Kemet (Ancient Egypt)

The Black Land and the Red Land

The ancient Egyptians called their country Kmt, usually written Kemet: the Black Land. As Egyptologist Salima Ikram explains, the name referred to the dark, fertile soil that the Nile laid down during its yearly flood. The surrounding desert was Deshret, the Red Land, which was both a hostile place and a source of minerals. Egyptians also called their country Tawy, the Two Lands, meaning Upper Egypt (the valley to the south) and Lower Egypt (the Delta to the north).

The Nile shaped everything. Its flood watered and enriched the fields, provided materials for crafts and building, and set the calendar: the season of inundation began the new year.

A long dynastic history

Egyptologists divide the civilization into periods: Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, First Intermediate Period, Middle Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period, followed by Macedonian and Ptolemaic rule. Roman rule began in 30 BCE.

All dates before 664 BCE are approximate, and published chronologies differ. University College London's chronology starts the Early Dynastic Period around 3100 BCE and the Old Kingdom around 2686 BCE. The University of Memphis timeline, based on the work of William J. Murnane, starts Dynasty 1 around 3000 BCE and rounds third-millennium dates on purpose to avoid a false sense of precision. The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates the Old Kingdom to about 2650–2150 BCE.

The Age of the Pyramids

The Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3–6) is often called the Age of the Pyramids. The Met describes Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara as the earliest pyramidal monument. The Great Pyramid at Giza is linked to the Dynasty 4 king Khufu, and his relative Hemiunu was probably its architect. Khafre and Menkaure built the other Giza pyramids.

Art of this period combined a formal set of rules with close observation of the human body. The standard standing pose stayed in use for more than 2,500 years. Tomb reliefs of Dynasties 5 and 6 include the earliest known scenes of daily life, such as fishermen and herdsmen on the river.

Debates about origins

Scholars have long debated who the ancient Egyptians were and how they related to the rest of Africa. In Nations nègres et culture (1954), the scholar Cheikh Anta Diop argued that the ancient Egyptians were Black Africans, and he connected this to a wider argument for Africa's cultural unity. He restated the thesis in UNESCO's General History of Africa (volume II) and at a 1974 UNESCO symposium in Cairo on the peopling of ancient Egypt, where it was discussed at length. His work has been influential, especially in Black American intellectual circles, and it remains a subject of scholarly debate rather than settled consensus. On the geography there is no dispute: Kemet was an African civilization of the Nile Valley.