Ancient Egyptians in Black and White: ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ and the Hamitic Hypothesis

Justin Michael Reed

doi:10.3390/rel12090712

Abstract

In this essay, I consider how the racial politics of Ridley Scott’s whitewashing of ancient Egypt in Exodus: Gods and Kings intersects with the Hamitic Hypothesis, a racial theory that asserts Black people’s inherent inferiority to other races and that civilization is the unique possession of the White race. First, I outline the historical development of the Hamitic Hypothesis. Then, I highlight instances in which some of the most respected White intellectuals from the late-seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century deploy the hypothesis in assertions that the ancient Egyptians were a race of dark-skinned Caucasians. By focusing on this detail, I demonstrate that prominent White scholars’ arguments in favor of their racial kinship with ancient Egyptians were frequently burdened with the insecure admission that these ancient Egyptian Caucasians sometimes resembled Negroes in certain respects—most frequently noted being skin color. In the concluding section of this essay, I use Scott’s film to point out that the success of the Hamitic Hypothesis in its racial discourse has transformed a racial perception of the ancient Egyptian from a dark-skinned Caucasian into a White person with appearance akin to Northern European White people.

Highlights

Every so often, Hollywood puts together another costly, mythic-historical epic to dazzle viewers.1 During the twenty-first century, the commercial success of some films within this broader genre has contributed to Hollywood funding a number of popular productions based upon the Bible,2 ancient Egypt,3 or both4 (Elliott 2014; Burnette-Bletsch and Morgan 2017, pp. 1–2)
This brief foray into one strain of the racialization involved in the Caucasian version of the Hamitic Hypothesis exemplifies this point about the social construction of race
The potential of identifying an ancient civilization like Egypt as Black led to a new configuration of White people as civilized Hamites

Summary

Introduction

Hollywood puts together another costly, mythic-historical epic to dazzle viewers. During the twenty-first century, the commercial success of some films within this broader genre has contributed to Hollywood funding a number of popular productions based upon the Bible, ancient Egypt, or both (Elliott 2014; Burnette-Bletsch and Morgan 2017, pp. 1–2). Scott’s film was frequently criticized for its continuation in a long history of Hollywood portraying ancient Egypt in the image of White people When confronted about his decisions and alerted to threats of the movie being boycotted, Scott provided some questionable responses. Tollerton acknowledges that the accusation of racist casting is one of the primary issues that has drawn attention to the film, but he avoids any sustained engagement with the racial politics of Exodus (2014) and instead references several online pieces written for popular audiences (Lilly 2015; Edwards 2014; Canning 2014; Tollerton 2017b) Among these works, the brief CNN.com article by Joel Baden and Candida Moss comes closest to my essay. I point out that the success of the Hamitic Hypothesis in accomplishing the primary goal of its White adherents—showing a shared racial identity with ancient Egyptians—has generated a racial perception of the ancient Egyptians as thoroughly Caucasian in appearance akin to Northern European White people

What Is the Hamitic Hypothesis?

Dark-Skinned Caucasians in the Hamitic Hypothesis

Conclusions

Ridley Scott’s Exodus