terms of Egypt, Breasted argued that Black people would ‘wander’ into Egypt but were uninfluential. Breasted supported his argument with craniometry by comparing the skulls of Egyptians with those from the Mediterranean, with the caveat that, “‘the people of the Great White Race are darker skinned than elsewhere.'”16 Unlike works prior to WWI, Breasted’s argument concedes that Black people made contributions to the contemporary world. However, ingrained racism kept Ancient Egypt white due to its essential role in the foundational story of Western civilization. One exception to this period of scholarship is W.E.B. Du Bois, a Black contemporary of Breasted. In his argument to accept classical surveys as accurate, Du Bois made two insights that add context to the history of racist Egyptology. Firstly, he argued that Egyptology itself began at a time when, “Few scholars …dared to associate the Negro race with humanity much less with civilization.”17 Thus Egyptology was already far behind the times by the political time of Du Bois in the 1900s, which allowed Black scholarship. The very definition of race as it had previously been used needed to be updated. Du Bois expanded the attributes of race, saying, “of what race then were the Egyptians? They were certainly not white in any sense of the world, neither in color nor in physical measurements, in hair, nor countenance, in language nor social customs.”18 Scholars like du Bois challenged the status quo at a time when Egyptian involvement in their own Antiquities Service and Egyptology programs was minimal. While today we would like to think scholarship has long surpassed the fear that the foundation of Western Civilization was not white, this is still a topic of debate. In the early 2000s the mummy of Tutankhamun underwent CT scanning which allowed for reconstruction of the boy king's appearance. When the exhibition Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs opened in 2007 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, it was met with backlash. Included in the exhibition was a facial reconstruction, and beside it a statement saying, “the features of his face are based on scientific data, but the exact color of his skin and the size and shape of many facial details cannot be determined with full certainty.”19 Despite the disclaimer, his depiction with light skin prompted outrage because it represented a clear bias towards whiteness, which is not surprising given the history of Egyptology. As Molefi Asante, a Temple University professor of African Studies who led protests over the exhibit said, “‘We asked the students as they were coming out of the museum, you've seen the exhibition of King Tut, 'Where is he from?'...You would discover that people can see the exhibition of Tutankhame-
n, and come out and not know that they have seen Africa.’”20 Representations like this one, created by Western institutions with racist histories emphasize the severing of Ancient Egypt from Africa, Black people and contemporary Egyptians. Within Egypt itself and internationally, Ancient Egypt as it is represented does not reflect a relationship with the modern state. The image of Tut and the long history of Western ownership of Egyptology has created the illusion that the Egyptian state is far removed from any possibility of Pharaonic nationalism. Dr. Charles Finch, the former Director of International Health at the Morehouse School of Medicine said, “Whenever our ancient writers, Hebrew, or Greek, make any reference to the ancient Egyptians color, it's always [B]lack. There was no debate. It only became a debate in the last 200 years.”21 Informed by a long history of European interference and exclusion, it is unsurprising that the former head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt Zahi Hawass, does not fight the representation of Tut in question. Hawass said in response to these protests, “‘Tutankhamun was not [B]lack and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian Civilization as [B]lack has no truth to it’”, and, “‘Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa.’”22 These statements from Hawass represent a struggle within Egyptology and the independent Egyptian nation as Egyptologists were trained to dissociate with any Black or Arab connections in order to be taken seriously. Given the long history of racial arguments justifying western domination of Egyptology, which disparaged Egyptians as barbarians, it is not surprising that Pharaonic nationalism has repeatedly failed. Between ingrained European racism and the Afrocentrism movement, Ancient Egyptian history is caught in its own identity battle. However, yet again, scholarly debate continues to involve the racial ownership of another nation's past: Black or white, Egypt still is not the owner of its history. Political Failure of Pharaonism This legacy severing Egypt from its Ancient history is reflected in Pharaonism’s political failure– which declined from its peak in 1922, transitioned to Arabism and eventually gave way to a political fear of Pharaonic association. The result is a ‘new Pharaonism’, meaning a new era of tyranny in Egyptian politics. This parallels Haykal’s early assertion that Egyptians have ‘a natural disposition to submission.’ After the granting of limited independence and the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb nine months lat13
