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Was Moses Black? ‘Urban Daily’ Proposes Black Actors for Spielberg Biblical Epic

January 26, 2012 By

ReBecca (great name!) Theodore-Vachon over at The Urban Daily raises an excellent question: Why do we picture Moses as this:

 

Instead of this?

"Moses Parting the Red Sea" by Aaron and Allen Hicks. http://www.itsablackthang.com/Allen-Aaron-Hicks-artwork.htm

After all, Moses came out of Egypt. He is also a huge symbol of hope for African-Americans. Theodore-Vachon proposes five black actors for the iconic role in Steven Spielberg’s proposed Biblical epic.

I have to admit, Denzel would be fabulous. What do you think?

 

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  • Trista

    Am I missing something? Moses wasn’t really Egyptian. He was adopted by Egyptions.

    Denzel as Moses…I dunno. Chiwetel Ejiofor might be cool. He was the only redeeming quality in the movie 2012.

    • Rebecca Cusey

      That’s right, but I think we have to assume some intermarriage between Hebrews and Egyptians. Starting with Joseph, right?

    • Rebecca Cusey

      There was a redeeming quality in 2012? I thought the credits rolling was the only good part!

  • Teresa Nelson

    Not all Egyptians were black, though. There were two kingdoms — and the depictions of Nubians were clearly different in hieroglyphic drawings than Egyptians of the Upper Kingdom, not just in their skin tone, but also in their dress. It’s a far leap to assume all Egyptians were black, merely because they hailed from Africa.

    As far as who should play Moses, that’s a question I’ll leave to the big players. :)

  • http://filmchatblog.blogspot.com/ Peter T Chattaway

    Well, there’s a theory that the reason Joseph got along with the Pharaohs so well — and the Hebrews who came after him didn’t — is because Joseph’s Pharaoh was a member of one of the Hyksos dynasties, i.e. the Semitic dynasties that ruled Egypt during the 16th century BC.

    There may or may not be anything to that theory, but if there is, then Joseph wouldn’t necessarily have been marrying anyone all that different from him.

    The bigger question here is why anyone should assume the Egyptians were black to begin with. We have the mummified remains of a number of their Pharaohs, and the Pharaohs in question don’t *look* particularly “African”, as that word is now used. (If a Libyan moves to America, is that person an African-American? Based on geography, we might say yes, but based on race…?)

    And then there are the murals painted by the Egyptians themselves, in which their skin does not *seem* to be particularly dark…

    Of course, this brings to mind all the silly controversies that arise whenever a non-black actress is considered for the part of Cleopatra. Never mind that Cleopatra, like all the other Pharaohs towards the end of the Egyptian empire, was the descendant of a *Greek* general (or, perhaps more accurately, a *Macedonian* general)…

    And hey, here’s *another* reason why Moses almost certainly wasn’t black: Because one of his *wives* was black! I quote Numbers 12:1: “And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Cushite woman…”

    Presumably Moses’ big brother and sister would not have objected if they, too, were Cushites (i.e. dark-skinned people of African descent).

    • Rebecca Cusey

      Modern Egyptians aren’t as dark as other Africans, either, like Sudanese. There are as many varieties of skin tone and facial features in Africa as there are hair colors and eye colors in Europe. I think an Ethiopian beauty looks as different from a Kenyan darling as an Irish lass looks from a Greek goddess.

      Interesting about the wife. Still, what’s closer to possibility of reality? An African-American or a Caucasian-American? I guess neither one would be accurate.

  • http://ticketstubz.blogspot.com Candice Frederick

    i love the thought. i wish hollywood was as progressive

    • Rebecca Cusey

      Hollywood follows money and, thus, tries to please the widest swath of potential audience. I sometimes wish it weren’t so, but it is.

  • james

    the egyptians were not black, the various races of Egypt were white until the Arabs came along in the Middle Ages. toward the end of the egyptian empire the nubians invaded-fair feautured blacks. they ran things for awhile, running the empire into the ground and producing small laughable pyramids in the desert that no tourists would bother to visit.

    king david was white with ruddy cheeks according to the Bible. in the new testament the only black disciple was identified by race.
    all of a sudden african-americans decided egypt and moses were black in the 20th century as a byproduct of ‘black is beautiful’ 60′s revisionism.
    and we are still buying this nonhistoric tripe despite archaeology and history? lol.

    • Rebecca Cusey

      I don’t think you can qualify either the Egyptians or David as “white.” Perhaps they weren’t African, dark skinned like we think of African, but nor were they Caucasian.

      There are more categories than “white” and “black.”

  • Yahudah

    All Hebrews were black and so were the Egyptians! Study it yourself don’t watch too much tel-lie-vision.
    Moses as well as Jesus fled into Egypt to escape the romans! If Moses and Jesus were white it would be easy for the romans to find dem!
    Let’s go back further when Moses was layed in the basket by his sister Miriam and the egyptian princes, daughter of pharao Ramses, found him in the Nile river, now how could she fool her father into believing that it was her child if the child was white??

    You white people wanna claim everything but when HIM returns with hair like lamswool (dreadlocks) and feet as brass as if burned in a oven(black!), you all gonna be very shocked!!!