Ancient Egyptians in Black and White
Exodus: Gods and Kings' and the Hamitic Hypothesis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3497629 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justin Michael Reed (0009-0000-7023-2729, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 9 |
| Pages | 712 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel12090712 |
| OpenAlex | W3198137930 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 34 |
In this essay, I consider how the racial politics of Ridley Scott's whitewashing of ancient Egypt in Exodus: Gods and Kings intersects with the Hamitic Hypothesis, a racial theory that asserts Black people's inherent inferiority to other races and that civilization is the unique possession of the White race. First, I outline the historical development of the Hamitic Hypothesis. Then, I highlight instances in which some of the most respected White intellectuals from the late-seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century deploy the hypothesis in assertions that the ancient Egyptians were a race of dark-skinned Caucasians. By focusing on this detail, I demonstrate that prominent White scholars' arguments in favor of their racial kinship with ancient Egyptians were frequently burdened with the insecure admission that these ancient Egyptian Caucasians sometimes resembled Negroes in certain respects-most frequently noted being skin color. In the concluding section of this essay, I use Scott's film to point out that the success of the Hamitic Hypothesis in its racial discourse has transformed a racial perception of the ancient Egyptian from a dark-skinned Caucasian into a White person with appearance akin to Northern European White people
Ancient history · Archaeology · Civilization · Genealogy · Kinship · Politics · Possession (linguistics) · Race (biology) · Sociology · White (mutation) · Anthropology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society
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| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |