The debate over the ethnic identity of dynastic Egypt is rooted in disparate physical depictions of the Egyptian people in the archaeological record, and in conflicting perceptions and portrayals from the Classical era forward. Against the backdrop of scientific racism, the beginning of academic Egyptology and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the issue of race and dynastic Egypt erupted into full-blown, international controversy in the 1790s.[2] In the more than two centuries since, the debate has ebbed and flowed, with Afrocentrism as an approach to the study of history serving in recent years to raise the profile of, and further fuel, the controversy. [3][4]
Today, many people agree that the ancient Egyptians did not fit neatly into any of the modern racial classifications, and a growing consensus dismisses racial classification as a social, rather than biological, construct. [5][6][7][8]
Origins of the debate
The classical observers
- Herodotus travelled to Egypt around 450 BC, about 2000 years after the Pyramid Age and when Egypt was part of the Persian Empire. In his writings about the Egyptians, he described them as having "black skins and woolly hair". [9]Though Herodotus is regarded as the father of history, the veracity and accuracy of some of his accounts is disputed, including specifically those concerning Ancient Egypt.
- The Greek playwright Aeschylus [525BC - 455BC], (also at the time of the Persian Empire) mentioning a boat seen from the shore, declared that its crew are Egyptians, because of their black complexions.[9][10]
- The philosopher and novellist Lucian [AD125-AD180], who lived long after the Dynastic Era, once described an Egyptian he encountered as being black.[10]
18th century
In 1798 Volney published his book Travels Through Syria and Egypt, in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785, in which he documented his experiences. In the book he describes the Great Spinx as having "negroid" characteristics. He also describes the Egyptians he encountered as appearing to be of mixed race.
19th century
The revelations of Volney and other observers had made regarding the Negroid characteristics of the Egyptians had a profound impact in the United States. In the early 19th century, slavery was still legal and, in part, justified on the basis of a White supremacist belief in inherent Black inferiority. According to George Mason University professor, Scott Trafton,[11] pro-slavery advocates were unreceptive to any reports of Black civilizations as these reports would undermine the rationale for slavery. In the early 19th century the anti-slavery movement had started to gain momemtum. In 1844, Samuel George Morton, one of the pioneers of scientific racism and polygenism, published his book, Crania Aegyptica, with the intention of proving that the Ancient Egyptians were not Black. Morton was a proslavery supporter and his writings were provided the intellectual support for the movement. Morton had obtained several Egyptian crania from Egyptologist George Gliddon. As a physician, Morton was able to perform a cranial analysis of the specimens. Morton would conclude that the Ancient Egyptians were not black, however in his book he notes that the Egyptian crania in his possession belonged to the two great races of Man, the Caucasian and the Negro.
Samuel George Morton's proteges George Gliddon and Josiah C. Nott would follow in his footsteps publishing Types of Mankind in 1855 with the same intention. Types of Mankind ws a scientific bestseller, but is now regarded as a classic example of scientific racism[12]. In the book, the authors acknowledge that Negroes were present in Egypt but they argue the Africans were only present in Egypt as captives or servants. However, even they admitted the Egyptians were intermediate between African and Asiatic races. [13]
In 1871 Charles Darwin published his book Descent of Man, in it he devoted an entire chapter to race. Having read Nott and Gliddon's Types of Mankind he wasn't entirely convinced about their assertions that the Egyptians were not black. Having seen the statue of Amunoph, he consulted with two men he described as "the most competent judges", and all three concluded that Amunoph had strongly marked Negro-type features. [14][15]
Several other 19th century scholars wrote about the race of the Egyptians. In 1851 Charles Anthon published a classical dictionary. In it Anthon references several observers such as Herodutus and Aeschylus who had described the Egyptians as black or dark-skinned. [10].In 1886, George Rawlinson wrote that the fundamental character of the Egyptians, with respect to physical type, language and tone of thought is Nigritic. Though he thought the Egyptians were not Black, he stated his belief that the resemblance to other, Black Africans was indisputable.[16][17]
20th-century Afrocentrism
Afrocentrism, or Afrocentricity, is a world view that emphasizes the importance of African people in culture, philosophy, and history.[18] The roots of Afrocentrism lie in a reaction to the repression of Black people throughout the Western world in the 19th century and as an answer to the scientific racism of the period, which tended to attribute any advanced civilization to the immigration of Indo-Europeans.[19] Part of this reaction involved reviewing history to document the contributions that Black people made to world civilization.[20]
Specifically, this attempted rewriting of the historical narrative of Europeans developed into two main forms: the claim that the foundations of European civilization lay not in Greece, but in the Egyptians, the culture and knowledge of which the Greeks allegedly stole; and that the Egyptians themselves were not only African, but also Black.[21] Often, Afrocentrists link the two claims. According to Marcus Garvey:
Every student of history, of impartial mind, knows that the Negro once ruled the world, when white men were savages and barbarians living in caves; that thousands of Negro professors at that time taught in the universities in Alexandria, then the seat of learning; that ancient Egypt gave the world civilization and that Greece and Rome have robbed Egypt of her arts and letters, and taken all the credit to themselves.[22]
The idea that the ancient Egyptians were Black was popularized throughout the 20th century in the works of George James, Cheikh Anta Diop, and, to a certain extent, in Martin Bernal's Black Athena. All three have used the terms "Black", "African", and "Egyptian" interchangeably,[23] despite what classicist Snowden calls "copious ancient evidence to the contrary".[24] Founded in 1979, the Journal of African Civilizations continually has stated that Egypt should be viewed as a Black civilization.[25][26] Figures attached to the group centering around the journal include Ivan van Sertima and John Henrik Clarke. Chancellor Williams was another noted historian who concluded that dynastic Egypt was fundamentally and predominantly Black.[27]
One of the earliest African-American historians to write about the Black presence in Egypt was Drusilla Dunjee Houston, whose Wonderful Ethiopians of the Cushite Empire was published in 1926. Prominent Afrocentrist historians, who've posited the fundamental Blackness of dynastic Egypt are Yosef ben-Yochanan, Ivan van Sertima, Runoko Rashidi and Molefi Kete Asante. Many of the findings of more mainstream scholars, such as Basil Davidson, Yaacov Shavit, Martin Bernal, though these historians are not Afrocentrist, per se, generally support the Afrocentrist paradigm.
The Afrocentrist viewpoint is not without its detractors. Some Western, mainstream scholars have assessed some Afrocentric ideas as pseudohistorical.[28][29] Other critics contend that some Afrocentric historical research lacks merit, and that Afrocentrism is grounded in identity politics and myth, rather than scholarship.[30] J.D. Muhly describes it as "well-intentioned, but quite unconvincing and lacking in the basic techniques of critical scholarship."[31]
Ancient Egyptian clues
The ancient tombs and temples contained thousands of works of writing, painting and sculpture, which reveal a lot about the people of that time. However their depictions of themselves in their surviving 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.[32][33][34][35][36]
Meaning of 'Kemet'
km biliteral | km.t (place) | km.t (people) | |||||||||
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One of the many names for Egypt in ancient Egyptian is km.t (read Kemet), meaning 'the black land' or 'the black one'. The claim that Kemite referred to the fact that the people of the land had black skins, as argued by Cheikh Anta Diop,[37] William Leo Hansberry,[37] or Aboubacry Moussa Lam[38] has become a cornerstone of Afrocentric historiography.[37]
This view is rejected by most Egyptologists.[39] Generally, 'Kemet' is taken to be a reference to the fertile black soil which was washed down from Central Africa by the annual Nile inundation, and which made Egypt habitable and successful in contrast to the barren desert or 'red land' outside the narrow confines of the Nile watercourse.[37][40] The use of the word kmt when referring to people is thought to be derived from the name of the land, meaning literally "those people who live in the black, fertile country."[37] Raymond Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian translates it into "Egyptians", as do most sources.[41]
Ancient Egyptian Art
In the many surviving tomb paintings, papyri and statues, the ancient Egyptians depicted themselves in a wide variety of colors, but the predominant color used for men was reddish-brown, while the women are usually portrayed with much lighter skin pigmentation. However, Egyptian artisans also sometimes depicted their subjects in other colors, such as blue and green. The meaning of such a color palette is not completely understood, but many believe it to have had ritual or mystical significance. This ambiguity has added fuel to the controversy.
There are a number of surviving copies of a sacred text from Dynastic times called the Book of Gates. These were usually carved and/or painted inside tombs, for the guidance of the soul of the deceased. These inscriptions clearly show that the Ancient Egyptians themselves were conscious of ethnicity, and that they saw fit to distinguish their race from the other races they knew - including the Nubians to the south of Egypt. In the chapter dealing with the Fifth Division of the Tuat, the work notes four different groups of men[42][43][44] (translation by E.A. Wallis Budge):
The first are RETH, the second are AAMU, the third are NEHESU, and the fourth are THEMEHU. The RETH are Egyptians, the AAMU are dwellers in the deserts to the east and north-east of Egypt, the NEHESU are the black races, and the THEMEHU are the fair-skinned Libyans.
Gallery of ancient Egyptian art
-
“Rahotep, husband of Nofret", from the 4th Dynasty, with much darker skin than his wife.
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“Nofret, wife of Rahotep", from the 4th Dynasty, with much lighter skin than her husband.
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Nefertiti, Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin.
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A rural mural, showing the women as being pale-skinned but the men ochre-red.
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“Seneb the scribe”, 4th Dynasty. Gender-based skin coloring is reflected in the children.
-
"Pharoah Mentuhotep II," 11th Dynasty.
-
From the tomb of Akmenthor the Physician – c. 2330 B.C.
-
Amarna-era princess, believed to have been a blood relative of Tutankhamun, Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin.
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Queen Tiye, believed to be Akhenaten's mother, wearing a Nubian enveloping wig[46] Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin.
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Akhenaten, considered by most Egyptologists to have been Tutankhamun's father, Cairo Museum.
20th-century science
The population of predynastic Egypt
Several studies involving human remains have concluded that Egypt has been a heterogeneous population from predynastic times, consisting of both Negroid and non-Negroid populations. Human remains from the South, Upper Egypt, have been described as having strong Negroid characteristics[47] whereas Lower Egypt in the North was seemingly less Negroid. In 1905 David Randall-MacIver analysed 1560 skulls from Thebes, in Upper Egypt. Based on the elaborateness of graves, he concluded that during predynastic periods Negroid people were the social equal of others, and were equally represented among the lower and higher classes. According to McIver's study, the Negroid element was very pronounced in predynastic periods, but had significantly diminished by Roman times. McIver suggests that at some time, non-Negroids must have gained the upper hand.[48] The traditional view has been that non-Negroid northerners invaded the southern Negroid population. However, most Egyptologists today believe it was the southern populations that invaded the North, ushering in the dynastic period.[47]
The population of the dynastic period
The dynastic period begins in 3150BC and ends in 30BC with the Roman Conquest. Over these milennia, there were several large-scale migrations into Egypt that had significant impacts on the Egyptian population, especially those of the Hyksos from Western Asia, as well as a continual stream of foreigners in smaller numbers. Toward the end of the dynastic period Libyans, Asiatics, Nubians, Assyrians, Persians and Greeks at various times conquered Egypt, and large numbers of their people settled in Egypt and intermingled with the resident population. This latter period is sometimes called the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt. For much of the dynastic period Nubia was under Egyptian rule, but in the 8th Century BC Nubian kings conquered much of Egypt, and ruled it as the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt for almost a hundred years (752-656BC). [49][50]
DNA studies
A number of DNA studies on modern Egyptians indicate that there has been significant gene flow from both Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. A recent study by Krings et al revealed two mitochondrial DNA clines. A Eurasian mtdna cline runs from northern Egypt to Southern Sudan. The second cline of Sub-Saharan mtdna extends from Southern Sudan to Northern Egypt. The results suggest significant bidirectional gene exchange between Egypt and Nubia within the last few thousand years.[49] A study using the Y-chromosome of modern Egyptian males found similar results. African haplogroups are predominant in the South but infrequent in Northern Egypt. The predominant haplogroups in the North are characteristic of other Arabic populations. [51]
The language element
The ancient Egyptian language has been classified as one of the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Afro-Asiatic languages comprise the following sub-families.
Afro-Asiatic languages are indigenous to both Middle Eastern Caucasians and sub-Saharan Africans. Of the six subfamilies of Afro-Asiatic, the Semitic languages form the only Afro-Asiatic subfamily that exists in both Africa and Asia. The other five of the six Afro-Asiatic subfamilies are restricted to the African continent. Though by numbers, most speakers of Afro-Asiatic languages are Middle Eastern, the greatest amount of linguistic diversity is found in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the diversity in the Afro-Asiatic language family is found in Ethiopia where diverse languages exist in close geographic proximity. In Black Athena, Bernal argues that Afro-Asiatic emerged in the in Great Rift Valley, and the people speaking the Egyptian language migrated from this region, northwest to what is now Egypt. [52]
In modern popular culture
There have been numerous controversies regarding the race of specific notable individuals from the history of Egypt, particularly the Great Sphinx, Tutankhamun and Cleopatra VII. [53]
The Great Sphinx of Giza
A number of writers have described the face of the Sphinx as having features that are Ethiopian, Nubian, African or Negro, as opposed to Grecian, Coptic or Arab (Semitic). These writers include the French philosopher Constantin-François Chassebœuf, [54] Gustave Flaubert,[55] and W.E.B. Du Bois.[56]The exact identity of the model for the Sphinx is unknown as there are no known written records that proclaim its identity. Almost all Egyptologists and scholars currently believe that the face of the Sphinx represents the likeness of the Pharaoh Khafra, whose statues have been located near the Sphinx and who is held to be the creator of the statue. A few Egyptologists and interested amateurs have made several conflicting hypotheses regarding the identity of the Sphinx, but at present, no definitive proof exists.[57] In 1992, the New York Times published a letter to the editor submitted by Sheldon Peck, a Harvard professor of orthodontics[58], who noted of the Sphinx that is shows “an anatomical condition of forward development in both jaws, more frequently found in people of African ancestry than in those of Asian or Indo-European stock."[59]
Tutankhamun
Supporters of Afrocentrism have claimed that Tutankhamun was black, and have protested that attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features have represented the king as too white.[60]
When pressed on the issue Zahi Hawass, the current Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated that "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it …. Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa.”[61][62][63][64]
Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy based on CT data from his mummy,[65][66] determining his skin tone and eye color is impossible. However, contemporaneous renderings of the king most often showed him with brown or red-brown skin and dark eyes.
Cleopatra VII
Supporters of Afrocentrism have claimed that Cleopatra, the last of the pharaohs, was black. In her book Not Out of Africa,[67] Mary Lefkowitz points out that Cleopatra’s ancestors, the Ptolemy dynasty, were Macedonian Greeks descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals. Lefkowitz states that:
- it was their practice to marry close relatives – brother with sister or uncle with niece, etc.
- the only possibility that Cleopatra VII might not have been a full-blooded Macedonian Greek arises from the fact that we do not know the precise identity of her grandmother on her father's side, as this lady was the mistress (not the wife) of her grandfather, Ptolemy IX.
- because of the incestuous custom of the Ptolemy family it is generally assumed that this grandmother was also a relative, but it is possible that she might have been of another race - no evidence has ever arisen either way.
- in her surviving portraits on coins and in sculpture, Cleopatra VII appears to be “Mediterranean” in appearance, with relatively straight hair and a hooked nose.
Notes
- ^ Biological and Ethnic Identity in New Kingdom Nubia
- ^ Black Athena, Volume 1, pp. 240-246
- ^ http://www.asante.net/articles/Liverpool-Address.html
- ^ Nathan Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997 ISBN 067494836X
- ^ Bard, in turn citing B.G. Trigger, "Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic?", in African in Antiquity, The Arts of Nubian and the Sudan, vol 1, 1978.
- ^ Snowden, p. 122 of Black Athena Revisited
- ^ Bard, p. 111 of Black Athena Revisited.
- ^ C. L. Brace, et al. 1993. “Clines and Clusters Versus “Race:” A Test in ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on the Nile,” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 36: 1-31.
- ^ a b The Negro, pp18, WEB Du Bois
- ^ a b c Anthon, Charles (1851). "Complexion and Physical Structure of the Egyptians". A classical dictionary, chapterurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=lWQPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA30#PPA30,M1.
- ^ [ home page http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/faculty_pages/trafton/trafton.html]
- ^ General Remarks on "Types of Mankind"
- ^ Morton, Samuel George (1844). "Egyptian Ethnography".
{{cite book}}
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- ^ Nott (1855). "Negro Types". Types of Mankind.
{{cite book}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ Rawlinson, George (1886). "The People of Egypt". Ancient Egypt.
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suggested) (help) - ^ . 2004 title=Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century http://books.google.com/books?id=YHgv011kWIAC&printsec=frontcover#PPP1,M1 title=Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century.
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(help) - ^ Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Volume 1., p. 111 by Henry Louis Gates (Editor), Kwame Anthony Appiah (Editor) Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN 0195170555
- ^ Bard p. 106
- ^ Asante, Molefi Kete. Afrocentricity, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988.
- ^ Lefkowitz p. 8
- ^ Marcus Garvey: "Who and what is a Negro", 1923. Quoted by Lefkowitz.
- ^ Snowden p.116 of Black Athena Revisited.
- ^ Snowden p. 116
- ^ Snowden p. 117
- ^ Homepage of the Journal of African Civilizations
- ^ Snowden pp.117-120
- ^ Sherwin, Elisabeth. "Clarence Walker encourages black Americans to discard Afrocentrism". Davis Community Network. Retrieved 2007-11-13.
- ^ Ortiz de Montellano, Bernardo & Gabriel Haslip Viera & Warren Barbour (1997). "They were NOT here before Columbus: Afrocentric hyper-diffusionism in the 1990s". Ethnohistory. 44: 199–234. doi:10.2307/483368.
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{{cite journal}}
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(help) - ^ Muhly: "Black Athena versus Traditional Scholarship", Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 3, no 1: 83-110
- ^ http://www.egyptologyonline.com/book_of_gates.htm
- ^ http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/gate/gate20.htm
- ^ http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/bookgates5.html
- ^ Charlotte Booth,The Ancient Egyptians for Dummies (2007) p. 217
- ^ Biological and Ethnic Identity in New Kingdom Nubia
- ^ a b c d e Shavit 2001: 148
- ^ Aboubacry Moussa Lam, "L'Égypte ancienne et l'Afrique", in Maria R. Turano et Paul Vandepitte, Pour une histoire de l'Afrique, 2003, pp. 50 &51
- ^ Bard, Kathryn A. "Ancient Egyptians and the Issue of Race". in Lefkowitz and MacLean rogers, p. 114
- ^ Kemp, Barry J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy Of A Civilization. Routledge. p. 21. ISBN 978-0415063463.
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(help) - ^ Raymond Faulkner, A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Oxford: Griffith Institute, 2002, p. 286.
- ^ http://www.egyptologyonline.com/book_of_gates.htm
- ^ http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/gate/gate20.htm
- ^ http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/bookgates5.html
- ^ Shaw. "The racial and ethnic identity of the Egyptians". The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. ISBN 0192802933.
- ^ "Ancient Egypt: Hairstyles," Oxford University Press Online[www.oup.com/us/pdf/ancient.egypt/hairstyles.pdf]
- ^ a b Zakrzewski (2006). "Population Continuity or Population Change:Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State" (PDF). doi:10.1002/ajpa.20569.
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(help) - ^ MacIver. "chapter 9". The Ancient Races of the Thebaid.
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(help) - ^ The Black Pharaohs - National Geographic
- ^ Lucotte (2001). "Brief communication: Y-chromosome haplotypes in Egypt" (PDF). doi:10.1002/ajpa.10190.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Black Athena, pp 88
- ^ Snowden pp.120-121 of Black Athena Revisited.
- ^ Constantin-François Chassebœuf saw the Sphinx as "typically negro in all its features"; Volney, Constantin-François de Chasseboeuf, Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie, Paris, 1825, page 65
- ^ "...its head is grey, ears very large and protruding like a negro’s...the fact that the nose is missing increases the flat, negroid effect. Besides, it was certainly Ethiopian; the lips are thick.." Flaubert, Gustave. Flaubert in Egypt, ed. Francis Steegmuller. (London: Penguin Classics, 1996). ISBN 9780140435825.
- ^ Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (1915). The Negro. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1915).
- ^ Hassan, Selim (1949). The Sphinx: Its history in the light of recent excavations. Cairo: Government Press, 1949.
- ^ Abstract Sheldon Peck, Department of Orthodontics at Harvard
- ^ To the Editor (1992-07-18). "Sphinx May Really Be a Black African". Retrieved 2007-10-18.
{{cite news}}
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(help) - ^ Tutankhamun was not black: Egypt antiquities chief, AFP, September 2007
- ^ http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iB6u3XEMp9IrJfl-kH6FHNgZCg_A
- ^ http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=9519
- ^ http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view_article.php?article_id=90699
- ^ http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20070925175335472C333850
- ^ "discovery reconstruction".
- ^ Science museum images
- ^ http://www.wellesley.edu/CS/Mary/contents.html
References
- Mary R. Lefkowitz: "Ancient History, Modern Myths", originally printed in The New Republic, 1992. Reprinted with revisions as part of the essay collection Black Athena Revisited, 1996.
- Kathryn A. Bard: "Ancient Egyptians and the issue of Race", Bostonia Magazine, 1992: later part of Black Athena Revisited, 1996.
- Frank M. Snowden, Jr.: "Bernal's "Blacks" and the Afrocentrists", Black Athena Revisited, 1996.
- Joyce Tyldesley: "Cleopatra, Last Queen of Egypt", Profile Books Ltd, 2008.
- Alain Froment, 1994. "Race et Histoire: La recomposition ideologique de l'image des Egyptiens anciens." Journal des Africanistes 64:37-64. available online: Race et Histoire Template:Fr icon
- Yaacov Shavit, 2001: History in Black. African-Americans in Search of an Ancient Past, Frank Cass Publishers