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ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS


by Cheikh Anta Diop
 Reproduced from
Egypt Revisted
Ivan Van Sertima
OCR technology.

The general acceptance, as a sequel to the work of Professor Lackey, of the hypothesis of mankind's monogenetic and African origin, makes it possible to pose the question of the peopling of Egypt and even of the world in completely new terms. More than 150,000 years ago, beings morphologically identical with the man of today were living in the region of the great lakes at the sources of the Nile and nowhere else. This notion, and others which it would take too long to recapitulate here, form the substance of the last report presented by the late Dr. Lackey at the Seventh Pan-African Congress of Pre-History in Addis Ababa in 1971. It means that the whole human race had its origin, just as the ancients had guessed, at the foot of the Mountains of the Moon. Against all expectations and in defiance of recent hypotheses it was from this place that men moved out to people the rest of the world. From this two facts of capital importance result:

(a) of necessity the earliest men were ethnically homogeneous and beyond. Gloger's law, which would also appear to be applicable to human beings, lays it down that warm-blooded animals evolving in a warm humid climate will secrete a black pigment (eumelanin) 2 Hence if mankind originated in the tropics around the latitude of the great lakes, he was bound to have brown pigmentation from the start and it was by differentiation in other climates that the original stock later split into different races;

(b) there were only two routes available by which these early men could move out to people the other continents, namely, the Sahara and the Nile valley. It is the latter region which will be discussed here.


From the Upper Palaeolithic to the dynastic epoch, the whole of the river's basin was taken over progressively by these negroid peoples.

Evidence of Physical Anthropology on the Race of the Ancient Egyptians
It might have been thought that, working on physiological evidence, the findings of the anthropologists would dissipate all doubts by providing reliable and definitive truths. This is by no means so the arbitrary nature of the criteria used, to go no farther, as well as abolishing any notion of a conclusion acceptable without qualification, introduces so much scientific hair-splitting that there are times when one wonders whether the solution of the problem would not have been nearer if we had not had the ill luck to approach it from this angle.

Nevertheless, although the conclusions of these anthropological studies stop short of the full truth, they still speak unanimously of the existence of a negro race from the most distant ages of prehistory down to the dynastic period. It is not possible in this paper to cite all these conclusions: they will be found summarized in Chapter X of Dr. Emile Massoulard's Histoire et protohistoire dEgypte (In- stitut d'Ethnologie, Paris, 1949). We shall quote selected items only.

Miss Fawcett considers that the Negadah skulls form a sufficiently homogeneous collection to warrant the assumption of a Negadah race. In the total height of the skull, the funicular height, the length and breadth of the face, nasal length, cephalic index and facial index this race would seem to approximate to the negro: in nasal breadth, height of orbit, length of palate and nasal index it would seem closer to the Germanic peoples; accordingly the Pre-Dynastic Negadians are likely to have resembled the negroes in cer- tain of their characterize and the white races in others. (pp. 402-3)

It is worth noting that the nasal indices of Ethiopians and Dravidians would seem to approximate them to the Germanic peoples, though both are black races. These measurements, which would leave an open choice between the two extremes represented by the negro and the Germanic races, give an idea of the elasticity of the criteria employed. A sample follows:

An attempt was made by Thomson and Randall Manlier to determine more precisely the importance of the negroid element in the series of skull from EI'Amrah, Abydos and Hou. They divided them into three groups: (1) negoid skulls (those with a facial index below 54 and a nasal index above 50, i.e. short broad face and broad nose); (2) non-negroid skulls (facial index above 54 and nasal index below 50, long narrow face and narrow nose); (3) intermediate skulls (assignable to one of the two previous groups on the basis of either the facial index or on the evidence of the nasal index, plus indited- uals marginal to either group). The proportion of negroids would seem to have been 24% of men and 19% of women in the early Pre-Dynastic and 25% and 28% respectively in the late Pre-Dynastic. Keith has disputed the value of the criterion selected by Thomson and Ranall Manlier to distinguish the negroid from the non-negroid skulls. His opinion is that if the same criteria were applied to the study of any series of contemporary English skulls, the sample would be found to contain approximately 30% of negroid types. (pp. 420-1)

The converse of Kieth's proposition could also be asserted, namely, that if the criterion were applied to the 140 million negroes now alive in black Africa a minimum of 100 million negroes woudl emerge whitewashed. It may also be remarked that the distinction between negroid, non-negroid and intermediary is unclear: the fact is that `non-negroid' does not mean of white race and `intermediary' still less so. `Falkenburger reopened the anthropological study of the Egyptian population in a recent work in which he discusses 1,787 male skulls varying in date from the old Pre-Dynastic to our own day. He distinguishes four main groups' (p. 421). The sorting of the predynastic skulls into these four groups gives the following results for the whole predynastic period: `36% negroid, 33% Mediterranean, 11% Cro-Magnoid and 20% of individuals not falling in any of these groups but approximating either to the Cro-Magnoid or to the negroid'. The proportion of negroids is definitely higher than that suggested by Thomson and Randall Mac- Iver, though Keith considers the latter too high.

Do Falkenburger's figures reflect the reality? It is not our task to decide this. If they are accurate, the Pre-Dynastic population far from representing a pure bred race, as Eliot-Smith has said, comprised at least three distinct racial elements over a third of negroids, a third of Mediterraneans, a tenth of Cro-Magnoids and a fifth of individuals crossbred-to varying degrees' (p. 422).

The point about all these conclusions is that despite their discrepancies the de- gree to which they converge proves that the basis of the Egyptian population was negro in the Pre-Dynastic epoch. Thus they are all incompatible with the theories that the negro element only infiltrated into Egypt at a late stage. Far otherwise, the facts prove that it was preponderant from the beginning to the end of Egyptian history, particularly when we note once more that `Mediterranean' is not a synonym for `white', Eliot-Smith's `brown' or 'Mediterranean' race being nearer the mark. `Elliot-Smith classes these Photo-Egyptians as a branch of what he calls the brown race, which is the same as Sergi's "Mediterranean or Eurafrican race".' The term `brown' in this context refers to skin colour and is simply a euphemism for negro 3 it is thus clear that it was the whole of the Egyptian population which was negro, barring an infiltration of white nomads in the photo-dynastic epoch.

In Petrie's study of the Egyptian race we are introduced to a possible classifiy cation element in great abundance which cannot fail to surprise the reader.

Petrie published a study of the races of Egypt in the Pre-Dynastic and Photo-Dynastic periods working only on portrayals of them. Apart from the steatopygian race, he distinguishes six separate types: an aquiline type repreentative of a white-skinned Libyan race; a plaited-beard type belonging to an invading race coming perhaps from the shores of the Rad Sea; a `sharp- nosed' type almost certainly from the Arabian Desert; a `tilted nose' type from Middle Egypt; a `jutting beard' type from Lower Egypt; and a `narrow-nosed' type from Upper Egypt. Going on the images, there would thus have been seven different racial types in Egypt during the epochs we are conidering. In the pages which follow we shall see that study of the skeletons seems to provide little authority for these conclusions. (p. 391)

The above mode of classification gives an idea of the arbitrary nature of the criteria used to define the Egyptian races. Be that as it may, it is clear that an- thropology is far from having established the existence of a white Egyptian race and would indeed tend rather to suggest the opposite. Nevertheless, in current textbooks the question is suppressed: in most cases it is simply and flatly asserted that the Egyptians were white and the honest layman is left with the impression that any such assertion must necessarily have a prior basis of solidtesearch. But there is no such basis, as this chapter has shown. And so generation after generation has been misled. Many authorities skate around the difficulty today by speaking of red-skinned and black-skinned whites without their sense of common logic being in the least upset. `The Greeks call Africa "Libya", a misnomer ab initio since Africa contains many other peoples besides the so-called Libyans, who belong among the whites of the northern or Meddler- ranean periphery and hence are many steps removed from the brown (or red) skinned whites (Egyptians).'4

In a textbook intended for the middle secondary school we find the following sentence: `A Black is distinguished less by the colour of his skin (for there are black-skinned "whites") than by his features: thick lips, fattened nose...'5 It is only through these twistings of the basic definitions that it has been possible to bleach the Egyptian race.

It is worthwhile calling to mind the exaggerations of the theorists of anthropo- sociology in the last century and the beginnings of the present one whose minute physiognomical analyses discovered racial stratifications even in Europe, and particularly in France, when in fact there was really a single and by now practi- cally homogeneous people.6 Today Occidentals who value their national cohesion are careful to avoid examining their own societies on so divisive a hypothesis, but continue unthinkingly to apply the old methods to the non-European societies.

Human Images of the Protohistoric Period: Their Anthropological Value

The study of human images made by Flinders Pearte on another plane shows that the ethnic type was black: according to Pearte these people were the Anu whose name, known to us since the protohistoric epoch, is always `written' with three pillars on the few inscriptions extant from the end of the fourth millennium before our era. The natives of the country are always represented with unmistak- able chiefly embalms for which one looks in vain among the infrequent portray- als of other races, who are all shown as servile foreign elements having reached the valley by infiltration (cf. Tera Neter7 and the Scorpion king whom Pearte groups together: `The Scorpion King... belonged to the preceding race of Anu, moreover he worshipped Min and Set.')"

As we shall see later Min, like the chief gods of Egypt, was called by the tradition of Egypt itself `the great negro'.

After a glance at the various foreign types of humanity who disputed the valley with the indigenous blacks, Petrie describes the latter, the Anu, in the following terms:

Besides these types, belonging to the North and East, there is the aboriginal race of the Anu, or Annu, people (written with three pillars) who became a part of the historic inhabitants. The subject ramifies too doubtfully if we in- clude all single pillar names, but looking for the Annu wriften, with the three pillars, we find that they occupied southern Egypt and Nubia, and the name is also applied in Sinai and Libya. As to the southern Egyptians, we have the most essential document, one portrait of a chief, Tera Neter, roughly mod- elled in relief in green glazed faience, found in the early temple at Abydos. Preceding his name, his address is given on this earliest of visiting cards, `Palace of the Anu in Hemen city, Tera Neter'. Hemen was the name of the god ofTuphium. Erment, opposite to it, was the palace of Annu of the south, Annu Menu. The nex( place in the south is Aunti (Gefeleyn), and beyond that Aunyt-Seni (Esneh) 9 Amilineau lists in geographical order the fortified towns built along the length of the Nile valley by the Annu blacks.

XX=Ant=(Esneh)
XX=AN=the souther 'On'
XX=Denderah, the traditional birthplace of Isis
XX=A town also called 'On' in the name of Taniis
XX=The town called the nothern 'On', the renowned city of Heliopolis.

The common ancestor of the Annu settled along the Nile was Ant or An, a name determinedby the word --- (khet) and which, dating from the earliest versions of the `Book of the Dead' onwards, is given to the god Osiris.
The wife of 0'~# the god Ant is the goddess Anet si~J who is also his sister, just as Isis is the sister of Osiris.
The identity of the god An with Osiris has been demonstrated by Pleyte;'o w e should, indeed, recall that Osiris is also surnamed by (?) the Anou: `Osiris Ani'. The god Anu is represented alternatively by the symbol a and the symbol a . Are the Aunak tribes now inhabiting the upper Nile related to the ancient Annu? Future research will provide the answer to this question.
Petrie thinks it possible to make a distinction between the predynastic people represented by Tera Neter and the Scorpion King (who is himself a Pharaoh even at that date as his head-dress shows) and a dynastic people worshipping the fal- con and probably represented by the Pharaohs Narmer" Khasekhem, Sanekhei and Zoser '2 .By reference to the faces reproduced in the figure it is easily per- ceived that there is no ethnic difference between the two lots, and both belong to the black race.

The mural in tomb SD 63 CSequence Date 63) of Hierakonpolis shows the native-born blacks subjugating the foreign intruders into the valley if we accept Petrie's interpretation: `Below is the black ship at Hierakonpolis belonging to the black men who are shown as conquering the red men'.13

The rebel-el-Arak knife haft shows similar battle scenes: `There are also combats of black men overcoming red men.'13 However, the archaeological value of this object, which was not found in situ but in the possession o'f a mer- chant, is less than that of the preceding items.
What the above shows is that the images of men of the protohistoric and even of the dynastic period in no way square with the idea of the Egyptian race popu- lar with Western anthropologists. Wherever the autochthonous racial type is represented with any degree of clearness, it is evidently negroid. Nowhere are the Indo-European and Semitic elements shown even as ordinary freemen serving a local chief, but invariably as conquered foreigners. The rare portrayals found are always shown with the distinctive marks of captivity, hands tied behind the back or strained over the shoulders.14 A protodynastic figurine represents an Indo- European prisoner with a long plait on his knees, with his hands bound tight to his body. The characteristics of the object itself show that it was intended as the foot of a piece of furniture and represented a conquered race15 Often the portrayal is deliberately grotesque as with other photo-dynastic figures showing indi viduals with their hair planted in what Pearte calls pigtails.16

In the tomb of king Ka (first dynasty) at Abydos, Pearte found a plaque show- ing an Indo-European captive in chains with his hands behind his back '7 ELliot- Smith considers that the individual represented is a Semite. The dynastic epoch has also yielded the documents illustrated in Pls 1.9 and 1. 14 showing Indo-Eu ropean and Semitic prisoners. In contrast, the typically negroid features of the Pharaohs (Narmer, first dynasty, the actual founder of the Pharaonic line; Zoser, third dynasty, by whose time all the technological elements of the Egyptian civi- lization were already in evidence; Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, a Cameroon type;'s Menthuhotep, founder of the eleventh dynasty, very black;'9 Sesostris I; Queen Ahmosis Nefertai; and Amenhophis I) show that all classes of Egyptian society belong to the same black race.

Pls 1.15 and 1. 16, showing the Indo-European and Semitic types, have been included deliberately to contrast them with the quite dissimilar physiognomies of the black Pharaohs and to demonstrate clearly that there is no trace of either of the first two types in the whole line of Pharaohs if we exclude the foreign Libyan and Ptolemaic dynasties.

It is usual to contrast the negresses on the tomb of Horemheb with the Egyptian type also shown. This contrast is surely a false one: it is social and not ethnic and there is as much difference between an aristocratic Senegalese lady from Dakar and those antique African peasant women with their horny hands and splay feet as between the latter and an Egyptian lady of the cities of antiquity. There are two variants of the black race: (a) straight-haired, represented in Asia by the Dravidians and in Africa by the Nubibus and the Tubbou or Teddy, all three with jet-black skins; (b) the kinky-haired blacks of the Equatorial re- gions. Both types entered into the composition of the Egyptian populations.

Melanin Dosage Test

In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin colour and hence the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility.

Melanin (eumelanin), the chemical body responsible for skin pigmentation, is, broadly speaking, insoluble and is preserved for millions of years in the skins of fossil animals.20 There is thus all the more reason for it to be readily recoverable in the skins of Egyptian mummies, despite a tenacious legend that the skin of mummies, tainted by the embalming material, is no longer susceptible of any analysis.21 Although the epidermis is the main site of the melanin, the melanocytes penetrating the derm at the boundary between it and the epidermis, even where the latter has mostly been destroyed by the embalming materials, show a melanin level which is non-existent in the white-skinned races. The samples I myself analysed were taken in the physical anthropology laboratory of the Music de l'Homme in Paris off the mummies from the Marietta excavations in Egypt. 22 The same method is perfectly suitable for use on the royal mummies of Thutmoses III, Seti I and Rameses II in the Cairo Museum, which are in an excellent state of preservation. For two years past I have been vainly begging the curator of the Cairo Museum for similar samples to analyse. No more than a few square millimetres of skin would be required to mount a specimen, the preparations being a few urn in thickness and lightened with ethyl benzoate. They can be studied by natural light or with ultra-violet lighting which renders the melanin grains fluorescent.
Either way let us simply say that the evaluation of melanin level by microscopic examination is a laboratory method which enables us to classify the ancient Egyptians unquestionably among the black races.

Osteological Measurements

Among the criteria accepted in physical anthropology for classifying races, the osteological measurements are perhaps the least misleading (in contrast to craniometry) for distinguishing a black man from a white man. By this criterion, also, the Egyptians belong among the black races. This study was made by the distinguished German savant Leprous at the end of the nineteenth century and his conclusions remain valid: subsequent methodological progress in the domain oi' physical anthropology in no way undermines what is called the `Leprous canon' which, in round figures, gives the bodily proportions of the ideal Egyptian, short-armed and of negroid or negrito physical type.23

Blood-Groups

It is a notable fact that even today Egyptians, particularly in Upper Egypt, belong to the same Group B as the populations of western Africa on the Atlantic seaboard and not the A2 Group characteristic of the white race prior to any crossbreeding.24 It would be interesting to study the extent of Group A2 distribution in Egyptian mummies, which present-day techniques make possible.



... For more see Egypt Revistied, Ivan Van Sertima. Journal of African Civilizations Lts., Inc.