Egyptian Origins of Scotland

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On January 28, 2022, we know of a Scotland firmly entrenched in the broader United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and previously a major member of the British Empire, but of course before 1707 when Scotland became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland had been an independent kingdom since the 9th Century. With recent rumblings in Scotland of a return to independent status, increased interest in the origins of this great country and its people become relevant as modern scholars must know where you have been to determine where you are going. One bizarre theory of Scottish origins holds that Ancient Egyptians or other North Africans were the original founders of Scotland, and this account dates back to at least 1320!

Mainstream academic history finds the first known written record of Scotland made by a Greek sailor, Pytheas, in 320 BC. By this time, Scotland, called “Orcas” by Pytheas, had already transformed from a land of tiny bands of hunter/gatherers to a relatively stable civilization of farmers and the establishment of permanent settlements that developed into towns. But what of the more ancient history that preceded the Greek knowledge of Scotland?

Scientists tell us ancient Scots first appeared around the end of the last Ice Age, as much as 14,000 years ago, as evidenced by tools made of flint. No Neanderthal or earlier proto-human presence in Scotland has been discovered, so the first Scots are believed to be our “modern” human ancestors. These stone age Homo sapiens are believed to have traveled to the island of Great Britain via a “land bridge” that connected Great Britain to the European continent during the last part of or just after the last Ice Age. Obviously, this sort of academic allegation greatly precedes the advent of the Egyptian civilization, which is currently believed to have first developed around 3100 BC.

Contrary to modern academic theories of the origins of humans in Scotland, Irish and Scottish mythology both claim that Scota, the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh, had traveled to Ireland to establish a settlement on the Emerald Isle from which those people, called “Scotti” in these myths, in turn traveled to Scotland to establish the basis of the Scots people.

Of course, people in the Medieval period and prior did not have established archaeological methods and technical tools such as Carbon dating, strata analysis, and an understanding of other methods of dating seemingly ancient fossils and artifacts. The human tendency to just make up an explanation for things unknown obviously included the topic of “where did the Scots people come from?” An early record of the Scota myth is found in the Book of Leinster, believed to have been completed around 1201 AD. An even earlier mention of the Scota story can be found in Historia Brittonum, written in the 9th Century AD and amended through the 12th Century AD.

Yet another document claiming such amazing origins of the Scottish people is the The Declaration of Arbroath, a letter sent by Scottish noblemen to Pope John XXII in an effort to elicit the support of the Pope for the cause of the independence of Scotland. By claiming an ethnic heritage different from that of the other British people, the Scots hoped to undermine the efforts of England to dominate Scotland. In the Declaration, the Scots noblemen cite the “fact” that Scots were descended from Israelites that had traveled from Egypt to Scotland in ancient times, even before the Exodus.

While mythological accounts may be entertaining and fun, and at times used to instill a level of pride or claim to an ancient heritage, modern science often undermines the premise of these myths with hard archaeological and scientific evidence.

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Original article titled "Egyptian Origins of Scotland? Debunked!"