Black Genesis (20 page)

DIOP AND THE CAUSE OF HIS STRUGGLES

Diop starts by recounting that in 1971 the Kenyan anthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey, in his final report at the Seventh Pan-African Congress of Prehistory at Addis Ababa, proved that more than one hundred fifty thousand years ago humans that were morphologically similar to us were living in central Africa around the great lakes that feed the Nile. Diop explains how this starling discovery opened a reappraisal of the ethnology of the ancient Egyptians and humankind as a whole. Leakey even thought he had found the very spot where the adventure of modern man had begun: the beautiful, snow-capped Rwenzori Mountains between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, traditionally known as the Mountains of the Moon and discovered by Henry Morton Stanley in 1885. These mountains stand between Lake Albert and Lake Edward and are the highest source of the Nile River.
Rwenzori
means “rainmakers,” a name inspired by the almost permanent rain clouds that cover the peaks of these mysterious mountains. According to Leakey, humans dispersed from here to inhabit the rest of Africa and, eventually, the whole planet. The implication was that modern humans, being from a warm and humid climate that caused the natural melanin in their pigmentation to darken, were originally black-skinned Africans. It was, therefore, from this Black stock that the other races of humans were formed. Other than migrating southward, eastward, and westward, these original humans could also go northward to two main regions: the Nile Valley and the vast, then green Sahara.

Starting from the late Paleolithic age the entire Nile Valley, from southern Sudan to northern Egypt, was populated by a Negroid people. Similarly, the northwest region of Africa that is today the Sahara was also populated by these same Negroid people. Diop rejected the claim by some anthropologists that ancient human skulls from Nagada in Lower Egypt and Abydos and El Amra in Upper Egypt exhibit not only Negroid but also Germanic features. He pointed out that similar skulls from well-known Black people such as the Ethiopians and Dravidians also exhibit the same characteristics but are clearly not Germanic. Diop also pointed out that finding non-Negroid features in skulls does not necessarily mean that living individuals were white. In Egypt some 1,787 skulls, dating from the predynastic period to the present day, were examined and found to be 36 percent Negroid, 33 percent Mediterranean, 11 percent Cro-Magnon, and the rest uncertain but most probably also Negroid. This shows, says Diop, that the original and pure Black Negroid race that first inhabited Egypt eventually merged with a Mediterranean race to create the Egyptians that we know today.

Diop also rejected Flinders Petrie's method of using symbolic images from ancient palettes to classify predynastic and protodynastic Egyptians into six racial types: an aquiline type, which he equated to white-skinned Libyans; a plaited-beard type, which he equated to originating on the Red Sea; a sharp-nosed type, which he equated to coming from central Arabia; a tilted-nose type, which he equated to coming from Middle Egypt; and a jutting-beard type, which he equated to coming from Lower Egypt. Diop points out that even if we accept such simplistic classifications, current Egyptology textbooks at best ignore the issue of racial origins or, at worst, flatly assert that the ancient Egyptians were white, leaving the lay reader with the false impression that such assertions are based on solid research—which, of course, they are not. Thus generations of readers have been misled to the false belief that the ancient Egyptian civilization owes little or nothing to Africa. Diop accuses Egyptologists of going “around the difficulty today by speaking of red-skinned and black-skinned whites without their sense of common logic being in the least
upset.”
¹⁹
He argues that in ancient times, the Greeks referred to all of Africa as Libya, which was a misnomer
ab initio,
because Africa contains many other peoples besides the so-called Libyans, who belong among the whites of the northern or Mediterranean periphery. Diop was justifiably repulsed by a textbook intended for middle and secondary school that explained that “a Black is distinguished less by the color of his skin than by his features: thick lips, flattened
nose . . .”
²⁰
Diop points out that many of the reliefs and murals from predynastic and early dynastic times in Egypt show

. . . the native-born blacks subjugating the foreign intruders into the valley . . . wherever the autochthonous racial type is represented with any degree of clearness, it is evidently Negroid. Nowhere are the Indo-European and Semitic elements shown even as ordinary freemen serving a local chief, but invariably as conquered foreigners. The rare portrayals found are always shown with the distinctive marks of captivity, hands tied behind the back or strained over the shoulders. A protodynastic figurine represents an Indo-European prisoner with a long plait on his knees, with his hands bound tight to his body. The characteristics of the object itself show that it was intended as the foot of a piece of furniture and represented a conquered
race.
²¹

Diop argues that the two variants of the Black race—the straight-haired Dravidians in Asia and the Nubians and Tebu, and the kinky-haired humans from the Equatorial regions—are found in the modern Egyptian population. Diop's silver bullet, however, was the proven scientific method that can determine skin-color by the analysis of the melanin content in mummies from ancient Egyptians—and he insists that, contrary to the words of Egyptologists, it was entirely possible to determine the melanin content of ancient mummies by microscopic analysis in the laboratory. Melanin, or, more precisely, eumelanin, is a naturally produced polymer responsible for skin pigmentation. It is insoluble and can be preserved for millions of years, such as in the skins of fossilized creatures. Diop claimed that it can be measured in the skin of Egyptian mummies. Even though Egyptologists lament that the skin of mummies is tainted by embalming material and thus is no longer susceptible to such analysis, Diop rejected this by showing that although the outer epidermis is where the melanin is usually found, melanocytes are particles deeper in the skin where they are not destroyed by the mummification process. From samples of common Egyptian mummies from the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, Diop was able to show high melanin levels that are not found in white-skinned people. Diop wanted to apply the same analysis to royal mummies kept in Egypt, but the Egyptian authorities refused to give him any samples—not even the few millimeters of skin tissue that are required for such analysis.

Another criterion, which had proved successful in the past in determining racial origins, is the so-called Lepsius Canon. This entails examining the bones of mummies' bodies rather than their skulls. According to Diop, this method shows that the “bodily proportions of the ideal Egyptian was short-armed and of Negroid or Negrito physical
type.”
²²
In addition, Diop suggests that blood groups could be used, for even today's modern Egyptians, especially those in Upper Egypt “. . . belong to the same Group B as the populations of western Africa on the Atlantic seaboard and not the A2 group characteristic of the white race prior to any crossbreeding. It would be interesting to study the extent of Group A2 distribution in Egyptian mummies, which present-day techniques make
possible.
²³

Diop also reviewed the various statements made by ancient Greeks and Romans who visited Egypt, as did Martin Bernal later in
Black Athena.
Diop asserts that if we accept what the ancient Greek and Roman writers say—and frankly, there are no good reasons why we shouldn't—then we must conclude that the ancient Egyptians were black-skinned, for these writers leave us with no doubt that they saw the Egyptians as “dark” or “black” men. Egyptologists, on the other hand, insist that we should not take seriously these ancient writers. A few Greek and Roman writers make clear Diop's point.

Herodotus (ca. 450 BCE), the father of history, states that “. . . it is in fact manifest that the Colchidians are Egyptian by race . . . several Egyptians told me that in their opinion the Colchidians were descended from soldiers of Sesostris. I had conjectured as much myself from two pointers, firstly because they have black skins and kinky
hair . . .”
²⁴
Herodotus also used the fact that the Egyptians were Black in order to prove that the oracle of Dodoni in Epirus, which according to legend was founded by a Black woman, was Egyptian in origin: “. . . and when they add that the dove was black they give us to understand that the woman was
Egyptian.”
²⁵

In one of the works of Aristotle (ca. 320 BCE) the great philosopher and father of scientific thinking speaks rather derogatorily about the Egyptians but nonetheless shows that he too regarded them as black-skinned: “Those who are too black are cowards like, for instance, the Egyptians and Ethiopians. But those who are excessively white are also cowards as we can see from the example of women . . . the complexion of courage is between the two (brown or
tanned).”
²⁶

Aeschylus (ca. 480 BCE), in his play
The Suppliants,
has one of the protagonists, a certain Danaos, comment on an Egyptian ship: “I can see the [Egyptian] crew with their black limbs and white
tunics.”
²⁷

Apollodorus (ca. 70 BCE) affirms that “Aegyptos conquered the country of the black-footed ones and called it Egypt after
himself.”
²⁸

Another Greek writer, Lucian (180 BCE), presents a dialog between two Greeks, Lycinus and Timolaus, discussing a young Egyptian boy. “Lycinus: This boy is not merely black; he has thick lips and his legs are too thin . . . his hair worn in a plait behind shows that he is not a
freeman.”
²⁹

Statements by many other ancient Greek and Roman writers provide similar confirmation, either directly or indirectly, that the ancient Egyptians were
black-skinned.
³⁰
Interestingly, before racial and cultural bias affected European scholars, many European travelers such as Constantin-Francois Volney, who journeyed in Egypt in 1783–1785, wrote honest statements: “. . . on visiting the Sphinx, the look of it gave me the clue . . . beholding that head characteristically Negro in all its features, I recalled the well-known passage of Herodotus which reads: ‘For my part I consider the Colchoi are a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black skinned and
kinky-haired . . .'”
³¹

Champollion-Figeac, the brother of the famous Champollion the Younger, who deciphered the hieroglyphics, wrote this bizarre response to Volney's observations: “. . . Volney's conclusion as to the Negro origin of the ancient population of Egypt is glaringly forced and
inadmissible.”
³²

Diop approaches the argument from a different and in some ways better perspective by asking how the ancient Egyptians viewed themselves. He notes that they referred to themselves as the Rmt-en-Km-t, which Egyptologists usually translate as People of the
Black Land,
³³
because, they say, the ancient Egyptians were not referring to themselves but rather to the color of the alluvial soil of the Nile Valley, which has a dark, almost black tint. Diop argues, however, that it makes far more sense to translate this term as Land of the Black People. Indeed, Km-t is perhaps the origin of the Biblical name Ham (hence Hamite), which also means “black.” The
H
and
K
in the Semitic dialects are often mingled to create the guttural
Kh.
Thus the Hebrew
Kh-am
may be a derivative of the earlier Egyptian
Kh-em.
This would certainly explain why in the Bible, Egypt is often called the land of Ham or Khem. Diop also presents an array of epithets of divinities of ancient Egypt that associate them with the color black implicitly, if it's not explicitly stated that they were
black-skinned,
³⁴
and he also presents a variety of other arguments involving complex linguistic comparisons and word syntax of the ancient Egyptian language and other African languages, but such arguments are well outside the scope of our investigation.

At any rate, suffice it to say that the evidence presented by Diop overwhelmingly supported a Black African origin for the ancient Egyptians. As we have said earlier, Diop's crowning moment was at the UNESCO Symposium in January 1974 in Cairo, where he and a colleague, Professor Obenga, carefully presented their scientific findings to a large audience of Egyptologists and anthropologists from all parts of the world. It was nevertheless stated in the conclusion of the report of the symposium: “Although the preparatory working paper sent out by UNESCO gave particulars of what was desired, not all participants had prepared communications comparable with the painstakingly researched contributions of Professors Cheikh Anta Diop and Obenga. There was consequently a real lack of balance in the
discussions.”
³⁵

The attending Egyptologists had not even bothered to prepare for a proper and balanced debate. Their biased conviction was so entrenched that they merely listened politely and then ignored the issue at hand. The UNESCO organizers, however, were clearly impressed by Diop and commissioned him to write the entry on the origins of the pharaohs in their
General History of Africa
published a few years later, in 1981. Yet the archaeologist Ahmed Mokhtar, who, ironically, was the editor of this UNESCO publication, could not prevent himself from adding a note in the introduction of the report: “The opinions expressed by Cheikh Anta Diop in this chapter are those which he developed and presented at the UNESCO symposium of ‘The People of Ancient Egypt,' which was held in Cairo in 1974. The arguments put forward in this chapter have not been accepted by all the experts interested in this problem.”

Notwithstanding Ahmed Mokhtar's odd remarks about a colleague and contributor to the UNESCO publication, what he said did not take into account the fact that some very senior French Egyptologists—notably Professors Jean Vercouter and Professor Jean Leclant—had been very impressed with Diop's professional presentation. In reality the resistance to accept or even consider Diop's thesis came not from Egyptologists in general but specifically from high Egyptian officials, as is well demonstrated by Dr. Zahi Hawass, the present chairman of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and undersecretary of state to the Ministry of Culture. Hawass is well-known for his aggressive attitude toward those who oppose him so that even the normally discreet
Sunday Times
of London felt compelled to write: “He rules Egyptology with an iron fist and a censorious tongue. Nobody crosses Zahi Hawass and gets away with it. . . . Nobody of any standing in Egyptology will come out to help you . . . because they'd lose their jobs. Sadly, people are cowering round his ankles. . . . The hugged ankles belong to the most powerful man in archaeology, Dr Zahi Hawass, aka Big Zee, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). It is Hawass who holds the keys to the pyramids, the Valley of the Kings, the Sphinx, Abu Simbel, everything. No Egyptologist gets in without his permission, and few will chance his
anger. . . .”
³⁶