Ancient Egyptian race controversy

In the 18th century, French philosopher and abolitionist, Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, in a set of comments regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians, wrote that "the Copts are the proper representatives of the Ancient Egyptians due to their jaundiced and fumed skin, which is neither Greek nor Arab, their full faces, their puffy eyes, their crushed noses, and their thick lips...the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native born Africans".{{sfn|Chasseboeuf|1787|pp=74–77}} Volney also said that the Sphinx gave him the key to the riddle as to why all the Egyptians he saw across the country "have a bloated face, puffed-up eyes, flat nose, thick lips – in a word, the true face of the mulatto." He wrote he was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but upon visiting the Sphinx, its appearance gave him the answer; "seeing that head, typically negro in all its features",{{sfn|Diop|1974|p=27}} Volney saw it as the "true solution to the enigma (of how the modern Egyptians came to have their 'mulatto' appearance)". He goes on to postulate, "the Copts were "true negroes" of the same stock as all the autochthonous peoples of Africa" and they "after some centuries of mixing..., must have lost the full blackness of its original color."{{cite book |last=Mokhtar |first=G. |title=General History of Africa II: Ancient Civilizations of Africa |year=1990 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley, CA |isbn=978-0-520-06697-7 |pages=1–118}} Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac criticized Volney and called his conclusion "evidently forced and inadmissible".{{sfn|Milton|Bandia|2009|p=215}}

The leading French scientist of the 18th century, Georges Cuvier, considered the Egyptians to be Caucasian, and it was with Cuvier that Augustus Granville sided in the dissection and first scientific autopsy of an ancient Egyptian mummy in 1825.{{cite book |last=Riggs |first=Christina |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8yHQAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA71 |title=Unwrapping Ancient Egypt |date=2014 |publisher=A&C Black |isbn=978-0-85785-677-7 |page=71 |language=en}} Another early example of the controversy is an article published in The New-England Magazine of October 1833, where the authors dispute a claim that "Herodotus was given as authority for their being negroes." They point out with reference to tomb paintings: "It may be observed that the complexion of the men is invariably red, that of the women yellow; but neither of them can be said to have anything in their physiognomy at all resembling the Negro countenance."{{cite journal |date=October 1833 |title=Original Papers: Ancient Egyptians |url=http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nwen;cc=nwen;rgn=full%20text;idno=nwen0005-4;didno=nwen0005-4;view=image;seq=00281;node=nwen0005-4%3A1 |journal=The New-England Magazine |volume=5 |issue=4 |pages=273–280}}

In 1839, Jean-François Champollion suggested that: "In the Copts of Egypt, we do not find any of the characteristic features of the ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with all the nations that successfully dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race."{{sfn|Jacques Joseph|1839|p=27}}

This memoir was made in the context of the first tribes that would have inhabited Egypt, his opinion was noted after his return from Nubia. In 1839, Champollion's and Volney's claims were disputed by Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, who blamed a misunderstanding of the ancients for spreading a false impression of a "Negro" Egypt, stating "the two physical traits of black skin and woolly hair are not enough to stamp a race as negro"{{rp|26}} and "the opinion that the ancient population of Egypt belonged to the Negro African race, is an error long accepted as the truth. ... Volney's conclusion as to the Negro origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization is evidently forced and inadmissible."{{sfn|Milton|Bandia|2009|p=215}}

Gaston Maspero, a 19th-century French Egyptologist, stated that "by the almost unanimous testimony of ancient Greek historians, they (Ancient Egyptians) belonged to the African race, which settled in Ethiopia."{{cite book |last1=Diop |first1=Cheikh Anta |title=Civilization or barbarism : an authentic anthropology |date=1991 |location=Brooklyn, New York |isbn=1556520484 |pages=Foreword (pp. 1–10) |edition=Firs}} Heinrich Karl Brusch, a 19th-century German Egyptologist stated that "according to ethnology, the Egyptians appear to form a third branch of the Caucasian race... and this much may be regarded as certain".{{cite book |last=Morkot |first=Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4P32r_Va3Y0C&pg=PA8 |title=The Egyptians: An Introduction |date=2005 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-415-27103-5 |page=8 |language=en}} E.A. Wallis Budge, a 19th-century British Egyptologist, argued that "There are many things in the manners and customs and religions of the historic Egyptians that suggest that the original home of their ancestors was in a country in the neighbourhood of Uganda and Land of Punt".{{cite book |last1=Diop |first1=Cheikh Anta |title=Civilization or barbarism : an authentic anthropology |date=1991 |location=Brooklyn, New York |isbn=978-1-55652-048-8 |pages=Foreword (pp. 1–10) |edition=}}

The debate over the race of the ancient Egyptians intensified during the 19th century movement to abolish slavery in the United States, as arguments relating to the justifications for slavery increasingly asserted the historical, mental and physical inferiority of black people.{{sfn|Baum|2006|pp=106–108}} For example, in 1851, John Campbell directly challenged the claims by Champollion and others regarding the evidence for a black Egypt, asserting "There is one great difficulty, and to my mind an insurmountable one, which is that the advocates of the negro civilization of Egypt do not attempt to account for, how this civilization was lost.... Egypt progressed, and why, because it was Caucasian."{{sfn|Campbell|1851|pp=10–12}} The arguments regarding the race of the Egyptians became more explicitly tied to the debate over slavery in the United States, as tensions escalated towards the American Civil War.{{sfn|Baum|2006|pp=105–108}}

In 1854, Josiah C. Nott with George Gliddon set out to prove "that the Caucasian or white, and the Negro races were distinct at a very remote date, and that the Egyptians were Caucasians."{{sfn|Baum|2006|p=108}} Samuel George Morton, a physician and professor of anatomy, concluded that "Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is [in the United States], that of servants and slaves."{{sfn|Baum|2006|p=105}}

{{Main article|General History of Africa}}

{{see also|UNESCO statements on race}}

At the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic script" in Cairo in 1974, the "Black Hypothesis" and the notion of a homogeneous population in Egypt was proposed by Cheikh Anta Diop in his chapter Origins of the Ancient Egyptians. "Numerous objections were made to the ideas propounded by Diop. These objections revealed the extent of a disagreement which remained profound even though it was not voiced explicitly." The disagreement was largely due to methodological issues,{{cite book |title=The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script : proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974. |date=1978 |publisher=Unesco |location=Paris |isbn=92-3-101605-9 |pages=81–82}} for example, the insufficient data "to enable provisional conclusions to be drawn with regard to the peopling of ancient Egypt and the successive phases through which it may have passed".{{cite book |title=The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script : proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974. |date=1978 |publisher=Unesco |location=Paris |isbn=9231016059 |pages=73–88}}

The arguments for all sides are recorded in the UNESCO publication General History of Africa,UNESCO, Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script; Proceedings, (Paris: 1978), pp. 3–134 with the "Origin of the Egyptians" chapter being written by Cheikh Anta Diop, a proponent of the "Black Hypothesis".{{cite book |title=Ancient civilizations of Africa |date=1990 |publisher=J. Currey |location=London |isbn=0852550928 |page=43 |edition=Abridged}} Diop's chapter was credited in the general conclusion of the symposium report by the International Scientific Committee's Rapporteur, Jean Devisse,{{cite book |last1=Mokhtar |first1=Gamal |title=Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Unesco International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa) |date=1990 |publisher=Currey |isbn=978-0-85255-092-2 |pages=33–34 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gZWuVAL2GooC |language=en}} as a "painstakingly researched contribution", consequently there was a "real lack of balance" in the discussion among participants.{{cite book |title=Ancient civilizations of Africa |date=1990 |publisher=J. Currey |location=London |isbn=0852550928 |pages=43–46 |edition=Abridged}}{{cite book |title=The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script : proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974. |date=1978 |publisher=UNESCO|isbn=92-3-101605-9 |location=Paris |pages=86, 93–94, 99}} At the 1974 UNESCO conference, several participants other than Diop and Obenga concluded that the Neolithic Egyptian population was indigenous to the Sahara, and was made up of people from north and south of the Sahara who had a range of skin colors.{{cite book|first=Muḥammad Jamāl al-Dīn |last=Mukhtār |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gZWuVAL2GooC&q=%2BUNESCO,+%2BMokhtar,+%2BCairo,+%2Brace&pg=PA46 |title=Ancient Civilizations of Africa |year=1990 |isbn=978-0852550922 |page=46 |publisher=Currey |access-date=2 June 2016}}{{cite book |title=The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script : proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974. |date=1997 |publisher=Karnak House |location=London |isbn=978-0907015994 |pages=94–95 |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000032875}} The majority of participants in the conference disagreed with Diop's and Obenga's views.{{Cite journal |last=Macgaffey |first=Wyatt |date=1991 |title=Who Owns Ancient Egypt? |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-african-history/article/abs/who-owns-ancient-egypt/EBDCEC5F4F0BAFC50638FCE86B6C8D25 |journal=The Journal of African History |language=en |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=515–519 |doi=10.1017/S0021853700031595 |s2cid=162117991 |issn=1469-5138 |quote=The majority, especially the Egyptians, disagreed with the views of Diop and Obenga.}} Similarly, none of the participants voiced support for an earlier postulation that Egyptians were "white with a dark, even black, pigmentation",{{rp|43}} although Professor Ghallab stated that "the inhabitants of Egypt in Palaeolithic times were Caucasoids".{{rp|44}}

Subsequent reviewers of the 1974 symposium debate and the UNESCO publication have presented a range of views on the outcome of the debate.{{cite journal |last1=Apena |first1=Adeline |title=G. Mokhtar, ed. UNESCO General History of Africa |journal=Comparative Civilizations Review |date=1 October 1994 |volume=31 |issue=31 |url=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol31/iss31/7/ |issn=0733-4540}}{{cite journal | last=Brett | first=Michael | year=1982 | title=The UNESCO History: Volume Two | journal=The Journal of African History | volume=23 | issue=1 | pages=117–120 | doi=10.1017/S0021853700020284| s2cid=245909418 }}{{cite journal | last=Wilks | first=Ivor | year=1982 | title=Book Reviews: UNESCO General History of Africa | journal=The International Journal of African Historical Studies | volume=15 | issue=2 | pages=283–285 | doi=10.2307/218551| jstor=218551 }}{{cite journal |last1=Kamugisha |first1=Aaron |title=Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko |journal=Race & Class |date=July 2003 |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=31–60 |doi=10.1177/0306396803045001002 |s2cid=145514370 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396803045001002 |issn=0306-3968}} According to Larissa Nordholt, the majority of reviewers at the time saw Diop's chapter as discrediting the publication's scholarly reputation due to the suggested "weight on politics".{{Cite thesis |last=Nordholt |first=Larissa Schulte |title=Africanising African history: decolonisation of knowledge in UNESCO's general history of Africa (1964-1998) |pages=539–551|date=2021 |degree=PhD |publisher=Leiden University |url=https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/3244250?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=e3e8bc49f3b6488a22fe&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=2}}{{Rp|page=279}} Larissa Nordholt argued that Diop's chapter was politically motivated, having been published only due to being in line with UNESCO's political imperatives, despite clashing with accepted historical methods and standards of academic rigor.{{Cite journal |last=Schulte Nordholt |first=Larissa |date=2021 |title=Multiple Hamitic Theories and Black Egyptians: Negotiating Tensions between Standards of Scholarship and Political Imperatives in UNESCO's General History of Africa (1964–1998) |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715866 |journal=History of Humanities |language=en |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=449–469 |doi=10.1086/715866 |hdl=1887/3242830 |s2cid=244133991 |issn=2379-3163|hdl-access=free }} Peter Shinnie reviewing the GHA volume, wrote that "It seems that UNESCO and [the editor] Mokhtar were embarrassed by the unscholarly and preposterous nature of Diop's views but were unable to reject his contribution".{{Cite journal |last1=Shinnie |first1=Peter L. |last2=Jewsiewicki |first2=B. |date=1981 |editor-last=Ki-Zerbo |editor-first=J. |editor2-last=UNESCO |editor3-last=Mokhtar |editor3-first=G. |title=The UNESCO History Project / L'Histoire-monument ou l'histoire conscience |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/484734 |journal=Canadian Journal of African Studies |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=539–551 |doi=10.2307/484734 |jstor=484734 |issn=0008-3968}} However,

Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Kenyan historian and editor of UNESCO General History of Africa Volume 5, stated that “Cheikh Anta Diop wrested Egyptian civilization from the Egyptologists and restored it to the mainstream of African history”.{{cite book |last1=Ogot |first1=Bethwell |title=African Historiography: From colonial historiography to UNESCO's general history of Africa |date=2011 |page=72 |s2cid=55617551 |language=en}} Stephen Quirke argued that the UNESCO-sponsored conference on the General History of Africa in 1974 "did not change the Eurocentric climate of research" and of the need to incorporate both African-centred studies and White European, academic perspectives. He later outlined that "research conferences and publications on the history and language of Kemet [Egypt] remain dominated, beyond 90%, by those brought up and trained in European, not African societies and languages (which include Arabic)".{{cite book |title=Egypt in its African context : proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, 2–4 October 2009 |date=2011 |publisher=Archaeopress |location=Oxford |isbn=978-1407307602 |pages=7–9}}

A forthcoming General History of Africa Volume IX will update the pre-existing volumes with recent archaeological, anthropological and historical research accumulated over four decades.{{cite book |last1=Holl |first1=Augustin |title=General introduction: Reconceptualizing the History of Africa and its diasporas in General history of Africa, X: Africa and its diasporas |publisher=UNESCO |page=XXXIV |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000387782?posInSet=3&queryId=84d08bef-8760-4457-bb29-3c4f72fcc2ad}} This volume will feature 60 historians from 28 countries (Africa, North America, Europe, Latin America, Caribbean and Asia).{{cite web |title=Intergovernmental Council of the Management of Social Transformations Programme, 16th, Paris, 2023 |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000384793?posInSet=1&queryId=849b1bdf-9938-4638-9886-b1795db235f1 |website=unesdoc.unesco.org}}{{cite web |title=Report by the Intergovernmental Council on the activities of the Management of Social Transformation (MOST) Programme in 2022-2023 |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000387378 |website=unesdoc.unesco.org}}

{{Main|Population history of Egypt}}

{{see also|DNA history of Egypt}}

Modern scholars who have studied ancient Egyptian culture and population history have responded to the controversy over the race of the ancient Egyptians in various ways.

Since the late 20th century, as the science of human population genetics has advanced, most biological anthropologists have come to reject the notion of race as having any validity in the study of human biology.{{cite journal |url=http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm |title=American Anthropological Association Statement on Race |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=100 |location=Arlington County |publisher=American Anthropological Association |date=1998}} (Occasionally re-included in other volumes afterwards.){{cite journal |url=http://physanth.org/about/position-statements/biological-aspects-race/ |title=Biological Aspects of Race |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170312082207/http://physanth.org/about/position-statements/biological-aspects-race/ |archive-date=12 March 2017 |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=101 |location=New York |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |date=1996}}

Frank J. Yurco outlined in a 1989 article that "In short, ancient Egypt, like modern Egypt, consisted of a very heterogeneous population".{{cite web |date=September 1989 |title=Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White? |url=https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/15/5/2 |access-date=2022-02-22 |website=The BAS Library |language=en |quote="The ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of varying complexions of color, from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti), to the light brown of Middle Egypt, to the darker brown of Upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan and the First Cataract region, where even today, the population shifts to Nubian." [...] "Ancient and modern Egyptian hair ranges from straight to wavy to woolly; in color, it varies from reddish brown to dark brown to black. Lips range from thin to full. Many Egyptians possess a protrusive jaw. Noses vary from high-bridged—straight to arched or even hooked—to flat-bridged, with bulbous to broad nostrils. In short, ancient Egypt, like modern Egypt, consisted of a very heterogeneous population."}} He also wrote in 1990: "When you talk about Egypt, it's just not right to talk about black or white .... To take the terminology here in the United States and graft it onto Africa is anthropologically inaccurate". Yurco added that "We are applying a racial divisiveness to Egypt that they would never have accepted, They would have considered this argument absurd, and that is something we could really learn from."{{Cite news|last=Specter|first=Michael|date=1990-02-26|title=Was Nefertiti Black? Bitter Debate Erupts|language=en-US|newspaper=Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/02/26/was-nefertiti-black-bitter-debate-erupts/4e7bdc74-18a6-435e-a5f6-df900cb7f014/|access-date=2022-02-22|issn=0190-8286}} Yurco wrote in 1996 that "the peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of North-East Africa are generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types)".{{cite book|first=Frank |last=Yurco |chapter=An Egyptological Review |date=1996 |editor1-first=Mary R. |editor1-last=Lefkowitz |editor2-first=Guy MacLean |editor2-last=Rogers |title=Black Athena Revisited |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |pages=62–100}}

Gamal Mokthar, editor of the UNESCO General History of Africa, wrote in 1990 that "It is more than probable that the African strain, black or light, is preponderant in the Ancient Egyptian, but in the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say more".{{cite book |last1=Mokthar |first1=Gamar |title=Ancient Civilizations of Africa Vol 2 (Unesco General History of Africa (abridged)) |date=1990 |publisher=J. Currey |location=London |isbn=978-0852550922 |pages=1–30 |edition=Abridged}}

Egyptologist Miriam Lichtheim, in 1990, wrote that "The Egyptians were not Nubians, and the original Nubians were not black. Nubia gradually became black because black peoples migrated northward out of Central Africa".{{Cite book |last1=Duhon-Sells |first1=Rose M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pcSeAAAAMAAJ |title=A Vision of Multicultural Education for the Year 2000 |last2=Pitts |first2=Emma Thomas |date=1994 |publisher=E. Mellen Press |isbn=978-0-7734-9427-5 |page=30 |language=en}}

Anthropologist Bernard R. Ortiz De Montellano wrote in 1993: "The claim that all Egyptians, or even all the pharaohs, were black, is not valid. Most scholars believe that Egyptians in antiquity looked pretty much as they look today, with a gradation of darker shades toward the Sudan".

Christopher Ehret wrote in 1996: "Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots. The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt".{{cite book |last1=Christopher Ehret |title="Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed). |date=1996 |publisher=Indianapolis Museum of Art |location=Indianapolis, Ind. |isbn=0-936260-64-5 |pages=25–27}}

Nancy Lovell wrote in 1999 that studies of skeletal remains indicate that the physical characteristics of ancient southern Egyptians and Nubians were "within the range of variation" for both ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa, and that the distribution of population characteristics "seems to follow a clinal pattern from south to north", which may be explained by natural selection as well as gene flow between neighboring populations. Lovell outlined that "In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas". She also wrote that the archaeological and inscriptional evidence for contact between Egypt and Syro-Palestine "suggests that gene flow between these areas was very likely", and that the early Nile Valley populations were "part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation".{{cite encyclopedia |last=Lovell |first=Nancy C. |chapter=Egyptians, physical anthropology of |title=Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt |editor1-last=Bard |editor1-first=Kathryn A. |editor1-link=Kathryn A. Bard |editor2-last=Shubert |editor2-first=Steven Blake |date=1999 |location=London |isbn=0415185890 |pages=328–331}}

Stuart Tyson Smith wrote in 2001: "Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the Egyptians as 'black', while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans." He continues: "Ancient Egyptian practices show strong similarities to modern African cultures including divine kingship, the use of headrests, body art, circumcision, and male coming of-age rituals, all suggesting an African substratum or foundation for Egyptian civilisation".{{cite book|last=Smith |first=Stuart Tyson |date=2001 |title=The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt |volume=3 |editor-first=Donald |editor-last=Redford |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=27–28}} Smith also wrote in 2004: "Egyptian art depicts Nubians with stereotypical dark skin, facial features, hairstyles, and dress, all very different from Egyptians and the other two ethnic groups, Asiatics and Libyans".Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypt's Nubian Empire, by Stuart Tyson Smith; pp. 5-8; Routledge 2004; {{ISBN|978-1134200931}} He adds that "no single material correlate, no matter how abundantly represented, unambiguously reflects ethnic group affiliation".Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypt's Nubian Empire, by Stuart Tyson Smith; p. 36; Routledge 2004; {{ISBN|978-1134200931}}

Sonia Zakrzewski who wrote in 2003 studied skeletal samples from the Badarian period to the Middle Kingdom in Upper Egypt. The raw data suggested that the Ancient Egyptians in general had "tropical body plans" but that their proportions were actually "super-negroid", i.e. the limb indices are relatively longer than in many "African" populations. She proposed that the apparent development of an increasingly African body plan over time may also be due to Nubian mercenaries being included in the Middle Kingdom sample. Although, she noted that in spite of the differences in tibiae lengths among the Badarian and Early Dynastic samples, that "all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations". Zakrzewski concluded that the "results must remain provisional due to the relatively small sample sizes and the lack of skeletal material that cross-cuts all social and economic groups within each time period."{{cite journal |last1=Zakrzewski |first1=Sonia R. |year=2003 |title=Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions |url=https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/12076/1/2003AJPA121pp219-229.pdf |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=121 |issue=3 |pages=219–29 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.10223 |pmid=12772210 |s2cid=9848529}}, Read at [https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/12076/1/2003AJPA121pp219-229.pdf]

Donald B. Redford wrote in 2004 that: "The old notion of waves of "races" flowing up the Nile Valley, effecting cultural change and improvement, is now known to be as erroneous as it was simplistic. New ideas need not come by means of invasion: occasionally they are indigenous and may parallel similar discoveries elsewhere which are wholly unrelated."{{sfn|Redford|2004|p=1}}

Robert Morkot wrote in 2005 that "The ancient Egyptians were not 'white' in any European sense, nor were they 'Caucasian'... we can say that the earliest population of ancient Egypt included African people from the upper Nile, African people from the regions of the Sahara and modern Libya, and smaller numbers of people who had come from south-western Asia and perhaps the Arabian peninsula."{{cite book |last1=Morkot |first1=Robert |title=The Egyptians : an introduction |date=2005 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |isbn=0415271045 |pages=10–13}}

Barry J. Kemp wrote in 2007 that the black/white argument, though politically understandable, is an oversimplification that hinders an appropriate evaluation of the scientific data on the ancient Egyptians since it does not take into consideration the difficulty in ascertaining complexion from skeletal remains. It also ignores the fact that Africa is inhabited by many other populations besides Bantu related ("Negroid") groups. He wrote that in reconstructions of life in ancient Egypt, modern Egyptians would therefore be the most logical and closest approximation to the ancient Egyptians. Kemp also wrote that "..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time" and the anthropological measurements of ancient Egyptians male limb length proportions had grouped "them with Africans rather than with Europeans".{{cite book|last=Kemp |first=Barry J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IT6CAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT46 |title=Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation |date=2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1134563883 |pages=46–58 |author-link=Barry J. Kemp}}

Barbara Mertz wrote in 2011: "Egyptian civilization was not Mediterranean or African, Semitic or Hamitic, black or white, but all of them. It was, in short, Egyptian."

Kathryn Bard wrote in 2014: "Egyptians were the indigenous farmers of the lower Nile valley, neither black nor white as races are conceived of today".{{cite book|last1=Lefkowitz |first1=Mary R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aYEeBQAAQBAJ&q=%22egyptians+were+the+indigenous+farmers+of+the+Lower%22&pg=PA104 |title=Black Athena Revisited |last2=Rogers |first2=Guy MacLean |date= 2014 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press Books |isbn=978-1-4696-2032-9 |language=en}}

Federico Puigdevall and Albert Cañagueral wrote in 2017: "There are defenders of the theory that the pharaohs were black, and there are those who maintain they had Caucasian origins. Neither theory is provable".{{cite book |last1=Puigdevall |first1=Federico |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8CpmDwAAQBAJ |title=The Secrets of Ancient Egypt: Egyptian Pyramids and the Secrets of the Pharaohs |last2=Cañagueral |first2=Albert |date=2017-12-15 |publisher=Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC |isbn=978-1-5026-3329-3 |pages=68 |language=en}}

Nicky Nielsen wrote in 2020: "Ancient Egypt was neither black nor white, and the repeated attempt by advocates of either ideology to seize the ownership of ancient Egypt simply perpetuates an old tradition: one of removing agency and control of their heritage from the modern population living along the banks of the Nile."{{cite book|last=Nielsen |first=Nicky |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LQLoDwAAQBAJ&q=%22Ancient+Egypt+was+neither+black+nor+white%22&pg=PA166 |title=Egyptomaniacs: How We Became Obsessed with Ancient Epypt |date= 2020 |publisher=Pen and Sword History |isbn=978-1-5267-5404-2 |language=en}}

Marc Van De Mieroop wrote in 2021: "Some scholars have tried to determine what Egyptians could have looked like by comparing their skeletal remains with those of recent populations, but the samples are so limited and the interpretations so fraught with uncertainties that this is an unreliable approach". He concluded that ancient Egypt's "location at the edge of northeast Africa and its geography as a corridor between that continent and Asia opened it up to influences from all directions, in terms of both culture and of demography."{{cite book |last1=Van de Mieroop |first1=Marc |title=A history of ancient Egypt |date=2021 |location=Chichester, West Sussex |isbn=978-1119620877 |pages=5–6 |edition=2nd}}

S.O.Y. Keita wrote in 2022 on the origins and the identity of the Ancient Egyptians. He examined various forms of evidence which included archaeology, historical linguistics and biological data to determine the population affinities. He concluded that "various disciplines indicate the groundings of Egypt within Northeastern Africa" and the ancient Egyptians "were a people and society that emerged in the Saharo-Nilotic region of Northeast Africa".{{cite book |last1=Keita Shomarka.|title=Ancient Egyptian 'Origins and "Identity"'. In Ancient Egyptian society : challenging assumptions, exploring approaches |date=2022 |location=Abingdon, Oxon |isbn=978-0367434632 |pages=111–122}} Keita also reviewed studies on the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptian population and wrote in 1993 that the original inhabitants of the Nile Valley were primarily a variety of indigenous Northeast Africans from the areas of the desiccating Sahara and more southerly areas. He also added that whilst Egyptian society became more socially complex and biologically varied, the "ethnicity of the Niloto-Saharo-Sudanese origins did not change".{{cite journal |last1=Keita |first1=S. O. Y. |title=Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships |journal=History in Africa |date=1993 |volume=20 |pages=129–154 |doi=10.2307/3171969 |jstor=3171969 |s2cid=162330365 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171969 |issn=0361-5413}}

William Stiebling and Susan Helft wrote in 2023 on the historical debate concerning the race and ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians in light of recent evidence. They argued that the physical appearances would have varied along a continuum from the Delta to the Nile’s source regions in the south. The authors specified that “some ancient Egyptians looked more Middle Eastern and others looked more Sudanese or Ethiopians of today, and some may even have looked like other groups in Africa”. The authors reached the view that “Egypt was a unique civilization with genetic and cultural ties linking it to other African cultures to its south and west and to Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures to its north”.{{cite book |last1=Jr |first1=William H. Stiebing |last2=Helft |first2=Susan N. |title=Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture |date=2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-88066-3 |pages=209–212 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AUm7EAAAQBAJ&q=Gourdine+keita |language=en}}

Various scholars have highlighted the role of colonial racism in shaping the attitudes of early Egyptologists, and criticised the continued over-representation of North American and European perspectives in the field.{{cite book |title=Egypt in its African context : proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, 2–4 October 2009 |date=2011 |publisher=Archaeopress |location=Oxford |isbn=978-1407307602 |pages=1–115}}{{cite journal |last1=Sedra |first1=Paul |title=Imagining an Imperial Race: Egyptology in the Service of Empire |journal=Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East |date=2004 |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=249–259 |doi=10.1215/1089201X-24-1-251 |s2cid=143690935 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/181224 |issn=1548-226X}}{{cite journal |last1=Walker |first1=J. D. |title=The Misrepresentation of Diop's Views |journal=Journal of Black Studies |date=1995 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=77–85 |doi=10.1177/002193479502600106 |jstor=2784711 |s2cid=144667194 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2784711 |issn=0021-9347}}{{cite web |last1=Young |first1=Robert J.C. |title=Black Athena, and Colonial Discourse Robert J.C. · PDF fileEgypt in America : Black Athena, Racism and Colonial Discourse Robert J.C. Young Colonial discourse analysis was initiated |url=https://pdfslide.tips/documents/black-athena-and-colonial-discourse-robert-jc-egypt-in-america-black-athena.html?page=1 |language=en}} Diop in his work, The African Origin of Civilization argued that the prevailing views in Egyptology were driven by biased scholarship and colonial attitudes.{{cite journal |last1=Victor |first1=Cilius |title=Book reviews : Civilization or Barbarism: an authentic anthropology |journal=Race & Class |date=October 1992 |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=98–100 |doi=10.1177/030639689203400214 |s2cid=145646841 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030639689203400214 |issn=0306-3968}}{{cite journal |last1=Clarke |first1=John Henrik |title=Cheikh Anta Diop and the New Light on African History |journal=Transition |date=1974 |issue=46 |pages=74–76 |doi=10.2307/2934962 |jstor=2934962 |s2cid=156002419 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2934962 |issn=0041-1191}} Similarly, Bruce Trigger wrote that early modern scholarship on the Nile Valley populations had been "marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism".{{cite book |last1=Trigger |first1=Bruce |title='Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic?', in Sylvia Hochfield and Elizabeth Riefstahl (eds), Africa in Antiquity: the arts of Nubia and the Sudan, Vol. 1 |date=1978}}

Stuart Tyson Smith wrote in 2018 that a common practice among Egyptologists was to "divorce Egypt from its proper northeast African context, instead framing it as fundamentally part of a Near Eastern or "Mediterranean" economic, social and political sphere, hardly African at all or at best a crossroad between the Near East, the eastern Mediterranean and Africa, which carries with it the implication that it is ultimately not really part of Africa". He explicitly criticises Van De Mieroop's comments that ancient Egypt was clearly 'in Africa' it was not so clearly 'of Africa' as reflecting "long-standing Egyptological biases". He concluded that the interrelated cultural features shared between northeast African dynamic and Pharaonic Egypt are not "survivals" or coincidence, but shared traditions with common origins in the deep past".{{cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Stuart Tyson |title=Gift of the Nile? Climate Change, the Origins of Egyptian Civilization and Its Interactions within Northeast Africa |journal=Across the Mediterranean – Along the Nile: Studies in Egyptology, Nubiology and Late Antiquity Dedicated to László Török. Budapest |date=1 January 2018 |pages=325–345 |url=https://www.academia.edu/43275151}}

Andrea Manzo wrote in 2022 that early Egyptologists had situated the origins of dynastic Egypt within a "broad Hamitic horizon that characterised several regions of Africa" and that these views had continued to dominate in the second half of the twentieth century. Manzo stated more recent studies had "pointed out the relevance of African elements to the rise of Egyptian culture, following earlier suggestions on Egyptian kingship and religion by Henri Frankfort" which countered the traditional view that considered Egypt "more closely linked to the Near East than to the rest of Africa".{{cite book |last1=Manzo |first1=Andrea |title=Ancient Egypt in its African context : economic networks, social and cultural interactions |date=2022 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-1009074544 |pages=1–50}}

Ehret recounted in 2023 that the previous two centuries of Western scholarship had presented Egypt as an “offshoot of earlier Middle Eastern developments”. He continued to argue that these old ideas had influenced the attitudes of scholars in other disciplines such as genetics and their approaches. Ehret was especially critical of the sampling methods and wider conclusions of a 2017 genetic study which conflicted with existing archaeological, linguistic, genetic and biological anthropological evidence.{{cite book |last1=Ehret |first1=Christopher |title=Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE |date=20 June 2023 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0-691-24409-9 |pages=83–86, 97, 167–169 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5KjEAAAQBAJ&q=ancient+africa:+a+global+history,+to+300+ce+christopher+ehret |language=en |access-date=20 March 2023 |archive-date=22 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230322125442/https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5KjEAAAQBAJ&q=ancient+africa:+a+global+history,+to+300+ce+christopher+ehret |url-status=live }} According to Ehret, these sources of evidence had already determined the founding populations of Ancient Egypt in areas such as Naqada and El-Badari to be the descendants of longtime inhabitants in Northeastern Africa which included Nubia and the northern Horn of Africa.

Genetic studies have been criticised by several scholars for a range of methodological problems and providing misleading racial classifications.{{cite journal |last1=Lieberman |first1=Leonard |last2=Jackson |first2=Fatimah Linda C. |title=Race and Three Models of Human Origin |journal=American Anthropologist |date=1995 |volume=97 |issue=2 |pages=231–242 |doi=10.1525/aa.1995.97.2.02a00030 |jstor=681958 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/681958 |issn=0002-7294}}{{cite book |last1=Celenko |first1=Theodore |title="The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians" In Egypt in Africa |date=1996 |publisher=Indianapolis Museum of Art |location=Indianapolis, Ind. |isbn=0936260645 |pages=20–33}}{{cite journal |last1=Ryan A.Brown and George J. Armelagos |title=Apportionment of racial diversity: A review |journal=Evolutionary Anthropology |date=2001 |volume=10, Issue 1 |issue=34–40 |pages=34–40 |doi=10.1002/1520-6505(2001)10:1<34::AID-EVAN1011>3.0.CO;2-P |s2cid=22845356 |doi-access=free }}{{cite book |last1=Eltis |first1=David |last2=Bradley |first2=Keith R. |last3=Perry |first3=Craig |last4=Engerman |first4=Stanley L. |last5=Cartledge |first5=Paul |last6=Richardson |first6=David |title=The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500-AD 1420 |date= 2021 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-84067-5 |page=150 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DskwEAAAQBAJ&dq=gourdine+critique+their+methods&pg=PA150 |language=en |via=Google Books}}{{sfn|Candelora|2022|pp=101–122}}{{cite journal |last1=Keita |first1=S. O. Y. |last2=Kittles |first2=Rick A. |title=The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence |journal=American Anthropologist |date=1997 |volume=99 |issue=3 |pages=534–544 |doi=10.1525/aa.1997.99.3.534 |jstor=681741 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/681741 |issn=0002-7294}}{{cite book |last1=Ehret |first1=Christopher |title=Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE |year= 2023 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0-691-24409-9 |pages=83–86, 167–169|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5KjEAAAQBAJ&q=ancient+africa:+a+global+history,+to+300+ce+christopher+ehret |language=en}} Boyce and Keita argued that certain studies have adopted a selective approach in sampling, such as using samples drawn mostly from northern (Lower) Egypt, which has historically had the presence of more foreigners from the Mediterranean and the Near East, and using those samples as representing the rest of Egypt. Thus, excluding the 'darker' south or Upper Egypt which presents a false impression of Egyptian variability. The authors also note that chromosomal patterns have featured inconsistent labelling such as Haplotype V as seen the with use of misleading terms like "Arabic" to describe it, implying this haplotype is of 'Middle Eastern' origins. However, when the haplotype V variant is looked at in context, it does have a very high prevalence in African countries above the Sahara and in Ethiopia.{{cite journal |last1=Keita |first1=S. O. Y. |last2=Boyce |first2=A. J. |title=Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation |journal=History in Africa |volume=32 |date=2005 |pages=221–246 |doi=10.1353/hia.2005.0013 |s2cid=163020672 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/187884/pdf |access-date=3 March 2022}}

In 2022, Danielle Candelora criticised how modern DNA studies are misused for political and racist agendas. As an example she cites the media echo about the Schuenemann genome study published in 2017, which was "sensationalized in the media as proof that Egyptians were not black Africans" in spite of its methodological limits, and taken by white suprematists as "scientific evidence" to justify their view on the achievements of the Ancient Egyptian civilisation. Candelora also noted that the media overlooked methodological limitations with the study such as the "untested sampling methods, small sample size, and problematic comparative data".{{sfn|Candelora|2022|pp=101–111}} However an unpublished, follow-up study in 2022 sampled six different excavation sites along the entire length of the Nile Valley, spanning 4,000 years of Egyptian history, and the 18 high quality mitochondrial genomes that were reconstructed which the authors argued supported the results from the 2017 Schuenemann genome study.{{cite web |url=https://isba9.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Abstract_Book_ISBA9_2022.pdf |title=Human mitochondrial haplogroups and ancient DNA preservation across Egyptian history (Urban et al. 2021) |website=ISBA9, 9th International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology| page=126 |date=2021 |quote=In a previous study, we assessed the genetic history of a single site: Abusir el-Meleq from 1388 BCE to 426 CE. We now focus on widening the geographic scope to give a general overview of the population genetic background, focusing on mitochondrial haplogroups present among the whole Egyptian Nile River Valley. We collected 81 tooth, hair, bone, and soft tissue samples from 14 mummies and 17 skeletal remains. The samples span approximately 4000 years of Egyptian history and originate from six different excavation sites covering the whole length of the Egyptian Nile River Valley. NGS 127 based ancient DNA 8 were applied to reconstruct 18 high-quality mitochondrial genomes from 10 different individuals. The determined mitochondrial haplogroups match the results from our Abusir el-Meleq study.}}

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."{{sfn|Kemp|2006|p=47}} The debate, therefore, takes place mainly in the public sphere and tends to focus on a small number of specific issues.

File:CairoEgMuseumTaaMaskMostlyPhotographed.jpg|275x275px]]

Several scholars, including Diop, 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.{{cite book|last=Williams |first=Chancellor |title=The Destruction of Black Civilization |year=1987 |publisher=Third World Press |location=Chicago|isbn=978-0-88378-030-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/destructionofbla00will_0/page/110 110] |url=https://archive.org/details/destructionofbla00will_0/page/110}}

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.{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051001522.html |title=A New Look at King Tut |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=11 May 2005 |access-date=11 May 2012}} Other experts have argued that neither skull shapes nor nasal openings are a reliable indication of race.{{cite journal |url=http://www.jcraniofacialsurgery.com/pt/re/jcransurg/abstract.00001665-200903000-00061.htm;jsessionid=Jh5hhbQkjv93xhGQSCLy5MFzgL54nCLTrTS7ZTn8G2671lXLTNDv!1553038018!181195628!8091!-1 |title=Skull Indices in a Population Collected From Computed Tomographic Scans of Patients with Head Trauma |journal=Journal of Craniofacial Surgery |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=545–550 |doi=10.1097/SCS.0b013e31819b9f6e |pmid=19305252 |date=5 January 2012 |access-date=1 May 2012 |last1=Eskandary |first1=Hossein |last2=Nematollahi-Mahani |first2=Seyed Noureddin |last3=Zangiabadi |first3=Nasser |s2cid=206050171}}

Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy, based on CT data from his mummy,{{cite web|url=http://dsc.discovery.com/anthology/unsolvedhistory/kingtut/face/facespin.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090220012527/http://dsc.discovery.com/anthology/unsolvedhistory/kingtut/face/facespin.html |url-status=dead |title=Discovery.com |archive-date=20 February 2009}}{{cite web |url=http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/tutankhamun/index.asp |title=Science museum images |publisher=Sciencemuseum.org.uk |access-date=1 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120527025639/http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/tutankhamun/index.asp |archive-date=27 May 2012 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all}} 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".{{cite web|url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0511_050511_kingtutface.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050514023611/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0511_050511_kingtutface.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=May 14, 2005 |title=King Tut's New Face: Behind the Forensic Reconstruction |work=National Geographic |date=28 October 2010 |access-date=1 May 2012}}File:QueenTiy01-AltesMuseum-Berlin.png, grandmother of Tutankhamun]]

Terry Garcia, National Geographic{{'}}s 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.{{cite news |first=Evan |last=Henerson |url=http://u.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,211~23523~2921859,00.html |title=King Tut's skin colour a topic of controversy |publisher=U-Daily News — L.A. Life |date=15 June 2005 |access-date=5 August 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061030201358/http://u.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,211~23523~2921859,00.html |archive-date=30 October 2006 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all}}

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."{{cite news|url=http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iB6u3XEMp9IrJfl-kH6FHNgZCg_A |title=Tutankhamun was not black: Egypt antiquities chief |agency=AFP |date=25 September 2007 |access-date=27 February 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120213002414/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iB6u3XEMp9IrJfl-kH6FHNgZCg_A |archive-date=13 February 2012}}

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.{{cite web|url=http://www.ancientegyptmagazine.com/ |title=Welcome to Ancient Egypt Magazine's Web Site |website=Ancientegyptmagazine.com|access-date=2016-06-02}} The Discovery Channel commissioned a facial reconstruction of Tutankhamun, based on CT scans of a model of his skull, back in 2002.{{cite web|url=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tutmask.jpg |title=Photographic image: Wikimedia Commons |format=JPG |publisher=Commons.wikimedia.org |date=10 December 2007 |access-date=1 May 2012}}{{cite web|url=http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/tutankhamun/ |title=Tutankhamun: beneath the mask |publisher=Sciencemuseum.org.uk |access-date=1 May 2012}}

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".{{cite web |last1=Smith |first1=Stuart Tyson |title=Review of From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt by Donald Redford. |url=https://www.academia.edu/43275262 |website=Near Eastern Archaeology 71:3 |date=1 January 2008}}

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".{{cite web|title=King Tut Related to Half of European Men? Maybe Not |date=3 August 2011 |url=http://www.livescience.com/15388-discovery-channel-tutankhamen-dna.html |publisher=Live Science |access-date=27 December 2016}}

File:Tutankhamun tomb photographs 4 326.jpg

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.Yehia Z Gad (October 2020) Insights from ancient DNA analysis of Egyptian human mummies: clues to disease and kinship, Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 30, Issue R1, 1 March 2021, Pages R24–R28 [https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article/30/R1/R24/5924364] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210502033524/https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article/30/R1/R24/5924364|date=2 May 2021}} Maternal and Paternal Lineages in King Tutankhamun's Family Guardian of Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honor of Zahi Hawass. Vol. I, pp. 497–518; 2020 [https://bia.unibz.it/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991005930750801241/39UBZ_INST:ResearchRepository] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210509094956/https://bia.unibz.it/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991005930750801241/39UBZ_INST:ResearchRepository|date=9 May 2021}}

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.

Genetic analysis indicated the following haplogroups:

• Amenhotep III YDNA R1b / mtDNA H2b
• Tutankhamun YDNA R1b / mtDNA K
• Akhenaten YDNA R1b / mtDNA K
• Tiye mtDNA K
• Yuya G2a / mtDNA K
• Thuya mtDNA K

In 2010 Hawass et al. undertook detailed anthropological, radiological, and genetic studies as part of the King Tutankhamun Family Project. The objectives included attempting to determine familial relationships among 11 royal mummies of the New Kingdom, as well to research for pathological features including potential inherited disorders and infectious diseases.{{Cite journal |last1=Hawass |first1=Zahi |last2=Gad |first2=Yehia Z. |last3=Ismail |first3=Somaia |last4=Khairat |first4=Rabab |last5=Fathalla |first5=Dina |last6=Hasan |first6=Naglaa |last7=Ahmed |first7=Amal |last8=Elleithy |first8=Hisham |last9=Ball |first9=Markus |last10=Gaballah |first10=Fawzi |last11=Wasef |first11=Sally |last12=Fateen |first12=Mohamed |last13=Amer |first13=Hany |last14=Gostner |first14=Paul |last15=Selim |first15=Ashraf |date=2010-02-17 |title=Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family |url=https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2010.121 |journal=JAMA |volume=303 |issue=7 |pages=638–647 |doi=10.1001/jama.2010.121 |pmid=20159872 |issn=0098-7484}} 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.{{cite web |last1=Keita |first1=S. O. Y. |title=Ideas about "Race" in Nile Valley Histories: A Consideration of "Racial" Paradigms in Recent Presentations on Nile Valley Africa, from "Black Pharaohs" to Mummy Genomest |url=https://egyptianexpedition.org/articles/ideas-about-race-in-nile-valley-histories-a-consideration-of-racial-paradigms-in-recent-presentations-on-nile-valley-africa-from-black-pharaohs/ |website=Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections|date=September 2022 }}

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.{{cite book |last1=Jr |first1=William H. Stiebing |last2=Helft |first2=Susan N. |title=Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture |date=2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-88066-3 |pages=209–212|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AUm7EAAAQBAJ&q=Gourdine+keita |language=en}}

{{main|Ethnicity of 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,{{cite web |first=Hugh B. |last=Price |title=Was Cleopatra Black? |access-date=28 May 2012 |website=The Baltimore Sun |date=26 September 1991 |url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/1991/09/26/was-cleopatra-blackthat-question-posed-recently-on/ |archive-date=December 11, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111211060804/http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-09-26/news/1991269177_1_melting-pot-taught-in-schools-minorities-and-women |url-status=live }} although generally not in scholarly sources.{{sfnp|Roller|2010}} For example, the article "Was Cleopatra Black?" was published in Ebony magazine in 2012,{{cite web |first=Charles |last=Whitaker |title=Was Cleopatra Black?|access-date=11 September 2023 |website=Ebony |date=February 2002 |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_4_57/ai_82479151/|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070309183549/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_4_57/ai_82479151|archive-date=9 March 2007}} The author cites a few examples of the claim, one of which is a chapter titled "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. and an article about Afrocentrism from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch mentions the question, too.{{cite web |first=Mona |last=Charen |title=Afrocentric View Distorts History and Achievement by Blacks |access-date=29 May 2012 |website=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |date=14 February 1994 |url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SL&p_theme=sl&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB04E771E692744&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM}} 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.{{sfnp|Lefkowitz|1992|pp=36–40}}{{cite book|title=World's Great Men of Color |volume=I |first=J.A. |last=Rogers |publisher=Simon & Schuster |date=2011 |isbn=978-1451650549}} Lefkowitz refutes Rogers' hypothesis, on various scholarly grounds.

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."{{sfnp|Lefkowitz|1992|pp=40–41}} According to Lefkowitz, Clarke's essay includes the claim that Cleopatra described herself as black in the New Testament's Book of Acts. Lefkowitz argues that this confuses Cleopatra with the Kandake mentioned in {{bibleverse|Acts|8:27}}, and that Cleopatra is mentioned nowhere in Acts.{{sfnp|Lefkowitz|1992|pp=40–41}}

File:Cleopatra VII, dalla via appia tra ariccia e genzano, 40-30 ac ca. 02.JPG, 1st century BC

{{sfnp|Roller|2010|pages=[https://archive.org/details/cleopatrabiograp00roll_0/page/54 54, 174–175]}}]]

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.{{sfnm|1a1=Samson|1y=1990|1p=104|2a1=Schiff|2y=2011|2pp=2, 28, 35–36, 42|3a1=Preston|3y=2009|3pp=22, 77|4a1=Goldsworthy|4y=2010|4pp=8, 127–128|5a1=Jones|5y=2006|5p=xiii|6a1=Kleiner|6y=2005|6p=22|7a1=Tyldesley|7y=2008|7pp=30, 235–236}} Michael Grant states that Cleopatra probably had not a drop of Egyptian blood and that she "would have described herself as Greek."{{sfnp|Grant|1972|p=5}} 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,"{{sfnp|Roller|2010}} although he speculates Cleopatra may have been one-fourth Egyptian.{{sfnp|Roller|2010|pp=15, 18, 166}}

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.{{sfnp|Cheshire|2011|pp=20–30}}{{sfnp|Lippert|2013|p=33}}

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.{{sfnp|Schiff|2011|pp=2, 41–42}}{{sfnp|Pina Polo|2013|pp=185–186}}{{sfnp|Kleiner|2005|pp=151–153, 155}}{{sfnp|Bradford|2003|pp=14, 17}}{{sfnp|Watterson|2020|p=15}} 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.{{sfnp|Pina Polo|2013|pp=185–186}} 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.{{sfnp|Roller|2003|p=139}}{{sfnp|Ferroukhi|2001a|p=219}}{{sfnp|Kleiner|2005|pp=155–156}} Aside from Hellenistic art, native Egyptian artworks of Cleopatra include the Bust of Cleopatra in the Royal Ontario Museum,{{sfnp|Ashton|2002|p=39}} 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.{{sfnp|Kleiner|2005|p=87}}{{sfnp|Roller|2010|pp=113–114, 176–177}} In his {{lang|de|Kleopatra und die Caesaren}} (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.{{sfnp|Pina Polo|2013|p=194, footnote 11}}

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.{{cite news |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5908494.ece |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629140819/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5908494.ece |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 29, 2011 |work=The Times |location=London |title=Found the sister Cleopatra killed |date=15 March 2009 |access-date=15 April 2010 |first=Daniel |last=Foggo}}{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/also_in_the_news/7945333.stm |title=Also in the news | Cleopatra's mother 'was African' |work=BBC News |date=16 March 2009 |access-date=2 June 2016}} Arsinoe and Cleopatra shared the same father (Ptolemy XII Auletes) but may have had different mothers,{{cite book |title=The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia |first1=Sarah |last1=Fielding |first2=Christopher D. |last2=Johnson |year=1994 |pages=154 |publisher=Bucknell University Press |isbn=978-0-8387-5257-9}} 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."{{cite web|url=https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2017/03/05/phrenology-and-scientific-racism-in-the-19th-century/|title=Phrenology and "Scientific Racism" in the 19th Century|website=Vassar College Word Press|date=March 5, 2017 |access-date=January 16, 2019|archive-date=February 28, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180228005004/https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2017/03/05/phrenology-and-scientific-racism-in-the-19th-century/|url-status=live}} 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,{{cite news|url=http://www.livescience.com/27459-cleopatra-sister-discovery-controversy.html |title=Have Bones of Cleopatra's Murdered Sister Been Found? |work=Live Science |access-date=7 April 2017}} 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.{{refn|group=note|name=seventh|In 1912, Franz Boas argued that cranial shape was heavily influenced by environmental factors and could change within a few generations under differing conditions, thereby making the cephalic index an unreliable indicator of inherited influences such as ethnicity.{{cite journal |last1=Boas |year=1912 |title=Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=530–562 |doi=10.1525/aa.1912.14.3.02a00080 |pmc =2986913}} Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard (2003),{{cite web |url=http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/CG_pubs/gravlee03b.pdf |title=Boas's Changes in Bodily Form: The Immigrant Study, Cranial Plasticity, and Boas's Physical Anthropology |access-date=21 April 2004 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040421082034/http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/CG_pubs/gravlee03b.pdf |archive-date=21 April 2004}}{{cite journal |last1=Gravlee |first1=Clarence C. |last2=Bernard |first2=H. Russell |last3=Leonard |first3=William R. |year=2003 |title=Heredity, Environment, and Cranial Form: A Re-Analysis of Boas's Immigrant Data |url=https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65137/1/aa.2003.105.1.125.pdf |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=105 |issue=1 |pages=123–136 |doi=10.1525/aa.2003.105.1.125 |hdl=2027.42/65137 |hdl-access=free}} Beals, Smith, and Dodd (1984) and Williams and Armelagos (2005) similarly posited that "race" and cranial variation had low correlations, and proposed that cranial variation was instead strongly correlated with climate variables.{{cite web |url=http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Lieberman2001CA.pdf |title=How Caucasoids Got Such Big Crania and How They Shrank |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090902203425/http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Lieberman2001CA.pdf |archive-date=2 September 2009 |first=Leonard |last=Lieberman}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249179360|title=Forensic Misclassification of Ancient Nubian Crania: Implications for Assumptions about Human Variation}} Brace (1993) differentiated adaptive cranial traits from non-adaptive cranial traits, asserting that only the non-adaptive cranial traits served as reliable indicators of genetic relatedness between populations.Brace et al., 'Clines and clusters versus "race"' (1993) This was further corroborated in studies by von Cramon-Taubadel (2008, 2009a, 2011).{{cite journal |last1=von Cramon-Taubadel |first1=N. |year=2011 |title=The relative efficacy of functional and developmental cranial modules for reconstructing global human population history |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=146 |issue=1 |pages=83–93 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.21550 |pmid=21710659}}{{cite journal |last1=von Cramon-Taubadel |first1=N. |last2=Lycett |first2=S.J. |year=2008 |title=Human cranial variation fits iterative founder effect model with African origin |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=136 |issue=1 |pages=108–113 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.20775 |pmid=18161847}}{{cite journal |last1=von Cramon-Taubadel |first1=N. |year=2009a |title=Congruence of individual cranial bone morphology and neutral molecular affinity patterns in modern humans |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=140 |issue=2 |pages=205–215 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.21041 |pmid=19418568}} Clement and Ranson (1998) estimated that cranial analysis yields a 77%-95% rate of accuracy in determining the racial origins of human skeletal remains.{{cite book |last1=Wilkinson |first1=Caroline |title=Forensic Facial Reconstruction |date=2004 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521820035 |page=84 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NKWm9Q0vbT4C |access-date=2 June 2015 |via=Google Books}} FORDISC, an interactive discriminant functions program,{{cite news|url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-291090697.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150329053803/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-291090697.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=29 March 2015 |title=Dennis Dirkmaat publishes new book on forensic anthropology |date=31 May 2012 |work=Computer Weekly News|via=HighBeam Research |access-date=27 November 2014}} is used by forensic anthropologists to assist in the creation of a decedent's biological profile when only parts of the cranium are available. The software uses discriminant function analysis to sort individuals into specific groups that are defined by certain criteria,{{cite book |title=A Companion to Forensic Anthropology |last1=Ousley |first1=Stephen |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |year=2014 |pages=311–329 |last2=Jantz |first2=Richard |editor-last=Dirkmaat |editor-first=Dennis |chapter=Ch. 15: Fordisc 3 and Statistical Methods for Estimating Sex and Ancestry}} by comparing potential profiles to data contained in a database of skeletal measurements of modern humans.Ousley, S.D., and R.L. Jantz (2005) FORDISC 3.0: Personal Computer Forensic Discriminant Functions.[http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/fordiscbody.htm University of Tennessee] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080705143942/http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/fordiscbody.htm |date=July 5, 2008 }} However a 2009 study found that even in favourable circumstances, FORDISC 3.0 can be expected to classify no more than 1 percent of specimens with confidence."{{cite journal |last1=Elliott |first1=Marina |last2=Collard |first2=Mark |date=11 November 2009 |title=Fordisc and the determination of ancestry from cranial measurements |journal=Biology Letters |publisher=The Royal Society |volume=2009 |issue=5 |pages=849–852 |doi=10.1098/rsbl.2009.0462 |pmid=19586965 |pmc=2827999}} In 2012, research presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists concluded that ForDisc ancestry determination was not always consistent, that the program does not perform to expectations and that it should be used with caution.{{cite web |title=Poster: Elliott and Collard 2012 Going head to head: FORDISC vs CRANID in the determination of ancestry from craniometric data |url=http://meeting.physanth.org/program/2012/session08/elliott-2012-going-head-to-head-fordisc-vs-cranid-in-the-determination-of-ancestry-from-craniometric-data.html |website=meeting.physanth.org |access-date=22 October 2015 |archive-date=April 19, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210419100538/https://meeting.physanth.org/program/2012/session08/elliott-2012-going-head-to-head-fordisc-vs-cranid-in-the-determination-of-ancestry-from-craniometric-data.html |url-status=dead }}}} 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).{{cite web |url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/the-skeleton-of-cleopatras-sister-steady-on/ |title=The skeleton of Cleopatra's sister? Steady on |website=The Times Literary Supplement |date=15 March 2009 |access-date=12 June 2018 |archive-date=March 17, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090317185101/http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2009/03/the-skeleton-of.html |url-status=dead }}

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.Weber, G.W., Šimková, P.G., Fernandes, D. et al. The cranium from the Octagon in Ephesos. Sci Rep 15, 943 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-83870-x

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.{{cite web | url =https://egyptindependent.com/egyptian-lawyer-sues-netflix-over-queen-cleopatra/|title=Egyptian lawyer sues Netflix over Queen Cleopatra|work=Egypt Independent| date=18 April 2023| accessdate =20 April 2023}} 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".{{citation|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/20/cleopatra-was-greek-not-a-tool-in-netflixs-war-on-history/|title=Cleopatra was Greek, not a tool in Netflix's war on real history|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=April 20, 2023 |access-date=22 April 2023 |last1=Daouda |first1=Marie }} 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."{{cite web | url =https://time.com/6273435/cleopatra-race-debate-netflix/|title=Was Cleopatra Black? A New Netflix Series Is Reviving an Old Controversy|work=Time Magazine| date=20 April 2023| accessdate =20 April 2023}}

File:Sphinx of Giza 9059.jpg

The identity of the model for the Great Sphinx of Giza is unknown.{{cite web |title=Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/uncovering-secrets-of-the-sphinx-5053442/ |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en |access-date=24 May 2020}} Most experts{{cite journal |last=Curran |first=Brian A. |date=1 January 1998 |title=The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Renaissance Egyptology |journal=Word & Image |volume=14 |issue=1–2 |pages=156–185 |doi=10.1080/02666286.1998.10443948 |issn=0266-6286}} 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.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

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{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/stream/voyageensyrieete01voln |title=Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte: pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785 … |last=Volney |first=C-F |year=1807 |location=Paris |pages=71 |author-link=Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney |publisher=Paris: Chez Courcier, imprimeur-libraire}} along with French novelist Gustave Flaubert.Flaubert, Gustave. Flaubert in Egypt, ed. Francis Steegmuller. (London: Penguin Classics, 1996). {{ISBN|978-0-14-043582-5}}. A similar description was given in the "well-known book"{{cite journal |last1=Foster |first1=Herbert J. |title=The Ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians |journal=Journal of Black Studies |date=1974 |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=175–191 |doi=10.1177/002193477400500205 |jstor=2783936 |s2cid=144961394}} by Vivant Denon, where he described the sphinx as "the character is African; but the mouth, the lips of which are thick."{{cite book |last1=Denon |first1=Vivant |title=Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt |date=1803 |publisher=General Bonaparte |pages=269–270 |quote=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,{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DBhqAAAAIAAJ&q=sphinx+ |title=Africans abroad: a documentary history of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin … |first=Graham W. |last=Irwin |date=1977 |publisher=Columbia University Press |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0231039369 |via=Google Books}}{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h1RRPJSaThsC&q=William+Edward+Burghardt+Du+Bois+the+negro |title=The Negro |first=W. E. B. |last=Du Bois |author-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |date= 2001 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0812217759 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |title=Black man of the Nile and his family |first=Yosef |last=Ben-Jochannan |pages=109–110}} Diop{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=Frontispiece, 27, 43, 51–53}} and Asante{{cite book|last=Asante |first=Molefi Kete |title=European Racism Regarding Ancient Egypt: Egypt in Africa |year=1996 |publisher=Indiana University Press |location=Indianapolis |isbn=978-0-936260-64-8 |page=117}} 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",{{cite web |last=Schoch |first=Robert M. |author-link=Robert M. Schoch |title=Great Sphinx Controversy |access-date=29 May 2012 |website=robertschoch.net |year=1995 |url=http://www.robertschoch.net/Great%20Sphinx%20Controversy.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204042121/http://www.robertschoch.net/Great%20Sphinx%20Controversy.htm |archive-date=4 February 2012}}{{cite news|title=Fortean Times |location=London |number=79 |date=February 1995 |pages=34, 39}} but he was described by others such as Ronald H. Fritze and Mark Lehner of being a "pseudoscientific writer".{{cite book |last=Fritze |first=Ronald H. |date=2009 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l2BrqdFg5AkC&dq=%22pseudohistorical+and+pseudoscientific+writer%22&pg=PT284 |title=Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-Religions |publisher=Reaktion Books |isbn=978-1-86189-430-4 |via=Google Books}}{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/09/us/scholars-dispute-claim-that-sphinx-is-much-older.html |title=Scholars Dispute Claim That Sphinx Is Much Older |work=The New York Times |date=9 February 1992}} 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.{{cite book |last1=Card |first1=Jeb J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cjOHDAAAQBAJ&q=sphinx+black+afrocentric&pg=PA75 |title=Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices |last2=Anderson |first2=David S. |date=2016 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |isbn=978-0-8173-1911-3 |language=en |via=Google Books}} 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.Diehl 2004, p. 112. Cyphers 1996, p. 156.

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.

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.

Most scholars hold that {{lang|egy-latn|kmt}} 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 {{lang|egy-latn|dšrt}} (conventionally pronounced deshret) or "the red land".Shavit 2001: 148{{sfn|Kemp|2006|p=21}} Raymond Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian translates kmt into "Egyptians",{{cite book |first=Raymond |last=Faulkner |title=A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian |location=Oxford |publisher=Griffith Institute |date=2002 |page=286}} Gardiner translates it as "the Black Land, Egypt".{{cite book |last=Gardiner |first=Alan |title=Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs |edition=3rd |publisher=Griffith Institute, Oxford |year=1957 |orig-year=1927 |isbn=978-0-900416-35-4}}'

Cheikh Anta Diop, a Senegalese scholar and author, states on page 41 in his chapter 'Origin of the Ancient Egyptians' in a United Nations publication (UNESCO) (1981) General History of Africa II (edited by G. Mokhtar)

"The Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves: kmt = the negroes (literally).44"

and in the footnotes he adds (44):

This important discovery was made, on the African side, by Sossou Nsougan, who was to compile this part of the present chapter. For the sense of the word see Wärterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache, Vol.5, 19,71, pp. 122 and 127

{{cite book

| last1 = Mokhtar | first1 = Gamal

| title = General history of Africa, II: Ancient civilizations of Africa

| publisher = UNESCO in Paris, in the United States by University of California Press and reprinted by Heinemann Educational Books, London

| pages = 41

| date = 1981

}}

Diop also said {{lang|egy-latn|km}}, the etymological root of other words such as Kam or Ham refer to Black people in Hebrew tradition.{{rp|27}}{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=246–248}}

A review of David Goldenberg's The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam states that Goldenberg "argues persuasively that the biblical name Ham bears no relationship at all to the notion of blackness and as of now is of unknown etymology".{{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Molly Myerowitz |title=David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam |journal=Bryn Mawr Classical Review |year=2004 |url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-02-53.html |access-date=4 February 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161025154659/http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-02-53.html |archive-date=25 October 2016 |url-status=dead}} Diop,

William Leo Hansberry, and Aboubacry Moussa LamAboubacry Moussa Lam, "L'Égypte ancienne et l'Afrique", in Maria R. Turano et Paul Vandepitte, Pour une histoire de l'Afrique, 2003, pp. 50 &51 have argued that kmt was derived from the skin color of the Nile valley people, which Diop claimed was black.{{rp|21, 26}} The claim that the ancient Egyptians had black skin has become a cornerstone of Afrocentric historiography.

French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron also at the conference stated that in Egyptian km meant 'black', the masculine plural was Kmu (Kemou) and the feminine plural Kmnt and that 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 onwardsand, in general, did they use names of colours to categorize people.{{cite book

| last1 = Mokhtar | first1 = Gamal | title = General history of Africa, II: Ancient civilizations of Africa

| publisher = UNESCO in Paris, in the United States by University of California Press and reprinted by Heinemann Educational Books, London

| pages = 41

| date = 1981

}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gZWuVAL2GooC&q=%2BUNESCO,+%2BMokhtar,+%2BCairo,+%2Brace&pg=PA10 |title=Ancient Civilizations of Africa |first=Muḥammad Jamāl al-Dīn |last=Mukhtār |page=10 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0852550922 |year=1990|publisher=Currey }}

At the UNESCO Symposium in 1974, Diop and Egyptologist/ linguist Théophile Obenga maintained that ancient Egypt was a Black African civilization to an international audience of scholars and experts.{{rp|40}} stating ""Egyptian can not be isolated from its African context and Semitic did not account for its birth; it was therefore legitimate to find relatives or cousins for it in Africa"

{{main|Art of ancient Egypt}}

File:Facsimile of the painting on the inner front side of the sarcophagus of Aashyt MET 48.105.32 EGDP013012.jpg

File:Opening_of_the_mouth_ceremony_(cropped).jpg being performed on a mummy before the tomb, Anubis attending the mummy of the deceased.]]

Ancient Egyptian tombs and temples contained thousands of paintings, sculptures, and written works, which reveal a great deal about the people of that time. However, their depictions of themselves in their surviving art and artifacts are rendered in sometimes symbolic, rather than realistic, pigments. As a result, ancient Egyptian artifacts provide sometimes conflicting and inconclusive evidence of the ethnicity of the people who lived in Egypt during dynastic times.{{cite web |url=http://www.egyptologyonline.com/book_of_gates.htm |title=Book of Gates |access-date=9 February 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090207072141/http://www.egyptologyonline.com/book_of_gates.htm |archive-date=7 February 2009}}{{cite book |first=Charlotte |last=Booth |title=The Ancient Egyptians for Dummies |date=2007 |page=217}}{{ISBN?}}

In their own art, "Egyptians are often represented in a color that is officially called dark red", according to Diop.{{sfn|Diop|1974|p=48}} 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."{{sfn|Diop|1974|p=55}} 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.{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=58–59}}

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".{{cite web |title=Nubia Gallery |url=http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/nubia/huy.html |publisher=The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago |access-date=September 10, 2012 |archive-date=January 3, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140103205228/http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/nubia/huy.html |url-status=dead }} This can be observed in paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Huy, as well as Ramses II's temple at Beit el-Wali.{{cite book |last=Emberling |first=Geoff |title=Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa |year=2011 |publisher=The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World |location=New York |isbn=978-0-615-48102-9 |pages=22–23, 36–37}} Also, Snowden indicates that Romans had accurate knowledge of "negroes of a red, copper-colored complexion ... among African tribes".{{cite book |last=Snowden |first=Frank |title=Blacks in Antiquity |year=1970 |publisher=The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |page=3}}

File:Men from Punt Carrying Gifts, Tomb of Rekhmire MET 30.4.152 EGDP013029.jpg carrying gifts, tomb of Rekhmire]]

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".{{cite web |last1=Smith |first1=Stuart Tyson |editor-last=Redford |editor-first=Donald |pages=28–29 |title=Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt – Volume 3 |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordencyclopediaofancientegyptvolume3/page/n35/mode/2up |date=1 February 2001}}

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."Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, A Modern Survey of an Ancient Land, Vol. 2. by Simson Najovits p. 318 He continues, "There is an extraordinary abundance of Egyptian works of art which clearly depicted sharply contrasted reddish-brown Egyptians and black Nubians."

File:Facsimile of the painting on the inner back side of the sarcophagus of Aashyt MET DT232303.jpg, a Nubian wife of Mentuhotep II in the 11th Dynasty,{{Cite journal |last=Liszka |first=Kate |date=8 October 2018 |title=Discerning Ancient Identity: The Case of Aashyet's Sarcophagus (JE 47267) |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/jeh/11/1-2/article-p185_8.xml |journal=Journal of Egyptian History |volume=11 |issue=1–2 |pages=185–207 |doi=10.1163/18741665-12340047 |issn=1874-1657 |s2cid=240026775}} depicting her with male and female Egyptian servants (facsimile by Charles K. Wilkinson)]]

In 2003, David O'Connor and Andrew Reid remarked that "Puntite and Egyptian males are assigned similarly reddish skins, but Nubians typically have darker one, and Libyans at most periods have light coloured, yellowish skin. Initially, Nubians and Puntities may have been shown as fairly similar in appearance and dress (short linen kilts), but by ca 1400 BC they are distinctly different".{{cite book |last1=O'Connor |first1=David |last2=Reid |first2=Andrew |title=Ancient Egypt in Africa |date= 2003 |publisher=Cavendish Publishing |isbn=978-1-84314-758-9 |page=13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zn3ViO-Vj-4C&q=%22Numerous+representations+of+Nubians,+Puntites+and+Libyans+occur+in+Egyptian |language=en}}

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,{{cite web |url=http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-5881-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 |title=(still image) Dynastie IV. Pyramiden von Giseh [Jîzah], Grab 24. [ Grabkammer No. 2 im K. Museum zu Berlin.], (1849–1856) |author=Digital Collections, The New York Public Library |access-date=19 August 2020 |publisher=The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations}} 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.{{cite book |last=Mertz |first=Barbara |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vs6xBkWiT7YC&q=red+land+black+land+the+daily+life |title=Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt |date=2011 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-06-208716-4 |language=en |via=Google Books}}

File:Book of Gates, 4th Division 5th Hour, in 3 Tombs, Seti I, Merenptah and Ramses III.png and 3)Tomb of Ramesses III

]]

File:Neues Reich. Dynastie XIX. (cropped) (cropped).jpg), "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.{{cite book |chapter=Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the Cairo Museum? |pages=207–212 |title=Egypt: Child of Africa |date=1994 |editor-first=Ivan Van |editor-last=Sertima}}{{cite web|url=http://manuampim.com/ |title=AFRICANA STUDIES |publisher=Manuampim.com |access-date=1 May 2012}}

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.{{cite web|url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/gate/gate20.htm |title=The Book of Gates: The Book of Gates: Chapter VI. The Gate Of Teka-Hra. The Fifth Division of the Tuat |publisher=Sacred-texts.com |access-date=1 May 2012}} 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" {{cite book

| last1 = Budge | first1 = E.A. Wallis .

| title = The Egyptian Heaven and Hell

| publisher = Chicago, open court Pub. Co.

| pages = 146

| date = 1906

| url = https://archive.org/details/egyptianheavenhe0003budg/page/146/mode/2up?q=races}} Budge's interpretation of the Egyptian text describing each figure: "The first are RETH, the second are AAMU, the third are NEHESU, and the fourth are THEMEHU. The RETH are Egyptians, the AAMU are dwellers in the deserts to the east and north-east of Egypt, the NEHESU are the black races, and the THEMEHU are the fair-skinned Libyans. "

The archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius documented many ancient Egyptian tomb paintings in his work Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien.{{cite web |url=http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-5999-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 |title=(still image) Neues Reich. Dynastie XIX. Theben [Thebes]. Bab el Meluk [Bîbân el-Mulûk]. Grab Sethos I. [Plan No. XVII] a. d. Raum D. [Forsetzung von Bl. 135]; c. Pfeiler aus Raum J; d. Ecke aus Raum M. [c. und d. jetzt im K. Mus. zu Berlin], (1849–1856) |author=Digital Collections, The New York Public Library |access-date=20 August 2020 |publisher=The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations}} 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.{{cite book |last=Hornung |first=Erik |url=https://archive.org/details/ancientegyptianb00horn |title=The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife |publisher=Cornell University Press |others=David Lorton (translator) |language=de |url-access=registration}} Ampim has further accused "Euro-American writers" of attempting to mislead the public on this issue.{{cite web|url=http://manuampim.com/ramesesIII.htm |title=Africana Studies. Tomb of Rameses III |publisher=Manuampim.com |access-date=1 May 2012}}

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.{{cite book |first=Frank |last=Yurco |chapter=Two Tomb-Wall Painted Reliefs of Ramesses III and Sety I and Ancient Nile Valley Population Diversity |title=Egypt in Africa |date=1996 |editor-first=Theodore |editor-last=Celenko}} (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".{{cite book |author=Yurco, Frank |editor=Celenko, Theodore |title=Egypt in Africa |date=1996 |publisher=Indianapolis Museum of Art |location=Indianapolis, Ind. |isbn=0253332699 |page=110}} 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". Ampim nonetheless continues to argue that plate 48 shows accurately the images that stand on the walls of KV11, and he categorically accuses both Yurco and Hornung of perpetrating a deliberate deception for the purposes of misleading the public about the true race of the ancient Egyptians.

{{multiple image|direction=horizontal|total_width=350

| image1 = Fayum-22.jpg

| image2 = Fayum-35.jpg

| image3 = Fayum-20.jpg

| footer = The naturalistic Fayum mummy portraits show the diversity of Egyptians in the Roman period.

}}

The Roman era Fayum mummy portraits attached to coffins containing the latest dated mummies discovered in the Faiyum Oasis represent a population of both native Egyptians and those with mixed Greek heritage.{{cite book |last=Bagnall |first=R.S. |date=2000 |editor-last=Walker |editor-first=Susan |title=Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits in Roman Egypt. Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |pages=27}} The dental morphology of the mummies align more with the indigenous North African population than Greek or other later colonial European settlers.{{cite journal |last=Irish |first=J.D. |date=April 2006 |title=Who were the ancient Egyptians? Dental affinities among Neolithic through postdynastic peoples |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |volume=129 |number=4 |pages=529–543 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.20261 |pmid=16331657}}

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."{{cite book |first=Basil |last=Davidson |title=African Civilization Revisited: From Antiquity to Modern Times |year=1991 |publisher=Africa World Press}}{{cite web |url=http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-590c-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 |title=(still image) Neues Reich. Theben [Thebes]: Der el Medînet [Dayr al-Madînah Site]: Stuckbild aus Grab 10. [jetzt im K. Museum zu Berlin.], (1849–1856) |author=Digital Collections, The New York Public Library |access-date=19 August 2020 |publisher=The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations}}

File:Representation of the deified queen Ahmose-Nefertari, the Great Royal Wife of Ahmose I. From Tomb TT359 at Deir el-Medina, Egypt. Neues Museum.jpg of the 18th Dynasty ]]

Ahmose-Nefertari is an example. In most depictions of Ahmose-Nefertari, she is pictured with black skin,{{cite journal |last=Gitton |first=Michel |date=1973 |title=Ahmose Nefertari, sa vie et son culte posthume |language=fr |trans-title=Ahmose Nefertari, her life and her posthumous cult |journal=École Pratique des Hautes études, 5e Section, Sciences Religieuses |volume=85 |issue=82 |pages=84 |doi=10.3406/ephe.1973.20828 |issn=0183-7451}} while in some instances her skin is blue{{cite book |last=Gardiner |first=Alan H. |title=Egypt of the Pharaohs: an introduction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1961 |location=Oxford |author-link=Alan Gardiner}}, p. 175 or red.{{cite web|url=https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/a-royal-setting-for-egyptian-antiquities |title=The deified former queen Ahmose Nefertari, protectress of royal tomb workers |website=www.louvre.fr}} In 1939 Flinders Petrie said "an invasion from the south...established a black queen as the divine ancestress of the XVIIIth dynasty"{{harvp|Petrie|1939|p=155}} He also said "a possibility of the black being symbolic has been suggested" and "Nefertari must have married a Libyan, as she was the mother of Amenhetep I, who was of fair Libyan style."

In 1961 Alan Gardiner, in describing the walls of tombs in the Deir el-Medina area, noted in passing that Ahmose-Nefertari was "well represented" in these tomb illustrations, and that her countenance was sometimes black and sometimes blue. He did not offer any explanation for these colors, but noted that her probable ancestry ruled out that she might have had black blood. In 1974, Diop described Ahmose-Nefertari as "typically negroid."{{rp|17}} In the controversial book Black Athena, the hypotheses of which have been widely rejected by mainstream scholarship, Martin Bernal considered her skin color in paintings to be a clear sign of Nubian ancestry.Martin Bernal (1987), Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785–1985, vol. I. New Jersey, Rutgers University Press In 1981 Michel Gitton noted that while in most artistic depictions of the queen she is pictured with black complexion,{{cite book |last1=Gitton |first1=Michel |year=1981 |title=L'épouse du dieu, Ahmes Néfertary : documents sur sa vie et son culte posthume |language=fr |trans-title=The god's wife, Ahmes Nefertary: documents on her life and her posthumous cult |edition=2nd |publisher=Université de Franche-Comté |location=Besançon |isbn=978-2-251-60172-4}}{{rp|84}} there are other cases in which she is shown with a pink, golden, blue, or dark red skin color.{{rp|74–5}}

Gitton called the issue of Ahmose-Nefertari's black color "a serious gap in the Egyptological research, which allows approximations or untruths."{{rp|2}} He pointed out that there is no known depiction of her painted during her lifetime (she is represented with the same light skin as other represented individuals in tomb TT15, before her deification); the earliest black skin depiction appears in tomb TT161, circa 150 years after her death.{{rp|11–12, 23, 74–5}}{{cite book |last1=Dodson |first1=Aidan |author-link1=Aidan Dodson |last2=Hilton |first2=Dyan |date=2004 |title=The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt |location=London |publisher=Thames & Hudson |isbn=0-500-05128-3}}{{rp|125}} 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."The Remarkable Women of Ancient Egypt, by Barbara S. Lesko; p. 14; B.C. Scribe Publications, 1996; {{ISBN|978-0-930548-13-1}}

File:EDIT of Monumenti dell'Egitto e della Nubia-plate-0146.jpg

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."Betsy Bryan; p. 213; The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt; edited by Ian Shaw; OUP Oxford, 2003; {{ISBN|978-0-19-280458-7}} 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.{{rp|125}} Scholars such as Joyce Tyldesley, Sigrid Hodel-Hoenes, and Graciela Gestoso Singer, argued that the skin color of Ahmose-Nefertari is indicative of her role as a goddess of resurrection, since black is both the color of the fertile land of Egypt and that of Duat, the underworld.Graciela Gestoso Singer, "[https://www.academia.edu/414029/Ahmose_Nefertari_the_Woman_in_Black Ahmose-Nefertari, The Woman in Black]". Terrae Antiqvae, January 17, 2011

Singer recognizes that "Some scholars have suggested that this is a sign of Nubian ancestry." Singer also states a statuette of Ahmose-Nefertari at the Museo Egizio in Turin which shows her with a black face, though her arms and feet are not darkened, thus suggesting that the black coloring has an iconographic motive and does not reflect her actual appearance.Tyldesley, Joyce. Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt. Thames & Hudson. 2006. {{ISBN|0-500-05145-3}}{{rp|90}}Hodel-Hoenes, S & Warburton, D (trans), Life and Death in Ancient Egypt: Scenes from Private Tombs in New Kingdom Thebes, Cornell University Press, 2000, p. 268.{{cite book |last=Vassilika |first=Emili |date=2009 |title=I capolavori del Museo Egizio di Torino |language=it |trans-title=The masterpieces of the Egyptian Museum of Turin |location=Florence |publisher=Fondazione Museo delle antichità egizie di Torino |isbn=978-88-8117-950-3}}{{rp|78–79}} In 2014, Margaret Bunson wrote that "the unusual depictions of Ahmose-Nefertari in blue-black tones of deification reflect her status and cult."Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt; by Margaret Bunson; Pg 17, Infobase Publishing, 2014; {{ISBN|978-1-4381-0997-8}} 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.

Since the second half of the 20th century, typological and hierarchical models of race have increasingly been rejected by scientists, and most scholars have held that applying modern notions of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AClFWV6PE8wC&q=brace,+egyptian,+race&pg=PA162 |title=Black Athena Revisited |page=162 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0807845554 |last1=Lefkowitz |first1=Mary R. |last2=Rogers |first2=Guy Maclean |year=1996 |publisher=UNC Press Books |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PG6HffPwmuMC&q=bard,+egyptian,+race&pg=PA329 |title=Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt |page=329 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0415185899 |last1=Bard |first1=Kathryn A. |last2=Shubert |first2=Steven Blake |year=1999 |publisher=Routledge |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pFrm19cZhugC&q=race,+egypt,+anachronistic,+bard&pg=PA136 |title=Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes |first=Stephen |last=Howe |page=136 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-1859842287 |year=1999 |publisher=Verso |via=Google Books}} The current position of modern scholarship is that the Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).{{cite book |title=Prehistory and Protohsitory of Egypt |first=Emile |last=Massoulard |date=1949}}{{cite book |last=Zakrzewski |first=Sonia R. |title=Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state |date=2003 |publisher=Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton |location=Highfield, Southampton}}{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Stuart Tyson |editor-last=Redford |editor-first=Donald |page=28 |title=Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt |volume=3 |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordencyclopediaofancientegyptvolume3/page/n35/mode/2up |date=1 February 2001}}{{cite book |last1=Ehret |first1=Christopher |title=Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE |date=2023 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0-691-24409-9 |pages=83–86|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5KjEAAAQBAJ&q=ancient+africa:+a+global+history,+to+300+ce+christopher+ehret |language=en}} At the UNESCO symposium in 1974, several participants concluded that the ancient Egyptian population was indigenous to the Nile Valley, and was made up of people from north and south of the Sahara who were differentiated by their color.{{cite book |title=The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script : proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974. |date=1978 |publisher=Unesco |location=Paris |isbn=92-3-101605-9 |pages=94–95}}

{{further|Kerma culture|Kingdom of Kush|Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt}}

The Black Egyptian hypothesis is the hypothesis that ancient Egypt was a "Black", homogeneous civilization.{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=1, 27, 43, 51}}{{cite book |last=Bernal |first=Martin |url=https://archive.org/details/blackathenaafroa00bern/page/242 |title=Black Athena |publisher=Rutgers University Press |year=1987 |isbn=978-0-8135-1276-1 |location=New Brunswick, New Jersey |page=[https://archive.org/details/blackathenaafroa00bern/page/242 242]}} At a UNESCO symposium in 1974 there was consensus that Ancient Egypt was indigenous to Africa.

However, Diop's hypothesis that Ancient Egypt was a "Black" civilization was met with "numerous objections" in 1974 which revealed "a disagreement which remained profound even though it was not voiced explicitly. In respect of certain sequences, the criticisms arose out of the line of argument put forward."{{cite book |first=Muḥammad Jamāl al-Dīn |last=Mukhtār |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gZWuVAL2GooC&q=%2BUNESCO,+%2BMokhtar,+%2BCairo,+%2Brace&pg=PA43 |title=Ancient Civilizations of Africa |year=1990 |isbn=978-0852550922 |pages=42–44 |publisher=Currey |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}} The majority of the objections "raised were of methodological nature" which ranged from the need for reliable statistical data to further research projects in several fields such as archaeology and physical anthropology before final conclusions on the peopling of Egypt could be made.{{cite book |title=The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script : proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974 |date=1978 |publisher=Unesco |location=Paris |isbn=9231016059 |pages=86–87}} There was also "total disagreement" from the majority of scholars in the 1974 conference on the hypothesis that Ancient Egypt had been a homogenous population until Persian times with several scholars favouring the hypothesis of a mixed population."However, during the discussion of the hypothesis of a homogeneous population, which was favoured by Professor Diop, and the hypothesis of a mixed population, which was supported by several other experts, it became clear that there was total disagreement" {{cite book |title=The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script : proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974. |date=1978 |publisher=UNESCO |location=Paris |isbn=92-3-101605-9 |page=49}}

Subsequent reviewers of the 1974 symposium debate and the UNESCO publication have presented a range of views on the outcome of the debate. Larissa Nordholt argued that Diop's chapter was politically motivated, having been published only due to being in line with UNESCO's political imperatives, despite clashing with accepted historical methods and standards of academic rigor. Nordholdt argued that Diop's views aligned with the decolonization efforts of the General History of Africa (GHA) but that he premised his arguments on outdated, racialism which classified humanity into distinct groups with a biological essence. However, she did state that the contributors did "come to a general consensus that the Egyptians could not have been "white" in the same way that Europeans were" and the dissemination of Diop’s ideas contributed to a wider recognition that the Ancient Egypt was an African civilisation although his methods were “not considered entirely permissible by most of the other GHA historians” According to Larissa Nordholdt, "Many reviewers, however, still objected to what they identified as an overtly political ideology within the GHA. They did not necessarily object to the flavour of that ideology, but rather to the presence of a political agenda as such. Often Diop’s chapter seemed to serve as a catalyst for that sentiment".{{Rp|pages=268–279}} Peter Shinnie reviewing the General History of Africa volume, wrote that "It seems that UNESCO and [the editor] Mokhtar were embarrassed by the unscholarly and preposterous nature of Diop's views but were unable to reject his contribution". However, Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Kenyan historian and editor of UNESCO General History of Africa Volume 5, stated that “Cheikh Anta Diop wrested Egyptian civilization from the Egyptologists and restored it to the mainstream of African history”. Stephen Quirke argued that the UNESCO-sponsored conference on the General History of Africa in 1974 "did not change the Eurocentric climate of research" and of the need to incorporate both African-centred studies and European academic perspectives. He later outlined that "research conferences and publications on the history and language of Kemet [Egypt] remain dominated, beyond 90%, by those brought up and trained in European, not African societies and languages (which include Arabic)".{{cite book |title=Egypt in its African context : proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, 2–4 October 2009 |date=2011 |publisher=Archaeopress |location=Oxford |isbn=978-1407307602 |pages=7–9}}

The Black Egyptian hypothesis includes a particular focus on links to Sub Saharan cultures and the questioning of the race of specific notable individuals from Dynastic times, including Tutankhamun{{cite web|date=25 September 2007 |title=Tutankhamun was not black: Egypt antiquities chief |url=http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iB6u3XEMp9IrJfl-kH6FHNgZCg_A |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120213002414/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iB6u3XEMp9IrJfl-kH6FHNgZCg_A |archive-date=13 February 2012 |access-date=28 May 2012 |website=AFP}} the person represented in the Great Sphinx of Giza,{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=1, 27, 43, 51}}{{cite book |first=Graham W. |last=Irwin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DBhqAAAAIAAJ&q=sphinx+ |title=Africans abroad: a documentary history of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin |date= 1977 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0231039369 |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite web |last=Schoch |first=Robert M. |author-link=Robert M. Schoch |year=1995 |title=Great Sphinx Controversy |url=http://www.robertschoch.net/Great%20Sphinx%20Controversy.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204042121/http://www.robertschoch.net/Great%20Sphinx%20Controversy.htm |archive-date=4 February 2012 |access-date=29 May 2012 |website=robertschoch.net}} and the Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra.{{cite web|url=http://www.asante.net/articles/19/race-in-antiquity-truly-out-of-africa/ |title=Race in Antiquity: Truly Out of Africa | Dr. Molefi Kete Asante |website=Asante.net |access-date=2 June 2016}}{{cite web |first=Hugh B. |last=Price |date=26 September 1991 |title=Was Cleopatra Black? |url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/1991/09/26/was-cleopatra-blackthat-question-posed-recently-on/ |access-date=28 May 2012 |website=The Baltimore Sun |archive-date=December 11, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111211060804/http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-09-26/news/1991269177_1_melting-pot-taught-in-schools-minorities-and-women |url-status=live }}{{cite web|first=Charles |last=Whitaker |date=February 2002 |title=Was Cleopatra Black? |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_4_57/ai_82479151/ |access-date=28 May 2012 |website=Ebony}} The author cites a few examples of the claim, one of which is a chapter titled "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.{{cite web |first=Mona |last=Charen |date=14 February 1994 |title=Afrocentric View Distorts History and Achievement by Blacks |url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SL&p_theme=sl&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB04E771E692744&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM |access-date=29 May 2012 |website=St. Louis Post-Dispatch}} Advocates of the Black African model rely heavily on writings from Classical Greek historians, including Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Herodotus. Advocates claim that these "classical" authors referred to Egyptians as "Black with woolly hair".{{refn|group=note|name=third|{{cite book |author=Herodotus |author-link=Herodotus |url=https://archive.org/details/histories00hero/page/134 |title=Histories (Herodotus) |publisher=Penguin Books |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-14-044908-2 |location=London, England |pages=[https://archive.org/details/histories00hero/page/134 134–135]}}{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=1, 27, 43, 51, 278, 288}}{{cite book |last=Najovits |first=Simson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3-hNBAAAQBAJ&q=diop+bernal+melanchroes&pg=PA319 |title=Egypt, Trunk of the Tree |volume=II: A Modern Survey of and Ancient Land |date=2003 |publisher=Algora Publishing |isbn=978-0-87586-256-9 |language=en |via=Google Books}}{{rp|316–321}}{{rp|52–53}}{{cite book|last=Mokhtar |first=G. |title=General History of Africa II: Ancient Civilizations of Africa |publisher=University of California Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-520-06697-7 |location=Berkeley |pages=1–118}}{{rp|21}} }} The Greek word used was "melanchroes", and the English language translation of this Greek word is disputed, being translated by many as "dark-skinned"{{cite book |last=Najovits |first=Simson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3-hNBAAAQBAJ&q=%22melanchroes+%22dark+skinned&pg=PA319 |title=Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, Vol. II: A Modern Survey of and Ancient Land |date=2003 |publisher=Publishing |isbn=978-0-87586-256-9 |language=en |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=Alan B. |last=Lloyd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8DiTX_EsWasC&q=herodotus,+melanchroes&pg=PA22 |title=Herodotus |year=1993 |isbn=978-9004077379 |page=22 |publisher=Brill|access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}} and by many others as "black".{{refn|group=note|name=fourth|{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=1, 27, 43, 51, 278, 288}}{{rp|52–53}}{{rp|15–60}}{{cite book |author=Herodotus |author-link=Herodotus |url=https://archive.org/details/histories00hero/page/103 |title=Histories (Herodotus) |publisher=Penguin Books |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-14-044908-2 |location=London, England |pages=[https://archive.org/details/histories00hero/page/103 103, 119, 134–135, 640]}}{{cite book |last1=Rawlinson |first1=George |title=The Histories of Herodotus |date=2018 |publisher=Scribe Publishing |isbn=978-1787801714 |quote=black-skinned and have woolly hair}}{{cite book |last1=Asante Kete Molefi |title="European Racism Regarding Ancient Egypt," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed). |date=1996 |publisher=Indianapolis Museum of Art |location=Indianapolis, Ind. |isbn=0-936260-64-5 |pages=116–117 |quote=The word Herodotus used for black-skinned, melanchroes, in the Greek, cannot be confused with white-, red-, or even brown-skinned. It means black skinned.}}}}{{refn|group=note|name=eighth| Diop said "Herodotus applied melanchroes to both Ethiopians and Egyptians...and melanchroes is the strongest term in Greek to denote blackness."{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=241–242}} According to historian and classicist to Alan B. Lloyd "there is no linguistic justification" for relating the term Melanchroes to blacks, since it "could denote any colour from bronzed to black (LSJ p. 1094, b)".{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8DiTX_EsWasC&q=herodotus%2C+melanchroes&pg=PA22| title=Herodotus: Book II |last=B. Lloyd |first=Alan |publisher=Brill |date=1993 |isbn=90-04-04179-6 |page=22}} Snowden claims that Diop is distorting his classical sources and is quoting them selectively.{{cite book |last1=Lefkowitz |first1=Mary R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AClFWV6PE8wC&q=herodotus,+melanchroes,+Lefkowitz&pg=PA118 |title=Black Athena Revisited |last2=Rogers |first2=Guy Maclean |year=1996 |isbn=978-0807845554 |page=118 |publisher=UNC Press Books |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}} According to Snowden, "both Egyptians and Ethiopians as melanes, but mentions only Ethiopians, not Egyptians, as having exceedingly woolly hair. In short, Ethiopians whose skin was the blackest and whose hair was the woolliest or most tightly curled of all mankind were the only people in classical texts who correspond roughly to the concept of blacks or Negroes as generally understood in modern usage".{{Cite book |last=Snowden |first=Frank M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aYEeBQAAQBAJ |title=Black Athena Revisited |date=2014 |publisher=UNC Press Books |isbn=978-1-4696-2032-9 |editor-last=Lefkowitz |editor-first=Mary |language=en |chapter=Bernal's 'Blacks' and the Afrocentrists |editor-last2=Rogers |editor-first2=Guy Maclean}}

Keita specified that the historical accounts of the ancient Greeks were of limited value as "they were not working within modern science" and it remained unclear if distinctions between Egyptians and Ethiopians were cultural rather than biological at certain times. He also added that "some Greeks reported that Egypt was an Ethiopian colony".{{cite book |last1=Keita S.O.Y. |title="The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed). |date=1996 |publisher=Indianapolis Museum of Art |location=Indianapolis, Ind. |isbn=0-936260-64-5 |pages=104–105}} There is dispute about the historical accuracy of the works of Herodotus – some scholars support the reliability of Herodotus{{refn|group=note|name=fifth|{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=2–5}}{{cite book |last=Diop |first=Cheikh Anta |url=https://archive.org/details/civilizationorba0000diop |title=Civilization or Barbarism |publisher=Lawrence Hill Books |year=1981 |isbn=978-1-55652-048-8 |location=Chicago, Illinois |url-access=registration}}{{rp|1}}{{cite book |last=Welsby |first=Derek |title=The Kingdom of Kush |publisher=British Museum Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-7141-0986-2 |location=London |page=40}}{{cite book |last=Heeren |first=A.H.L. |title=Historical researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians |publisher=University of Michigan Library |year=1838 |location=Michigan |pages=13, 379, 422–424 |asin=B003B3P1Y8}}{{cite book |last=Aubin |first=Henry |title=The Rescue of Jerusalem |publisher=Soho Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-1-56947-275-0 |location=New York |pages=94–96, 100–102, 118–121, 141–144, 328, 336}}{{cite book |last1=Hansberry |first1=William Leo |title=African & Africans, African History Notebook, Vol. II |date=1977 |publisher=Black Classic Press |location=Maryland|isbn=978-1574781540 |pages=103–113}}}} while other scholars regard his works as being unreliable as historical sources, particularly those relating to Egypt.{{refn|group=note|name=sixth|{{cite book |last1=von Martels |first1=Z. R. W. M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZZ5ZH-f38E4C&q=herodotus,+fehling&pg=PA1 |title=Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition |year=1994 |isbn=978-9004101128 |page=1 |publisher=Brill|access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=Kenton L. |last=Sparks |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KztVonFGqcsC&q=herodotus,+Pritchett&pg=PA59 |title=Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic … |year=1998 |isbn=978-1575060330 |page=59 |publisher=Eisenbrauns |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{Cite book |first1=David |last1=Asheri |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yPhE6NxllLoC&q=herodotus,+fehling&pg=PA74 |title=A Commentary on Herodotus |first2=Alan |last2=Lloyd |first3=Aldo |last3=Corcella |date=30 August 2007 |isbn=978-0198149569 |page=74 |publisher=OUP Oxford |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=Jennifer T. |last=Roberts |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k2hMQLFU9IMC&q=herodotus,+Pritchett&pg=PA115 |title=Herodotus: A Very Short Introduction |date=23 June 2011 |isbn=978-0199575992 |page=115 |publisher=OUP Oxford |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=Alan |last=Cameron |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A3H_51913RkC&q=herodotus,+fehling&pg=PA156 |title=Greek Mythography in the Roman World |date=2 September 2004 |isbn=978-0198038214 |page=156 |publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=John |last=Marincola |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VTIyhET2o0MC&q=herodotus,+fehling&pg=PA34 |title=Greek Historians |date=13 December 2001 |isbn=978-0199225019 |page=34 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |last1=Amoia |first1=Alba Della Fazia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Xv6R5qiDEQC&q=herodotus,+fehling&pg=PA171 |title=Multicultural Writers from Antiquity to 1945: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook |last2=Knapp |first2=Bettina Liebowitz |year=2002 |isbn=978-0313306877 |page=171 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=David G. |last=Farley |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qD_WnbaMmMEC&q=hartog,+herodotus&pg=PA21 |title=Modernist Travel Writing: Intellectuals Abroad |date=30 November 2010 |isbn=978-0826272287 |page=21 |publisher=University of Missouri Press |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=Alan B. |last=Lloyd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8DiTX_EsWasC&q=%22reliability%27,+%22herodotus%22,+sesostris&pg=PA1 |title=Herodotus |year=1993 |isbn=978-9004077379 |page=1 |publisher=Brill |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |first=Flemming A. J. |last=Nielsen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bRp541cRPRoC&q=armayor,+herodotus&pg=PA41 |title=The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and the Deuteronomistic History |date= 1997 |isbn=978-1850756880 |page=41 |publisher=Bloomsbury |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pyjaXnWHAEIC&q=herodotus,+fehling&pg=PA21 |title=Herodotus: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1 May 2010 |isbn=978-0199802869 |page=21 |access-date=2 June 2016 |via=Google Books}}}}}}

Other claims used to support the Black Hypothesis included anthropological measurements of Egyptian mummies, testing melanin levels in a small sample of mummies,{{rp|20, 37}}{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=236–243}} language affinities between ancient Egyptian language and Sub-Saharan languages,{{rp|28, 39–41, 54–55}}{{cite book |first1=Alain |last1=Ricard |first2=Naomi |last2=Morgan |title=The Languages & Literatures of Africa: The Sands of Babel |publisher=James Currey |date=2004 |pages=14}} interpretations of the origin of the name Kmt, conventionally pronounced Kemet, used by the ancient Egyptians to describe themselves or their land (depending on points of view),{{rp|27,38,40}} biblical traditions,{{cite book |last=Snowden |first=Frank |title=Before Color Prejudice |year=1983 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=978-0-674-06380-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/beforecolorpreju00snow_0/page/3 3] |url=https://archive.org/details/beforecolorpreju00snow_0/page/3}}{{rp|27–28}} shared B blood group between Egyptians and West Africans,{{rp|37}} and interpretations of the depictions of the Egyptians in numerous paintings and statues.{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=6–42}}

The hypothesis also claimed cultural affiliations, such as circumcision,{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=112, 135–138}} matriarchy, totemism, hair braiding, head binding,{{cite book |last=DeMello |first=Margo |title=Encyclopedia of Body Adornment |date=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0313336954 |page=150 |quote=The ancient Egyptians practiced head binding as early as 3000 BCE,... the Mangbetu of the Congo also practiced head binding. |via=Google Books}} and kingship cults.{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=1–9, 134–155}} Artifacts found at Qustul (near Abu Simbel – Modern Sudan) in 1960–64 were seen as showing that Ancient Egypt and the A-Group culture of Nubia shared the same culture and were part of the greater Nile Valley sub-stratum,{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Bruce |title=Before the Pyramids |year=2011 |publisher=Oriental Institute Museum Publications |location=Chicago, Illinois |isbn=978-1-885923-82-0 |pages=89–90}}{{cite web |url=http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/nubia/ |title=The Nubia Salvage Project | The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago |website=Oi.uchicago.edu |access-date=2 June 2016 |archive-date=January 27, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140127030439/http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/nubia/ |url-status=dead }}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E9nfgKRMxVoC&q=qustul,+baines&pg=PA104 |title=Ancient Egyptian Kingship |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-9004100411 |last1=O'Connor |first1=David Bourke |last2=Silverman |first2=David P. |year=1995 |publisher=Brill |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |last=Diop |first=Cheikh Anta |title=Civilization or Barbarism |url=https://archive.org/details/civilizationorba0000diop |url-access=registration |year=1991 |publisher=Lawrence Hill Books |location=Chicago, Illinois, USA |isbn=978-1-55652-048-8 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/civilizationorba0000diop/page/103 103–105]}}{{cite book |last=O'Connor |first=David |title=Before the Pyramids |year=2011 |publisher=Oriental Institute Museum Publications |location=Chicago, Illinois |isbn=978-1-885923-82-0 |pages=162–163}} but more recent finds in Egypt indicate that the Qustul rulers probably adopted/emulated the symbols of Egyptian pharaohs.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-h4gJAlx8o0C&q=qustul,+bard&pg=PA446 |title=The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt |page=446 |date=23 October 2003 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0191604621 |last1=Shaw |first1=Ian |publisher=OUP Oxford |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W9OFBw7yGZkC&q=qustul,+burner,+imported&pg=PA167 |title=The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa … |author1-link=David Wengrow |first1=D. |last1=Wengrow |page=167 |date=25 May 2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0521835862 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4QGV7Eiy3PsC&q=qustul,+baines&pg=PA69 |title=African Connections: An Archaeological Perspective on Africa and the Wider World |first=Peter |last=Mitchell |page=69 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0759102590 |year=2005 |publisher=Rowman Altamira |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |title=Early Dynastic Egypt |first=Toby A. H. |last=Wilkinson |publisher=Routledge |year=2001 |isbn=978-0415260114 |doi=10.4324/9780203024386 |at=Page 194 probably}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=irbP2hHqDAwC&q=qustul,+grave&pg=PA577 |title=Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region Between Ancient Nubia and Egypt … |first=László |last=Török |page=577 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-9004171978 |year=2009|publisher=Brill }}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ui9Qwtp-LV4C&q=Qustul+burner&pg=PA38 |title=Daily Life of the Nubians |first=Robert Steven |last=Bianchi |page=38 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0313325014 |year=2004 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing |via=Google Books}}

Authors and critics state the hypothesis is primarily adopted by Afrocentrists.{{cite book |last1=Lefkowitz |first1=Mary R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aYEeBQAAQBAJ&q=%22Bernal+and+many+Afrocentrists+have+used%22&pg=PA127 |title=Black Athena Revisited |last2=Rogers |first2=Guy MacLean |date=24 March 2014 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press Books |isbn=978-1-4696-2032-9 |language=en |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |last=Shaw |first=Ian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZR173Wu9uw4C&q=%22black%22+%22afrocentric%22+%22egypt%22&pg=PA106 |title=Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction |date=22 July 2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-157840-3 |language=en |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |last=Blench |first=Roger |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uVc2AAAAQBAJ&q=%22this+school+promotes+the+inverted+assumption+that+ancient+Egypt+was%22&pg=PA37 |title=Archaeology, Language, and the African Past |date=22 June 2006 |publisher=Rowman Altamira |isbn=978-0-7591-1421-0 |language=en |via=Google Books}}{{cite journal |url=http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/Snowden%20Misconceptions.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304052116/http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/Snowden%20Misconceptions.pdf |archive-date=4 March 2016 |title=Misconceptions about African Blacks in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Specialists and Afrocentrists |first=Frank M. Jr. |last=Snowden |journal=Arion |series=Third Series |volume=4 |number=3 |date=1997 |pages=28–50 |publisher=Trustees of Boston University |jstor=20163634}}{{cite journal |first=Bernard R. Ortiz |last=De Montellano |title=Melanin, Afrocentricity, and Pseudoscience |journal=Yearbook of Physical Anthropology |volume=36 |number=33–58 |date=1993 |pages=33–58 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.1330360604 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajpa.1330360604}}{{cite journal |last=Chowdhury |first=Kanishka |date=1997 |title=Afrocentric Voices: Constructing Identities, [Dis]placing Difference |journal=College Literature |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=35–56 |jstor=25112296 |issn=0093-3139}}{{cite web|title=Afrocentrism {{!}} Definition, Examples, History, Beliefs, & Facts |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Afrocentrism |access-date=7 August 2020 |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |language=en}}{{cite journal |last=Bay |first=Mia |date=2000 |title=The Historical Origins of Afrocentrism |journal=Amerikastudien / American Studies |volume=45 |issue=4 |pages=501–512 |jstor=41157604 |issn=0340-2827}} The current position of modern scholarship is that the Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).

This theory was the most dominant view from the Early Middle Ages (c. 500 AD) until the early 19th century.{{sfn|Sanders|1969|pp=521–532}}{{cite journal |title=The Origin of Egyptian Civilisation |first=Edouard |last=Naville |journal=The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland |volume=37 |date=1907 |pages=201–214|doi=10.2307/2843255 |jstor=2843255 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2176460}} The descendants of Ham were traditionally considered to be the darkest-skinned branch of humanity, either because of their geographic allotment to Africa or because of the Curse of Ham.{{sfn|Sanders|1969|pp=521–523}} Thus, Diop cited Gaston Maspero "Moreover, the Bible states that Mesraim, son of Ham, brother of Chus (Kush) ... and of Canaan, came from Mesopotamia to settle with his children on the banks of the Nile."{{sfn|Diop|1974|pp=5–9}}

By the 20th century, the Asiatic race theory and its various offshoots were abandoned but were superseded by two related theories: the Eurocentric Hamitic hypothesis, asserting that a Caucasian racial group moved into North and East Africa from early prehistory subsequently bringing with them all advanced agriculture, technology and civilization, and the Dynastic race theory, proposing that Mesopotamian invaders were responsible for the dynastic civilization of Egypt (c. 3000 BC). In sharp contrast to the Asiatic race theory, neither of these theories proposes that Caucasians were the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt.{{sfn|Sanders|1969|pp=524–527}}

At the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974, none of the participants explicitly voiced support for any theory where Egyptians were Caucasian with a dark pigmentation."{{rp|43}} The current position of modern scholarship is that the Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).

{{Further|Hamites}}

File:234 of '(The World's Inhabitants; or, Mankind, animals & plants ... With ... illustrations, etc.)' (11204692506).jpg

The Caucasian hypothesis, which has been rejected by mainstream scholarship, is the hypothesis that the Nile valley "was originally peopled by a branch of the Caucasian race".{{cite book |title=The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity |first=Bruce |last=Baum |pages=108}} It was proposed in 1844 by Samuel George Morton, who acknowledged that Negroes were present in ancient Egypt but claimed they were either captives or servants.{{cite book |first=Samuel George |last=Morton |author-link=Samuel George Morton |title=Crania Ægyptiaca, Or, Observations on Egyptian Ethnography Derived from Anatomy, History and the Monuments |chapter=Egyptian Ethnography |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t1MGAAAAQAAJ |year=1844 |via=Google Books}} George Gliddon (1844) wrote: "Asiatic in their origin .... the Egyptians were white men, of no darker hue than a pure Arab, a Jew, or a Phoenician."{{cite book |first=George Robins |last=Gliddon |author-link=George Gliddon |title=Ancient Egypt: Her monuments, hieroglyphics, history and archaeology |date=1844 |pages=46}}

The similar Hamitic hypothesis, which has been rejected by mainstream scholarship, developed directly from the Asiatic Race Theory, and argued that the Ethiopid and Arabid populations of the Horn of Africa were the inventors of agriculture and had brought all civilization to Africa. It asserted that these people were Caucasians, not Negroid. It also rejected any Biblical basis despite using Hamitic as the theory's name.{{sfn|Sanders|1969|pp=525–532}} Charles Gabriel Seligman in his Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1913) and later works argued that the ancient Egyptians were among this group of Caucasian Hamites, having arrived in the Nile Valley during early prehistory and introduced technology and agriculture to primitive natives they found there.{{cite journal |first=C.G. |last=Seligman |title=Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan |journal=The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland |volume=43 |date=July–December 1913 |pages=593–705 |doi=10.2307/2843546 |jstor=2843546 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/1449643}}

The Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi (1901) believed that ancient Egyptians were the Eastern African (Hamitic) branch of the Mediterranean race, which he called "Eurafrican". According to Sergi, the Mediterranean race or "Eurafrican" contains three varieties or sub-races: the African (Hamitic) branch, the Mediterranean "proper" branch and the Nordic (depigmented) branch.The Mediterranean Race: a Study of the Origins of European Peoples, 1901, pp. v–vi, "Preface", also p. 45. Sergi maintained in summary that the Mediterranean race (excluding the depigmented Nordic or 'white') is: "a brown human variety, neither white nor Negroid, but pure in its elements, that is to say not a product of the mixture of Whites with Negroes or Negroid peoples".Sergi, 1901, p. 250.

Grafton Elliot Smith modified the theory in 1911,"Concepts of Race in the Historiography of Northeast Africa", Wyatt MacGaffey, The Journal of African History, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1966. stating that the ancient Egyptians were a dark haired "brown race",The Ancient Egyptians and the origin of Civilization, 1911, p. 69. most closely "linked by the closest bonds of racial affinity to the Early Neolithic populations of the North African littoral and South Europe",Smith, 1911, p. 25. and not Negroid.As according to Smith the hair of the "Proto-Egyptian was precisely similar to that of the brunet South European" and "presented no resemblance whatever to the so-called 'wooly' appearance and peppercorn-like arrangement of the Negro's hair". – Smith, 1911, p. 58. Smith's "brown race" is not synonymous or equivalent with Sergi's Mediterranean race."Neither in Sergi's nor in Elliot Smith's scheme are Brown and Mediterranean equivalent terms." – MacGaffey, 1966, p. 4. The Hamitic Hypothesis was still popular in the 1960s and late 1970s and was supported notably by Anthony John Arkell and George Peter Murdock.{{sfn|Sanders|1969|p=531}}MacGaffey, 1966, pp. 5–9.

At the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974, none of the participants explicitly voiced support for any theory where Egyptians were Caucasian with a dark pigmentation."{{rp|43}} The current position of modern scholarship is that the Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).{{cite book |last1=Ehret |first1=Christopher |title=Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE |date=20 June 2023 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0-691-24409-9 |pages=83–86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5KjEAAAQBAJ&q=ancient+africa:+a+global+history,+to+300+ce+christopher+ehret |language=en}}

{{Further|Turanid race}}

The Turanid race hypothesis, which has been rejected by mainstream scholarship, is the hypothesis that the ancient Egyptians belonged to the Turanid race, linking them to the Tatars.

It was proposed by Egyptologist Samuel Sharpe in 1846, who was "inspired" by some ancient Egyptian paintings, which depict Egyptians with sallow or yellowish skin. He said "From the colour given to the women in their paintings we learn that their skin was yellow, like that of the Mongul Tartars, who have given their name to the Mongolian variety of the human race.... The single lock of hair on the young nobles reminds us also of the Tartars."History of Egypt, 1846, Part I, p. 3 "The Asiatic Origin of the Race.

The current position of modern scholarship is that the Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development (see population history of Egypt).

{{Main|Dynastic race theory}}

{{further|Egypt–Mesopotamia relations}}

The Dynastic race theory, which has been rejected by modern scholarship, is the hypothesis that a Mesopotamian force had invaded Egypt in predynastic times, imposed itself on the indigenous Badarian people, and become their rulers.{{cite book |title=Early dynastic Egypt |first=Toby A. H. |last=Wilkinson |publisher=Routledge |date=1999 |page=15}}{{cite book |title=Black Athena Revisited |first1=Mary R. |last1=Lefkowitz |first2=Guy MacLean |last2=Rogers |page=65 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=97jwg1Xwpj0C&q=%2B%22dynastic+race+theory%22,+%2Bpetrie&pg=PA65 |access-date=2 June 2016 |isbn=978-0807845554 |year=1996 |publisher=UNC Press Books |via=Google Books}} The Mesopotamian-founded state or states were supposed to have conquered both Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty of Egypt.

The theory was proposed in the early 20th century by Flinders Petrie, who deduced that skeletal remains found at pre-dynastic sites at Naqada (Upper Egypt) indicated the presence of two different races, with one race differentiated physically by a noticeably larger skeletal structure and cranial capacity.{{cite journal |last=Derry |first=D.E. |title=The Dynastic Race in Egypt |journal=Journal of Egyptian Archaeology |volume=42 |date=1956|pages=80–85 |doi=10.1177/030751335604200111 |s2cid=194596267}} Petrie also noted new architectural styles—the distinctly Mesopotamian "niched-façade" architecture—pottery styles, cylinder seals and a few artworks, as well as numerous predynastic rock and tomb paintings depicting Mesopotamian style boats, symbols, and figures. Based on plentiful cultural evidence, Petrie concluded that the invading ruling elite was responsible for the seemingly sudden rise of Egyptian civilization. In the 1950s, the dynastic race theory was widely accepted.

While there is clear evidence the Naqada II culture borrowed abundantly from Mesopotamia, the Naqada II period had a large degree of continuity with the Naqada I period,{{cite book |last=Gardiner |first=Alan |title=Egypt of the Pharaohs |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1961 |page=392}} and the changes which did happen during the Naqada periods happened over significant amounts of time.{{cite book |last1=Shaw |first1=Ian |last2=Nicholson |first2=Paul |title=The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt |location=London |publisher=British Museum Press |date=1995 |page=228}} The most commonly held view today is that the achievements of the First Dynasty were the result of a long period of cultural and political development, and the current position of modern scholarship is that the Egyptian civilization was an indigenous Nile Valley development.{{cite book |last=Redford |first=Donald B. |title=Egypt, Israel, and Canaan in Ancient Times |location=Princeton |publisher=Princeton University Press |date=1992 |page=13}}

Frank Yurco stated that depictions of pharonic iconography such as the royal crowns, Horus falcons and victory scenes were concentrated in the Upper Egyptian Naqada culture and A-Group Nubia. He further elaborated that "Egyptian writing arose in Naqadan Upper Egypt and A-Group Nubia, and not in the Delta cultures, where the direct Western Asian contact was made, [which] further vititates the Mesopotamian-influence argument".{{cite book |last1=Frank J.Yurco |title="The Origin and Development of Ancient Nile Valley Writing," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed). |date=1996 |publisher=Indianapolis Museum of Art |location=Indianapolis, Ind. |isbn=0-936260-64-5 |pages=34–35}} According to David Wengrow, the A-Group polity of the late 4th millenninum BCE is poorly understood since most of the archaeological remains are submerged underneath Lake Nasser.{{cite book |last1=Wengrow |first1=David |title="Ancient Egypt and Nubian: Kings of Flood and Kings of Rain" in Great Kingdoms of Africa, John Parker (eds) |date=2023 |publisher=THAMES & HUDSON |location=[S.l.] |isbn=978-0500252529 |pages=1–40}}

The Senegalese Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop fought against the dynastic race theory with his own "Black Egyptian" theory and claimed, among other things, that Eurocentric scholars supported the dynastic race theory "to avoid having to admit that Ancient Egyptians were black".Epic encounters: culture, media, and U.S. interests in the Middle East – 1945–2000 by Melani McAlister Martin Bernal proposed that the dynastic race theory was conceived by European scholars to deny Egypt its African roots.{{cite book |title=Black Athena Revisited |first1=Mary R. |last1=Lefkowitz |first2=Guy MacLean |last2=Rogers |isbn=978-0807845554 |year=1996|publisher=UNC Press Books }}

{{Undue weight|date=February 2025}}

In 2023, American comedian Kevin Hart's planned tour of Egypt was cancelled, after an uproar on Egyptian social media over Afrocentric claims made by Hart about Egyptian history.{{cite news |title=Kevin Hart's comedy tour stop in Cairo cancelled amid backlash over 'Afrocentric' comments |url=https://news.yahoo.com/kevin-hart-comedy-tour-stop-194716252.html |access-date=5 March 2023 |publisher=Yahoo News |date=February 26, 2023}}

In response to the Hart controversy, Egyptian Egyptologist Zahi Hawass stated that "Africans have nothing to do with the pyramids scientifically"{{cite web |title=Egyptians Create Viral Hashtag Against Kevin Hart's Cairo Performance |date=August 14, 2024 |url=https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/12/19/egyptians-create-viral-hashtag-against-kevin-harts-cairo-performance/amp/}}{{cite web |title=The pyramids are not African. Zahi Hawass responds to Kevin Hart |url=https://arabic.cnn.com/travel/article/2022/12/16/zahi-hawass-responds-kevin-hart-pyrmaids-egypt |website=CNN Arabic |language=ar |date=16 December 2022}} Hawass has previously commented on the race controversy and expressed the view that the Ancient Egyptians were not black and "We believe that the origin of Ancient Egyptians was purely Egyptian based on the discovery made by British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie at Naqada, and this is why the Ancient Egyptian civilisation did not occur in Africa, it occurred only here".{{Cite web |last=Samil |first=Nehar |date=2021 |title=Claims that Ancient Egyptians were black untrue: Zahi Hawass |url=https://dailynewsegypt.com/2021/04/14/claims-that-ancient-egyptians-were-african-untrue-zahi-hawass/ |access-date=2022-09-08 |website=Daily News Egypt}} Hawass had also affirmed that "No Africans built the pyramids because Kushites didn't exist at the period when the pyramids were built" and dismissed the "notions that Egyptians are Black Africans despite our presence in Africa".{{cite web |title=Zahi Hawass Denies Egypt's Pyramids Were Built by Africa's Kushites {{!}} Sada Elbalad |url=https://see.news/zahi-hawass-denies-egypts-pyramids-were-built-by-africas-kushites |website=see.news |language=en}}

• African historiography
• Afrocentrism
• Biological anthropology
• Demographics of Egypt
• DNA history of Egypt
• Dynastic race theory
• Egyptomania
• Egyptian nationalism
• Eurocentrism
• Genetic history of the Middle East
• Genetic history of Africa
• Hamitic hypothesis
• History of anthropology
• Historical race concepts
• Indo-Aryan Migration controversy
• Pharaonism
• Scientific racism
• UNESCO General History of Africa
• Yakub (Nation of Islam)

{{Reflist|group=note}}

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• {{cite book |last=Watterson |first=Barbara |title=Cleopatra: Fact and Fiction |publisher=Amberley Publishing |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-445-66965-6}}

{{refend}}

• {{cite web|url=https://armenianweekly.com/2017/06/01/a-case-of-turkish-genetic-appropriation/|title=A Case of Turkish Genetic Appropriation|work=Aris Govjian|date=June 2017 |publisher=The Armenian Weekly}}.

• {{Commons category-inline|Ancient Egyptian race controversy}}

{{Ancient Egypt topics}}{{Falsification of history}}{{Authority control}}

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