Egypt's black pharaohs ignored
BY CHRISTINA BOYLE / DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2008, 3:15 AM
Egypt was ruled by black pharaohs for nearly 100 years, but their role as leaders of the ancient civilization
has been largely kept in the dark because of racism, according to this month's National Geographic
magazine.
Scholars and historians have repeatedly failed to acknowledge the impact made by the group of kings who
traveled from deep in Africa and conquered Egypt in 728 B.C., National Geographic says.
The Nubian kings, who came from an area of Africa that is mostly present-day Sudan, became the country's
25th dynasty and reunited Egypt, which had been torn apart by warlords.
The magazine claims the true impact of these rulers has never been widely accepted because European
powers colonized the region in the 19th century and the role of the "darker skinned" conquerors was seen
as irrelevant.
"For decades, historians flip-flopped: Either the black pharaohs were actually 'white,' or they were
bumblers, their civilization a derivative off-shoot of true Egyptian culture," writes Robert Draper in
National Geographic.
"The neglect of Nubian history reflected the bigoted world view of the times."
The story of the Nubians proves that African civilization was thriving in the ancient world, and
intermingling and intermarriage with Egyptians was also reasonably common, the article says.
Some studies also have found that Egyptian pharaoh King Tutankhamun's grandmother, the 18th-dynasty
Queen Tye, may have had Nubian heritage.
The rule of Nubian Pharaohs remains widely unknown to the public, yet has been known by Egyptologist
researchers since the 19th century. Scholars of this time period wished to hide the information due to the
extreme amount of institutionally structured racism within the field. Historians either categorized the
Nubian Pharaoh’s as “white” or deemed the Nubian rulers as irrelevant to “true” Egyptian culture, and
merely viewed the study of their reigns as unnecessary.
This new public knowledge brings to light that not only ancient Egyptian’s could be biased in reporting the
rulers of their civilization, but even in current history, European scholars were guilty of the same actions
even when reporting on another culture entirely.