This is despite the fact that genealogical records show Cleopatra I was a Seleucid princess (daughter of Antiochus III the Great of Syria) who married Ptolemy V Epiphanes of Egypt. For those who don’t know, the Seleucid Empire was a Greek state in Western Asia.

It’s not as easy as saying that because Egypt existed on the continent of Africa, then everyone is black. That’s crazy to make those sorts of claims (yet it still happens every single day).  But let’s not discount the concept altogether. Let’s look at real scientific and historical evidence.

Were the Ancient Egyptians Black? What DNA and Archaeology Actually Show

The racial identity of the ancient Egyptians has become one of the most controversial questions surrounding ancient history.

Ancient Egyptians did not divide humanity into the same racial categories used in the modern United States and Europe. They identified themselves through language, homeland, culture, religion, political loyalty, and relationships with neighboring peoples.

Some portray ancient Egypt as an entirely Black African civilization populated by people who resembled modern populations from central, western, or southern Africa. Others have attempted to separate Egypt from Africa completely, describing the Egyptians as Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, or even white.

Neither position accurately reflects the evidence.

Ancient Egypt was an African civilization. It developed in the Nile Valley of northeastern Africa, and many of its cultural foundations emerged among communities living in Egypt and Sudan. However, ancient Egyptians were not one biologically uniform population. Egypt stood at the meeting point of Africa, the Mediterranean, and Southwest Asia, and its population reflected that geography.

The most accurate answer is that ancient Egyptians were Northeast Africans with a range of appearances and ancestry. Some were probably dark-skinned enough to be identified as Black today, while others likely had brown, olive, or lighter complexions. Modern American racial categories cannot describe every person who lived along the Nile over more than 3,000 years.

In the more than 3,000 years that ancient Egypt existed, there were so many different people in the country.

3,000 years is a long, long time. In comparison, the United States has only existed for 250 years. During that short period, look at all that has changed. And that’s the case with ancient Egyptians as well. And in that time, millions of people lived in the area. So when we say “ancient Egyptians,” keep in mind we are talking about a ton of people.

Historians estimate the population of ancient Egypt ranged from 1 to 5 million people throughout its Pharaonic history. The population grew steadily alongside agricultural advancements, peaking at roughly 3 to 5 million during the imperial height of the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BCE), and eventually reaching 7 to 8 million in the later Greco-Roman period.

So let’s start at the beginning and really look at where it all began.

Where Did the Predynastic Egyptians Come From?

Predynastic Egypt generally refers to the period before the First Dynasty and the unification of Egypt around 3100 BCE. Farming settlements developed along the Nile for thousands of years before the first pharaohs appeared. The British Museum dates the Predynastic Period to approximately 5500 to 3100 BCE.

The people of Predynastic Egypt did not arrive in one massive invasion from a single foreign homeland. Ancient Egyptian civilization developed mainly from communities that had been living in northeastern Africa for generations.

Archaeological and skeletal evidence suggests considerable population continuity between Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt. A study of several successive Egyptian populations found both continuity and substantial biological diversity, supporting the conclusion that Egyptian state formation was primarily an indigenous process rather than the result of a foreign population replacing local inhabitants.

These communities were shaped by several interconnected regions:

• The Egyptian Nile Valley
• The deserts and oases west of the Nile
• Nubia and the Sudanese Nile Valley to the south
• The Nile Delta and Mediterranean coast
• Sinai, the Levant and Southwest Asia to the northeast

Predynastic Egypt was therefore neither isolated from the rest of Africa nor cut off from the ancient Near East.

What Does Ancient Egyptian DNA Tell Us?

Ancient DNA from Egypt is extremely difficult to recover. Heat, humidity, embalming chemicals, and thousands of years of biological decay usually destroy genetic material. For that reason, the current sample remains very small.

A 2017 study examined remains from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. Researchers recovered mitochondrial DNA from dozens of individuals but obtained usable genome-wide nuclear data from only three. Those three individuals lived between approximately 787 BCE and 23 CE. They belonged to the later centuries of Egyptian history, thousands of years after the Predynastic Period.

The three individuals showed closer genetic affinity to ancient populations from the Levant and other parts of Southwest Asia than to populations from central or western sub-Saharan Africa. Researchers estimated that the ancient samples possessed roughly 6 to 15% sub-Saharan-related ancestry, while the modern Egyptian comparison samples carried approximately 14 to 21%.

“Sub-Saharan-related ancestry” is a genetic research term. It means that part of a person’s DNA is statistically more similar to DNA found in reference populations whose ancestors lived south of the Sahara than to the other populations included in the analysis.

The study suggested that additional sub-Saharan-related ancestry entered the Egyptian population during or after the Roman Period. However, its authors explicitly warned that all three nuclear samples came from one location in Middle Egypt. They acknowledged that southern Egyptians may have had greater ancestry connected to Nubia and other African populations.

The study cannot prove what every ancient Egyptian looked like, and it certainly cannot establish the ancestry of Predynastic Egypt by itself.

A much earlier genome was published in 2025. Scientists sequenced the complete genome of a man buried at Nuwayrat, near Beni Hasan. He lived between approximately 2855 and 2570 BCE, during the transition between the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom. Although he lived after unification, he is the closest complete Egyptian genome currently available to the Predynastic Period.

Researchers found that approximately 77.6% of his ancestry was best represented by a Middle Neolithic North African population, while about 22.4% was most closely related to Neolithic populations from the eastern Fertile Crescent, including Mesopotamia.

These percentages should not be interpreted to mean that one parent was Moroccan and another was Mesopotamian. Geneticists use the closest available ancient reference populations as statistical stand-ins for ancestry that may have existed across a much broader region.

Nevertheless, the result supports two important conclusions: First, most of this early Egyptian man’s ancestry was connected to ancient North Africa. Second, Egyptian populations had already received ancestry related to Southwest Asia by the beginning of the Old Kingdom.

Because the study examined only one individual, it cannot represent the full population of Egypt. More genomes from Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, Predynastic cemeteries, and different social classes will be necessary before researchers can produce a complete picture.

So while this information suggests that he (the one guy) may have been black, or at least part black, it still doesn’t account for the genetic makeup of the millions of other ancient Egyptians.

Think of it like this … just because your neighbor is black, does that mean everyone who lives on your street is also black? Of course not.

The same content applies to ancient Egyptians. While some may have been black or partially black, just as many were not.

Ancient Egyptians cannot be accurately placed into one modern racial category.

They were an indigenous Northeast African population shaped by the Nile Valley, the Sahara, Nubia, the Mediterranean, and Southwest Asia. Early evidence suggests a large foundation of ancient North African ancestry combined with ancestry related to the Fertile Crescent.

Southern Egyptian populations probably had stronger relationships with Nubian and other Nile Valley populations than communities in the northern Delta.

The evidence does not support the claim that every ancient Egyptian belonged to a homogeneous sub-Saharan Black population.

However, the evidence also does not support the opposite claim that ancient Egyptians were white, non-African, or universally light-skinned. At least one early Old Kingdom Egyptian with predominantly North African ancestry was genetically predicted to have dark-to-black skin.

The most historically accurate answer is therefore not simply yes or no.

Ancient Egyptians were Northeast Africans. They possessed varied ancestry and probably displayed a broad range of brown and dark skin tones. Some would likely be perceived as Black today, while others might not. What united them was not a modern racial identity, but their shared language, culture, religion, and connection to the land of Egypt.

Ancient Egyptians were not a single, uniform people. Like populations today, they varied in ancestry, appearance, and skin tone, shaped by thousands of years of movement and contact across Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Near East.