Were The Ancient Egyptians White? DNA Says Yes!

"Shit..."

The discussion and debate of the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians has long been a topic that creates quite a lot of discourse in modern society. Some say the Egyptians that created one of the greatest, if not the greatest, civilizations in the history of early humanity were undoubtedly black while others insist they were white. Where does this argument find its roots?

Throughout the millenniums it was widely accepted that the ancient Egyptian civilization was a Mediterranean culture. Egypt's geographical location and the written history of the region's inhabitants made clear that ancient Egypt was, in fact, a Mediterranean society. This belief went uncontested up until about the 1960's when the rise of Afrocentrism in America made its debut. Afrocentrics in search of their own history decided to claim Egypt as a part of their own legacy by virtue of Egypt being within the continent of Africa. African-Americans whose history was lost in the transatlantic slave trade with no sense or knowledge of their own genealogy and point of origin began to lay claim on anything and everything African. While Egypt does remain an African country, the roots of African-Americans brought to the Americas during slavery is nowhere near Egypt.

Afrika Bambaata reppin' the Zulu nation but somehow Egyptian?

...not a king.

With the discovery of DNA came DNA mapping. The human genome can be traced to show the point of origin of each individual by means of matching the individual's DNA with others from all over the world that have a similar genetic makeup linking to their common ancestors. The science of DNA has advanced as technology has improved over the decades to make DNA tests readily available to anyone with about $100 and some saliva to spare. As African-Americans have partaken in these inexpensive DNA tests in search of their roots, they have found that their point of origin is overwhelmingly West Africa with countries such as Ghana, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone being some of the most common.

"You lyin' bruh"

You might be saying to yourself, "So what? That doesn't mean the ancient Egyptians were white." and you would be absolutely correct but there's one problem. DNA from the actual ancient Egyptians still exists to this day in the form of samples from Mummies. The Egyptians were so adamant about preserving their dead for the afterlife that they were kind enough to leave themselves behind so we can now study them extensively today. Recent DNA tests conducted at the University of Tuebingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have revealed that the Egyptians have a very unique genetic makeup matching those of people from the Near East, Anatolia (Turkey) and Eastern Mediterranean Europeans. Basically, the tests have confirmed what we've known all along.

"You won't let us have shit, cuh."

This finding does not imply that all ancient Egyptians were "white". Many East African individuals that are black in skin tone share these same genetic admixtures that prove Eurasian roots. Ethiopians, for example, have very unique facial features that bear no resemblance to Sub-Saharan West Africans that the majority of the African-American diaspora are born from. This is not to imply by any means that the ancient Egyptians all resembled East Africans but there is a strong case for many East Africans sharing a similar genetic admixture to the Egyptians. Most likely the ancient Egyptians had a diverse look ranging from resembling Haile Selassie to Kim Kardashian with maybe even a few Nubian Wesley Snipes's walking around. Egypt was the crossroads of the world at the time so the chance of Sub-Saharan Africans being present is not a fantastical notion, nor would the presence of North Europeans be far-fetched.

Well hello there...rawr!

The bust of Queen Nefertiti is undoubtedly that of an olive-toned Mediterranean woman while many statues of the pharaohs are a bit more ambiguous by their use of black onyx stone as a medium. Some Egyptian art depicts the Egyptians as having black skin but there was a reason for this; Ancient Egyptians associated the color black with many different things ranging from death to fertility and the afterlife. These works of art have been widely used by African-American afrocentrics as proof that the Egyptians were solely black. Some of the individuals depicted had a specifically Nubian look to them but they were depicted as slaves which leaves theories to the Nubians being the Hebrews of the bible open to debate, but I'm not even going to go there. You can debate that in the comments section. Nevertheless, the claims that Egypt was a distinctively black culture from the Afrocentrics have been debunked with modern science and ancient artifacts. #FACTS

"We're gonna need some more bricks, Toby"

In my own research, I have made use of a newly popular online application called Kairos that uses facial recognition technology to map facial points and matches them with racial features then gives users an approximate percentage of the racial makeup of the subject. My findings have shown that the pharaohs of Egypt were, for a lack of better terms, "white". Entertainingly enough, I also found that Black Lives Matter activist and racial antagonist Shaun King whom claims to be of the Floyd Mayweather persuasion is actually...wait for it...white! I know, imagine my shock. It's ok, Shaun. We forgive you. You can come home now. You iz a Kang.