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© Copyright 2001, Jim Loy
Various populations (such as African-America and some populations in South America) derive much of their culture from Africa. In the past, such subcultures were called Afrocentric. Lately, some people have chosen to rewrite history, claiming that most (maybe all) of western culture is derived from Africa. In particular, these Afrocentrists claim that the Greeks (from whom we got much of our culture) got their culture from Egypt. In general, historians do not take this idea seriously.
By the way, studies of mummies from all walks of life, from kings to beggars, show that nearly all Egyptians were the same people that we see today in Egypt. Various people may consider Egyptians black or not black; race is much more ambiguous than most of us think, with most of us having both black and white ancestors (according to genetic evidence). Egyptians are more or less related to people from the rest of Africa. Egypt was normally called The Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt) in ancient times. But it was also called Kmt, the Black Land. Egyptologists claim that this was because the land itself was black, as opposed to the Red Land, which was the desert. Instead of the Black Land, the Afrocentrists call Egypt the Land of the Blacks, which would seem to be somewhat inaccurate liguistically. And Egypt was ruled by black Nubians for a relatively short period of time, as well.
Some of our culture is of Greek origin. The Greeks got much of their culture from a wide variety of sources, Phoenicia, Persia, Crete, and certainly Egypt. And much of their culture was original. At least they were inspired by the monuments and columns of Egypt. Rome borrowed some of the Egyptian gods. Today, we continue to be inspired by Egypt, and occasionally borrow (pyramids and art) from their culture. But we got very little of our western culture from Africa.
Afrocentrism seems to be a cry for dignity for Blacks. This is commendable; but their main claims about history are false. I'm sure that all of Africa and its descendents have much to be proud of. Certainly they have not gone as far out of their way to destroy other civilizations. The period of Black slavery should be a cause for shame (see below) for Whites, not for Blacks.
Addendum #1:
That last sentence above assumes that we take pride or shame or feel responsible for the actions of our ancestors. We are not our ancestors. The distant past is not our fault. Whites (and Blacks) should not be ashamed of slavery, although it was a great crime. Blacks and Whites often have pride (and shame) about their ancestors. If I have bigots or slave owners in my family tree, that might not make me happy. If I had a slave as an ancestor, I might consider that a reason to be proud. Personally, my ancestry is interesting, but I can't really imagine being very proud or ashamed about it. And I'm certainly not responsible for what those folks did.
Did most of western culture come from Egypt, by way of Greece? What is culture? Let's start with architecture: Greece may have gotten much architecture from Egypt; there are certainly similarities; we get some from Greece. Next art: in my opinion, Greek art is almost nothing like Egyptian art; it is hard to deduce a connection. Literature: there is not much existing Egyptian literature; it is hard to see any connection. Philosophy: I've never heard of any Egyptian works on philosophy. Religion; some of the Greek gods are roughly similar to some Egyptian gods; we don't get much of our current religion from either Greece or Egypt. Laws: the great ancient legal ideas from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and Israel seem to have a lot in common; maybe Egypt influenced the rest; hard to tell. Egyptian science and mathematics; the Egyptian science that we know of was Greek; their numbering system has had some small effect. Perhaps Egypt had a vast influence over western civilization, but the evidence of that would seem to be meager.
Addendum #2:
I received this email:
The desperate attempt you made to discredit those of us who believe that blacks once ruled a great civilization was laughable. I mean we all got a good chuckle. It's not going to seem so funny to black youth looking for facts who are less researched than us.
My favorite part is when you said,"Black Nubians ruled for a short while."
That was classic. Believe it or not, you still have peers making a fool of themselves through a refusal to concede even that!
Thanks for making a battered ol' group of revolutionaries feel like we may not be losing so badly. That whole article was, as they say in my humble ghetto, A TRIP.
Peace, [name deleted]
Although this person seems to have not read my article, it is about time that I got an indignant response. The purpose of the article was to make it clear that, while we certainly got some small amount of culture from Egypt, western culture is not largely the result of Egyptian culture. And the Black Land was called that because the soil was black, not because the people were black.
The above article brings up the second issue about whether the Egyptians of today are black. Before I wrote the above article, I had no idea that Egyptians consider themselves black, or that other people consider them black. And I'm not entirely sure of this, one way or another, as I have only heard from a small number of people about that. Genetically, Egyptians are very closely related to the other people of Africa, and (compared to Europeans or Asians) they are African or black. And from what I have read, mummies, from the lowliest peasants to the kings, have been shown to be much more closely related genetically to the current Egyptians than to any of the other peoples in Africa or the middle east.
I mentioned Nubians ruling Egypt, because that was the only time when people from other parts of Africa ruled Egypt. I expected that some readers might have had the mistaken impression that much darker people lived in Egypt in ancient times, and that they were perhaps pushed out by the spread of Christianity and Islam. This scenario is, of course, false. As I said above, there is ample evidence that the Egyptians of ancient times are the same people as the Egyptians of today.