About

The White Egyptian or White Pharaoh, also known as the "American Textbook" meme, refers to an unnamed Egyptian Pharaoh character from the slot machine game Pharaoh's Fire, whose design displays distinct European features. Originally believed to be from an American textbook, the White Egyptian appeared often in Nordicist and Eurocentric memes, of both serious and ironic nature.

Origin

Although Pharaoh's Fire was released on December 18th, 2014,^[1] the White Egyptian himself never appeared in any meme until November 5th, 2017, when Imgur user DreamStar15 posted him with the caption "We are Kings",^[2] likely as a reference to the We Wuz Kings meme (shown below).

On June 24th, 2020, Twitter user @jugga101, posted a version of the image that had its caption cropped (shown below, left), saying "Our textbooks really had this on pg 10"^[3] (shown below, right).

The tweet received over 450,000 likes and nearly 70,000 retweets in one year.

Spread

Screenshots of the tweet were shared on Reddit, gaining particular attention on r/Sino, posted by user Pastor_Castle and captioned "American textbook be like "We Wuz Egyptians And Shieet",^[4] gaining 1,000 upvotes in one year (shown below, left). And on r/HistoryMemes, with a Nobody: format, by user dontcryformegiratina, titled "Pharaoh Dudebrotep IV of the Chadite dynasty",^[5] which received over 36,500 upvotes in one year (shown below, right).

On October 12th, 2020, FunnyJunk user crixuz shared some screenshots in a thread titled "liars",^[6] as they were of Twitter users discussing the image. One showed user @selringz and her Afrocentric implication of Cleopatra being black (shown below, left), and another showing @kindawisewoman, who had claimed to have indeed seen the image in a textbook, but was later confronted by user @bigblock111, proving that the White Egyptian is in reality from a slots game (shown below, right).

On September 9th, 2020, a SnuggleDuck user posted a face reconstruction of Ramses II, with the White Egyptian right beside it, captioning it "we wuz kangz, too"^[7] (shown below, left). On March 20th, 2021, an anonymous 4chan user on the /his/ board posted a meme that had the White Egyptian's face photoshopped on the portraits of other ancient non-European civilizations' leaders^[8] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References