How Black were the pharaohs?
Egyptian nationalists really want to know.
Mahmoud Abdelrahman in Cairo
Atef Tawfiq was haunted by a single question: Are today’s Egyptians truly descendants of the ancient pharaohs?
The 30-year-old physician from Kafr el-Sheikh governorate had grown up steeped in pride for his country’s 5,000-year-old civilization. But online, he watched as others claimed ownership of that heritage, asserting that modern Egyptians were interlopers with no genetic connection to the pyramid builders.
“When your civilization is being stolen in front of you, you have to respond, but with evidence, not just words,” Tawfiq says.
His answer came in the form of a DNA test. According to the results, he shares 86% genetic similarity to ancient Egyptians and 97% to contemporary Egyptians. “It gave me a sense of pride in my country’s history,” he says.
It’s unclear what Tawfiq’s results actually mean in genetics science, given that human beings also share 98.8% of their DNA with chimpanzees. But he is only one of hundreds of Egyptians who have submitted saliva or blood samples to laboratories in recent years, driven not primarily by medical curiosity but by a desire to reclaim their ancestry in what has become a charged debate over who can rightfully claim pharaonic civilisation.
Martino Khalil, an Egyptian Canadian, understands that “human identity is more complex than a laboratory can settle”. Yet, he felt compelled to take the test too. After living in Canada for nearly two decades, he began to ponder his Egyptian roots and wrote extensively about Egypt and its history between 2019 and 2023. Sceptical commentators on his writing, including those he describes as Afrocentrists, would often question him: “You’re not Egyptian. You don’t look like us. Your skin is lighter, your hair is different. What’s your connection to this history?” In late 2022, he ordered the DNA test kit.
“I did the test out of curiosity and because I wanted material evidence to counter these claims,” Khali says. His results said he was 99.6% Egyptian Coptic and 0.4% North African, specifically with Amazigh origins. He felt reassured but it didn’t really change how he saw himself. “I believe human identity is far broader than genetic lineage,” he says. “We’re not closed bloodlines reduced to numbers.”
From pan-Arabism to genetic nationalism
The surge in genetic testing coincides with rising nationalist fervour in Egypt, where economic crisis, weakening regional influence, and an influx of refugees have converged with government promotion of what some researchers call “neo-pharaonism”.
For decades Cairo led pan-Arabism but Egypt’s regional influence has waned. With that, pharaonic heritage has emerged as an alternative source of national pride.
The shift became visible in April 2021, when President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi presided over the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade, a nationally televised spectacle in which 22 royal mummies were transported through Cairo in gold-trimmed carriages accompanied by martial music and ancient-Egyptian-themed performances.
In the parade’s wake, social-media movements with names like “Kemet” – the ancient Egyptian name for Egypt – and “Egyptian Consciousness” proliferated. These pages, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, celebrate ancient Egyptian civilisation while pushing back against “Afrocentric” ideas that claim that pharaonic Egypt was a black African civilisation.
This online activism has had real-world consequences. In 2022, these groups successfully campaigned to cancel an “Afrocentric” conference planned in Aswan and protested American comedian Kevin Hart’s scheduled Cairo performance. The next year, they mobilised against Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra docudrama series, which cast a Black actress in the title role.
The outcry prompted Egypt’s ministry of tourism and antiquities to issue an official statement declaring that Cleopatra was “fair-skinned with Hellenistic features”.
Beneath this surge in identity politics is a heavier undercurrent that both government and the people could use some distraction from: Egypt’s severe economic crisis. The country owes $150-billion in external debt, its currency is collapsing, and inflation has reached record levels. Present life is increasingly difficult.
The economic crisis also leads longer-settled residents to perceive newcomers as more competition for dwindling opportunities, turbocharging the turn to identity politics. Egypt hosts more than 1-million refugees from Sudan, who have fled the civil war there. Neo-pharaonic social media accounts have increasingly targeted Black refugees, with hashtags calling to “kick refugees out of Egypt”.
‘Citizen science’
Mohamed Abdelhady launched Egy-Origins in 2017 to map the genetic sequence of Egyptians across thousands of years by comparing contemporary DNA samples with results from ancient mummies.
What began as an individual initiative has evolved into a citizen-science project. Abdelhady says some 400 Egyptian volunteers have been tested, with results showing what he describes as 90% genetic similarity to ancient populations.
“There’s a widespread misconception that Egyptians have been genetically altered over 5,000 years due to invasions or migrations and, therefore, modern Egyptians don’t belong to their ancient ancestors,” Abdelhady says. “But with science and genetic analysis, we can refute these claims.”
But not all scientists are convinced. Dr Yahya Gad, professor of molecular genetics and supervisor of the ancient DNA laboratory at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, disputes the existence of a single genetic map for ancient Egyptians, given that ancient Egyptian history spans more than 3,000 years. Available mummy samples also show bias. Royal and elite classes were represented more than ordinary people because they enjoyed higher-quality embalming processes, which increased chances of body preservation.
“Egypt has always been a meeting place for cultures and peoples and this mixture is what makes us see natural genetic diversity today in the Egyptian population,” Gad says. “They fall in the middle of the genetic map of modern humanity after mixing with most ancient world peoples, except East Asia.”
He emphasises that some contemporary Egyptians’ resemblance to ancient ones in features or genes is natural and does not grant any individual or group genetic superiority. “Genes are a tool for understanding health and medicine, not a means for ranking between humans.”
Regardless of scientific credibility or lack thereof, Egyptians seeking answers and grounding continue sending blood samples to laboratories for testing. This practice mirrors the actions of their government, which is grappling with its place in the modern world by looking backwards to an ancient past.
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.