>>705585There was a big controversy over the race of the Egyptians among European and American scholars. Some European scholars thought that a lot of Ancient Egyptian art made them look black, which sparked a big debate over if the Ancient Egyptians were black and, if not, what race they were. This made its way over to the United States, where it became entrenched in the slavery debate, where some abolitionists used the example of an advanced black Egyptian civilization as proof that blacks weren't some kind of slave race, while many proponents of slavery vehemently denied that the Ancient Egyptians were black and claimed they were "Caucasian."
It has since come to light, with further scholarship, that the Ancient Egyptians were a somewhat cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic civilization which over time merged into a single ethnic group, which are the modern native Egyptians of today (and who, for the most part, are not black). Unfortunately, some black Americans now have an emotional attachment to "black Egypt" and, when combined with a skepticism of modern historical scholarship, leads to the sort of conspiratorial thinking that makes up the foundation for the various "Hotep" tendencies. Many Hoteps take it further and claim all sorts of civilizations were actually black, but central to the whole Hotep worldview is typically the idea that Ancient Egypt was black.