Black History Month trail

Science and Racism in the 19th Century Black History Month trail

This trail has been produced as part of Black History Month (October 2014) to help people discover lesser known stories behind some of the objects at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Whipple Museum of the History of Science.

The trail is complemented by a special display at The Whipple Museum, which includes anthropometric instruments and illustrations.

Start the trail at the Fitzwilliam Museum

Greece & Rome Gallery [21] The Greeks and Romans often showed generalised caricatures of African people as seen here on two vases (case 6 no. 9 - left and cover, and case 10 no. 5 - right). The terms Ethiopian (meaning literally burnt face) and Egyptian were often used interchangeably in Greek literature.

There is no question that both Greeks and Romans saw Egypt as part of African culture rather than European. The crocodile, which can be seen on this vase (case 10 no. 5 right), was also used to represent Egypt in Classical art.

Egyptian Galleries [20 & 19] The Ancient Egyptian people also created caricatures of their surrounding enemies, showing the people of Sudan with darker skin than their own; and the people of Libya with skin that was lighter and with a distinctive hairstyle (Case 3 no. 15 - below left).

Early Egyptologists such as William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), who excavated many of the objects in these galleries used the same 19th century racist ideologies that are explored in the display at the Whipple Museum to interpret Ancient Egyptian culture. Although Petrie looked at Egyptian culture as separate from the imperial measurements, he was still unwilling to see it as part of Africa. Even today, it is common for representations that depict people with tightly coiled hair, dark skin and particular facial features as ‘Nubians’ (a geographical region that is in southern Egypt and northern Sudan) rather than Egyptians.

However, there would have been many shared physical features between the two groups of people. In this way, modern scholarship continues to divide ancient people by racial classification based on their appearance, when people of African descent have a number of different hair types and other physical features.

This object (case 14 no. 27 - above right) was excavated by Petrie at a house in Ehnasya. It dates to the Roman occupation of Egypt and is typically identified as a Nubian warrior.

European Pottery Gallery [27] Anti-slavery medallions were manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood in the late 18th century. The image on this small medallion (Case 7 - below) shows a powerless, shackled individual. However, we know from historical and archaeological records that enslaved African people continued many of their cultural practices, including religion. People resisted enslavement on a daily basis from deliberately damaging tools, to full rebellions.

All photographs Š Fitzwilliam Museum/Whipple Museum, except Douglass portrait by George K. Warren (d. 1884), Public Domain.

Continue the trail at the Whipple Museum

The Museum’s entrance is located on Free School Lane, (between Bene’t Street and Pembroke Street) in the centre of Cambridge.

Wheelchair accessible entrance is located via Downing Street on the University’s New Museum’s Site.

WHIPPLE MUSEUM OPENING HOURS

Monday – Friday: 12.30 – 4.30 | FREE ADMISSION

KEEP IN TOUCH

www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple

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Science and Racism in the 19th Century Black History Month trail

Whipple Museum of the History of Science

This trail has been produced as part of Black History Month (October 2014) to help people discover lesser known stories behind some of the objects at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Whipple Museum of the History of Science.

The trail is complemented by a special display at The Whipple Museum, which includes anthropometric instruments and illustrations.

Start the trail at the Whipple Museum

Science & racism in the 19th century Central desk case near large wooden telescope The classification of different races increasingly became an object of scientific study in the 19th century. Instruments were invented and manufactured to measure and record human diversity. These theories often supported racist and exploitative regimes, including slavery and colonisation.

Field work to measure the variation of human bodies across different ethnic groups was used to draw racially based conclusions. Europeans were believed to have a large frontal lobe in comparison to Africans, for example, representing greater intelligence. By the mid-19th century, instruments such as head calipers could be found on the slave plantations of South Carolina.

African Americans played an important role in challenging such racist theories. During a lecture in 1854, Frederick Douglass (below), himself a former slave, spoke of the “ethnological unfairness towards the negro”, pointing out that ethnologists tended to “exaggerate the differences between the negro and the European”.

Charles Piazzi Smyth’s Great Pyramid Measure Wall case on left entitled ‘Measuring’ 19th century European travellers and explorers often interpreted what they encountered overseas in terms of difference from, and inferiority to, familiar European places, culture, and knowledge. The Great Pyramid of Giza puzzled many such visitors, because the structure’s grandeur and complexity did not conform to typical conceptions of ‘primitive’ North African culture.

One extreme solution to this apparent conundrum was developed by Victorian ‘pyramidologists’, who argued that the Great Pyramid had not actually been built by ancient Egyptians, but was, rather, a Christian monument built by the ancient tribes of Israel under the direct guidance of God. The Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth, travelled to Egypt in 1864 to accurately re-measure the pyramid. His aim was to prove that it had been constructed using a ‘sacred cubit’ mentioned in the Old Testament, and to directly link this preserved divine unit to the British imperial inch.

Piazzi Smyth used a lump of basalt plundered from the local area to record and calibrate his measurements, which he hoped would demonstrate the biblical origins of both the pyramid and the British system of imperial measures.

Such claims recast the Great Pyramid as a repository of Christian knowledge awaiting European comprehension, but Flinders Petrie soon found that new measurements taken in 1880 were most easily explained using the Egyptian’s own measure of length, the Egyptian cubit.

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Continue the trail at the Fitzwilliam Museum

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FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM OPENING HOURS

Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00 – 17.00 Sundays & Bank Holidays: 12.00 – 17.00 | FREE ADMISSION

KEEP IN TOUCH

www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

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