Black Egyptians and White Greeks?: Historical Speculation and Racecraft in the Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Origins

Bryan Banker

doi:10.3390/h9040145

Abstract

Recent portrayals of ancient Egypt in popular culture have renewed attention concerning the historical accuracy of how race and racism appear in representations of antiquity. Historians of the antiquity have robustly dismissed racist claims of whitewashing or blackwashing historical and cultural material in both scholarship and in popular culture. The 2017 video game Assassin’s Creed: Origins is a noteworthy site to examine this debate, as the game was designed with the assistance of historians and cultural experts, presenting players with an “historically accurate” ancient Egypt. Yet, if race is a fantasy, as Karen Fields and Barbara Fields’ “racecraft” articulates, then what historians have speculated in their study of race and racism are presentations of a proto-racecraft, borrowing from historian Benjamin Isaac. This essay argues that Assassin’s Creed: Origins racecrafts through the paradigm of historical speculation. As historians have speculated on meanings and operations of “race” and racism in ancient Egypt, Origins has made those speculations visible through its depiction of a racially diverse Ptolemaic Egypt. Yet, this racecraft is paradoxically good, as the game does so to push back against the hegemony of whiteness and whitewashing in contemporary popular culture.

Highlights

The recent portrayals of antiquity in popular culture have energized renewed attention concerning the historical accuracy of how race and racism appear in representations of the ancient world
The racecrafted nature of race and racial differences portrayed in Origins arrives by way of historical speculation, as the “exact meanings and operations” of everyday racial and ethnic performances in Ptolemaic Egypt have not been fully interrogated by scholars (McCoskey 2002, p. 35)
Players accept racecrafted diversity as real, through the continuing acceptance of what is “seen” and “thought” while playing, and because of the way racecraft is woven into public language of our everyday racecrafted present (Fields and Fields 2012, p. 19)

Summary

Introduction

The recent portrayals of antiquity in popular culture have energized renewed attention concerning the historical accuracy of how race and racism appear in representations of the ancient world. Depictions of darker skin can be seen in ancient cultural material, but scholars deliberate and speculate whether the different skin tones in art detail racial differences in the minds and imagination of those in the ancient world (Talbot 2018; Bond 2017; Pharos 2018; Whitmarsh 2018). This essay contends that as game historians live in a racecrafted present, they have anachronistically put race and racism in a world that was different, projecting racecraft into the past Their positive racecrafting of the antiquity has political purpose. This essay, first scans how historians have studied the ways in which race and racism appear in the historical and cultural materials, before focusing on Origins as the object of study on how that scholarship is rendered as a racecrafted speculation. As Origins presents as a historically accurate “vivid truth”, players encounter a game that paradoxically racecrafts and reproduces mystification about race and racism to counter contemporary assertions of white supremacy

Racing and Racism in the Antiquity and Historical Scholarship

Conclusions—Could Racecraft Be “Good?”