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West Africa Magazine

July 8, 2001

 

Egyptology: Hanging in the Hair

 

by Anu M'bantu and Fari Supia

 

F0R YEARS, EGYPTOLOGY has been fighting a losing battle to hold onto an ancient Egypt that is Caucasian or, at worst, sun-tanned Caucasian.

 

At the 1974 UNESCO conference Egyptology was dealt a fatal blow. Two African scholars wiped the floor with 18 world-renowned Egyptologists. They proved in 11 different categories of evidence that the ancient Egyptians were Africans (Black). Following that beating, Egyptology has been on its knees praying to be saved by science. Their last glimmer of hope has been the hair on Egyptian mummies.

 

The mummies on display in the world's museums exhibit Caucasoid-looking hair, some of it brown and blonde. These mummies include Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao of the 17th dynasty and the 19th dynasty's Rameses II. As one scholar put it: "The most common hair colour, then as now, was a very dark brown, almost black colour although natural auburn and even rather surprisingly blonde hair are also to be found."

 

Many Black scholars try skillfully to avoid the hair problem. This is a mistake!

 

In 1914, a white doctor in Detroit initiated divorce proceeding against his wife whom he suspected of being a "closet Negro". At the trial, the Columbia University anthropologist, Professor Franz Boas (1858-1942), was called upon as a race expert. Boas declared: "If this woman has any of the characteristics of the Negro race it would be easy to find them . . . one characteristic that is regarded as reliable is the hair. You can tell by microscopic examination of a cross-section of hair to what race that person belongs."

 

With this revelation, trichology (the scientific analysis of hair) reached the American public. But what are these differences?

 

The cross-section of a hair shaft is measured with an instrument called a trichometer. From this you can get measurements for the minimum and maximum diameter of a hair The minimum measurement is then divided by the maximum and then multiplied by a hundred. This produces an index. A survey of the scientific literature produces the following breakdown:

 

  San, Southern African  55.00

  Zulu, Southern African  55.00

  Sub-Saharan Africa  60.00

  Tasmanian (Black)  64.70

  Australian (Black)  68.00

  Western European  71.20

  Asian Indian  73.00

  Navajo American  77.00

  Chinese  82.60

 

In the early 1970s, the Czech anthropologist Eugen Strouhal examined pre-dynastic Egyptian skulls at Cambridge University. He sent some samples of the hair to the Institute of Anthropology at Charles University, Prague, to be analyzed. The hair samples were described as varying in texture from "wavy" to "curly" and in colour from "light brown" to "black". Strouhal summarized the results of the analysis:

 

"The outline of the cross-sections of the hairs was flattened, with indices ranging from 35 to 65. These peculiarities also show the Negroid inference among the Badarians (pre-dynastic Egyptians)."

 

The term "Negroid influence" suggests intermixture, but as the table suggests this hair is more "Negroid" than the San and the Zulu samples, currently the most Negroid hair in existence!

 

In another study, hair samples from ten 18th-25th dynasty individuals produced an average index of 51! As far back as 1877, Dr. Pruner-Bey analyzed six ancient Egyptian hair samples. Their average index of 64.4 was similar to the Tasmanians who lie at the periphery of the African-haired populations(1).

 

A team of Italian anthropologists published their research in the Journal of Human Evolution in 1972 and 1980. They measured two samples consisting of 26 individuals from pre-dynastic, 12th dynasty and 18th dynasty mummies. They produced a mean index of 66.50

Ancient Egyptian Wig

Royal Ontario Museum, Canada

Young Bishari's of North Africa, Egypt, 1890

Click photo to enlarge

Ancient Egyptian wig is made of human hair attached to a net.

18th Dynasty Egypt

The overall average of all four sets of ancient Egyptian hair samples was 60.02. Sounds familiar . . ., just check the table!

 

Since microscopic analysis shows ancient Egyptian hair to be completely African, why does the hair look Caucasoid? Research has given us the answers.

 

Hair is made of keratin protein. Keratin is composed of amino acid chains called polypeptides. In a hair, two such chains are called cross-chain polypeptides. These are held together by disulphide bonds. The bulk of the hair, the source of its strength and curl, is called the cortex. The hair shafts are made of a protective outer layer called the cuticle.

 

We are informed by Afro Hair - A Salon Book, that chemicals for bleaching, penning and straightening hair must reach the cortex to be effective. For hair to be permed or straightened the disulphide bonds in the cortex must be broken. The anthropologist Daniel Hardy writing in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, tells us that keratin is stable owing to disulphide bonds. However, when hair is exposed to harsh conditions it can lead to oxidation of protein molecules in the cortex, which leads to the alteration of hair texture, such as straightening.

 

Two British anthropologists, Brothwell and Spearman, have found evidence of cortex keratin oxidation in ancient Egyptian hair. They held that the mummification process was responsible, because of the strong alkaline substance used. This resulted in the yellowing and browning of hair as well as the straightening effect.

 

This means that visual appearance of the hair on mummies cannot disguise their racial affinities. The presence of blonde and brown hair on ancient Egyptian mummies has nothing to do with their racial identity and everything to do with mummification and the passage of time. As the studies have shown, when you put the evidence under a microscope the truth comes out. At last, Egyptology's prayers have been answered. It has been put out of its misery.

 

Its tombstone reads Egyptology, R.I.P June 2001.

 

 

Note: Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight hair, all of which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical regions. American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race"

Judging a persons hair color/texture alone is insufficient to characterize a race.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

                                                                   

 

 

The statue crowning the U.S. Capitol is called "Freedom." Yet it was a black slave who figured out how to coax apart the 19½-foot, 15,000-pound plaster statue so it could be cast in bronze and rejoined atop the dome.

Slaves, in fact, helped build much of the building and grounds of Congress, their owners earning $5 per month for their work. Ed Hotaling, a retired TV reporter in Washington, was among the first to widely publicize this in a report in 2000.

Following Hotaling's lead, a task force is planning a permanent memorial to the hundreds of slaves who helped build the Capitol from the late 1700s until the mid-1800s. The group will make recommendations to House Speaker

Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Sen. Ted Stevens (news, bio, voting record), R-Alaska, president pro tempore of the Senate.

During February, Black History Month, task force members have been particularly focused on their role and have shared ideas by telephone as they prepare to meet.

The final cost and form of the memorial is still undetermined. It could be a site on the Capitol grounds or a living memorial such as an annual traditional African ceremony to honor the slaves.

"I don't think the story of the Capitol would be fully told until we have something depicting the lives of the people who helped build it," says Rep. John Lewis (news, bio, voting record), D-Ga., a student leader during the civil rights movement. Lewis and J.C. Watts, a Republican former member of Congress from Oklahoma, set up the task force.

Currie Ballard, a historian at Langston University in Oklahoma and a task force member who favors a living memorial, says it is fitting that the effort also inform people about the country's African- American heritage.

"It's so apropos that America says, 'Yes, a wrong has been committed, and let's educate people that black people have made a significant contribution to America,' " Ballard says.

Slavery in Washington was different from slavery in the rural South, says Walter Hill, senior archivist and African-American history specialist with the National Archives. Households had smaller groups of slaves, eight or nine, and the men and women often were skilled artisans. Owners hired out their slaves to earn money.

In the late 1700s, when a federal commission began planning to build the Capitol, it hired slaves to work alongside free black and white workers. The idea was to keep free workers from complaining about their conditions by bringing in competition, says historian Bob Arnebeck, an expert on the construction of the Capitol.

Decades later, Congress decided it wanted a Statue of Freedom placed atop a new Capitol dome, and commissioned Thomas Crawford, an American sculptor who lived in Rome, to create it.

Crawford initially wanted to model the statue's headdress after freed Roman slaves. But Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy who headed the construction of the Capitol as secretary of war, objected to the slavery reference. Crawford instead created a helmet with eagle head and feathers, according to the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.

Washington-area sculptor Clark Mills was hired to cast the statue - which arrived in five plaster parts from Italy - into bronze.

Mills' foundry foreman first put the plaster pieces together for exhibition, according to the Architect of the Capitol, but demanded more money to take it apart for the final casting. Mills refused and instead put Philip Reid in charge of the casting.

Reid was about 42, small in stature and respected for his work, according to C.R. Gibbs, a Washington historian. While working on the statue from 1860 to 1862, he figured out that by hooking a rope into an iron eye on its crown and instructing men to gently pull on it, the statue would come apart in its original sections, according to records at the Capitol.

Reid and others then were able to cast the parts in bronze.

In 1863, a year after President Lincoln freed Washington's slaves, the bronze parts were hoisted atop the Capitol and assembled. Some records indicate Reid played a role in that operation, too, although he would have been free by then.

Hotaling discovered the history of the slaves while researching the 200th anniversary of the Capitol.

"It was seeing history in the form of discarded old faded photostats lying on top of filing cabinets, and saying, 'My God, this is incredible. Why hasn't anybody done anything about it?' " Hotaling says.