Race Ideology Of Ancient Egypt

The race and race ideology of Ancient Egypt has been a contested terrain since the nineteenth century. Scholars all over, especially in western parts of the world, have participated in researching what exactly the Ancient Egyptians were and how they viewed race in their culture. Ancient Egypt has been so controversial among many because of the incredulous knowledge they possessed that allowed them to create an abundance of early technologies and be one of the most advanced cultures of their time. When asking the question, “What race were the ancient Egyptians?”, typically most scholars will give one of three answers: Ancient Egyptians were African, Ancient Egyptians were Middle Eastern, or Ancient Egyptians were of European decent. In this …show more content…
During the nineteenth century in America change was happening. This time period includes many changes in attitudes and opinions toward the enslaved African people. This change in thinking among people led to monumental events like the Civil War in the United States of America. American people started to question weather enslaving Africans was really the right thing to be doing anymore. Those who felt like it was important and vital to not only the American people, but the Africans as well, began to research and use history as justification to continue what was already existing. Many theories of African inferiority came out around this time and racist scholars fought hard to cover any trace of African intelligence that would contradict their claims. One big problem for these scholars were the Ancient Egyptians. Based on artifacts they left behind, in modern time we were able to see how intelligent and incredibly advanced they were. They also lived in a country called Egypt, that is visibly apart of Africa on any map. This was not good for any of the theories supporting the argument that African people were unintelligent and needed to be enslaved, which was what was being said to keep Africans enslaved and to keep Europeans on …show more content…
Dr. Scott Trafton is a professor that received many awards for his book, Egypt land, that goes in to depth about the early Egyptians and their culture and how it played a role in American culture. Dr Trafton states (4), “ Thus, one of the primary arguments of this book is that much of the nineteenth-century American racial and national identity can be said to partake of a schematic split structured by the conflictual visions of ancient Egypt.” He goes on to explain why Egypt was used a comparison for the modern injustices by Americans and often referred to America as “Egypt of the West”. Dr. Martin Bernal was also a professor and author that became notorious for his works about ancient Egypt. He wrote the famous, Black Athena, which had multiple volumes. He examines more deeply into the history of what our European academy has set up for the world to believe versus how the knowledge we actually posses, he argues, comes from Egyptian