Nubian Moor Race

Nubian Moor Race

Nubian Moor Women

Nubian Moor Women

Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Destruction of African Civilization

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Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

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The Destruction of African Civilization
A great deal of information about the culture of Africa has been lost because of the destruction of ancient records. Great libraries in several African cities were burned, looted, and their treasures stolen. The library in Thebes was destroyed by an invading Assyrian army in 661 B.C. [John G. Jackson]

The Land of the Blacks, as it was referred to, was a vast and big world, two million square miles, not limited to the southern region. The Ethiopian Empire once extended from the Mediterranean at the north and southward, to the source of the Nile. Egypt, it should be pointed out, was the northeastern region of ancient Ethiopia.

The six cataracts of the Nile were the great watermarks in the heartland of the Blacks from whence African culture spread over the continent. This northern sector had been the object of world attention from the earliest times. Interestingly, the ancients referred to Egyptians and Nubians as Ethiopians. Nubians were later called 'negroes" by Westerners.

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Rameses II
It was during the period of Rameses II's reign, about 1400 B.C.E., that the racial composition of the Egyptian Dynasties began to change. Rameses II, moved his capital city from Luxor to Memphis, then finally to the Delta region, in order to keep a constant vigilance over the Assyrian and Palestinian wars that he had involvement in.

The African domination of Egypt began to diminish. The infiltration of Asian, Libyan, and other non-Black races in Egypt caused an insurrection that led to the outbreak of a civil war that lasted for 25 years. The war had turned and the non-Africans became empowered, with the Hyksos becoming the Pharaohs of Egypt.

During this same period of time, a number of other major events were transpiring around the world, many of which included Africans: Egypt was in a state of total decline; a Libyan by the name of Osorkon I ruled the throne; the "Third Golden Age" of Egypt had come to an end; large groups of people fled Egypt; Nubians retreated back southward; and many of the Africans took to the seas.

There is a natural ocean current that flows from the West Coast of Africa to the Americas (the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, etc.). It has been recorded that Africans were the first known "gods of the Olmecs" in Mexico (1400–1300 B.C.). African sculptures, pyramids, and large colossal heads still exist in Mexico that support reports of Mexican and African relationships in the early Americas.

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Egyptian Philosophy

From the time of Pharaoh of the Third Dynasty to Pharaoh Khufu of Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty (builder of the great pyramids of Giza), we can see the superior intellect of these ancient African people. Their understanding of mathematics and knowledge of the heavens and the sun with relationship to the stars is astonishing. These people had studied astronomy in Egypt and the lands south of Punt for thousands of years. This is evidenced by the monuments that remain such as the Great Sphinx of Giza, the half human animal figure that dates back to the ancients of the ancients.

Kemet or Ta-merry was the center of learning. People from all over the Mediterranean came to study in their Mystery Schools. The Greek philosophers were students or had some contact with the students of the Egyptian institutions of learning. The Greeks who learned the ancient teachings of science, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, masonry, etc. were considered enemies of the state of Athens and were imprisoned exiled, or put to death.

There is in existence, a list of alleged Greek philosophers, who were regarded as undesirables in the Greek State in which they were citizens. These philosophers continued accepting their source of wisdom and knowledge from Egypt (Kemet), at the risk of physical injury to themselves. They were men who kept the records in their heads, and operated in deep secrecy in fear of the state (Greece).

Any Greek citizen that embraced foreign ideology was considered a criminal and a "teacher of an alien philosophy." This charge was lodged against Socrates, Aristotle, and others in the Greek government. It was Socrates who was put into prison and later sentenced to death by the same people who now claim his teachings as their own. All Egyptian temples carried inscriptions on the outside addressed to the Neophytes (initiates). And among them was the injunction "Know Thyself." Socrates copied these words from the Egyptian temples, but was not the author.

The Egyptian Mystery system was also a secret order. Membership was gained by initiation and a pledge of secrecy. The teachings were graded and delivered orally by the Neophyte; and under these circumstances of secrecy, the Egyptians developed secret systems of writing and teachings, and forbade their initiates from writing what they had learned. After nearly five thousand years of prohibition against the Greeks, they were permitted to enter Egypt for the purpose of their education. First through the Persian invasion and secondly through the invasion of Alexander the Great. The Greeks made the best of their chance to learn all they could about Egyptian culture. After the invasion of Alexander, the royal temples and libraries were plundered and pillaged, and Aristotle's school converted the library of Alexandria into a research center.

"It is Imhotep," said Sir William Osler of John Hopkins University, "who was the real father of medicine. The first figure of a physician to stand out clearly from the mists of antiquity." Imhotep, a multi-level genius, called "God of Medicine, Prince of Peace, and a type of Christ." If Imhotep designed the first "step pyramid" in approximately 2680 B.C. (and he did), how did Pythagoras develop the so-called "Pythagorean Theorem," the formula for the triangle, when he lived 540 B.C., 2100 years after the pyramid was built?

The teachings were solely of the indigenous Africans of the Mystery System commonly in use along the Nile Valley and Great Lakes regions of Northern, Eastern, and Central Africa.

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Religion and Science of the Africans

Religion has been defined as a "propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man," which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and human life. Humans are believed to have evolved through three states of beliefs.

The Age of Magic
The Age of Religion
The Age of Science
For thousands of years before religion was known, man believed in the principles of magic, and strove to put them into practice in his daily life.

In the book Africa Origins of the Major Western Religions, Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan writes:

Paganism, Voodooism, Witchcraft, Fetishism, Black Magic, Obyah, and Oledamare are just a mere sampling of the many names relegated to a few of the righteously sacred religions of solely traditional indigenous African origin. Approximately 750,000 B.C.E., and possibly before this date, the indigenous African people, the so-called Bantus, Bushmen, Pygmies, Hottentots, Negroes, and others bearing such labels of inferiority, have been honoring a 'superior force' or being prior to the recording of history.

The "Twa" (referred to as pygmies), recorded as being the first inhabitants of the world, had the earliest mode of worship recognizable in propitiation of the superhuman power.

What then is the foundation of African Spirituality? Our ancestors believed that man must place the utmost importance in the quest to "know thyself," as the deification of man was highly regarded. The Egyptians (Africans) taught that the soul of man, if liberated from the body, could become God-like. According to this concept, they also held that man would be among the Gods in his lifetime on earth and attain what was called the "Beautific Vision," (changed to "saints" in Christendom).

In Africa spirituality, the name ascribed to God, depended mainly on where in Egypt (Africa) a person lived. Those living in Thebes referred to God as "Ra," in Memphis as "Amon or Amen," and in Nubia as "Ptah." African spirituality was simply a holistic approach to life, possessing no one train of thought to dominate the mind. African spirituality was based on the Osirian doctrine and the principles of Maat. In brief, the central principle of Maat is that the Gods serve humanity as humanity serves the Gods. Maat is divine harmony. It is built upon, and reflection of understanding the celestial realm.

Christian on Christian crime. (Spanish Inquisition)

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Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

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Christianity: Christendom

All of the research gathered on the very difficult subject of Christianity leads one to believe that the foundation of this religion had its origin in ancient Africa with the Twa people of Central Africa 40,000 years ago or longer. These ancient people embraced the same mythological story of a savior being crucified, as is the case of Joshua ben-Pendara, whose name was changed by the Greeks to Jesus Christ.

Joshua ben-Pendara or Jesus, was a native African who was educated in the Egyptian Mystery Schools according to the Mystery System. Moses was educated in the same schools, and in the same manner.

Research also concludes that the concept of Christianity is very similar, if not copied from the Egyptian Mystery System. According to the late A. Powell Davies,

"Originally, it was the earth itself that was the goddess, virginal again with every spring. Her son was the fruit of the earth, born only to die, and in dying, to be implanted once more in the earth, as the seed that would renew the cycle. This was the 'vegetation myth' from which the 'Savior-God' and the 'Mater Dolorosa' was drawn, soon to be elaborated.

The cycle of seasons on earth was viewed to be parallel with the coordinate cycle of the heavens. The concept of the Virgin goddess grew out of the constellation Virgo. Virgo rose in the eastern sky just when Sirius, the star from the east, was signaling the new birth of the Sun. The passage of the horizon line through Virgo was the conception of the Virgin from the Sun. The earth myth was thus blended with the sky myth and both with the memory of ancient heroes, real or legendary, and so came the saga of the Redeemer.

The cave, later to be associated with the birth of Jesus, was earlier the birthplace of Horus, who, when he was grown, would become Osiris, who must die for the salvation of his people. Isis was the Mater Dolorosa."

This ancient myth of the Africans was altered and officially was changed first by the Greeks, and later by the Romans who adopted the religion of the Africans and later changed it. This can best be described by what happened at the Nicene Council (in "Nice") which is now northwest Turkey.

The Nicene Council was held in 325 A.D., by Emperor Constantine to settle a dispute caused by the Arian views of the Trinity. Arius was a priest of Alexandria who believed that Christ is not of the same essence as God, but of similar substance. The Council adopted the so-called NICENE CREED, which declared that God and Christ as God are of one substance. The council also fixed the time of observing Easter, with a question of whether the Christian Easter should be on the same day as the Jewish Passover, or on Sunday. The Nicene Council is where African spirituality was altered to become an Arian religion, and later used to foster slavery and racism throughout the world.

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Constantine I Emperor of the Roman Empire (27 February 272 – 22 May 337)


Africans in the Roman Empire

Many people are not aware of the African influence on the Roman Empire, and the Roman Church. Christianity had become the "State" religion in Rome, African spirituality was completely suppressed and the "Isis Sect" (Osiris, the Father; Horus, the Son; Isis, the Mother of the Son) was no longer practiced openly.

As Christianity came into focus, three African Popes emerged in church history, Pope Victor I; Pope Militiades; and Pope Gelasius. Pope Victor I, came to power in 168 A.D., at a time when the date of Easter was very controversial. The fact that Easter Day is always celebrated on a Sunday is due to the decision of Pope Victor I, the fourteenth in line after Saint Peter. The second African pope was Militiades, a Black priest who was elected the thirty-seventh pope in 311 A.D. Militiades was the first pope to have an official residence. It was under Pope Militiades' reign that Constantine was converted to Christianity. A split came about in the church after Constantine began intervening in church affairs. Militiades died in 314 A.D. and was the last pope to be buried in the famous Catacombs.

The third African pope was Gelasius, who was born in Rome to African parents. He received a superior education. In his youth, Gelasius was a member of the Roman clergy. As pope Gelasius arranged several rules for the clergy, including allowing the use of wine at the Holy Communion.

Galasius has been recognized as one of the most vigorous, resourceful popes in the 5th Century. His writings and sermons have been quoted down through the ages. Gelasius composed many hymns. He also arranged a standard Mass book. Gelasius died in 496 A.D.

It has been said that Rome fell because she threw her doors too wide open by permitting Africans to become State and Church dignitaries. The reality of the fall of Rome is that Roman power weakened when the strength and efficiency of the Roman army deteriorated. The prevailing thought about Africans has been that it was only through the colonizing and Christianizing of Africans that they could hope to become civilized. The facts contained in the records of history, which may be examined, prove that Africans had highly developed civilized nations long before Europe or the Christian church was born. The church today, for example, continues to observe ancient Egyptian (African) practices without their knowledge.

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Spanish Inquisition

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition, was a tribunal established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the medieval inquisition which was under papal control. The Inquisition worked in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts, especially those Jews, Muslims and others coerced on pain of death to adopt the Christian religion. Various motives have been proposed for the monarchs' decision to fund the Inquisition, such as increasing political authority, weakening opposition, suppressing conversos, and profiting from confiscation of the property of convicted heretics. The new body was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II.

Ferdinand II & V
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King of Aragon, Sicily, Naples, and Valencia.

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Isabella I of Castile.

Death tolls

The historian Hernando del Pulgar, contemporary of Ferdinand and Isabella, estimated that the Inquisition had burned at the stake 2,000 people and reconciled another 15,000 by 1490 (just one decade after the Inquisition began).

Modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all processes between 1540 and 1700. This material provides information on about 44,674 judgements, the latter studied by Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras. These 44,674 cases include 826 executions in persona and 778 in effigie. This material, however, is far from being complete - for example, the tribunal of Cuenca is entirely omitted, because no relaciones de causas from this tribunal has been found, and significant gaps concern some other tribunals (e.g. Valladolid). Many more cases not reported to Suprema are known from the other sources (e.g. no relaciones de causas from Cuenca has been found, but its original records has been preserved), but were not included in Contreras-Hennigsen's statistics for the methodological reasons. William Monter estimates 1000 executions between 1530–1630 and 250 between 1630-1730.

The archives of the Suprema only provide information surrounding the processes prior to 1560. To study the processes themselves, it is necessary to examine the archives of the local tribunals; however, the majority have been lost to the devastation of war, the ravages of time or other events. Pierre Dedieu has studied those of Toledo, where 12,000 were judged for offences related to heresy. Ricardo García Cárcel has analyzed those of the tribunal of Valencia. These authors' investigations find that the Inquisition was most active in the period between 1480 and 1530, and that during this period the percentage condemned to death was much more significant than in the years studied by Henningsen and Contreras. Henry Kamen gives the number of about 2,000 executions in persona in the whole Spain up to 1530.

García Cárcel estimates that the total number processed by the Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000. Applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560-1700—about 2%—the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Nevertheless, very probably this total should be raised keeping in mind the data provided by Dedieu and García Cárcel for the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia, respectively. It is likely that the total would be between 3,000 and 5,000 executed.

However, it is impossible to determine the precision of this total, and owing to the gaps in documentation, it is unlikely that the exact number will ever be known.

Inquisition Torture

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The Iron Maiden

The name of this instrument seems to have originated from a sort of sarcophagus that had the face of a maiden carved on its front door, probably with the aim of making this horrible container look more refined. The inside of the sarcophagus was fitted with spikes designed to pierce different parts of the body, but miss the vital organs, so that the victim was kept alive, in an upright position.

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The Branks

The Branks, or Scold's Bridle, is a sort of metal gag, which was principally used on scolding housewives. It was typically fashioned as a cage that locked onto the head, aided by a metal protrusion that fit into the mouth. This tongue-piece was often enhanced with spikes or a rowel (small spiked wheel) to discourage attempts to speak. They appear to have originated in Scotland in the 16th century and passed from there to England and thence to the Americas, although there is some evidence that a type of branks may have been used even earlier

Some were also fitted with a chain to permit securing the wearer in a public place. Ancient houses in Congleton, Cheshire had a hook fixed beside the fireplace to which the town gaoler could fix the community bridle if the wife nagged too much.

Occasionally a bell on a spring was added to herald the approach of the wearer. An example of this type is on display in the Torture Chamber of the Tower of London.

Branks were also used to silence witches to prevent them from chanting or reciting their magic spells.

In the Americas, the brankswere a type of humiliation punishment, while in medieval Europe, they were used more as a torture device.

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The Spanish Spider

This simple tool was used on victims either ice cold or red hot. The number of prongs differed; four to six being the most popular. A person was lifted in the air using the spider. The prongs were attached to any sensitive part of the body, but wouldn’t necessarily cause death.

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The Chair

The victim was strapped in the chair using tight leather straps. The initial pain of hundreds of sharp rusty spikes penetrating the flesh could always be increased by the torturer forcibly pressing the prisoner down or back against the spikes. A modern variation would send electric current through the chair, and thusly the electric chair was born.

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The Rack

The rack was a well used torture device during the inquisition that simply stretched a person out until he/she “confessed” or broke/split.

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The Headcrusher

Headcrushers exerted tremendous force on the head by means of a screw. This could be used to force a confession or as a means of execution. Examples of headcrushers can be seen in the Tower of London.

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The Pear.

The pear was a well used torture device during the inquisition that simply was inserted in a person mouth, rectum, or vagaia and stretched until he/she “confessed” or broke/split.

Can African People Save Themselves?

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Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

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John Henrik Clarke (January 1, 1915 - July 16, 1998

Can African People Save Themselves? By John Henrik Clarke

The question can be answered in many ways, in both the negative and the positive. I have chosen to answer it in the positive, because I am an African person and I have hope for a commitment to every African on the face of the earth. My commitment to mankind comes through African people. If African people are to save themselves, they must first know themselves. They must first know where they have been and what they have been, where they are, and the significance of what they are.

By knowing this, they will get some idea of what they still must be. African people must stop being the market and the dumping ground for shoddy consumer goods of other people. We must, on an international basis, begin to produce the things we wear, the food we eat, the cars we drive, and then train our children to follow our footsteps and complete the mission. The mission will be to be a self-sustained and contained people. At least a third of the Africans in the world can be employed providing goods and services for other Africans.

Once we create an internal economic system, we can relate to any external economic system in the world. No African State can be truly independent when it does not produce the bread it eats nor the safety pin that holds a child's diaper together. No nation can call itself free and self-sustaining when it must order its toilet paper from another nation. Africans must begin to produce every item essential to their survival. Education must be geared to produce the large number of technically trained Africans needed for this task, and the trained must in turn produce other Africans to replace them. No African nation in the world should beg for the skills of another nation or people to sustain itself.

Africans can save themselves by having the will to do so until the job of self-protection and true independence has been achieved.

The salvation of Africa by African people will contribute to the peace and the salvation of the world. This salvation should be the mission of every African on the face of the earth. The completion of the mission and the benefits that will accrue from it will be the legacy that African people can leave for the whole world.

Can African People Save Themselves?
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By Dr. Charles Quist-Adade, PV Special Correspondent, Vancouver, Canada - Thursday 3 December 2009.


In the first of his many part article on the links between Continental Africa and the African Diaspora, Dr. Charles Quist-Adade argued that while the situation of people of African descent seem desperate and hopeless, increasing numbers of black activists, philanthropists, scholars, and ordinary people are doing their share to improve the lives of their brethren on both sides of the Atlantic. What is need is a more organized, and planetary plan and action to make the disjointed efforts meaningful and fruitful.

In this part two, Dr. Quist-Adade reviews the works of late Dr. John Henrik Clarke, the great African American pan-Africanist historian and intellectual, with particular emphasis on his pamphlet entitled Can African People Save Themselves?


Commentary

Africa and the Diaspora Part II By Charles Quist-Adade, PhD

Dr. Clarke was an historian with a sense of mission. That mission was the liberation of the African race from oppression, racism and subjugation. A master narrator, a griot par excellence, he was also an intellectual giant with an astute sense of purpose. That purpose was to fuse theory with practice. For, as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah put it, ideas without action were blind and action without ideas was empty. Thus throughout his works, Dr. Clarke emphasized the marriage of ideas and action. His pamphlet Can African People Save Themselves is no exception.

While he was, one would dare say, obsessed with the idealistic dream of unity of the African race, he planted his feet firmly in reality, on earth. Thus, it is his sense of optimism and total trust in the potential of his people to save themselves from the trilogy of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism that impelled him to answer the question: Can Africans Save Themselves? in the affirmative.

He wrote: “The question can be answered in many ways, both negative and positive. I have chosen to answer it positive, because I am an African person and I hope for a commitment to every African on the face of the earth. My commitment to mankind comes first through my commitment to African people. If African people are to save themselves, they must first know themselves. They may first know where they have been and what they have been, where they are and the significance of what they are….Mainly because I believe in African people and have worked toward their salvation and their definition in the world most of my adult years of my life.”

But he was pragmatic enough to realize how difficult African unity could be. That is why he attacked the retrogressive and defeatist tendencies of some of our people, the greed, selfishness, pompousness of some African leaders.

In his incisive rendition of the “African story,” Dr. Clarke traced Africa’s predicament to European activities in Africa and prescribed roadmaps out of Africa’s physical and mental slavery.

He wrote: “In the last 500 years, African people and most Asian people have been reacting to the European presence in the world and responding to Europeans’ desire to control most of the land and resources in the world.” Europeans, he said, came out of the Middle Ages “people-poor, land-poor and resource-poor.” One-third of the population of Europe had been lost through famines and plagues. Europeans were “angry and hungry.” When they rediscovered the skill of longitude and latitude and became to explore the lands beyond their shores, they were searching for a way to rebuild their economy and strengthen their power in the world.

Europeans, he charged, created the slave trade, the colonial system and, began to change the world dramatically and forever. They declared war on the cultures of all the people in the world, except Europeans, making the rest of the world their servants’ quarters.

The African independence explosion which was ignited by Ghana’s independence on March 6, 1957, the anti-colonial wars in Asia, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s and the fight for a Caribbean federation around the same time, was a collective revolt in their servants’ quarters. This revolt challenged the world as designed by Europeans. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans not only colonized most of the world, they colonized most of the information regarding the world. Part of the war on the cultures of non-European people was the colonization of imagery, especially the image of God. Most of the people in Asia and in Africa under European domination dared to address God in a language of their own creation or look at God in the image created by their own imagination.

Colonialism and the Conquest of the Mind Dr. Clarke therefore called on Africans to pay proper academic attention and serious attention, in general to the impact of the rise of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries on the mind of the non-European world. Europe’s greatest achievement during this period, acknowledged, was not enslavement and the military conquest of most of the world, the conquest of the minds of most of the people of the world.

European conquest of the non-European world was achieved not by mere brute force or “brawn power” but largely by “brain power.” He wrote: “By the end of the 19th century, Europe effectively controlled or influenced most of the geography and people of the earth. In spite of the military advantage, the Europeans mainly having guns and their victims mainly without guns, there still were not enough Europeans in the world to have effectively taken over most of the world. What they did not achieve militarily, they achieved through propaganda. He called this achievement the manifestation of the “evil genius of Europe.”

When Europe found itself and shook off the lethargy of the Middle Age, after the disaster of the Crusades, they began to propagate certain concepts that reverberate to this day that are basically untrue. The most damaging of these concepts are:

1. That the world was waiting in darkness for the Europeans to bring the light of culture and civilization. As a matter of fact, in most cases, the truth was the contrary. The Europeans put out more light and destroyed more civilizations and cultures than they built.

2. Another European concept that is still with us, doing its maximum damage, is that the European concept of god is the only concept worthy of serous religious attention. In most of the world where the Europeans expanded, especially in Africa, they deprived the people of the right to call on God in a language of their creation and to look at God through their own imagination. They inferred or said outright that no figure that did not resemble a European could by god or the representative of god.

3. The European concept that the invader and conqueror is a civilizer. Conquerors are never benevolent. In nearly all cases they spread their way of life at the expense of the conquered people.

4. The myth of the European as discoverer is still with us 500-years after Christopher Columbus’ alleged discovery of America. This is one of the most prevailing myths in history, because Christopher Columbus discovered absolutely nothing. Conversely, he did help to set in motion a pattern of European expansion, slavery and exploitation that left its scar on most of mankind.

Dr. Clarke emphatically called on Africans to “regain their self-confidence and image of God that they had originally conceived him or her to be.” To be continued.

About the author: Dr. Charles Quist-Adade is a Sociology professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He specializes in race and ethnic relations, globalization, and social justice.

An Overview of Black History

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Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

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north entrance of Palace of Knossos

MINOAN CRETE AFRICAN INFLUENCED FORERUNNER OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATIONS



"The first civilization of Europe was established on the island of Crete. It is called the Minoan Culture, after King Minos, an early legendary ruler of the island. The ancestors of the Cretans were natives of Africa, a branch of Western Ethiopians." --John G. Jackson

Minoan Crete, the forerunner of Greek civilization, is the earliest known European high-culture. Although modest in size (170 miles east to west, thirty-five miles north to sourth), Crete exercised immeasurable influence on the Aegean archipelago, Western Asia and the Greek mainland. Throughout Crete the vestiges of complex palaces, paved highways, aqueducts, terra-pipes for drainage, and irrigation canals provide plentiful proof of Minoan ingenuity in the areas of scientific and technical innovation. The Minoans possessed registed trademarks, uniform weights and measures, calendrical systems based on precise astronomical observations and advanced writing systems. Interestingly enough, there were few fortifications on the island.

British archaeologist Arthur Evans (1851-1941), who conducted excavations on the island, was convinced of African migrations to ancient Crete and noted "the multiplicity of these connections with the old indigenous race of the opposite African coast." The late African-American cultural historian John G. Jackson (1907-1993) advocated the view the Minoan civilization was rooted in Africa, and believed that the ancestors of the Minoans "dwelt in the grasslands of North Africa before that area dried up and became a great desert. As the Saharan sands encroached on their homeland, they took to the sea, and in Crete and neighboring islands set up a maritime culture."

The research team of C.H. and H.B. Hawes, the latter of whom, like Evans, conducted important archaeological excavations in Crete, support John Jackson's argument, and noted that: "Anthropologists are inclined to the view that the Neolithic people of Crete were immigrants, and probably came from North Africa."

Arthur Evans was convinced of North African migrations to Neolithic Crete. He pointed out that:

"The multiplicity of these connections with the old indigenous race of the opposite African coast, and which we undoubtedly have to deal with in the pre dynastic population of the Nile Valley, can in fact be hardly explained on any other hypothesis than that of an actual settlement in Southern Crete."

Historian H.R. Hall, also Oxford trained, shared Evans' position on the early population of Minoan Crete:

"While the majority of the original Neolithic inhabitants of Crete probably came from Anatolia, another element may well have come in oared boats from the opposite African coast, bringing with them to the southern plan of Messara the seeds of civilization that, transplanted to the different conditions of Crete, developed into the great Minoan culture, a younger more brilliant, and less long-lived sister of that of Egypt."

Whether the Minoan culture was more brilliant than that of Egypt is highly questionable at best, but on the other points Hall seems to just about to hit the mark. Evans, again, indeed considered Egypt and Libya as the springboards of Minoan civilization; so much so that he structured his own Minoan chronology on that of dynastic Egypt. He was particularly struck by the similarities in the contents of the of the tombs of the ancient Minoans and Egyptians:

"So numerous, in fact, are the points, of comparison presented by the contents of these early interments with those of pre dynastic Egypt that, far-fetched as the conclusion might appear at first sight, I was already some years since constrained to put forth the suggestion that about the time of the conquest of the lower Nile Valley by the first historic dynasty some part of the older population had actually settled in this southern foreland of Crete."

Gordon Childe also commented on the relations between Crete and pre dynastic Egypt:

"At least on the Mesara, the great plain of southern Crete facing Africa, Minoan Crete's indebtedness to the Nile is disclosed in the most intimate aspects of its culture. Not only do the forms of early Minoan stone vases, the precision of the lapidaries' technique and the aesthetic selection of variegated stones as his materials carry on the the pre dynastic tradition, Nilotic religious customs such as the use of the sistrum, the wearing of amulets in the forms of legs, mummies and monkeys, and statuettes plainly derived from Gerzean `block figures,' and personal habits revealed by depilatory tweezers of the Egyptian shape and stone unguent palettes from the early tombs and, later, details of costumes such as the penis-sheath and loin-cloth betoken something deeper than the external relations of commerce."

Cretan/Egyptian contacts pick up again in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. During the reigns of Egyptian monarchs Makare Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (1504-1447 B.C.) the people of Crete, whom the Egyptians called Keftiu, were graphically portrayed as tribute bearers on the walls of the tombs of the Egyptian nobility.

SOURCES:
African Presence In Early Europe, Edited by Ivan Van Sertima
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Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (26 January 1935 - 25 May 2009)

Man, God And Civilization, by John G. Jackson
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John Glover Jackson (April 1, 1907 – October 13, 1993)

Crete and Phoenicia


The ancient Crete civilization has been referred to as the Minoan culture, named after King Minos. The ancestors of the Cretans were natives of Africa, a colony of western Ethiopians, who dwelt in the grasslands of North Africa before that area became a desert. As the Sahara expanded, these Africans took to the sea, and in Crete and the neighboring islands, set up maritime culture.

By 1700 B.C., this civilization had reached its peak. The Sea Kings of Crete at Knossus ruled over the region that became the cultural center of the eastern Mediterranean.

The Palace of Minos contained a throne room, a chapel, storerooms, and bathrooms with terra cotta bathtubs, fitted with drains quite modern in construction. They were made of faucet-joined pipes superior to any known to the later Romans and unequaled until the nineteenth century.

The Minoan palace royalty was but a replica of Egyptian royalty, and the very name of Minos seem to be only a slight alteration of the name of the first Egyptian Pharaoh, Aha Mena or Menes.

In 1420 B.C., the eruption of the volcano on the Santorini Island had a catastrophic effect on the people of Crete. All the Islands in the sea of Aegea and Crete were covered with a layer of volcanic dust ten centimeters thick. A cloud covered the area for several days and the tidal wave (tsunami) destroyed the entire coastline. The cities of Cnossus, Mallia, Hagia, Amonisos, Gournia, and Triada were destroyed. The gas fumes poisoned the population, causing illnesses such as bronchitis and digestive disorders.

After the explosion on the Santorini Island, most of the surviving population is thought to have moved from Crete to continental Greece and Asia Minor.

Phoenicia and Greece proper are believed to have benefited from the invasion of the Cretans after the Santorini eruption and the culture and civilization that came with the new inhabitants.

The Phoenicians were known as the first great mariners and merchants of the ancient world, who adapted many of the cultural elements of the Egyptians. We first hear of these people as dwellers on the shores of the Persian Gulf. And later, they colonized the land of Canaan. Hence, calling themselves Canaanites. These mariners manufactured a famous dye called Royal Purple, which the Greeks later referred to as Phoenix, from the term Phoenicians.

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Greece and Rome

The Greeks are known for their contributions to science, mathematics, and philosophy. Yet they knew nothing about any of this before studying these concepts from the Egyptians. Aristotle acknowledged that his own teachings came from Egypt. All the known theories of Pythagoras, Plato, and Democritus came from the education they received in the Egyptian temples.

Egypt, from very early times had been the University of Greece. It had been visited, according to tradition, by Orpheus and Homer. Most of the so-called Greek intellectuals reportedly made the voyage to Egypt. It was regarded as a pilgrimage to the cradle land of their mythology.

Why then, did the Greeks, and later the Romans, find if necessary to claim that so-called "Greek Philosophy" had something other than an African origin—an origin that goes back thousands and thousands of years? Perhaps the Greeks knew that for a nation to establish itself as a world power, it could not accept and maintain in its original form, the teachings of a people just conquered. Throughout history, a conquering nation has always taken the treasures of those conquered and incorporated the best of their ideologies, i.e., math, science, religion, architecture, etc., into their own society.

Consider if you will Alexander the so-called Great, and his partners in crime, who looted and burned the libraries containing all of the books from the ancient Mystery System. The Mystery System of Egypt, in connection with the God Osiris, was represented in all Egyptian temples by the symbol of an "Open Eye." This symbol also forms part of the decoration of all Masonic lodges of the modern world and dates back to 5000 B.C., or earlier. This same symbol was represented by the Egyptians as a god with eyes all over his, known as the "All Seeing Eye."

The Greeks' necessity to change from an African to Greek philosophy becomes quite clear. As the Greek kings began to dominate the Egyptian Empire, the knowledge and institutions of the ancient Mysteries had to be corrupted in order for the Greeks to gain control of the Egyptian people.

The name of the continent was changed from Alkebu-lan to Africa, and the names of the countries also changed, mainly because the Greeks could not pronounce some of the names, i.e., Ta-Merry or KEMET (Kimit, Kmt), became Egypt. The titles of special events and places were also changed, for once the memory is erased, domination and control can begin.

Herodotus, the "Father of European History," received his basic and advanced education from the indigenous Egyptians, who were Africans, studying the seven liberal arts and sciences in the Mystery System in Egypt. Herodotus had to translate his new knowledge to the understanding of his fellow Greek citizens in terminology and sounds that they could comprehend. Also, the Greek alphabet did not contain a sufficient numbers of characters to produce certain indigenous African sounds.

The Greeks gained a great deal of knowledge from the Egyptians. This enabled the Greeks to give the world their free thought, intellectual tolerance, metaphysics, logic, theoretical science, and contributions in education, art, literature, and politics.

The reign of Julius Caesar marked the end of Greek civilization, and the beginning of Roman domination. Caesar was then virtually master of the world. After the death of both Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, and the harsher aspects of Roman control fell on Egypt.


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THEY STOLE OUR HISTORY AS THEIR OWN!


This review is from: Stolen Legacy

ORIGINS OF AMEN


What is racism? Is bigotry and racism just a White Thing? By Thomas Jackson. Shows the hypocrisy of the 'anti-racism' movement.

In the beginning

The subjugation of Africa and its peoples began in earnest with the control of our minds which to date has reaped surplus dividend to outsiders, especially the European colonisers.

The basis of African emancipation or the much-talked about renaissance (including the call for a continental African union), must of necessity, begin with the decolonisation of our minds through the restoration of our history.

The truth is we have been educated, and still being educated, by the very people who have reasons to write Africa and its peoples out of the history of humanity.

The re-writing of African history would at least empower the future generation with a clear and true perception of their forebears, hence of themselves. Such restoration is by itself service to humanity, for the historical consciousness of humanity has suffered for nearly 600 years of deliberate distortion by Western scholars and writers.

This was achieved through falsifying, primarily, the history of the great African civilisation of Kemet (also known as Ancient Egypt). For years, Western historians have tried to divorce Negro Africans from Kemetic civilisation, while attributing those accomplishments to a race of people whom they called Hamites (Indo-Europeans who came from Asia). But, in fact, there is no such race in Asia.

The `Hamitic myth' was invented in the 1920s by Charles G. Seligman, an English anthropologist and author of Races of Africa. According to him: `Negroes were too primitive to be capable of any advanced thought'. He claimed that Kemet was created by Hamites whom he regarded as `Caucasians [belonging] to the same branch of mankind as almost all Europeans.'

Seligman was in fact continuing from where Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, professor at Gottingen University in Germany, had left. In 1795, Blumenbach had put forward the `superiority of Caucasians', a term he coined for Europeans in his classification of human races. Incidentally, he included Egyptians among his `Caucasians.' This myth has held sway in academia for over 200 years.

But the Ancient Egyptians called themselves Kemmui, which meant black, written in their language Medu-Neter (or hieroglyphics as a block of wood charred at the ends).

For early Greek historians, the idea of distorting the history of Kemet was impractical, for they were well aware that the birth of science, mathematics, philosophy, etc, was too ancient in Kemet to contest, and would have been absurd to advance a contrary opinion.

This is evident in the entire Greek account of Ancient Egypt, which glorify the civilisation of Kemet. It was, after all, in Kemet that the Greeks got their education in practically every conceivable field of knowledge.

In effect, there was never a `Greek miracle'. What is now known as `the Greek miracle' was prepared by millennia of work in the arts and sciences in the very bosom of what was later misnamed the `Dark Continent', work done by Negro Africans.

Inherent in this distortion is a flawed principle that implicitly admits the truth of the Negro-Egyptian civilisation, hence the very need for concealment.

`We can't beat them since we weren't there at the beginning, so let's deny it.' This is what I call Diop-mbra (the Diopian principle named after the great Senegalese historian and writer, Cheik Anta Diop).

This principle saturated 18th century European consciousness. For Europe is aware that almost half of the recorded history of humanity had passed before anyone in `Europe' could read or write.

Greek civilisation and its entire intellectual output, which are accepted today as the source of European civilisation, are directly located in Kemet, the great African civilisation which occurred along the River Hapi (European name, Nile).

As Sir E.A. Wallis Budge attests in his book, Egypt: `The prehistoric native of Egypt, both in the old and new Stone Ages, was African, and there is every reason for saying that the earliest settlers came from the South. There are many things in the manners and customs and religions of historic Egyptians that suggest that the original home of their ancestors was in a country in the neighbourhood of Uganda and Punt.'

Europe's awareness of this fact was to fabricate the history of Africa and erect a false edifice, which has to be maintained at all cost.

Today, based on this edifice, there is a school of thought that says since Africans have no history of any real significance to the rest of the world, we are a non-essential factor for the advancement of the human race. In other words, we are expendable and disposable commodities in the context of human advancement.

Whether it is an IMF loan, UN programme, nuclear testing in the Sahara Desert, Aids, dislocation of Africans in Brazil, USA, Papua New Guinea, Diego Garcia or East Timor; or genetically modified crops, the principle of Africa's expendability is adhered to with religious zeal.

Remember America's current treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, when chief economist at the World Bank, felt no guilt in proposing that toxic waste should be dumped on the `poorest' countries because their populations were not as valuable, in dollar terms, as the inhabitants of the rich countries (see NA, Sept p28-29). When this was leaked to The Economist (London) and Summers was challenged, his answer was that it had been an `intellectual exercise' with which he wanted to engage his colleagues to whom he had sent the memo.

In recent days, the CNN (the American cable channel) has been advertising one of its programmes in these words: `You are what you know'. Stretching this to the African condition, it means we are breeding an inferiority complex in ourselves through believing the manufactured history of insignificance.

It is therefore no surprise that Africa and its peoples have moved from the `dark continent' in the last century to a `hopeless continent' at the beginning of this new century.

The `dark continent' was a necessary pretext to civilise (which really meant, to loot, maim, enslave and plunder); and the `hopeless continent' an acknowledgement of success of the latter. In effect, self-absolvement and a licence for future `noble and compassionate deeds' as usual.

Kemet (aka Ancient Egypt)

This is the civilisation that rose, for over 3,000 years, along the River Hapi (Nile to foreigners), a river whose sources rise from the deep valleys of the East African Moon Mountains.

In fact, Ancient Egypt was preceded by an earlier Negro civilisation called Ta-Seti, which meant `Land of the Bow'.

In his brilliant, new book, Classical Splendour: Roots of Black History (published recently in London), Robin Walker confirms:

`Ancient Egypt is the first major civilisation in Africa for which records are abundant. It was not, however, Africa's first civilisation. That honour goes to the ancient Nubian kingdom of Ta-Seti, which encompassed the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of Egypt.

`This region,' Walker continues, `is also called `Ethiopia' in some of the literature, and `Kush/Cush' in others. In 1980, Prof Bruce Williams, the director of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, published the results of excavations that his team started in the Nubian city of Qustul in 1962. The New York Times broke the story on 1 March 1979, carrying an article on its front page [headlined] Nubian Monarchy Called Oldest.

`The evidence recovered suggested that a dynasty of 12 pharaohs ruled over Ta-Seti, about 300 years before the First Dynasty of Ancient Egypt was established. From the royal tombs, five styles of pottery were found, showing different designs... Dr Williams also found examples of early hieroglyphic writing on some of the pottery, the oldest known evidence of a writing system anywhere in the world.'

Ta-Seti

Available records show that this Nubian civilisation began from 3800 to 3100 BC. Its seat was at Napata, its temples and pyramids can still be found in modern day Sudan and Egypt. It was Ta-Seti which gave birth to the first dynastic period of Kemet, providing all the necessary civilising elements, including the first 20 alphabets (Meroe hieroglyphics).

As Robin Walker, again, confirms in his book: `Ideas for civilisation and culture spread from Nubia to its northern neighbour, Egypt (or Kemet). Pharoah Narmer (called Aha Mena or Menes) unified the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty. The records credit him with the building of Memphis, its ancient capital and administrative centre. It was built near the boundary that originally divided the two lands.'

Records show that the progenitors of Ancient Egypt (Kemet) were of indigenous African Negroid stock. They called their kings Nesu-biti or Hem.of (meaning His Majesty). This was during the native period which some historians now call the Archaic and Old Kingdoms (3100-2100BC). But in the New Kingdom (1500-1087BC) the kings were called Per ?? (meaning Great House) which was later corrupted into Pharoah by foreigners, mainly Asians and Assyrians, to refer to the Ancient Egyptian kings on account of the great buildings in which they lived.

North Africa

In their attempt to whiten Egyptian civilisation, Western historians have found it necessary to blatantly ignore the `many stupendous primeval monuments in Sudan and Ethiopia that so clearly proclaim a civilisation earlier than that of Ancient Egypt.'

These historians have misled the world into believing that Ancient Egyptian civilisation emerged from the shores of Europe through Greece. This is in spite of the fact that all the accounts by ancient Greeks themselves confirm that black Africans had lived throughout the length and breadth of Africa (including north of the Sahara) for as long as the continent had been known to the world.

These facts have been well documented and attested by Persian and Byzantine historians of the 5th century, who wrote that the people of North Africa were black, until North Africa fell to the Roman Empire, leading to an influx into North Africa of Roman and other European tribes.

In fact, Hannibal (247-183 BC) who extended his rule from Carthage (Tunisia) to Rome and Spain, and who has been so `whitened' by Europeans, issued a coin after he defeated the Romans at Trasmere which showed a Negro African on one side and an elephant on the other (Polybius, Book 3).

Ernest Babelon, a numismatist, (a person who studies or collects coins) attested: `The Negro [on Hannibal's] coin has a definite characteristic that leaves no doubt of the ethnographic intention of the engraver. He has rings in his ears, flat nose, thick lips, hair arranged in rows of knots. I think the effigy on the coin was Hannibal himself.'

Europe

It is in fact easier to prove that Ancient Egypt was a Negroid civilisation than Europe's claim to Greek civilisation. For, there was no recorded history of Europe in ancient times.

The Europe we know today was divided by the frontier formed by the two rivers, Rhine and Danube. South and west of the frontier lay the civilised world, and north and east the barbarians of whom the then civilised world (principally Africa) knew almost nothing about.

At best, at the twilight of the Neolithic Age, Europeans were dwelling in caves. When pastoral existence began in Europe, Africans had, for centuries, harvested corn, made wine, wrote philosophical treatises, studied the stars, built complex buildings, produced mystics and divine incarnations (sages, gurus, prophets), and laid down the first creed of the salvation of the soul.

The French writer, Count Constantin de Volney in his important book, The Ruins of Empires, clearly states that the black people of Kemet were the first to `attain the physical and moral sciences necessary to civilised life'.

Wrote Volney: `It was, then, on the borders of the Upper Nile, among a Black race of men, that was organised the complicated system of worship of the stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the labours of agriculture; and this first worship, characterised by their adoration under their own forms and national attributes, was simple proceeding of the human mind.'

When a few nomadic communities banded to settle in Rome around 1000 BC, the African civilisation was more than 2,000 years old ? its religion, philosophers, scientists, etc, were already ancient.

When the Greek pantheon was in rudimentary stage ? the Olympiad yet to be held; Hinduism yet to appear, Gautama Buddha yet to be born around 560 BC, Prophet Mohammed yet to be born; when Abraham journeyed to Kemet for refuge entering with 70 shepherds and 12 patriarchal families who left after 400 years as a 600,000 strong Jewish community, acquiring all the elements of its future tradition (including monotheism and circumcision), the pyramids of Kemet were already a collector's item.

Land of the Blacks

The Greeks, credited with European civilisation, themselves confirmed ? right from Herodotus, Isocrates to Plutarch ? that the Egyptians `were very black' and had `woolly hair'.

These eyewitness accounts were made when Egyptian civilisation had already been in existence for, at least, 2,000 years. The Egyptians themselves stated in various texts, notably the Edfu text ? an inscription still found in the Temple at Edfu ? that: `Several thousand years ago, we were led by our king from the South to settle up the Nile valleys.'

Another account, the Papyrus of Hunefer (the philosopher and high priest), which is now exhibited in the British Museum in London, states: `We came from the beginning of the Nile where God Hapi dwells at the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon'. The furthest point of `the beginning' of the River Hapi (Nile) is in Uganda.

Queen Maatkare Hatshepsut (1778-1458 BC, 18th Dynasty), the daughter of King Tutmoses II, wrote in her tomb:

`I have restored what was cast down. I have built up what was uncompleted. Since the Asiatics arrived in this land, and the barbarians were among them, destroying buildings, while they governed, not knowing Ra.'

Hatshepsut sent a fleet of ships to visit Punt (which covered the entire region called East Africa today, comprising Uganda, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania), the land which the Egyptians themselves referred to as `the sacred land'.

Queen Hatshepsut was, in effect, honouring the long-held African tradition of paying homage to the ancestral homestead. Nowhere in this greatly detailed account found in her Temple, was it said that it was a military expedition. The delegation was jointly headed by Prince Nehusi, Senmut (the chief architect) and Tuuti (the treasurer).

This time-honoured journeys were in practice as far back as the 5th Dynasty (2510-2460 BC), from the days of King Asakaf to King Pepi II, when the journeys were made inland, affirming an earlier African civilisation that preceded Ancient Egypt.

The Nubians of Sudan are today accepted as the ancestors of black Africans to the point where Negro and Nubian is synonymous both in antiquity and modern times.

Ethiopians and Copts are two Negroid groups subsequently mixed with different Mediterranean strains ? this fact is well established and undisputed by historians.

The Negro of the Nile Delta inbred gradually with Mediterraneans who continually infiltrated Egypt at a time when all the major Kemetic civilisations had been in place, from the First Dynasty to the 12th Dynasty.

The Rosetta Stone

During the 18th century, there was a renewed interest by Europe in Egyptian gold and artefacts. This made possible the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone (currently in the British Museum) which was found in 1799 at the mouth of the Nile by members of Napoleon's expedition.

On the Stone was a decree issued by Ptolemy Ephihanes V in Greek and Medu-Neter which was deciphered by the Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion who, in turn, while still in Egypt, wrote about what he saw in the temples to his brother Jaques Joseph Champollion-Figeac. Jean-Francois died in 1832. His brother, Figeac, who later became the icon of European Egyptology, published the full text of Jean-Francois' letter in 1883.

Europeans were baffled to discover a first hand account by the Ancient Egyptians themselves, pointing to Negro Egypt. It was at the same time that Europe was enslaving Negro Africans and sending them to the Americas. As a result, Europe could not admit to a Negro Egypt, the source of ancient Greek civilisation, even if the Ancient Egyptians themselves had affirmed this.

Figeac's publication of Jean-Francois' correspondence established a major piece of evidence from an European which should render all suppositions unnecessary regarding Negro Egypt.

As early as 233 BC (18th Dynasty), the Egyptians continuously represented the two groups of their own race in a manner that could not possibly be confused by anybody. Significantly the order in which the four races then known to the Egyptians (Kemmui, Nahasi, Namou, Tahmou) are consistently arranged in relation to the god, Horus, also bestowed on them their social hierarchy.

Jean-Francois Champollion affirmed this in his letter to his brother, Champollion-Figeac:

`Right in the valley of Biban-el Moluk, we admired like all previous visitors the astonishing freshness of the painting and the fine sculpture of tombs. I had a copy of the peoples represented on the bas-relief.

`According to legend, they wished to represent the inhabitants of Egypt and those of foreign lands. Thus we have before our eyes the images of various races of man known to the Egyptians, established during that early epoch. Men led by Horus, belong to four races; the first, the one closest to the god, has a dark red colour, a well proportioned body, kind face, long braided hair, slightly aquiline nose, designated men par excellence.

`There can be no uncertainty about the racial identity of the man who comes next: he belongs to the black race designated Nahasi.

`The third man present a very different aspect; his skin colour borders on yellow or tan; he has a strong aquiline nose, thick, black pointed beard and wears a short garment of varied colours; these called Namou.

`Finally, the last one, what we call the flesh-coloured, a white skin of the most delicate shade, a nose straight or slightly arched, blue eyes, blond or red bearded, tall stature, very slender and clad in hairy ox-skin, a veritable savage tattooed on various parts of his body, he is called Tahmou.

`I hasten to seek the tableau corresponding to this one in the other royal tombs and, as a matter of fact I found several, convincing me of that fact that the Egyptians were representing namely: (1) Egyptian, (2) Black Africans, (3) Asians, (4) finally (and I am ashamed to say so, since our race is the last and most savage in the series) Europeans, who in those remote epoch, frankly did not cut too fine a figure in the world.

`This manner of viewing the tableau is accurate, because on the other tombs, the same generic names reappear always in the same order. We find there, Egyptians and Africans represented in the same way, which could not be otherwise; but Namou [the Asian] and Tahmou [Indo-Europeans] present significant and curious variants.

`I certainly did not expect, on arriving here to find sculptures that could serve as vignettes for history of primitive Europeans, if ever one has the courage to attempt it. Nevertheless there is something flattering and consoling in seeing them, since they make us appreciate the progress we have subsequently achieved.'

Even the gods were painted black

The Ancient Egyptians went as far as painting the images of their gods in coal-tar black. There are records showing that early Christendom worshipped and converted the Kemetic `devine mother' Aset (Isis) and Horus, her son, as blacks until the era of the European Renaissance.

Jocely Rhys, an English scholar affirms: `In catacombs of Rome, Black statutes of this Egyptian devine mother and infant still survive from early Christendom, which they converted to the Virgin Mary.'

Will Duran (Story of Civilisation IV) also wrote: `Statutes of Isis and Horus were renamed Mary and Jesus; the Roman Lupercalia and the Feast of Isis became the Nativity; the Saturnalia became Christmas celebration.'

For artistic and ceremonial purposes, the Ancient Egyptians painted themselves in dark red for men and yellow for women. There are numerous existing paintings in the Temple of Ramese III, and the famous Abu Simbel paintings where the Ancient Egyptians and Nubians are painted solid black.

Scientifically speaking, there is no dark-red race. The colour of the two Negroes closest to Horus are at best an expression of two Negro shades. In modern-day Sudan, wrestlers paint their skin red and yellow for ceremonial purposes.

The Ancient Egyptians did not differentiate themselves from the Nubians as a separate race. When foreigners, principally the Assyrians (Syria), Persians (Iran) and the Hykos (Indo-Europeans) invaded Egypt, the natives sought refuge in Nubia (Sudan) to drive them out, it was as natural a kinship as Britain's special relationship with America.

It was also an `unwritten law' since inheritance was matrilineal in Kemet to the extent that all foreign usurpers to the throne sought to marry into the royal household to legitimatise their claim by having `golden blood', not `blue blood', and having the `golden Horus name' ? an ancestral name legitimising the royal strain.

Ptolemy Lago, the first of the Roman rulers, married into the royal African household to legitimise his claim. Julius Caesar did the same and had a child with Netermut Cleopatra. Mark Antony later abandoned his wife for Netermut Cleopatra for the same reasons. In effective, all the so-called Greeco-Roman rulers in the dying days of the Kemet civilisation (304-30 BC, the Ptolemaic Period) were all Africans.

The spirit world

The capability to ascribe the universe to one supreme being (monotheism), and to embrace the gods, (polythesism, which the Europeans called idiol worshipping) and divine kingship, had all been in practice by the Akan of Ghana, the Ife of Nigeria and others, long before the Europeans arrived in West Africa on their civilising mission in the 14th century.

The Dogon of Mali knew how to determine mathematically and graphically the position of the sun on the ecliptic just as their great ancestors had done in the Nile Valley.

The essential core of the Ancient Egyptian civilisation is spirituality, which permeated every aspect of life including science; hence Atom, the appellation of Ra the Almighty, corresponds to the atom in physics of today.

Modern Western science has confirmed beyond doubt that atom particles contain elements of light which the Ancient Egyptians portrayed as a ray of the sun, and also makes the `plants grow green' (Great Hymns of Aton-King Akhenaton). Yet science, in the hands of the Western world, has become inimical to the spirit.

This centrality of the spirit, being embodied in all aspects of the living is abundantly clear in Black Africa, to the point that superstition became synonymous with Africans.

A colossal volume of books (payprus) on practically every subject has survived from the Kemetic civilisation, which are currently in the possession of Western scholars and institutions.

The very calendar of 365 days, the division of the day to 12-hour cycles, all created by Kemetic scientists and astrologers 4,000 years ago, based on the movement of the sun, are still in use today, as if they were invented by European scientists.

Maheru Imhotep Ra (2980 BC), mystic, poet and scientist, who lived in the court of King Djoser, is the father of medicine, not Hippocrates as the world has been led to believe. Imhotep Ra diagnosed and treated diseases, and wrote over 200 books on bladder, liver, skin colour, eyes, abdomen, and tracked the circulation of blood 2,000 years before it was known in Europe ? long before Hippocrates was born.

The Greeks

The Greeks travelled to Kemet in search of the knowledge of ancient African mystic systems.

In effect, the legacy of scientific and philosophic knowledge was wrongly credited to the Greeks. It was then handed to the Romans who passed it on to Renaissance Europe, and on to the modern world.

After nearly 3,000 years of prohibition against the Greeks, they were allowed to enter Kemet to study. This was made possible, first, through the Persian invasion and, secondly, through the invasion of Alexander the Great (from the 6th century BC) to the death of Aristotle (322 BC).

The Greeks took every opportunity to learn all they could, receiving direct instructions from the African high priests. When Egypt came under Roman control, they looted and ransacked the great libraries of Egypt.

This looting of the libraries was the genesis of Western scientific, philosophic and technical knowledge. This continued when Napoleon's invading army arrived in Egypt in 1798 AD.

Democritus, another Greek historian, accused his fellow Greek, Anaxagoras, of having `stolen' the Egyptian mystical teachings on the sun and moon, and passed it round as his.

Socrates, one of the greatest Greek scholars, while awaiting condemnation in prison for teaching African wisdom, and also for his condemnation of corruption, admitted to his pupils for plagiarising (if not word for word) the work of the African philosopher, Aesop, the Ethiopian (560 BC).

Said Socrates: `I availed myself of some of Aesop's fables which were ready to hand and familiar to me and I versified the first of them that suggested themselves'.

Homer, 850 BC, in his Odyssey IV, praised Ancient Egypt `where the doctors are the first scientists of the world'.

The death of Aristotle, who had inherited a vast quantity of books from the libraries of Egypt through his friendship with Alexander the Great, was naturally followed by the death of Greek philosophy which degenerated into a system of borrowed ideas, known by themselves as eclecticism.

The compilation of Greek philosophy ? if not at the instigation of Aristotle himself, certainly students of his school ? was not authorised by the Greek government which persecuted the Greek philosophers since it considered philosophy as African and foreign to Greek sensibilities, and thus could lead to the corruption of the youth.

As a result, Anaxagoras was indicted and fled from prison to exile in Ionia. Socrates was also executed for exhibiting some of the qualities mandatory for initiation into ancient African mystical teachings. Plato was also persecuted and fled to Megara for refuge.

In short, what some have called the `pseudo-science' of African-American scholars of black history is not pseudo-science after all.

`Insofar as Egypt [Kemet] is the distant mother of Western sciences,' wrote Cheik Anta Diop in Civilization or Barbarism, `most of the ideas that we call foreign are oftentimes nothing but mixed up, reversed, modified, elaborated images of the creations of our African ancestors, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, dialectics, the theory of being, the exact sciences, arithmetic, geometry, mechanical engineering, astronomy, medicine, literature (novel, poetry, drama), architecture, the arts, etc. One can see then how fundamentally improper is the notion, so often repeated, of the importation of foreign ideologies in Africa. It stems from a perfect ignorance of the African past.'

THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN INDIA:

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Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

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African Civilization in Western Asia

The earliest civilization in Western Asia were the Sumerians, followed by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, all of them preceding the Chaldeans. The Sumerians have been described as a black faced people, pictured on monuments as beardless with shaven heads. There has been much confusion as to where the Sumerians original homeland was. However, through much research, anthropologists have proven that they are of African heritage.

According to author, Drusilla D. Houston, Arabia was originally settled by two distinct races, an earlier Cushite Ethiopian race and a later Semitic race. In an article on Arabian states, written in Encyclopedia Britannica, the institutions of Yemen, Hadrabut, Oman, and adjoining districts point to an African origin.

Arabia, Egypt, Sumer, and India were all colonies of the Cushite Empire. Ethiopia was the mother of them all, and her rulers under various titles were great rulers. Researchers have found traces of wealthy nations, great buildings, and accomplishment in the areas of astronomy and other sciences. The Sumerians, however, achieved a level of excellence in various arts and sciences that none of the other cultures of Mesopotamia ever rose to.

The Sumerian civilization can only be attributed to the arrival of black migrants from Africa's Nile Valley. According to writer Runoko Rashidi, Sumer flourished during the third millennium. In their own literature, the Sumerians referred to themselves as "blackheads." Sumer was only one of numerous Nilotic Cushite colonies implanted in the early Asia. This empire consisted of a major urban center surrounded by smaller satellite towns and villages, mostly independent states. The Sumerian city-states merge to form a powerful unified kingdom led by provincial leaders granted divine status.

Ur was the most powerful Sumerian city. This great Sumerian city lasted for nearly a century. The Sumerians architectural practice can be traced back to their ancestors of the Nile. The Sumerian Empire was quite prosperous. However, the Sumerian foundation was quite fragile. The coalition of the empire was erratic and unstable, which would imply that the Sumerians weren't concerned with the future, or long-term establishment. The Sumerian Empire downfall was due to northern invasions. The Indo-European and Semites invaded and destroyed the Sumerian civilization. Additionally, the agrarian resources had been severely limited which contributed to the destruction.

Although it may seem that the Sumerians vanished from history, the factual reality of the archaeological and anthropological data strongly supports the Sumerians presence in eastern civilization. The Sumerians (of African heritage) planted the seeds for Mesopotamia and Babylonia, and were the pioneers and settlers of the Asian frontier. The Sumerians established the groundwork and set the guidelines for kingdoms and empires to follow.

THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN INDIA:


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Head of a Black man from Mohenjo-Daro

AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

One of the foremost tasks for contemporary African centered scholars is to provide an historical overview of the global African community. This is a critical task that must be completed in its entirety. This includes the history, culture and present condition of African people both at home and abroad. We are already aware, it should be pointed out, based on recent scientific studies of DNA, that modern humanity originated in Africa, that African people are the world's aboriginal people and that all modern humans can ultimately trace their ancestral roots back to Africa. If not for the primordial migrations of early African people, humanity would have remained physically Africoid, and the rest of the world outside of the African continent absent of human life. This is our starting point.

Since the first modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) were of African birth, the African presence globally can be demonstrated through the history of the Black populations that have inhabited the world within the span of recent humanity. Not only are African people the aboriginal people of the planet, however, there is abundant evidence to show that Black people created and sustained many of the world's earliest and most enduring civilizations. Such was the case in India.

The questions we pose here are simply these: Who are the African people of India? What is their significance in the annals of history? Precisely what have they done and what are they doing now? These are extremely serious questions that warrant serious and fundamental answers. This series of articles, "The African Presence in India: An Historical Overview," is designed to provide some of those answers.

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Africoid figurine from the Indus Valley

ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY INDIA

Exceptionally valuable writings reflecting close relationships between Africa and early India have existed for more than two thousand years. In the first century B.C.E., for example, the famous Greek historian Diodorus Siculus penned that, "From Ethiopia he (Osiris) passed through Arabia, bordering upon the Red Sea as far as India.... He built many cities in India, one of which he called Nysa, willing to have remembrance of that (Nysa) in Egypt, where he was brought up."

Another important writer from antiquity, Apollonius of Tyana, who is said to have visited India near the end of the first century C.E., was convinced that "The Ethiopians are colonists sent from India, who follow their forefathers in matters of wisdom." The literary work of the early Christian writer Eusebius preserves the tradition that, "In the reign of Amenophis III [the mighty Dynasty XVIII Egyptian king] a body of Ethiopians migrated from the country about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile." And still another document from ancient times, the Itinerarium Alexandri, says that "India, taken as a whole, beginning from the north and embracing what of it is subject to Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the Ethiopians."


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INDIA'S EARLIEST CIVILIZATION

In Greater India, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization. We are referring here to the Indus Valley civilization- -India's earliest high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River. The Indus Valley civilization was at its height from about 2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. This phase of its history is called the Harappan, the name being derived from Harappa, one of the earliest known Indus Valley cities.

In 1922, about 350 miles northeast of Harappa, another large Indus city, Mohenjo-daro (the Mound of the Dead) was identified. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were apparently the chief administrative centers of the Indus Valley complex, and since their identification, several additional cities, including Chanhu-daro, Kalibangan, Quetta and Lothal have been excavated.

The Indus cities possessed multiple level houses enhanced by sophisticated wells, drainage systems and bathrooms with flushing toilets. A recognized scholar on the Indus Valley civilization, Dr. Walter Fairservis, states that the "Harappans cultivated cotton and perhaps rice, domesticated the chicken and may have invented the game of chess and one of the two great early sources of nonmuscle power: the windmill."

The decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly frequent incursions of the White people known in history as Aryans--violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and later Iran. Indeed, the name Iran means the "land of the Aryan."

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Durga Temple

DRAVIDIAN KINGDOMS OF SOUTH INDIA


It is safe to say that when we speak of the Dravidians as a people we are speaking of the living descendants of the Harappan people of the ancient Indus Valley who were pushed into South India as the result of the Aryan invasions. This is certainly consistent with Dravidian traditions which recall flourishing cities that were either lost or destroyed in antiquity. The term "Dravidian," however, encompasses both an ethnic group and a linguistic group. The ethnic group is characterized by straight to wavy hair textures, combined with Africoid physical features. In reference to this Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop stated that:

"There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent."

Dravidian, in addition to its ethnic component, however, is an important family of languages spoken by more than a hundred million people, primarily in South India. These languages include Tamil (the largest element), Kannada, Malayalam (from which the name of the Asian country Malaya is derived), Telegu and Tulu. The term "Dravidian" itself is apparently an Aryan corruption of Tamil.

From at least the third century C.E. three major Dravidian kingdoms existed in South India: the kingdoms of Pandya, Chera and Chola. Pandya was the southernmost Dravidian kingdom. The major city of Pandya was Madurai, the location of the famous chapel of the Tamil Sangam (Academy). The Sangam, of which there were three, was initiated by a body of forty-eight exceptionally learned scholars who established standards over all literary productions. The Pandyan rulers received these intellectuals with lavish honors.

It is also important to note that in the kingdom of the Pandyas women seem to have enjoyed a high status. This is the exact opposite of the regions of India where the Whites ruled. In these lands of Aryan domination it is said that a woman was never independent. "When she is a child she belongs to her father. As an adult when she marries she belongs to her husband. If she outlives her husband she belongs to her sons." An early queen of the Pandyas, on the other hand, for example, is credited with controlling an army of 500 elephants, 4,000 cavalry and 13,000 infantry.

In 1288 and again in 1293 the Venetian traveler Marco Polo visited the Pandyan kingdom and left a vivid description of the land and its people. Polo exclaimed that:

"The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described."

To the northwest of Pandya was the kingdom of Chera (present-day Kerala). Northwest of Pandya lay the kingdom of Chola, said to be the place where Saint Thomas the Apostle was buried. The same Marco Polo who visited Pandya referred to Chola as "the best province and the most refined in all India."

The Dravidians were an unusually advanced seafaring people, with the Cholas, in particular, distinguishing themselves amongst the dominant maritime powers of their era. Through its ports, the great kings of Chola traded with Ethiopia and Somalia, Iran and Arabia, Combodia and China, Sumatra and Sri Lanka, exporting spices and camphor, ebony and ivory, quality textiles and precious jewels.

It seems readily apparent that the Dravidian kingdoms and the Dravidian people were quite well known internationally. When Augustus became head of the Roman world, for example, the Dravidian kingdoms sent him a congratulatory embassy. Dravidian poets describe Roman ships, which carried bodyguards of archers to ward off pirates, while the Dravidian kings themselves employed bodyguards of Roman soldiers. In respect to the ancient East, at least one author has identified a Dravidian presence in the Philippines, noting that: "From India came civilized Indians, the Dravidians from whom the savage Aryans learned. They began at least 500 BC and soon controlled the coast."

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Panya Woman in South India
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Kanikar tribal man in South India

APARTHEID IN INDIA


The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors to the Blacks but they were aggressive, developed sophisticated military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid, caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their White conquerors. This vicious new world order was cold-bloodily racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his 1970's visit to India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White race."

Caste law in India, based originally on race, regulated all aspects of life, including marriage, diet, education, place of residence and occupation. This is not to deny that there were certain elements of the Black aristocracy that managed to gain prominence in the dominant White social structure. The masses of conquered Black people, however, were regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were said to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for the Black masses in conquered India. It was written that:

"A Sudra [Black] who intentionally reviles twice-born men [Whites] by criminal abuse, or criminally assaults them with blows, shall be deprived of the limb with which he offends. If he has criminal intercourse with an Aryan woman, his organ shall be cut off, and all his property confiscated. If the woman has a protector, the Sudra shall be executed. If he listens intentionally to a recitation of the Veda [a traditional Hindu religious text], his tongue shall be cut out. If he commits them to memory his body shall be split in half."

Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism.

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THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA: THE WORLD'S MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE


The greatest victims of Hinduism have been the Untouchables. Indeed, probably the most substantial percentage of all the Black people of Asia can be identified among India's 160 million Untouchables. These people are the long-suffering descendants of Aryan-Sudra unions and native Black populations who retreated into the hinterlands of India in their efforts to escape the advancing Aryan sphere of influence to which they ultimately succumbed. India's Untouchables number more than the combined populations of England, France, Belgium and Spain.

The existence of Untouchability has been justified within the context of Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of Karma and rebirth. Indus believe that persons are born Untouchables because of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts describe these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact with them was regarded as polluting.

Untouchables were usually forced to live in pitiful little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu communities. During certain periods in Indian history Untouchables were only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu communities at night. Indeed, the Untouchables' very shadows were considered polluting, and they were required to beat drums and make loud noises to announce their approach. Untouchables had to attach brooms to their backs to erase any evidence of their presence. Cups were tied around their necks to capture any spittle that might escape their lips and contaminate roads and streets. Their meals were taken from broken dishes. Their clothing was taking from corpses. They were forbidden to learn to read and write, and were prohibited from listening to any of the traditional Hindu texts. Untouchables were denied access to public wells. They could not use ornaments and were not allowed to enter Hindu temples. The primary work of Untouchables included scavenging and street sweeping, emptying toilets, the public execution of criminals, the disposal of dead animals and human corpses, and the clean-up of cremation grounds. The daily life of the Untouchable was filled with degradation, deprivation and humiliation.

The basis status of India's Untouchables has changed little since ancient times, and it has recently been observed that "Caste Hindus do not allow Untouchables to wear shoes, ride bicycles, use umbrellas or hold their heads up while walking in the street." Untouchables in urban India are crowded together in squalid slums, while in rural India, where the vast majority of Untouchables live, they are exploited as landless agricultural laborers and ruled by terror and intimidation. As evidence of this, several cases from 1991 can be cited: On June 23, 1991 fourteen Untouchables were slaughtered in the eastern state of Bihar. On August 10, 1991 six Untouchables were shot to death in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. On August 16, 1991, an Untouchable woman was stripped in public and savagely beaten in the southern state of Andra Pradesh. On September 6, 1991, in the western state of Maharastra, an Untouchable policeman was killed for entering a Hindu temple. Official Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against Untouchables have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of atrocities by caste Hindus against Untouchables in 1989 alone. However, Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities against Untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and murders, are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed, justice for Untouchables is rarely dispensed.

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DALIT: THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA

Possibly the most substantial percentage of Asia's Blacks can be identified among India's 160 million "Untouchables" or "Dalits." Frequently they are called "Outcastes." Indian nationalist leader and devout Hindu Mohandas K. Gandhi called them "Harijans," meaning "children of god." The official name given them in India's constitution (1951) is "Scheduled Castes." "Dalit," meaning "crushed and broken," is a name that has come into prominence only within the last four decades. "Dalit" reflects a radically different response to oppression.

The Dalit are demonstrating a rapidly expanding awareness of their African ancestry and their relationship to the struggle of Black people throughout the world. They seem particularly enamored of African-Americans. African-Americans, in general, seem almost idolized by the Dalit, and the Black Panther Party, in particular, is virtually revered. In April 1972, for example, the Dalit Panther Party was formed in Bombay, India. This organization takes its pride and inspiration directly from the Black Panther Party of the United States. This is a highly important development due to the fact that the Untouchables have historically been so systematically terrorized that many of them, even today, live in a perpetual state of extreme fear of their upper caste oppressors. This is especially evident in the villages. The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the corresponding philosophy that accompanies it signals a fundamental change in the annals of resistance, and Dalit Panther organizations have subsequently spread to other parts of India. In August 1972, the Dalit Panthers announced that the 25th anniversary of Indian independence would be celebrated as a day of mourning. In 1981, in Bangalore, India Dravidian journalist V.T. Rajshekar published the first issue of Dalit Voice--the major English journal of the Black Untouchables. In a 1987 publication entitled the African Presence in Early Asia, Rajshekar stated that:

"The African-Americans also must know that their liberation struggle cannot be complete as long as their own blood-brothers and sisters living in far off Asia are suffering. It is true that African-Americans are also suffering, but our people here today are where African-Americans were two hundred years ago.

African-American leaders can give our struggle tremendous support by bringing forth knowledge of the existence of such a huge chunk of Asian Blacks to the notice of both the American Black masses and the Black masses who dwell within the African continent itself."


THE BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM IN INDIA


Buddhism appeared in India during the sixth century B.C.E. and came in the form of a protest against Hinduism. Buddhism opposed the arrogance of caste, and preached tolerance. It should not be surprising, then, that it developed a large and rapid following in the regions of India where the Blacks had survived in substantial numbers. On the emergence of Buddhism in India, Diop has suggested that:

"It would seem that Buddha was an Egyptian priest, chased from Memphis by the persecution of Cambyses. This tradition would justify the portrayal of Buddha with woolly hair. Historical documents do not invalidate this tradition...There is general agreement today on placing in the sixth century not only Buddha but the whole religious and philosophical movement in Asia with Confucius in China, Zoroaster in Iran. This would confirm the hypothesis of a dispersion of Egyptian priests at that time spreading their doctrine in Asia."

Dr. Vulindlela Wobogo, another African-centric scholar, has observed that:

"Manifestations of the Buddha in Asia are Black with woolly hair. They all appear to be Egypto-Nubian priests who fled Egypt...The priests carried their spiritual knowledge but lost much of the scientific knowledge for obvious reasons. The well-known aspects of Buddhism and its companion, yoga, are all simply Egypto-Nubian priesthood practices, meditation, and...the belief that one could attain a god-like state if the soul was liberated from the body through knowledge and denial."

In a monumental two volume work entitled A Book of the Beginnings, originally published in 1881, Gerald Massey recorded that:

"It is not necessary to show that the first colonisers of India were Black, but it is certain that the Black Buddha of India was imaged in the Africoid type. In the Black [African] god, whether called Buddha or Sut-Nahsi, we have a datum. they carry in their color the proof of their origin. The people who first fashioned and worshipped the divine image in the Africoid mold of humanity must, according to all knowledge of human nature, have been Africans themselves. For the Blackness is not merely mystical, the features and the hair of Buddha belong to the Black race."

In the first volume of his massive text Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins wrote that:

"The religion of Buddha, of India, is well known to have been very ancient. In the most ancient temples scattered through Asia, where his worship is yet continued, he is found black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips and curly hair of the African."

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African Merchant

HABSHIS AND SIDDIS: AFRICAN DYNASTIES IN INDIA

India also received its share of African bondsmen, of whom the most famous was the celebrated Malik Ambar (1550-1626). Ambar, like a number of Africans in medieval India, elevated himself to a position of great authority. Malik Ambar, whose original name was Shambu, was born around 1550 in Harar, Ethiopia. After his arrival in India Ambar was able to raise a formidable army and achieve great power in the west Indian realm of Ahmadnagar. Ambar was a brilliant diplomat and administrator. He encouraged manufactures and built canals and mosques. He gave pensions to poets and scholars, established a postal service, and ultimately became one of the most famous men in India.

In a collective form, however, and in respect to long term influence, the African sailors known as Siddis stand out. Certainly, Siddi kingdoms were established in western India in Janjira and Jaffrabad as early as 1100 AD. After their conversion to Islam, the African freedmen of India, originally called Habshi from the Arabic, called themselves Sayyad (descendants of Muhammad) and were consequently called Siddis. Indeed, the island Janjira was formerly called Habshan, meaning Habshan's or African's land. Siddi signifies lord or prince. It is further said that Siddi is an expression of respectful address commonly used in North Africa, like Sahib in India. Specifically, it is said to be an honorific title given to the descendants of African natives in the west of India, some of whom were distinguished military officers and administrators of the Muslim princes of the Deccan.

In the second decade of the sixteenth century a European traveler named Armando Cortesao noted that:

"The people who govern the kingdom [Bengal] are Abyssinians [Ethiopians]. These men are looked upon as knights; they are greatly esteemed; they wait on the kings in their apartments. The chief among them are eunuchs and these come to be kings and great lords in the kingdom. Those who are not eunuchs are the fighting men. After the king, it is to this people that the kingdom is obedient from fear."

The Siddis were a tightly knit group, highly aggressive, and even ferocious in battle. They were employed largely as security forces for Muslim fleets in the Indian Ocean, a position they maintained for centuries. The Siddi commanders were titled Admirals of the Mughal Empire, and received an annual salary of 300,000 rupees. According to Ibn Battuta (1304-1377), the noted Muslim writer who journeyed through both Africa and Asia, the Siddis "are the guarantors of safety on the Indian Ocean; let there be but one of them on a ship and it will be avoided by the Indian pirates and idolaters."

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