False Images

Being Aware of False Images Museum

Falsifying images demeans, degrades and distorts history!

Image changing and skin bleaching of history

The attempt to erase ancient African history

Image provided courtesy of MATHU ATER

On the top this ancient Kamite are represented on an actual wall relief, re-discovered in today's Egypt. The image on the bottom is a false image, an impersonation of the picture of the ancient African on the top.

Many books, television shows, movies, and websites fabricate
or show false images of ancient Africans, in this case the ancient Kamites (ancient Egyptians), some are just lies, others are images of Greeks and Romans who thousands of years later only imitated these Africans', appearances, mannerisms and actions.


Image provided courtesy of African By Nature

To express their spirituality many of the paints that the ancient Kamites (ancient Egyptians) used was water based, so the colors on the sculptures and wall paintings was usually washed off or faded by flooding or by age.

Many of the wall painting have been re-painted in modern times, in some case trying to re-create the original images. In other cases the gold images have been re-painted a lighter color.

The ancient Kamites (ancient Egyptians) used many colors to portray themselves and their African Gods in a spiritual way. Blue, green, gold and reddish brown on their monuments, sculptures, and wall paintings.

The colors the ancient Kamites used symbolically reflected their spiritual belief systems and were not reflective of their actual skin color. Blue and green also had great spiritual meaning.

The man in red represents the "blood of life" and the woman in gold represents fertility.

Colors were also used by a number of other ancient and modern indigenous African peoples, today like the Masai or the Samburu, the Wodaabe of the Niger, and the Himba of Namibia and other indigenous African ethnic groups in the southern, central, northern, western, and eastern areas of Africa.


Image provided courtesy of African By Nature

Like the Masai, Wodaabe, and Himba the ancient kmt or Kamites (the Greeks called them Egyptians) at times painted their bodies with red pigment, a very ancient African practice.

For thousands of years before this great civilization, Africans had been extracting ocher (or ochre) from the earth, a mineral oxide of iron that comes in a wide array of colors.

"The Land of the Red Women," Himba women still cover themselves with a mixture of animal fat, red ochre and local herbs that both gives their body the smooth, reddish appearance the Himba find attractive, plus offers some protection against the desert sun. Married women wear a small headpiece made of soft skin on top of their braided and ochred hair.



In addition, they often wear a heavy ornament around their necks that includes a conch shell that hangs between their breasts in the front and a metal-studded leather plate that hangs down the center of their back. They also wear heavy metal rings around their ankles as well as other jewelry made of copper, ostrich shells or woven reeds.

The colors the ancient Kamites used symbolically reflected their spiritual belief systems and were not reflective of their actual skin color. Blue and green also had great spiritual meaning.

The man in red represents the "blood of life" and the woman in gold represents fertility.


One of the most misrepresent people in North Africa are the indigenous Berber people. These beautiful women are not shown on mainstream television, movies and rarely in print. These are the descendants of the ancient Berbers that the ancient Romans spoke of and wrote about.

The original indigenous Berbers were the North African ancestors of the present day dark-brown peoples of the Sahara and the Sahel, mainly those called Fulani, Tugareg, Zenagha of Southern Morocco, Kunta and Tebbu of the Sahel countries, as well as other dark-brown arabs now living in Mauretania and throughout the Sahel, including the Trarza of Mauretania and Senegal, the Mogharba as well as dozens of other Sudanese tribes, the Chaamba of Chad and Algeria."

The Westerners have chosen to concentrate on the most recent world of the Arab and Berber-speaking peoples and present it as if it is a world that has always been. "It is like comparing the Aztecs of five hundred years ago with the ethnic mix of America today," wrote Reynolds. "The story of when North Africa was Moorish and Arabia, the land of Saracens, has yet to be told."

- Dana Reynolds, Anthropologist


Anthropologist, Dana Reynolds traced the African roots of the original North African peoples through a dozen Greek and Byzantine (neo-Roman writers) from the first to the sixth century A.D. "They describe the Berber population of Northern Africa as dark-skinned [modern Europeans call dark brown skin color, as black-skinned] and woolly-haired." Among these writers who wrote about the Berbers were Martial, Silius Italicus, Corippus and Procopius.

Saint Augustine was a dark-skinned Berber and many of the later Roman emperors would have trouble getting citizenship in some of today’s European states. - Professor Mikuláš Lobkowicz, the former rector of the Munich university and current director of the Institute of Central and East European Studies in Eichstätt.

There are those who say that the Berber is part of the African story of Ham, from the land of Ber, the son of biblical figure Ham.

The original inhabitants of Ireland before the Celts invaded were Berber people who stretch all the way from Saharan Africa to Western Ireland. In North Africa they are known as Berbers, the original people before the Arab invasion of North Africa, they were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as "barbarians," the Tuaregs of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, etc. are a Berber people. In Spain and Portugal they were known as "Iberians," which is the name of the Peninsula. In Ireland the Berbers are known as "Hibernians." The Celts and later invaders pushed them back to the West of Ireland, where you most commonly see the "black Irish" with black hair and brown eyes. The most popular recreational organization of Irish Americans is the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH).


Modern Berber family having a traditional meal

The images that are shown in mainstream television, movies and in print are of the lighter skinned people that are also referred as Berber.

Modern north Africa has changed a great deal, from waves of invasions such as the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Germanic tribes, Arabs, Turks and the French have led to the amalgamation in the region.

The role of literally millions of enslaved Indo-Europeans and concubinage in the creation of admixed populations in cities like Tunis, Tripoli, Fez, Sale and Algiers are well documented. This is the formation of populations in north Africa today.

These now lighter skinned people do not call themselves African. In fact, the term "African" is a very demonized term to many, more than likely because of the modern European invasion into Africa, Europeans had to justify their behavior (some still do), and the term African is the object of ridicule and humiliation.

The term Berber is now a regional word to apply to these people that now share many common cultural ideas and customs.

Image provided courtesy of
The Freeman Institute™

Image of today
Modern Africa's Sphinx. Some believe that Napoleon Bonaparte ordered his invading and occupying soldiers to shoot off the nose and lips of the Sphinx.

Image provided courtesy of
The Freeman Institute™

Image rarely seen
In 1798 Baron Dominique Vivant Denon drew what he saw of the Sphinx of Africa. Some believe that Napoleon Bonaparte ordered his invading and occupying soldiers to shoot off the nose and lips.
The Real Sphinx
This image is of the indigenous African
Sphinx in Africa,
This image is of the indigenous African Sphinx in Africa,
The European Sphinx
This image is of today's imagination of the Sphinx in Las Vegas, Nevada in the United States.


Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747-1825), was one of the key figures of the art world at the end of the Ancient Regime and during the Empire. Diderot, Voltaire, Robespierre, Josephine de Beauharnais, Bonaparte... all these famous people punctuated his life. Living through many different regimes, this draftsman, engraver, and author was also a diplomat, collector, and director general of museums, including the Napoleon Museum (today the Louvre Museum) which was deeply marked by his tenure.

In May 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte left France with a military force of more than thirty-four thousand men. Their destination was Egypt. Along with the French army went 167 savants, the most prominent men of science, headed by the Baron Dominique Vivant Denon. After a series of victories had secured his position in Egypt, Napoleon founded the Institut d'Egypte and directed it to study the science, African history and antiquities of ancient and modern Egypt.

Later in that same year Denon accompanied General Desaix to Upper Egypt as the French pursued the Mameluke Murad Bey. Denon used this often dangerous time to sketch the monumental ruins. These drawings were later shown to Napoleon who, recognizing their importance, immediately commissioned the savants to measure and draw the monuments sketched by the Denon. This work formed the basis of the Description de l'gypte.

In the face of superior British forces, Napoleon's position in Egypt quickly deteriorated, but by this time Denon had returned to France and published his Voyage dans la Basse at la Haute gypte in folio in 1802. Voyage was so popular that it was translated into English in 1803 as Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, running to forty editions. In the meantime the organization of the Description de l'gypte proceeded slowly under the direction of Edme Francois Jomard. A work consisting of more than nine hundred plates with accompanying text was published from 1809 in nine volumes of text, eleven volumes of plates and three volumes of grand format.

The Description broke new ground in thought and technique and heralded a new era for the archaeology of Africa's ancient Egypt. Considering the background of the savants it is not surprising that a scientific approach was taken in the representation and study of the ancient monuments.
The savants however continued to have difficulty representing hieroglyphs because the problem of translation had yet to be solved.

The Description and Denon's Voyages opened up a new world for European fantasy and
Europeans making Egypt an exciting, fashionable and profitable destination. While the Description was in preparation, Jean Franqois Champollion, later call by Europeans as the 'Father' of Egyptology, discovered the key to the decipherment of the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone unearthed by Napoleon's army in 1799. In the wake of this came a new awareness and understanding of Egyptian history.

Men of learning could now read the ancient language, allowing them to see past the monuments to the society and culture of ancient Egypt. After the expulsion of the French from Egypt, the invading British were able to satisfy their own fascination with Africa's ancient Egypt. Under the patronage of Henry Salt, the Consul General, and with a firm in from the Mameluke prince, a number of amateurs were able to explore the ruins. Perhaps the most extra-ordinary of these amateurs was Giovanni Battista Belzoni.

Belzoni had been born in Padua in 1778 but was in England by 1803 when he married. Being a colossus himself - he stood at 6 feet 8 inches - it is not surprising that Belzoni played the circus strongman for a time, though by profession he was an hydraulic engineer. He was contracted by the Muhammed Ali to construct irrigation works in Egypt, but when he failed he was assisted by Henry Salt who commissioned him to organize the transport of the massive basalt head of Ramesses II from Thebes to the British Museum. Belzoni tackled this task with a verve and enthusiasm which captured the imagination of the public and ensured the admiration of his patron.

In the following years Belzoni was to make a number of other discoveries, perhaps the most notable being that of the magnificent tomb of the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh, Seti I, father of Ramesses II. Having entered the tomb, Belzoni's hopes of treasure were dashed when it was found that the tomb had been robbed, some say probably in antiquity. Belzoni did, however, discover the spectacular alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I, later drawn by Joseph Bonomi in Samuel Sharpe's The Alabaster Sarcophagus of Oimenepthah I., King of Egypt (1864).

It is curious - and perhaps a reflection on the wealth of discoveries coming out of Africa at the time - that when Henry Salt offered the sarcophagus to the British Museum, the Trustees rejected it and it was sold to Sir John Soane.

On his return to London, Belzoni mounted an exhibition based on the tomb of Seti I which was a resounding success. The publisher John Murray encouraged Belzoni to produce his Narrative of the operations and recent discoveries within the pyramids, temples, tombs and excavations in Africa's Egypt and Nubia which consists of a volume of text and a volume of magnificent plates. Within the year the Narrative of the operations was available in English, French and German. Belzoni may have been vilified as a treasure hunter but there is no doubt that his enthusiasm and energy intensified the level of inquiry into Egypt's antiquity.

Not to be outdone by the French and English, the new Prussian King, Frederick Wilhelm IV, ordered an expedition to Egypt to research scientifically the ancient monuments and to collect antiquities. Karl Richard Lepsius was appointed by the King to lead the expedition which arrived in Egypt in 1842 and remained for three years. The expedition toured through Egypt and Nubia and introduced a new rigour to the excavation and recording of archaeological sites. Almost nine hundred illustrations, based on Lepsius's work, were published between 1849 and 1859 as Denkmiiler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien in twelve folio volumes.

Denkmtiler is the largest work of its kind and, along with Jomard's Description de l'gypte, continues to be an important record of ancient Egyptian antiquities and sites. The copy in the State Library of Victoria was presented by the King of Prussia himself to Redmond Barry in 1864. Barry had it bound in England for £150 before sending it to Melbourne.

Early in the nineteenth century Africa also attracted artists such as David Roberts who visited in 1838. Roberts portrayed Egypt's ruins with great romance and a touch of mysticism, but his work was often criticized for its unscientific and often inaccurate rendering. The now famous image of the "Approach to the Simoon" was labeled theatrical but when Roberts presented the image to Charles Dickens the latter thought it wonderful and inspiring.

The popularity of Roberts' work no doubt contributed to the European and European American
fantasies of Africa's ancient Egypt. "Egyptomania" of the time, a cult movement which influenced all including the poets Byron, Shelley, Keats and the satirist Horatio Smith. The following lines from Shelley's 'Ozymandias' were inspired by the colossal images depicted in Richard Pococke's Description of the East (1743-45):

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert...

From the multitude of drawings published between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Europeans gained an insight into the society of ancient Egypt. With the advent of photography in the mid-nineteenth century the number of images multiplied exponentially. Du Camp, Abney, Frith and others opened a new world in which the viewer saw with clarity the grandeur and decay of that great African civilization. As Samuel Sharpe pointed out, drawings suffered from the inaccuracies of man but not so photography: Here we have all the truthfulness of nature, all the reality of the objects themselves, and, at the same time, artistic effects which leave us nothing to wish for.

Ancient Africa's Egypt continues to capture the imagination of the world.