Le Plug 🌱🍄

There is a reason the Cleopatra argument is so persistent. It is the only one available. Think about what it requires you to believe to maintain the position that ancient Egypt was not African: You have to believe that a civilization located on the African continent, surrounded by African populations, drawing on the Nile Valley civilizational complex that stretches deep into the African interior, sharing linguistic roots with other African language families, trading and intermarrying with Nubian kingdoms to the south for thousands of years... Was somehow not African. Was a separate category. A Mediterranean anomaly. An island of non-Africa on the African continent. That belief requires so much architectural maintenance. So many careful exclusions. So many reclassifications. So much sustained institutional effort. The Cleopatra argument is what you reach for when all of that architecture is under pressure and you need something that sounds like a fact. It is one true fact deployed in the service of a framework that cannot survive honest examination.