page_title: Black Egyptian hypothesis
section_title: Ancient art
hierarchical_section_title: Black Egyptian hypothesis / Ancient art
caption_attribution_description: English: 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&#160;; d. Ecke aus Raum M. [c. und d. jetzt im K. Mus. zu Berlin]
context_page_description: The Black Egyptian hypothesis states that ancient Egypt was a predominantly Black civilization, as the term is currently understood in modern American ethnic perception. It includes a particular focus on identifying links to Sub-Saharan cultures and the questioning of the race of specific notable individuals from Dynastic times, including Tutankhamun, the king represented in the Great Sphinx of Giza, and Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra.
  The hypothesis is primarily adopted by Afrocentrists. while Asante maintains that Diop predates the term. Advocates of the hypothesis believe race is commonly used by historians, the black racial category was comprehensive enough to absorb the various phenotypes in Ancient Egypt, and "many of the most powerful Egyptian dynasties...one can usefully call black."
  Mainstream scholars reject the notion that Egypt was a black civilization; they maintain that, despite the phenotypic diversity of Ancient and present day Egyptians, applying modern notions of black or white races to ancient Egypt is anachronistic.
context_section_description: Diop saw the representation of black people in Egyptian art and iconography throughout Egyptian history.  University of Chicago scholars state that the skin pigment used in Egyptian paintings to refer to Nubians can range "from dark red to brown to black". This can be observed in paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Huy, as well as Ramses II's temple at Beit el-Wali.  Also, Snowden indicates that Statius spoke of "red Ethiopians" and Romans had accurate knowledge of "negroes of a red, copper-colored complexion...among African tribes".
  Professors Vercoutter, Ghallab and Leclant stated that "Egyptian iconography, from the 18th Dynasty onward, showed characteristic representations of black people who had not previously been depicted; these representations meant, therefore, that at least from that dynasty onward the Egyptians had been in contact with peoples who were considered ethnically distinct from them."
  Depictions of Egyptians in 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.  Najovits states 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." He continues that "There is an extraordinary abundance of Egyptian works of art which clearly depicted sharply contrasted reddish-brown Egyptians and black Nubians."
  Barbara Mertz writes 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, 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 Cushite. In his funerary scroll, he is shown with dark brown skin instead of the conventional reddish brown used for Egyptians
  Ahmose-Nefertari is an example of the controversy. In most depictions of Ahmose-Nefertari, she is pictured with black skin, while in some instances her skin is blue or red. In 1939 Flinders Petrie said "an invasion from the south...established a black queen as the divine ancestress of the XVIIIth dynasty" He also said "a possibility of the black being symbolic has been suggested."  Petrie also stated that "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 Der 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." 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. In more recent times, scholars such as Joyce Tyldesley, Sigrid Hodel-Hoenes, and Graciela Gestoso Singer, argued that her skin color 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 the underworld." 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 b
caption: From Lepsius: Bottom row, left to right "Reth" (Egyptians), "Aamu" (Asiatics), Top row, left to right "Nehesu" (Nubians), and "Themehu" (Libyans)
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