  In this paper, we suggest a new hypothesis for explaining the spectrum of the
extragalactic MeV gamma-ray background as observed by COMPTEL and SMM. We
propose that both the flux level and spectrum can be accounted for as a
superposition of non-thermal MeV tails in the spectra of Seyfert galaxies and
other AGN. Although present detectors are not sensitive enough to obtain MeV
data from individual extragalactic sources, indirect evidence in support of our
hypothesis is found in OSSE and COMPTEL observations of the galactic black hole
candidate Cygnus X-1.
