Editing Egyptology (section)

===Bias in Egyptology===
{{See also|Ancient Egyptian race controversy}}
{{Undue weight|date=January 2025}}

Various scholars have highlighted the role of colonial racism in shaping the attitudes of early Egyptologists, and criticised the continued over-representation of North American and European perspectives in the field over African ones.<ref>{{cite book |title=Egypt in its African context : proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, 2–4 October 2009 |date=2011 |publisher=Archaeopress |location=Oxford |isbn=978-1407307602 |pages=1–115}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sedra |first1=Paul |title=Imagining an Imperial Race: Egyptology in the Service of Empire |journal=Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East |date=2004 |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=249–259 |doi=10.1215/1089201X-24-1-251 |s2cid=143690935 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/181224 |issn=1548-226X}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Walker |first1=J. D. |title=The Misrepresentation of Diop's Views |journal=Journal of Black Studies |date=1995 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=77–85 |doi=10.1177/002193479502600106 |jstor=2784711 |s2cid=144667194 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2784711 |issn=0021-9347 |access-date=13 October 2022 |archive-date=13 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221013183043/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2784711 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kamugisha |first1=Aaron |title=Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko |journal=Race & Class |date=July 2003 |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=31–60 |doi=10.1177/0306396803045001002 |s2cid=145514370 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396803045001002 |issn=0306-3968 |access-date=13 October 2022 |archive-date=28 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220928064105/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396803045001002 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Young |first1=Robert J.C. |title=Black Athena, and Colonial Discourse Robert J.C. &middot; PDF fileEgypt in America : Black Athena, Racism and Colonial Discourse Robert J.C. Young Colonial discourse analysis was initiated |url=https://pdfslide.tips/documents/black-athena-and-colonial-discourse-robert-jc-egypt-in-america-black-athena.html?page=1 |language=en |access-date=13 October 2022 |archive-date=13 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221013183045/https://pdfslide.tips/documents/black-athena-and-colonial-discourse-robert-jc-egypt-in-america-black-athena.html?page=1 |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Cheikh Anta Diop]] in his work, ''The African Origin of Civilization'' argued that the prevailing views in Egyptology were driven by biased scholarship and colonial attitudes.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Victor |first1=Cilius |title=Book reviews : Civilization or Barbarism: an authentic anthropology |journal=Race & Class |date=October 1992 |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=98–100 |doi=10.1177/030639689203400214 |s2cid=145646841 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030639689203400214 |issn=0306-3968 |access-date=13 October 2022 |archive-date=13 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221013183043/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/030639689203400214 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Clarke |first1=John Henrik |title=Cheikh Anta Diop and the New Light on African History |journal=Transition |date=1974 |issue=46 |pages=74–76 |doi=10.2307/2934962 |jstor=2934962 |s2cid=156002419 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2934962 |issn=0041-1191 |access-date=13 October 2022 |archive-date=13 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221013183043/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2934962 |url-status=live }}</ref> Similarly, [[Bruce Trigger]] wrote that early modern scholarship on the Nile Valley populations had been "marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trigger |first1=Bruce |title='Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic?', in Sylvia Hochfield and Elizabeth Riefstahl (eds), Africa in Antiquity: the arts of Nubia and the Sudan, Vol. 1 |date=1978}}</ref>

British Africanist [[Basil Davidson]] wrote in 1995 that a number of unsatisfactory labels are often attached—such as "Bushmen", "Negro", or "Negroid"—to indigenous, African populations. He was also critical of the [[Hamites|Hamitic hypothesis]] and other categorisations of "North African stocks" as "white". Davidson further added that the "ancient Egyptians belonged, that is, not to any specific Egyptian region or Near Eastern heritage but to that wide community of peoples who lived between the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, shared a common "Saharan-Sudanese culture", and drew their reinforcements from the same great source, even though, as time went by, they also absorbed a number of wanderers from the Near East".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davidson |first1=Basil |title=Africa in history : themes and outlines |date=1991 |publisher=Collier Books |location=New York |isbn=0684826674 |pages=10–15 |edition=Rev. and expanded}}</ref>

In 2018, [[Stuart Tyson Smith]] argued that a common practice among Egyptologists was to "divorce Egypt from its proper northeast African context, instead framing it as fundamentally part of a Near Eastern or "Mediterranean" economic, social and political sphere, hardly African at all or at best a crossroad between the Near East, the eastern Mediterranean and Africa, which carries with it the implication that it is ultimately not really part of Africa". He explicitly criticised the view that ancient Egypt was clearly 'in Africa' it was not so clearly 'of Africa' as reflecting "long-standing Egyptological biases". He concluded that the interrelated cultural features shared between northeast African dynamic and Pharaonic Egypt are not "survivals" or coincidence, but shared traditions with common origins in the deep past".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Stuart Tyson |title=Gift of the Nile? Climate Change, the Origins of Egyptian Civilization and Its Interactions within Northeast Africa |journal=Across the Mediterranean – Along the Nile: Studies in Egyptology, Nubiology and Late Antiquity Dedicated to László Török. Budapest |date=1 January 2018 |pages=325–345 |url=https://www.academia.edu/43275151 |access-date=13 October 2022 |archive-date=13 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221013183043/https://www.academia.edu/43275151 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 2021, [[Marc Van De Mieroop]] stated that "It was only recently that traditional scholarship started to acknowledge the African background of Egyptian culture, partly in response to world history's aim to replace dominant western-centered narratives with others than focused more on the contributions of other regions, including Africa. At the same time, primarily African diaspora communities wanted the continent's ancient history to be approached outside a Eurocentric context, and insisted, for example, on the use of ancient Egyptian term ''kemet'' instead of the European one".<ref name="A history of ancient Egypt">{{cite book |last1=Van de Mieroop |first1=Marc |title=A history of ancient Egypt |date=2021 |location=Chichester, West Sussex |isbn=978-1119620877 |pages=5–6 |edition=Second}}</ref>

In 2022, Andrea Manzo argued that early Egyptologists had situated the origins of dynastic Egypt within a "broad [[Hamites|Hamitic]] horizon that characterised several regions of Africa" and that these views had continued to dominate in the second half of the twentieth century. Manzo stated more recent studies had "pointed out the relevance of African elements to the rise of Egyptian culture, following earlier suggestions on Egyptian kingship and religion by [[Henri Frankfort]]" which countered the traditional view that considered Egypt "more closely linked to the Near East than to the rest of Africa".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Manzo |first1=Andrea |title=Ancient Egypt in its African context : economic networks, social and cultural interactions |date=2022 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-1009074544 |pages=1–50}}</ref>

In 2023, [[Christopher Ehret]] outlined that the previous two centuries of Western scholarship had presented Egypt as an "offshoot of earlier Middle Eastern developments". Although, he acknowledged that recent generations of scholars in Egypt and Nubia have been "uncovering extensive new bodies of evidence" which have dispelled older assumptions. However, Ehret continued to argue that these old ideas had influenced the attitudes of scholars in other disciplines such as [[genetics]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ehret |first1=Christopher |title=Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE |date=20 June 2023 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0-691-24409-9 |pages=83–85, 97|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5KjEAAAQBAJ&q=ancient+africa:+a+global+history,+to+300+ce+christopher+ehret |language=en |access-date=22 March 2023 |archive-date=22 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230322125442/https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5KjEAAAQBAJ&q=ancient+africa:+a+global+history,+to+300+ce+christopher+ehret |url-status=live }}</ref>