A 2014 painting depicting the rulers of Ancient Egypt as sub-Saharan Africans
Hotep is an African-American subculture which originated in the United States during the 1960s. The term hotep is an Egyptian word meaning "at peace" which was later appropriated as a "What's good?" greeting by African-American advocates of an Afrocentric view of Ancient Egypt. In the eyes of Hoteps, the Ancient Egyptians were dark-skinned (like sub-Saharan Africans) and were some of the progenitors of the African-American community, even claiming that Cleopatra (who was of pure Macedonian Greek ancestry) was a black queen. However, history and genetics have shown that Ancient Egypt was a multiracial society with brief periods of Nubian rule, and that Nubians were mostly confined to Upper Egypt, while most inhabitants of the rest of Egypt were olive or brown-skinned ancestors of the Copts, and Lower Egypt had large Greek and Jewish communities. With the rise of Black Power ideology and Afrocentrism during the 1960s and 1970s, many African-Americans began to adopt Ancient Egyptian names for themselves and their children as a means of "reclaiming" African culture.
Since the 1990s, the term Hotep has also come to refer to radical or fanatical black nationalists who, according to the black news website The Root : "hold a steadfast belief in illogical conspiracy theories, an arrogant adherence to respectability politics, sexism and homophobia that vacillate from 'thinly veiled' to 'If being gay is natural, how come there ain't any gay elephants?,' unbowed and uncompromising support for any black man accused of any wrongdoing, even if said man's guilt is clear, (and) ashy ankles..." The Hotep movement has recently been associated with the alt-right movement due to their shared opposition to feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, and other progressive values, branding itself as the Ankh-right.
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