Scotia - Kemetic Mother of the Scots

WALTER Bower wrote his compendium of Scottish history, Scotichronicon, in the 1440s. This sweeping Latin text aimed to set down the history of the Scottish people from the earliest times – and by so doing to show what race of people we were.

He referenced his chronicle from ancient texts and oral history. What he recorded was astounding.

According to Bower, the Scottish people were not an amalgam of Picts, Scots and other European peoples, but were in fact Egyptians, who could trace their ancestry directly back to a pharaoh's daughter and her husband, a Greek king.The queen's name was Scota – from where comes the name Scotland. The Greek king was Gaythelos – hence Gaelic, and their son was known as Hiber – which gives us Hibernia.

 

Nor was Bower the first to propose such exalted lineage for the Scots. The story goes back further and was even included in The Declaration of Arbroath. This seminal document - written in 1320 by the Barons and noblemen of Scotland - was a letter imploring the Pope to intervene on their behalf during the Wars of Independence. The text refers to "the ancients" who "journeyed from Greater Scythia … and the Pillars of Hercules … to their home in the west where they still live today".

According to tradition, this royal family was expelled from Egypt during a time of great uprising. They sailed west, settling initially in Spain before travelling to Ireland and then on to the west coast of Scotland. This same race of people eventually battled and triumphed over the Picts to become the Scots – the people who united this country.

Few historians have taken the story to be anything more than a verbose bit of Middle Ages origin story-spinning, created by a nation who needed to prove that they were of ancient stock.

"Most political entities [in medieval times] try and trace the origin of their race back into biblical times," says Steve Boardman, lecturer in Scottish history at Edinburgh University. "It was a way of asserting the natural existence of the kingdom of the Scots."

 

But now a new book, Scota, Egyptian Queen of the Scots, by Ralph Ellis, claims to prove that this origin myth was no made-up story but the actual recording of an Egyptian exodus that did indeed conclude in Scotland.