The Myth of Ancient Egypt Comes at a Steep Price
Moses Ebe Ochonu
The myth of ancient Egypt comes at a steep price
Since the 19th century, a strain in Black American culture has claimed ancient Egypt as ancestor and inspiration. A fascination with that long-ago land has permeated Black art deeply enough to seem like one of its very foundations. In the early 20th century, the emblem of the N.A.A.C.P. house organ, “The Crisis,” looked like a sphinx, and many covers featured beautiful Egyptian motifs. In the 1990s, many thinkers warmly embraced the book “Black Athena” by the historian Martin Bernal, which made the claim — since rather roundly debunked — that the ancient Greeks had stolen much of the glory of their culture from “Black” Egypt. So strong has this current of thought been that it fills an exhibition currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now.”
Beautiful work, make no mistake. But I have always found something problematic about this focus on ancient Egypt as a historical precursor to American Blackness. I’m going to step aside from the controversies over just what color the ancient Egyptians were. The simple fact is that Black Americans are not on the whole their descendants. They are the descendants of all of Africa, a vast and endlessly varied continent. Its peoples have warred with and until not so very long ago even enslaved one another, as rampantly as humans worldwide always have. It is home to over 2,000 languages — almost every third language in the world. Preferring and massaging the single halcyon dream of ancient Egypt misses all of that rich diversity, misreading the historical record and depriving us of the true richness of our heritage.
Most likely not a single enslaved Black person was brought to America from Cairo or Alexandria. They were brought to America from the West African coast, from what is now Senegal down to Angola. Senegal alone is over 3,000 miles across a desert to the southwest of Cairo as the crow flies — about as far as New York City is from Anchorage or Dublin. Black America tracing itself to Egypt makes as much historical sense as would Czechs deciding to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, seek out first editions of James Joyce and favor tartans as an expression of being European.
Sure, all cultures mythologize their past to an extent. Ta-Nehisi Coates in his new book, “The Message,” argues that as Black people, “we have a right to imagine ourselves as pharoahs.” But we also have a right to imagine ourselves as sultans, maharajahs or New Guinea hunter-gatherers. What was wrong with what we actually were?
This question is especially urgent as the abiding fondness for the Egypt idea tends to sideline the astonishing history of the empires that enslaved Americans actually emerged from and amid. In the 13th century, the Mali Empire produced a kind of Magna Carta called the Kouroukan Fouga. It was mindful of the rights of women to a degree surprising for any document before, roughly, Ms. magazine, counseling respect for “women, our mothers.” It stipulated that a man’s insanity or impotence was justification for a woman to seek divorce. European history teaches us to associate ancient empires with the ambition of overseas exploration, and the Mali Empire was no exception. Musa, the grandson of the empire’s founder, Sundiata Keita, sent out hundreds of ships to explore the great beyond.
South of Mali in what is today Angola was the kingdom of the Kongo, which was ruled in 1625 by Manikongo Garcia II. The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has described him as holding “court amid Flemish tapestries, wearing Indian linens, eating with cutlery of American silver in the company of titled Kongo nobles and bishops in red sashes, while secretaries took dictation.” His rival was the queen of the neighboring Ndongo kingdom, Nzinga Mbande. She dressed in men’s clothes and excelled as a warrior; in off hours she enjoyed male concubines. Surely a ripe source for creative imagination.
In what we now call Benin once stood the Dahomey kingdom. Its capital could boast 12 palaces, festooned with bas-relief carvings depicting the history of the kingdom, every bit as impressive as what visitors see at the Met’s Egyptian rooms. King Houegbadja, who ruled in the 17th century, went about with an entourage of female soldiers. All of this is grounds for celebration and creativity that does not require drawing an imaginary line from King Tut to Will Smith.
I suspect that one reason Black Americans are drawn to ancient Egypt is that it may seem grander, more advanced than the West African empires. But that impression is based partly on how well Egypt’s monuments have survived in desert conditions. Monuments of the West African empires, hewed from forested regions and long since grown over, can be harder to reconstruct.
The history of ancient Egypt, too, is preserved in more detail than that of most West African empires because Egypt had a writing system. But that doesn’t mean that the society was more sophisticated. Enormously complex societies thrived in antiquity without writing, such as the Catalhoyuk in Turkey and the Cahokia in Illinois.
Of course, Black Americans aren’t the only ones who fetishize ancient Egypt. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many European and American thinkers participated in an Egyptology craze. It elevated ancient Egypt, with its Rosetta Stone, Cleopatra and such as “civilized” while casting sub-Saharan Africans as dismissible primitives. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for example, was renowned for his contemptuous take on the sub-Saharan region he called “Africa proper” — in effect, the real Africa. For him, this region was “unhistorical” with an “undeveloped spirit”
That attitude lingered. When I was a young language-loving kid, I got a coloring book about the celebration of Christmas in 19 countries. I enjoyed it so much that I still have it. Each entry describes the customs in both English and the country’s official language. There was a serious flub, though: The description of Ethiopia’s customs was rendered in Swahili, which is not spoken in Ethiopia; its national language is Amharic, a relative of Hebrew and Arabic. By the standards of 1972 when the book was written, including an African country at all was ahead of the curve, but it seems that a residual sense of overgeneralization was still at play. I can’t see them as having described Denmark’s Christmas traditions in German.
The beauty of modern American Blackness is not a function of sphinxes, Nefertiti and hanging out with ancient Greeks. When creating and burnishing our stories, our myths, our art, we should remember where we really came from. They are all around us. In the 1930s, the pioneering Black linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner found speakers of the Gullah Creole language on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia who could still sing songs in the Mende language of Sierra Leone. The reason peanuts are called goobers in the South (and in the candy that’s popular at movie theater concession stands) is that they were called nguba in the Kikongo language of Angola and other countries.
Kunta Kinte, in the book and later two miniseries of “Roots,” spoke the Mandinka language of the Mali Empire. Mythology is relevant here. Alex Haley, who wrote the novel, claimed that “Roots” was based on historical sources, but it has since become clear that he largely concocted the story of his ancestors, expanding shreds of fact into fiction he later called “faction.” OK, “Roots” is legend rather than scholarship. But at least it depicts one of Black Americans’ true places of origin.
I wish we could let go of the idea that ancient Egypt is Black Americans’ common heritage. My cheek swab traces me to Senegal and Angola. Preferences will differ on this, but as for me, I get ancestral pride from my relatives here in America, such as the fierce great-aunt I knew as T.I., who could sprint up subway steps without missing a beat at 92, or Mom Springer, who was a more or less out lesbian and jazz saxophonist in the 1920s. If I need some Africa in the mix, the enlightenment of Kouroukan Fouga and the fierceness of Nzinga Mbande do me just fine.
Dr. Oohay
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Victor Okafor
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“The ultimate measure of a man [or, a woman] is not where he [or, she] stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he [or, she] stands at times of challenge and controversy.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Cornelius Hamelberg
“the untrustworthiness of Egyptologists
who do not know their trips”
A good starting point: Ishmael Reed : I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra
Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones’ doctoral thesis was Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama …
At a time when Africa was synonymous with “the land of the Ethiops/ the name Africa was coterminous with Ethiopia, we could also look at the Moors — and civilization
Further afield, the so called “ Moorish Americans “ two of the most famous of whom happens to be Wallace Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad , the founders of the Nation of Islam
First of all, by all accounts, John McWhorter is a serious person (who I have encountered elsewhere before). He is incapable of writing anything silly. He has impeccable credentials and is definitely a scholar who is conscious of Cheikh Anta Diop and various other serious scholars of that orientation, conscious of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena that he mentions, and Mary Lefkowitz et al ‘s hostile reaction published as Black Athena Revisited (1996), Not Out Of Africa How ""Afrocentrism"" Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History (1998) and in between, the several fierce, overheated debates between Martin Bernal and Mary Lefkowitz ( and other scholars) all worthy of our attention :
https://www.google.com/search?q=debates+between+Martin+Bernal+and+Mary+Lefkowitz
Lurking in the background to the subject matter under our purview are implications for the myths and realities of the Yoruba - Egypt connection
Less seriously lurking in the background is the improbable Igbo fantasy claim or myth that they are one of the “lost tribes of Israel” claims that are so far not supported by tangible proofs such as DNA….
I googled the titleThe myth of ancient Egypt comes at a steep price By John McWhorter to find out where it had been published, because it’s important whether alleged stuff and nonsense is published in some entertainment magazine to titillate the public there, or published in e.g. some white trash Darwinist magazine to pander to the appetite of those still waving the flag that “our ancestors were not apes” or if whatever alleged trash was published in “Daily Trust” or a peer review journal - although that should in no way diminish the authenticity of the central truths it sets out to establish or as we say in Nigeria or the alleged truths it wants to rubbish.
Unfortunately Google couldn’t say where the article was published.
The next question is why did Don Ochonu after a long hiatus / leave of absence from this forum, decide to post this piece which he knew would make such a splash? To get our attention? To what purpose?
Wrongfully/ righteously or unrighteously, and without showing any sympathy whatsoever, Dr. Oohay has disdainfully dismissed the African-American glorification of their alleged Egyptian ancestry as “ressentiment” designed to combat or overcome the OVERwhelming IC (inferiority complex) imposed on “black” folks (among many other “different”folks) through scientism”.
The fact is that the clinging on to the notion of glorious ancestors coming from Egypt must have been a natural reaction to Whitey saying that as Africans they had no history and no civilisation.
Not less disdainful in his dismissal, Victor Okafor brushes it off as “ a laughable essay. Suffice it to say that it does not deserve being dignified with any further comment.”
Really?
Of course, Cornelius Ignoramus disagrees with Okafor, very strongly. I find John McWhorter’s essay to be insightful, sane, educative, well balanced, relevant , and timely. ( I can imagine a less well informed hustler like Kamala Harris on the campaign trail, approaching the Gullah Folk in South Carolina to hustle their votes hoping they'd resonate with her by her claiming ancient or recent African affinity to them and to that end talking about an alleged common African ancestry which goes back all the way to the glorious higher civilisations of Ancient Egypt…
What remains to be heard is the final judgement from Don Ochonu himself, if he indeed thinks or thought that the forum was in need of some comic or cosmic relief or better still kingdom come and cosmic orgasm
N.B y’all : Hypocrisy is not kosher
Michael Afolayan
Toyin Falola
A small point of correction:
They are not tracing the African American heritage to Ancient Egypt, but a) connecting part of the heritage of Western civilisation to Egypt and b) affirming its blackness and revolutionary contribution.
Nothing is wrong with this. Alas! the Christian in an African village connects its beginning to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden!
Traditions are invented.
From:
'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, November 24, 2024 at 7:53 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Myth of Ancient Egypt Comes at a Steep Price
Thanks for posting this, Moses. My great elderly friend and senior colleague, Jan Vansina of sweet memory, told me how he worked relentlessly with Alex Haley to create "Roots." Coincidentally, the day I invited Jan to give a lecture in my Monday class on February 10, 1992 was the day Haley died, and JV dedicated the lecture of that day to his friend. I have always been of the opinion that, contrary to various schools espoused by Africologists (our big brother, Molefi Asante of Temple, and folks of UW-Milwaukee's Africology program [I believe the name has changed to something like Africa and the Diaspora Studies] in the fore), tracing the African American heritage to Ancient Egypt is a stretch. While North Africa could not be dismissed from the equation altogether, South of the Sahara would trump Ancient Egypt. But what do I know. . . the least among you knowledgeable folks of the Dialogue family!
MOA
(I don't know why this has sat in my inbox unsent. I wrote it early last week)
The myth of ancient Egypt comes at a steep price
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Moses Ochonu
Toyin Falola
Moses:
I have not stated my opinion but stated what they say and do.
Most civilisations do this---they invent traditions and mythologies for specific purposes. You must be a Christian to believe that Jesus Christ was conceived by a woman who had no sex. Yes, it works. If you say otherwise, you commit blasphemy.
And people come along the way to question the mythology…as in the piece we are discussing….
I am from Ibadan, a city founded in 1829. This is a historical fact. However, the kings and chiefs rejected this date and aged the city, tracing it to a progenitor founder, Lagelu, who was there centuries before. Many Yoruba towns have aged their accounts, tracing them to Oduduwa!
We have to consider the alternatives before them at the precise time they created the Egyptian connections. I must confess I have not read about this.
Also, mythologies require a lot of work to create. An intellectual figure must create another one that works, perhaps expanding the Obatala and Yemonja stories.
Happy Thanksgiving, which illustrates this point: a white mythology of conquest and historical erasure of indigenous population.
TF
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Cornelius Hamelberg
“...tracing the African American heritage to Ancient Egypt is a stretch.” ( Professor Michael Afolayan)
There is of course a world of difference between ancestry and heritage , so that in claiming Shakespeare as part of his literary heritage the distinguished Owerri Motor Park Poet doesn’t have to be an Englishman or born in the vicinity of Stratford-upon-Avon , just as celebrating with some delight, “The Africanity of Ancient Egypt”, surely, there’s no harm in Gloria in Excelsis Emeagwali who is a specialist in that area referring to Ancient Egypt and some of the other UNESCO World Heritage Sites as her heritage… in the same way that Baba Kadiri I’m sure is probably attached to e.g some exalted Yoruba sculptures and Vincent Adepoju too, ecstatic about the Benin Bronzes as part of OUR HERITAGE ! ( Just stretching a point. Seriously I abide by what Ojogbon says, and I know that he's not trying to please some slightly anti American Negro faculty chief. )
Unlike the time when with the Egyptian charioteers in hot pursuit the Almighty split the Sea of Reeds to create a land corridor/ safe passage for his Beloved Chosen People to escape, there was no mass exodus from Egypt recorded about the Almighty granting his Beloved Egyptians safe passage via the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic ocean, to land safely in North America. ( We could also take note of the Muslim conquest of Egypt 639 -642 )
As Malcolm X put it, “ We are not Americans. We are a people who formerly were Africans who were kidnaped and brought to America. Our forefathers weren't the Pilgrims. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us.”
Somewhere, in one of his many videos, Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour says, “We ( African Americans) have more of a right to Africa than the Jews have to Palestine” ( Some kind of Black Zionism)
There was a rumour going around that Jesse Jackson folks actually came from Somalia …
Old news : Jesse Jackson's lineage traced
Not a time for rejoicing :
“ I can't BELIEVE what Biden JUST DID | We are ALL IN DANGER!!
Gloria Emeagwali
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