Actor and comedian Kevin Hart just had his show in Cairo canceled because of a remark he made about the Egyptian pharaohs being black. That comment was a joke he made while on his “Reality Check” tour. Speaking about the pharaohs and teaching kids black history, Hart said:
“We must teach our children the true history of Black Africans when they were kings in Egypt and not just the era of slavery that is cemented by education in America. Do you remember the time when we were kings?”
The Cairo stop on his tour was then promptly canceled. “It is with a heavy heart that we share with you, due to local logistical issues, the cancellation of our Kevin Hart event scheduled for February 21st, in Cairo,” the Egyptian management group R Productions announced on Facebook.
Middle East Eye argues that “logistical issues” were not to blame, but rather that his joke about the pharaohs being black infuriated the Egyptians, who accused him and other blacks of wanting to “steal” Egypt’s proud history and “blackwash” it to fit a politically correct American agenda.
Hart faced a flood of criticism in the Arab world’s most populous country for promoting Afrocentrism.
The movement seeks to promote the role Black people played in history and the creation of western civilisation. Hart’s critics, however, accused him of distorting history and robbing Arabs of their claim to the country’s ancient past saying he claimed that Black Africans were once the kings of Egypt.
”We must teach our children the true history of Black Africans when they were kings in Egypt and not just the era of slavery that is cemented by education in America. Do you remember the time when we were kings?” he allegedly stated, though its unclear where the remarks originated.
A hashtag calling for Hart’s show to be cancelled or boycotted became one of the top trending topics on social media in Egypt in December.
One Twitter user said Afrocentrists “want to steal and attribute Egypt’s civilization to Africans and tell modern Egyptians that we are occupying Egypt from them. We must all participate in the campaign to cancel Kevin’s concert.”
Despite many vapid morons online claiming that the pharaohs were black, they were not. All of the post-Alexander the Great pharaohs were of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was Macedonian. Ptolemy was one of the generals of Alexander who wrested control of Egypt in the wars among Alexander’s successors after his untimely death.
Before Alexander, the Egyptians were closer to the modern peoples of the Levant, or Middle Easterners, as BigThink reported, saying:
But a group of international researchers, using unique methods, have overcome the barriers to do just that. They found that the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant. This is the Eastern Mediterranean which today includes the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Egypt was made part of the Roman Empire by Julius Caesar and then annexed fully by Augustus after his defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, though it remained exclusively the emperor’s. So, starting with Augustus, the “pharaoh” was Roman.
So, in summary, the earliest pharaohs were related to the people of the Levant. Then Alexander conquered Egypt and the pharaohs were Macedonian. Then, after Julius Caesar, Antony, and Augustus, the pharaohs were Roman. At no point were they black.
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