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The question of Egypt's
Africaness is no longer in question. In fact, Egypt was considered an
African culture until the 1800s when white supremacist decided it was to
their advantage to claim otherwise. Since that time the general public
has presumed that Egypt
was a culture that derived its roots from the Middle
East, although scholars know otherwise.
Much of Egypt's religious beliefs,
philosophy, traditions, kingship, architecture, musical instruments,
totemism, art and circumcision rights were undeniably African.1
Diodorus (63BC-14AD), an
ancient Greek historian, recorded the popular belief that Egypt was an
Ethiopian colony:
"The Ethiopians (black people), as history relates, were the first
of all men…They also say that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the
Ethiopians, Osiris having been the leader of the colony…And the larger
part of the customs of the Egyptians are, they hold, Ethiopian, the
colonists still preserving their ancient manners. For instance, the belief
that their kings are gods, the very special attention which they pay to
their burial, and many other matters of a similar nature are Ethiopian
practices, while the shapes of their statues and the forms of their
letters are Ethiopian."2
Diodorus agreed with the
tradition. He wrote that the Egyptians, "are colonists sent out by
the Ethiopians….and the larger part of the custom of the Egyptians, these
historians hold, are Ethiopian colonists still preserving their ancient
manners."3
The Greek globe-trotter
Herodotus, (480?BC-425), often called, "The Father of History,"
recorded some cultural similarities between Egypt and Ethiopia in order
to explain why he believed the black Colchidians in Russia were colonist
from Egypt:
"…among mankind the Egyptians and the Ethiopians have practiced circumcision
since time immemorial. The
Phoenicians and Syrians of Palestine themselves admit that they learnt
the practice from the Egyptians while the Syrians in the river Thermodon
and Pathenios region and their neighbors the
Macrons say they learnt it recently from the Colchidians. These are the
only races which practice circumcision and it is observable that they do
it in the same way as the Egyptians. As between the Egyptians themselves
and the Ethiopians I could not say which taught the other the practice,
for among them it is quite clearly a customs of great antiquity."4
Even the 5000-year-old
Narmer palette: Egypt's
first monument, has signs that, "are essentially African," as
reported by G. Mokhtar and J. Vercoutier.5
Basil Davidson wrote, "Egypt
was not born into a void; it emerged from a Neolithic womb, and this womb
was African. The peasants of the Fayum Lake,
those who laid the foundations of old Egyptian society, were not without
their own ideas about like and the cosmos; the provenance of these ideas,
or of most of them, was undoubtedly more African than Asian. "God's
Land" with all it great ancestral spirits lay, for dynastic Egypt,
neither in the east nor in the north, but far to the south and west.
There is nothing to show that the earliest forms of ram and sun worship
or of other cults made famous along the Nile did not take their rise in
this obscure "God's Land" of "upper Africa."6
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1Ancient
civilizations of Africa/ UNESCO International Scientific Committee for
the Drafting of a General History of Africa;
editor, G. Mokhtar (London; Heinemann Educational Books; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1981), 49
2Poe,
Richard. Black Spark White Fire. Rocklin,
CA: PRIMA, 1997. 352
3Davidson,
Basil. "The Ancient World and Africa:
Whose Roots?" Race and Class. A Journal for Black and Third World Liberation. 29.2, 1987, 6
4Poe,
53
5Ancient
civilizations of Africa/ UNESCO International Scientific Committee for
the Drafting of a General History of Africa;
editor, G. Mokhtar (London; Heinemann Educational Books; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1981), 15
6Davidson,
Basil. The Lost Cities of Africa. Boston: Little
Brown, 1959, 75
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