Education For Life Academy

Education For Life Academy

Where Black History Lives!

The Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Curriculum

The notion that a strict phenotype of dark-black skin is the only marker of indigenous, African origin fuels racial myths and ignorance about the African continent and its people.

Racialization in the Age of Enlightenment

It was not until the 1800s, at the height of racial slavery in the New World, and on the heels of French imperialism in Egypt, that Western thinkers began to aggressively counter established knowledge of Egypt as a Black civilization. German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who was responsible for one of the earliest systems of racial categories, coined the term “Caucasian” and classified the Egyptians as members of the “Caucasian” (white) race. Within decades, the scientific community accelerated its efforts to prove non-African origins of Egypt.

At the center of these debates was Samuel Morton, a natural scientist and professor of anatomy, widely considered the founder of American anthropology. Morton supported the theory of polygenesis, which claimed that the different races were separate species created from separate origins. His claim to fame was in the area of craniology, a branch of science that erroneously established white racial superiority and intelligence by measuring the size of human skulls. In 1844, he published Crania Aegyptiaca to dispute the eyewitness accounts of Herodotus who described the Egyptians as black Africans. In this study, Morton measured the dimensions and characteristics of 137 human crania from Egypt and concluded, “The valley of the Nile, both in Egypt and in Nubia, was originally peopled by a branch of the Caucasian race.” He suggested the Egyptians were a race in between the Indo-European and Semite races, and as the descendants of Ham they were therefore “affiliated with the Libyan family of nations.”

In response to Herodotus’ reference that described the Egyptians as black-skinned with wooly-hair, Morton pointed to a slightly different translation in which the passage reads “black and had short curly hair.” According to Morton, Herodotus’ use of the term “black-skinned” was misleading since black is “evidently a relative , and not an absolute term.” He further explained the Egyptians had hair “as fine as that of the fairest European nations of the present day,” and when Caucasian hair is “allowed to grow, it is remarkable for a profusion of short curls of extreme fineness.” In respect to the Nubians, Morton suspected they were mixed with Arab and Negro blood due to the appearance of their upper lips, which were “somewhat thicker than is considered beautiful among northern races” though “still far from the Negro lip.” Rather than to accept Herodotus’ account of a black Egyptian civilization, Morton stated he could “much readily believe that the historian had never been to Egypt at all.”

Morton’s work was funded by George R. Gliddon, an American Egyptologist who was eager to dispel the notion that Ancient Egypt was established and ruled by black Africans. In 1841, Gliddon wrote a letter to Morton, stating, “I am hostile to the opinion of the African origin of the Egyptians. I mean of the high caste—kings, priests, and military. The idea that the monuments support such theory…I think untenable, and might be refuted.” Like Morton, Gliddon dismissed the ancient texts written by Herodotus as insignificant because Egyptologists, he argued, “know Egypt better now than all the Greek authors or the Roman.” Guided by intellectual arrogance, Gliddon claimed more authority than those who had traveled to Egypt during the height of its influence, and he donated the 137 skulls to Morton in order to secure scientific verification for his beliefs.