PART I
BLACKS CREATED EVERYTHING?
THAT'S A BUNCH OF MALARKEY!
The Myths Blacks Believe: The Ancient Egyptians Were Negroes and Built the Grand Pyramids
Recently, I ruffled the feathers of a bunch of Afrocentric blacks when I criticized one of their upcoming documentaries, Hidden Colors 3, which tries to blame much of black dysfunction on white ‘racism.’ Every imaginable excuse is made in this film to rationalize black failure and the level of savagery that even white liberals are now having a hard time denying.
The craziest things were said by blacks who tried in vain to refute my short article. One of the more popular ones was that the ancient Egyptians were actually negroes who ruled the land of Egypt. The notion is preposterous to say the least. More than that, it simply doesn’t comport with the historical evidence that’s available.
Blacks or negroes were definitely around in ancient Egypt centuries ago, but that’s because they were slaves. They were low-level servants and most of them performed manual labor, rather than ruling some glorious kingdom as they very mistakenly assume. In some instances, they served as guards for the royal family or as soldiers. They built the pyramids alright, by carrying and arranging large boulders within it under threat of force!
Contemporary blacks, including some of their white enablers, believe such nonsense because they are desperate to lift their image. Blacks, generally, have little to be racially proud of when so many of their people have served as nothing more than slaves throughout most of their miserable history, conducting menial tasks on behalf of their masters.
When one realizes that most Africans were living in the stone age up until about the mid 20th century, there’s little that’s genuinely encouraging when one considers their history. These are harsh words, admittedly, but that does not make them any less true. We must face the facts as they are and not as we might wish them to be.
This doesn’t meant that some individual blacks haven’t succeeded and broken from the chains of poverty and ignorance. They are, however, the exception, not the norm.
In spite of many opportunities to advance themselves, including continual assistance from the West, blacks in Africa and throughout the entire world are known for characteristics and qualities that are less than positively uplifting, such as: Low IQ levels, an aversion to formal education, strong and abiding criminal proclivities, skyrocketing crimes levels – especially violent crime, a strong compulsion to rape women and young girls, impulsiveness, lack of self-control, volatile natures, an inability to control their sexual desires or exhibit sexual restraint, and great difficulty in adapting to first-world advanced civilizations.
Nicholas Wade, the New York Times science editor, in his recent book, A Troublesome Inheritance, argues strongly on this last point. He writes that blacks, due to genetic reasons, are not able to adapt to advanced societies as are whites and Asians. It’s a bold theory, no doubt, but the science behind has not been disproved. Moreover, has not every inner-city within America demonstrated that very point?
Whites know this, and so do many blacks. They freely admit it among themselves, but rarely to whites so as to not threaten the pity, ‘assistance’ and freebies they get from naive, do-gooder whites.
Instead of facing their dysfunctional ways and seeking to reform their conduct, blacks make up the most bizarre and historically inaccurate things about themselves. These are nothing more than misguided attempts to make up for what is sorely lacking in them as persons and as a race of people.
But wait, it gets even better with such wild claims in history as:
* Claiming the ancient Kenyans had calculated the speed of light
* That black Egyptians built the pyramids and invented electricity
* That Africans traveled to the Americas and taught the Aztecs everything they knew
* That various figures in Western history were actually black Africans
* That the Romans and Greeks were taught everything they knew by blacks
*Cleopatra was black
*Hannibal was also black.Jesus and his Apostles were black. Adam and Eve were black. Moses was black etc etc.
*And the favorite one, that Africans used to have the power to fly and built the pyramids by moving the stones with the power of their minds. I did some research about where all this started and found this quote:
"""While this is a very real, and very important, process of reclaiming history, there is such a thing as taking it too far. Last year, I heard a discussion of a new Afrocentric curriculum being presented to the Philadelphia school system. The "noted Afrocentrist" being interviewed, whom I had never heard of even though he was "noted" and I do make an attempt to keep informed of these things, He told the interviewer about how the ancient Egyptians were all black, the direct ancestors of all black-skinned persons in the United States today, and were the founders of every culture and every technological advance which had ever been given to the world anywhere. When the interviewer asked for specifics, the speaker told how the pyramids were built -- with special levitational powers that the ancient Egyptians possessed, allowing them to fly themselves, and other objects, around at will simply by using their minds. When pressed, the speaker admitted the Egyptians lost their ability to fly and all their other incredible powers when "the white man invaded."
"You honestly believe the ancient Egyptians knew how to fly and move pyramid blocks with their minds?" asked the interviewer. "And you want to teach African-American schoolchildren this?"
The speaker paused, then said: "Well, no, I don't really believe they knew how to fly, and I don't believe they had any special powers. But we've got to give these kids something good to believe in, don't we?"
Granted, not all blacks believe such lies, but a growing number of them do. Trying to intellectually and calmly reason with them, however, is like arguing with the wind. It’s akin to reasoning with defiant little children who are unable to focus on what you’re saying, who can’t follow carefully a logical argument, but who are determined to prove you wrong – regardless of what the facts
actually indicate.
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PART II
Was Greek Culture Stolen from Africa?
Modern Myth vs. Ancient History
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by Mary Lefkowitz |
Excerpted from her book: Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History
Why I wrote the book
In the fall of 1991 I was asked to write a review-article for The New Republic about Martin Bernal's Black Athena and its relation to the Afrocentrist movement. The assignment literally changed my life. Once I began to work on the article I realized that here was a subject that needed all the attention, and more, that I could give to it. Although I had been completely unaware of it, there was in existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools and even in universities.
Ordinarily, if someone has a theory which involves a radical departure from what the experts have professed, he is expected to defend his position by providing evidence in its support. But no one seemed to think it was appropriate to ask for evidence from the instructors who claimed that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt.
Normally, if one has a question about a text that another instructor is using, one simply asks why he or she is using that book. But since this conventional line of inquiry was closed to me, I had to wait till I could raise my questions in a more public context. That opportunity came in February 1993, when Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley's Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan as a "distinguished Egyptologist," and indeed that is how he was introduced by the then President of Wellesley College. But I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization. Rather, he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like himself.
After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same assertions once again in his lecture, I asked him during the question period why he said that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander, and had stolen his philosophy from the Library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after his death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the inquiry. Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by white historians. But others stayed to hear me out, and I assured Dr. ben-Jochannan that I simply wanted to know what his evidence was: so far as I knew, and I had studied the subject, Aristotle never went to Egypt, and while the date of the Library of Alexandria is not known precisely, it was certainly only built some years after the city was founded, which was after both Aristotle's and Alexander's deaths.
A lecture at which serious questions could not be asked, and in fact were greeted with hostility -- the occasion seemed more like a political rally than an academic event. As if that were not disturbing enough in itself, there was also the strange silence on the part of many of my faculty colleagues. Several of these were well aware that what Dr. ben-Jochannan was saying was factually wrong. One of them said later that she found the lecture so "hopeless" that she decided to say nothing. Were they afraid of being called racists? If so, their behavior was understandable, but not entirely responsible. Didn't we as educators owe it to our students, all our students, to see that they got the best education they could possibly get? And that clearly was what they were not getting in a lecture where they were being told myths disguised as history, and where discussion and analysis had apparently been forbidden.
Good as the myths they were hearing may have made these students feel, so long as they never left the Afrocentric environment in which they were being nurtured and sheltered, they were being systematically deprived of the most important features of a university education. They were not learning how to question themselves and others, they were not learning to distinguish facts from fiction, nor in fact were they learning how to think for themselves. Their instructors had forgotten, while the rest of us sat by and did nothing about it, that students do not come to universities to be indoctrinated --at least in a free society.
Was Socrates Black? I first learned about the notion that Socrates was black several years ago, from a student in my second-year Greek course on Plato's Apology, his account of Socrates' trial and conviction. Throughout the entire semester the student had regarded me with sullen hostility. A year or so later she apologized. She explained that she thought I had been concealing the truth about Socrates' origins. In a course in Afro-American studies she had been told that he was black, and my silence about his African ancestry seemed to her to be a confirmation of the Eurocentric arrogance her instructor had warned her about. After she had taken my course, the student pursued the question on her own, and was satisfied that I had been telling her the truth: so far as we know, Socrates was ethnically no different from other Athenians.
What had this student learned in her course in Afro-American studies? The notion that Socrates was black is based on two different kinds of inference. The first "line of proof" is based on inference from possibility. Why couldn't an Athenian have African ancestors? That of course would have been possible; almost anything is possible. But it is another question whether or not it was probable. Few prominent Athenians claim to have had foreign ancestors of any sort. Athenians were particularly fastidious about their own origins. In Socrates' day, they did not allow Greeks from other city-states to become naturalized Athenian citizens, and they were even more careful about the non-Greeks or barbaroi. Since Socrates was an Athenian citizen, his parents must have been Athenians, as he himself says they were.
Another reason why I thought it unlikely that Socrates and/or his immediate ancestors were foreigners is that no contemporary calls attention to anything extraordinary in his background. If he had been a foreigner, one of his enemies, or one of the comic poets, would have been sure to point it out. The comic poets never missed an opportunity to make fun of the origins of Athenian celebrities. Socrates was no exception; he is lampooned by Aristophanes in his comedy the Clouds. If Socrates and/or his parents had had dark skin, some of his contemporaries would have been likely to mention it, because this, and not just his eccentric ideas about the gods, and the voice that spoke to him alone, would have distinguished him from the rest of the Athenians. Unless, of course, he could not be distinguished from other Athenians because they all had dark skin; but then if they did, why did they not make themselves bear a closer resemblance the Ethiopians in their art?
Was Cleopatra Black?
Until recently, no one ever asked whether Cleopatra might have had an African ancestor, because our surviving ancient sources identify her as a Macedonian Greek. Her ancestors, the Ptolemies, were descended from one of Alexander's generals. After Alexander's death in 323 B. C., these generals divided up among themselves the territory in the Mediterranean that Alexander had conquered. The name Cleopatra was one of the names traditionally given to women in the royal family; officially our Cleopatra (69-30 BC) was Cleopatra VII, the daughter of Ptolemy XII and his sister. Cleopatra VII herself followed the family practice of marrying within the family. She married her two brothers (Ptolemy XIII and XIV) in succession (after the first died in suspicious circumstances, she had the second murdered). Her first language was Greek; but she was also the first member of the Ptolemaic line who was able to speak Egyptian. She also wore Egyptian dress, and was shown in art in the dress of the goddess Isis. She chose to portray herself as an Egyptian not because she was Egyptian, but because she was ambitious to stay in power. In her surviving portraits on coins and in sculpture she appears to be impressive rather than beautiful, Mediterranean in appearance, with straight hair and a hooked nose. Of course these portraits on metal and stone give no indication of the color of her skin.
The only possibility that she might not have been a full-blooded Macedonian Greek arises from the fact that we do not know the precise identity of one member of her family tree. We do not know who her grandmother was on her father's side. Her grandmother was the mistress (not the wife) of her grandfather, Ptolemy IX. Because nothing is known about this person, the assumption has always been that she was a Macedonian Greek, like the other members of Ptolemy's court. Like other Greeks, the Ptolemies were wary of foreigners. They kept themselves apart from the native population, with brothers usually marrying sisters, or uncles marrying nieces, or in one case a father marrying his daughter (Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra Berenice III). Because the Ptolemies seemed to prefer to marry among themselves, even incestuously, it has always been assumed that Cleopatra's grandmother was closely connected with the family. If she had been a foreigner, one of the Roman writers of the time would have mentioned it in their invectives against Cleopatra as an enemy of the Roman state. These writers were supporters of Octavian (later known as Augustus) who defeated Cleopatra's forces in the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
Does Racial Identity Matter?
The question of race matters only insofar as it is necessary to show that no classicists or ancient historians have tried to conceal the truth about the origins of the Greek people or the ancestry of certain famous ancient figures. It has been suggested that classicists have been reluctant to ask questions about Greek origins, and that we have been so "imbued with conventional preconceptions and patterns of thought" that we are unlikely to question the basic premises of our discipline. But even though we may be more reluctant to speculate about our own field than those outside it might be, none of us has any cultural "territory" in the ancient world that we are trying to insulate from other ancient cultures.
Did ancient Greek religion and culture derive from Egypt?
The idea that Greek religion and philosophy has Egyptian origins derives, at least in part, from the writings of ancient Greek historians. In the fifth century BC Herodotus was told by Egyptian priests that the Greeks owed many aspects of their culture to the older and vastly impressive civilization of the Egyptians. Egyptian priests told Diodorus some of the same stories four centuries later. The church fathers in the second and third centuries AD also were eager to emphasize the dependency of Greece on the earlier cultures of the Egyptians and the Hebrews. They were eager to establish direct links between their civilization and that of Egypt because Egypt was a vastly older culture, with elaborate religious customs and impressive monuments. But despite their enthusiasm for Egypt and its material culture (an enthusiasm that was later revived in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe), they failed to understand Egyptian religion and the purpose of many Egyptian customs.
Classical scholars tend to be skeptical about the claims of the Greek historians because much of what these writers say does not conform to the facts as they are now known from the modern scholarship on ancient Egypt. For centuries Europeans had believed that the ancient historians knew that certain Greek religious customs and philosophical interests derived from Egypt. But two major discoveries changed that view. The first concerned a group of ancient philosophical treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; these had throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance been thought of as Egyptian and early. But in 1614 the French scholar Isaac Casaubon demonstrated that the treatises were actually late and basically Greek. The second discovery was the decipherment of hieroglyphics, the official system of Egyptian writing, completed by 1836. Before decipherment, scholars had been compelled to rely on Greek sources for their understanding of Egyptian history and civilization. Once they were able to read real Egyptian texts, and could disregard the fanciful interpretations of hieroglyphics that had been circulating since late antiquity, it became clear to them that the relation of Egyptian to Greek culture was less close than they had imagined. Egyptian belonged to the Afroasiatic language family, while Greek was an Indo-European language, akin to Sanskrit and European languages like Latin.
On the basis of these new discoveries, European scholars realized that they could no longer take at face value what Herodotus, Diodorus, and the Church fathers had to say about Greece's debt to Egypt. Once it was possible to read Egyptian religious documents, and to see how the Egyptians themselves described their gods and told their myths, scholars could see that the ancient Greeks' accounts of Egyptian religion were superficial, and even misleading. Apparently Greek writers, despite their great admiration for Egypt, looked at Egyptian civilization through cultural blinkers that kept them from understanding any practices or customs that were significantly different from their own. The result was a portrait of Egypt that was both astigmatic and deeply Hellenized. Greek writers operated under other handicaps as well. They did not have access to records; there was no defined system of chronology. They could not read Egyptian inscriptions or question a variety of witnesses because they did not know the language. Hence they were compelled to exaggerate the importance of such resemblances as they could see or find.
Did the theory of the transmigration of souls come from Egypt?
Because he tended to rely on such analogies as he could find, Herodotus inevitably made some false conjectures. Herodotus thought that Pythagoras learned about the transmigration of souls from Egypt, when in fact the Egyptians did not believe in the transmigration of souls, as their careful and elaborate burial procedures clearly indicate. Herodotus tells us that he wrote down what the Egyptians told him; but when they spoke, what did he hear? Since he did not know Egyptian, his informants could have been Greeks living in the Greek colony of Naucratis in the Nile Delta, or Egyptians who knew some Greek. How well-informed were his informants? On the question of origins, at least, it seems that neither group had any more than a superficial understanding of the other's culture. Perhaps someone explained to him about the Egyptian "modes of existence," in which a human being could manifest itself both materially, or immaterially, as ka or ba or a name, and that death was not an end, but a threshold leading to a new form of life. Belief in these varied modes of existence required that bodies be preserved after death, hence the Egyptian practice of mummification. Greeks, on the other hand, believed that the soul was separated from the body at death, and disposed of bodies either by burial or cremation. In any case, there is no reason to assume that Pythagoras or other Greeks who believed in transmigration, like the Orphics and/or the philosopher-poet Empedocles, got their ideas from anyone else: notions of transmigration have developed independently in other parts of the world.
Did Plato Study in Egypt?
Plato never says in any of his writings that he went to Egypt, and there is no reference to such a visit in the semi-biographical Seventh Epistle. But in his dialogues he refers to some Egyptian myths and customs. Plato, of course, was not a historian, and the rather superficial knowledge of Egypt displayed in his dialogues, along with vague chronology, is more characteristic of historical fiction than of history. In fact, anecdotes about his visit to Egypt only turn up in writers of the later Hellenistic period. What better way to explain his several references to Egypt than to assume that the author had some first-hand knowledge of the customs he describes? For authors dating from the fourth century and earlier, ancient biographers were compelled to use as their principal source material the author's own works. Later biographers add details to the story of Plato's Egyptian travels in order to provide aetiologies for the "Egyptian" reference in his writings. The most ironic anecdote of all is preserved by Clement of Alexandria: Plato studied in Egypt with Hermes the "Thrice Great" (Trismegistus). This is tantamount to saying that Plato studied with himself after his death. The works of Hermes could not have been written without the conceptual vocabulary developed by Plato and Aristotle, and is deeply influenced not just by Plato, but by the writings of Neoplatonist philosophers in the early centuries AD. In any case, whoever these teachers were, Plato seems never to have learned from them anything that is characteristically Egyptian, at least so far as we know about Egyptian theology from Egyptian sources. Instead, Plato's notion of the Egyptians remains similar to that of other Athenians; he did not so much change the Athenian notion of Egyptian culture as enrich and idealize it, so that it could provide a dramatic and instructive contrast with Athenian customs in his dialogues.
Was there ever such a thing as an "Egyptian Mystery System?"
Even after nineteenth-century scholars had shown that the reports of Greek visitors to Egypt misunderstood and misrepresented what they saw, the myth that Greek philosophy derived from Egypt is still in circulation. The notion of an Egyptian legacy was preserved in the literature and ritual of Freemasonry. It was from that source that Afrocentrists learned about it, and then sought to find confirmation for the primacy of Egypt over Greece in the fantasies of ancient writers. In order to show that Greek philosophy is in reality stolen Egyptian philosophy, Afrocentrist writers assume that there was in existence from earliest times an "Egyptian Mystery System," which was copied by the Greeks. The existence of this "Mystery System" is integral to the notion that Greek philosophy was stolen, because it provides a reason for assuming that Greek philosophers had a particular reason for studying in Egypt, and for claiming that what they later wrote about in Greek was originally Egyptian philosophy. But in reality, the notion of an Egyptian Mystery System is a relatively modern fiction, based on ancient sources that are distinctively Greek, or Greco-Roman, and from the early centuries AD.
In their original form, ancient mysteries had nothing to do with schools or particular courses of study; rather, the ritual was intended to put the initiate into contact with the divinity, and if special preparation or rituals were involved, it was to familiarize the initiate with the practices and liturgy of that particular cult. The origin of the connection of Mysteries to education in fact dates only to the eighteenth century. It derives from a particular work of European fiction, published in 1731. This was the three-volume work Sethos, a History or Biography, based on Unpublished Memoirs of Ancient Egypt, by the Abbé Jean Terrasson (1670-1750), a French priest, who was Professor of Greek at the Collège de France. Although now completely forgotten, the novel was widely read in the eighteenth century..Of course Terrasson did not have access to any Egyptian information about Egypt, since hieroglyphics were not to be deciphered until more than a century later.
Why claim that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt?
Perhaps the most influential Afrocentrist text is Stolen Legacy, a work that has been in wide circulation since its publication in 1954. Its author, George G. M. James, writes that "the term Greek philosophy, to begin with is a misnomer, for there is no such philosophy in existence." He argues that the Greeks "did not possess the native ability essential to the development of philosophy." Rather, he states that "the Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the Black people of North Africa, The Egyptians." It is not hard to understand why James wishes to give credit for the Greek achievement to the Egyptians, even if there is little or no historical foundation for his claims. Like the other nationalistic myths, the story of a "Stolen Legacy" both offers an explanation for past suffering, and provides a source of ethnic pride.
But although the myth may encourage and perhaps even "empower" African-Americans, its use has a destructive side, which cannot and should not be overlooked. First of all, it offers them a "story" instead of history. It also suggests that African-Americans need to learn only what they choose to believe about the past. But in so doing, the Afrocentric myth seeks to shelter them from learning what all other ethnic groups must learn, and indeed, face up to, namely the full scope of their history.
What people on earth have had a completely glorious history? While we point to the great achievements of the Greeks, anyone who has studied ancient Greek civilization knows that they also made terrible and foolish mistakes. Isn't treating African-Americans differently from the rest of humankind just another form of segregation and condescension? Implied discrimination is the most destructive aspect of Afrocentrism, but there are other serious problems as well. Teaching the myth of the Stolen Legacy as if it were history robs the ancient Greeks and their modern descendants of a heritage that rightly belongs to them. Why discriminate against them when discrimination is the issue? In addition, the myth deprives the ancient Egyptians of their proper history and robs them of their actual legacy. The Egypt of the myth of the Stolen Legacy is a wholly European Egypt, as imagined by Greek and Roman writers, and further elaborated in eighteenth-century France. Ancient Egyptian civilization deserves to be remembered (and respected) for what it was, and not for what Europeans, ancient and modern, have imagined it to be.
What is the evidence for a "Stolen Legacy?"
James's idea of ancient Egypt is fundamentally the imaginary "Mystical Egypt" of Freemasonry. He speaks of grades of initiation. In these Mysteries, as the Freemasons imagined them, Neophyte initiates must learn self-control and self-knowledge. He believes that Moses was an initiate into the Egyptian mysteries, and that Socrates reached the grade of Master Mason. In his description of the Greek philosophy, he emphasizes the Four Elements that play such a key role in Terrasson's Memphis and Masonic initiation ceremonies. He speaks of the Masonic symbol of the Open Eye, which based on an Egyptian hieroglyph but in Masonry has come specifically to represent the Master Mind. As in the University/Mystery system invented by Terrasson, Egyptian temples are used as libraries and observatories.
What then are the Greeks supposed to have stolen from the Egyptians? Are there any texts in existence that be found to verify the claim that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt? How was the "transfer" of Egyptian materials to Greece accomplished? If we examine what James says about the way in which the "transfer" was supposed to have been carried out, we will find that that few or no historical data can be summoned to support it. In fact, in order to construct his argument, James overlooked or ignored much existing evidence.
Did Aristotle raid the Library at Alexandria?
No ancient source says that Alexander and Aristotle raided the Library at Alexandria. That they do not do so is not surprising, because it is unlikely that Aristotle ever went there. Aristotle was Alexander's tutor when Alexander was young, but he did not accompany him on his military campaign. Even if he had gone there, it is hard to see how he could have stolen books from the library in Alexandria. Although Alexandria was founded in 331 BC, it did not begin to function as a city until after 323. Aristotle died in 322. The library was assembled around 297 under the direction of Demetrius of Phaleron, a pupil of Aristotle's. Most of the books it contained were in Greek.
Did Aristotle plagiarize Egyptian sources?
If Aristotle had stolen his ideas from the Egyptians, as James asserts, James should be able to provide parallel Egyptian and Greek texts showing frequent verbal correspondences. As it is, he can only come up with a vague similarity between two titles. One is Aristotle's treatise On the Soul, and the other the modern English name of a collection of Egyptian texts, The Book of the Dead. These funerary texts, which the Egyptians themselves called the Book of Coming Forth by Day, are designed to protect the soul during its dangerous journey through Duat, the Egyptian underworld, on its way to life of bliss in the Field of Reeds. Both Aristotle and the Egyptians believed in the notion of a "soul." But there the similarity ends. Even a cursory glance at a translation of the Book of the Dead reveals that it is not a philosophical treatise, but rather a series of ritual prescriptions to ensure the soul's passage to the next world. It is completely different from Aristotle's abstract consideration of the nature of the soul. James fails to mention that the two texts cannot be profitably compared, because their aims and methods are so different. Instead, he accounts for the discrepancy by claiming that Aristotle's theory is only a "very small portion" of the Egyptian "philosophy" of the soul, as described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. On that basis, one could claim that any later writer plagiarized from any earlier writer who touched on the same subject. But why not assume instead that the later writer was influenced by the earlier writer, or even came up with the some of the same ideas independently, especially if those ideas are widespread, like the notion that human beings have souls?
James also alleges that Aristotle's theory of matter was taken from the so-called Memphite Theology. The Memphite Theology is a religious document inscribed on a stone tablet by Egyptian priests in the eighth century BC, but said to have been copied from an ancient papyrus. The archaic language of the text suggests that the original dates from sometime in the second millennium BC. According to James, Aristotle took from the Memphite theology his doctrine that matter, motion, and time are eternal, along with the principle of opposites, and the concept of the unmoved mover. James does not say how Aristotle would have known about this inscription, which was at the time located in Memphis and not in the Library of Alexandria, or explain how he would have been able to read it. But even if Aristotle had had some way of finding out about it, he would have had no use for it in his philosophical writings. The Memphis text, like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, is a work of a totally different character from any of Aristotle's treatises.
The Memphite text describes the creation of the world as then known (that is, Upper and Lower Egypt). It relates how Ptah's mind (or "heart") and thought (or "tongue") created the universe and all living creatures in it: "for every word of the god came about through what the heart devised and the tongue commanded." From one of his manifestations, the primordial waters of chaos, the sun-god Atum was born. When Ptah has finished creating the universe, he rests from his labors: "Ptah was satisfied after he had made all things and all divine words."
In form and in substance this account has virtually nothing in common with Aristotle's abstract theology. In fact, in Metaphysics Book 11, Aristotle discards the traditional notion of a universe that is created by a divinity or divinities, in favor of a metaphysical argument. If there is eternal motion, there is eternal substance, and behind that, an immaterial and eternal source of activity, whose existence can be deduced from the eternal circular motion of the heavens. The source of this activity is what is called in English translation the "unmoved mover."All that this theory has in common with the Memphite theology is a concern with creation of the universe. On the same insubstantial basis, it would be possible to argue that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the story of creation in the first book of Genesis.
Is there a diversity of truths?
There are of course many possible interpretations of the truth, but some things are simply not true. It is not true that there was no Holocaust. There was a Holocaust, although we may disagree about the numbers of people killed. Likewise, it is not true that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt; rather, it is true that the Greeks were influenced in various ways over a long period of time by their contact with the Egyptians. But then, what culture at any time has not been influenced by other cultures, and what exactly do we mean by "influence"? If we talk about Greek philosophy as a "Stolen Legacy," which the Greeks swiped from Egyptian universities, we are not telling the truth, but relating a story, or a myth, or a tall tale. But if we talk about Egyptian influence on Greece, we are discussing an historical issue.
In historical and scientific discussions it is possible to distinguish degrees, and to be more or less accurate. As a classicist, I may overemphasize the achievement of the Greeks because I do not know enough about the rest of the Mediterranean world; Egyptologists may be inclined to make the same mistake in the opposite direction. We recognize that no historian can write without some amount of bias; that is why history must always be rewritten. But not all bias amounts to distortion, or is equivalent to indoctrination. If I am aware that I am likely to be biased for any number of reasons, and try to compensate for them, the result should be very different in quality and character from what I would say if I were consciously setting about to achieve a particular political goal.
Drawing a clear distinction between motivations and evidence has a direct bearing on the question of academic freedom. When it comes to deciding what one can or cannot say in class the question of ethnicity or of motivations, whether personal or cultural, is or ought to be irrelevant. What matters is whether what one says is supported by facts and evidence, texts or formulae. The purpose of diversity, at least in academe, is to ensure that instruction does not become a vehicle for indoctrinating students in the values of the majority culture, or for limiting the curriculum to the study of the history and literature of the majority culture. That means that it is essential for a university to consider developments outside of Europe and North America, and to assess the achievements of non-European cultures with respect and sympathy.
It is another question whether or not diversity should be applied to the truth. Are there, can there be, multiple, diverse "truths?" If there are, which "truth" should win? The one that is most loudly argued or most persuasively phrased? Diverse "truths are possible only if "truth" is understood to mean something like "point of view." But even then not every point of view, no matter how persuasively it is put across, or with what intensity it is argued, can be equally valid. The notion of diversity does not extend to truth.
Students of the modern world may think it is a matter of indifference whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt. They may believe that even if the story is not true, it can be used to serve a positive purpose. But the question, and many others like it, should be a matter of serious concern to everyone, because if you assert that he did steal his philosophy, you are prepared to ignore or to conceal a substantial body of historical evidence that proves the contrary. Once you start doing that, you can have no scientific or even social-scientific discourse, nor can you have a community, or a university.
Copyright © 1996 by BasicBooks All Rights ReservedMary Lefkowitz is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College. She is the author of many books on ancient Greece and Rome, including Lives of the Greek Poets and Women in Greek Myth, as well as articles for the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic. She is the co-editor of Women's Life in Greece and Rome and Black Athena Revisited.
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Not Out of Africa by Mary Lefkowitz - The book that has sparked widespread debate over the teaching of revisionist history in schools and colleges. Was Socrates black? Did Aristotle steal his ideas from the library in Alexandria? Do we owe the underlying tenets of our democratic civilization to the Africans? Mary Lefkowitz explains why politically motivated histories of the ancient world are being written and shows how Afrocentrist claims blatantly contradict the historical evidence. Not Out of Africa is an important book that protects and argues for the necessity of historical truths and standards in cultural education. Purchase from Amazon.com |
PART III
Anyone who reads a newspaper, watches television, or scans the Internet for news of the day can’t escape discussions about race – that’s one of the things most prevalent in the news today. True, the current discussion was triggered by the shooting in Ferguson, but each time another incident with a racial component occurs; it causes the same kind of “discussion” over and over.
What the Attorney General is really saying is that blacks aren’t really equal enough yet, and the fault lies with Caucasians who are (still) treating blacks unfairly. He wants to talk about what whites can do to implement more flavors of affirmative action and to help blacks overcome conditions of their own making.
In no other aspect of life are events that ended 150 years ago used to coerce a majority to compensate a minority for the actions of long dead individuals. But they haven’t forgotten – references to “slaves” and the “plantation” can be seen in signs carried by black protestors even today. Some black “leaders” like Holder, Sharpton, and Jackson, refuse to let slavery die. They still maintain that, if not for slavery, blacks would be equal (or superior) to whites.
But, we are not equal.
Blacks are a minority and that means that we aren’t equal in numbers. Whites make up 77.7% of the population (U.S. Census est. 2013), blacks account for 13.2%. That number alone verifies that we aren’t equal; there are almost six times as many whites as blacks.
We don’t look alike; our skin color is different, our hair is different, our facial components are different – from birth, we are different.
Blacks complain that they aren’t treated equally, but over the past couple of decades blacks have intentionally distanced themselves from the white majority. That is, they are actively and intentionally contributing to becoming less equal, for example:
- Blacks have made it a point to name their children differently, with uniquely black-centric names.
- Many (especially young blacks) dress differently: wear pants around their knees, dreadlocks, cornrows, extremely long nails.
- They talk differently, intentionally, and chastise any black who “talks white.”
- They created rap “music.” Most of it is vulgar, violent, demeaning to women, and celebrates a gangster lifestyle – yet they embrace it as a uniquely black art form.
- They show disdain for traditional marriage and family. Seventy-two percent (72%) of black babies are born to unwed mothers (NBC News), Children of unmarried mothers of any race are more likely to perform poorly in school, go to prison, use drugs, and be on welfare. When will black fathers begin to take responsibility for their offspring?
- They vote as a bloc and refuse to admit any faults in a black office holder. Even now in July of 2014 (Quinnipiac poll), Obama still has the approval of 83% of blacks.
- They denigrate any black who doesn’t follow the prescribed black paradigm and demean them as “Uncle Toms,” “Oreos,” and other derogatory terms for “acting white.”
- They refuse to allow our justice system to follow its course and instead impose a guilty sentence on a white target – long before all of the evidence is public knowledge.
- They seemingly celebrate belligerence – displaying an “attitude” of intimidation and threat of violence when confronted.
But why would whites (in general) continue to keep a distance from blacks? One reason could be that blacks commit more criminal offenses, especially considering that they’re only 13.2% of the population.
According to Crime in the United States 2012 (FBI.gov), whites were arrested for murder in 48.2% of the cases, while blacks accounted for 49.4% of the arrests. Hold on – they’re close to equal – but no, not when blacks only comprise only 13.2% of the population yet still commit more of the murders than whites.
We aren’t equal when the minority commits more murders than the majority.
And how about robberies? Blacks accounted for 54.9% of all robberies, with whites arrested for 43.4%. Again, remember that only 13.2% of the population is black.
Not equal there either.
Blacks may say that they are more apt to be arrested simply for “being black.” Black men are six times as likely as white men to be in federal and state prisons (Pew Research Center, 2013). That means that they were convicted, not just arrested for crimes that warranted prison time. They stood trial, a jury and judge heard evidence, and they were convicted – that means that they were guilty.
And no other population group has as robust a record of rioting and looting when things don’t go “their way.”
So no, we’re still not equal.
But, they say that they’re disproportionately profiled. The national crime statistics prove that blacks commit crimes at a much higher rate (considering their population) so a certain amount of profiling is necessary.
Does it make sense for law enforcement to be looking for an elderly white woman when reports from the scene described the perpetrator as a young black man? Of course not. Since more crimes are committed by black men, it is only logical that they will be suspects more often. That means that we’re not profiled at the same rate – nor should we. Again, not equal.
Here’s a novel idea – if blacks don’t like being profiled, just account for fewer crimes. When black men (especially young ones) stop committing the majority of crimes in this country, the main reason for their profiling will disappear.
And yet blacks conveniently ignore how much they owe to whites.
White people gave the slaves their freedom and white people paid for their freedoms by dying (disproportionately) in war. There’s almost never any mention that the American men who have died in war for the freedoms we all enjoy were overwhelmingly white. Yet is there any appreciation shown?
Of course not. White men bought our freedom with their blood and it was decidedly not in equal numbers.
There’s never any appreciation shown to whites who foot the bill for housing assistance, SNAP program food stamps, “free” cellphones, etc. Since 41.7 percent of African Americans (Tax Foundation.org) will file a tax return with no liability (they’ll pay no federal income taxes), the money funding welfare programs was first taken from overwhelmingly white taxpayers. For SNAP programs (Pew Research), blacks get 31% of the funding, whites only 15%.
Not equal there either.
Blacks have embraced and imbedded into their psyche the concept of “us versus them,” where “them” are white people and they look at everything in life through a prism colored by that concept.
It is unfortunate that few blacks condemn what has become an increasingly confrontational attitude embraced by many black activists. It serves no useful purpose except to widen the gap between the races.
Please explain to me how that contributes to us becoming more “equal.”
PART IV
Black Lies Matter
In Ferguson, Missouri, the evidence shows that, on August 8, 2014, “Big Mike” Brown committed several crimes in a very brief amount of time. He committed a strong-arm robbery, assaulted a police officer, fought for the officer’s gun, refused the officer’s orders to stop, and charged the officer “like a football player with his head down”. Actions have consequences, and the consequences of Mike’s choices and actions that morning were exactly what anyone of any skin color should expect.
Words also have consequences. In the Brown case, or similar cases where violent behavior leads to tragedy, lessons could be taught that would be helpful to communities where violence is much too common. Our President is in a perfect position to intervene in a positive and helpful way. There could be words about personal responsibility, respecting the rights of others, respecting law enforcement. Anger and violence could be condemned.
Or, ‘leaders’ could lie about every aspect of the Michael Brown case in a way that would inflame racial divisions, create more anger and violence and increase hatred of the police. They could concentrate on grievances in a way that is entirely destructive – an approach that has no chance of improving the lives of black people. They could create a nationwide movement that would tear this country apart. This is the path that was taken by large numbers of people in powerful positions.
The narrative chosen by the racial dividers is everywhere, but here are some examples of the lies used by black ‘leaders’ to create the angry mobs.
Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, Black Caucus Chairwoman said, “This decision [grand jury] seems to underscore an unwritten rule that black lives hold no value; that you may kill black men in this country without consequences or repercussions.”
Missouri State Senator Jamilah Nasheed called the Brown case “an execution style murder”. She was later arrested with a gun in one of the race mobs she worked to create.
Jesse Jackson, speaking to angry protestors, said, “The civil rights of Michael Brown was violated… I would hate to think what would happen if you had black police maliciously killing white children in this way… The forces of evil choose to undercut our dreams. ”
Our chief law enforcement official, Eric Holder, rushed to characterize the case as an unjustified killing by a racist cop. While the grand jury was examining evidence, Holder was pronouncing a verdict. To nationalize the anger he said that the problems caused by racist cops “are truly national in scope” and they “threaten the entire nation”. He said, “Our police officers cannot be seen as an occupying force”.
Speaking at a University in Baltimore, Louis Farrakhan said that if the demands of those who wanted to lynch Office Wilson were not met, “we’ll tear this goddamn country apart!” The crowd cheered. Promoting a race-war Farrakhan added, “We going to die anyway. Let’s die for something.”
NAACP President Cornell Brookes said the Brown case was a case of “police brutality” that is “commonplace in communities of color all across the country”. He announced nationwide “Journey for Justice” demonstrations against police misconduct.
President Obama supported the race-baiter narrative. He even brought up Ferguson at the the U.N. General Assembly, saying that this racist incident demonstrates how America has “failed to live up to our ideals”. He invited the mob organizers to the White House on two occasions to express agreement with their grievances and to urge them to keep demonstrating, to “stay the course”.
You can know everything you need to know about Obama’s strategy on racial issues by knowing that the ever-despicable Al Sharpton is Obamas “go-to guy on race”. Sharpton is a very frequent visitor to our White House, where he and Obama plan their strategies on racial issues. Cornell West said Sharpton is, “the bona fide house negro of the Barack Obama plantation”. Sharpton said of Obama, “He’s calculating… he gets the game”.
What is the game?
It’s different things for different players and it has nothing to do
with honestly addressing the real problems of the black underclass.
It’s about power, money and the march toward leftist utopian dreams.Most of the people on the streets are “useful idiots” who are pawns in the game. Notice how easily the lies of demagogues can arouse a mob. The “hands up, don’t shoot” myth was re-enacted by people lying in the streets, by legislators, by educators, by athletes, and by television commentators. It’s a parade of angry misinformed fools. Think of them as the Alinsky Army in training. The deaths that have been part of this training operation are just collateral damage. There will be more destruction.
Those who are directing the show are simply following these Alinsky’s rules:
“The organizer’s first job is
to create the issues or problems, …’The organizer ‘must first rub raw
the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent
hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He
must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for
unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . .
. An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent. …From
the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams… only one
thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the
army. “
The Bill Ayers association relates to the current racial turmoil. Instigating a race-war was an explicit part of the Weathermen’s plans to fundamentally transform “AmeriKKKa”. The plan was for white radicals to trigger a worldwide revolution by instigating racial violence here. If you think Ayers has changed his destructive plans, you would be wrong.
You can take his word for it. At an Occupy Wall Street rally in 2012, he said, “I get up every morning thinking, today I’m going to make a difference. Today I’m going to end capitalism. Today I’m going to make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed but…I’m back again tomorrow.
In a radio interview in 2012 he said, “I think the people who practice white supremacy and who benefit from it are going to have to be stopped. And I think that’s a huge undertaking and I think it takes a revolution.”
Since Ayers has the same revolutionary goals “every day”, we can assume that he had those goals on the day that he hosted a fundraiser in his living room to launch the political career of Barack Obama.
You may be shocked and saddened by the choreographed violence in the street, but you must realize that there are those who are encouraged and excited by it. Do not cede the moral high ground to these people. The fundamental transformation they seek is utopia in theory but very real destruction in practice. Do not under-estimate the danger that these people pose to your future.
PART V
Do non-whites blame white people for all their problems?
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