24663: Davis (Comment) re: 24659: VISHNUSURF re: 24656: jolierosey re: 24633: Fleury re: 24622: VISHNUSURF/ Ezili ...

[sak-pase@bimini.ws]

Davis, Karen <kdavis@marygrove.edu>


in re: Egyptian roots of anything

from: Karen F. Di8manche Davis, kdavis@marygrove.edu 

My suspicion is that, being human, we all (1) try hard to find nobility in our ancestry while ignoring the horse thieves (note how many people in my Polish family talk about their royal ancestors, but none about the unwed mothers & philandering uncles; also, how many African Americans claim ancestry from royalty, when in fact the African royalty were selling off their soldier & villager ancestors for their own profit).
(2) we latch on to spurious connections between huistorical events, what our language teachers call "false friends"--the name "Amy" is not derived from amyl nitrate, e.g.)
(3) being human, all of us, for at least the last 200,000 years, have shared the same bodies, same brains, same hands, same spirits, and same earth, and traveled far to hook up with each other, too! So of course there will be amazing similarities among our social and cultural beliefs and practices. 

None of this "proves" that the ancient Egyptians invented Vodou, nor that the old Mali empire invaded and settled southern Mexico, nor that seafaring Japanese taught papermaking to the Maya a thousand years ago. 

Having puzzled over & taught about such questions of origin for many years, I am klikely to ask" why does it matter?" In the Mahabharata, when the star of a dojo challenges a newcomer to state his family origins, the wise master comments that origins are lost in time, and often unknown, but the actions of a man proves his mettle. (presumably this holds for us women too!)

My understanding is that the Old, New, & Middle Kingdom Egyptians (KMT), regarded themselves and depicted themselves as separate from the southerly blacker Nubians, with whom they were closely connected with long-term alliances, wars, trade, intermarriage, etc, as well as, e.g. separate from Syrians, Assyrians, Hittites, etc. We know that the founders of KMT moved east into the Nile Valley after long droughts drove them from their lush husbandry regions in what is now desert. 

I personally suspect that the Sahara trade routes that we know have operated between N. Africa, Egypt, and W African nations for at least a thousand years, probably operated also 5-8,000 years ago (but there is no evidence of this that I know of). But does this deny the creativity, spirit, vitality, and intelligence of either the north africans, west africans, or ancient egyptians, that they may have traded goods, etc. with each other? I doubt it.

We in our western philosophies are far too valuing of "civilizations" that can be proven with grand buildings of stone, with writing on walls & tablets, with lovely images on ancient pots. And far too undervaluing of the incredible genius of oral histories, dance, gesture, cloth, proverbs, riddles, song, pitch and tone, body-learning, apprentice instruction, respect for tried & proven traditions.

Above all, I find it incredibly amusing that the same ("white") Egyptians that British historians of C.E. 1900 called on as their illustrious ancestors (thus proving British cultural wiorth, evidently)--cf. "heliocentric" school of British ethnology) are now the same ("black") Egyptians that some African American historians of C. E. 2000 are lauding as their illustrious ancestors *(thus, evidently, proving African cultural worth?)

Karen