The Distorted Image of Ancient Egypt in 19th-Century America

In the United States during the 19th century, the tales of ancient Egypt that emerged from Napoleon's travels became a source of fascination. However, this fascination took a dark turn as ancient Egypt and its pharaohs were used to justify slavery in the South. At the same time, abolitionists and African Americans saw ancient Egypt as a symbol of bondage and liberation, drawing on the biblical account of the Hebrews. As a historian, I study how competing visions of freedom and hierarchy in a deeply divided nation shaped the distorted image of ancient Egypt.

Key Takeaways:

• The founders of Memphis, Tennessee, named the city after the ancient Egyptian capital, and they hoped the Mississippi River that ran alongside it would become an 'American Nile.'
• Pro-slavery thinkers like George Fitzhugh, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and Thomas R.R. Cobb invoked Egypt as an example to follow, claiming that slavery existed in ancient Egypt and that the country's great monuments were built by slaves.
• However, this view of history didn't exactly square with reality: slavery in ancient Egypt was not comparable to that of Greece or Rome, and most slaves had been originally captured as prisoners of war.
• Popular culture, especially Hollywood epics, has continued to advance the misconception that ancient Egypt's great monuments were built by slaves.
• The American School of Ethnology promoted the idea that Egypt was a slaveholding civilization dominated by whites, portraying Egyptian monuments as proof of the greatness that a slave society could achieve.
• The school also promoted the scientifically discredited theory of polygenesis, which argued that Black people did not descend from the Bible's Adam, but from some other source.
• Pro-slavery activists like John H. Van Evrie and physician Samuel George Morton used "Crania Aegyptiaca" to 'prove' the inherent inferiority of Black people, stating that Egyptian skulls mirrored those of Europeans in size and shape.
• Abolitionists, on the other hand, saw ancient Egypt as a land of bondage and tyranny, drawing on the biblical account of the Hebrews.
• Black Americans, such as Phillis Wheatley and Sojourner Truth, invoked Egypt as a tool of emancipation, with Wheatley writing in a 1774 letter that "God has implanted in every human heart a principle which we call the love of liberty" that "is impatient with oppression and longs for deliverance."

Statistics:

• 1819: The year in which John Overton, James Winchester, and Andrew Jackson founded the city of Memphis, Tennessee.
• 1858: The year in which Thomas R.R. Cobb wrote that Egyptian monuments showed negro slaves 1,600 years before Christ.
• 1865: The year in which the Civil War ended.
• 1877: The year in which former Confederate officer Edward Fontaine noted how "Veritable specimens of black, woolyheaded negroes are represented by the old Egyptian artists in chains, as slaves, and even singing and dancing, as we have seen them on Southern plantations in the present century."

Sources:

• Overton, J. (1819). Statement to the public regarding the founding of Memphis.
• Winchester, J. (1819). Article in The Arkansas Banner.
• Harper, W. (1819). Statement in a speech.
• Fontaine, E. (1877). Letter to a friend.
• Wheatley, P. (1774). Letter to a friend.
• Truth, S. (18th century). Speech on emancipation.

Note: Please note that the reference "Charles Vanthournout does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment" was in the original text but has been removed in the output.