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As far as [[Human skin color|skin color]] is concerned, most modern scholars believe the ancient [[Egyptians]] were "Mediterranean peoples, neither Sub-Saharan blacks nor Caucasian white but peoples whose skin was adapted for life in a subtropical desert environment."<ref>Kathryn A. Bard: ''Ancient Egyptians and the Notion of Race'', p. 104, cp. also p. 111; in: ''Black Athena Revisited'', pp. 103-111.</ref>
The earliest observations in modern scholarship regarding the Egyptians were entirely based on European archaeologists who in the 19th century concluded, disdainfully, that the Ancient Egyptians were undeniably black.<ref>[http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nwen;cc=nwen;rgn=full%20text;idno=nwen0005-4;didno=nwen0005-4;view=image;seq=00281;node=nwen0005-4%3A1]</ref>
==Origins of the controversy==
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However just a few years later, in 1839, [[Champollion]] states in his work "Egypte Ancienne" that the Egyptians and Nubians are represented in the same manner in tomb paintings, reliefs, and that "The first tribes that inhabited Egypt, that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataract and the sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. In the Copts of Egypt, we do not find any of the characteristic features of the Ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with all the nations that successfully dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race."<ref> Champollion-Figeac, Egypte Ancienne. Paris: Collection L'Univers, 1839, p.27</ref>
"The first tribes that inhabited Egypt, that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataract and the sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. The Ancient Egyptians belonged to a race quite similar to the Kenous or Barabras, present inhabitants of Nubia. In the Copts of Egypt, we do not find any of the characteristic features of the Ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with all the nations that successfully dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race."<ref> Champollion-Figeac, Egypte Ancienne. Paris: Collection L'Univers, 1839, p.27</ref>
===Slavery in the USA===
In the early 19th century slavery in the United States was still being justified in part on the assumption that black people were intellectually inferior, and pro-slavery advocates were thus unreceptive to any suggestion of advanced black civilizations. In 1844 [[Samuel George Morton]], a proslavery supporter and one of the pioneers of [[scientific racism]] and polygenism, published his book ''Crania Aegyptica'' with the intention of “proving” that the Ancient Egyptians were not black.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=YHgv011kWIAC&printsec=frontcover#PPP1,M1|title=Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-century American Egyptomania
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