Origin of the ancient egyptians

[Ɔkyeame Kwame]

"The Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves: kmt=the negroes (literally)."




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ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS


by Cheikh Anta Diop

The Egyptians as They Saw Themselves

It is no waste of time to get the views of those principally concerned. How
did the ancient Egyptians see themselves? Into which ethnic category did
they put themselves? What did they call themselves? The language and
literature left to us by the Egyptians of the Pharaonic epoch supply
explicit answers to these questions which the scholars cannot refrain from
minimizing, twisting or 'interpreting.'

The Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves:
[hieroglyphics]=kmt=the negroes (literally).44 This is the strongest term
existing in the Pharaonic tongue to indicate blackness; it is accordingly
written with a hieroglyph representing a length of wood charred at the end
and not crocodile scales.45 This word is the etymological origin of the
well-known root Kamit which has proliferated in modern anthropological
literature. The biblical root kam is probably derived from it and it has
therefore been necessary to distort the facts to enable this root today to
mean 'white' in Egyptological terms whereas, in the Pharaonic mother tongue
which gave it birth, it meant 'coal black.'

In the Egyptian language, a word of assembly is formed from an adjective or
a noun by putting it in the feminine singular. 'kmt' from the adjective
[hieroglyphics] =km=black; it therefore means strictly negroes or at the
very least black men. The term is a collective noun which thus described the
whole people of Pharaonic Egypt as a black people.

In other words, on the purely grammatical plane, if one wishes to indicate
negroes in the Pharaonic tongue, one cannot use any other word than the very
one which the Egyptians used of themselves. Furthermore, the language offers
us another term, [hieroglyphics] kmtjw=the negroes, the black men
(literally)=the Egyptians, as opposed to 'foreigners' which comes from the
same root km and which the Egyptians also used to describe themselves as a
people as distinguished from all foreign peoples.46 These are the only
adjectives of nationality used by the Egyptians to designate themselves and
both mean 'negro' or 'black' in the Pharonic language. Scholars hardly ever
mention them or when they do it is to translate them by euphemisms such as
the 'Egyptians' while remaining completely silent about their etymological
sense.47 They prefer the expression [hieroglyphics] Rmt kmt=the men of the
country of the black men or the men of the black country.

In Egyptian, words are normally followed by a determinative which indicates
their exact sense, and for this particuar expression Egyptologists suggest
that [heiroglyphics] km=black and that the colour qualifies the
determinative which follows it and which signifies 'country'. Accordingly,
they claim, the translation should be 'the black earth' from the colour of
the loam, or the 'black country', and not 'the country of the black men' as
we should be inclined to render it today with black Africa and white Africa
in mind. Perhaps so, but if we apply this rule rigorously to [hieroglyphics]
=kmit, we are forced to 'concede that here the adjective "black" qualifies
the determinative which signifies the whole people of Egypt shown by the two
symbols for "man" and "woman" and the three strokes below them which
indicate the plural'. Thus, if it is possible to voice a doubt as regards
the expression [hieroglyphics] =Kme, it is not possible to do so in the case
of the two adjectives of nationality [hieroglyphics] kmt and kmtjw unless
one is picking one's arguments completely at random.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the ancient Egyptians should never have
had the idea of applying these qualificatives to the Nubians and other
populations of Africa to distinguish them from themselves; any more than a
Roman at the apogee of the empire could use a 'colour' adjective to
distinguish himself from the Germani on the other bank of the Danube, of the
same stock but still in the prehistoric age of development.

In either case both sides were of the same world in terms of physical
anthropology, and accordingly the distinguishing terms used related to level
of civilization or moral sense. For the civilized Romans, the Germans, of
the same stock, were barbarians. The Egyptians used the expression
[hieroglyphics] =na-has to designate the Nubians; and nahas48 is the name of
a people, with no colour connotation in Egyptian. It is a deliberate
mistranslation to render it as negro as is done in almost all present-day
publications.

The Divine Epithets

Finally, black or negro is the divine epithet invariably

used for the chief beneficent gods of Egypt, whereas all the malevolent
spirits are qualified as desret=red; we also know that to Africans this form
applies to the white nations; it is practically certain that this held good
for Egypt too but I want in this chapter to keep to the least debatable
facts.

The surnames of the gods are these:

[hieroglyphics] =kmwr=the 'Great Negro' for Osiris49

[hieroglyphics] =km=the black + the name of the god50

[hieroglyphics] =kmt=the black + the name of the goddess51

The km (black) [hieroglyphics] qualificative is applied to Hathor, Apis,
Min, Thoth, etc52 [hieroglyphics] set kmt=the black woman=Isis53 On the
other hand 'seth', the sterile desert, is qualified by the term desret=red.
54 The wild animals which Horus fought to create civilization are qualified
as desret=red, especially the hippopotamus.55 Similarly the maleficent
beings wiped out by Thoth are Des= [hieroglyphics] =desrtjw=thr red ones;
this term is the grammatical converse of Kmtjw and its construction follows
the same rule for the formation of 'nisbes'.

Witness of the Bible

The Bible tells us. ' . . .the sons of Ham [were] Cush, and Mizraim [i.e.
Egypt], and Phut, and Canaan. And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and
Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtechah.56

Generally speaking all Semitic tradition (Jewish and Arab) classes ancient
Egypt with the countries of the blacks.

The importance of these depositions cannot be ignored, for these are peoples
(the Jews) which lived side by side with the ancient Egyptians and sometimes
in symbiosis with them and have nothing to gain by presenting a false ethnic
picture of them. Nor is the notion of an erroneous interpretation of the
facts any more tenable.57

Cultural Data

Among the innumerable identical cultural traits recorded in Egypt and in
present-day black Africa, it is proposed to refer only to circumcision and
totemism.

According to the extract from Herodotus quoted earlier, circumcision is of
African origin. Archaeology has confirmed the judgment of the Father of
History for Elliott-Smith was able to determine from the examination of
well-preserved mummies that circumcision was the rule among the Egyptians as
long ago as the protohistoric era,58 i.e. Earlier than -4000.

Egyptian totemism retained its vitality down to the Roman period59 and
Plutarch also mentions it. The researches of Amelineau6,60 Loret, Moret and
Adolphe Reinach have clearly demonstrated the existence of an Egyptian
totemic system, in refutation of the champions of the zoolatric thesis.

If we reduce the notion of the totem to that
of a fetish, usually representing an animal
of a species with which the tribe believes
it has special ties formally renewed at
fixed intervals, and which is carried into
battle like a standard; if we accept this
minimal but adequate definition of a totem,
it can be said that there was no country
where totemism had a more brilliant reign
than in Egypt and certainly nowhere where
it could be better studied.61

Linguistic Affinity

Walaf,62 a Senegalese language spoken in the extreme west of Africa on the
Atlantic Ocean, is perhaps as close to ancient Egyptian as Coptic. An
exhaustive study of this question has recently been carried out.63 In this
chapter enough is presented to show that the kinship between ancient
Egyptian and the languages of Africa is not hypothetical but a demonstrable
fact which it is impossible for modern scholarship to thrust aside.

As we shall see, the kinship is genealogical in nature.

Egyptian Coptic Walaf


=kef=to grasp, (Saidique dialect) kef=seize a prey
to take a strip keh=to tame 65
(of something)64

PRESENT PRESENT PRESENT

kef i keh kef na
kef ek keh ek kef nga
kef et keh ere kef na
kef ef kef ef

kef es keh es kef ef na
kef es

kef n keh en kef nanu
kef ton keh etetu kef ngen
kef sen keh ey kef nanu

PAST PAST PAST

kef ni keh nei kef (on) na
kef (o) nek keh nek kef (on) nga
kef (o) net keh nere kef (on) na

kef (o) nef keh nef kef (on) ef na
kef (o) nes keh nes kef (on) es

kef (o) nen keh nen kef (on) nanu
kef (o) n ten keh netsten kef (on) ngen
kef (o) n sen67 keh ney68 kef (on) nanu





EGYPTIAN WALAF

(symbol) =feh=go away feh=rush off

We have the following correspondences between the verb forms,
with identity of similarity of meaning: all the Egyptian verb
forms, except for two, are also recorded in Walaf.

EGYPTIAN WALAF

feh-ef feh-ef
feh-es feh-es
feh-n-ef feh-on-ef
feh-n-es feh-ones

feh-w feh-w

feh-wef feh-w-ef
feh-w-es feh-w-es

feh-w-a-ef feh-il-ef
feh-w-n-es feh-w-on-es

feh-in-ef feh-il-ef
feh-in-es fen-il-es
feh-t-ef feh-t-ef
feh-t-es feh-es
feh-tyfy feh-ati-fy
feh-tysy feh-at-ef

feh-tw-ef mar-tw-ef
feh-tw-es mar-tw-es

feh-kw(i) fahi-kw

feh-n-tw-ef feh-an-tw-ef
feh-a-tw-es feh-an-tw-es

feh-y-ef feh-y-ef
feh-y-es fey-y-es

EGYPTIAN WALAF


[symbol] =mer=love mar=lick (symbol)
mer-ef mar-ef
mer-es mar-es
mer-n-el mar-on-ef
mer-n-es mar-on-es

mer-w mar-w

mer-w-ef mar-w-ef

mer-w-n-f mar-w-on-ef
mer-w-n-es mar-w-on-es

mer-in-ef mar-il-ef
mer-in-es mar-il-es

mer-t-ef mar-t-ef
mer-t-es mar-t-es

mer-tw-ef mar-tw-ef
mer-tw-es mar-tw-es

mer-tyfy mar-at-ef
mer-t-tysy mar-aty-es
mar-aty-s
mar-aty-sy

mar-kwi mari-kw
mer-y-ef mar-y-ef
mer-y-es mar-y-es
mer-n-tw-ef mar-an-tw-ef
mer-n-tw-es mar-antw-es
mar-tw-on-ef
mar-tw-on-es

Egyptian and Walaf Demonstratives

There are the following phonetic correspondents between Egyptian and Walaf
demonstratives;

[This section was omitted because of the difficulty of reproducing the
symbols on the Internet]

These phonetic correspondences are not ascriable either to elementary
affinity or to the general laws of the human mind for they are regular
correspondences on outstanding points extending through an entire system,
that of the demonstratives in the two languages and that of the verbal
languages. It is through the application of such laws that it was possible
to demonstrate the existence of the Indo-European linguistic family.

The comparison could be carried to show that the majority of the phonemes
remain unchanged between the two languages. The few changes which are of
great interest are the following:

[This section was omitted because of the difficulty of reproducing the
symbols on the Internet]

It is still early to talk with precision of the vocalic accompaniment of the
Egyptian phonemes. But the way is open for the rediscovery of the vocalics
of ancient Egyptian from comparative studies with the languages of Africa.

Conclusion

The structure of African royalty, with the king put to death, either really
or symbolically, after a reign which varied in length but was in the region
of eight years, recalls the ceremony of the Pharaoh's regeneration through
the Sed feast. Also reminiscent of Egypt are the circumcision rites
mentioned earlier and the totemism, cosmogonies, architecture, musical
instruments, etc., of Africa.71 Egyptian antiquity is to African culture
what Graceo-Roman antiquity is to Western culture. The building up of a
corpus of African humanities should be based on this fact.

It will be understood how difficult it is to write such a chapter in a work
of this kind, where euphemism and compromise are the rule. In an attempt to
avoid sacrificing scientific truth, therefore, we made a point of suggesting
three preliminaries to the preparation of this volume, all of which were
agreed to at the plenary session held in 1971. 72 The first two led to the
holding of the Cairo Symposium from 28 January to 3 February 1974. 73 In
this connection I should like to refer to certain passages in the report of
that symposium. Professor Vercoutter, who had been commissioned by Unesco to
write the introductory report, acknowledged after a thorough discussion that
the conventional idea that the Egyptian population was equally divided
between blacks, whites and half-castes could not be upheld.. 'Professor
Vercoutter agreed that no attempt should be made to estimate percentages,
which meant nothing, as it was impossible to establish them without reliable
statistical data'. On the subject of Egyptian culture: 'Professor Vercoutter
remarked that, in his view, Egypt was African in its way of writing, in its
cullture and in its way of thinking'.

Professor Lecant, for his part, 'recognized the same African character in
the Egyptian temperament and way of thinking'.

In regard to linguistics, it is stated in the report that 'this item, in
contrast to those previously discussed, revealed a large measure of
agreement among the participants. The outline by Professor Diop and the
report by Professor Obenga were regarded as being very constructive'.

Similarly, the symposium rejected the idea that Pharaonic Egyptian was a
Semitic language. 'Turning to wider issues, Professor Sauneron drew
attention to the interest of the method suggested by Professor Obenga
following Professor Diop. Egyptian remained a stable language for a period
of at least 4500 years. Egypt was situated at the point of convergence of
outside influences and it was to be expected that borrowing had been made
from foreign languages, but the Semitic roots numbered only a few hundred as
compared with a total of several thousand words. The Egyptian language could
not be isolated from its African context and its origin could not be fully
explained in terms of Semitic, it was thus quite normal to expect to find
related languages in Africa'.

The genetic, that is, non-accidental relationship between Egyptian and the
African languages was recognized: 'Professor Sauneron noted that the method
which had been used was of considerable interest, since it could not be
purely fortuitous that there was a similarity between the third person
singular suffixed pronouns in Ancient Egyptian and in Wolof, he hoped that
an attempt would be made to reconstitute a palaeo-African language, using
present-day languages as a starting point'.

In the general conclusion to the report it was stated that: 'Although the
preparatory working paper sent out by Unesco gave particulars of what was
desired, not all participants had prepared communications comparable with
the painstakingly researched contributions of Professors Cheikh Anta Diop
and Obenga. There was consequently a real lack of balance in the
discussions'.

A new page of African historiography was accordingly written in Cairo. The
symposium recommended that further studies be made on the concept of race.
Such studies have since been carried out, but they have not contributed
anything new to the historical discussion. They tell us that molecular
biology and genetics recognize the existence of populations alone, the
concept of race being no longer meaningful. Yet whenever there is any
question of the transmission of a hereditary taint, the concept of race in
the most classic sense of the term comes into its own again, for genetics
tells us that 'sickle-cell anaemia occurs only in negroes'. The truth is
that all these 'anthropologists' have already in their own minds drawn the
conclusions deriving from the triumph of the monogenetic theory of mankind
without venturing to put them into explicit terms, for if mankind originated
in Africa, it was necessarily negroid becoming white through mutation and
adaptation at the end of the last glaciation in Europe in the Upper
Palaeolithic; and is not more understandable why the Grimaldian negroids
first occupied Europe for 10,000 years before Cro-Magnon Man-the prototype
of the white race-appeared (around -2,000).

The idealogical standpoint is also evident in apparently objective studies.
In history and in social relations, it is the phenotype, that is, the
individual or the people as that individual or people is perceived, which is
the dominant factor, as opposed to the genotype. For present-day genetics, a
Zulu with the 'same' genotype as Vorster is not impossible. Does this mean
that the history we are witnessing will put the two phenotypes, that is, the
two individuals, on the same footing in all their national and social
activities? Certainly not -- the opposition will remain not social but
ethnic.

This study makes it necessary to rewrite world history from a more
scientific standpoint, taking into account the Negro-African component which
was for a long time preponderant. It means that it is now possible to build
up a corpus of Negro-African humanities resting on a sound historical basis
instead of being suspended in mid-air. Finally, if it is true that only
truth is revolutionary, it may be added that only rapprochement brought
about on a basis of truth can endure. The cause of human progress is not
well served by casting a veil over the fact.

The rediscovery of the true past of the African peoples should not be a
divisive factor but should contribute to uniting them, each and all, binding
them together from the north to the south of the continent so as to enable
them to carry out together a new historical mission for the greater good of
mankind; and that is in keeping with the ideal of Unesco.

"Footnotes to: ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS"

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ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS (Cont,)


by Cheikh Anta Diop

NOTES

1. Proceedings of the Seventh Pan-African Congress of Pre-History and
Quaternary Studies, December 1971

2. M.F.A. Montagu, 1960, p. 390.

3. The study of this race's pigmentation can be carried farther by the
method described; actually Elliott-Smith often found patches of skin on the
bodies and the mummification methods which cause skin deterioration were not
yet in use.

1

4. D.P. De Pedrals, p.6.

5. Geographie, classe de 5, 1950.

6. In his 'Lutte des races" (1883) L. Gumplovicz asserts that the diverse
classes making up a people always represent different races, of which one
has established its domination over the others by conquest. G. DeLapounge in
an article published in 1897 postulated no less than a dozen 'fundamental
laws of anthropo-sociology' of which the following are typical; his 'law of
distribution of wealth' posits that, in countries of mixed European-Alpine
populations, wealth is greater in inverse proportions to the cephalic index;
the 'law of urban indices' given prominence by Ammon in connexion with his
research on Badener conscripts asserted that town dwellers exhibit greater
dolichocephaly than the people in the adjacent countryside; the 'law of
stratification' was formulated in the following terms: 'the cephalic index
decreases and the proportion of dolichocephalics rises the higher the social
class, in each locality'. In his Selections sociales' the same writer had no
hesitation in asserting that 'the dominant class in the feudal epoch belongs
almost exclusively to the variety "Homo Europaeus" so that it is not pure
chance which has kept the poor at the foot of the social ladder but their
congenital inferiority'.

We thus see that German racism was inventing nothing new, when Alfred
Rosenberg asserted that the French Revolution must be deemed a revolt of the
brachycephalics of the Alpine stock against the dolichocephalics of the
Nordic race.' (A. Cuvillier, p. 155)

7. W.M.F. Petrie, 1939, Fig. 1.

8. Ibid., p. 69.

9. Ibid., p. 68.

10. E. Amelineau, 1908, p. 174.

11. Pl. 1.2.

12. Pl. 1.3.

13. W.M.F. Petrie, 1939, p.67.

14. Pl. 1.11.

15. Pl. 1.5.

16. Pl. 1.8.

17. Pl. 1.7 I know that 'Indo-European' is usually said to be a language,
not a race, but I prefer this term to 'Aryan' wherever its use causes no
confusion.

18. Pl. 1.2.

19. Pl. 1.13.

20. R.A. Nicolaus, p. 11.

21. T.J. Pettigrew, 1834, pp. 70-71.

22. C.A. Diop, 1977.

23. M.E. Fontant, pp. 44-5 (see reproduction: T).

24. M.F.A. Montagu, p. 337.

25. In the fifth century before our era, at the time when Herodotus visited
Egypt, a black-skinned people, the Colchians, were still living in Colchis
on the Armenian shore of the Black Sea, East of the ancient port of
Trebizond, surrounded by white-skinned nations.

The scholars of antiquity wondered about this people's origins and Herodotus
in "Euterpe', the second book of his history on Egypt, tries to prove that
the Colchians were Egyptians, whence the arguments we quote. Herodotus, on
the strength of commemorative stelae, erected by Sesostris in conquered
countries, asserts that this monarch had got as far as Thrace and Seythia,
where stelae would seem to have been still standing in his day (Book II,
103).

26. Herodotus, Book II, 104. As with many peoples in black Africa, Egyptian
women underwent excision of the clitoris: ef. Strabo, Geography, Book XVII,
Ch. I.

27. Herodotus, Book II, 57.

28. Seneca, Questions of Nature, Book IV, 17.

29. Herodotus, Book II, 22.

30. Aristotle, Physiognomy, 6.

31. Lucian, Navigations, paras 2-3.

32. Apollodoros, Book II, 'The Family of Inachus', paras 3 and 4.

33. Aeschylus, The Suppliants, vv. 719-20. See also v. 745.

34. Strabo, Geography, Book I, ch. 3, para. 10.

35. My italics.

36. Diodorus, Universal History, Book III. The antiquity of the Ethiopian
civilization is attested by the most ancient and most venerable Greek
writer, Homer, in both the Lliad and the Odessey: 'Jupiter followed today by
all the gods receives the sacrifices of the Ethiopians' (Iliad, I, 422).
'Yesterday to visit holy Ethiopia Jupiter betook himself to the ocean shore'
(lliad, I, 423).

37. Diogenes Laertius, Book VII,i.

38. The Egyptian notables liked to have a Syrian or Cretan female slave in
their harems.

39. Ammianus Marcellinus, Book XXII, para 16 (23).

40. Pirate gangs who worked from small ships called Camare.

41. Ammianus Marcellinus, Book XXII, para. 8 (24).

42. M.C.F. Volney, Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte, Paris, 1787, Vol. I, pp.
74-7.

43. J.J. Champollion-Figeac, 1839, pp. 26-7.

44. This important discovery was made, on the African side, by Sossou
Nsougan, who was to compile this part of the present chapter. For the sense
of the word see Worterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache, Vol 5, 1971, pp. 122
and 127.

45. Ibid., p. 122.

46. Ibid., p. 128.

47. R.O. Faulkner, 1962, p. 286.

48. Worterbuch der agyptischen Sprache, p. 128.

49. Ibid. P. 124.

50. Ibid., p. 125.

51. Ibid., p. 123.

52. It should be noted that set-kem=black wife in Walaf.

53. Worterbuch der agyptischen Sprache, p. 492.

54. Ibid., p. 493.

55. Desret= blood in Egyptian; deret=blood in Walaf; ibid., p. 494.

56. Genesis, 10:6-7.

57. C.A. Diop, 1955, pp. 33ff.

58. E. Massoulard, 1949, p. 386.

59. Juvenal, Satire XV, vv. 1-14.

60. E. Amelineau, op. Cit.

61. A. Recnach, 1913, p. 17.

62 Often spelt Wolof.

63. C.A. Diop, 1977.

64. R. Lambert, 1925, p. 129.

65. A. Mallon, pp. 207-34.

66. A. De Buck, 1952.

67. Ibid.

68. A. Mallon, pp. 207-34.

69. By extension=love intensely (hence the verb mar-maral) after the fashion
of a female animal licking the cub which she has just borne. This sense does
not conflict with the other notion which the determinative may convey of a
man raising hand to mouth.

70. See below for the explanation of this important law.

71. See C.A. Diop, 1967.

72. See final Report of the First Plenary Session of the International
Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a general History of Africa,
UNESCO, 30 March-8 April 1974.

73. Symposium of 'The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meriotic script'. Cf. Studies and Documents No. I UNESCO, 1978.