World History: Resisting the De-Africanizing of Ancient Egypt - Pursuing Its Paradigms of Excellence

[Judi Lynn]

World History: Resisting the De-Africanizing of Ancient Egypt – Pursuing Its Paradigms of Excellence and Achievement.

by Staff • Yesterday 3:11 PM

(ThyBlackMan.com) The expanding discourse of concern and needful resistance that has developed in the Black scholarly and engaged community around the planned USA tour of Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist and former Minister of State of Antiquities in Egypt, is understandable and to be encouraged. For he has taken talking points from W. Flinders Petrie, author of the discredited “dynastic master race” theory, and others similarly afflicted with the interpretive disorder of racist reasoning concerning ancient Egypt, Africa and the world, arguing that “the Ancient Egyptian civilization did not occur in Africa, it occurred only here.” Here he denies not only the African geographical location of ancient Egypt, but also the historical and cultural context in which it comes into being and flourishes. Thus, billed as the world’s most celebrated archaeologist and real-life Indiana Jones, he will come with considerable ideological baggage which must be resisted as we resist the efforts of the right-wing in this country to deny, outlaw and erase Black history and Black Studies.



Resisting the De-Africanizing of Ancient Egypt
© Provided by ---Thy Black Man

In his major works, The African Origin of Civilization (1974) and Civilization or Barbarism (1991), the multilingual, multidisciplined Imhotepian Senegalese scholar, Nana Cheikh Anta Diop put forth some of the basic arguments for the African character of ancient Egypt, in spite of the presence of a mixed population, especially since the Arab conquest in 639 CE. First, he argues from the evidence of physical anthropology which reveals ancient Egyptian affinities with other African peoples, i.e., iconography, melanin dosage tests, osteological (bone) measurements and blood group tests. More recent biological anthropological studies on crania and skeletal remains tend to affirm significant affinities with other African peoples, especially Nubians, Ethiopians and Somali.

Secondly, Diop argues from the self-definition of the Egyptians who, he contends, called themselves Kmtyw or Kemetiu, Black people, stemming from km, the ancient Egyptian word for Black. Eurocentric scholars, he notes, translates this term as people of the Black land, i.e., Black land (fertile) as opposed to Red Land (desert). It should be noticed that the word is open to both interpretations and that ancient Africans did not attach the meanings to color that we do now. However, even if we suspend judgement on this contention, the other arguments remain cogent and compelling.

Thirdly, Diop offered the evidence of eyewitness reports from Israelite Hamitic designations of Kush and Egypt and from “Greek and Latin writers contemporary with the ancient Egyptians” who describe the Egyptians as having characteristics commonly associated with being African, i.e., dark skin, defiant hair and bold lips and noses, and thin legs. Hawass, recalling Miriam Lichtheim’s curious claim that the Nubians were dark skin Whites, concedes that the ancient Egyptians “had dark skin, but were not Black” because they did not have the same noses and lips as other Africans.

Fourthly, Diop argues from the evidence of cultural similarities which he maintains include common elements with other African cultures such as circumcision, divine kingship, totemism, matrilineal focus, cosmogonies, architecture, musical instruments and religious practices. Related to cultural similarities, Diop offers evidence of the linguistic affinity of ancient Egyptian with Wolof, a Senegalese language which he argues “is perhaps as close to ancient Egyptian as Coptic” and displays a “genetic, that is non-accidental relationship”, with other African languages.

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/world-history-resisting-the-de-africanizing-of-ancient-egypt-%e2%80%93-pursuing-its-paradigms-of-excellence-and-achievement/ar-AA19mq5X

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