In response to recent incorrect claims that ancient Egyptians were not African, the Nile Valley Collective presents
MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT THE NILE VALLEY
Is Flinders Petrie’s New Race Theory accepted by Egyptologists today?
No. Nor is the Dynastic Race Theory that he and others referred to.
The theory was refuted by Jacques de Morgan, the archaeologist who worked the site of Naqada after Petrie did. de Morgan’s results were accepted by the entire Egyptological community, including Flinders Petrie, as he stated in a talk at the Anthropological Institute, which was published in 1899.
Bibliography
Arkell, A. J. and Peter J. Ucko. “Review of Predynastic Development in the Nile Valley.” Current Anthropology 6,2 (1965): 145–166.
Challis, Debbie. The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic ideas of Francis Galton and Flinders Petrie. Bloomsbury, 2013.
Hassan, Fekri A. “The Predynastic of Egypt.” Journal of World Prehistory 2,2 (1988): 135–185.
Keita, S. O. “‘Race’: ‘There are no races’, What do Scientists Mean? Part I.” Medium. April 29, 2021. Part of a series on “race.”
de Morgan, Jacques. Recherches sur les origines de l’Égypte, vol. 2, Ethnographie préhistorique et tombeau royal de Négadah. E. Leroux, 1897.
Petrie, W. M. Flinders. “On our present knowledge of the Early Egyptians.” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 28 (1899): 202–203.
Does the Hamitic hypothesis factor into Egyptology or Nubiology today?
No.
Egyptologists and Nubiologists do not look to the Hamitic hypothesis to explain the movements of the people who settled the Nile River Valley.
Bibliography
Sanders, Edith R. “The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origins and Functions in Time Perspective.” The Journal of African History 10,4 (1969): 521–532.
Wengrow, David. “Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of Power: The African Foundations of Ancient Egyptian Civilization Reconsidered.” In Ancient Egypt in Africa, edited by Andrew Reid and David O’Connor, 121–135. Routledge, 2003.
Did people just show up all at once in the Nile Valley?
No.
Population groups gradually settled in the region over time. There was no single “people” or group of people who settled the Nile Valley and began what we refer to as ancient Egyptian dynastic history.
Bibliography
Mokhtar, Gamal. “Introduction.” In General History of Africa II: Ancient Civilizations of Africa, 1–26. UNESCO, 1981.
Wengrow, David, Michael Dee, et al. “Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: a prehistoric perspective on Egypt’s place in Africa.” Antiquity 88 (2014): 95–111.
Was Egyptian culture African in its origin?
Yes.
Egyptian culture, as reflected in the early dynastic era, emerged from a set of cultural features that existed across a large swath of northeast Africa.
Bibliography
Ehret, Christopher. “The African Sources of Egyptian Culture and Language.” In África antigua: el antiguo Egipto, una civilización africana, edited by Josep Cervelló Autuori, 121–128. Aula Aegyptiaca Fundación, 2001.
Exell, Karen, ed. Egypt in its African Context. Archeopress, 2011. See especially the chapter by Alain Anselin, “Some Notes about an Early African Pool of Cultures from which Emerged the Egyptian Civilisation,” 43–53.
Smith, Stuart Tyson. “Gift of the Nile? Climate Change, the Origins of Egyptian Civilization and Its Interactions within Northeast Africa.” In Across the Mediterranean – Along the Nile, Volume 1, 325–346. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2020.
Wengrow, David, Michael Dee, et al. “Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: a prehistoric perspective on Egypt’s place in Africa.” Antiquity 88 (2014): 95–111.
Do any ancient Egyptian artifacts resonate with contemporary people of African descent?
Yes.
A museum exhibit brought together examples of hair combs from various cultural groups in Africa, including ancient Egypt. An exhibit on East African headrests examined their continued use over 5,000 years in different parts of Africa. Both exhibits continue to resonate deeply with people of African descent.
Bibliography
Ashton, Sally-Ann. 6,000 Years of African Combs. The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2013.
Ashton, Sally-Ann and Jean-Michel Massing. Triumph Protection and Dreams: East African Headrests in Context. The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2011.
Did Nubians simply copy Egyptian cultural traditions?
No.
Choices made by Nubians to combine indigenous cultural elements with aspects of Egyptian material culture—often used in innovative ways—reflect the cultural entanglements between, and long-term cultural memory of, Egyptian and Nubian people over thousands and thousands of years.
Bibliography
Ashby, Solange. “Black Is Queen: The Divine Feminine in Kush.” Online lecture at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. March 25, 2021.
Ashby, Solange. Calling Out to Isis: The Enduring Presence of Nubian Worshippers at Philae. Gorgias, 2020.
Smith, Stuart Tyson. “Ethnicity and Culture.” In The Egyptian World, 218–241. Routledge, 2007.
Smith, Stuart Tyson and Michele Buzon. “Identity, Commemoration, and Remembrance in Colonial Encounters: Burials at Tombos during the Egyptian New Kingdom Nubian Empire and Its Aftermath.” In Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East, 185–216. University of Colorado Press, 2014.
Is the earliest evidence of social complexity and large-scale construction in Africa found along the Nile in Egypt in places such as Naqada?
No.
A number of large carved stone monuments exist at the site of Nabta Playa. Thought to be a regional ceremonial center, Nabta Playa is located in Nubia, 100 kilometers west of Abu Simbel. Human activity in the area began as early as 11,000 years ago. Evidence from the site includes cattle burials, large constructions, specific arrangements of stone, including an astronomical circle, and suggestions of social control and hierarchy. The proposed timeframe, 7500 cal B.P., is earlier than the dating of similar evidence found in the Nile Valley.
Bibliography
Malville, J. McKim, Fred Wendorf, Ali A. Mazar, and Romuald Schild. “Megaliths and Neolithic Astronomy in Southern Egypt.” Nature 392 (1988): 488–491.
Wendorf, Fred and Romuald Schild. “Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17 (1998): 97–123.
Were the Egyptians always antagonistic toward Nubian people?
No.
Textual and artistic evidence shows that people with Nubian names and people who had themselves depicted in Nubian attire lived in Egypt and married people with Egyptian names.
Bibliography
The stela of the Nubian soldier Nenu, 03.1848, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Could Nubians live in Egypt and not be slaves of Egyptians?
Yes.
Several Nubian women were queens of the Dynasty 11 king Mentuhotep II. They also served as priestesses of Hathor. The kings of Dynasty 25 were Nubians who conquered and ruled Egypt. The nobleman Maiherpri was a Nubian who was reared at the royal court, served as a high official under Thutmose IV, and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. Nubians were famed archers. They frequently served as police and as soldiers for the Egyptian king. The famous painted box of Tutankhamun depicts Nubians in the king’s army and accompanying the king on a hunting expedition.
Bibliography
Painted box of Tutankhamun depicting Nubians in the Egyptian king’s army.
Does the Egyptian word nhsy (Nehesi), which refers to a “Nubian” person, correspond to a skin color identity of “black”?
No.
The word nhsy is related to the verb “to bite or to sting (like an insect).” It referred to Nubian people because of their famed skill at archery, as a pun on the sting of their well-placed arrows. Another suggestion is that nhsy is related to the verb “to implore a deity” and may reference the renown of Nubian magicians and the incantations they made.
Bibliography
Chichi, Sandro Capo. “On the Etymology of the Egyptian Word Nehesi ‘Nubian’.” NAC’s Journal of African Cultures and Civilizations 1 (2015).
Smith, Stuart Tyson. “Ethnicity: Constructions of Self and Other in Ancient Egypt.” Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018): 113–146.
Is there a single African population or “physical type”?
No.
The many population groups in Africa exhibit a range of external phenotypes, including various different hues of skin tone, different types of hair form and texture, and different physiognomies.
Bibliography
Keita, S. O. Y., R. A. Kittles, et al., “Conceptualizing human variation.” Nature Genetics Supplement 36,11 (Nov 2004): S17–S20, p. S18–S19.
Did the emergence of Homo sapiens involve the entire continent of Africa?
Yes.
Fossil evidence from sites in East and South Africa have typically been regarded as the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens. Recent finds in Morocco show that the emergence of modern humans may have occurred across a more widespread area in Africa than previously recognized.
Bibliography
Was the Sahara ever a fertile area?
Yes.
The African Humid Period is the era when northern Africa was a much wetter environment than today. The lush Green Sahara (10,000–6,000 years ago) supported networks of cattle-herding pastoralists who moved across northern Africa in north–south and in east–west directions. The resultant meeting up of different population groups would have resulted in exchanges of cultural traditions and mixings of people.
Bibliography
Smith, Stuart Tyson. “Gift of the Nile? Climate Change, the Origins of Egyptian Civilization and Its Interactions within Northeast Africa.” In Across the Mediterranean – Along the Nile, Volume 1, 325–346. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2020.
Wengrow, David, Michael Dee, et al. “Cultural convergence in the Neolithic of the Nile Valley: a prehistoric perspective on Egypt’s place in Africa.” Antiquity 88 (2014): 95–111.
Once people settled along the Nile in Egypt and the desiccation of the Sahara began, was Egypt cut off from other African population groups?
No.
Even with the desertification of formerly fertile lands, people continued to traverse the desert through routes punctuated by oases. People who lived along the Nile in Egypt continually had interactions with people in Nubia and with people elsewhere in Africa.
Bibliography
Smith, Stuart Tyson. “Gift of the Nile? Climate Change, the Origins of Egyptian Civilization and Its Interactions within Northeast Africa.” In Across the Mediterranean – Along the Nile, Volume 1, 325–346. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2020.
Were the ancient Egyptians African?
Undeniably.
Published 16 April 2021.
Edited 3 May 2021.
Nile Valley Collective 