Controversy Erupts as Egypt and Netherlands Clash Over ‘Kemet’ Exhibition: A Closer Look at the Debate

2023-06-24 09:48:17

► What are the Egyptian authorities indignant regarding?

Nothing is going well between Egypt and the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden in the Netherlands. Opened at the end of April in this museum, an exhibition “Kemet”, literally the “black earth”, according to the name given by the Egyptians in antiquity to their country, set fire to the powder. It presents the way in which many African-American musicians, actors or artists, such as Beyoncé, Eddy Murphy, Tina Turner or Miles Davies have seized images of ancient Egypt and pharaohs to make them emblems of black pride. .

A scandal for the Egyptian authorities who see it as a “falsification of history” and “Afrocentrism”, denouncing an appropriation of ancient Egyptian history, in particular by the defense movements of black American populations. In retaliation, they forbade Dutch archaeologists from continuing their excavations in the Saqqara necropolis, some of which they had been working on since 1975. To the chagrin of the management of the Dutch museum, who regret that the Egyptian authorities did not take worth coming to see the exhibition.

This is not the first controversy on the subject. Last May, the release of the series produced by Netflix on Cleopatra had already sparked the ire of the Egyptian authorities, the queen being interpreted by black actress Adele James. Immediately social networks were inflamed and a petition to ban it had collected tens of thousands of signatures. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities had communicated insisting on the ” White skin ” and the ” hellenistic features of the last pharaoh.

► Why is Egypt reacting so violently?

For the writer Ammar Ali Hassan, an Egyptian researcher specializing in political science, the ” virulence of the government’s reactions can be explained by a desire to reassure the Egyptian people, proud of their history but worried regarding their place in the world. A feeling reinforced today “ as the country experiences a decline in both global and regional influence and experiences a severe economic crisis », Analyzes the professor at the University of Helwan.

More broadly, the regime of Marshal-President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi relies on these debates to win back part of public opinion. ” A majority of the population accuses the government of neglecting Egyptian lands since the islands of Tiran and Sanafir were ceded to Saudi Arabia “, continues Ammar Ali Hassan. The two islets in the Red Sea had been ceded to the neighboring kingdom almost without consideration in 2017. A humiliation for many Egyptians.

And now the government fears that this exhibition – speaks to him of ‘propaganda’ – negatively affects the rights of Egypt to the waters of the Nile threatened by the construction of the Renaissance dam in Ethiopia ».

► What do historians say regarding the links between Egypt and Africa?

“From the outset, Egyptian civilization was very probably linked to the Near East and to the eastern Mediterranean world”, underlines the Egyptologist Michel Chauveau, professor at the Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes. This did not prevent ancient Egypt from trading very early, via the Nile, with Africa. “She even colonized the country of Kush in Nubia, which had adopted pharaonic writing and religion”he recalls.

Later, thanks to a moment of crisis, Kushite kings invaded Egypt in their turn. They conquered the entire Nile valley as far as the delta in – 712. And these black pharaohs reigned over the country briefly until – 663 before retreating to the south, before the assaults of the Assyrians. In 2022, the Louvre museum devoted an exhibition to this ephemeral XXVth dynasty, a project which had not raised any particular challenges from the Egyptian authorities.

As for Cleopatra VII, even if we have little precise information on her physique, it is indeed unlikely that she had African features. Daughter of King Ptolemy XII, she was the last representative of this Macedonian dynasty of the Lagides, in 305 by Ptolemy 1st, one of the generals of Alexander the Great. However, if we do not know the identity of Cleopatra’s mother, we know that the Lagides were renowned for favoring consanguineous marriages in order to preserve the purity of their lineage.

“The Netflix series shows the court of Alexandria populated almost exclusively by blacks. It’s strange when you know that it was composed mainly of Greeks “observes, a bit amused, the Egyptologist.

► Where does the theory of a black Egypt come from?

This theory of black Egypt “was born in the United States under the pen of Martin Delany, who was the first black officer to fight in the Union army during the Civil War”, explains Michel Chauveau. In his test « Principia of Ethnology » (1879), this great voice of black pride defended the idea of ​​an African origin of Egyptian civilization.

Then in the 1960s, during the struggles for independence in Africa, “Cheikh Anta Diop in Senegal created a whole school to prove that ancient Egypt was a typically African civilization. Without convincing the Egyptologists”continues Michel Chauveau.

Finally, this theory was taken up in 1987 by Martin Bernal, a British historian, teaching at Cornell University in New York, in his book “Black Athena”, which has become a real bestseller. “This professor went even further by asserting that Black Egypt was at the origin of the civilization of ancient Greece. He pointed to alleged similarities between Greek and Egyptian words, which has been refuted by linguists,” further specifies the Egyptologist, a specialist in demotic, the cursive writing of ancient Egypt.

1687604709
#Egypt #struggling #cultural #Afrocentrism