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The Battle To Keep Ancient Egypt Black

Posted by majestic on April 4, 2008

National Geographic magazine insulted the historical and cultural legacy of Blacks during Black History Month by distorting history and blatantly insinuating that ancient Egyptians were anything but Black, said a critic.

In an exclusive interview with The Final Call, Temple University scholar Dr. Molefi Kete Asante decried the article’s entire framework, beginning with its title “The Black Pharaohs-Conquerors of Ancient Egypt.”

“If you assume that this article is about the Black pharaohs then the question that is begged is that, who were the other pharaohs?” Dr. Asante asserted.

According to the author of “The History of Africa,” a comprehensive history of the continent, National Geographic writer Robert Draper erroneously suggests the pharaohs were not Black and it didn’t matter since “the ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s (the Nubian monarch who reunified Ancient Egypt) historic conquest of Egypt, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant,” he argued.

Mr. Draper jabbed at Black scholarship stating, “Revisiting that golden age in the African desert does little to advance the case of Afrocentric Egyptologists, who argue that all Ancient Egyptians . . . were Black Africans.”

Mr. Draper added, “Tut’s own grandmother, the 18th dynasty Queen Tiye, is claimed by some to be of Nubian heritage.”

He points to a bust of Queen Tiye and asks, “Did the powerful Queen Tiye, King Tut’s grandmother, have Nubian ancestry? This bust, made of wood that has darkened with age, has inspired claims that she did.”

Dr. Asante scoffed at that notion. “Look at the lips! These days what we have to do is assume that these people will never accept it. They will never accept the truth … that nothing like this was in Europe. Greece and Rome combined do not make Egypt.”

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  • Mike
    Being of full Coptic ancestry, reading Afrocentric revisionism makes me cringe; but what the hell, I'm biased. Definitely agree with John -- it's a cookie-cutter approach to a more complex issue [apparently a North African ethnic group isn't considered, only "Europe, Greece, and Rome" vs Black Africa].
  • Looks more like an angry clique of fringe scholars furious over not having their tiny brand of revisionism respected...which isnt likely to happen anytime soon, since most of the DNA work and serious anthropological/archeological scholarship done in the last 50 years stands in stark contrast to their premise. That some of the ancient Egyptian leadership were of Nubian ancestrey is certain and beyond doubt...but to state that all of them were is ridiculous and shows political motivation instead of serious scientific inquiry.
  • Paul
    Ha ha, The creators of the pyramids were as white as the driven snow. They even have red headed and blonde early mummies of pharoahs. What a joke. these people are desperate to attach themselves to something of greatness
  • Name
    Another imbecile that knows nothing about ancient Egypt. Suffer and die in your ignorance buffoon...
  • connie dobbs
    Paul obviously doesn't know anything about such esoteric things as "the sun" and "melanin" either. I've been to egypt, there are no "snow white" people there, except perhaps a tourist on their first day. Pretty much any redhead in egypt all those thousands of years ago would have had a melanoma and died pretty quickly. It's HOT there. There's lots of sun, and not a lot of clouds, and that means not a lot of crackers. Of course, his boneheaded statement is only as equally boneheaded as the belief that they were all "black" (whatever that means). The Nubians were, absolutely, but the original egyptians were largely semitic peoples, same as the folks that are there now, and there was much breeding between the various groups of folks in the area. Egypt was a crossroads for both the semitic folks of the middle east and the "classical" africans.

    I do think it's funny how most of the black egyptophiles tend to picture Cleopatra as a nubian princess though. Now *that* is showing ignorance of history.
  • John Grunwell
    I think it's interesting to note that many, many, many folks in Sudan (upper Egypt/Sudan and such), Eritrea, Somalia and so on consider themselves *Arab*. Afrocentric folks' intense focus on the idea of so-called 'Black Egyptians' is easy to understand, but definitely covers the ancient world with a glossy filter of our contemporary worldviews. The Middle East/North Africa/Mediterranean has been a hotbed of human civilization for untold millennia, and the populace reflect thousands of years of different ethnic groups coming together and doin' the wild thang. There were certainly "Black" Egyptians, commoners and pharoahs alike, but just as well there were people Americans would label Arabs, or who would self-identify in any number of ways that don't include "Black." I have a friend who is Egyptian and Coptic, and who is so classical Egyptian in appearance that folks told her, when she visited Egypt as a young woman, that she looked positively "pharoahnic." Sorry to report: not by any stretch of the imagination would anyone in the world consider her "Black." The Egyptians were Egyptian, an amalgam of people living at the crossroads of Asia and Africa, and they look the part.
  • kyle
    Go find out about the WUSHAN man and tell me the oldest humans came from Africa 100 and whatever thousand years ago. The information that is being passed around on our side of the internet totally contradicts what the Chinese have found.
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