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Ancient Egypt and White Nationalism: The Co-option of Egyptian Identity Zachary Morgan, Western Carolina University Ancient Egyptian civilization. Just these simple words conjure a bombardment of imagery to any reader: from massive pyramids, noble Sphinxes, and regal pharaohs with wealth unimaginable. The history and culture of Egypt has always been a source of fascination with academics and the public alike, and for good reason.1 Ancient Egypt is universally recognized as one of the premier civilizations of the Ancient world and an outlier to the common narrative of the West being the foundation of civilization. Because of this, interpretations of the biological racial identity of Ancient Egypt have played a critical role in forming various ethnic, cultural, and political groups’ perception of their heritage and identity.2 This has led to conscious attempts of these groups to claim the legacy of Egypt as their own through a variety of methods, creating uses and abuses of history that have been directly linked to the political and cultural concerns of the time. Considering that the claim of this paper is to support the idea that Egyptian history has been critical in creating heritage and national identity throughout history, for both white nationalists and African/African American activists, the periodization covered by this paper will be quite long. Analysis will begin by examining ancient sources that the Egyptians themselves left behind. This will be an attempt to capture as accurate an understanding as possible of how the Egyptians viewed themselves, to make more obvious the abuses that occurred later. Most historiography on ancient Egypt suggests that Egyptians were well aware of the “skin color” differences of their time, a fact which would be utilized by white nationalists to support an xenophobia against many of the races that would attempt to claim them.3 This did not stop white and black groups from both attempting to claim the legacy of Egypt, however, especially in America as it began to move towards Civil War. The next section of this paper will focus on the historiography of the Civil War era, focusing primarily on US writers. This will shed light primarily on how racial science theories were utilized to discredit the idea of African Americans possessing the ability to form a civilization. Comparisons to more modern sources will begin in this era due to it being the first time in American history the racial identity of Egyptians became intensely argued, largely due to attempted justifications of slavery. Most historical writings of the day presented the belief that no “dark race of men” had ever been equal to the white race.4 This belief caused many academics to assume that all great civilizations of the past had been created by the white race, since it was believed they were the only ones capable of such a feat. Historians of the time used this belief to claim that the success of the Egyptian civilization was a direct result of it being Caucasian, again proving the inferiority of African Americans.5 The third section will shift ahead in time to the period from World War I to World War II and that era’s struggles over utilizing Egyptian history to construct national and ethnic identities. Historiography of this era is directly connected with the aims of European imperialism. The rise of imperialism coinciding with the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb tied politics and Egyptian history more closely together than had ever been seen.6 This connection created a historiography that utilized Egyptian history to promote European ideals of imperialism, always at the expense of the native peoples. This message naturally created a backlash within the African American community that would reach its height during the turmoil of the Civil Rights movement. As the Civil Rights movement gave African Americans the confidence to fight the segregation of Jim Crow, activists and academics were also encouraged to create a new historiography that emphasized the importance of black history. This caused them to reject the imperialist ideals of Egyptian historiography and to claim that the treasures and cultural heritage of Egypt should be analyzed in a purely African context.7 The new historiography directly challenged the belief of the aforementioned Civil War era historians, who believed that no Africans had ever created a civilized culture before the arrival of white Europeans.8 Naturally, the popularity of this new belief generated a severe response from the white academic community, who attempted to support the old claim of the superiority of white civilization. Debate guaranteed that the controversy of the racial identity of Egypt would continue into the modern era, again proving its long legacy. The final section of this paper will focus on specific modern-day controversies regarding the racial identity of Egyptians. Interesting to note, modern “historiography” has largely been led by the public, sinc...

Ancient Egypt and White Nationalism: The Co-option of Egyptian Identity | Tucaksegee Valley Historical Review