Why Didn't They Tell You?

… that Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs had the same bone structure as Black American males?

Sometimes one piece of evidence is enough to settle an argument. I believe that the evidence demonstrating that Egyptian pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom all had the same bone structure as Black American males is enough to settle the unnecessary controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptians. Since most Americans of African descent trace most of their ancestry to West Africa, this amounts to saying that the Ancient Egyptians had the same osteology (bone structure) as West Africans. What is the evidence?

During and after WWII, the United States faced the problem of identifying the remains of repatriated Americans killed during the war. One piece of evidence that is of great value in identifying remains is the height of the living individual. Generally length of the cadaver is not sufficient to get an accurate estimate of the living stature of the individual. Therefore, researchers developed equations for estimating living stature from the length of long bones (the tibia, fibula, and femur in the leg and the humerus, ulna, and radius in the arm). Given these equations, forensic specialists can plug in the length of the long bone to get an estimate of the height of the living person. Researchers Trotter and Gleser developed separate equations for Negroes (that was in the 1950s) and Whites because of “a failure of the formulae of one race to give satisfactory prediction results for the second [race].”¹ Physical anthropologists hit upon the idea that they could use these equations to estimate the living stature of Egyptian pharaohs using the lengths of long bones obtained from mummies.

Some scholars interested in using the equations developed by Trotter and Gleser acknowledged that “the physical proportions of Ancient Egyptians had negroid affinities²; nevertheless since they were certainly not negroes, the use of the negro equations to estimate their stature has generally been avoided.”³ In other words, they preferred to remain ignorant (of the true height of these pharaohs) rather than shatter their false notion that Ancient Egyptians were white. Thus we have here a perfect example of prejudice and racism retarding the advance of science and knowledge. Please note that these were not “rednecks” doing this but august members of the intellectual establishment.  

Robins and Shute, who used the Negro equations to estimate the living height of pharaohs of the 18^th and 19^th Dynasties, which included King Tut, observed, “Such equations only yield acceptable values for stature if the unknown population group [Egyptian Pharaohs] to which they are applied had similar physical proportions … to the group [American Negroes] from which the equations have been derived.” Robins and Shute decided to estimate the living statures of New Kingdom (18^th and 19^th dynasty) kings since Robins had already shown for the Middle Kingdom that “for males, at least, plausible estimates of stature that are reasonably consistent when different long bones are used only result from the negro equations”.³

Robins and Shute showed that using the white equation to estimate the living heights of New Kingdom Pharaohs was not a good fit and gave rise to unrealistic and unacceptable predictions. The authors, therefore, concluded that, “From a practical point of view, the conclusion must be that the Trotter & Gleser (1958) negro equations can be applied satisfactorily to ancient Egyptian material as they stand.”³ Using the Negro equations, the authors were able to estimate the living heights of fourteen (14) kings⁴ of the 18^th and 19^th dynasties and in the process dispel the notion that Thutmose III was excessively short.

In plain language, “Negroes” have longer lower legs than whites. If you compare a black man and a white man of the same height, generally the black man’s lower leg (his tibia), from his knee to his ankle, will be longer than white man’s tibia. That is what Black People mean when they say someone has a high “booty”. That is also why the equations derived from a white population would not work for estimating the living heights of Egyptian Pharaohs of the New Kingdoms. They were black, and not white. A perfect example of this body type is Narmer (See picture below), first Pharaoh to unite Lower and Upper Egypt, sometime between 3,000 and 3,300 B.C. Still today most scholars in the august academies of the world do not want to acknowledge this truth.

Are there other scientific verifications of the race of Ancients Egyptians we could allude to? Yes there are. Just to give one that is close to home. Eighty-six percent (86%) of my DNA comes from Sub-Sahara Africa, mostly from West Africa. My male chromosome is designated as Sub-Saharan African, E1b1a. Rameses III, the last great warrior pharaoh of the New Kingdom (20^th Dynasty) also had the E1b1a male chromosome.⁵ Indeed, 23andme.com says that we share a common ancestor. Specifically it says “You and Ramesses III share an ancient paternal-line ancestor who probably lived in north Africa or western Asia.”  (See picture below of Rameses III).

Morale of this vignette: Distorting or not accepting the truth retards the development of science and knowledge. The true history of humanity cannot be written until academic racism is obliterated.

Sources

1. p. 465, Mildred Trotter and Goldine C. Gleser (1952). Estimation of Stature from Long Bones of American Whites and Negroes, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, n. s. 10, 436-514.
2. The late great Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop in his book African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality reports that the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius, based on objective measurements, reached “… the formal, major conclusion that the perfect Egyptian is Negritian. In other words, his bone structure is Negroid and that is why anthropologists say little about the osteology of the Egyptian.”, p. 64.
3. Robins, G. and C.C.D Shute (1983). The physical proportions and living stature of New Kingdom Pharaohs, Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 12, No. 5.
4. 18^th Dynasty Pharaohs: Ahmose, Amenhotpe I, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Thutmose III, Amenhotpe II, Thutmose IV, Amenhotpe III and Smenkhkare; 19^th Dynasty Pharaohs: Sety I, Ramesses II, Merneptah, Sety II, and Siptah.
5. Hawass, Zahi and et al (2012). Revising the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III, British Medical Journal, Vol. 344 (17 December 2012).