BLACKS & CHRISTIANS MAINTAINED THE LEGACY OF KEMET

In the last decade, a new confidence has swept through some circles in modern Misr. You hear it online, in the streets, in the cafés, and especially in the comment sections: “We are the Pharaohs. We built the pyramids. Kemet is ours.” These declarations come with an air of certainty so intense that anyone who questions them is treated as an enemy, especially if that person is a Black descendant of the African civilizations that shaped the Nile Valley long before Arabic even existed.

But let us speak plainly: this is a retroactive claim, not a historical one. It is a nationalistic costume worn today, not a cultural inheritance preserved over the centuries. And the historical record — the actual documented behavior of the rulers and populations of Misr for over a thousand years — exposes the truth with clarity.

For most of their history under Arab rule, the people now claiming Kemet did not love it, did not protect it, and did not identify with it. The ancient temples, pyramids, statues, and sacred spaces that the world reveres today were, for centuries, treated not as cultural treasures but as pagan remains. The modern claims only became loud once Kemet became profitable — once tourists, scholars, and the global imagination elevated these relics to world significance.

To understand how deep the disconnect truly is, consider the most striking example: Al-Aziz Uthman, the son of Salah al-Din. In the 1190s, he ordered his men to destroy the pyramids, beginning with the Pyramid of Menkaure. This was not an accident. It was not neglect. It was a deliberate attempt to erase the civilization that many in Misr today suddenly insist they descend from. His workers tried for months, chiseling away at casing stones that ancient Africans had engineered far beyond the abilities of their medieval attackers. They failed, but the scars they left on the pyramid remain as a permanent record of their contempt.

This episode is not an isolated moment of fanaticism. It reflects exactly how ancient Egypt was viewed by the rulers of Misr for centuries. Pyramids were seen as monuments of disbelief. Temples were considered places of sorcery. Hieroglyphs were believed to be magical spells. The ancient Egyptian language was allowed to die without a single institution stepping forward to preserve it. The culture that modern Egypt markets to the world existed, for most of Arab Egypt’s history, in the shadows — unloved, unclaimed, and undefended.

And while this neglect was unfolding in Misr, there were three groups who kept the flame of Kemet alive.

First, the Coptic Egyptians, whose language is the last surviving form of ancient Egyptian, preserved in their church liturgy long after official institutions abandoned it. The Copts carried linguistic DNA that links directly back to the temple walls.

Second, the Nubians, whose kingdoms continued building pyramids and honoring Nile valley traditions long after Egypt had turned away from its own past. In many ways, Nubia preserved the spirit of Kemet more faithfully than Cairo did for centuries.

Third — and perhaps most ironically — Black people across the African diaspora, especially in the United States and the Caribbean, defended Kemet’s African identity when almost no one else cared. Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and later generations of Afrocentric scholars honored and studied Kemet at a time when many Egyptians were still afraid to walk inside a temple at night.

So when certain voices in modern Misr declare an intellectual war on Black people for acknowledging the African roots of Kemet, they are waging war on historical truth. They are attacking the very communities that preserved the memory they now attempt to monopolize. And they are claiming a heritage their own ancestors tried to bury, tear down, or ignore.

Modern Egyptians have every right to take pride in the monuments that stand on their soil. Pride is human. Nationalism is powerful. But pride does not rewrite history. Geography does not equal lineage. And shouting does not create a connection where centuries of cultural rejection left a void.

Kemet was never “lost.”
It was ignored — until the world reminded Misr what stood in its own backyard.

The people who now try to silence Black voices speaking on Kemet have inherited a land, not a tradition. Yet they direct their hostility not toward the erasure committed by medieval rulers, not toward the colonial powers who stole monuments and mummies, but toward the very descendants of the African world that gave Kemet birth.

If they insist on intellectual war, then the battlefield will be history itself — and history is not on their side