Until
recently, there had been a scholarly debate among European intellectuals,
as well as some Blacks, on what they referred
to as the peopling of ancient Egypt.
 What
this question really posed was, “Who were
the ancient Egyptians?” Were they Black,
white, mulatto, etc.?
This
issue has been at the core of European history,
or better yet, European historiography
(the science of how history is written) for more than two hundred
years. This framework of European hegemony over the history of the
world has had a devastating impact on African people and the African
mind.
It
is in this context that we understand the intellectual devastation
of the European conceptualization of the world order. We should
understand this in relation to our movement for an African centered
education aimed at helping our people come out from beneath this
European intellectual assault.
Let
me use renowned African dee thinker, scholar,
and ancestor, Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers’
paper he wrote titled, “Race of Ancient Egyptians,” in helping clarify
this subject. This paper gives us the insights we need to understand
in this regard.
Dr.
Carruthers observes, “The doctrine of
white supremacy was launched by philosophers like David Hume who
asserted in 1749 ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally
inferior to the whites.’ This position was expressed in a different
context by Montesquieu about the same time.”
We
are guided by Dr. Carruthers when he explains,
“In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu asserted, ‘it is impossible
for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.’ Montesquieu
was justifying the enslavement of Africans that was one of the major
reasons for inventing the doctrine of white supremacy.”
 Upon
further examination, Dr. Carruthers reveals - “Obviously the emerging doctrine could not
gain credibility among those who were familiar with the traditional
wisdom among Europeans that the ancient Africans of Egypt had achieved
a very high level of civilization and had transmitted to the ancient
Greeks many of the major ideas considered a part of Greek civilization.”
Dr.
Carruthers explains, “Several decades
after the founding of the concept of white supremacy, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel supplied the solution of this latter difficulty
when, at the beginning of the 19th century,
he asserted that Africa was ‘not a historical
part of the world.’”
Finally, Dr. Carruthers quotes Hegel to demonstrate the ultimate in European
intellectual arrogance, Hegel states, “Historical movement in it
- that is its northern part - belongs to the Asiatic or European
world… Egypt
will be considered in reference to its western phase,
but it does not belong to the African spirit.”
Through
this conceptualization, Dr. Carruthers reveals, “Thus Hegel took Egypt
out of Africa and Africans out of Egypt. He also removed Africans from history.”
As
an outgrowth of this kind of thinking by European scholars,
the field of Egyptology began to emerge. Egyptology as a field of
study is the creation of the European mentality that seeks to gather
evidence (artifacts and antiquities) that supports the idea of the
European origin of civilization.
Egyptologists
have literally attempted to remove Egypt
from the geographical confines of Africa and reposited it within
the geographical domain of Asia.
The
removal of Egypt from Africa serves a
twofold purpose. First, it leads to the
obvious idea that Egypt
is not a part of Africa; therefore, its population could not have been Black. Secondly, it serves the purpose of implying that civilization did not begin
with the Black race.
Fortunately, we have always had Black scholars among us who did not get trapped
in the European conception of the world. It started with men like
Hosea Easton, Henry Highland Garnett,
and Martin R. Delany who - “took the biblical myth of Ham and used
it to establish Blacks as the authors of the great Nile Valley civilizations.”
Also,
“They… used ancient European works such as Herodotus, Diodorus and whatever modern works they could find. This tradition
has been an honorable endeavor and has taught us much.” The old
scrappers, according to Dr. Carruthers,
“are still among us, slugging it out as per our beloved Professor
John G. Jackson.”
Through
the work of Senegalese scholar Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop,
Dr. Théophile Obenga, Dr. Yosef ben Jochannan, and Chancellor Williams, the origin of the ancient Egyptians should
never ever be a question for African people. This question has been
resolved. We should be clear that the ancient Egyptians (or more
properly called, Kemetic people) were
Black.
Diop
points out that Herodotus “after relating his eyewitness account
informing us that the Egyptians were Black, demonstrated, with rare honesty (for a Greek),
that Greece borrowed from Egypt all elements of her civilization
even the cult of gods, and that Egypt
was the cradle of civilization.”
Our
scholars, thinkers, and researchers should never again
raise the questions of who the Egyptians were. Clearly,
they were Black people. This question has been resolved!
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist, Conrad
W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman of the National Black
United Front (NBUF).
Click here
to contact Dr. Worrill. |
