Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
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<strong>Egypt</strong>ologists and anthropologists, in reference to the racial origins <strong>of</strong> the ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ians. Not surprisingly, this sort <strong>of</strong><br />
labeling has generated much confusion and debate, not least by racists in <strong>Egypt</strong> and elsewhere, who are fearful <strong>of</strong> having<br />
<strong>Black</strong> Africa as the true origin <strong>of</strong> the ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ian civilization. A contemporary example <strong>of</strong> such fear is a description<br />
in a popular pocket travel guidebook: “Unfortunately, as in most developing societies, the world’s population is usually<br />
categorized according to a cultural-racial hierarchy. White Westerners are at the top, <strong>Egypt</strong>ians next, then Arabs,<br />
followed by Asians, and lastly Africans. While these attitudes are undoubtedly racist, they do not find violent expression<br />
toward poorer local Sudanese, for instance.” 1<br />
Of course, such a racial hierarchy system is deplorable 2 to current sensibilities <strong>of</strong> modernity, and such a ranking is<br />
by no means universally adhered to by the <strong>Egypt</strong>ian people. *39 Yet evidence that the guidebook’s point is somewhat<br />
accurate to many people’s experience is the recurrent distribution <strong>of</strong> the guidebook and the fact that its reviewers do not<br />
seem to complain about the racial hierarchy description. And as we shall see, such cultural-racial value ranking has<br />
indeed played a role in shaping scholarly <strong>Egypt</strong>ology.<br />
THE HALF-HAMITES THEORY<br />
A theory that was very popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggested that the Hamites were a<br />
Mediterranean people who had migrated to central or eastern Africa and interbred with the Negroes there to produce a<br />
Negroid-Hamitic race <strong>of</strong> black-skinned people with fine Caucasian-like features. Examples were thought to be the Tutsi<br />
and the Masai. 3 For example, in 1930 the British ethnologist Charles Gabriel Seligman even claimed that the Hamites<br />
were a subgroup <strong>of</strong> the Caucasian race and that all the major achievements <strong>of</strong> the African people were, in fact, the result<br />
<strong>of</strong> Hamites who had migrated into central Africa as Europeans and brought along with them all the know-how <strong>of</strong><br />
civilization, which they then passed on to the inferior <strong>Black</strong> race. 4 In other words, the alleged <strong>Black</strong> Hamites were the<br />
product <strong>of</strong> a purer and superior Hamitic race. <strong>The</strong> conclusion was therefore that the <strong>Black</strong> Hamites should be regarded as<br />
superior to the “black negroes” by virtue <strong>of</strong> their alleged Mediterranean or Caucasian origins. According to C. G.<br />
Seligman,<br />
Apart from relatively late Semitic influence . . . the civilizations <strong>of</strong> Africa are the civilizations <strong>of</strong> the Hamites, its<br />
history is the record <strong>of</strong> these peoples and <strong>of</strong> their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the<br />
Bushmen, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized <strong>Egypt</strong>ians or by such wider pastoralists as are<br />
represented at the present day by the Beja and Somali. . . . <strong>The</strong> incoming Hamites were pastoral “Europeans”—<br />
arriving wave after wave—better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes. 5<br />
<strong>The</strong>se false and rather blatantly racist views were finally challenged by many scholars in the 1950s and ’60s, but so<br />
deep-rooted was the belief that <strong>Black</strong> Negroes were inferior to <strong>Black</strong> Hamites that such views are still entertained by<br />
some misguided and uneducated people, making it difficut to remove them once and for all. We must recognize, <strong>of</strong><br />
course, that the Hamite controversy is not a simple one and that there are many gray areas in this debate that are far too<br />
complex to do full justice to them here. Suffice it to say, however, that until very recently the very idea that an advanced<br />
<strong>Black</strong> race from sub-Saharan Africa was at the source <strong>of</strong> the ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ian civilization, and perhaps even <strong>of</strong> all<br />
civilization, was disturbing to many Western people and was pure anathema to those who held Eurocentric views. Thus<br />
we still find in textbooks the dubious Mediterranean or Levantine or Sumerian-Babylonian labels listed to explain the<br />
origin <strong>of</strong> the ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ians, while precious little is said <strong>of</strong> the far more plausible <strong>Black</strong> African influence. True, some<br />
<strong>Egypt</strong>ologists do at times express their opinions that there could be a central African or east African origin <strong>of</strong> the ancient<br />
<strong>Egypt</strong>ians, but such views are diluted by the use <strong>of</strong> such terms as Hamitic, Half-Hamitic, and Hamitic pastoralists that<br />
still imply a Mediterranean European origin. For example, Henry Frankfort, the renowned director <strong>of</strong> the prestigious<br />
Warburg Institute and pr<strong>of</strong>essor <strong>of</strong> preclassical history, uses such terminology when he writes, “. . . somatic and<br />
ethnological resemblances, and certain features <strong>of</strong> their language, connect the ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ians firmly with the Hamiticspeaking<br />
people <strong>of</strong> East Africa. It seems that the Pharaonic civilization arose upon the north-east African Hamitic<br />
substratum” 6 and “the pr<strong>of</strong>ound significance which cattle evidently possessed for the ancient <strong>Egypt</strong>ians allows us to<br />
bring an entirely fresh kind <strong>of</strong> evidence to bear on the problem. . . . In the life <strong>of</strong> the Hamites or Half-Hamites, cattle<br />
played an enormous part . . .,” 7 and “. . . that North and East African substratum from which <strong>Egypt</strong>ian culture arose and<br />
which still survives among Hamitic and half-Hamitic people today.” 8