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If it strikes you that this is a vulgar conceit that Diop's legacy can now be re-appropriated by the mainstream academy after years of dismissal, I would entirely agree. Diop, however, foresaw the possibility of precisely this type of appropriation. In his defiant 1973 introduction to The African Origin of Civilization, he stated: 'In fact, our conception of African history, as exposed here, has practically triumphed, and those who write on African history now, whether willingly or not, base themselves upon it.' (101)
References
(1) Quoted in Bruce Trigger, 'Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic?', in Sylvia Hochfield and Elizabeth Riefstahl (eds), Africa in Antiquity: the arts of Nubia and the Sudan, Vol. 1 (New York, Brooklyn Museum, 1978).
(2) Edith R. Sanders, 'The Hamitic hypothesis: its origin and functions in time perspective', Journal of African History (Vol. 10, no. 4, 1969), pp. 521-32.
(3) As quoted by Shomarka Keita, 'Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships', History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), p. 145.
(4) Sanders, op. cit., p. 521. Repudiating Seligman's outrageous comments is hardly necessary but, as Trigger drily states, 'The idea that pastoralists, rather than agriculturalists, were creators and disseminators of a high culture was a curious one, which has been flatly denied as a cultural historical principle elsewhere'. See Trigger, op. cit.
(5) Cheikh Anta Diop, Nations Negres et Culture (Paris, Presence Africaine, 1954). The African Origin of Civilization: myth or reality? (Chicago, IL, Lawrence Hill Books, 1974) consists largely of selections from Nations Negres et Culture and Anteriorite des Civilizations Negres: mythe ou verite historique? (Paris, Presence Africaine, 1967).
(6) Cheikh Anta Diop, 'Preface: the meaning of our work', in The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. xii.
(7) Cheikh Anta Diop, 'Evolution of the Negro world', Presence Africaine (Vol. 23, no. 51, 1964), pp. 5-15.
(8) Wyatt MacGaffey, 'Concepts of race in the historiography of northeast Africa', Journal of African History (Vol. VII, no. I, 1966), pp. 1-17.
(9) Ibid., p. 4
(10) Ibid., pp. 11, 16.
(11) Sanders, op. cit. Basil Davidson traces the first sustained attack on the Hamitic hypothesis to Joseph Greenberg's 1963 text The Languages of Africa. While Sanders' was not the first attack on the Hamitic hypothesis (see, for example, Diop), her argument against it seems to be the first that gained wide scholarly acceptance. See Basil Davidson, 'The ancient world and Africa: whose roots?'. Race & Class (Vol. 29, no. 2, 1987).
(12) Sanders, op. cit., p. 531.
(13) Davidson, op. cit.
(14) Trigger, op. cit.
(15) Ibid., p. 28
(16) Ibid., pp. 27, 35. It should be noted that Trigger approvingly cites Diop's comments on the fiction of the platonic concept of 'ideal' races.
(17) Joyce Rensberger, 'Nubia: discovering an ancient African civilization', Washington Post (10 May 1995).
(18) J. D. Fage, A History of Africa (London, Hutchinson, 1978).
(19) Ibid., p. 34.
(20) Davidson, op. cit.
(21) This quote was attributed by the rapporteur to M. Glele, the representative of the Director General of UNESCO. See annex to Chapter 1, 'Report of the symposium on "The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script"', in G. Mokhtar (ed.), General History of Africa Vol. II: ancient civilizations of Africa (London, James Currey, 1990), abridged version. All quotations are taken from this version.
(22) Rapporteur's comment, ibid., p. 55. For other reviews, see Peter L. Shinnie and B. Jewsiewicki, 'The UNESCO history project/l'histoire-monument ou l'histoire conscience', Canadian Journal of African Studies (Vol. 15, no. 3, 1981); Michael Brett and D. W. Phillipson, review of UNESCO General History of Africa Vols I & II, Journal of African History (Vol. 23, no. 1, 1982); and Jan Vansina, 'UNESCO and African historiography', History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), pp. 337-52.
(23) Rapporteur's comment, op. cit.
(24) Jean Vercoutter at the 1974 UNESCO conference. Quoted in Shomarka Keita, 'Communications', American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1355-6.
(25) Rapporteur's comment in Mokhtar, op. cit., p. 43.
(26) For Diop's contribution, see Cheikh Anta Diop, 'Origin of the ancient Egyptians', in Mokhtar, op. cit.
(27) Rapporteur's comment in Mokhtar, op. cit., p. 49.
(28) All quotes from ibid., pp. 45, 49, 46.
(29) Ibid., p. 51.
(30) Ibid., p. 56.
(31) Martin Bernal, Black Athena: the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilisations Vol. I: the fabrication of ancient Greece 1785-1985 (London, Vintage, 1987), pp. 241-2. Of the three volumes originally projected, volumes 1 and 2 have been published to date.
(32) Jasper Griffin, 'Who are these coming to the sacrifice?', New York Review of Books (15 June 1989).
(33) Martin Bernal, 'Black Athena and the APA', in Arethusa special issue, The Challenge of 'Black Athena' (Vol. 22, 1989). Bernal followed this statement by quoting the paragraph reproduced here.
(34) Glen Bowerstock, 'Review of Black Athena, vol. 1', Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Vol. 19, 1989), pp. 490-1.
(35) Bernal, Black Athena I, op. cit., p. 242, emphasis in original.
(36) David H. Kelley, 'Egyptians and Ethiopians: color, race and racism', The Classical Outlook (Vol. 68, 1991), p. 77.
(37) Martin Bernal, 'Black Athena and the APA', Arethusa (Vol. 22, 1989), pp. 17-38; S. O. Y. Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', Arethusa (Vol. 26, 1993), pp. 295-314.
(38) John Baines, 'Was civilization made in Africa?', New York Times Book Review (11 August 1991).
(39) Shomarka Keita mentions the absurdity of Baines's position in Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(40) Peter A. Young, 'Was Nefertiti black?', Archaeology (Vol. 45, no. 5, September/ October 1992).
(41) Ibid.
(42) Kathryn A. Bard, 'Ancient Egyptians and the issue of race', in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers (eds), Black Athena Revisited (Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
(43) C. Loring Brace, with David P. Tracer, Lucia Allen Yaroch, John Rabb, Kari Brandt and A. Russell Nelson, 'Clines and clusters versus "race": a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile', in Lefkowitz and Rogers, op. cit., p. 150.
(44) Bard, op. cit., p. 104.
(45) Ibid., p. 111.
(46) Brace et al., op. cit.
(47) Ibid., p. 153.
(48) Ibid., pp. 130, 131.
(49) Ibid., pp. 140, 145.
(50) See here Richard Poe's excellent discussion of this issue in Black Spark, White Fire: did African explorers civilize ancient Europe? (NY, Prima Publishing, 1997).
(51) Brace et al., op. cit., p. 148.
(52) Ali Rattansi and Sallie Westwood (eds), Racism, Modernity and Identity,: on the western front (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994).
(53) See S.O.Y. Keita and Rick A. Kittles, 'The persistence of racial thinking and the myth of racial divergence', American Anthropologist (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 534-544.
(54) Brace et. al., op. cit., p. 156.
(55) For Bernal's assessment of Blumenbach, see Black Athena I.
(56) Frank M. Snowden, Jr., 'Bernal's "Blacks," Herodotus, and the other classical evidence', Arethusa (Vol. 22, 1989); Before Colour Prejudice: the ancient view of blacks (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983). In a review of Before Colour Prejudice, Nancy Murray makes the point that Snowden almost seems to consider the West's view of people of African descent as inferior to be a misunderstanding that would have been readily rectified if Europeans in the sixteenth century had met people similar to those of ancient Kush. (Race & Class (Vol. 26, no. 3 1985).)
(57) Bernal, Black Athena I, op. cit., p. 436. This comment has given Bernal's opponents plenty of ammunition with which to attack him, see Jasper Griffin, 'Anxieties of influence', New York Review of Books (20 June 1996).
(58) Frank M. Snowden, Jr., 'Bernal's "Blacks" and the Afrocentrists', in Lefkowitz and Rogers (eds), op. cit.
(59) Ibid., p. 115.
(60) Emily Vermeule, 'The world turned upside down', New York Review of Books (26 March 1992), pp. 40-3. For Shomarka Keita's comments, see his article, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(61) An argument made by some early twentieth-century quick-wits in their re-reading of the French Revolution.
(62) Shomarka Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(63) Robert Young, 'Egypt in America: Black Athena, racism and colonial discourse', in Westwood, and Rattansi (eds), op. cit.
(64) F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989), pp. 24-9, 58.
(65) Bruce Williams, 'The lost pharaohs of Nubia', in Ivan van Sertima (ed.), Egypt Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 1993).
(66) It should be noted that Keita's work on ancient African biological relationships preceded this correspondence. See Shomarka Keita, 'An analysis of crania ftom Tell Duweir using multiple discriminant functions', American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Vol. 75, 1988), pp. 375-90; 'Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, (Vol. 85, 1990), pp. 35-48; 'Further studies of crania from ancient northern African crania' American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Vol. 87, 1992), pp. 245-54.
(67) Shomarka Keita, 'Communications', American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1355-6. Robert Pounder's article appeared as 'Black Athena II: history without rules', American Historical Review (April 1992).
(68) Keita, 'Communications', op. cit. Emphasis in original.
(69) Robert Pounder, 'Communications,' American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1356-7.
(70) Shomarka Keita, 'Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships', History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), pp. 129-30.
(71) Ibid., p. 143.
(72) Ibid., pp. 130, 147, 134, 143.
(73) Ibid., p. 138.
(74) Ibid., pp. 145, 150.
(75) Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(76) Ibid., p. 298.
(77) Martin Bernal, 'Response to S.O.Y. Keita', Arethusa (Vol. 26, no. 3, 1993), pp. 315-9.
(78) Shomarka Keita, 'Is studying Egypt in its African context 'Afrocentric'?' in Were the Achievements of Ancient Greece Borrowed from Africa? Proceedings from a Seminar sponsored by the Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage, Georgetown University, 16 November 1996. Other contributors to this conference included Mary Lefkowitz, Deborah Boedeker, Erich Mattel, Stanley Burstein, James D. Muhly, Jay Jasanoff and Frank Yurco.
(79) Ibid., pp. 37, 39-40, 43, 46.
(80) S.O.Y. Keita and Rick A. Kitties, 'The persistence of racial thinking and the myth of racial divergence', American Anthropologist (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 534-44; pp. 534, 540.
(81) It should be noted that there is no evidence that Keita was influenced by Diop's scholarship.
(82) Theodore Celenko (ed.), Egypt in Africa (Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 17.
(83) Ancient Egypt is usually taught either as a separate discipline or amalgamated in a 'Near Eastern Studies' department. Rarely is it linked with African studies, a bias that extends to exhibitions in museums.
(84) Celenko, op. cit.
(85) Christopher Ehret, 'Ancient Egyptian as an African language, Egypt as an African culture', in Celenko, op. cit. Also see Ehret's recent contribution to African studies, An African Classical Age: eastern and southern Africa in world history (University Press of Virginia, 1998).
(86) Fekri A. Hassan, 'The predynastic of Egypt: Africa's prelude to civilization', in Celenko, op. cit.
(87) John Ray, 'The Mesopotamian influence on ancient Egyptian writing' in Celenko, op. cit., p. 38.
(88) Frank Yurco. 'The origins and development of ancient Nile valley writing' in Celenko, op. cit., p. 35.
(89) Molefi Asante, 'Early African cultures: an Afrocentric perspective' in Celenko, op. cit. I should probably state here that, despite my defence of one aspect of the arguments put forward by US-based Afrocentrists, I have serious reservations concerning the merit of some of their cultural nationalist Egyptocentric arguments. My perspective here is far closer to the well-known critiques of Afrocentrism by White, Lemelle and Boyce-Davies. See E. Frances White 'Africa on my mind: gender, counter-discourse and African American nationalism', Journal of Women's History (Vol. 2, no. 1, spring 1990); Sidney Lemelle, 'The politics of cultural existence: Pan-Africanism, historical materialism, and Afrocentricity', Race & Class (Vol. 35, no. 1, 1993); and Carole Boyce Davies, 'Beyond unicentricity: trans-cultural black presences', Research in African Literatures (Vol. 30, no. 2, summer 1999).
(90) Bruce Williams, 'The lost pharaohs of Nubia', in Ivan van Sertima, op. cit., originally published in Archaeology (Vol. 33, no. 5, 1980), pp. 14-21: William Y. Adams, 'Doubts about the lost pharaohs', Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Vol. 44, 1985), pp. 185-92; Bruce Williams, 'The Qustul incense burner and the case for a Nubian origin of ancient Egyptian kingship', in Celenko, op. cit.; Joseph W. Wegner, 'Interaction between the Nubian A-group and predynastic Egypt: the significance of the Qustul incense burner', in Celenko, op. cit.
(91) J. McKim Malville, Fred Wendorf, Ali A Mazar and Romauld Schild 'Megaliths and Neolithic astronomy in southern Egypt', Nature (Vol. 392, no. 2, April 1998).
(92) Leonard Lieberman, 'Gender and the deconstruction of the race concept', American Anthropology (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 545-58.
(93) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. 236.
(94) Diop certainly was not averse to representing ancient Egyptians as uniformly 'jet black' when it suited him, see his 'Origin of the ancient Egyptians' in Ivan van Sertima, op. cit.
(95) The editor of Egypt in Africa uses this term to describe the ancient Egyptian populations, while stating that the terms 'black' and 'white' are inappropriate for populations that had no concept of race, a position that I agree with. What is tiresome, however, is the inability of many scholars to understand, or to identify, the power that the phrase 'the Egyptians were black' has for many African-Americans, in the context of a racist, Eurocentric society, and indeed, to use Lewis Gordon's phrase, an 'anti-black' world.
(96) John Iliffe, Africans: the history of a continent (Cambridge, CUP, 1995), p. 26. Iliffe was responding to Diop's declaration that 'Egyptian culture is to African culture what Greco-Roman antiquity is to Western culture'. Iliffe goes on to give reasons for this apparent lack of influence which include the particularity of the culture to the Nile valley, and the desiccation of the Sahara, which he sees as an impermeable barrier. This is little more than Fage revisited in the 1990s.
(97) David O'Connor, 'Ancient Egypt and Black Africa--early contacts', Expedition (Vol. 14, 1971), pp. 2-9. O'Connor has emerged as one of the major historians of Nubia, see Ancient Nubia: Egypt's rival in Africa. (Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).
(98) The phrase is Basil Davidson's. See Basil Davidson, 'The ancient world and Africa: whose roots?' Race & Class (Vol. 29, no. 2, 1987).
(99) Michael Rice, Egypt's Making: the origins of ancient Egypt, 5000-2000 BC (London, Routledge, 1991).
(100) Josep Cervello Autuori, 'Egypt, Africa and the ancient world', in C. J. Eyre (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge 3-9 September 1995, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (Vol. 82, 1998).
(101) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. xvii.
*Copyright by Aaron Kamugisha, 2003
Table Of Contents of the BOOK edited by CELENKO
References
(1) Quoted in Bruce Trigger, 'Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic?', in Sylvia Hochfield and Elizabeth Riefstahl (eds), Africa in Antiquity: the arts of Nubia and the Sudan, Vol. 1 (New York, Brooklyn Museum, 1978).
(2) Edith R. Sanders, 'The Hamitic hypothesis: its origin and functions in time perspective', Journal of African History (Vol. 10, no. 4, 1969), pp. 521-32.
(3) As quoted by Shomarka Keita, 'Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships', History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), p. 145.
(4) Sanders, op. cit., p. 521. Repudiating Seligman's outrageous comments is hardly necessary but, as Trigger drily states, 'The idea that pastoralists, rather than agriculturalists, were creators and disseminators of a high culture was a curious one, which has been flatly denied as a cultural historical principle elsewhere'. See Trigger, op. cit.
(5) Cheikh Anta Diop, Nations Negres et Culture (Paris, Presence Africaine, 1954). The African Origin of Civilization: myth or reality? (Chicago, IL, Lawrence Hill Books, 1974) consists largely of selections from Nations Negres et Culture and Anteriorite des Civilizations Negres: mythe ou verite historique? (Paris, Presence Africaine, 1967).
(6) Cheikh Anta Diop, 'Preface: the meaning of our work', in The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. xii.
(7) Cheikh Anta Diop, 'Evolution of the Negro world', Presence Africaine (Vol. 23, no. 51, 1964), pp. 5-15.
(8) Wyatt MacGaffey, 'Concepts of race in the historiography of northeast Africa', Journal of African History (Vol. VII, no. I, 1966), pp. 1-17.
(9) Ibid., p. 4
(10) Ibid., pp. 11, 16.
(11) Sanders, op. cit. Basil Davidson traces the first sustained attack on the Hamitic hypothesis to Joseph Greenberg's 1963 text The Languages of Africa. While Sanders' was not the first attack on the Hamitic hypothesis (see, for example, Diop), her argument against it seems to be the first that gained wide scholarly acceptance. See Basil Davidson, 'The ancient world and Africa: whose roots?'. Race & Class (Vol. 29, no. 2, 1987).
(12) Sanders, op. cit., p. 531.
(13) Davidson, op. cit.
(14) Trigger, op. cit.
(15) Ibid., p. 28
(16) Ibid., pp. 27, 35. It should be noted that Trigger approvingly cites Diop's comments on the fiction of the platonic concept of 'ideal' races.
(17) Joyce Rensberger, 'Nubia: discovering an ancient African civilization', Washington Post (10 May 1995).
(18) J. D. Fage, A History of Africa (London, Hutchinson, 1978).
(19) Ibid., p. 34.
(20) Davidson, op. cit.
(21) This quote was attributed by the rapporteur to M. Glele, the representative of the Director General of UNESCO. See annex to Chapter 1, 'Report of the symposium on "The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script"', in G. Mokhtar (ed.), General History of Africa Vol. II: ancient civilizations of Africa (London, James Currey, 1990), abridged version. All quotations are taken from this version.
(22) Rapporteur's comment, ibid., p. 55. For other reviews, see Peter L. Shinnie and B. Jewsiewicki, 'The UNESCO history project/l'histoire-monument ou l'histoire conscience', Canadian Journal of African Studies (Vol. 15, no. 3, 1981); Michael Brett and D. W. Phillipson, review of UNESCO General History of Africa Vols I & II, Journal of African History (Vol. 23, no. 1, 1982); and Jan Vansina, 'UNESCO and African historiography', History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), pp. 337-52.
(23) Rapporteur's comment, op. cit.
(24) Jean Vercoutter at the 1974 UNESCO conference. Quoted in Shomarka Keita, 'Communications', American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1355-6.
(25) Rapporteur's comment in Mokhtar, op. cit., p. 43.
(26) For Diop's contribution, see Cheikh Anta Diop, 'Origin of the ancient Egyptians', in Mokhtar, op. cit.
(27) Rapporteur's comment in Mokhtar, op. cit., p. 49.
(28) All quotes from ibid., pp. 45, 49, 46.
(29) Ibid., p. 51.
(30) Ibid., p. 56.
(31) Martin Bernal, Black Athena: the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilisations Vol. I: the fabrication of ancient Greece 1785-1985 (London, Vintage, 1987), pp. 241-2. Of the three volumes originally projected, volumes 1 and 2 have been published to date.
(32) Jasper Griffin, 'Who are these coming to the sacrifice?', New York Review of Books (15 June 1989).
(33) Martin Bernal, 'Black Athena and the APA', in Arethusa special issue, The Challenge of 'Black Athena' (Vol. 22, 1989). Bernal followed this statement by quoting the paragraph reproduced here.
(34) Glen Bowerstock, 'Review of Black Athena, vol. 1', Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Vol. 19, 1989), pp. 490-1.
(35) Bernal, Black Athena I, op. cit., p. 242, emphasis in original.
(36) David H. Kelley, 'Egyptians and Ethiopians: color, race and racism', The Classical Outlook (Vol. 68, 1991), p. 77.
(37) Martin Bernal, 'Black Athena and the APA', Arethusa (Vol. 22, 1989), pp. 17-38; S. O. Y. Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', Arethusa (Vol. 26, 1993), pp. 295-314.
(38) John Baines, 'Was civilization made in Africa?', New York Times Book Review (11 August 1991).
(39) Shomarka Keita mentions the absurdity of Baines's position in Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(40) Peter A. Young, 'Was Nefertiti black?', Archaeology (Vol. 45, no. 5, September/ October 1992).
(41) Ibid.
(42) Kathryn A. Bard, 'Ancient Egyptians and the issue of race', in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers (eds), Black Athena Revisited (Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
(43) C. Loring Brace, with David P. Tracer, Lucia Allen Yaroch, John Rabb, Kari Brandt and A. Russell Nelson, 'Clines and clusters versus "race": a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile', in Lefkowitz and Rogers, op. cit., p. 150.
(44) Bard, op. cit., p. 104.
(45) Ibid., p. 111.
(46) Brace et al., op. cit.
(47) Ibid., p. 153.
(48) Ibid., pp. 130, 131.
(49) Ibid., pp. 140, 145.
(50) See here Richard Poe's excellent discussion of this issue in Black Spark, White Fire: did African explorers civilize ancient Europe? (NY, Prima Publishing, 1997).
(51) Brace et al., op. cit., p. 148.
(52) Ali Rattansi and Sallie Westwood (eds), Racism, Modernity and Identity,: on the western front (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994).
(53) See S.O.Y. Keita and Rick A. Kittles, 'The persistence of racial thinking and the myth of racial divergence', American Anthropologist (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 534-544.
(54) Brace et. al., op. cit., p. 156.
(55) For Bernal's assessment of Blumenbach, see Black Athena I.
(56) Frank M. Snowden, Jr., 'Bernal's "Blacks," Herodotus, and the other classical evidence', Arethusa (Vol. 22, 1989); Before Colour Prejudice: the ancient view of blacks (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983). In a review of Before Colour Prejudice, Nancy Murray makes the point that Snowden almost seems to consider the West's view of people of African descent as inferior to be a misunderstanding that would have been readily rectified if Europeans in the sixteenth century had met people similar to those of ancient Kush. (Race & Class (Vol. 26, no. 3 1985).)
(57) Bernal, Black Athena I, op. cit., p. 436. This comment has given Bernal's opponents plenty of ammunition with which to attack him, see Jasper Griffin, 'Anxieties of influence', New York Review of Books (20 June 1996).
(58) Frank M. Snowden, Jr., 'Bernal's "Blacks" and the Afrocentrists', in Lefkowitz and Rogers (eds), op. cit.
(59) Ibid., p. 115.
(60) Emily Vermeule, 'The world turned upside down', New York Review of Books (26 March 1992), pp. 40-3. For Shomarka Keita's comments, see his article, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(61) An argument made by some early twentieth-century quick-wits in their re-reading of the French Revolution.
(62) Shomarka Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(63) Robert Young, 'Egypt in America: Black Athena, racism and colonial discourse', in Westwood, and Rattansi (eds), op. cit.
(64) F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989), pp. 24-9, 58.
(65) Bruce Williams, 'The lost pharaohs of Nubia', in Ivan van Sertima (ed.), Egypt Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 1993).
(66) It should be noted that Keita's work on ancient African biological relationships preceded this correspondence. See Shomarka Keita, 'An analysis of crania ftom Tell Duweir using multiple discriminant functions', American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Vol. 75, 1988), pp. 375-90; 'Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, (Vol. 85, 1990), pp. 35-48; 'Further studies of crania from ancient northern African crania' American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Vol. 87, 1992), pp. 245-54.
(67) Shomarka Keita, 'Communications', American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1355-6. Robert Pounder's article appeared as 'Black Athena II: history without rules', American Historical Review (April 1992).
(68) Keita, 'Communications', op. cit. Emphasis in original.
(69) Robert Pounder, 'Communications,' American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1356-7.
(70) Shomarka Keita, 'Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships', History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), pp. 129-30.
(71) Ibid., p. 143.
(72) Ibid., pp. 130, 147, 134, 143.
(73) Ibid., p. 138.
(74) Ibid., pp. 145, 150.
(75) Keita, 'Black Athena: "race", Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
(76) Ibid., p. 298.
(77) Martin Bernal, 'Response to S.O.Y. Keita', Arethusa (Vol. 26, no. 3, 1993), pp. 315-9.
(78) Shomarka Keita, 'Is studying Egypt in its African context 'Afrocentric'?' in Were the Achievements of Ancient Greece Borrowed from Africa? Proceedings from a Seminar sponsored by the Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage, Georgetown University, 16 November 1996. Other contributors to this conference included Mary Lefkowitz, Deborah Boedeker, Erich Mattel, Stanley Burstein, James D. Muhly, Jay Jasanoff and Frank Yurco.
(79) Ibid., pp. 37, 39-40, 43, 46.
(80) S.O.Y. Keita and Rick A. Kitties, 'The persistence of racial thinking and the myth of racial divergence', American Anthropologist (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 534-44; pp. 534, 540.
(81) It should be noted that there is no evidence that Keita was influenced by Diop's scholarship.
(82) Theodore Celenko (ed.), Egypt in Africa (Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 17.
(83) Ancient Egypt is usually taught either as a separate discipline or amalgamated in a 'Near Eastern Studies' department. Rarely is it linked with African studies, a bias that extends to exhibitions in museums.
(84) Celenko, op. cit.
(85) Christopher Ehret, 'Ancient Egyptian as an African language, Egypt as an African culture', in Celenko, op. cit. Also see Ehret's recent contribution to African studies, An African Classical Age: eastern and southern Africa in world history (University Press of Virginia, 1998).
(86) Fekri A. Hassan, 'The predynastic of Egypt: Africa's prelude to civilization', in Celenko, op. cit.
(87) John Ray, 'The Mesopotamian influence on ancient Egyptian writing' in Celenko, op. cit., p. 38.
(88) Frank Yurco. 'The origins and development of ancient Nile valley writing' in Celenko, op. cit., p. 35.
(89) Molefi Asante, 'Early African cultures: an Afrocentric perspective' in Celenko, op. cit. I should probably state here that, despite my defence of one aspect of the arguments put forward by US-based Afrocentrists, I have serious reservations concerning the merit of some of their cultural nationalist Egyptocentric arguments. My perspective here is far closer to the well-known critiques of Afrocentrism by White, Lemelle and Boyce-Davies. See E. Frances White 'Africa on my mind: gender, counter-discourse and African American nationalism', Journal of Women's History (Vol. 2, no. 1, spring 1990); Sidney Lemelle, 'The politics of cultural existence: Pan-Africanism, historical materialism, and Afrocentricity', Race & Class (Vol. 35, no. 1, 1993); and Carole Boyce Davies, 'Beyond unicentricity: trans-cultural black presences', Research in African Literatures (Vol. 30, no. 2, summer 1999).
(90) Bruce Williams, 'The lost pharaohs of Nubia', in Ivan van Sertima, op. cit., originally published in Archaeology (Vol. 33, no. 5, 1980), pp. 14-21: William Y. Adams, 'Doubts about the lost pharaohs', Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Vol. 44, 1985), pp. 185-92; Bruce Williams, 'The Qustul incense burner and the case for a Nubian origin of ancient Egyptian kingship', in Celenko, op. cit.; Joseph W. Wegner, 'Interaction between the Nubian A-group and predynastic Egypt: the significance of the Qustul incense burner', in Celenko, op. cit.
(91) J. McKim Malville, Fred Wendorf, Ali A Mazar and Romauld Schild 'Megaliths and Neolithic astronomy in southern Egypt', Nature (Vol. 392, no. 2, April 1998).
(92) Leonard Lieberman, 'Gender and the deconstruction of the race concept', American Anthropology (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 545-58.
(93) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. 236.
(94) Diop certainly was not averse to representing ancient Egyptians as uniformly 'jet black' when it suited him, see his 'Origin of the ancient Egyptians' in Ivan van Sertima, op. cit.
(95) The editor of Egypt in Africa uses this term to describe the ancient Egyptian populations, while stating that the terms 'black' and 'white' are inappropriate for populations that had no concept of race, a position that I agree with. What is tiresome, however, is the inability of many scholars to understand, or to identify, the power that the phrase 'the Egyptians were black' has for many African-Americans, in the context of a racist, Eurocentric society, and indeed, to use Lewis Gordon's phrase, an 'anti-black' world.
(96) John Iliffe, Africans: the history of a continent (Cambridge, CUP, 1995), p. 26. Iliffe was responding to Diop's declaration that 'Egyptian culture is to African culture what Greco-Roman antiquity is to Western culture'. Iliffe goes on to give reasons for this apparent lack of influence which include the particularity of the culture to the Nile valley, and the desiccation of the Sahara, which he sees as an impermeable barrier. This is little more than Fage revisited in the 1990s.
(97) David O'Connor, 'Ancient Egypt and Black Africa--early contacts', Expedition (Vol. 14, 1971), pp. 2-9. O'Connor has emerged as one of the major historians of Nubia, see Ancient Nubia: Egypt's rival in Africa. (Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).
(98) The phrase is Basil Davidson's. See Basil Davidson, 'The ancient world and Africa: whose roots?' Race & Class (Vol. 29, no. 2, 1987).
(99) Michael Rice, Egypt's Making: the origins of ancient Egypt, 5000-2000 BC (London, Routledge, 1991).
(100) Josep Cervello Autuori, 'Egypt, Africa and the ancient world', in C. J. Eyre (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge 3-9 September 1995, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (Vol. 82, 1998).
(101) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. xvii.
*Copyright by Aaron Kamugisha, 2003
Table Of Contents of the BOOK edited by CELENKO
FOREWORD 11 (2)
Bret Waller Director Indianapolis Museum of Art
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 13 (2)
INTRODUCTION 15 (5)
Theodore Celenko Curator of African, South Pacific, and Precolumbian Art Indianapolis Museum of Art
EARLY AFRICAN CULTURES 20 (14)
African Prehistory and Human Evolution 20 (3)
Kathy D. Schick Associate Professor of Anthropology Indiana University
Nicholas Toth Professor of Anthropology Indiana University
The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians 23 (2)
S. O. Y. Keita Department of Biological Anthropology Oxford University
A. J. Boyce University Reader in Human Population Biology Oxford University
Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture 25 (3)
Christopher Ehret Professor of History, African Studies Chair University of California at Los Angeles
Saharan Rock Art 28 (3)
Mohamed Sahnouni Assistant Professor, Institute of Archaeology University of Algiers, Algeria
The Predynastic of Egypt: Africa's Prelude to Civilization 31 (2)
Fekri A. Hassan Petrie Professor University of London
Early African Cultures: An Afrocentric Perspective 33 (1)
Molefi Kete Asante Chair and Professor Department of African American Studies Temple University
AFRICAN ORIGINS OF EGYPTIAN WRITING 34 (6)
The Origins and Development of Ancient Nile Valley Writing 34 (4)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
The Mesopotamian Influence on Ancient Egyptian Writing 38 (2)
John Ray Herbert Thompson Reader in Egyptology University of Cambridge
MOTHER AND CHILD FIGURES 40 (6)
Mother and Child Figures in Africa 40 (3)
Martha J. Ehrlich Associate Professor of Art History Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Mother and Child Imagery in Egypt and Its Influence on Christianity43 (3)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
HEADRESTS 46 (4)
African Headrests 46 (4)
Rebecca L. Green Assistant Professor of Art History Bowling Green State University (Ohio)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
DEPICTION OF HUMANS IN AFRICAN ART 50 (6)
Depiction of Humans in African Art 50 (6)
Theodore Celenko Curator of African, South Pacific, and Precolumbian Art Indianapolis Museum of Art
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
ANCESTOR WORSHIP AND DIVINE KINGSHIP 56 (6)
Ancestor Worship and Divine Kingship in the Ancient Nile Valley 56 (3)
Lanny Bell Associate Professor of Egyptology, Emeritus Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago
Ancestor Worship and Divine Kingship in Sub-Saharan Africa 59 (3)
Chapurukha M. Kusimba Curator, Department of Anthropology Field Museum of Natural History
ANIMAL DEITIES AND SYMBOLS 62 (6)
Animal Deities and Symbols in Africa 62 (4)
Chapurukha M. Kusimba Curator, Department of Anthropology Field Museum of Natural History
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
The Beast of Kings: Male Lion Imagery and Kingship in the Ancient Nile Valley 66 (2)
James F. Romano Curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art The Brooklyn Museum
MASKING 68 (10)
Masking in Sub-Saharan Africa 68 (3)
Arthur P. Bourgeois University Professor of Art History Governors State University
The Case for Ceremonial Masking in Ancient Egypt 71 (4)
Arlene Wolinski Professor of History San Diego Mesa College
The Case Against Extensive Masking in Ancient Egypt 75 (3)
Robert Steven Bianchi Independent Egyptologist New York
BODY ART 78 (10)
Body Art in Africa: Painting, Tattooing, and Scarification 78 (3)
Chike C. Aniakor Professor of African Art Howard University
Tattooing and Skin Painting in the Ancient Nile Valley 81 (3)
Robert Steven Bianchi Independent Egyptologist New York
Scarification in the Nile Valley from Antiquity to the Present 84 (4)
Timothy Kendall Associate Curator of Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
CIRCUMCISION AND MALE INITIATION 88 (4)
Circumcision and Male Initiation in Africa 88 (4)
Susan Bailey Department of Anthropology Indiana University
NUBIA 92 (12)
An Outline of Nubian History 92 (3)
Peter Lacovara Assistant Curator of Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Qustul Incense Burner and the Case for a Nubian Origin of Ancient Egyptian Kingship
95 (3)
Bruce B. Williams Independent Egyptologist Chicago
Interaction between the Nubian A-Group and Predynastic Egypt: The Significance of the Qustul Incense Burner 98 (3)
Joseph W. Wegner Egyptologist University of Pennsylvania
King Taharqa of Kush 101 (3)
Peggy Brooks-Bertram Adjunct Professor Center for Applied Policy Studies State University of New York at Buffalo
FACES OF EGYPT 104 (14)
The Diversity of Indigenous Africans 104 (2)
S. O. Y. Keita Department of Biological Anthropology Oxford University
The Physical Characteristics of Egyptians and Their Southern Neighbors: The Classical Evidence
106 (3)
Frank M. Snowden, Jr. Professor of Classics, Emeritus Howard University
Two Tomb-Wall Painted Reliefs of Ramesses III and Sety I and Ancient Nile Valley Population Diversity 109 (3)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
Are Africans African? Scholarship Over Rhetoric and Propaganda, Valid Discourse on Kemetic Origins 112 (4)
Asa G. Hilliard III
Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Education Georgia State University
European Racism Regarding Ancient Egypt 116 (2)
Molefi Kete Asante Chair and Professor Department of African American Studies Temple University
LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION 118 (1)
EXHIBITION COMPONENTS 119
Bret Waller Director Indianapolis Museum of Art
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 13 (2)
INTRODUCTION 15 (5)
Theodore Celenko Curator of African, South Pacific, and Precolumbian Art Indianapolis Museum of Art
EARLY AFRICAN CULTURES 20 (14)
African Prehistory and Human Evolution 20 (3)
Kathy D. Schick Associate Professor of Anthropology Indiana University
Nicholas Toth Professor of Anthropology Indiana University
The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians 23 (2)
S. O. Y. Keita Department of Biological Anthropology Oxford University
A. J. Boyce University Reader in Human Population Biology Oxford University
Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture 25 (3)
Christopher Ehret Professor of History, African Studies Chair University of California at Los Angeles
Saharan Rock Art 28 (3)
Mohamed Sahnouni Assistant Professor, Institute of Archaeology University of Algiers, Algeria
The Predynastic of Egypt: Africa's Prelude to Civilization 31 (2)
Fekri A. Hassan Petrie Professor University of London
Early African Cultures: An Afrocentric Perspective 33 (1)
Molefi Kete Asante Chair and Professor Department of African American Studies Temple University
AFRICAN ORIGINS OF EGYPTIAN WRITING 34 (6)
The Origins and Development of Ancient Nile Valley Writing 34 (4)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
The Mesopotamian Influence on Ancient Egyptian Writing 38 (2)
John Ray Herbert Thompson Reader in Egyptology University of Cambridge
MOTHER AND CHILD FIGURES 40 (6)
Mother and Child Figures in Africa 40 (3)
Martha J. Ehrlich Associate Professor of Art History Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Mother and Child Imagery in Egypt and Its Influence on Christianity43 (3)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
HEADRESTS 46 (4)
African Headrests 46 (4)
Rebecca L. Green Assistant Professor of Art History Bowling Green State University (Ohio)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
DEPICTION OF HUMANS IN AFRICAN ART 50 (6)
Depiction of Humans in African Art 50 (6)
Theodore Celenko Curator of African, South Pacific, and Precolumbian Art Indianapolis Museum of Art
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
ANCESTOR WORSHIP AND DIVINE KINGSHIP 56 (6)
Ancestor Worship and Divine Kingship in the Ancient Nile Valley 56 (3)
Lanny Bell Associate Professor of Egyptology, Emeritus Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago
Ancestor Worship and Divine Kingship in Sub-Saharan Africa 59 (3)
Chapurukha M. Kusimba Curator, Department of Anthropology Field Museum of Natural History
ANIMAL DEITIES AND SYMBOLS 62 (6)
Animal Deities and Symbols in Africa 62 (4)
Chapurukha M. Kusimba Curator, Department of Anthropology Field Museum of Natural History
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
The Beast of Kings: Male Lion Imagery and Kingship in the Ancient Nile Valley 66 (2)
James F. Romano Curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art The Brooklyn Museum
MASKING 68 (10)
Masking in Sub-Saharan Africa 68 (3)
Arthur P. Bourgeois University Professor of Art History Governors State University
The Case for Ceremonial Masking in Ancient Egypt 71 (4)
Arlene Wolinski Professor of History San Diego Mesa College
The Case Against Extensive Masking in Ancient Egypt 75 (3)
Robert Steven Bianchi Independent Egyptologist New York
BODY ART 78 (10)
Body Art in Africa: Painting, Tattooing, and Scarification 78 (3)
Chike C. Aniakor Professor of African Art Howard University
Tattooing and Skin Painting in the Ancient Nile Valley 81 (3)
Robert Steven Bianchi Independent Egyptologist New York
Scarification in the Nile Valley from Antiquity to the Present 84 (4)
Timothy Kendall Associate Curator of Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
CIRCUMCISION AND MALE INITIATION 88 (4)
Circumcision and Male Initiation in Africa 88 (4)
Susan Bailey Department of Anthropology Indiana University
NUBIA 92 (12)
An Outline of Nubian History 92 (3)
Peter Lacovara Assistant Curator of Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Qustul Incense Burner and the Case for a Nubian Origin of Ancient Egyptian Kingship
95 (3)
Bruce B. Williams Independent Egyptologist Chicago
Interaction between the Nubian A-Group and Predynastic Egypt: The Significance of the Qustul Incense Burner 98 (3)
Joseph W. Wegner Egyptologist University of Pennsylvania
King Taharqa of Kush 101 (3)
Peggy Brooks-Bertram Adjunct Professor Center for Applied Policy Studies State University of New York at Buffalo
FACES OF EGYPT 104 (14)
The Diversity of Indigenous Africans 104 (2)
S. O. Y. Keita Department of Biological Anthropology Oxford University
The Physical Characteristics of Egyptians and Their Southern Neighbors: The Classical Evidence
106 (3)
Frank M. Snowden, Jr. Professor of Classics, Emeritus Howard University
Two Tomb-Wall Painted Reliefs of Ramesses III and Sety I and Ancient Nile Valley Population Diversity 109 (3)
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
Are Africans African? Scholarship Over Rhetoric and Propaganda, Valid Discourse on Kemetic Origins 112 (4)
Asa G. Hilliard III
Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Education Georgia State University
European Racism Regarding Ancient Egypt 116 (2)
Molefi Kete Asante Chair and Professor Department of African American Studies Temple University
LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION 118 (1)
EXHIBITION COMPONENTS 119
