---
title: "Ancient Egyptian race controversy"
chunk: 4/18
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Egyptian historian and archaeological inspector at the Ministry of Antiquities, H. A. A. Ibrahim, examined the megalithic complex of Nabta Playa, Upper Egypt to understand the cultural and population influences of the Holocene on pre-dynastic Egypt. She cited an anthropological study confirming the appearance of a Sub-Saharan high status child in a ceremonial centre and concluded that the megalithic structures had close resemblance to comparable structures in the Sahelian and Sub-Saharan regions of Africa.
In another chapter on the population genetics of pharaonic Egypt, geneticist Jean Phillipe Gourdine adduced correlative sources of linguistic, anthropological, paleontological and genetic evidence which demonstrated African affinities with specific Neolithic and predynastic remains at the Naqada, Badari and Adaima sites in Upper Egypt. He referenced a number of studies performed by Eric Crubézy, this included genetic analysis on the modern Upper Egyptian population in Adaima which identified genetic markers common across Africa, with 71% of the Adaima samples carrying E1b1 haplogroup and 3% carrying the L0f mitochondrial haplogroup. This was supported by an anthropological study by Cruzeby in the pre-dynastic cemetery at Adaima (3700 BCE) which found the notable presence of dental markers, characteristic of Khoisan people, (25%) among several children’s teeth." Gourdine also stated the geological African context of Egypt along with the migratory movements of Homo Sapiens from the Green Sahara, drying of Lake Chad and back Asia to Africa migration, must be taken into consideration to develop an understanding of the Pharaonic Egyptian population.
Linguistic studies has situated the Egyptian language in the Afro-Asiatic family phylum which included the Berber, Chadic, Kushitic, Egyptian, Omotic and Semitic languages. There is no agreement on the exact origin of the proto-language but most linguists are supportive of an African origin of the proto-language spoken between 13,000 to 15,000 years whereas others support a Near Eastern origin dated to 10,000 years ago. A featured linguist, Roger Blench, in the publication had argued this remained an area of controversy due to archaeological evidence and textual sources which have suggested an origin of  dispersal in the Near East. Nevertheless, he also stated that all the diversity of the Afro-Asiatic language family is concentrated in Sub Saharan Africa, especially in Ethiopia (including Omotic and Cushitic languages). Blench himself has argued that lexicon in the Chadic language is suggestive of migration westwards into waterways joining the Nile basin with Lake Chad. He further added that it was possible that early Afro-Asiatic speakers had domesticated wild cattle in the Egyptian-Sudanese border 10,000 years ago.
Other African scholars in the recent volume including Augustin Holl, Olabiyi B.J. Yai, Yoporeka Somet and Martial Ze Belinga made favourable references to the intellectual influence of Cheikh Anta Diop in explicating bias in Western scholarship and serving as an early figure in constructing a multidisciplinary approach, with a particular emphasis on a scientific methodology, towards African history. Somet also observed the value of Diop's prescient writings in recognizing the African origin of humanity and early Egyptian civilization by "the middle of the century".

== Position of modern scholarship ==

Modern scholars who have studied ancient Egyptian culture and population history have responded to the controversy over the race of the ancient Egyptians in various ways.
Since the late 20th century, as the science of human population genetics has advanced, most biological anthropologists have come to reject the notion of race as having any validity in the study of human biology.
Mainstream scholarship have situated the ethnicity and the origins of predynastic, southern Egypt as a foundational community primarily in northeast Africa which included the Sudan, tropical Africa and the Sahara whilst recognising the population variability that became characteristic of the pharaonic period. Pharaonic Egypt featured a physical gradation across the regional populations, with Upper Egyptians having shared more biological affinities with Sudanese and southernly African populations, whereas Lower Egyptians had closer genetic links with Levantine and Mediterranean populations.