Ancient Egyptian Race Controversy - Position of Modern Scholarship

Position of Modern Scholarship

Main article: Population history of Egypt See also: Race in ancient history

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

Since the second half of the 20th century, most (but not all) scholars have held that applying modern notions of race to ancient Egypt is anachronistic. The 2001 Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt states that "Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study.” The focus of some experts who study population biology has been to consider whether or not the Ancient Egyptians were primarily biologically North African rather than to which race they belonged.

It is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area. About 5,000 years ago the Sahara area dried out, and part of the indigenous Saharan population retreated East towards the Nile Valley. In addition Neolithic farmers from the Near East are known to have entered the Nile Valley, bringing with them their food crops, sheep, goats and cattle. Fekri Hassan and Edwin et al. point to mutual influence from both inner Africa as well as the Levant.

Dynastic Egyptians referred to their country as "The Two Lands". During the Predynastic period (about 4800 to 4300BC) the Merimde culture flourished in the northern part of Egypt (Lower Egypt). This culture, among others, has links to the Levant in the Near East. The pottery of the later Buto Maadi culture, best known from the site at Maadi near Cairo, also shows connections to the southern Levant. In the southern part of Egypt (Upper Egypt) the predynastic Badarian culture was followed by the Naqada culture. These people seem to be more closely related to the Nubians and North East Africans than with northern Egyptians. Recent excavations at Qustal, near Abu Simbel (Modern Sudan), affirmed that the oldest examples of Egyptian dynastic and monarchial motifs can be found alongside A-group Nubian ceramics in Upper Egypt and Nubia. The Qustul burner, along with other artifacts from the Qustul area, provides the evidence that the "pivotal change" from predynastic to dynastic "Egyptian monumental art" happened in Africa and by Africans.

Due to its geographical location at the crossroads of several major cultural areas, Egypt has experienced a number of foreign invasions during historical times, including by the Canaanites (Hyksos), the Libyans, the Kushites (Nubians) the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedonian Greeks, the Romans, Byzantium, the Arabs, the Ottoman Turks, the French and the British.

UNESCO convened the "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974. At that forum the "Black Egyptian" theory was rejected by 90% of delegates, and the symposium concluded that Ancient Egyptians were much the same as modern Egyptians. The arguments for all sides are recorded in the UNESCO publication General History of Africa, with the "Origin of the Egyptians" chapter being written by Diop.

In 1996, the Indianapolis Museum of Art published a collection of essays, which included contributions from leading experts in various fields including archaeology, art history, physical anthropology, African studies, Egyptology, Afrocentric studies, linguistics, and classical studies. While the contributors differed in some opinions, the consensus of the authors was that Ancient Egypt was a North African civilization (although ethnic type was not mentioned), based on Egypt's geographic location on the African continent.

In 2008, S. O. Y. Keita wrote that "There is no scientific reason to believe that the primary ancestors of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast Africa.... The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range of evolutionary influences over time, although researchers vary in the details of their explanations of those influences." Recent DNA studies have indicated that ancient Egyptians had an approximate 90% genetic commonality with modern Egyptians, which would make the current population largely representative of the ancient inhabitants.