Black Folk in Ancient Egypt: Race, Diaspora, and Revisionism

St. Clair Drake describes the Black, definitively African presence in ancient Egyptian history in the Preface to Black Folk Here and There as "a constant struggle by Nile Valley black elites to regain political power and cultural independence" after the Roman Empire's "incorporation of Egypt on the eve of the Christian era" (xv). This struggle would be played out across multiple continents through contact with various colonizing forces. Even those "black elites" in ancient Egypt did not enjoy what Drake calls "autonomous development" (xv). Instead, the black elites were eventually "co-opted by Roman, Greek, and Middle Eastern imperial rulers" (xvi).

This did not preclude the black African presence from prevailing in ancient Egyptian history. Most of the so-called black elite "enjoyed a high degree of participation as equals" in many situations (Drake xvi). However, slavery would remain a persistent presence throughout African history and indeed in ancient Egypt as well. Sub-Saharan Africa was viewed as a repository for labor — from female domestic labor to prostitution — while males from sub-Saharan Africa were used as soldiers and menial laborers.

A second period of the Black Diaspora that Drake explicates in the Preface of Black Folk Here and There is the "process of gradual Islamization that began in the eleventh century AD, followed by a massive economic and cultural European penetration after the middle of the nineteenth century" (xvi). Between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries, the Arab-Berber slave trade "siphoned off blacks with military skill, political acumen, and intellectual and artistic talent for the benefit of Muslim cultures stretching from Spain to northern India" (xvi).

However, as they were in ancient Egypt, the blacks who were "siphoned off" during this period were "accepted as social equals and marriage partners" and "did not generate black cultures" in the Diaspora (Drake xvi). There was also a notable incorporation of black African cultural contributions into European culture, and more importantly, those contributions were acknowledged "without racial attribution" (Drake xvi). For example, the role of ancient Egypt in the development of Greek intellectual and religious thought, as well as the impact of Moorish culture, art, and design on Southern Europe, cannot be underestimated. Ironically, during this same period the elite rulers of black kingdoms in Africa had been facilitating the slave trade that led to the third and most consequential era of the Black Diaspora.

The transatlantic slave trade lasted from the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century and had the most immense impact on African scholarship, as this period gave rise to the first instance of "racial slavery" (Drake xvi). Cultural "coping and co-optation" began to emerge in the Americas through the investigation of ancient Egyptian history. Archaeological findings that spawned interest in ancient Egypt were readily incorporated by white European and American scholars. Ancient Egypt became fully co-opted to the point where the black African presence there was practically erased from the historical record — a process that can be attributed almost directly to white scholars such as Breasted and Weigall.

James H. Breasted became infatuated with Akhenaten, as St. Clair Drake points out in Black Folk Here and There. Akhenaten is described as "history's first individual" and the "world's first idealist" (Drake 207). More importantly, Breasted portrays Akhenaten as being unequivocally white. The prevailing belief that Akhenaten was unequivocally white was conjoined with the simultaneous belief that the Pharaoh was a demigod. Indeed, some scholars of the modern era even projected Christ-like qualities onto Akhenaten, describing him as a messiah figure who was a "precursor of Jesus Christ" (Drake 208).

The convergence of these two projections onto the Pharaoh Akhenaten carries clear racial implications. Drake suggests that Breasted could not have conceived of a man in such a position of great political and spiritual power who was not also white. The prevailing attitude that blacks were "closest to the ape" during the era of social Darwinism had influenced such beliefs (Drake xvii). The revisionist perspective arose in direct reaction to the racialist view presented by Breasted and also by Weigall, who described Akhenaten as "the first Pharaoh to be a humanitarian" and "the first man to preach simplicity, honesty, frankness, and sincerity...from a throne" (cited in Drake 207).