelessly to present these cultures in a black, sub-saharan context. For instance, on the berber people article, the origins of the "berbers" (they mistakenly enmesh various disparate groups of people together, for instance the Kabyles of the mountainous regions of Algeria with the so-called Berbers of southern Morocco or West African so-called berbers who in reality little resemble the groups mistakenly referred to as Berbers in North Africa who reside along the littoral coast when in reality these people are probably unrelated as is evidenced by their physical appearance and their culture) are being reported based on findings on a study conducted near the border of mauritania, southern morocco where obviously there is going to be some sub-saharan blood as mauritania, though today wrongly labeled North Africa, is in fact West Africa. In reality, as a native of the region, I have never encountered a black berber though I am aware there are few (literally few as in maybe less than .5 % of the population ) in the Southern regions who are however clearly not of North African ancestry. The presence of some for instance Cote D'ivoirians in Tunisia, due to the temporary relocation of the African Bank, which in my opinion should have been relocated to another sub-saharan african country, is what leads some ignorant and uneducated people to corroborate their wishful thinking by mistakenly assuming these guests are residents or natives. In claiming that such a large group of unrelated and disparate people can be labeled "berbers" a name they do not recognize, and in distorting their history, reality and culture by ridiculously claiming that it can be interpreted based on a study conducted in fact in a region that is on the periphery of North Africa and more appropriately West and hence sub-saharan African, these madmen do injustice to history and to these helpless people who are not even aware of the fact that others in foreign lands who have never even visited the region are speaking on their behalf. In the same article on wikipedia, when someone pointed out the fact that the Algerian president is of Arab and not berber, whatever that means, descent, an insolent ignoramus dared to retort by asserting that he must be berber, despite himself. In truth, most inhabitants of the urban areas in the Southern Mediterranean are not "berber" but Arab but also of sundry other different origins: european, asiatic and indigenous. The so-called "berbers" in these regions have clearly no sub-saharan roots, as is evidenced by their existence! but these lunatics insist that they are, they cite the weather, which contrary to what they assert is typically mediterranean and not persistently "hot" as they say and thus, as they claim, in that most laughable manner "conducive to blackness." Their assertions are being based on a laughable study that used, again, a small sampling of people, aroudn 40, from the mauritanian/moroccoan border. It is sad how these findings are being applied to an entirely different creed of people in the distant region of the southern meditteranean littoral coast. In making these assertions, the region's vastness is also being overlooked, the fact that the region is immense. In the same way, at university, a friend of mine, who is of chinese origin, constantly complains to me about an african-american course that is being offered in the social "studies" (not science) department that claims the ancient Egyptians were black. I am happy you have raised this important topic, I only wish the current hijacking of the Southern Mediterranean's history and culture will soon end, and that people clarify things, people who can do so in a calm manner, which I unfortunately cannot in the face of such injustice and absurdity. Thank you so much for protecting history! I hope ephemeral projects like wikipedia don't last, but while they do, history and reality will continue to be undermined and distorted =(
  • DNAisntcolorful
    As NO ONE has said before me, it's doesn't matter who's skin was darker or lighter than the other. Because if we were to all give blood to a science lab for research they would NOT be able to tell us who is white, black, brown, nor yellow. if we all died and nothing was left but bones they couldn't tell color, nor intelligence or ignorance level so it doesn't matter, Africa's history, is everyones history because it was scientifically proven the first human was in africa, not europe, russia, nor asia, so i the end none of us is better than one another. all we need to know is that they were human and around the southern Mediterranean (as presumed in the bible about Moses). because in gods eyes he loves us but, WE ALL SUCK... until we get into heaven!!!!
  • Ny Martin
    As a person interested in both astronomy and archaeology I found your site and have been having a good time reading through it; as a Black woman in the US I found your discussion of Black Pharaohs interesting, and much to be preferred over many (whose primary line of argument is that Black people couldn't possibly produce anything as wonderful or complex as Ancient Egypt's civilization). It is a real shame that so many people argue over the ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians, whose very bodies we have preserved by the hundreds for us to examine, and even more of a shame that civilizations such as Great Zimbabwe that were indubitably populated by Black people are so unknown.

    At any rate, thank you for this article and for your site.
  • Much on the topic is finally coming to light and I suggest that many will finally have the opportunity to know that the buzz behind the racial make up of Egypt is not Pseudo Science, but in fact a reality of the past.

    This months Issue of National Geographic will bring a novice on the subject up to speed and begin their journey into finding out the truth.

    Also more can be found on NGM.com

    Good luck and do not do as the masons and hang your self for finding the truth. The truth will feel all who accept it, no matter your race.
  • izu
    From what i can understand, these arguments are not about historical accuracy. it seems to be about racist supremacy, would it be so bad if the Egyptians were black or the rest of the white world had learned and benefited from african cultures, empires and resources. We should be more concerned with todays world where white westerners and other races in the world consider blacks and Africans wherever they are in the world as vagriants and savages.
    Blacks are no good, their names are funny etc, it just shows the willingness to treat people badly because they have different cultures and skin colours.

    Africa's history has been distorted and manipulated by their invaders as has every so called "third world country" (and this the reason this countries are underdeveloped because the "whiteman has invaded their lands and till this day continues to do so economicaly)

    I have a strong suspicion that we would all be happy with our history if our present was balanced and rich i.e Blacks being allowed to develop their countries economies without the unfair manipulation of Western governments and multi national corporations.

    Ask yourself how can you help people today have a good history tommorow.
  • Agyeman Bediako
    In Ghana we know that we all migrated from ancient Egypt to settle here. This knowledge is found in oral literature and is passed on from generation to generation. Lyrics in songs are full of this knowledge.

    It is evident that the Pharoahs were black people or dark skinned. Just look closely at the features of the great sphinx - the thick lips, the broad nose, the fully blown cheeks etc - and you will realize that he is a black man. Now just consider the name Khufu. It sounds like one of these Ghanaian names like Kufuor - meaning fighter or Tutu - one of the names of an Ashanti King.

    It is amazing that history has been distorted to such an extent to make the black man who was first on the scene (of creation) and became civilized to be treated with contempt and be down trodden. Accepting this fact means
    that the black man had developed his scientific knowledge encompassing astronomy, surveying, metallurgy, structural engineering etc long ago. An understanding of this should tell you why this would be refuted and be played down.

    I wonder why the reconstruction of King Tut should be done in Europe. It is all because the Europeans and for that matter Britain who has looted our resources and would want to continue in this act tries not to associate any greatness with black Africa. They see exaltation of the yellow skin present day Egyptians as best serving their ulterior interest, because they could easily associate with this concept more that anything else. Some people are more equal than others.

    It is unfortunate that these Europeans have got the resources and the communication channels to propagate these false distorted facts but it is hoped that the truth would come out before it is covered up entirely.
  • As a helpful note, there is a comment policy here. Basically coming along and making sweeping assertions like "anyone who doesn't agree with me is racist" is going to get you deleted. Sorry, but I talk with Egyptologists and my own experience is they're interested in finding out what happened in the past. They may be mistaken, but there isn't a grand racist conspiracy. If you think there is you're welcome to set up your own weblog exposing it and here's a helpful link to get you started.

    In contrast while I don't agree with Agyeman Bediako's comments above, I wouldn't dismiss them out of hand because he's giving justifications as to why he thinks Ghanaians came from Egypt.

    My own research in the Mediterranean at the moment seems to be showing that written records aren't reliable when the talk about periods before writing. This is why I'm sceptical of claims from oral history. Egyptian pottery from whichever dynasty descent is claimed from in Ghana would be more convincing. I don't know of any found there yet, but then again I don't think there's been a full survey of the region yet. There certainly are plenty of archaeological surprises waiting to be found in West Africa.

    More relevant, there is research from Kenya which is undermining oral history regarding the creation of Swahili culture. The oral tales are that Omanis came can took control of the area. In contrast the archaeological evidence suggests that the Stone Towns were part of an indigenous culture. There's a lot more to it than that, I am simplifying terribly here. I plan to write more about it, but it will take time because I want to do it properly. In my reading the African past is sophisticated, varied and isn't a carbon-copy of events found elsewhere.

    If I were re-writing this post today I'd spend next to no time discussing skin shade of the Egyptians and instead ask why the race question matters, and that's where Izu is right. It's about imposing modern politics on the past. We wouldn't take a claim that Egyptians were Labour or Conservative Party supporters seriously, because they're modern constructs. The politics of race are also modern and either justifications for slavery or a reaction against it. Taking ideas about race from this debate and putting them on the past risks saying that the slave owners were more or less right about race and just wrong on the details.

    Personally I think African archaeology can show that some of the fundamental assumptions about Africa are wrong and that there's much more to human behaviour than we currently know.

    You're welcome to disagree with me, but if your comments are going to be long rambling comments quoting half-formed bible passages, or if you're claiming all Europeans are psychopaths or that all Egyptologists are racists then I'll delete them exactly the same way that I'd delete any moronic claims about all Africans being psychopaths or racists.
  • Agyeman Bediako
    Alun I don't get me wrong. I assure you most of these so called egyptologist and authorities are re-constructing ancient history wearing European binoculars and lenses and because of that most of their conclusions will forever remain flawed and distorted. If you want to construct a perfect history to know what happened before the dawn of modern civilization then you must start from Africa. Egypt itself is a derivative of Ancient African Civilization. For you to conclude that because of disenfranchisement the African is looking for a grand or prestigious history and that the Great Zimbabwe seems not to match up is incorrect.
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