There has been notable backlash on online forums such as Steam and YouTube over the portrayal of Egyptians in the game along with accusations of falsifying history to promote a racist agenda. Frankly these claims are ridiculous and I would usually ignore or make light of them but in light of recent controversies surrounding race in the ancient world like the BBC Twitter controversy where respected Classicist Mary Beard was attacked by social media users for "defending blackwashing" or even Gods of Egypt's portrayal of Egyptian deities by European actors, it is incredibly topical and an important discussion to have in today's climate.

To begin with a picture is worth a thousand words, so before we enter more verbose and theoretically charged grounds, let us see how Egyptians living in Egypt around a century after Bayek chose to depict themselves in realistic portraiture. Here are some examples of Egyptians depicted in mummy portraits, which were generally encaustic paintings on linen, wood or, more rarely, papyrus that were usually commissioned in life and were placed over the mummy of the deceased.

We can see some that were of darker complexions comparable to the darker NPCs ingame like Medunamun.

We can also see depictions of people who are quite light skinned and even resemble Southern Europeans in some respects, like this woman who falls well within the range of appearance for Egyptians as does this man.

And then there is this Egyptian man from the Roman period who looks kind of similar to Bayek in certain videos but this might just be me.

These portraits are all believed to depict native Egyptians but at this time Egypt was also home to Greeks, Nubians, Aethiopians, Syrians, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Jews, Indians, Gauls, ad infinitum albeit these minorities would have made up a combined total of less than 10% in all likelihood during the mid 1st Century BCE and they were concentrated around the metropoles and port cities. Most are neither dark nor fair like this young man or this woman who simply look North African.

But all in all, the characters portrayed are clearly not Sub-Saharan in complexion or in features, and the Memphiite priestesses actually do look like Egyptians from the region. To be honest a lot of the NPCs would not look out of place in Qalubiya or someplace like that in the Delta.

Now sometimes, the proof is in the pudding and none of these people are lily-white and none of them are remotely Sub-Saharan which is exactly what we would expect from Egypt's projected population.

Ancient Egyptians are generally believed to be most similar to other North and especially North East African populations like modern Libyans instance as opposed to West Asian or East African populations which is a shared trait with modern Egyptians who are probably the most similar population to ancient Egyptians that exists today.

There was a fairly significant amount of admixture from Levantine(Middle Eastern) populations as well as ethnic and cultural assimilation of Nilo-Saharan groups well in Egypt's pre-Dynastic history, as well as continued contact with Levantine and East African civilisations throughout Antiquity which impacted the culture and ethnography of ancient Egypt in its cradle and continued to influence its religion and culture throughout the ancient period. It is also likely that there was some gene flow through island hopping between Europe and Africa as well as tran-Saharan migration thanks to the Sahara's wet phases. The population of Northern(Lower) Egypt is the region with the highest concentration of Middle Eastern admixture and individuals from this region have the highest genetic similarities to Levantine and Near Eastern groups. Upper Egypt conversely has the highest percentage of Afro-Semitic and Saharan admixture and individuals from this region show more similarities to people from the Horn of Africa and the Maghreb than those in the northern, more Mediterranean regions do. DNA testing on remains from ancient Egyptian sites has not occurred often and the few instances where it was attempted were highly controversial, such as attempts to analyse Tutankhamun's mummy for genetic disorders, because of the strong risk of the genetic material being broken down and/or contaminated by archaeologists, tomb robbers and even the analysts.

A recent study of mummies from the pre-Ptolemaic Ptolemaic and Roman period in Abusir El-Meleq near the Faiyuum was able to safely overcome many of the difficulties of extracting DNA safely, and it indicates that the inhabitants of the region were closer to ancient and particularly Neolithic Anatolian groups than their modern counterparts as well as having about 8% less Sub-Saharan admixture than modern Egyptians which could be a result of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade or it could reflect possible admixture from Nubian population groups in the past 2000 years. It also suggests that intermarriage and intermingling between Greek and Roman groups with this population was negligible throughout this time period. The only issue here is that we have no way of knowing whether this village is in any way reflective of Egypt's demographics, but it is certainly an indicator that at least in this region the population was not significantly impacted by Greek or Roman immigration or intermarriage and that they had more genetic overlap with Neolithic Anatolians than Sub-Saharan clades. Of course, because the people who write articles for non-scientific/anthropolgical sites are pretty bad at information retention and comprehension, there were a lot of articles stating that the scientists claimed that ancient Egyptians were actually Turkish which is a like a game of Telephone gone horribly wrong.

An older but less sensationalised study had already suggested that Egypt had a strong connection to the ancient Near East and was (predictably) not closer to Sub-Saharan clades than modern North Africans. It also suggests that this gene flow was not one way but that gene flow went back and forth between the Levant, North East Africa and the Horn of Africa which is supported by the "Back to Africa" hypothesis, wherein population groups that had settled Eurasia returned to East Africa rather than there simply being a one way migration outwards. This also ties in to the evidence that predynastic Egypt experienced migrations from the Levant which influenced ethnic and cultural features of the region that I mentioned above.

Now the problem with similar studies in general that attempt to prove or disprove genetic continuity they do not show where the closest genetic affinities are out of every possible ethnic grouping but what the closest genetic affinities are out of the reference points used. For example, in a hypothetical study comparing North East African groups to Saharan populations and North West European populations, the North East African groups would show the closest affinity to Saharan samples and that would be the finding even though these samples might show a closer affinity to North West African or Near Eastern groups in a study including them. And in a hypothetical study comparing samples from populations in the Maghreb to samples from the Congo and to the Near East, the Maghreb populations might chart closer to the Levant although in a study including Saharan and North African populations as reference points this would not necessarily be the case. This is just one of the ways that studies can be unintentionally skewed and is why they are frequently criticised, as important as the findings is the way these results were reached.

The biggest problem of all is simply that there has not been any large scale testing of genetic material taken from sites throughout Egypt, let alone studies spanning Egypt's Dynastic and pre-Dynastic history, but in the future there will hopefully be more breakthroughs as we map Egypt's genetic history and I personally am optimistic about the breakthroughs thus far.

Modern Egyptians carry genes from Afro-Semitic ethnic groups as well as Near Eastern and a small amount of Southern European admixture but are predominantly North East African in origin. Modern North African ethnicities share a common ancestral origin which is evidenced across Egyptian, Libyan, Sudanese, Coptic and Moroccan populations to name a few, and North African and Maghrebi populations are thought to be descended from a population that was distinct from both Sub-Saharan and Eurasian populations although it was frequently impacted by both.

Ancient evidence including Graeco-Roman literary accounts and skeletal remains supports the idea that ancient Egypt's population had similar clines to modern Egypt, with more southerly populations being closer to Maghrebi and Saharan ethnic groups and more northerly regions being closer to Near Eastern ethnic groups in a kind of gradual scale where Egyptians in the Nile Delta are fairer with more Semitic/Levantine features while Egyptians near the first cataracts are more similar to their Saharan neighbours.

This is where modern scholarship tends to rely on physical anthropology, which to be clear has been problematic in the past due to ideologically motivated cherrypicking of data, the fixation on arbitrary traits and the association of objectively random values to their presence. That said, its methodological tools can still be used to show continuity in populations that have experienced environmental pressures or isolation, only with the cautionary tale of esssentialising physical characteristics that has been left behind by previous generations of less rigorous anthropologists and proto-anthropologists.

Technically speaking, North Africans and East Africans are caucasoid populations, they are not placed in the same racial category as Africans from the Congo region for example but are placed in the category of Middle Easterners. However they would not necessarily be considered "white", because whiteness can be measured many different ways. It could refer to the skin tone or hair type of an individual but many Caucasians in regions like the Middle East and North Africa are of browner complexion than the average Western/North Western European. It is also sometimes seen as referring exclusively to individuals belonging to the same ethnic group as Western and especially North Western Europeans by white supremacist ideologies. Take the US for example, all North African and Middle Eastern people are considered Caucasian but many individuals might not think of them as being "white". This is highly relevant to ancient Egypt because people tend to try to conceptualise Egypt in terms of white vs black, but not only are there multiple ethnic groups that are represented, but even in modern times the racial politics surrounding these groups are not straightforward.

The main reason for the backlash is attributable to the difference between "blackness" as a social construct and the ethnic categories that technically fall under the umbrella of "blackness". I have no doubt that for the people offended by the appearances of certain NPCs ingame they would consider these people to be black and would treat them the same way as an African-American of Sub-Saharan/West African and Western European descent if judging them solely on appearance as being "dark", that oh so nebulous category, but from an anthropological perspective this is simply ignorant of the diversity present in Africa which exceeds that of any other continent.

Take countries like Ethiopia and Eritrea for example, their populations consist mainly of Afro-Semitic and Nilo-Saharan population groups (not unlike ancient Nubia, Aksum and Upper Egypt) and the people are not to be confused with Sub-Saharan Africans but not all of them appear Near Eastern or West Asian, many might be automatically categorised as "black" based on their appearance if they were somewhere like the US or UK but others might resemble stereotypical Middle Easterners. Compare for example someone Gerartu Tulu or Kenenisa Bekele of the Cushitic Oromo ethnic group to Haile Gerima, Haile Selassie or "Gigi" of the Amhara another Afro-Asiatic group in Ethiopia, as well as Berbers, an Afro-Semitic speaking population from North-West Africa that is especially well represented in Libyan, Tunisian and Algerian populations and includes individuals like Lounes Matoub of Algerian Berber descent and Fatima Tabaamrant of Moroccan Berber Amazigh descent, to see the diversity within Afro-Asiatic populations. Many Berbers even appear European for instance, but ethnically and culturally they are lumped together with other Berbers who are darker skinned, compare this Moroccan Berber family with this Tuareg man or these Tuareg children. Now a degree of gene flow from both Sub-Saharan (Niger-Congo) and Levantine (Arab) population movement is present and to be expected but there is no evidence that the population of North and East Africa was ever displaced, entirely diluted or exterminated the way that Afrocentrists and white supremacists argue, on the whole even though Egypt has been culturally Arabised to a great extent and there has been an increase in Arab and Sub-Saharan admixture in the past 1500-2000 years, most Egyptians seem to be ethnically Egyptian which is what common sense also dictates given that there is literally zero reason to think that genocide or massive migration ever impacted the Egyptian population as a whole in modern times, let alone enough to substantiate these claims.

Both modern Egypt and ancient Egypt are non-homogenous, and there are North to South and East to West clines, where there is much greater similarity to Near Easterners in the North and slightly more towards the East, and much greater similarity to Saharans (like Nubians) to South and slightly more towards the West as a result of population movements along the Nile. In fact, the heritage of foreigners in early Egypt goes beyond genetics, there is continuity between prehistoric tool-making, dwellings and modes of subsistence between Upper Egypt and regions like Nubia and Morocco in the Paleolithic, and in the Neolithic Levantine pottery styles and agricultural methods began to influence Lower Egypt before spreading further up the Nile as trade between Lower and Upper Egypt increased before the Dynastic period and unification.

In the Bronze Age there was extensive trade between the Levant and Egypt, and along with the Hyksos conquest of Lower Egypt and the establishment of the capital of Avaris by them, there was in all likelihood a more gradual immigration of Semitic peoples. Around the same time Nubia siezed portions of Upper Egypt. However the mid regions of Egypt continued to be ruled by the Pharaohs in Thebes who were nevertheless forced to pay tribute to the Hyksos until they defeated them and reconquered the region under Ahmose I who continued the work of his father and brother in campaigning against the Hyksos and Kushites. To quote Kamose, elder brother and predecessor of Ahmose

What is the point in my own strength? A thief is in the north, another down in Nubia. And here I sit between an Asian and a Nubian. Each man has his slice of Egypt and the land is partitioned. No man can pass through it as far from the South as to the North. No man can be at ease while they are milked by the taxes of the Asiatics. I will grapple with him that I might crush his belly. For my desire is to rescue Egypt that the Asiatics have destroyed.

Following this was the zenith of ancient Egyptian civilisation as the New Kingdom came to conquer regions stretching from modern Sudan to Turkey in what is often referred to as "the Egyptian Empire". So between successive wars and migrations there was already significant gene flow between North East African and the Near East in Antiquity in addition to the trade that was essential to Mediterranean civilisation.

Given the geographical difference between Upper, Middle and Lower Egypt the cultural and ethnic makeup of the land was never uniform but is better described as being familiar. This is reflected in modern Egypt where there is actually some diversity between Egyptians in areas like Alexandria and Egyptians in regions like Qena but again, modern Egyptians share a common ethnic origin although they have varying degrees of admixture.

However the predominant assumption that this diversity in pigmentation is solely attributable to the mixing of ethnic groups has been challenged in more recent scholarship even as it has enjoyed popularity

The “Egypt-as-a-zone-of-mixture” hypothesis, however, assumes the prior exis- tence of discrete parent populations of different appearance-in this case, a light- skinned one in the north and a dark-skinned one in the south. Whether that hypothetical southern dark-skinned population is called “Ethiopian”, “nìgre", “Bantu,” “Black,” “Kaffir,” “Negro,” or whatever, the universal assumption is that the increase in skin pig- mentation is accompanied by everted lips, low-bridged noses, projecting jaws and teeth, attenuated lower legs, and a variety of other physical attributes. All recent assessments of ancient Egyptian art invariably focus on the portrayal of this configuration. Whatever name is used, the underlying mind-set is the same, and it is the old-fashioned typological essentialism of the “race” concept. The category in the minds of the users of those various names as the same as the “true Negro” of traditional "racial anthropology". We do not deny that such a configuration exists and is identifiable, and that people who illustrate it can be found in known areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The problem lies in the assumption that those separate elements are invariably linked together so that the presence of one can inevitably be taken to indicate the presence of the others.1

Although we can see various traits associated with the two "races" proposed as originating the Egyptians this is not actually scientific evidence of origin. Although Upper Egyptians resemble tropical Africans in their limb ratios this is also found in unrelated South Asian (particularly Indian) populations as well as South American ones that exist under similar conditions of intense heat found near the equator and long limbs are selected for in hot environments. High melanin levels and dark brown skin is similarly explained by environment and populations which are extremely divergent from tropical Africans like Australians, Negritos and even some Asians display darker skin. The high bridged nose common to North and East Africa is also associated with European/West Asian peoples but it is also found among Amerind peoples, and this is very likely an evolutionary adaptation to deal with lack of moisture in the air which can be found in cold, northerly climates or in arid ones such as those found around the Sahara. Therefore it has been argued that these traits should not be automatically cherrypicked to attempt to define North African and Maghrebi peoples as "Negroid" or "Caucasoid" but could well be attributable to independent adaptations to their environment by more modern anthropologists 2. In this way the claims that North and East Africa were home to "mulatto" or mixed populations that was made by 19th and early 20th anthropologists and archaeologists like Flinders Petrie is a lazy assumption that reveals more about contemporary ideologies than findings based on empirical evidence.

Graeco-Roman authors in particular liked to compare Aethiopian, Nubian, Egyptian and Indian populations as they saw them as being representative of the effects that heat and moisture (or lack thereof) can have on the appearance of a people. Since these groups were under varying degrees of heat and dry conditions, and they inhabited regions to the south, they were something of an proto-anthropolgical litmus test, Aethiops were furthest south and the darkest, Egyptians and Indians were slightly to the north and fairer etc. Hence the numerous references to "Indian" Andromeda or to people from the sub-continent as Ethiopian. The contact with individuals who were exceedingly dark skinned and of "negroid" facial features and the distinction between them and Egyptians by Greek and Roman artists and authors further supports the idea that ancient Egyptians were not "black" in the strictest sense of the word (see the Pompeiian Love scenes on the Nile 1 and 2 or this bust of an African youth). The 1st Century BCE Roman historian and geographer Strabo describes the distribution of skin tone as he understood it and he describes the Egyptians as fairer than Aethiopians

As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in color, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Egyptians.

And in the 1st Century AD Roman poem Astronomica

Curly hair about the temples betrays the Syrian. The Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness; less sun-burnt are the natives of India; the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it is a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone. The Sun-god dries up with dust the tribes of Africans amid their desert lands; the Moors derive their name from their faces, a and their identity is proclaimed by the colour of their skins.

Nevertheless, a distinction was made between the appearances of North/East Africans and Indians by Greek and Roman authors and this comparison was not a straightforward equivalency. Egyptians in their own art are generally distinct from Nubians, Asians, Libyans and Greeks but they tended to depict individuals and peoples not in a hyper realistic fashion but more as vignettes intended to typify Egypt's outsiders. Skin tone was also used in a stylistic fashion, and women were often painted gold and men red to conform to Egyptian ideals where men were virile and vigorous (symbolised by red) and women spent the majority of their time indoors without being exposed to excessive sunlight which is especially apparent in scenes depicting couples like this or this dual statue. So taking Egyptian art on face value is dubious at best, 2 dimensionality and smoothed details notwithstanding.

In conclusion, based on what I have seen of the game, the morphology of the Egyptians is fairly accurate, they appear to be a mixture of what is occasionally referred to as "Semitic" and "Hamitic" types with a variation in skin tone ranging from brown to olive/light skin and eye colour ranging from brown/black to hazel/green. The accusations that they resemble Sub-Saharans in features seems odd given that we have seen an (accurately) overwhelming degree of Semitic traits in terms of facial features but particularly noses, lips and brows. To support this compare the character model of Bayek to this Tutsi man and this Lobedu woman both of whom belong to the Bantu grouping of Sub-Saharan Africa, and then again to the North, North-East and East African groups we have examined thus far. Bayek has a long and high bridged nose, prominent brow, compact lips and a proportionately small jaw. All of these traits could possibly be found in Sub-Saharan populations but they are not typical for them, they are most typical of Eurasian or Maghrebi populations. His eyes are hazel/light brown, a trait shared by Europeans, North Afticans and Near Easterners but not by Sub-Saharans which further marks his heritage. Even his skin tone is within the range of North Africans and Middle Easterners albeit towards the browner end of the spectrum for these groups but since Bayek is a native of Upper Egypt this makes sense and matches the regional demographics.

Most of these complaints seem to have been born less out of problems with the anthropological background of the game or with Ubisoft's representation of ancient Egypt, but with contemporary racial politics in the United States and to a lesser extent Western Europe. The fact that the majority of African Americans are of mixed descent, with paternal North Western European descent being especially common and the average African American being of 16.7 to 24% European descent (with some having much less or much more than this) has likely contributed to the association of "blackness" with a wide variety of traits. That is to say, that the comparatively large proportion of brown skinned individuals who may or may not also have Caucasian features who identify as black might have a lot to do with the identification of brown skinned people in general as "black" which can also be traced to to American laws like the "one drop rule". Take Halle Berry for example, as a mixed race woman she chose to identify as black and is an icon for the African American and black women as a whole. Her features are not representative of Sub Saharan Africans but she is nevertheless "black".

With the ancient Egyptians no such catharsis can be reached. The modern ideas of "blacks", "whites" or even "Europeans" as distinct and essentially juxtaposed groups did not exist until around 250 years ago, and the idea that similarities in skin tone or hair/eye colour would be a primary factor in determining cultural values would seem insane to ancient peoples who used tribal affiliations, language and cultic practices to define themselves. To be certain the Egyptians had their own self identity to define themselves in relation to their neighbours but this did not center around their Africanness or Caucasianness, the underlying assumption that they were either fundamentally equal to say, Nubians or Canaanites, would have been rejected as they saw themselves as being a distinct people from both regardless of physical appearance. To use another example, although we might consider both French and Italian people as being "white",the Roman inhabitants of central Italy did not share the belief that they and the Gauls were of a common stock and heritage. Indeed, the very idea that being of a similar complexion or continental origin to a significant historical figure or even civilisation imparts any increased value onto a modern individual is ludicrous if taken outside of the framework of self-validation or ideological rhetoric. Therefore the Egyptians saw themselves as neither black nor white, and if an individual were to travel back in time to explain this social phenomenon it is doubtful that they would see any value in it.

What we are left with is a people that can be identified as North African, has been influenced by the Near East to a great extent, and does not conform to the popular or archetypal roles of "Black African" or "White European" and can therefore be contested based on varying metrics of race. Even modern North Africa is perceived differently by different groups, ironically the people that are the closest to ancient Egyptians and are their modern descendants, are viewed with scorn by both Afrocentric and white supremacist schools of thought who construct an identity of inferior invaders for them and reserve the status of one of the world's oldest civilisations for their racial mirage, be it a Nordic race or a Sub Saharan one.

One thing that must be stressed is that ancient Egypt was an undeniably African civilisation and an integral part of the Near East but by no means black, nor white in the modern sense and the desire to invoke either identity in regards to the ancient Egyptians is always born out of modern racial politics not academic rigour. Egypt has remained Egyptian just as much as we can say that China or Britain, two regions which have been home to various ethnic groups and which also experienced immigration, empire and conquest in historic times, have remained predominantly Chinese or British.

As it stands, the development team of Assassins' Creed: Origins clearly did their research and as the game nears launch so should its critics.

Citations

1, 2 Clines and clusters vs "Race": A test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile by C. Loring Brace, David P. Tracer, Lucia Allen Yaroch, John Robb, Kari Brandt, A. Russell Nelson

Recommended Reading

Egypt and the Egyptian by Douglas J. Brewer and Emily Teeter is a great start to Egyptian history in general.

An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt by Kathryn Bard discusses the history, methods and theories behind Egyptian archaeology as well as the difficulties faced by it, which includes those surrounding the construction of ethnicity in ancient Egypt.

Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Graeco-Roman Experience by Frank M. Snowden examines the ways in which "black" individuals were perceived by Greek and Roman society which naturally pays attention to Ethiopians and Nubians within Hellenistic and Roman Egypt among other topics.