Was Egyptian Civilization African?
...o authors involves the word kmt. Kmt is the name that the Egyptians called their country. In Crawford’s article, which claimed that Egypt was an African society, he defines the word as meaning “the negroes”. He states that they named their country this because they were black people. His counterpart, Bard, defines that word as “Black Land”. She states that the name was given because of the Nile Valley’s fertile, dark soil, as opposed to the dŝrt (“Red Land”) of the surrounding desert land. Each party’s argument relies on the definition of kmt to solidify it. Another main area of disagreement is the usage of ancient artifacts in the argument. In Crawford’s article, he cites that tools and other artifacts found in Egypt were similar to findings that were found in sub-Saharan African civilizations. Bard, a qualified archeologist, states it best when she writes, “This seems like a ridiculous conclusion today: stone tools thousands of years old cannot tell us the race of their makers any more than they can tell us what language their makers spoke” (54). The “yes” article is strong in that it provides conclusions drawn from the comparison of modern day Africans and the mummified Egyptian skulls of the past. It is weak in that it only deals with the race and does not really compare the cultures of the Africans & Egyp...