Egyptian authorities have revoked a Dutch museum’s archaeological permissions over what they deemed an “Afrocentric” exhibition currently on view. Kemet: Egypt in hip-hop, jazz, soul & funk, which opened in mid-April at the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) in Leiden, explores how Black musicians of the forced diasporas in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean have incorporated Ancient Egyptian motifs and stories in their music and supporting visuals. In an email, the head of the Foreign Missions of Egyptian Antiquities reportedly accused the museum of “falsifying history” by promoting the appropriation of Ancient Egyptian culture and aesthetics in its exhibition and voided its excavation permit at the Saqqara ruins.
Kemet was what Ancient Egyptians used to call their territory during the Old Kingdom and is said to translate to “black land,” a reference to the fertile soil of the Nile Delta. The exhibition drew from this word and how the richness of this ancient culture has been reinterpreted and celebrated by the likes of Miles Davis, Nas, Erykah Badu, Nina Simone, and other household names in the Black American music scene over the decades. The exhibition includes iconic posters and album covers and songs by these and other artists who are evidently influenced by Ancient Egyptian motifs and historical figures, such as Rihanna’s and Beyoncé’s portrayals as Queen Nefertiti and jazz group Sun Ra Arkestra’s interpretation of Egyptian themes in its Afrofuturist sound and imagery.
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“For many Black artists, the antiquity of Egypt and Nubia is a meaningful symbol for the antiquity of all Africa, and part of their own identity,” a translated text for the exhibition reads. “Embracing and claiming those cultures shifts the focus from Africa’s slavery past to its inspirational past and offers a way to (re)tell stories about Africa’s past from this perspective.”
Though this revocation is a major blow to the RMO as it has conducted excavation projects with fellow research partners at the Saqqara necropolis since 1975, museum Director Wim Weijland told Dutch daily newspaper NRC that “we [the museum] are not going to make excuses and we will not adjust the exhibition.”
“This exhibition has been made with great care,” Weijland stated. “The museum will formally object to the decision. And we have asked our partner, the Egyptian Museum in Turin, to take over our concession. Hopefully that will work, then the work can at least continue.”
The Egyptian Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities has responded to Hyperallergic’s request for comment. The RMO declined to comment further.
One of the exhibition’s curators, Daniel Soliman, also noted to the newspaper that no one from the Antiquities Service had visited the exhibition or contacted the museum about its contents. “All the fuss comes from images that have been released from their context,” he said, citing an alleged rise in Egyptian nationalism and anti-Black racism and propaganda in the country.
The museum reported that social media posts promoting the exhibition were bombarded by negative and “sometimes racist” comments from Egyptian web users once it opened. RMO even put out a statement about the social media backlash explaining its decision to remove any racist and offensive comments and why it was important to the museum to consider contemporary understanding and reinterpretation of Ancient Egypt.
This is not the first time Egyptians have been bristled by the conflation of Ancient Egypt with greater Africa and Black culture originating from the diaspora. Days before the Leiden museum’s exhibition opened, disgraced minister of antiquities and Egyptian Nationalist Zahi Hawass blasted Jada Pinkett Smith’s Netflix docuseries Cleopatra, which cast a Black-British lead to portray the femme fatale Pharaoh, for “trying to stir up confusion to spread false information that the origin of Egyptian civilization is Black.” And at one point, a Change.org petition written by two diasporic Egyptians calling for Netflix to cancel the release of the series garnered over 85,000 signatures before the platform shut it down.
Source: Hyperallergic.com