Education For Life Academy

Education For Life Academy

Where Black History Lives!

The Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Curriculum

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 that 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.” Gliddon donated 137 skulls for Morton’s study in order to secure scientific verification for his beliefs. 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 he had more authority on the ancient Egyptians than those who had traveled to Egypt during the time of the ancient Egyptians.

Although Morton conceded that Blacks were “abundantly represented” in the pictorial depictions inside of tombs and monuments, he denied they had any major influence on Egyptian civilization. He noted, “Negroes were numerous in Egypt but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and slaves.” Besides, the size of Negro skulls was proof, according to Morton, that they did not have the intelligence to produce a high civilization. Cheikh Anta Diop, one of the foremost scholars of African history, counters this “falsification of history” that denied African history and reduced the Black race to nothing more than slaves. He states:

The memory of the recent slavery to which the Black race has been subjected, cleverly kept alive in men’s minds and especially in Black minds, often affects Black consciousness negatively. From that recent slavery an attempt has been made to construct—despite all historical truth—a legend that the Black has always been reduced to slavery by the superior White race with which he has lived, wherever it may have been. This enables Whites easily to justify the presence of Negroes in Egypt or in Mesopotamia or Arabia, by decreeing that they were enslaved. Although such an affirmation is nothing but dogma designed to falsify history—those who advance it are fully aware that it is erroneous—it nonetheless contributes to alienating Black consciousness…It became increasingly difficult each day and even inadmissible, for those unaware of his past glory—and for Blacks themselves—to believe that they could have originated the first civilization which flowered on earth, a civilization to which humanity owes most of its progress.

The scientific community, led by Morton and others, relied on modern racial/racist theories to establish ancient Egypt as a part of the family of Caucasian/white nations confirming white racial superiority. Even in the case of the Nubians, who were undeniably black Africans, Morton invented racial theories to minimize their role in human history.