posted 26 March 2004 03:22 PM            

Review by Lynne Cheney
Insight on the News, April 15, 1996 v12 n14 p29(2)

Lynne Cheney is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Telling the Truth: Why Our Culture and Our Country Have Stopped Making Sense and What We Can Do About It.

Mary Lefkowitz Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became An Excuse to Teach Myth as History

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Lefkowitz knows better. In Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became An Excuse to Teach Myth as History, she applies her knowledge of the ancient world and its languages to showing, as she puts it, that "virtually all the claims made by Afrocentrists can be shown to be without substance."

Take the claim that Cleopatra of Egypt was black. To reach this conclusion, Lefkowitz points out, one must assume that the unlikely actually is probable: for example, that Cleopatra's grandmother, the only member of her family not identified precisely as a Macedonian Greek, was a black African. It is possible that this was the case, Letfkowitz points out; but surely if it had been, the Roman writers of the time, who hated Cleopatra, would have used her foreign ancestry against her.

Because ancient sources that mention the matter identify Cleopatra as Macedonian Greek, Afrocentrists turn to more modern sources to buttress their case. One writer, Joel Rogers, has pointed out that in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare describes Cleopatra as "tawny," which means, he says, that Shakespeare thought of her as a mulatto. Lefkowitz finds this unconvincing - just as she does the use of the bard's work on this occasion - "as if Shakespeare were an authority on Ptolemaic Egypt."

But other Afrocentrist citations are even more bizarre. Rogers actually offers as evidence a passage from Ripley's Believe It or Not that claims that Cleopatra was "fat and black." John Henrik Clarke, professor emeritus of black and Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College in New York, writes that "in the Book of Acts, Cleopatra describes herself as `black.'" Clarke does not give the precise chapter and verse in Acts and for very good reason, says Lefkowitz. Cleopatra is not mentioned in Acts and, in fact, died some 60 years before this book of the New Testament was written.

To illustrate the harm done by Afrocentric myths, Lefkowitz tells of the Wellesley student who objected to the showing of the film Cleopatra on the grounds that having Elizabeth Taylor in the starring role perpetuated the lie of "white supremacy." When a member of the classics department tried to discuss Cleopatra's genealogy with the student, it quickly became apparent that she wanted no part of such explanations. To her way of thinking, they were further examples of white racism.

Afrocentrism is more than an exercise in esteem building; it is a way of nurturing racial resentment. When academics such as Lefkowitz are skeptical, it is seen as evidence that whites, simply because they are white, want to deny blacks, simply because they are black, the grand heritage of ancient Egypt. Before the 19th century, Afrocentrists say, scholars acknowledged the primacy of Egypt, but with the burgeoning of the slave trade, European scholars began to minimize the importance of all things African and to credit the Greeks with what were actually Egyptian achievements.

Lefkowitz acknowledges that there was a shift, but it was not racism that caused it; rather, it was an increase in knowledge. Scholars learned how to read hieroglyphics "and once they were able to read real Egyptian texts," they "could disregard the fanciful interpretations of hieroglyphics that had been circulating since late antiquity." Afrocentrists return to these fanciful interpretations and report as truth such myths as Aristotle's having plagiarized his philosophy from the library at Alexandria - a clear impossibility, Lefkowitz observes, since the library was assembled only after Aristotle's death.

Those concerned about fraudulent history being taught on campuses owe a debt of gratitude to Lefkowitz for this book, and so do those who are appalled by untruths being propagated in our schools. Concerned parents will find herein powerful ammunition in their battle to rid of Afrocentrist ideas the worldhistory curriculum their children are studying.

But the battle likely is to be protracted. Afrocentrists themselves will not be impressed by the evidence that Lefkowitz has piled up because truth - which is the aim of gathering evidence - is not their concern. Their goal is a pride-building myth.

posted 26 March 2004 03:31 PM            

Scholia Reviews ns 6 (1997) 2.

Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Pp. xvii + 222, incl. 4 illustrations, notes and an index. ISBN 0-465-09837- 1. US$24.00.

Michael Lambert,
University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

The contributions of Mary Lefkowitz to the Afrocentric debate and the historiography of antiquity is well known for its clearheaded, analytical precision and for its passionate rejection of the hypothesis that a great deal of the glory that was Greece was stolen from the African Egyptians. In Not Out of Africa, Lefkowitz sets out to tackle the notion, current amongst many adherents of the post-modern approach to history, that there is no ascertainable historical 'truth' in the slippery rhetoric of historical texts, but that there are many truths, appropriated by those engaging with the texts in different contexts. Afrocentric historiography thus rewrites the past from an African or African- American perspective in an attempt to empower its readers with pride in what are reclaimed (from European historiography) as the glories of black cultural achievement. Historiography becomes the tool of cultural politics and, argues Lefkowitz, 'everyone should be aware that there are real dangers in allowing history to be rewritten, even for culturally useful purposes' (p. 8).

Lefkowitz focuses on the founding fathers of the Afrocentric approach to the historiography of classical antiquity, in particular George James, whose Stolen Legacy[[1]] has been so influential in shaping the views of extremist Afrocentrists, such as the inimitable Dr. Yosef A.A. ben- Jochannan, whose public lectures seem such a dangerous combination of racist hysteria and transparently shabby scholarship, exposed in a rather kindly way by Lefkowitz. The author probes the origins of Afrocentrism in African American historiography and interestingly demonstrates how the views of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, were shaped by the following kind of claim made by black Masonry: 'So out of Egypt and through the black man, the world gains its first knowledge of the worship of the deity and the cultivation of science . . . The Negroes [were] the founders of arts, sciences, and other forms of culture instead of being only hewers of wood and drawers of water' (cited in Lefkowitz, p. 130). The influential work of the Senegalese author, Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism is also critically examined.[[2]]

Common to the above historiographical tradition is not only an uncritical dependence on the works of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus (used extensively by Martin Bernal as well, in order to construct his hypothesis in Black Athena),[[3]] but also, as Lefkowitz demonstrates, a tendency to use Greek myth as historical evidence. The myth of Danaus, for example, has been extensively used to illustrate Egyptian colonisation of Greece (the ubiquitous Hyksos on the move again?); however, with the aid of a family tree (p. 19), Lefkowitz reminds us that Danaus was the descendant of Io, daughter of Inachus of Argos, who wandered from Greece to Egypt, tormented by the jealous Hera. Thus, if anything, Danaus and his daughters were returning Greek exiles, not colonising Egyptians. Furthermore, there is simply no archaeological proof of an invasion of Greece by Egyptians in the second millenium BCE. There are undeniably many references in Herodotus, and Diodorus to Egyptian influence on various aspects of Greek culture, but Lefkowitz is at pains to deconstruct these authors and show that Greek writers, in their efforts to establish direct links with an obviously older and very impressive culture, presented a very Hellenised portrait of Egypt, filtered through the very sort of ethnocentric gaze the Afrocentrists employ. This is especially evident in, for example, Herodotus' use of Greek names for Egyptian deities: 'the real and important distinctions [between ancient Egyptian and Greek religion] are further obscured', argues Lefkowitz, 'by the Greek practice of calling other peoples' gods by the names of Greek gods' (p.67).

Of particular interest is Lefkowitz's intricate 'Quellenforschung' which demonstrates, most convincingly, that the ideas of James and Garvey were grounded in the Egyptology of Freemasonry,[[4]] which was in turn moulded by the essentially fictitious account of Egypt and its non-existent 'Mystery System', described in the Abbe/ Terrasson's Sethos, published in 1731.[[5]] Both Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder were Masons who had read Terrasson; 'The Magic Flute' thus abounds with the kinds of symbols and motifs characteristic of this essentially European construct of Egypt. The fact that black Masonry and the founding fathers of Afrocentrism have been perpetuating a 'wholly European Egypt, as imagined by Greek and Roman writers, and further elaborated in 18th century France' (p. 126) is not without irony.

Some of the more radical claims of the Afrocentrist tradition, such as the fact that Socrates and Cleopatra were black and that Aristotle slunk around Egypt (in the wake of Alexander the Great), pilfering African ideas from the library at Alexandria (not yet built), are handled by Lefkowitz with a cool empiricism: the evidence is carefully dissected and shown to be shaky or non-existent. A\ propos the case of Cleopatra's black ancestors, for example, Lefkowitz comments: 'The principal reason why classical scholars do not talk about Cleopatra's black ancestors is that no one knows that Cleopatra's grandmother was an Egyptian, or whether she was black, because no one knows anything about Cleopatra's grandmother (p.47). Of course, there remains the possibility (acknowledged by Lefkowitz) that Cleopatra may have had black ancestors, but this is not a proven historical fact and should not be propagated as such.

All of this would seem like the proverbial tempest in an academic teacup, if it were not for the fact that the Afrocentrist view of antiquity is being taught in some American universities as if it were the 'truth'. Here Lefkowitz is especially interesting, as she considers the purpose of such courses within the wider contexts of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Lefkowitz clearly believes that there are many possible interpretations of the truth (no-one would deny that history can ever be written without some bias), but refuses to accept that propaganda and myth (or that which is patently untrue) should be taught as truth, even if for the sake of cultural empowerment. Freedom of speech gives one the right to claim that Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt, but does academic freedom give one the same right to teach this opinion in the classroom, as if it were fact? Lefkowitz clearly believes not: 'Academic freedom and tenure are not intended to protect the expression of uninformed or frivolous opinions' (p.165). Such questions lead Lefkowitz to discuss the purpose of universities in her final chapter.

Because of the confusion about the purpose of the university (do we enforce social justice, or do we disseminate knowledge?), we have reached the point where academic discourse is impossible, at least in certain quarters, because the achievement of social goals, such as diversity, has been allowed to transcend the need for valid evidence. But once we accept the idea that instead of truth, there are many truths, or different ethnic truths, we cannot hope to have an intellectual community (pp. 174-175). Once one asserts as fact that Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt and conceals the evidence that proves the contrary, one cannot, believes Lefkowitz, have scientific or even social scientific discourse or a community or a university.

Perhaps because Lefkowitz deals with the views of extreme Afrocentrists who, because of racist attitudes, peddle patent untruths (such as the thefts of Aristotle from the non- existent library at Alexandria), she has a clear notion of what she understands by the truth. It is clearly not 'point of view', for she believes that one can have a diversity of 'points of view', but not a diversity of 'truths' (p.162). The notion of diversity cannot be extended to truth which, for Lefkowitz, seems to mean something like 'known facts'. However, what are the 'known facts', when one deals with something as elusive as the influence of one culture on another? Take the hypothesis that ancient Greek civilisation was influenced by the civilisation of ancient Egypt. Turn to the literary sources, such as Herodotus, Diodorus and Plutarch. This category of evidence undeniably suggests that many aspects of Greek civilisation were influenced by ancient Egypt; it appears to be a 'known fact' to the authors concerned. However, we are not to believe this, as none of these writers knew Egyptian and in any case they conceived of Egypt in Hellenic terms. Our disbelief of this evidence is shaped by the notion that ancient historians worked within a context which shaped what they considered to be the 'truth'. Lefkowitz's 'deconstruction' of these Greek writers is surely moulded by the intellectual milieu in which she is writing; the late twentieth century with its attendant notion of the inherent dangers in essentialising the 'truth'. The artistic record (for example, aspects of Minoan art- such as the Ayia Triadha sarcophagus and archaic Greek sculpture) suggests considerable Egyptian influence; the archaeological and linguistic records (despite Bernal's ingenious and at times disastrous etymological games), on the other hand, suggest that the influence was minimal. What are the 'known facts'? That the Greeks stole their civilisation from Africa? Obviously not. That there was some influence over many centuries? Perhaps, but this has to be debated, and the context and intention of the interpreter of or claimant to the 'truth' (Lefkowitz included) has to be considered. We may well have to come to the same conclusion Lefkowitz reached about Cleopatra's grandmother: we do not know the 'truth', but such a conclusion seems possible only if one believes that in certain areas of cultural history there are no 'known facts'.

There is no doubt, however, that Lefkowitz's work can make a crucial contribution to the broader Eurocentric- Afrocentric debate taking place in many South African universities at the moment. After years of apartheid historiography, many of our students are keenly aware of myth and propaganda disguised as history and are eager to discover what they conceive of as a truly African historiography. Lefkowitz's expose/ of the excesses of the Afrocentrist view of antiquity comes as a timely reminder that ethnocentric historiography, whether written by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus or George James, can be horribly blinkered and can, for political or cultural purposes, distort the evidence which exists or make claims on the basis of that which does not exist. For those of us who teach classics in universities in Africa, where, I trust, Mary Lefkowitz's book will feature alongside those of Diop and Bernal in courses where the historiography of antiquity is debated, Not Out of Africa is essential reading.

posted 26 March 2004 03:37 PM            

Also the whole fiasco started at Welsley College where a bitter freud erupted between Tony Brown and Marry Leftowitz over a guest speaker Yusef Ben Yochnan. Leftowitz and Yochnan got into a big argument about Aristotle stealing his wisdom from the Egyptians,and apparently Yochnan could not support his theories.

Leftowitz says in her book''Even if the Egyptians would have been Africans then the Greeks would have thought no less of them''Leftowitz in a debate with Richard Poe on Armstonrg Willams admitted that by the one-drop rule the ancient Egyptians would have been black.

Here is a much better article by Ibrham K. Sundiata dealing with a more realavent issue concerning the Egyptians and Egyptology.

AFROCENTRISM
The Argument We're Really Having
© 1996 by Ibrahim Sundiata

Afrocentrism is many things to many people, from the insistent claims of Leonard Jeffries to the commercialism of the mainstream media. In the last five years it has pushed its way into the American consciousness, both as an academic movement and as an attitude. Several years ago I watched Eddy Murphy as Akenaton, Iman as Nfertiti, and Michael Jackson as a Trickster Imhotep in the music video "Remember the Time." MTV had met Afrocentrism? At any rate, it was an ambitious fantasy set in ancient Egypt for the delectation of Black Americans and, perhaps, the consternation of Whites.

I, a professional Africanist, had remained largely removed from the controversy surrounding Black nationalist historiography and, especially, Afrocentrism. Not that I hadn't heard about clashes. Several years ago, I could not help but be aware of charges of both racism and anti-Semitism at Hillary Clinton's alma mater, Wellesley College. Professor Tony Martin of the Africana Studies Department taught from The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, a book issued by the Nation of Islam; it argued that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. Professor Mary Lefkowitz, a classicist, became one of Professor Martin's chief critics. He in turn accused her of leading a "Jewish onslaught." The president of the college became embroiled in an argument over freedom of speech, a debate with national reverberations, especially in a decade of supposedly deteriorating Black/Jewish relations.

Several months ago I met the same Mary Lefkowitz, a pleasant low-keyed woman with a scholarly face. In a course about Africa and the West, I had invited her to speak. Lefkowitz, now author of Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History, spoke in measured tones about the stories that many scholars, Black and White, had spun about the connection between Egypt and Greece. The student audience asked questions and probed the responses in the best scholarly fashion. And that should have been that.

Now, in May of 1996, I found myself on a panel at Wellesley with the opposing forces of Afrocentrism and anti-Afrocentrism. I had stepped into the minefield that surrounds Afrocentrism, "Blackness" and "political correctness" in the academy. The audience of several hundred, crammed into a small science auditorium, was a sea of black, brown and white faces. Some young, a few old, mostly female, they seemed to resonate with the kind of intense interest seldom reserved for ancient history. Indeed, I knew that they had not come for that, per se. In the past several months Lefkowitz has become the doyenne of those who wish to see the end of liberal "relativism" in the academy, including many on the Right who see her as the opening wedge in a crusade to cleanse the temples of learning of creeping multiculturalism. Conservative pundits like George Will in Newsweek are using her work as a cudgel to beat home certain ideas about standards, pedagogy and race. Not since Martin Bernal's 1987 Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, which argued for the African roots of Attic civilization, have so many nonspecialists gotten into a lather about the sons and daughters of Hellen. The discussion has little to do with Egyptology or classics; it does involve our deepest feelings of who we are and the state of contemporary Black/White relations.

Lefkowitz is a serious scholar. We also have essential points of disagreement. She and I talked over lunch about the controversy surely to follow on the heels of the publication of her book. Lefkowitz points out that some Afrocentrists state that the ancient Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt. She maintains that any idea of an Egyptian "Mystery System" is ultimately based on Greco-Roman sources which present only a partial and late version of Egyptian practice and ritual. These were worked up into a pseudohistorical pastiche in the early eighteenth century by a French cleric and then given wide currency. Lefkowitz argues that the Masons and certain twentieth century African American writers mistakenly used this work to construct a vision of ancient Egyptian religion and knowledge. However, she does not stop there. On the basis of a very slender number of examples, she set out to demolish what she construes to be "Afrocentrists" and to save young people from their clutches. She explicitly states that her work is a critique of "relativist" or "subjective" history that attempts to vindicate the past of any particular group?in this case Blacks. Indeed, her work has been partially funded by conservative groups hoping to stem the tide of such scholarship. If her tormentors have the Nation of Islam, Professor Lefkowitz has the Bradley and John M.Olin Foundations.

Until the publication of Bernal's work in the late 1980s, the White academic establishment took little notice of what was emerging as "Afrocentrism." However, Black nationalist historiography had already put down deep roots in the African American community. In the nineteenth century writers like Edward Blyden and Martin Delany pointed the way. In the twentieth century J. A. Rogers and others emphasized the Black contributions to "High Cultures" of the Old World, contributions which they argued had been for too long denied. At the same time, religious groups, like the Moorish Science Temple and, later, the Nation of Islam, created a completely alternative cosmology and narrative for African Americans. This responded to the predominant ideology of White supremacy and created a universal history in which the North American racial hierarchy was turned on its head. Blacks were the original people and whites were a devolution. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the following Black Power movement increased the need for a broader new history. Works like Chancellor Williams' The Destruction of Black Civilization and George James' Stolen Legacy became focal texts. The Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop's works were translated into English; these were taken up by many Black Studies departments and became part of the alternative Black Studies canon.

Afrocentrists argue that Blacks must see themselves through Black eyes, as agents of history, rather than as simply subjects of investigation. Their view must proceed from an "inside place." Most emphasize the civilizations of northeastern Africa, namely Kemet (Egypt), Nubia, Axum, and Meroe. Early on it was truly a "Black Thing," involving as it did its own conferences, publishing and networks. By 1978 Jay Carruthers' Kemetic Institute was established in Chicago. A year later a similar thematic course was taken by the Institute of Pan-African Studies in Los Angeles. A meeting in that city in 1984, the First Annual Ancient Egyptian Studies resulted in the organization of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations. In the same year Ivan Van Sertima's Nile Valley Civilization group held a major conference. His Journal of African Civilization became a major diffusion point in the burgeoning corpus of Afrocentric literature.

In spite of criticism (or maybe because of it), Afrocentrism (or Afrocentricity) was and is spreading. Elementary schools in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, as well as other locales, have initiated new curricula, impelled largely by the demands of parents and students. The African American Baseline Essays, created for the Portland, Oregon, school system, have had a wide impact. Covering a number of disciplines, ranging form history to mathematics, the essays attempt to topple the perceived "Eurocentrism" of the pedagogical status quo. At the same time, Afrocentrism has begun to make itself felt in higher education. The largest Afrocentric program in the United States is housed at Temple University in Philadelphia and has well-over one hundred students under the chairmanship of Molefi Asante.

The African American Studies establishment has awakened to find itself on the defensive and university administrators find their campuses being visited by a stream of Afrocentric speakers invited in by the students. In the early 1970s Orlando Patterson of Harvard, a Jamaican-born sociologist, lambasted the incipient movement as emphasizing only "pageants, pyramids and princes." Twenty years later Newsweek carried a feature article on it; Afrocentrism was a menacing exotic growth emanating from the bowels of urban America, rapping out a lyric of Black primacy and rapping ancient history on the head. Many Whites and not a few African Americans saw it as dangerous. In 1994 the Manhattan Institute, a public policy forum, published Alternatives to Afrocentrism, a collection of highly critical essays by, among others, Lefkowitz, Gerald Early, Stanley Crouch, Wilson Moses, and Frank Yurco. Early, an African American, has been especially vitriolic, dismissing Afrocentrism as just another North American experiment in "group therapy," intellectual fast food for his less sophisticated brethren.

Lefkowitz says that her own combat with Afrocentrism began after a visit to Wellesley in the early 1990s by the longtime Afrocentrist Yosef Ben-Jochannan. Given this experience and subsequent ones, the Wellesley professor advises: "University administrators ought to ask whether we need courses in flat-earth theory ? or Afrocentric ancient history ? even if someone is prepared to teach them." This assumes an equivalence between flat earth theory and all Afrocentrism, a simplistic assumption, at best. Some of Afrocentrism's detractors connect it with everything from anti-Americanism to anti-Semitism. True, among some of its proponents these elements are all too much in evidence. Doctrines of "Sun People" and "Ice People" have emerged that simply reverse the Manichean duality of the dominant White mindset and spit it back. Melanism, "the doctrine that this pigment confers superior intelligence on Blacks, has been propounded, as have theories, too numerous to mention, which connect the origin of Blacks with the Lost Continent of Mu or Muria, a kind of sepia version of Atlantis. Indeed, like former Utopians, many tendencies branch off and make the transition from the tired Profane History of this world (and the political battles it calls for) to millenarian Never Lands which exist outside the American racial nightmare.

Many of Afrocentrism's critics have chosen to battle these straw men (and women). However, "Afrocentrists do not want," according to Asante, "to replace Greece with Egypt. They want a proper recognition of African civilization." Afrocentrism "is not, nor can it be based on biological determinism." The movement is open to "anyone willing to submit to the discipline of learning the concepts and methods. . . ." The question is not whether or not Cleopatra was Black ? Asante argues that she was not ? but about "a proper recognition of African civilization." Maulana Karenga uses the term "Afrocentricity" to avoid any perception that it has aims equivalent to the "Eurocentrism" it seeks to replace. In seeking to delimit it, he has encouraged its adherents to be autocritical. They must not "promote a static, monolithic and unreal concept of African culture which denies or diminishes its dynamic and diverse character." They must also not "overfocus on the Continental African past at the expense of recognizing the African American past and present as central to and constitutive of African culture and the Afrocentric enterprise."

Afrocentrism attracts attention in a way that new theories of the diffusion of the Indo-European languages do not. Part of this is due to the fact that Afrocentrism lends itself to a political vision. Many of its opponents, from Arthur Schlesinger to Dinesh D'Souza, see it as the historiographical groundwork for Black separatism. As it filters into the academy, it increasingly influences young African Americans who will be the leaders of tomorrow. In addition, as it filters into formerly white temples of learning, it acquires legitimacy and funding which make it harder to uproot as time progresses. To its myriad enemies, it, Hydra-like, seems to acquire new heads and new strength. Some of these new heads are White and within the Ivy League. Chief among them is Martin Bernal of Cornell. He argued that until the eighteenth century Western Europeans had seen the origins of Greek civilization in Egyptian and Phoenician colonization. In the nineteenth century this "Ancient Model" was dropped in favor of one which attributed the wellsprings of classical Greek civilization to hardy (and quite White) northerners cascading down the Balkans. Bernal labels this formulation the "Aryan Model." In it the African and Semitic roots of the West could be blotted out. Racism and anti-Semitism had triumphed, if only for a time.

Bernal's second volume of Black Athena was published in 1991 and it still causing fallout half-a-decade later. Indeed, cyberspace is whizzing with e-mailed debates between the twin peaks of the (White) debate on Afrocentrism. Lefkowitz and a colleague, Guy Rogers, have added fuel to the fire by editing a rather ponderous tome entitled Black Athena Revisited in which a wide variety of scholars hammer away at Bernal's central theses. Much of it has been heard before; much of it needs to be very seriously debated. Much of it is arcane and makes one wonder why all the media hype surrounding arguments about people who have been dead for at least twenty-five hundred years. For instance, Frank Yurco, the Egyptologist, tackles Black Athena herself and holds that Bernal's claim that the Hellenic goddess of wisdom sprang from an Egyptian prototype, Neit, is nonsense. Yurco assures us, at one point, that "H is a strongly voiced phoneme in Egypto-Coptic..[also] Greek theta does not exist in Egypto-Coptic, but it would have to derive from the final t in Egyptian Hwt." Not really the kind of thing most people, even academics, discuss at parties. It is of even less concern to the "Boyz in the Hood." So why now is this "hot stuff"? Lefkowitz is invited to speak on National Public Radio and is defended by George Will, but the recent discovery of the complex relationship between the Germanic languages and the Slavic and Celtic groups won't get five minutes or five pages in the media. The issue is race. The present wrangles have two parts: the relationship between "Black" Africa and Egypt, and the relationship between Egypt and Greece. The first is primary; the issue of Egypt's relation to Greece only takes on interest (and color) when the issue of who the ancient Egyptian actually "were" comes into play.

The assertion that the Egyptians were "Black" raises hackles. The three writers that deal with race in the Lefkowitz/Rogers collection go to considerable lengths to prove that "Blacks," however defined, are not part of the story. Indeed, Glen Bowersock, reviewing Not Out of Africa in the New York Times, had already questioned "why Egyptian origins or influences should be linked with Africans at all, except in the simple-minded geographical sense." This is the heart of the matter. It has bedeviled Western scholars for over one-hundred and fifty years and is still not resolved. Although in the nineteenth century Sir Richard Burton referred to modern Egyptians as "whitewashed niggers," and Sir Flinders Petrie referred to their ancient ancestors as being of "course mulatto stock," neither of these formulations serve to give an agreeable pedigree to the precursors of Western civilization. Indeed, it was for this reason that Giuseppe Sergi, an Italian anthropologist overcame the problem in the 1880s by divining that the ancient Egyptians were dark ? sometimes very dark ? Caucasians. He labeled his group Hamites and placed them at the intersection of Africa and Asia. Later anthropologists theorized a Hamitic or series of Hamitic languages. By the 1920s the American anthropologist, C. G. Seligman, wrote that any signs of "civilization" in Africa were the products of the penetration of these incomparable bearers of culture. A few years later, Alfred Rosenberg, chief Nazi Party ideologue, could confidently claim Egypt's ruling class for Europe's peoples - and their Aryan branch at that. By the 1960s, however, the "Hamitic Hypothesis" had fallen from grace as the established orthodoxy. The linguist Joseph Greenberg demonstrated that the "Hamitic" languages were a chimera; no such unified group could be found. The people called "Hamites" were found to belong to differing language families. As the linguistic foundations for the hypothesis fell away, so too did the idea of a conquering "Hamitic Race."

At least until Black Athena Revisited. On the whole, the book hedges on the race issue. Guy Rogers says, in summation that "It would be inaccurate to describe the ancient Egyptians as either black or white; the population of ancient Egypt was one of mixed pigmentation." The assertion is mild, but in the land of Colin Powell it seems more disingenuous than myopic. We live in a society of races, which few classicists have expressed any desire to declassify. W. E. B. Du Bois was right when he said: "We cannot if we are sane, divide the world into whites, yellows, and blacks, and then call blacks white." He might have said that it would be equally as strange to call them "Mediterranean," "Hamitic," or a hundred other euphemisms. One assumes that these various authors in Black Athena Revisited have seen, if not met, an African American. And here lies the rub ? the very catholicity of the term "Black" in the North American context. The "social "construction of race in America does not rely on skin color. "African Americans," as Asante notes, " constitute the most heterogeneous group in the United States biologically, but perhaps one of the most homogeneous socially." Hypodescent, the "One Drop Rule," has molded and still molds discussions "Blackness." And, it is still maintained. As Wilson Moses points out, "Even today, this . . . reasoning remains the basis for classifying appreciable numbers of people as 'black' despite their blue eyes and blond hair." While Cheikh Anta Diop did argue for a West African phenotype for the ancient Egyptians, leading Afrocentrists do not insist upon it. In fact they are quiet explicit. Karenga notes that it "is . . . playing Europe's racial game to concede that Egyptians are white or Asian if they don't look like a Eurocentric version of a West African." Furthermore, "Ethiopians and Somalis, perhaps, resemble the ancient Egyptians and ancient Nubians more than any other peoples and they are, even by Eurocentric standards, African." Unless we revive the hoary "Hamitic" Myth, they are.

One need not argue that the ancestors of African Americans rafted to the Americas on papyrus boats to make the Afrocentrists' point. The issue is that if they had "Black" African ancestry, it would clearly place them in a subordinate caste in the United States. Or, as Wilson Moses has put it, "In fact many of the Pharaohs, if transplanted across time and onto the Chattanooga Choo-Choo in 1945, would have a hard time obtaining a Pullman berth or being seated in a dining car." It might be pointed out that the ancient Egypt did not see themselves as "Caucasoid" or "Negroid." The issue of imposing our racial taxonomies on the ancient Egyptians is a specious one. To call the Hittites or the Trocharians "Indo-Europeans" is to impose terminology on peoples who never themselves used it. The process of classifying and aggregating is well-known to most social scientists ? witness the evolution of the 1970s ethnic neologism "Hispanic."

For those anti-Afrocentrists truly concerned with the Black in Black Athena, there is a way out. One of the writers in the attack on Bernal has it. Not only were the ancient Egyptians not Black, their nearest relatives are Europeans: "It is obvious that both the Predynastic and Late Dynastic Egyptians are more closely related to the European cluster than they are to any of the other major regional clusters in the world." In one fell swoop, he drives a stake through the heart of Bernal's argument, those of the Afrocentrists, and not a few Africanists. Relying on skulls, but not blood groupings or DNA, Loring Brace, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan, tells us that heads do talk and that the ancient Egyptians were closer, at least head-wise, to Germans and Danes than they were to Somalis, Ethiopians, Nubians or Berbers. He dismisses the term "race" and then revives it cleverly disguised within the term "cluster." There are several of these; the two of most interest to him just happen to be the "European" and the "African." And the Egyptians definitely belong with the former. Brace' s article is by far the longest and most detailed of the three in the book that deal with specifically with race. It would also vindicate much late nineteenth century racial thought on the "Egyptian Question."

One of the authors in Black Athena Revisited, Kathryn Bard, does note that some craniometry is pretty old-fashioned. The dean of African-American classicists, Frank Snowden, in his contribution, advises Afrocentrists to give up Egypt and focus on Nubia as the first great Black civilization. Brace's contribution, far more radical than it seems at first glance, would deny even this concession. Nubians, like the Egyptians, are not part of the African head cluster. Brace's argument is admittedly clever, for it avoids any claims that might arise based on the American "One Drop Rule." The Egyptians and their neighbors to the south in Nubia and the Horn are, according to a series of impressive cranial geneologies, adaptations to climate. And the African "cluster" is not in the mix; the ancient Egyptians were people with European skulls whose epidermises gradually adapted to the rigors of a subtropical sun.

Of course, Dr. Brace is not the final word. The field of physical anthropology has progressed somewhat beyond the phrenology and craniometry of the nineteenth century. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, to many the present authority in the field, has said that we must look to gene frequencies, blood groupings and a host of other data before we construct our "racial" genealogies. Homo sapiens has had the annoying habit of being able to interbreed; unlike Brace, Cavalli-Sforza believes that the population of the Horn of Africa is clearly the result of a fusion of black African and non-African elements. The Italian geneticist, a former Princeton professor and one of the authors of the Human Genome Project, is hardly a radical in matters racial. At the same time, he, more than some of his American confrerès, is willing to admit to the infinite variety of human experience and the human hybridity that may have been the past of the race and which may be its future.

Where "race" has been legally enforced for over nine generations, we must take it, however socially constructed, very seriously. And here is the both the hope and the warning. Lefkowitz, the scholar, acknowledges that "If you go by the American 'one-drop rule,' the Egyptians would be black." In spite of any craniofacial legerdemain, the Egyptians and their neighbors to the south were "people of color." Hopefully, the sterile debate on whether Northeastern Africa was really within or without Africa will soon be closed. In the late 1980s an Ethiopian student, Mulugeta Seraw, was stomped to death by a group of skinheads in Portland, Oregon. They crushed his skull. Dr. Brace's measurements were irrelevant.

http://way.net/dissonance/sundiata.html

posted 26 March 2004 03:48 PM            

The arguements presented by Frank Snowden is also biased because he contridicts himself many times bending a twisting the rules for the determination of blackness.

posted 26 March 2004 03:56 PM            

Ann Macy Roth) BUILDING BRIDGES TO AFROCENTRISM: A LETTER TO MY EGYPTOLOGICAL COLLEAGUES
[The author of this essay retains the copyright. Permission is hereby granted to make copies for personal or classroom use so long as this statement and the name and address of the author are included with each copy. The essay is also available via anonymous ftp or WWW at: ftp://oi.uchicago.edu/pub/papers/AMRoth_Afrocentrism.ascii.txt where it was first publicly posted on 26 January 1995.

It has also been submitted for publication in the Newsletter of the American Research Center in Egypt.

Ann Macy Roth Visiting Assistant Professor of Egyptology Howard University amr@cldc.howard.edu

"What color were the ancient Egyptians?" This is a question that strikes fear into the hearts of most American Egyptologists, since it so often presages a barrage of questions and assertions from the Afrocentric perspective. Few of us have devoted much thought or research to the contentions of the Afrocentric movement, so we nervously try to say something reasonable, and hope that the questioner won't persist and that we won't end up looking silly or racist or both.
In late 1993, I received a temporary appointment to the faculty of Howard University and began teaching Egyptological subjects to classes that were almost entirely African-American. As a result, I have been dealing with Afrocentric issues on a regular basis, and have spent a good deal of time and energy thinking and talking about them. Since my appointment, many of my Egyptological colleagues at other universities have asked me about Afrocentric sentiment at Howard and my strategies for teaching traditional Egyptology to the students who espouse it. The tone of these inquiries has demonstrated to me both the curiosity and the discomfort that American Egyptologists feel about Afrocentrism. This attempt to write an account of my impressions is partly inspired by such questions, which I have had difficulty answering cogently in short conversations. More importantly, however, I have come to believe that the Afrocentric movement has a great potential to advance or to damage our field. Which of these directions it takes will depend upon the degree to which traditionally- trained American Egyptologists can come to understand and adapt to its existence. This essay is my attempt to speed that process.
"Afrocentric Egyptology," as practiced today, has an international scholarly literature behind it. (The movement is, if anything, more prominent in France than it is here, to judge from the numerous displays of Afrocentric books and journals I saw in Paris book shops last summer.) In America, however, Afrocentric Egyptology is less a scholarly field than a political and educational movement, aimed at increasing the self- esteem and confidence of African-Americans by stressing the achievements of African civilizations, principally ancient Egypt. As such, it is advocated in popular books, textbooks, and even educational posters sponsored by major breweries. It has apparently thus far enjoyed considerable success in its educational aims. As a result, it is being taught to students from grade school through the university level all over America, and its tenets are frequently cited as established fact by the media and the educational establishment. Coming to Howard as part of a tentative Egyptological experiment, I was amazed at the quantity of Egyptology that was already being taught, in courses ranging from drama to mathematics to philosophy. (An Afrocentric work by Ivan van Sertima on Egypt is included in the recommended reading for freshman orientation.) The movement continues to grow in importance and influence, and, whatever one thinks of its content, it has an increasing degree of popular acceptance by a large audience.
This kind of Egyptology has little to do with the Egyptology that we professional Egyptologists practice, and many of us currently regard its incursions upon our field as a nuisance. We see it only when its exponents ask aggressive and seemingly irrelevant questions in classes and public lectures, or make extravagant claims about ancient Egyptian achievements (the harnessing of electricity, the conquest of large parts of southern Europe), citing authors of dubious credibility and outdated theories and translations (often by E. A. W. Budge). Especially annoying are those who combine Afrocentrism with the age-old mystical-crackpot approach to our field, claiming for the Egyptians fantastic lost skills and secret knowledge. In most cases, our reaction to Afrocentrism is avoidance: we deal with the issue by dismissing it as nonsense, by disparaging the knowledge of its proponents, and by getting back to "real" Egyptology.
By doing this, however, we are both ignoring a danger and missing an opportunity. The number of African- Americans who are taught this material is growing, and we will increasingly have to deal with its inaccuracies and exaggerations simply in order to teach our students. This gap between our field and the Afrocentric version of it is not going to go away; if we ignore it, it will surely widen. And by setting ourselves against the whole phenomenon in an adversarial and often condescending way, we make it impossible for the responsible educators involved in the movement (and there are many) to tap our expertise and improve the accuracy of the materials they teach.
At the moment, however, we have the opportunity to narrow the gap by taking a more positive direction. By granting that an Afrocentric perspective may have something to offer our field, we can exorcise the defensiveness and hostility that is so often engendered by the assertions of Afrocentrists. By making our classes more hospitable to those with Afrocentric views, we take the first steps towards training a new generation of Afrocentric scholars in the traditional methods of our field. They will then be able to correct and improve the argumentation of Afrocentric scholarship so that the content of their movement benefits from traditional Egyptology's decades of research and hard-won conclusions. Afrocentric Egyptology need not necessarily conflict with traditional Egyptology; it seems to me possible to combine the two, to the benefit, perhaps, of both.
First, however, it is necessary for traditional Egyptologists to understand the underpinnings of Afrocentric Egyptology. Its contentions, as I have encountered them, fall under four rough rubrics: (1) that the ancient Egyptians were black, (2) that ancient Egypt was superior to other ancient civilizations (especially that of the ancient Greeks, which is seen to be largely derivative), (3) that Egyptian culture had tremendous influence on the later cultures of Africa and Europe, and (4) that there has been a vast racist conspiracy to prevent the dissemination of the evidence for these assertions. Most traditional Egyptologists recognize these contentions, but do not understand the motives behind them, and so deal with them in a counter- productive way. I will address them one by one.

1. The contention that the Ancient Egyptians were Black. Like most of us, it had never occurred to me that the ancient Egyptians were any color in particular. Neither black nor white seemed an appropriate category- -they were simply Egyptian. This view, in fact, is probably the one held by most Egyptians themselves, both ancient and modern. As we know from their observant depictions of foreigners, the ancient Egyptians saw themselves as darker than Asiatics and Libyans, and lighter than the Nubians, and with different facial features and body types than any of these groups. They considered themselves, to quote Goldilocks, "just right." These indigenous categories are the only ones that can be used to talk about race in ancient Egypt without anachronism. Even these distinctions may have represented ethnicity as much as race: once an immigrant began to wear Egyptian dress, he or she was generally represented as Egyptian in color and features. Although there are occasional indications of unusually curly hair, I know of no examples of people with exaggeratedly un-Egyptian facial features, such as those represented in battle and tribute scenes, who are represented wearing Egyptian dress, though such people must have existed.
As for indigenous categories in modern Egypt, I have been told by most of the modern Egyptians with whom I've discussed the question that, if they had to use the categories of the modern Western world, they would describe themselves as white. (There are some exceptions, but few would describe themselves as black.) As evidence of this, one can point to the consternation that was produced in Egypt when it was announced that the black actor Lou Gosset would portray President Anwar Sadat in a biographical film. There exist terms in modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic to describe skin color, most commonly "white," "wheat-colored," "brown," and "black." In practice, however, these terms are frequently applied inaccurately, so that people are (flatteringly) described as lighter in color than they actually are. The term "black" is viewed almost as a pejorative, and is rarely used. This categorization of the modern population is only partly relevant to the question, although it contributes to the reluctance of Egyptologists working in Egypt to describe the ancient Egyptians as "black."
I have encountered arguments that the ancient Egyptians were much "blacker" than their modern counterparts, owing to the influx of Arabs at the time of the conquest, Caucasian slaves under the Mamlukes, or Turks and French soldiers during the Ottoman period. However, given the size of the Egyptian population against these comparatively minor waves of northern immigrants, as well as the fact that there was continuous immigration and occasional forced deportation of both northern and southern populations into Egypt throughout the pharaonic period, I doubt that the modern population is significantly darker or lighter, or more or less "African" than their ancient counterparts. It should be noted, however, that we really do not know the answer to this question. More research on human remains needs to be, and is being, done.
But what of scientific racial categories? The three races we learned about in grade school? In talking to several physical anthropologists, I have learned that these three races have no clear scientific meaning. Anthropologists today deal with populations rather than individuals, and describe ranges of characteristics that occur within a population as being similar to or different from the ranges of characteristics of another population, usually expressing the degree of affinity with a percentage. There is no gene for blackness or whiteness, and nothing that can allow a scientist to assign a human being to one or the other category, beyond the social definitions of the culture in which the scientist is a participant. While anthropologists sometimes describe people in terms of the traditional three races, this is not a result of applying objective criteria based on clear biological distinctions, but is instead a shorthand convenience. Such judgments work backwards from the social categories to arrive at an identification that would be recognized by a member of society. For example, when a forensic anthropologist gives the race of an unidentified dead body as "white," it is simply a prediction that the "missing person" form with which it will be compared probably described the person that way. Scientific determinations are thus just as dependent upon social categories as more impressionistic judgments are.
Even comparative studies can be biased by the assumptions that underlie them. Some "Eurocentric" criteria for race acknowledge the wide variety of physical characteristics found in Europe, and define as "black" only those populations that differ markedly from all European populations. As a result, populations that resemble any European population are excluded from the category "black." This is often what happens when scientists are asked about the remains of ancient Egyptians, some of whom closely resembled southern Europeans. By this model, only Africans living south of the Sahara desert, which separates them more markedly from European gene pools, are defined as "black." The categorizations arrived at by reversing the same procedure are equally extreme. If the range of physical types found in the African population is recognized, and the designation "white" is restricted to those populations that have none of the characteristics that are found in any African populations, many southern Europeans and much of the population of the Middle East can be characterized as "black." This method was at one time adopted by "white" American schools and clubs, which compared applicants to the "white" physical types of Northern Europe, and found that many people of Jewish or Mediterranean heritage did not measure up. Neither of these ways of determining "race" can result in a definitive division between "black" and "white," because those are not in fact distinct categories but a matter of social judgment and perspective. What is a continuum in nature is split into two groups by our society. (The terms "African" and "European," although easier to distinguish because of their geographic basis, are no less subjective and problematic as cultural categories.)
Race, then, is essentially a social concept, native to the society in which one lives. It is anachronistic to argue that the ancient Egyptians belonged to one race or another based on our own contemporary social categories, and it is equally unjustifiable to apply the social categories of modern Egypt or of ancient Greece or any other society, although all of these questions are interesting and worthy of study on their own. The results tell us nothing about Egyptian society, culture and history, which is after all, what we are interested in.
This is not, however, what the Afrocentrist Egyptologists are interested in. They want to show that according to modern Western categories, the ancient Egyptians would have been regarded as black. This approach is not invalidated by the cultural limitations of racial designations just outlined, because it is an attempt to combat a distinct modern, Western tradition of racist argument, a tradition which has the effect of limiting the aspirations of young African-Americans and deprecating the achievements of their ancestors. This argument contends that black peoples (that is, peoples that we would describe as black) have never achieved, on their own, a satisfactory civilization, and by extension can never achieve anything of much value. "Look at Africa today," argue the adherents of this notion, ignoring the added burdens imposed by economic exploitation, cultural imperialism, and a colonial past on most African nations, and ignoring the African states which do not appear regularly in the newspapers. "Look at history," they add, discounting Egypt as part of the Near East and ignoring (generally through ignorance) the other great African cultures.
These misconceptions are argued in many parts of American society. President Richard Nixon was quoted as making several of these arguments in the recently released diaries of his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman. Similar assertions were made occasionally in the more intemperate discussions of the Los Angeles riots. And I understand that the Pennsylvania chapters of the "Klu Klux Klan" give each new member a leather-bound book with the gilded title Great Achievements of the Black Race, which is filled entirely with blank pages. Is it any wonder that the members of this maligned group want to inscribe on those blank pages the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, the gold of Tutankhamun, the Asiatic conquests of Thutmose III, and the fame and political acumen of Cleopatra?
At this juncture, however, many Egyptologists miss the point. "Why not use Nubia?," I have been asked, "or any of the other great African civilizations? Why can't they leave Egypt alone?" The answer is that these other civilizations did not build pyramids and temples that impressed the classical writers of Greece and Rome with their power, antiquity, and wisdom. Nor have most modern Americans and Europeans heard of the civilizations of Nubia, Axum, Mali, Ife, Benin, and Zimbabwe. Hannibal is famous enough to be worth claiming, but few other non-Egyptians are. The desire to be associated with historical people who are generally acknowledged to be "great" by the Western cultural canon accounts for the frequent and (to Egyptologists) puzzling contention that Cleopatra was black, despite the fact that she was demonstrably descended from a family of Macedonian generals and kings who married their sisters, and therefore had little claim to either a black or an African origin (although one of my Classicist colleagues at Howard tells me that her paternal grandmother is unknown, and might have been Egyptian). The reason she is identified as black is that, among modern Americans, she is probably the best known ancient Egyptian of them all. Shakespeare and Shaw wrote plays about her, her life has been chronicled in several popular films, and her name is regularly invoked in our popular culture to signal the exotic, the luxurious, and the sexy. In this sense, "Afrocentric" Egyptology is profoundly Eurocentric, and necessarily so: it plays to the prevalent cultural background of its intended audience.
If the question of the race of the ancient Egyptians is entirely subjective and political, then, why does it bother Egyptologists at all? Why would we rather the Afrocentrists "used Nubia"? I think our reasons are largely related to the tenuous place our field holds in academia. Afrocentrists see Egyptologists as a strong, academically supported, establishment force; but despite, and perhaps even partly because of, the popular fascination with its contents, Egyptology tends not to be taken quite seriously by people who study other parts of the ancient world. Already many noted departments of Near Eastern Studies with extensive faculty in ancient Mesopotamia and the Levant do not feel it necessary to teach or support research in Egyptology at a similar level. We fear, perhaps, that if we endorse the view that ancient Egypt was a "black civilization," we will further cut ourselves off from our colleagues who study other civilizations contemporary with ancient Egypt. At the same time, there is no place for us in African studies departments, which generally tend to address questions related to modern history and current political and social problems. While anthropologists working in Africa may offer us insights and models, the methods and concerns of our field require more, rather than less, contact with scholars studying other ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures. We have been too isolated for too long as it is.
The politics of the situation, as well as the requirements of course topics such as archaeology, make it important for us to deal with the question of the race of the ancient Egyptians in our university classes. My own method, developed long before coming to Howard, is to be very explicit about my own views on the question. I give a lecture on the land and the people of Egypt, normally very early in the semester, before the question is brought up by students, and I try to present the question neutrally, without defensiveness or antagonism. I explain the social nature of racial categories, and the categories used by the Egyptians themselves, their representation of foreigners, and the frequency of foreign (Asian and African) immigration to Egypt in all periods of its history, extending back into the Paleolithic. Discussions of geography and language are also useful here. It is also necessary to address the political question. In doing so, I often make use of Bruce Williams' observation (which really goes to the heart of the matter) that few Egyptians, ancient or modern, would have been able to get a meal at a white lunch counter in the American South during the 1950s. Some ancient Egyptians undoubtedly looked very much like some modern African- Americans, and for similar historical reasons. Very few, if any, of them looked like me. I also explain the politics of the question in modern Egypt. Finally, I explain the irrelevance of the political question to the subject I will be teaching, a circumstance that allows me to respect the students' political convictions (which I treat rather as I might treat a religious conviction), and should allow them to learn about Egyptian culture in my class without violating their beliefs. By making my position clear at the outset, I forestall the Afrocentric students' speculations and attempts to "trap" me into committing myself to the exaggeratedly "Eurocentric" views that they might otherwise assume I espouse. It also reassures students that they can come to me with questions about their Afrocentric readings, or their own Afrocentric questions about course materials; the topic is no longer taboo. It is impossible to build bridges if we discourage discussion.

2. The contention that the Egyptians were the greatest civilization in history. Contrary to the expectation of most Afrocentrists, most Egyptologists are less bothered by the contention that the Egyptians were black than by the exaggerated claims made about the achievements of Egyptian civilization. These claims, including attribution to the Egyptians of great mathematical, scientific, and philosophical sophistication, are often based on misinterpretations or exaggerations of the evidence, and in some cases pure fantasy and wishful thinking. Many of the arguments advanced show a complete ignorance of (or disregard for) the facts of chronology, for example, the contention that the Greeks "stole" their philosophy from the library at Alexandria and then burned it down to cover their theft, or the claim that the architecture of Greek peripteral temples was borrowed from the eastern mamisi at Dendera.
Paradoxically, while it is in the details of this contention that Egyptologists find the most grounds for outrage and dismissal of the entire movement, this is also the area where we can do the most to help the Afrocentrists move towards a more rigorous and respectable scholarship. In principle, few Egyptologists would deny that ancient Egypt was a great civilization, and that the ancient Egyptians achieved wonderful things and made unique contributions to history and global culture. It in no way detracts from these contributions that they had terrible difficulties adding fractions because of a ludicrously clumsy system of notation, or that they did not understand the importance of the brain, or that they may have borrowed the idea of writing from Sumerian civilization. On these points the Afrocentrists need to develop a better appreciation of where the strengths of Egyptian civilization really were. Most Afrocentrists do not want to be in the position of teaching their children things that aren't true. However, because of the political desire to find great Egyptian achievements in areas that the West values, and because of the limited material available to them and their limited familiarity with the culture, they often misinterpret the evidence and seize upon unsubstantiated ideas that fit their agenda.
The way we can help here is not, however, to argue against these misunderstandings and mistaken ideas individually. There are too many of them, and the arguments tend to be both unpleasantly adversarial and futile.
"See, this is a model of an ancient Egyptian glider- plane."
"Actually, it's a Late Period model of a bird. If the Egyptians could fly gliders at that period, don't you think Greek and Egyptian sources would have mentioned it? "
"But it's aerodynamically perfect!" "Well, of course it is; it's a bird." "But it's different from all the other bird models. Besides, what do you know about aerodynamics?"
This sort of argument gets us nowhere. The only strategy that is effective is more fundamental. We must familiarize students with the evidence and the way one argues from it. Students who have read translations of ancient Egyptian literature and other texts and discussed how social and cultural deductions can be drawn from primary sources will generally not stand for assertions about ancient Egypt that are blatantly contradicted in these texts. Likewise students who have read about the forms of pyramids and the theories about their construction, or who have become familiar with Egyptian tomb iconography, will not believe claims that do not correspond to the evidence they have seen. (There will, of course, be ideologues who will hold on to their groundless convictions in the teeth of the evidence, but most of them will have dropped the class after the initial discussion of the race of the ancient Egyptians.) Teaching students a more source-based, critical approach not only will improve their ability to evaluate the contentions of Afrocentric Egyptology, but should help them deal with other subjects as well, and lays the foundation for academic and other work that will give them pride in their own achievements as well as their heritage. Moreover, an explicitly source-based approach has the added advantage of forcing us to reexamine our own basic assumptions.
When Afrocentrists base their conclusions on the evidence, the results can serve their purposes without violating the sensibilities of scholars. The validity of the evidence also lends authority to the ideological position being argued. One example that goes some distance towards this goal is an Afrocentric poster given me by one of my students, designed and produced by a group called the Melanin Sisters, for grade-school children. The poster is decorated with hieroglyphs and urges the reader to adopt behavior in accordance with the ancient Egyptian concept of Ma'at. As a guide to the requirements, the Negative Confession is quoted (albeit with some substitutions for the weird bits). Another student showed me a book called Hip-Hop and Maat, which again uses the Negative Confession, as well as selections from Egyptian wisdom literature, to construct a system of morality that the author contrasts favorably with the street ethics prevalent among many young African-Americans. (Unfortunately, I did not make a note of the bibliographic information, and I've been unable to find the book again.) The use of actual Egyptian evidence in developing Afrocentric materials could be encouraged and made more authentic if Egyptologists took a less adversarial attitude toward its creators.
If we teach Afrocentric students to find evidence for their assertions and to construct convincing arguments, there will always be the possibility that they will use these tools to argue points that we find uncongenial to our pictures of Egyptian civilization. At a conference some years ago, I praised an innovative and provoking argument to a colleague, and his reply was, "Yes, I suppose it was interesting, but just imagine what they will do with it." To use such fears of exaggeration in the popular sphere (regardless of whether they are justified) as an excuse for suppressing arguments that contradict our own reconstruction of the past is unjustifiable and unscholarly. Political bias is unavoidable, so the current wisdom goes, and we all find it more difficult to accept some arguments than others, depending upon our own previous ideas or our feelings about the person making the argument. But such predispositions are something that we all deal with frequently, and should have learned to set aside. We are scholars, and we should not be afraid of the truth, whatever it turns out to be.

3. The contention that Egyptian civilization had extensive influence on Europe and Africa. This argument really has two parts, which are in some ways symmetrical, but which have two entirely different motivations. The argument for Egyptian influence in Europe is an extension of the argument for the overall superiority of Egypt to other cultures: by rooting Greek and Roman civilizations in Egypt, Africa can be seen as the source of the civilization we find most impressive: our own. The argument for the influence of Egypt on other African civilizations, in contrast, is intended to allow modern African- Americans (who are in most cases the descendants of people abducted from non- Egyptian parts of Africa) to claim the Egyptian cultural heritage as their own.
The half of this question that has been most discussed of late is the claim that Egypt colonized Greece, and that classical Greek culture is essentially Egyptian. Greece is traditionally viewed by Western culture as the source of beauty and reason, so (again, for political reasons) it is felt especially important to show that ancient Egypt was extremely influential in its development. Black Athena, Martin Bernal's work on the question, has been at the center of the recent debate on this claim, and has given it a degree of prominence and respectability in the non- Afrocentric scholarly community. Despite this, I feel strongly that Bernal's books do an ultimate disservice to the cause he is trying to advance. In the short term, of course, they have brought both the issue and Bernal himself to the forefront of public consciousness. However, his arguments are so chosen and presented that they cannot serve as a solid foundation for the academically credible Afrocentric Egyptology that he hopes to create.
In many cases, Bernal has either intentionally misled his readers by his selection of evidence or he has neglected to investigate the full context of the evidence on which he builds his arguments. He routinely cites late Classical traditions that support his argument, and ignores the Egyptian evidence that doesn't. A good example of these problems is his discussion of the connections of Egypt with bull cults on Crete (vol. II, pp. 22-25, and more fully as Chapter IV, especially pp. 166- 184). After an initial foray proposing dubious connections between Min, bulls, Pan, and the Minoan king Minos, Bernal connects Minos to Menes and the name of Memphis, Mn-nfr, because of their phonetic similarity and their connection with the bull cult of Apis. (Mn-nfr, of course, comes from the name of the mortuary temple of Pepi I and has nothing to do with Menes, who is called the founder of the Apis cult only by a late Roman writer.) The name of the Mnevis bull also contains the magic letters mn in the Classical sources. The fact that the name was consistently written Mr-wr by the Egyptians is not mentioned in the summary, while in the fuller argument it is dismissed as "confusion among the three biconsonantals mr, mn and nm" in words referring to cattle (possibly due to onomatopoeia). The fact remains that the Mnevis bull is only rarely called anything but Mr- wr. The "winding wall" sign in Mr-wr, which is also used in mrrt, "street," is connected in his summary with the labyrinth of the Minotaur.
The result of these arguments is a "triple parallel": the connection of a bull cult in both Egypt and Crete "with the name Mn, the founding pharaoh, and a winding wall." But in Egypt neither the name Mn nor the founding king was clearly connected to the Apis cult; and the connection of the "winding wall" sign with the Mnevis bull was probably purely phonetic. The triple parallel reduces to a single coincidence: the founding king of Egypt and the most famous king of the Minoans both had names with the consonants "Mn." This relationship, as Bernal points out, has been discussed by previous scholars. That both countries had bull cults, like most other ancient Mediterranean cultures, is hardly worthy of remark. The following discussion of "the bull Montu" is even more tenuous, since Montu is generally characterized as a falcon, and is no more to be equated with the Buchis bull with which he shares a cult place than the sun god Re is to be equated with the Mnevis bull. That these arguments are flawed does not prove Bernal's conclusions wrong, of course; but such arguments can never prove him right, and in the meantime they obscure the debate.
The connections and contacts between Egypt and the Greek world have long been recognized, and Bernal misrepresents the degree to which modern scholars suppress evidence for them. Certainly the influence of Egyptian statuary on Archaic Greek kouroi is widely accepted, among Classicists as well as Egyptologists, although the differences in their function and execution are obviously of importance too. In arguing for an Egyptian colonization of Greece, however, Bernal and his followers disregard the extensive Egyptian textual tradition (surely if Thutmose III had conquered southern Europe and set up colonies there he would have mentioned it in his annals, for example), as well as the arguments of the scholars who have been investigating these questions for decades. Most of Bernal's arguments, interestingly, rest on the Greek textual tradition, which was of course a product of its culture's own cultural and political situation and requirements, and often made use of the Egyptians' antiquity and reputation for wisdom. By crediting the Greek evidence over the Egyptian, European over the African, Bernal takes advantage of the fact that his Western audience is more familiar with (and more inclined to credit) the Classical tradition than the Egyptian. That few of the myriad reviews of the series have been written by Egyptologists is an obvious indication of the European provenience of his evidence.
If we are honest, most Egyptologists would admit that we would like nothing better than to find indisputable evidence that all Western culture derived from Egypt; such a discovery would make us far more important, more powerful, and wealthier than we are today. Because of this bias, we are justifiably cautious in making such claims.
The other half of this contention, that Egyptian civilization had a wide influence in the rest of Africa, is argued most prominently in the writings of Sheikh Anta Diop. Many turn-of-the-century scholars made such a claim, and they are widely and reverently quoted in the Afrocentric literature to support the more recent contentions. Interestingly, their motivation was essentially racist. The invention of the "Hamitic" racial group, defined as a population essentially "white" in skeletal features, but with the peculiar anomaly of dark skin, allowed some early Egyptologists to categorize the Egyptians and the Nubians as "white." Then, working on the racist assumption that "blacks" were incapable of higher civilization, they attributed anything that looked like civilization in the remainder of Africa to "ancient Egyptian colonization." While there is a rather pleasant poetic justice in the fact that the flawed conclusions resulting from these racist assumptions are currently being used to argue for the connection of all Africans and African culture with the glories of ancient Egypt, the evidence for these conclusions is hardly acceptable from a scholarly point of view. As with the European conquests and colonies hypothesized by Bernal, African conquests and colonies beyond Upper Nubia are unlikely because of the silence of the Egyptian records, although other kinds of contact are not impossible.
These two contentions of Egyptian influence outside of Egypt are among the most difficult Afrocentric claims to deal with. Unlike the question of race, these are not subjective judgments, and yet like the question of race they are yes-no questions that lie at the heart of the Afrocentric hypothesis. In particular, to deny the claim that all Africans are descended culturally and genetically from the ancient Egyptians is seen as an attack on African- Americans' right to claim the ancient Egyptian heritage as their own. At the moment, these claims have neither been definitively proved nor disproved, so it is probably wisest to take an agnostic position regarding them. The nature and extent of Mediterranean connections with ancient Egypt are worthy of further study, and may offer scope to arguments more truly Afrocentric than those propounded by Bernal. In Africa, too, there clearly were connections of some kind with areas beyond Nubia, as we know from the depiction of trade goods; and the degree of contact with Western Africa through Libya and the Oases has not been exhaustively studied. All of these areas have been receiving more attention in recent years, and it may be that there was more contact between Egypt and the rest of Africa, or between Egypt and Europe, than our current interpretations allow. If there was, let those who would argue it argue from evidence rather than authority.

4. There has been a scholarly conspiracy among Eurocentric Egyptologists to suppress evidence about the blackness of the ancient Egyptians, their greatness, and their influence on European and other African civilizations. This is probably the most offensive manifestation of Afrocentrism we encounter, implying as it does that Egyptologists as a group have routinely abandoned their scholarly integrity, simply in order to further some racist agenda. (As an epigrapher, I find the charge that we have recarved the faces of Egyptians represented in tomb reliefs particularly ludicrous.) Its most frequent manifestation is the Napoleon-knocked- the-nose-off-the-Sphinx-so-no- one-would-know-it-was- black contention, a silly argument that demonstrates the movement's unattractive paranoia. For the evidence against this, incidentally, I refer the reader to a fascinating article by Ulrich Haarmann, "Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt," BSOAS 43 (1980) 55-66, which records that, according to Makrizi, Rashidi, and other medieval Arab authors, the face of the Sphinx was mutilated in 1378 A.D. (708 A.H.) by Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr, whom Haarmann describes as "a fanatical sufi of the oldest and most highly respected sufi convent of Cairo."
Although some Afrocentrists may have found individual Egyptologists uncooperative, for reasons made clear above, we are hardly likely to deny the achievements of the Egyptians. In one sense, we are far more Afrocentric than the Afrocentrists, since we try, where possible, to study Egyptian civilization on its own terms, rather than comparing it to our own culture. Most of us have developed a great respect for the skills of the Egyptians: their abilities and sophistication as sculptors, writers, diplomats, theologians, painters, architects, potters, bureaucrats, builders, warriors, and traders will not be denied by those who have studied the results of their work. Even greater skill is apparent in the suitability of these achievements to the needs of the ancient culture as a whole, and this suitability is better appreciated the better one understands the cultural context in which the achievement occurred. To yank a building or a statue or a poem from its indigenous cultural milieu in order to compare it with its Western counterparts is decidedly Eurocentric, especially when one uses the Western products as the standard against which the Egyptian are to be judged; and yet, for political reasons, this is the most common approach of the Afrocentrists.
In another sense, however, the contention that Egyptologists are Eurocentric has at its center a kernel of truth. Any Egyptologist who proposes to do something constructive about the Afrocentric movement must admit that, in its origins and to some extent in its current preoccupations, Egyptology is a Eurocentric profession. It was founded by European and American scholars whose primary interest was in confirming the Classical sources and in confirming and explicating the Old and New Testaments for the furtherance of Christianity. A look at the earliest Egypt Exploration Society publications illustrates the way that early scholars "sold" their work by connecting it to familiar Classical and (especially) Biblical names and places: The Store City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus (1885), Tanis (1885), Naukratis (1886 and 1888), The Shrine of Saft el Henneh and the Land of Goshen (1887), The City of Onias and the Mound of the Jew (1890), and Bubastis (1890). Furthermore, the fact that the cultures to the north and east of Egypt provide texts that we can use to correct and augment the Egyptian evidence, while those to the south and west do not, provides a third reason for concentrating our research on foreign relations to the northeast. Insofar as Nubian cultures have been studied, they have until recently been seen as distorted and somewhat comical attempts to replicate their great neighbor to the north. Because of these circumstances (the Classical focus of Western culture, Christianity, and the distribution of writing), as well as the often unconscious racism of early scholars which has affected the shape of our field, Egyptologists have too often ignored the rest of Africa.
This ignorance has not been complete. As a result of the birth of cultural anthropology around the turn of the century, there was a great interest in finding the origin of Egyptian traditions in those of "other primitive cultures," i.e., the societies of contemporary Africa, which were taken as models for what Egypt was like "before civilization." This rather weird perspective led to such anachronisms as the claim that the ancient Egyptian jubilee ceremony "derived" from the alleged eighteenth- century African practice of killing a king who became too old to rule effectively.
Despite the nature of the underlying assumptions, this early work in anthropological comparisons contains many interesting ideas. (I have found the work of A. Blackman especially rich.) Such similarities between cultures, reviewed and reworked to accord with current scholarly standards, may help explicate some of the puzzling elements in Egyptian culture. It must be remembered, however, that similarity does not prove influence, or even contact. As the archaeology and cultural anthropology of Africa becomes better known, and as Egyptologists, Afrocentric and traditional, become more familiar with and sophisticated about African cultures, it may be that patterns of such similarities can be identified, categorized, and traced with sufficient scholarly rigor to show routes of contact. These are important questions, and represent an area where the Afrocentric perspective might make substantial contributions not just to the education and self-esteem of African-Americans but to the international scholarly field of Egyptology as well. Such discoveries would add immeasurably to the resources of the entire field of Egyptology, widening our horizons and broadening our understanding of Egyptian culture.

posted 26 March 2004 04:13 PM            

Now the Black civilization that shook the white man up the most was the Egyptian civilization, and it was a Black civilization. It was along the banks of the Nile which runs through the heart of Africa. But again this tricky white man, and he's tricky--and mind you again, when I say this, it's not a racist statement. Some of them might not be tricky, but all of them I've met are tricky. And his civilization shows his trickiness. The tricky White man was able to take the Egyptian civilization, write books about it, put pictures in those books, make movies for television and the theatre--so skillfully that he has even convinced other white people that the ancient Egyptians were White people themselves. They were African, they were as African as you and I. And he even gave the clue away when he made this movie, "King Solomon's Mines," and he showed the Watusis, you know, with their Black selves, and he outright admitted in there that they looked like the ancient pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Which means that the White man himself, he knows that the Black man had this high civilization in Egypt, whose remains today show the Black man in that area had mastered mathematics, had mastered architecture, the science of building things, had even mastered astronomy.

posted 26 March 2004 04:18 PM            

Read the views of Shomarka Keita.

See Keita, S. O. Y., "Response to Bernal and Snowden,"
_Arethusa_, Volume 26, Fall 1993)

posted 26 March 2004 04:30 PM            

Afrocentrism
Afrocentrism is a mythology that is racist, reactionary, and essentially therapeutic. It suggests that nothing important has happened in black history since the time of the pharaohs and thus trivializes the history of black Americans. Afrocentrism places an emphasis on Egypt that is, to put it bluntly, absurd. --Clarence E. Walker*

Afrocentrism is a pseudohistorical political movement that erroneously claims that African-Americans should trace their roots back to ancient Egypt because it was dominated by a race of black Africans. Some of Afrocentrism's other claims are: the ancient Greeks stole their main cultural achievements from black Egyptians; Jesus, Socrates and Cleopatra, among others, were black; and Jews created the slave trade of black Africans.

The main purpose of Afrocentrism is to encourage black nationalism and ethnic pride as a psychological weapon against the destructive and debilitating effects of universal racism.

Some of Afrocentrism's leading proponents are Professor Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University; Professor Leonard Jeffries of City University of New York; and Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena.

One of the more important Afrocentric texts is the pseudo-historical Stolen Legacy (1954) by George G. M. James. Mr. James claims, among other things, that Greek philosophy and the mystery religions of Greece and Rome were stolen from Egypt; that the ancient Greeks did not have the native ability to develop philosophy; and that the Egyptians from whom the Greeks stole their philosophy were black Africans. Many of James' ideas were taken from Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), who thought that white accomplishment is due to teaching children they are superior. If blacks are to succeed, he said, they would have to teach their children that they are superior.

James's principal sources were Masonic, especially The Ancient Mysteries and Modern Masonry (1909) by the Rev. Charles H. Vail. The Masons in turn derived their misconceptions about Egyptian mystery and initiation rites from the eighteenth century work of fiction Sethos, a History or Biography, based on Unpublished Memoirs of Ancient Egypt (1731) by the Abbé Jean Terrasson (1670-1750), a professor of Greek. Terrasson had no access to Egyptian sources and he would be long dead before Egyptian hieroglyphics could be deciphered. But Terrasson knew the Greek and Latin writers well. So he constructed an imaginary Egyptian religion based upon sources which described Greek and Latin rites as if they were Egyptian (Lefkowitz). Hence, one of the main sources for Afrocentric Egyptology turns out to be Greece and Rome. The Greeks would have called this irony. I don't know what Afrocentrists call it.

James's pseudo-history is the basis for other Afrocentric pseudo-histories such as Africa, Mother of Western Civilization by Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannnan, one of James's students, and Civilization or Barbarism by Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal.

Afrocentrism is being taught in many universities and colleges, and is the basis of an entire curriculum for children in two Milwaukee schools.

posted 26 March 2004 04:41 PM            

http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/cgi-bin/pbg/007303195X?mv_session_id=BZmiTFLG&mv_pc=173§ioncode=

Taking Sides Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in World Civilizations
Author(s): Joseph Mitchell Helen Buss Mitchell
ISBN: 007303195X
DOI: 10.1036/007303195X

Format: Softcover, 400 pages.
Pub date: September 27, 1999
Copyright: 2000
$22.50 US
Product Line: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin
Related Titles by Category:
? History -- World

posted 26 March 2004 04:58 PM            

Fallacies of Afrocentrism
Grover Furr

A few days ago I posted an article I wrote back in '91 when the college's black student org. invited Leonard Jeffries to come to speak. In it I ran through, though very briefly (for space), some of the fallacies of Afrocentrism. Here is a little more about them, in no special order.

Afrocentrism seriously distorts Egyptian history. Egyptians were not "black" (Negroid) on the whole, though a few dynasties of rulers were. But Egyptians were also not racists, it seems, and people of different colors intermarried. We could do well to follow their lead in this!
There is no evidence that Nefertiti or Cleopatra were 'black', for example. Naturally, they were not "white" (i.e. European) either.

Greeks did not "steal" their culture from Egypt. In the ancient Mediterranean world, cultural influences moved around a lot.
The Egyptian rulers and their acolytes (like all the "-hoteps", Imhotep, Ptahhotep, et al.) were an oppressive and expoitative aristocracy. Cheikh Anta Diop, whom Afrocentrists admire but, it seems, seldom read, has a very interesting review of Jacques Pirenne's History of Ancient Egypt in one of his books. Diop comments favorably about Pirenne's description of revolutions against the Egyptian rulers by lower-class Egyptians -- something one would expect in an exploitative society. But the Afrocentrists who so admire Diop never mention this aspect of Ancient Egypt! In short, what they admire is the aristocratic, exploitative aspect of it.
"African culture" is not a unity: there are many, many cultures in Africa. Ancient Egyptians are not the ancestors, either culturally or genetically, of the peoples of West Africa or of the American black population.
The whole "ice man-sun man" thesis of Francis Welsing is racist crap, without a shred of evidence to support it. Welsing seldom publishes her 'research'; same with Jeffries. I know: I've tried to get it; with lots of effort, I've gotten a very little bit. The infamous "Melanin" Conferences at which these ideas are promoted are virtually secret, their 'proceedings', if any, not available to anyone.
The premises of Afrocentrism are false and racist against blacks, among others.

it is false and racist that anyone has any business taking "pride" in the "achievements" of one's distant ancestors, since intelligence, creativity, etc., are not inherited, and furthermore no one can take any credit for anything they have not achieved themselves. This is the case even if modern blacks were the descendants of ancient Egyptians, which they are not. Besides, if one takes credit for the "achievements" of one's distant ancestors, why not also assume the blame for the atrocities committed by the same ancestors?
it is false and racist to say that "blackness", "melanin" (or "whiteness", etc.) confers intelligence, or any characteristics at all. If it were true, all blacks with any degree of white ancestry would be "sub-human" just as the "ice person" thesis claims whites are; most American blacks, if not all, therefore.
Where does Afrocentrism come from? Historically, it's a reaction to the tremendous upsurge of racism spurred by 18th and 19th century European imperialism. I think Bernal [Black Athena, Volume I] is right when he points out that after 1800 study of Egypt -- and also of the Semitic mid-east -- was systematically denigrated for racist reasons. Some scholars reacted against this marginalization of Egypt and the Mid-East, including some black scholars (but not only them). This is the ancestry of Afrocentrism, sketched by Bernal rather convincingly. What is not convincing about Bernal (Volumes 1 and 2) is his derivation of Greek civilization from Egyptian colonists. However, even if it were true, it would not mean what the Afrocentrists say it means.

Today, Afrocentrism is a racist, highly conservative, nationalist pseudo-science (by the latter term I mean: based upon phony scholarship and premises). It victimizes black students almost exclusively, since it is they who have this nonsense foisted off upon them as truth.

The fact that it is tolerated and even promoted at various universities, including the one I teach at, is a tribute to higher education's racism against black students. This kind of worthless, reactionary crap would never be tolerated if it were being purveyed to white students!

Afrocentrism is another form of authoritarianism. It tells black students: Believe "your leaders" because they are black! Since there's no evidence worthy of the name for these theses, "believe your black leaders" is all that's left.

Who are these misleaders, phony scholars? I do not see any division into "responsible" and "irresponsible." Asante and Karenga write the same kind of nonsense as Jeffries and Welsing. If you want to read some real authoritarian crap from somebody with a Jesus complex (i.e. he believes he's the chosen of God), read Asante's Afrocentricity, in which he claims the belief structure was "granted" him as a "vision", like Paul on the road to Damascus. He even reprints it!

Afrocentrism, being racist against blacks, is useful to the racist US ruling class, and I think that's why it's tolerated. It serves to inculcate racist, anti-white views among black students, and to keep them obedient to whatever the highly conservative 'authorities' tell them.

The same kind of nationalism flourished in the '60s, where it served to keep blacks from uniting with anti-racist whites to fight racism. That's the function of Afrocentrism today, and very valuable it is to the tactic of "divide and conquer", by which white and black workers and students are kept divided from one another.

However, Afrocentrism is nowhere near as influential as overt anti-black racism of the Murray/Herrnstein Bell Curve kind, or of the D'Amato/Christy Whitman/Joe Bruno kind. Anti-black racism is sharply on the increase, under the guise of "attacking Affirmative Action", attacks on welfare, and so on.

Racism is on the increase because the ruling class always uses racism to divide the working class against one another, the better to fleece it -- to lower the standard of living and increase profits. Afrocentrism helps them, and so continues to flourish, as do the right-wing fascists, militias, etc., all of which are also racist to the core.

Racism is the key issue here. If there were a mass anti-racist movement involving many whites, as there was in the '60s, the "cultural nationalists" like the Afrocentrists, like the Farrakhans, would be an insignificant force as they were then. As it is, with racism against blacks rising rapidly, and no multi-racial, anti-racist movement, it is the nationalists who appear, to some, to be at least 'doing something' about racism, something to assert the equality and dignity of black people. They are not doing this; but the appearance that they are is what attracts many black students and others.

You want to weaken Afrocentrism? FIGHT ANTI-BLACK RACISM!

posted 26 March 2004 05:18 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Amwa:
Keino,

Read "Black Athena Revisited" for the opposite viewpoint its by Mary Lefkowitz and
Guy Maclean Rogers..This is the book that
has scholars weighing in on this issue and
they present the Egyptians as Mediterraneans.

---

posted 26 March 2004 05:28 PM            

Like most anthropology if you pick and chose the crania then it will cluster with the closest match. He ignores most North-Eastern African groups that would cluster with ancient Egyptians,so it appears that ''sub-Saharan'' Africans are not related to ancient Egyptians.

The only other interesting article is the one with Robert Palter and Martin Bernal aruging over ancient Egyptian science.

posted 26 March 2004 07:57 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
From the perspective of someone who works in an academic enviorment let me say this. These Afrocentrics are on the defensive for the first time in years. For a long time people tried to ignore them but they went so far as to become a problem. What is really helping now is some of our wealthy donors starting to complain. The University leaders listen when money is a stake.
i think we have to decide if the programs can be saved or if they have become so radicalized that they will have to be dropped or phased out.
In my Western Civ 201 class I teach AE as a Near Eastern power. I have never had one student ask me (with the exception of the Cleopatra story) if AE's were black. Frankly, I have never dealt with the subject in terms of race one way or the other. EVERY ancient professor I have talked with or worked with have told me AE is a near eastern subject and not African. That is the way we teach it.

---

posted 27 March 2004 07:56 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
I teach at a large branch university in the Houston metro area. We have a diverse enrollment with blacks, whites, Latinos, many orentials. I have taught students from many different places and it makes the job really interesting. I find it interesting that global capitalism is making ALL of these people wealthy. Most of my students go on to make much more money than I do.
The pretty Egyptian girl who's picture you posted yesterday...lets look ahead. 25 years from now her daughter wiull be wearing a short skirt, will drive a convertable and will make a great living doing data processing for a major firm. She will do her shopping on the net or at a spacious shopping mall in upper Egypt. She will go to the disco on the weekends and will not marry until much later than her mother did. The company she works for will be global and will care less what her race or religion might be. The battle to make that possible for her is being fought right now in the middle east and elsewhere. It'sd a battle that the Muslim extremist and the Africanist can not win, the march of history is aganist them. Both of those groups are looking back, that young girl would like to move ahead and in America and the UK we are going to see that she has that chance.

---

I wish your ideological fantasies of capitalist utopia would start in the US first where only 3 out of 10 college grads find a job in their first few years out of school. I'm not knocking capitalism but 2 of the fastest growing economies in the world, India, and China, are socialist countries.

As far as the Middle East and Africa go, I'd hope the future you wish for doesn't come to pass. I love America but I would hate to see our culture cloned around the world. I'd hope living conditions improve for the many poor people in Africa and the Middle East but I also hope they maintain their national character and values.

BTW, not everyone wants to live like Americans. To have that belief turns many off around the world.

posted 27 March 2004 09:55 AM            

RE: The only way that girl would be educated in the UK to the level you are talking about is if she enters the country as an asylum seeker, and is afforded every grant and benifit she can claim, as it would be immpossible for her to afford that education. I couldnt even afford that education in the UK. 70% of Europeans could not afford that education. And in their own countries the standard of education to which they have access is seldom recognised in the USA, Australia, UK, Germany or France.

In many European countries since the introduction of the Euro, pay up to 75% of their income of bricks and morter; subject to the rising prices the richer countries like the UK and GERMANY are prepared to pay as they move freely around the EU.

Educacion by no means is accessable to the masses as it is in Australia, and what I am told in the US.

The battle as you say is by no means over. The millions getting wealthy are not the poorer people moving up.

In regards to "Socialism being a dead hammer". There will unfortunatly be a need to exploit other countries of cheep labor for those counties fortunate enough to become "technologicaly industrialised"
Unless you are prepared to pay 10 times the cost of the last shirt you purchased at the mall which was made in china or the many other countries the US and many others use.

In fact you will find like the UK even technological advanced prooducts will be shipped of shore for the labor intensive savings. Have you ever made an operator assited call from the UK? If you have you will more than likely get an answer from an Indian speeking person, who is not an imigrant but actualy is aswering your call in India. This is the local exchange. That is one of hundreds of examples were labor in tecnological business are using off shore labor. Exactly the same as the Industrial exploitation.

I would hazard a gues that the reality of this is not waht is tought at schools in the USA though. The idealism is the bases for education in regards to global capitalism. Much the same as the Afrocentric ideal looks good on paper. The every day person are the ones hat suffer for these ideals.

Global capitalism is making very few rich in Europe.

PS: and thats only Europe, do you have any idea what is happening In Africa at the moment?

Ozzy

posted 27 March 2004 10:43 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
Socialism is dead as a hammer. It was an option as long as we had an industrial economy that was 'labor' intensive. In the new 'technological world' is has no place. China and India are socialist but being rapidly modified to adjust to the global business community. Tony Blair, leader of the "Progressive Party" in the UK ststed that the job of Progressive politics has changed, it is now to educate a work force for the global business community. The nominee of the Democratic party is nearly a billionaire abd Bill Clinton in the 90's was one of the friendliest President's in history to big business. Drive down any major street in America and Europe and you see signs of coporate power everywhere you look. It is providing wealth for millions of people. Even our poorest citizens have a life style undreamed of 50 years ago. No, the battle is over. You can either get on the train or it will run over you.

---

Wealthy politicians in the US is nothing new. Very few American Presidents were born lower class. The US government is still a boys club for elitists.

Not to continue to go off topic but
I'm on the train. I believe that mass communications is making the world a smaller place and all economies are becoming more interdependent. The point I was making is that India and China are able to get more of their people on the train than the US because they are socialist countries. Their entire populations are reaping the benefits of their economic growth through education and health care whereas in America the gap between rich and poor is huge not just in terms of wealth but also in terms of education, life expectancy, and upward mobility. In the US people shouldn't have to be wealthy to get a good education, or get regular doctor's appointments. But that's just my opinion.

posted 27 March 2004 10:51 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Horemheb:
I teach at a large branch university in the Houston metro area. We have a diverse enrollment with blacks, whites, Latinos, many orentials. I have taught students from many different places and it makes the job really interesting. I find it interesting that global capitalism is making ALL of these people wealthy. Most of my students go on to make much more money than I do.
The pretty Egyptian girl who's picture you posted yesterday...lets look ahead. 25 years from now her daughter wiull be wearing a short skirt, will drive a convertable and will make a great living doing data processing for a major firm. She will do her shopping on the net or at a spacious shopping mall in upper Egypt. She will go to the disco on the weekends and will not marry until much later than her mother did. The company she works for will be global and will care less what her race or religion might be. The battle to make that possible for her is being fought right now in the middle east and elsewhere. It'sd a battle that the Muslim extremist and the Africanist can not win, the march of history is aganist them. Both of those groups are looking back, that young girl would like to move ahead and in America and the UK we are going to see that she has that chance.

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First let me start by saying that socialism alone will never prosper because capitalism is entrenched in all modern economic societies. Capitalism may be powerful, however its is but a dust in the wind when big and powerful countries like China and Japan find a way that synergies capitalism with socialism. Socialism is a loose term for the political and economical theory that advocates a system of collective or government ownership and management of the means of production and distribution of goods. However this control of production is both collective and individual once the government is kept at bay and only used as a tool to monitor and police the practices. Because of the collective nature of socialism, it is to be contrasted capitalism. Where capitalism stresses competition and profit of a few elite, socialism calls for cooperation and social service of the majority for the good of all people. Capitalism, can be described as an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, in which personal profit can be acquired through investment of capital and employment of labor. Capitalism is grounded in the concept of free enterprise, which argues that government intervention in the economy should be restricted and that a free market, based on supply and demand, will ultimately maximize consumer welfare. Capitalism has existed in a limited form in the economies of all civilizations, Egypt, Nubia, Sumer Rome, but its modern importance dates at least from 18th century, when bankers, merchants, and industrialists-the bourgeoisie-began to displace landowners in political, economic, and social importance, particularly in Great Britain. Capitalism stresses freedom of individual economic enterprise; however, government action has been and is required to curb its abuses, which have ranged from slavery (particularly in Britain and the United States) and apartheid (in South Africa) to monopoly cartels and financial fraud, even to modern day slavery in Sudan and India. In the United States, it exists in the form of subsidies, tax credits, incentives, and other types of exemptions. Though private production plays a major role in the economies of Germany and Japan, both nations have centrally planned industrial policies in which bankers, industrialists, and labor unions meet and seek to agree to wage policies and interest rates; these countries reject the idea of letting the market wholly determine the economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe (1989-91) left those countries with a heavy burden and an uncertain future, and represented a substantial retreat in the power of capitalism's traditional economic opponent, socialism. What you think of as progress and a better life in Upper Egypt or some other country because of the enslavement ideals of Capitalism is only relative. These people would be moved from a lifelong system of socialism and community practices to a dog eat dog world of barbarism and greed, but still live on the bottom of the system now however, without the benefits of a close nit society and community. Everyone is now out for themselves. I have seen this happen first hand in my country and with it comes increase crime, greed, insanity, and instability of families which further adds to the problem of keeping the masses poor while the rich gets richer. This is why America seems to be fragmenting right before our eyes as everyone is against their neighbours and its seems like now one trusts even their brothers and sisters. I am NOT giving flack to America because it is a great country and would be an even greater force to reckon with if it had more of a community and socialist based capitalistic system. More people in America would have power hence making the US more powerful and united. Ausar do you want to see this happen in your village? I am not totally disparaging capitalism nor socialism, but I am saying that countries who find a harmonious way to combine the two are going to be the leaders in tomorrow’s world.

posted 27 March 2004 01:56 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by neo*geo:

Race is an issue with so much political and emotional baggage that it's difficult for people to get into a discussion about it without being rude or insulting one another. This is why in an attempt to save this forum I bumped up about a dozen old topics that have nothing to do with race. Obviously, if I keep coming back here I must find something good in the people who post on this forum. Lets try to sound more like students of Egyptology and less like race baiters...

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posted 27 March 2004 03:41 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Ozzy:
A question: how many here are actauly aware of the ecnomic climate in Europe.? I have to ask as I see so any references to Europe and the UK were it is not consitant with the real life in this part of the world.

RE: The only way that girl would be educated in the UK to the level you are talking about is if she enters the country as an asylum seeker, and is afforded every grant and benifit she can claim, as it would be immpossible for her to afford that education. I couldnt even afford that education in the UK. 70% of Europeans could not afford that education. And in their own countries the standard of education to which they have access is seldom recognised in the USA, Australia, UK, Germany or France.

In many European countries since the introduction of the Euro, pay up to 75% of their income of bricks and morter; subject to the rising prices the richer countries like the UK and GERMANY are prepared to pay as they move freely around the EU.

Educacion by no means is accessable to the masses as it is in Australia, and what I am told in the US.

The battle as you say is by no means over. The millions getting wealthy are not the poorer people moving up.

In regards to "Socialism being a dead hammer". There will unfortunatly be a need to exploit other countries of cheep labor for those counties fortunate enough to become "technologicaly industrialised"
Unless you are prepared to pay 10 times the cost of the last shirt you purchased at the mall which was made in china or the many other countries the US and many others use.

In fact you will find like the UK even technological advanced prooducts will be shipped of shore for the labor intensive savings. Have you ever made an operator assited call from the UK? If you have you will more than likely get an answer from an Indian speeking person, who is not an imigrant but actualy is aswering your call in India. This is the local exchange. That is one of hundreds of examples were labor in tecnological business are using off shore labor. Exactly the same as the Industrial exploitation.

I would hazard a gues that the reality of this is not waht is tought at schools in the USA though. The idealism is the bases for education in regards to global capitalism. Much the same as the Afrocentric ideal looks good on paper. The every day person are the ones hat suffer for these ideals.

Global capitalism is making very few rich in Europe.

PS: and thats only Europe, do you have any idea what is happening In Africa at the moment?

Ozzy

[This message has been edited by Ozzy (edited 27 March 2004).]

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posted 27 March 2004 03:59 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by ausar:
The problem is that nobody responds to the topics that don't concern the racial idenity of the ancient Egyptians. I have posted many topics about ancient Egyptian culture,soceity,worlview,and various other topics that went without any recognition. At times it has become rather hopless;thus my current attitude on the subject.

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Ausar, this afects Egypt as well, and can in fact be assoociated with AE, the subject is timeless. Solon claimes that he borowed the his vagrancy laws from Egypt, the law made it an offence for any man to not have an occupation, and he supported free traid which again he claimes was what he saw in Egypt. Can we move this to AE? Lets discuss these what affects these would have had on AE civiisation. Any ideas?

posted 27 March 2004 07:03 PM            

Most of the system of economics in Egypt was based primary on argitcultural and rural based even like modern Egypt it is predominatley agirtcultural with more emphasis know on industalized fields. Of course,there were specilized trades in Egypt like carpentry that asselmbled furniture for mass production and for export or trade. This was only during the Middle Kingdom and previously it primiarly goldsmiths or other people who mass produced and traded these essential.

We can also talk about the trade that extrended in pre-dyanstic Egypt with various places from A-group Nubia to modern day Palestine. Most of this was for raw materials or for religious goods. We don't see mass skilled trade during this time.

Anyway,I have to study more about the trade and commerce in Pre-dyanstic Egypt unfolding into the Islamic area. Even during this time rural Egyptians came to the city markets in Al-Fustat[Cairo] to trade their various pottery and produce to the people in the city. Still then it was primarily a barter system.

posted 28 March 2004 07:32 AM            

One last tought, is their evidance of the barter system that was used? I know the basic barter system is trade one thing for another, but the barter systems can be very complicated, calculating one items value against another. Often a common comodity is then used as a standard of trade becuase of the complicated nature of bartering. Could this have been some sort of grain? I doubt it would have been preciouse metals as they were mostly imported, and imported products did not in most situations become the standard commodity in Bartering.

The valuation of wealth would therefore be more easily gaged, RE: hearders use cattle as a display of wealth, and is passed on via marriage and death. Land also seems to form part of wealth of an Egyptian, but not like Europe were much of the land ended up being owned by Lords who least the land to the workers. What was the land distrabution like in AE?

I dont know if this is of interest to anyone else but its someting I have not read much about in regards to AE.

posted 28 March 2004 10:54 AM            

However,not all land was owned by the pharoah since sometimes solider[of Egyptian origin or foreign origin] were granted land for their services in the Egyptian millitary.

I am glad you explore this side of ancient Egyptian lifestyle because not many people have an interest past the pyramids or mummies. To me Egypt is much more than this,so this is why my focus on their daily lifestyle from Pharoah to peasent.

posted 28 March 2004 03:37 PM            

Anyone know of any evidance of surplus of grains in Egypt at any period which would give an indication of the trade power it would have had to import these raw materials like wood?'

I do know that later dynastys, did trade grain for many things including GREEK soldiers, So was grain the basis for trade through most of the Dynasies or did it change.?

And was war again a means for obtaining these raw materials?

Ozzy

posted 28 March 2004 04:57 PM            

Not really certain about the grain surplus,nor does anything get mentioned untill the time of the 9th and 10th dyansty when it talks about a drought that disabled Egypt and Egyptians.

I will have look more into this,but material on this is very hard to come by. Egyptian texts themselves don't give much detail or information.

Egyptian texts date to the era of the 6th dyansty document this trade with the land of Yam.

posted 29 March 2004 11:16 AM            

EGYPTIANS AND NUBIANS

The cultures of Egypt and Nubia are the ones most often claimed by Afrocentrists, usually Americans of West African descent. But the data from anthropology and genetics reveals the Caucasoid make-up of Egyptians, both ancient and modern, and places Nubia, which acquired a partly Negroid character, in the Afro-Asiatic cultural complex, separate from sub-Saharan and West African groups.

NUBIANS

Starting from the Late Neolithic...similarities between the Nubians and the populations of Northeast Africa...and Asia...became even more distinct, which may prove the existence of strong ties derived probably from influx of the Caucasoids from the regions of Levant, Mesopotamia, and India. They were coming to Nubia through the Sinai Peninsula, but probably also through the south Saudi Arabia. The Kerma series from Upper Nubia shows particular similarities to the present-day Indian series.
From the Neolithic on, or possibly even earlier, the strategic location of Nubia, promoting contacts between various populations, started to bring about effects in the form of the civilizational development of this region. Finally, these two factors led to the Hamitisation process, whereby superimposition of the Caucasoids on the Negroids took place.

Aleksandra Pudlo, Anthropological Review, 1999

The occurrence of E*5 212 and E*5 204 alleles in two populations of the Mediterranean basin (Turkey and Italy) but not in West Africans can be explained by taking into account that the Ethiopian gene pool was estimated to be >40% of Caucasoid derivation (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). In addition, more recent phylogenetic analysis based on classical protein polymorphism (Tartaglia et al. 1996) and Y-chromosome sequence variation (Underhill et al. 2000) showed that Ethiopians appear to be distinct from Africans and more closely associated with populations of the Mediterranean basin.

Scacchi et al., Human Biology, 2003

...the present study on the Y-chromosome haplotype shows that there are northern and southern Y-haplotypes in Egypt. The main Y-haplotype V is a northern haplotype, with a significantly different frequency in the north compared to the south of the country: frequencies of haplotype V are 51.9% in the Delta (location A), 24.2% in Upper Egypt (location B), and 17.4% in Lower Nubia (location C). On the other hand, haplotype IV is a typical southern haplotype, being almost absent in A (1.2%), and preponderant in B (27.3%) and C (39.1%). Haplotype XI also shows a preponderance in the south (in C, 30.4%; B, 28.8%) compared to the north (11.7% in A) of the country.

It is interesting to relate this peculiar north/south differentiation, a pattern of genetic variation deriving from the two uniparentally inherited genetic systems (mtDNA and Y chromosome), to specific historic events. Since the beginning of Egyptian history (3200-3100 B.C.), the legendary king Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt. Migration from north to south may coincide with the Pharaonic colonization of Nubia, which occurred initially during the Middle Kingdom (12th Dynasty, 1991-1785 B.C.), and more permanently during the New Kingdom, from the reign of Thotmosis III (1490-1437 B.C.). The main migration from south to north may coincide with the 25th Dynasty (730-655 B.C.), when kings from Napata (in Nubia) conquered Egypt.

Lucotte et al., Am J Phys Anthro, 2003

Keino the actual website is: http://www.angeltowns.com/members/racialreal/egypt_nubia.html

Carleton Coon info is considered racist but
it gives a different point of view for you
to research.