Molefi Kete Asante Institute

“Molefi Kete Asante responds to Wassim El Sisy’s Inaccurate Post”
In my response to El Sisy’s July 24, 2024, piece in Egypt Independent, I have included his statements in parenthesis, and my responses in bold without parenthesis.
“The Afrocentric movement, which has arisen from Black nationalists seeking to reject European influence, has encroached on both historical fact and the legitimacy of modern-day Egyptians to their ancient cultural heritage.”
First, Afrocentricity is not black nationalism. One is a philosophical theory about the nature of history; the other is a political movement of social activism. Secondly, there is no such thing as “encroaching” on historical fact. Something is either historical fact or it is not. Thirdly, my concern is not with the “legitimacy of modern-day Egyptians” who after hundreds of years of being in Kemet, the ancient name of Egypt, have become the leaders of Egypt, despite the fact that there are still many Nubians in their own land. My concern is that the largely “Arab” population of Egypt has sought to remove the ancient Africans from their history and to claim the ancient Kemetic history as Arab!
“The movement claims that those currently living within Egypt are essentially imposters and that Ancient Egypt was originally a Black civilization.”
The only imposters are those who claim that ancient Kemet, the land of Black People, was Arab land. That is just like saying that the Europeans who conquered America, North and South, are the original owners of the land and culture of those two continents. They are legitimate now as modern inhabitants of the land but no one living in the Americas is willing to deny the original owners. Arab intellectuals who know the truth are unable to speak it for fear of being ostracized by rabid racist types like Wassim El Sisy. I have yet to hear an Arab intellectual tell the truth about the African origin of ancient Kemet. Humanity, Homo sapiens, originate in Africa. Ancient Kemet, just like Kush, Libya, and Tunisia, was the land of black humans!
“It is this line of reasoning that has led to the controversial portrayal of Cleopatra as Black within Netflix’s mini-series “Queen Cleopatra” (2023), which was critically-panned and sparked outrage amongst Egyptians.” Three of the most of the movement’s most eminent figures include Anta Diop (1923 – 1986), Molefi Kete Asante (1942) and activist Malcom X (1926 – 1965).”

The argument about Cleopatra is foolish. It only rises because El Sisy thinks of blackness as negative, something that comes from a racist ideology. Cleopatra’s sister, Arsinoe, we know was of black African origin according to her DNA. It is not a leap to say that Cleopatra VII, Arsinoe’s sister, also had similar DNA. Netflix’s portrayal was made based on recent research by Sally Ann Ashton and other trained Egyptologists and Kemetologists. Dr. El Sisy is actually a trained urologist, and he might be good at that job, but he is only a neophyte when it comes to the history of ancient Egypt. Living in Egypt and occupying the political entity of modern Egypt does not make one an authority no more than being president of the United States makes one an authority on the Comanche, Apache, Dine, Cherokee, Lenape, or Muskogee, indigenous people who lived in North America before Europeans arrived.
“Several of its beliefs state that the US and Europe seeks to get rid of its Black populations, who in-turn desire to be first-class citizens. Zionists and Israels owing to their close ties to the US in turn would prefer to have Egypt populated by Black Americans.”
El Sisy must know that Afrocentricity is not a religion. There is no “belief” system here; Afrocentricity is an analytical instrument that promotes the agency of African people in all historical contexts. As the leading proponent of Afrocentric theory, I do not know of any Afrocentrists who claim that the USA and Europe want to get rid of its black population. In fact, the younger indigenous and black population of the United States is growing at a rapid rate and the older European population is declining. African Americans occupy important positions in the government, corporations, financial agencies, sports, media, entertainment, scientific, and technological fields by virtue of discipline, hard work, creativity, and intelligence.
I have no idea why El Sisy would say “Zionists and Israelis owing to their close ties to the US in turn would prefer to have Egypt populated by Black Americans.” Why would African Americans want to populate Egypt? What would Zionists and Israelis have to do with what African Americans do? Is El Sisy suggesting that the thousands of African Americans who visit Egypt each year should stop coming to visit the ancient civilization of Africa?
“According to the movement, Black Americans are the true inheritors of ancient Egyptians – while those living in Egypt today are the descendants of Greek, Roman and Arab colonizers that have kicked the original Black Egyptians out.”
I quote Cheikh Anta Diop here, “Egypt is to Africa, as Greece is to Europe.” I add my own comment that ancient Kemet, Nubia-Kush, and Axum are repositories of the most important cultural origins of the ancient African people. On the other hand, it is true that the contemporary population of Egypt is a mixture of Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Romans, Persians, and Nubians who are Africans. Who would deny or disprove that except someone who has a religious agenda, not a historical one?
“Under these Afrocentric beliefs, only Copts and Nubians can lay claim to Egyptian heritage and not Arab Muslims.”
This is a weird statement. Once more it should be said that Afrocentrists are not operating on beliefs. El Sisy is obviously fascinated by religion. As to Copts and Nubians (Kush*tes) they have a long history in Kemet; however, Copts have a less ancient history than the Kush*tes. The Copts are related the Greeks who became Christians during the early part of the new era, around 100 AD. Today they have a strong relationship to their Greek origins but have retained some of the basic ideas of the ancient Kemetic language. As to Arab Muslims, I see only enmity against the African origin of the Nile Valley Complex of Civilizations, and this may be based on the Arab enslavement of Africans during the period after General El As was invited into Kemet to help the black people, original ancient
Egyptians, throw out the Romans in 639 AD. It is after this period that we see the larger invasion of Egypt from Arabia. Arabs are not indigenous to Africa. This historical fact is not disputed, but occupation does not mean claiming original construction and development of the ancient civilization. It was purely an African, that is, black affair, until the foreign invasions by Persia, Assyria, Greece, Hkysos, Rome, and Arabs.
“The Max Planck Institute in Germany determined that there was no prominent black race in Egypt until 600 AD – not a single black gene appeared in Egyptian mummies from 1200 BC till 600 AD, and only eight percent appeared after 600 AD due to slavery and the national trade between sub-Saharan Africa and Mediterranean Africa, including Egypt. This means 900 years after the end of 30 dynasties of the Egyptian civilization! Alexander the Great arrived in Egypt during 332 BC.”
Once again El Sisy seems unfamiliar with the criticism of the Max Planck study by serious Egyptologists and Kemetologists. They have written that the study is flawed, misleading, and methodologically problematic. The uniting of Kemet under Menes occurred around 3400 BCE, nearly 1500 Years before the mummies were buried at Abusir. Menes came from Upper Egypt which was occupied by black-skinned human beings. This is logical since all Homo sapiens are derived from Africans who lived in East Africa more than 250,000 years ago.
Here is more detailed information from Chris Ehret, Shomarka Keita, and other scholars. The Max Planck researchers used mummies from one small area of ancient Kemet, Abusir el Meleq, which is 70 miles south of Cairo. There are several issues with these mummies. They are all from the same area even though over a long period of time. This is like discovering in Iraq mummies from Basra area of the country and saying that they have African genes. Of course, they have lived in that area of Iraq since the 9th century when there was a large influx of Africans to that region. So, in this mummy study it occurs to me that this area may very well have been an area where the Hyksos (Hewar Khasut) who had invaded Kemet around 1400 BCE settled once they conquered lower Egypt, or as other scholars have pointed out, a place that was frequented as a location by Greeks who settled in Egypt. It is to be expected that unwrapping the dead in that place would reveal more genetic matter from outside of Egypt than if you studied mummies in Waset (Luxor) or anywhere else in the country, from a similar period.
I think it is correct for the Max Planck Institute to say, as a caveat:
“All our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt.” Unfortunately, the Institute’s study has given El Sisy and other Arab racists a reason to run down a rabbit hole.
In southern Egypt the Max Planck Institute says, “the genetic makeup of the people may have been different, being closer to the interior of the continent.” I say the genetic makeup was different just a few miles away from Abusir and the Faiyuum.
“The Stanford and Barcelona Universities have also confirmed that Blacks first came to live in Egypt only 750 years ago. And Harvard University research on Clopantry Sudanese mummies revealed that the current Nubians are not descendants of the Clopantry mummies, and these mummies are actually closer to the Egyptians.”
I used to think that the greatest distorters of African history were Europeans, but the previous statement about the Stanford and Barcelona universities must be challenged as ignorance of the first order. Let me clearly attack this suggestion and the 2017 Schuenemann study as biased and sensationalized because they are being used by ideologues like El Sisy to try to take Africans out of ancient Egypt and replace them with Arabs.
What was wrong with this study was a lot, but mostly it was deeply flawed. How would it look to uncover a gravesite in Brazil and say that the original people were Portuguese. Or dig up a cemetery in the city of New York and claim that the original inhabitants were white, simply because of the cemeteries studied. If you dug up a Greek or Hyksos cemetery you will find genetic material of those people. On the hand, there is no serious rational person who would say that black people came to Egypt only in 1600! Egypt is in Africa and Africa has been called a black continent forever. The ancient Egyptians did not come from Arabia. The builders of ancient Africa were black Africans!
DNA evidence points to a root civilization for Kemet that existed in central Africa. As early as 2012, two mummies of two 20th dynasty individuals, Ramesses III and “Unknown Man E” believed to be Ramesses III’s son Pentawer, were analyzed by a team led by Albert Zink and Yehia Z Gad, and others. Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies; using the Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor, the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a was predicted. E1b1a is most prevalent in west and central Africa. People migrated all over the African continent.
In 2022, biological anthropologist Shomarka O.Y. Keita pointed to the problems with the Schuenemann 2017 study’s approach and conclusions. He claimed it suffered from over-generalizations, and a failure to consider alternative explanations. One issue was the comparative samples from West Africa as a proxy group and generalizations about geographical Egypt and population origins from the sample results. Keita also pointed to the fact that the authors draw inference on migrations in line with their Bayesian statistical approach rather than integrate other data into their explanations about the population history.
Also, in 2022, archaeologist Danielle Candelora said there were several limitations with the 2017 Scheunemann et al. study such as “new (untested) sampling methods, small sample size and problematic comparative data. Later in 2023, Stiebling and Helft noted that the Scheunemann findings still derived from a small sample of mummies from one site in Middle Egypt dating to the New Kingdom and later periods. They also stated that this study could not represent earlier populations or Egyptians from Upper Egypt who were geographically closer to Sub-Saharan populations.
Finally, in 2023, Christopher Ehret argued that the conclusions of the 2017 study were based on insufficiently small sample sizes, and that the authors had a biased interpretation of the genetic data.
But we also have eyewitness accounts, paintings, tomb murals, and images on furniture and utensils pointing to what we today would consider dark skinned black people. El Sisy seems to be one who, because of his ideology, wants to distort African history. The population of Egypt moved down the Nile from the interior of Africa and combined with groups migrating out of the Sahara. Even those groups were Africans because Africans populated the Sahara.
Africa is not just Kemet. Th Nile River itself flows more than 4000 miles. There has always been cultural movement up and down the river. Our language, art, concepts, symbolisms, food, colors and divinities have traveled. Furthermore, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on earth. El Sisy’s race paradigm position is based on a deeply held belief that Africans are inferior. It is embarrassing that his nastiness knows no bounds when it comes to “race” and religion. Many other African cultures trace their origin to ancient Egypt. This is true with Yoruba, Asante, and Wolof.
El-Sisy wants to change the language and play semantics. Are contemporary Egyptians Africans? If the Egyptians are not Africans, then are they European, Asian, indigenous American? It is legitimate for Arabs to claim the Levant, especially Arabia, as their origin, but not Egypt.
It has been pointed out over time that the first nome in ancient Kemet was Ta-Seti! This refers to Nubia.
Why did Nubia invade Egypt under Piankhy to restore its culture? Nubia was more integrated with Kemet than the Romans or the Greeks. People speak of Greco-Roman influences, why not Nubia-Axum influences?
Racism fuels the reasoning behind people wanting to separate Egypt from Africa, but the two billion people in Africa are not willing to have their history stolen or distorted!

“Genetic studies from inhabitants of the Horn of Africa Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, do not correspond with Egyptian genes.”
The response to this statement is that it is clear that the Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalians, and people of Djibouti are Africans, but the contemporary Egyptians known as Arabs have a different, non-African genetic composition. El-Sisy’s basic argument is racist because he is in the race paradigm which casts Africans and black people as lesser than others. He wants to say that ancient Egyptians were not black Africans, but it is a foolish argument since Cheikh Anta Diop in his book, The African Origin of Civilization, said that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. The Sahara was not a barrier to migration. Furthermore, at one time it was green and fertile. One must read Robert Bauval and Thomas Brophy’s Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt to see this argument. People migrated from one place to others in the continent, and then out of the continent.

“Egyptian Professor Yahya Zakaria Gad conduced genetic research on the family of Tutankhamun, published in the Jama journal with the participation of Zahi Hawass, Samia Ismail and Tarek Taha, which compared their data to the genes of current Egyptians. Their results showed an 88.6 percent match with current Egyptians.Professor Tarek Taha also replicated research from American geneticist Margarett Kendell on Egyptian genes, which found that 97.5 percent of the genes of Egyptians, Muslims and Copts, are the same!”
In 2022, Shomarka. O.Y. Keita analyzed 8 Short Tandem loci (STR) data published as part of Tutankhamen’s family studies by Hawass et al., using an algorithm that only has three choices: Eurasians, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Using these three options, Keita concluded that most of the samples, which included the genetic remains of Tutankhamun, showed a population "affinity with “sub-Saharan” Africans in one affinity analysis. However, Keita further added that different “data and algorithms might give different results” which reflect the complexity of biological heritage and the associated interpretation
“In the American Journal of Human Genetics chapter “The Egyptians in All of Us”, Cambridge scientists revealed that humanity spread out from what is now Egypt to Asia and Europe 55,000 years ago.”
El Sisy’s report is misleading. The abstract of the article by Pagani and others says “The predominantly African origin of all modern human populations is well established, but the route taken out of Africa is still unclear. Two alternative routes, via Egypt and Sinai or across the Bab el Mandeb strait into Arabia, have traditionally been proposed as feasible gateways considering geographic, paleoclimatic, archaeological, and genetic evidence. Distinguishing among these alternatives has been difficult.” Africa is the original homeland of Homo sapiens and wherever humans live, they have migrated from the continent. Whether Africans went through Egypt or Ethiopia remains unclear; some even believe that the route was across into Europe from Morocco. Nevertheless, the origin was African.

“Several allegations from the movement state that Queen Tiye, the wife of Amenhotep III, is evidence that that Egyptians were originally black. However research by Professor Taha who investigated the tomb of Tiye’s parents, Thuya and Yuya at the the Tahrir Museum found that they were genetically Egyptian, alongside their children and grandchild, Tutankhamen.”
Queen Tiye’s images and representations are unmistakably of a black woman. The most powerful representations of King Tutankhamen are the two huge statues of him as a black person found in his tomb. We know that neither Queen Tiye nor her grandson Tutankhamen was Arab. They were Africans culturally, geographically, and linguistically. The connection between them and the Nubians is much closer than that of Queen Tiye to Arab culture.

“Artwork found on a sandal shows imagery of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh holding up a black warrior, which represent his authority over Egypt’s enemies and contradict Afrocentrist claims.”
This is such a silly comment about warfare. So, one sees a Russian holding a Ukrainian, and claim that this is significant, or a German holding a French person. The people of Kemet, land of black people, was the same complexion and culture as the people who were claimed to be “enemies.” This was not a racial thing but El Sisy, because of an animus toward blackness, feels that he has to explain this as racial.
“Ancient Greek historian Herodotus’s reports that he personally saw dark-skinned Egyptians with curly hair are also used as a common source of proof by the movement, but this can be explained by the Nubian invasion to Egypt during the 25th Dynasty which lasted for 60 years from 715 BC – 655 BC.”
Herodotus actually says in Histories, Book Two, that the people of Colchis had black skin and wooly hair. The word used in the Greek for black skin is melanchroes, neither phrenochroes, nor leukochroes. Neither brown, nor white skin but melan-chroes, meaning black.
“The broken noses of ancient Egyptian statues have been used by Afrocentrists as evidence that they have Black features and their faces were broken to hide this fact – but in actuality this was done as a spiritual belief to allow the spirit to leave the body.”
I am not sure what Afrocentrists El Sisy is writing about when he says that the broken noses on statues was evidence of black features. It is certainly conceivable that out of a fit of anger some persons were malicious enough to destroy African features on statues, but this is not an element in any Afrocentric thinking of which I am familiar. On the other hand, it is quite unlikely that El Sisy’s idea that the faces were broken to release the spirit makes sense. If that were the case, then we would see many more broken faces, and not just in Kemet but in other parts of the continent.
(revised post)
Molefi Kete Asante
Author of The History of Africa, Customs and Culture of Egypt, and The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism.

“Molefi Kete Asante responds to Wassim El Sisy’s Inaccurate Post”
In my response to El Sisy’s July 24, 2024, piece in Egypt Independent, I have included his statements in parenthesis, and my responses without parenthesis..

“The Afrocentric movement, which has arisen from Black nationalists seeking to reject European influence, has encroached on both historical fact and the legitimacy of modern-day Egyptians to their ancient cultural heritage.”

First, Afrocentricity is not black nationalism. One is a philosophical theory about the nature of history; the other is a political movement of social activism. Secondly, there is no such thing as “encroaching” on historical fact. Something is either historical fact or it is not. Thirdly, my concern is not with the “legitimacy of modern-day Egyptians” who after hundreds of years of being in Kemet have become most of the body politic. My concern is that the largely “Arab” population has sought to remove the ancient Africans from their history and to claim the ancient Kemetic history as Arab!
“The movement claims that those currently living within Egypt are essentially imposters and that Ancient Egypt was originally a Black civilization.”
The only imposters are those who claim that ancient Kemet, the land of Black People, was Arab land. That is just like saying that the Europeans who conquered America, North and South, are the original owners of the land and culture of those two continents. They are legitimate now as modern inhabitants of the land but no one living in the Americas is willing to deny the original owners. Arab intellectuals who know the truth are unable to speak it for fear of being ostracized by rabid racist types like Wassim El Sisy. I have yet to hear an Arab intellectual tell the truth about the African origin of ancient Kemet. Humanity, Homo sapiens, originate in Africa. Ancient Kemet, just like Kush, Libya, and Tunisia, was the land of black humans!
“It is this line of reasoning that has led to the controversial portrayal of Cleopatra as Black within Netflix’s mini-series “Queen Cleopatra” (2023), which was critically-panned and sparked outrage amongst Egyptians.” Three of the most of the movement’s most eminent figures include Anta Diop (1923 – 1986), Molefi Kete Asante (1942) and activist Malcom X (1926 – 1965).”

The argument about Cleopatra is foolish. Her sister, Arsinoe, we know was of black African origin according to her DNA. It is not a leap to say that Cleopatra VII, her sister, also had similar DNA. Netflix’s portrayal was made based on recent research by Sally Ann Ashton and other trained Egyptologists and Kemetologists. Dr. El Sisy is actually a trained urologist, and he might be good at that job, but he is only a neophyte when it comes to history and ancient Egypt. Living in Egypt and occupying the political entity of modern Egypt does not make one an authority no more than being president of the United States makes one an authority on the Commanche, Apache, Dine, Cherokee, Lenape, or Muskogee people who lived in North America before Europeans arrived.
“Several of its beliefs state that the US and Europe seeks to get rid of its Black populations, who in-turn desire to be first-class citizens. Zionists and Israels owing to their close ties to the US in turn would prefer to have Egypt populated by Black Americans.”
El Sisy must know that Afrocentricity is not a religion. There is no “belief” system here; Afrocentricity is an analytical instrument that promotes the agency of African people in all historical contexts. As the leading proponent of Afrocentric theory, I do not know of any Afrocentrists who claim that the USA and Europe want to get rid of its black population. In fact, the younger indigenous and black population of the United States is growing at a rapid rate and the older European population is declining. African Americans occupy important positions in the government, corporations, financial agencies, sports, media, entertainment, scientific, and technological fields by virtue of discipline, hard work, creativity, and intelligence.
I have no idea why El Sisy would say “Zionists and Israelis owing to their close ties to the US in turn would prefer to have Egypt populated by Black Americans.” Why would African Americans want to populate Egypt? What would Zionists and Israelis have to do with what African Americans do? Is El Sisy suggesting that the thousands of African Americans who visit Egypt each year should stop coming to visit the ancient civilization of Africa?
“According to the movement, Black Americans are the true inheritors of ancient Egyptians – while those living in Egypt today are the descendants of Greek, Roman and Arab colonizers that have kicked the original Black Egyptians out.”
I quote Cheikh Anta Diop here, “Egypt is Africa, as Greece is to Europe.” I add my own comment that ancient Kemet, Kush, and Axum are repositories of the most important cultural origins of the African people. On the other hand, it is true that the contemporary population of Egypt is a mixture of Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Romans, Persians, and Africans. Who would deny or disprove that except someone who has a religious agenda, not a historical one?
“Under these Afrocentric beliefs, only Copts and Nubians can lay claim to Egyptian heritage and not Arab Muslims.”
This is a weird statement. Once more it should be said that Afrocentrists are not operating on beliefs. El Sisy is obviously fascinated by religion. As to Copts and Nubians (Kush*tes) they have a long history in Kemet; however, Copts have a less ancient history than the Kush*tes. The Copts are related the Greeks who became Christians during the early part of the new era, around 100 AD. Today they have a strong relationship to their Greek origins but have retained some of the basic ideas of the ancient Kemetic language. As to Arab Muslims, I see only enmity against the African origin of the Nile Valley Complex of Civilizations, and this may be based on the Arab enslavement of Africans during the period after General El As was invited into Kemet to help the black people, original ancient
Egyptians, throw out the Romans in 639 AD. It is after this period that we see the larger invasion of Egypt from Arabia. `This historical fact is not disputed, but occupation does not mean claiming original construction and development of the ancient civilization. It was purely an African, that is, black affair, until the foreign invasions.
“The Max Planck Institute in Germany determined that there was no prominent black race in Egypt until 600 AD – not a single black gene appeared in Egyptian mummies from 1200 BC till 600 AD, and only eight percent appeared after 600 AD due to slavery and the national trade between sub-Saharan Africa and Mediterranean Africa, including Egypt.This means 900 years after the end of 30 dynasties of the Egyptian civilization! Alexander the Great arrived in Egypt during 332 BC.”
Limitations
The uniting of Kemet under Menes occurred around 3400 BCE, nearly 1500 Years before the mummies at Abusir. Menes came from Upper Egypt which was occupied by black-skinned human beings. This is logical since all Homo sapiens are derived from Africans who lived in East Africa more than 250,000 years ago.
Further Limitations of Max Planck Study cited by El Sissy.
The researchers used mummies from one small area of ancient Kemet. Abusir el Meleq is 70 miles south of Cairo. There are several issues with these mummies. They are all from the same area even though over a long period of time. This is like discovering in Iraq mummies from Basra area of the country and saying that they have African genes. Of course, they have lived in that area of Iraq since the 9th century. So, in this mummy study it occurs to me that this area may very well have been an area where the Hyksos (Hewar Khasut) who had invaded Kemet around 1400 BCE settled once they conquered lower Egypt. Their progeny would have genetic material related to people of Southwest Asia where they came from prior to invading Egypt.
I think it is correct for the Max Planck Institute to say, as a caveat:
“all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt.”
Actually, the mummies came from the Faiyuum, which was well known as a place settled by many foreigners, Hyksos, and especially Greeks.
In southern Egypt the Max Planck Institute says, “the genetic makeup of the people may have been different, being closer to the interior of the continent.” I say the genetic makeup was different just a few miles away from Abusir.
“The Stanford and Barcelona Universities have also confirmed that Blacks first came to live in Egypt only 750 years ago. And Harvard University research on Clopantry Sudanese mummies revealed that the current Nubians are not descendants of the Clopantry mummies, and these mummies are actually closer to the Egyptians.”

Let me clearly attack the 2017 Schuenemann study as biased and sensationalized because it is being used by ideologues like El Sisy to try to take Africans out of ancient Egypt and replace them with Arabs.
What was wrong with this study was a lot, but mostly it was deeply flawed. How would it look to uncover a gravesite in Brazil and say that the original people were Portuguese. Or digging up a cemetery in my city of Philadelphia and claiming that the original inhabitants were white.
DNA evidence points to a root civilization for Kemet that existed in central Africa. As early as 2012, two mummies of two 20th dynasty individuals, Ramesses III and "Unknown Man E" believed to be Ramesses III's son Pentawer, were analyzed by a team led by Albert Zink and Yehia Z Gad, and others. Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies; using the Whit Athey's haplogroup predictor, the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a was predicted. E1b1a is most prevalent in west and central Africa. People migrated all over the continent.
In 2022, biological anthropologist S.O.Y. Keita pointed to the problems with the 2017 study's approaches and conclusions. He claimed it suffered from over-generalizations, and a failure to consider alternative explanations. One issue was the comparative samples from West Africa as a proxy group and generalizations about geographical Egypt and population origins from the sample results. Keita also pointed to the fact that the authors draw inference on migrations in line with their Bayesian statistical approach rather than integrate other data into their explanations about the population history.
In 2022, archaeologist Danielle Candelora stated that there were several limitations with the 2017 Scheunemann et al. study such as “new (untested) sampling methods, small sample size and problematic comparative data.
In 2023, Stiebling and Helft acknowledged that the 2017 study had performed the largest study on ancient Egyptians but noted that the findings still derived from a small sample of mummies from one site in Middle Egypt dating to the New Kingdom and later periods. They also stated that this study could not represent earlier populations or Egyptians from Upper Egypt who were geographically closer to Sub-Saharan populations.
In 2023, Christopher Ehret argued that the conclusions of the 2017 study were based on insufficiently small sample sizes, and that the authors had a biased interpretation of the genetic data
In 2010 Hawass et al. undertook detailed anthropological, radiological, and genetic studies as part of the King Tutankhamun Family Project. The objectives included attempting to determine familial relationships among 11 royal mummies of the New Kingdom, as well to research for pathological features including potential inherited disorders and infectious diseases.
Eyewitness accounts, paintings, tomb murals, and images on furniture and utensils point to what we today would consider dark skinned black people. El Sissy seems to be one who, because of his ideology, wants to distort African history.
The population of Egypt moved up the Nile from the interior of Africa and combined with groups migrating out of the Sahara.
Africa is not just Kemet. The Nile River itself flows more than 4000 miles. There has always been cultural movement up and down the river. Our language, art, concepts, symbolisms, food, colors and divinities have traveled. Furthermore, Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on earth. El Sisy’s race paradigm position is based on a deeply held belief that Africans are inferior. It is embarrassing that his nastiness knows no bounds when it comes to race and religion.
Many other African cultures trace their origin to ancient Egypt. This is true with Yoruba, Asante, and Wolof.
What is black? What is African? What is Egyptian?
El-Sisy wants to change the language and play semantics. Are contemporary Egyptians Africans? If the Egyptians are not Africans, then are they European, Asian, indigenous American?
It has been pointed out over time that the first nome in ancient Kemet was Ta-Seti!
Why did Nubia invade Egypt under Piankhy to restore its culture? Nubia was more integrated with Kemet than the Romans or the Greeks. People speak of Greco-Roman influences, why not Nubia-Axum.
Racism fuels the reasoning behind people wanting to separate Egypt from Africa.

“Genetic studies from inhabitants of the Horn of Africa Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, do not correspond with Egyptian genes.”
El-Sisy’s basic argument is racist because he is in the race paradigm which casts Africans and black people as lesser than others. He wants to say that ancient Egyptians were not black Africans, but it is a foolish argument since Cheikh Anta Diop said that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. The Sahara was not a barrier to migration. Furthermore, at one time it was green and fertile. One must read Robert Bauval and Thomas Brophy’s Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt to see this argument. People migrated from one place to others in the continent, and then out of the continent.

“Egyptian Professor Yahya Zakaria Gad conduced genetic research on the family of Tutankhamun, published in the Jama journal with the participation of Zahi Hawass, Samia Ismail and Tarek Taha, which compared their data to the genes of current Egyptians. Their results showed an 88.6 percent match with current Egyptians.Professor Tarek Taha also replicated research from American geneticist Margarett Kendell on Egyptian genes, which found that 97.5 percent of the genes of Egyptians, Muslims and Copts, are the same!”
In 2022, Shomarka. O.Y. Keita analyzed 8 Short Tandem loci (STR) data published as part of Tutankhamen’s family studies by Hawass et al., using an algorithm that only has three choices: Eurasians, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Using these three options, Keita concluded that most of the samples, which included the genetic remains of Tutankhamun, showed a population "affinity with "sub-Saharan" Africans in one affinity analysis". However, Keita further added that different "data and algorithms might give different results" which reflect the complexity of biological heritage and the associated interpretation
“In the American Journal of Human Genetics chapter “The Egyptians in All of Us”, Cambridge scientists revealed that humanity spread out from what is now Egypt to Asia and Europe 55,000 years ago.”
El Sisy’s report is misleading. The abstract of the article by Pagani and others says “The predominantly African origin of all modern human populations is well established, but the route taken out of Africa is still unclear. Two alternative routes, via Egypt and Sinai or across the Bab el Mandeb strait into Arabia, have traditionally been proposed as feasible gateways considering geographic, paleoclimatic, archaeological, and genetic evidence. Distinguishing among these alternatives has been difficult.” Africa is the original homeland of Homo sapiens and wherever humans live, they have migrated from the continent. Whether Africans went through Egypt or Ethiopia remains unclear; some even believe that the route was across into Europe from Morocco. Nevertheless, the origin was African.

“Several allegations from the movement state that Queen Tiye, the wife of Amenhotep III, is evidence that that Egyptians were originally black. However research by Professor Taha who investigated the tomb of Tiye’s parents, Thuya and Yuya at the the Tahrir Museum found that they were genetically Egyptian, alongside their children and grandchild, Tutankhamen.”
Queen Tiye’s images and representations are unmistakably of a black woman. The most powerful representations of King Tutankhamen are the two huge statues of him as a black person found in his tomb. We know that neither Queen Tiye nor her grandson Tutankhamen was Arab. They were Africans culturally, geographically, and linguistically. The connection between them and the Nubians is much closer than that of Queen Tiye to Arab culture.

“Artwork found on a sandal shows imagery of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh holding up a black warrior, which represent his authority over Egypt’s enemies and contradict Afrocentrist claims.”
This is such a silly comment about warfare. So, one sees a Russian holding a Ukrainian, and claim that this is significant, or a German holding a French person. The people of Kemet, land of black people, was the same complexion and culture as the people who were claimed to be “enemies.” This was not a racial thing but El Sissy, because of an animus toward blackness, feels that he has to explain this as racial.
“Ancient Greek historian Herodotus’s reports that he personally saw dark-skinned Egyptians with curly hair are also used as a common source of proof by the movement, but this can be explained by the Nubian invasion to Egypt during the 25th Dynasty which lasted for 60 years from 715 BC – 655 BC.”
Herodotus actually says in Histories, Book Two, that the people of Colchis had black skin and wooly hair. The word used in the Greek for black skin is melanchroes, neither phrenochroes, nor leukochroes. Neither brown, nor white skin but melan-chroes, meaning black.
“The broken noses of ancient Egyptian statues have been used by Afrocentrists as evidence that they have Black features and their faces were broken to hide this fact – but in actuality this was done as a spiritual belief to allow the spirit to leave the body.”
I am not sure what Afrocentrists El Sisy is writing about when he says that the broken noses on statues was evidence of black features. It is certainly conceivable that out of a fit of anger some persons were malicious enough to destroy African features on statues, but this is not an element in any Afrocentric thinking of which I am familiar. On the other hand, it is quite unlikely that El Sissy’s idea that the faces were broken to release the spirit makes sense. If that were the case, then we would see many more broken faces, and not just in Kemet but in other parts of the continent.