The vanishing evidence of classical african civilizations

[Ɔkyeame Kwame]

THE VANISHING EVIDENCE OF
CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS

Part I: The Temple Evidence Prof. Manu Ampim


3RD SEASON OF FIELD RESEARCH (AUGUST – SEPTEMBER 1995)
I reported in the March 1995 issue of the The Gaither Reporter that on my previous primary research trip to Egypt and Nubia in November/December 1994 I found a significant increase in the activity of various Euro-American and Egyptian government “conservation” teams. I further noted that there is a direct relationship between these “conservation” teams and the accelerated defacement and destruction of many ancient Egyptian images and inscriptions, particularly on the temple walls. I also indicated in my article that while several of the greatest Pharaonic (ancient Egyptian) monuments are in a state of rapid decay, there is a steady flow of Africentric “study tours” which are visiting these monuments, while doing nothing to either document the remaining but rapidly disappearing images and artifacts, or to help save these great African monuments for future generations.
After my 1994 trip to Egypt/Nubia, I recognized that due to the incredible rate of decay and destruction there is little time to document the surviving evidence of classical African civilizations on the monuments of this region. Thus, I recently completed my third season of field research to this area to photograph and video the evidence that is virtually disappearing from temple walls every day. In fact, there has been a threat to the survival of the Pharaonic monuments since the middle of the 19th century when these half-buried structures were removed from the sand by European adventurers. When these structures were uncovered, they were destabilized upon being exposed to the natural elements (sun, wind, and rain), and to looters who swiftly dismantled the temple structures for profit schemes and to use the stones as building material.
My 3rd season of work in Egypt and northern Nubia consisted of 5 weeks (August/September 1995) of field research. I conducted primary (first-hand) research at 27 sites throughout this Nile Valley region, from Tanis, Giza, and Sakkara in northern Egypt, to Aswan, Sehel Island, and Beit al-Wali in northern Nubia. My main task was to observe, record, and document the vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations. My other objectives were to acquire further ammunition to document the Ra-Hotep/Nofret forgeries in the Cairo Museum, and to continue my study of ancient African social organization and spiritual culture.¹
As I had expected when I returned to Egypt/Nubia in 1995, some of the temple carvings that were visible in November/December 1994 had disappeared in just eight months. The disappearance of these carvings is due mainly to the fact that nearly every ancient Egyptian temple is currently under some level of “conservation.” This so-called conservation work is being carried out by two main groups: European and American research teams, and Egyptians working under the auspices of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (formerly the Egyptian Antiquities Organization). In many cases, these two groups have not conserved the monuments by keeping them from further damage or lost, but rather they have permanently damaged and even deliberately destroyed images and inscriptions that have been in existence for thousands of years. Thus, the erosion of the monuments in recent years caused by the natural elements and the pressure of industrialization, urban growth, and agricultural development have been far outstripped by the deliberate destructive acts by European researchers and Arab workers and citizens.

DESTRUCTION OF THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
The wall surface of the great Karnak Temple of Egypt is literally being taken apart stone by stone, as “conservation” workers are removing dozens of pounds of rock and wall material every day and discarding them as debris. The rate of defacement and destruction of Karnak and other temples is stunning. I have documented in just over half a year the progressive lost and calculated damage to the temple carvings. In just 15 minutes local Egyptian government workers (most of whom are Arab), in alliance with Western conspirators from Europe and North America, are able to deface sacred African temple carvings from one of the world’s most profound collections of art which have remained in reasonably good condition for nearly 4,000 years. With a few crude strokes, these so-called “restorers” and “conservationists” are altering the facial features of relief images, defacing many temple scenes, and demolishing other scenes until they are almost unrecognizable. A careful examination of the pattern of wall damage at Karnak substantiate these points. It seems evident that this crude, clumsy, and incompetent “conservation” work is aimed at nothing less than the destruction of all the physical evidence which demonstrates that both ancient Egypt and Nubia are classical African civilizations.

Currently, the wall surface of the great Karnak Temple, along with its images and inscriptions, is being thoroughly dismantled.
This concerted effort to destroy the physical evidence of classical African civilizations is evident when one considers the facts. For example, with the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1960, the whole area of lower Nubia was flooded and is now under Lake Nasser, the largest man-made lake in the world. The ancient Nubian remains/artifacts were effectively destroyed before the nature, quantity, and significance of this material could be determined. Tragically, these artifacts are at the bottom of Lake Nasser and will probably never be recovered. This is a devastating lost in regards to preserving the memory of the classical Nubia. Most of the limited Nubian artifacts that were salvaged before the rising flood waters damaged them were shipped off to museums throughout Europe and America.

(A) Modern conspirators have deliberately cut a line through the face of Ramses II in order to change the shape of his nose. (B) The face of Ramses IV has been completely obliterated by modern conspirators.

Many of the monuments now remaining in northern Nubia are the more recent temples built under foreign rule by the Greeks and Romans, so that there are numerous images on these structures which represent European -- not African -- faces. In fact, many of the popular temples in Egypt and northern Nubia are from the foreign Greco-Roman period, so there is a significant mixture of indigenous Africans and a host of foreigners from southern Europe and western Asia.
With the vast majority of the physical evidence of an African Nubia already destroyed or removed from northern Nubia itself, the next project of the conspirators is to erase the memory of an African Egypt. I have found that in most cases on the walls of ancient Egyptian temples, when there is a rare undamaged African image it is safely away from the view of most tourists, because the average tourist rarely has the time or interest to venture beyond the regular tourist track and see these powerful African images. Every single tour guide (who are almost all Arabs) that I have observed take tourists to the same areas of the temple to point out only selected scenes and images. There is hardly time for tourists to wonder off and explore on their own, and if there is a break in the formal tour people are usually at the concession area using the bathroom, eating, or buying souvenirs. They are not expending energy walking long distances and climbing over walls trying to see (not to mention study) every section of these huge Karnak Temple complex, which includes a host of smaller temples, courts, shrines, obelisks, halls, statues, wall carvings, pylons, mud-brick houses, and an open-air museum, etc.

The original wall surface has been thoroughly destroyed and then smoothed over with White Portland Cement by modern conspirators. The right shoulder and lower body of one of the figures is still visible.
The widespread damage to the temple images has allowed misinformed and misguided Egyptologists to argue from such sources as the temple evidence that ancient Egypt was a multi-racial society and therefore belongs to the world’s heritage and not necessarily to African history. There are probably about a million tourists each year who visit Egypt and Nubia, and they get a totally false view of the identity of the builders of these great civilizations, largely because the evidence of the builders’ Black origin is disappearing. This vanishing evidence has enabled dishonest Egyptologists and tour guides to misrepresent the identity of the founders and builders of ancient Egypt by selectively pointing out the “non-African” images on the walls. Actually, many of the images which appear to look “non-African” have undergone a racial make-over and look nothing like they did originally. These images have been crudely recarved by European and Arab conspirators who work hard to eliminate all traces of African facial features. Only through exhaustive first-hand research can one demonstrate from the surviving on-site temple evidence that ancient Egypt was a Black civilization.

An Egyptian government worker stands in front of the massive wall damage that he has just created. The evidence of his destructive activity is on the ground around him: scaffolding, piles of dismantled wall material, tools, mixing water, and a bag of White Portland Cement to smooth over the wall surface after the images and inscriptions are broken away.
CHICAGO HOUSE “CONSERVATION”
Currently, there are a couple of major temple “conservation” and “restoration” efforts in the Waset (Luxor) area of Egypt. One such effort is the Great Hypostyle Hall Project of Karnak, which is a joint project by the Centre Franco-Egyptian d’etude des Temples of Karnak and the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology, at Memphis State University. A second project is the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The Oriental Institute project is headquartered at the Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt. The Chicago House has been engaged in an ongoing “conservation” effort in the Waset (Luxor) area for over 70 years in order to document the scenes and inscriptions on the walls of the endangered and rapidly decaying Pharaonic monuments of this area. The Waset area contains the largest concentration of ancient temples still standing anywhere in the world.
The work of the Chicago House includes creating a photo archive of 15,000 negatives and some 20,000 prints (as of 1990), which provides the most extensive photographic coverage of Waset temples and tombs available in one place anywhere in the world. However, the Chicago House project is concerned with simply recording the temple scenes and inscriptions and not with protecting the monument carvings from further deterioration and destruction. Thus, while the Chicago House artists, photographers, and Egyptologists are making a record of the temple wall materials, the carved surfaces are practically falling off the wall before their eyes.
As the human-aided erosion and deliberate destruction continue, soon there will be nothing left but bare walls and the drawings and photos created by the Chicago House. Once all of the original evidence vanishes, the “official” records of what the Waset area temple carvings looked like will be kept by the Chicago House. Egyptologists and other scholars will be able to consult these records, while the general public will be forced to rely on a distorted second-hand view of ancient Egyptian civilization. In years to come, with the original evidence gone from the temple walls one will have to do thorough archival research to find the evidence of the Black origins of ancient Egypt and Nubia. In fact, even while there are temple carvings still visible today, European Egyptologists and scholarly publications such as KMT Magazine do not hesitate to present racist drawings and depictions that clearly ignore and contradict the historical facts.
The Chicago House’s limited concept of “conservation” is to record all of the scenes and inscriptions on the Waset area temples, so that volumes of books can be created and available for scholars and researchers to consult after the carvings have vanished. The problem with this approach, of course, is that we will be forever dependent on the accuracy and interpretations of the European artists and photographers of the Chicago House.
The Chicago House’s work of documenting the material on temple walls is far from being an exact science. Instead, the photographs depend heavily on the light source and angle, and the exposure and development of the film. The more damage there is to a wall surface, the greater the difficulty in interpreting a photograph, where details can become confusing or even lost in the shadows.
As a backup to the photograph, the artists stand in front of the temple wall and trace (directly on the surface of the photoprint) the shapes and proportions of the original carving, while eliminating the damaged areas. The drawing is later inked and examined independently by two Egyptologists who make suggestions for corrections or restorations of missing or damaged areas of the scene. Afterwards, there are repeated consultations between the artists and Egyptologists so that the drawings are as “faithful as possible” to what is preserved on the wall. This process is far from being precise as the final inked drawings are ultimately determined by the assumptions and interpretations of the European Egyptologists and artists. Moreover, it is well established within the field of Egyptology that mistakes are often made by the most careful artists and researchers.

PROJECT 2000 WORLD HISTORY AGENDA
The Europeans are the only group on the planet which have the audacity to write “a history of the world,” and there is little doubt that they will put together an explosive barrage of propaganda about classical African civilizations and other cultures of the world in the year 2000. With Project 2000, the European propaganda machine will be in high gear as they tell and re-tell the history of the world. With much of the original evidence of classical African civilizations gone, the European obsession with the falsification of African history and culture will be much easier and more effective.

RECOMMENDATIONS
The Waset temples and other Pharaonic monuments throughout Egypt are in jeopardy, and unfortunately unless there is swift action taken the carvings of some temples will completely disappear within a few years, while those of others will be gone by next century.
1. African Americans should join the growing effort and write letters to the Supreme Council of Antiquities demanding that there be a 10-year moratorium on all excavations in Egypt, and that instead of more unnecessary excavations the international resources be focused on true conservation and saving the temples and other Pharaonic monuments.
2. The African American community should challenge Africentric “study tours” to stop the excessive European-style tourist trips to Egypt, and instead either eliminate these trips or transform them into work/study tours, where they are conducting field work and documenting the remaining artifacts.²
3. African people must create several central archives of photographs and video tapes of the monuments and artifacts in order to preserve an independent record of the remaining evidence of classical African civilizations. (Advancing The Research has already begun this project and I welcome any duplicate photos and video tapes in order to continue working toward establishing an extensive independent archive of source material.)
Originally published 1995.

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^[1] For a summary of my work on these forgeries, see: “Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the Cairo Museum?” pp. 207-212 in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), edited by Ivan Van Sertima. ^[2] For more details see: Manu Ampim, Towards Black Community Develop: Moving Beyond the Limitations of the Lecture Model, 2nd ed. (1996) pp. 169-177.
THE VANISHING EVIDENCE OF
CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS
Part II: The Tomb Evidence Prof. Manu Ampim


In August/September 1995, I undertook my 3rd season of field research in Egypt and Nubia. I conducted primary (first-hand) research at 15 sites in 1994 and 27 sites in 1995. As I indicated in part I of this series, my work of documenting modern forgeries and studying ancient African social organization and spiritual culture was superseded by the overwhelming problem of the rapid decay and deliberate destruction of many temple and tomb carvings.
The vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations is more apparent from the temple evidence than from the tombs because the temple “conservation” work is obvious from the scaffolding, which is visible from different locations within a temple. Not only does the scaffolding draw attention but the workmen’s equipment and the broken up pieces of temple wall surface lying on the ground are also easily noticed. Whereas, when a tomb is under “conservation,” the structure is usually closed to the public until the repair work and secret behind-the-scene alterations are complete.
The altering of Black (African) facial features and the lightening of the skin colors of painted reliefs inside the tombs are central aspects of the conspiracy to destroy the memory of classical African civilizations. The two main conspirator groups carrying out these acts are European and American research teams, and local government workers. Throughout Egypt and Nubia, the tomb images have suffered different levels of decay and destruction. In places such as Giza the tombs are closed as there is little left to see; in Tell Amarna the tomb carvings are in an advanced state of decay; in El Kab and Aswan many of the images have been systematically defaced; and in Beni Hassan only 4 of the 39 tombs are open because the rest are badly damaged. The only major location which has escaped serious tomb damage is Sakkara, but this may not remain true in the future because the conspirators’ work is not complete, until they have destroyed or defaced all the evidence of classical African civilizations.


Modern conspirators have thoroughly erased the facial characteristics of these Black images.



“EATING MUMMY”
In the tombs, not only have the faces of many wall images been altered or destroyed, but the crimes against African mummies are almost beyond description. There is a tradition dating back to at least 1000 A.D. In which Arabs and later Europeans engaged in the practice of “eating mummy.” This practice has been written about by a number of authors, and it was widespread in modern Egypt and Western Europe. It consisted of countless ancient African mummies being burned, ground up, and made into a kind of powder in order to be eaten. This incredible act of cannibalism was considered an effective medical practice and folk remedy. The belief became widely prevalent that cures could be obtained by eating ground-up preserved bodies. “Eating mummy” was considered effective in treating contusions, coughs, epilepsy, migraines, ulcers, cases of poison, and as a general panacea.
Mummies or fragments of mummies were taken from their tombs and sent to Cairo and Alexandria, where merchants sent the ground-up parts all over Western Europe. In the European Middle Ages and Renaissance mummy trafficking was widespread. Egyptian mummies were so sought after that the chaplain to Queen Catherine de Medici of France made a special trip to Egypt in 1549 and, together with some physicians from Italy, broke into a number of tombs around Sakkara in a quest for mummies to use in various medicines. Catherine’s father-in-law, King Francis I of France, also carried ground-up mummy in a pouch around his waist at all times in case of an emergency.
The mummy madness was such that if a genuine ancient Egyptian mummy was not available, local Arabs would use the corpses of executed criminals or those who had died from disease. They used these modern substitutes to meet the high demand for mummy powder, despite the protest against this barbaric practice by some physicians, among them the French surgeon Ambroise Paré, who stated, “It causes great pain in their stomachs, gives them evil smelling breath and brings about serious vomiting.”
“Eating Mummy” had a long and respectable tradition as a medicinal remedy. This uncivilized European and Arab tradition of eating mummified human flesh was part of a flourishing trade and thus did not die out until the 19th century! It is impossible to calculate the many thousands of African mummies that ended up in the stomachs of Europeans and Arabs.

MODERN VIOLATIONS
The violation of African mummies has continued without hesitation in the form of local Arab citizens and tomb “guardians” who hide mummies in a secluded location until they can find an adventurist tourist who willing to pay and be taken to see a mummy or skeletal remains. I have seen extreme violations being carried out by Arabs at various tomb sites. In one of the Khokka tombs on the West Bank of Waset (Luxor), I witnessed two Arabs go in a tomb and take out the mummified parts of an 18th dynasty African official. They took him out of his burial place and savagely began assembling the various parts: the lower legs, the upper legs, the torso, the head, and finally they took out the mummy’s heart and asked me if I wanted to photograph it before they placed it inside of the chest area. All of this was done for “baksheesh” (tip) with no regard for the African ancestor.
In many other cases, human bones have been scattered throughout the tomb, as well as broken into small pieces and thrown about in the cemetery as the robbers are making off with the loot. The Arab villagers continue to loot ancient tombs and sell the African artifacts in the illicit underground antiquities market.
The destruction of African mummies has led to a gross distortion of the historical facts. For example, Dr. Wilfred Griggs and his colleagues of Brigham Young University (BYU) are in possession of an unparalleled thousands of human DNA samples, many of them from the ancient Egyptians. Dr. Griggs recently gave a presentation in San Jose, California in which he discussed the joint BYU and Rosicrucian Museum mummy project. Griggs stated that the DNA tests that were run on the Rosicrucian mummies indicated that of the 4 tested “not one of the four showed the African [genetic] marker. Now that doesn't’t surprise me,” he added, “because...there [were] many different races” in Egypt. Griggs never gave any context for his remarks, as he did not mention the time period when each of these mummies lived. Nor did he mention the geographical location where they lived within ancient Egypt, or where their burials were found. In fact, Griggs’ motives are extremely questionable, because there was no balance in his statements. For example, Griggs did not indicate if the DNA results showed either a “European” or “Asian” genetic marker. He only made sure to state that the “African” marker was not found.

The facial damage to these four figures in a Valley of the Kings tomb is a typical pattern in the concerted effort to destroy Black images.
VALLEY OF THE KINGS
The main tomb work of the modern European and Arab conspirators has been on the West Bank of Waset (Luxor), and in particular the Valley of the Kings, because this is the most popular tourist location within Egypt where people go to see the ancient African tombs. The Valley of the Kings is well-known to travelers and Egyptologists as the principle burial ground of the pharaohs of dynasties 18-20, and it is one of the most significant archaeological sites in the world. The Kings Valley was intended as a quiet and secure resting place for African kings, but the artifacts in the area have suffered greatly at the hands of plunderers, treasure hunters, antiquity dealers, Egyptologists, archeologists, and tourists. Of the 62 tombs in the Kings Valley, there is usually only about 9 tombs open [as of 1995]. The rest of the tombs are closed for “conservation.”
Since many of these Kings Valley tombs were rediscovered in the 19th and early part of the 20th century, they have fallen into disrepair. Many of them have permanently suffered from the steady pressure of thousands of tourists each day, local Arab tomb-robbing villages such as Qurna, and from the destructive acts of archeologists and Egyptologists, who are more concerned with gaining recognition in academic circles than with the welfare of the tombs. The result of all this activity has been the African mummies being violated and destroyed, burial goods being sold or shipped off to museums, paints chipping off the tomb walls, and the accumulation of salt crystals which have put the brilliantly colored reliefs in a very fragile state.

BUILDING REPLICA TOMBS
The problem of deterioration of the Kings Valley (KV) tombs has led to a growing international movement to build replica tombs and close the original structures. The tomb replication project will likely be implemented in the future. Under this plan, the popular tombs which have suffered irreparable damage, such as the tomb of Tutankhamen, will be permanently closed to the public. Once they are closed, the only persons who will have access to the original KV tombs will be Egyptian government officials and workers, and “qualified” researchers.
The completion of this tomb replication project will be a major step in further erasing the memory of a Black Egypt. These replica tombs, with the lightened colors and remade facial features, will graphically demonstrate that the evidence of classical African civilizations is vanishing.
The tomb publications by Western scholars are currently a main source of information on tomb decorations and details, and when some of the KV tombs are permanently closed these often inaccurate and unreliable publications will unfortunately be the exclusive source of our information.
See part I of this series for recommendations on how you can help stop the vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations.
THE VANISHING EVIDENCE OF
CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS

Part III: The Museum Evidence
Prof. Manu Ampim

In parts I and II of The Vanishing Evidence series, I examined the progressive decay and deliberate acts of destruction to temple and tomb carvings. An additional aspect of this problem is the systematic altering of images in museums throughout Egypt and the Western World. The vast majority of statues, paintings, and relief images have been subtlety, and in many cases drastically, altered by conspirators to give them a non-African appearance. The changing of the racial identity of the vast majority of the ancient Egyptian images in museums is a major international issue which has been unaddressed. Through my primary research at nearly all of the major museums throughout Europe, America, Canada, and Egypt, I have been able to observe that there is an effective and systematic effort to destroy or eliminate the statues and paintings, which demonstrate that the founders and builders of ancient Egypt were Black people.
FACIAL & RACIAL RECONSTRUCTION
Museum artifacts are often manipulated and altered by a number of groups having access to these materials before they are viewed by the public. The broad group of conspirators involved with this cunning behind-the-scenes work includes: archeologists, Egyptologists, and government workers, who dig up, record, and decide the fate of the artifacts; restoration and conservation workers, who restore and piece the broken artifacts back together; and museum workers and officials who are the last group to handle the artifacts before they go on public display. The archaeologists/excavators and Egyptologists who dig up the artifacts have exclusive access to them until they are transported and turned over to a museum or other institution.

Officials of an Italian museum decided to give Thutmosis III a new nose in a crude and outrageous attempt to change his racial appearance.
However, many private collections have been organized around the numerous artifacts that are never reported or recorded and are consequently stolen, and then sold or smuggled out of the country by members of the excavation team. Local Arab villagers not associated with an archaeological team are also heavily involved in tomb robbing and reshaping artifact images, before they are eventually found in a private collection or public museum.
Museum artifacts are therefore handled, repaired, worked on, and “restored” behind the scenes before they are put on public display. Thus, the time from the initial excavation of an artifact until it is displayed for public viewing can be several years. In this time period, incredible changes are usually made to the statues, paintings, and reliefs. In fact, a careful examination of the ancient Egyptian artifacts bearing racial images in any museum or collection will demonstrate that the vast majority of items have been re-worked to change or obscure the racial identity. These museum images have been tampered with and often thoroughly de-Africanized, as they have been transformed from African to a European or some type of mixed group.

The Ra-Hotep and Nofret statues are seated in strange chairs with backboards and Mdw Ntr writing near their head. These statues are among the greatest forgeries in the history of ancient African archaeology.
[Manu Ampim, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret (forthcoming)] The reconstruction methods of the conspirators range from crude to sophisticated, and each process has the intent of changing the African racial identity of the images. For example, paint colors are systematically lightened or completely erased; noses are broken off or sanded down on the sides to make then thinner; the length of the lips are shortened to make them appear smaller; chins are knocked off to distort the facial structure; and other images are completely fabricated.

The Ra-Hotep statue violates a long list of clearly defined rules. A few of these rules are: Ra-Hotep is a royal son and high ranking official, but he does not wear a wig; he has a gray mustache; and he never had an emblem in his right hand across his chest.



Ra-Hotep's entire kilt belt is shown on his lap, rather than the universal ancient Egyptian practice of showing one belt-end protruding from the waist line. Also, Ra-Hotep never had an emblem in his left hand.
Museums around the world are filled with artifacts that have been thoroughly altered and de-Africanized by the conspirators. The following is a short list of these museums:
¨ The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California claims to have “the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in the western United States,” but much of its collection is actually made up of replicas and reconstructions, with images predictably resembling modern Europeans features.
¨ The Metropolitan Museum in New York, among other problems, has an entire room dedicated to Queen Hapshepsut, and every image of her has undergone obvious nose reconstruction.
¨ The National Museum of Antiquities in Holland has a number of statues that have undergone careful facial reconstruction.
¨ The Cairo Museum in Egypt contains forgeries and dozens of statues with nose alterations, and lightened colors which now resemble the pale skin tone of Europeans.
¨ The Boston Museum of Fine Arts amazingly has “replacement heads” in the middle of the museum floor, while the more important statues of Black rulers and officials are off to the side of the room, or in the basement, safely away from the view of tourists.
¨ The Louvre Museum in France has some of the most stunning and powerful African images of important figures anywhere in the world, yet the museum has bold signs placed in strategic locations throughout the Egyptian gallery, directing tourists to one particular statue: the “unnamed seated scribe,” who has undergone a thorough racial makeover and now appears European.
¨ The British Museum in England has re-worked the faces of statues so well that it in a few cases it is extremely difficult to detect their work.
¨ The Art History Museum in Austria is organized totally backward, as the foreign period of the Greeks, Romans and other invaders is placed in the front portion of the Egyptian gallery, so that this is the first impression that tourists get. Meanwhile, the real builders of Kemetian civilization are placed strategically in the back of the gallery.
¨ The Manchester Museum in Britain uses skull remains to do facial reconstructions, which almost always resembles Europeans, or else they have no particular ethnic identity.
These and many other museums around the world are collectively eliminating the Black identity of the ancient Egyptian and Nubian civilizations through carefully thought out and misleading displays and gallery arrangements. The obvious goal of these institutions is to destroy the memory of a Black ancient Egypt and Nubia. Unfortunately, they have been quite successful in this long range project, as each month millions of tourists visit these museums and get a totally false impression of the identity of the ancient Egyptians and Nubians.

ORIENTATION AND DISTORTION
In addition to the facial and racial makeovers that have been performed on the vast majority of artifacts, the museum gallery organization and layout is another effective method of distortion. The Art History Museum in Austria is one of many museums that use gallery layout and orientation strategies to deceive the public by confusing the racial identity of the indigenous people of ancient Egypt. For example, along with placing the Greek and Roman statues in prominent locations, museums also disregard dates and time periods, and instead lump artifacts together in general categories (such as statues, pottery, papyri, coffins, mummies, etc.), eventhough these artifacts may have been made several thousand years apart. Thus, one finds African statues from the early pyramid age next to those from the foreign period of Greek and Roman rulers at the very end of ancient Egyptian civilization 2,500 years later!

MODERN FORGERIES
A large number of Egyptian forgeries have been discovered over the years, and perhaps the greatest of them all are the statues of prince Ra-Hotep and his wife Nofret. These two statues in room 32 of the Cairo Museum are among the most famous “ancient Egyptian” statues, as they have been featured and written about in a long list of publications. Their popularity is also due to the fact that they are totally unique and they look European.
Elsewhere in a preliminary essay, “Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the Cairo Museum?” I have outlined 21 major problems with these unique statues that put them in direct contradiction to the strict artistic rules by which all Kemetian royal sculptors were bound. In the future, I will be publishing my full research exposing these forgeries in a forthcoming book entitled, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret.¹
While ancient African culture and history continues to vanish, the African American community is doing little to stop this process. The African African community could be in the forefront of protecting and preserving the records and remains of classical African civilizations, but on this issue it lacks direction and leadership. If the current rate of destruction, distortion, and theft of temple, tomb, and museum evidence continues, then little primary evidence will remain by the end of this century, and thus the falsification of classical African culture and history will be easier and more effective.
Anyone interested in joining the national campaign to stop the vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations, should refer to the recommendations in part I of The Vanishing Evidence series.

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¹ See Manu Ampim, “Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the Cairo Museum?” pp. 207-212 in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), edited by Ivan Van Sertima.

THE VANISHING EVIDENCE OF
CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS:
“A 2001 Update” Prof. Manu Ampim

The “Vanishing Evidence” series is a general summary of years of detailed observation and research. The full documentation supporting the conclusions expressed in this series of articles, including dozens of photographs, will be published in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret. I make no attempt here to “prove” such a complicated case as forgeries and the deliberate destruction of African artifacts in just a few short articles. Rather, this series is simply a preliminary report on my findings, which will be given extensive treatment in my book Modern Fraud. - MA

SCOPE OF “THE VANISHING EVIDENCE” SERIES
I originally wrote "The Vanishing Evidence of Classical African Civilizations" series in The Gaither Reporter in 1995-1996. The 3-part series documents the unintentional human-aided deterioration, as well as the deliberate and massive alteration, mutilation, and destruction of ancient Egyptian artifacts. The series covers three broad categories of this vanishing evidence: the Temple Evidence (part I), the Tomb Evidence (part II), and the Museum Evidence (part III). Before writing the series, I had meticulously studied artifacts and images at temples, tombs, pyramids, museums, and ancient residential sites throughout Egypt and Nubia (1990, 1994-1995). I also carefully examined ancient Egyptian and Nubian artifacts at nearly all of the major museums, institutes, and libraries in eleven European countries (1989-1990), and in dozens of cities throughout the U.S. And Canada (1991-1992). Overall, I painstakingly studied well over a million images and artifacts before writing the “The Vanishing Evidence” series.
My initial goal was simply to follow the path of research outlined by the eminent scholar, Dr. Chancellor Williams in The Destruction of Black Civilization (1974), and conduct primary research on ancient Black civilizations. As Williams pointed out, the accurate knowledge of African science, social organization, and advanced spiritual systems can only be known from an unbiased first-hand study of the history and artifacts. Though I began my extensive multi-country research tour with a mission of documenting the specific details of the advanced African civilizations of ancient Egypt and Nubia, a quite different and unexpected theme emerged in every region that I studied. I was struck by the specific patterns of deliberate alterations and defacement of the artifacts. These patterns became clear after I had visited the initial group of European museums. What I noticed most was that these acts were more than simply knocking off the noses of statues, they involve a much broader assault on ancient Black images.

The pair statue from the Tomb of Ikhetneb has lost most of its original paint on the faces and upper body of the two images, while much of the original paint on the legs and feet still survive. It seems evident that the darker paint has been deliberately erased on the face and upper body, thus giving the images the illusion of a white-skin appearance.
METHODS OF DESTRUCTION AND ALTERATION
My observations of the evidence are careful and are supported by photographic and video documentation. The extensive study of over a million artifacts and images gave me the keen power of observation to make analyses of the same materials that are also available to Egyptologists, although most of them have not studied the volume of the materials that I have examined. When the artifacts in question were examined meticulously, I found that the methods used to change or damage the images are varied, and they include: subtly altering the shape of the nose on statues by using some type of sanding device; adding on false noses; reshaping or completely destroying the face on temple and tomb walls; lightening the color of the face and body paint on statues and paintings; completely eliminating the paint on statues and paintings and thus making the images appear “white”; destroying the lower facial structure, particularly the chin and jaw area; putting in false bluish-gray inlaid eyes; plastering over temple images with White Portland Cement during ongoing “conservation” work; and creating outright forgeries! These acts of fraud and deliberate destruction is what I call the handiwork of modern conspirators. I was stunned by such an angry, vicious, and widespread attack against Black images by the enemies of Classical African Civilizations.

MODERN FORGERIES
One of the most absurd invention of the conspirators is the forged statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret in the Cairo Museum. I present detailed and concrete evidence in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret (also see part 3 of this series on the Museum Evidence) that there is a list of specific artistic rules which are consistently applied to statue after statue throughout the pyramid age.[1] Although some writers would attempt to argue to the contrary, the fact that there was a body of specific artistic rules is demonstrated by the tens of thousands of statues and paintings that are presented in exactly the same way across various sites and cites throughout all of the major periods: the old, middle, and new kingdoms. Thus, these shocking forgeries make no artistic sense as they violate a long list of clearly defined rules, according to the ancient Egyptian rule system. Further, these fabricated European-looking statues do not make any cultural or historical sense, and it is consistent that they were found (or rather created by modern hands) during the 19th century, which has been called by some historians as “The Great Age of Fakes.” There is no doubt that the Ra-Hotep and Nofret forgeries stand completely outside of the ancient Egyptian artistic, cultural, and historical reality.
One of the great forgeries of the 19th century which has already been proven is that of the famous Queen Tetisheri. The statue of “Queen Tetisheri” was purchased by the British Museum in 1890, and this fake piece (with its facial features resembling most Europeans) was paraded around the world until it was first suspected as a fraud in 1984. This fake Tetisheri statue was showcased in the British Museum special exhibit on forgeries in 1990, but not before this forgery fooled experts and deceived the world for 100 years![2]

This limestone statuette inscribed with the name of Queen Tetisheri was long regarded as an important piece for the study of ancient Egyptian sculpture of the late 17th and early 18th dynasties. Now, however, this world renown statuette is regarded as a modern forgery.
WHO ARE THE CONSPIRATORS?
Who are the conspirators responsible for these acts of destruction, alteration and invention is a basic question that must be answered. Brian Fagan in his book on The Rape of Egypt (1975) documents a list of culprits: the Christian Copts who destroyed statues and monuments; the conquering Arabs who dismantled ancient buildings; and the 18th and 19th century European travelers, adventurers, and archeologists who were treasure hunters, plunderers, and looters. It was during the 19th century that a vast number of ancient Egyptian artifacts were excavated, but most of these discoveries were not adequately documented, with original on-site photographs and detailed field reports, which are now standard procedures within the archeological field. The systematic documentation of archaeological excavations did not develop until many years after volumes of artifacts were already taken from their original African sites and eventually placed in museums. Indeed, it is a sketchy record of how most of these artifacts were discovered and eventually made it onto museum floors.
This brings us to the identification of a large group of conspirators, who are the handlers of the excavated artifacts. This group includes excavators, antiquities dealers, museum curators and directors, and restorers and conservationists. Somewhere between the original excavation of the artifacts, to their transport, sale and acquisition, storage, cleaning, conservation, and finally their display on the museum floor there has been a diligent effort at altering, reworking, and “touching up” the facial features of countless statues. The conspirators who perpetrate these acts are behind the scenes actors who use a hit and run strategy of defacement and alteration of the art. They hide their hands from public view, but the results of their fraudulent and destructive activity is plain to see by anyone who carefully examines the evidence, as their pattern of fraud is highly distinctive. The lack of original documentation of many excavated artifacts has made it easy for these conspirators to commit their fraud. It is well known that many great artifacts of ancient Egypt were destroyed by the hands of plunderers during the widespread looting and trading in antiquities that went on for centuries, but what is not well known is the full story of the artifacts that did survive the wave of plunderers and make it into modern museum collections. I show in Modern Fraud that a large number of these surviving artifacts have undergone a racial makeover at the hands of modern conspirators. The results of their fraudulent work are the countless altered artifacts, reworked pieces, fake genealogies, and a host of forged statues.
The most recent revelation of the racist fabrications by this group of handlers, or more specifically Western museum directors, is reported in the current issue of Archaeology Magazine 54 (September-October 2001, p. 27). This report is associated with an article by Peter Lacovara et al. Archaeology reported that in the absence of scholarship the directors of the Niagara Falls Museum in Ontario, Canada “fabricated pedigrees” for many of their Egyptian mummies in the mid-nineteenth century. The most imaginative of these fake pedigrees, or false identities, was created for a bearded male mummy of the Roman period. The museum officials invented the following elaborate story for him which is a complete myth: “General Ossipumphnoferu the General in Chief of Thotmes III. ... He was a man of military skill, also a famous magician. He was 60 years old when he died. The scar on his forehead was caused by an enraged elephant while defending the king from his onslaughts. A palace was erected for the general near that of the king.” The museum officials took their scandalous activity even further, as for many years the “general” was displayed in the coffin of Iawttayesheret, a high-ranking woman from the 25th dynasty, which was 700 years before his time! It is incredible that the directors of a public museum would take an unidentified Roman period mummy, with a European facial appearance, put him in a woman’s coffin from 700 years earlier, and then create a bogus identity for him as a famous general during a period which was another 700 years earlier than the coffin he was buried in! Eventhough this mummy and other artifacts at the museum were not studied comprehensively by an Egyptologist, this is yet another case which documents that Western museum directors would go to any lengths in the 19th and early 20th century to falsify evidence.
Currently, there is no doubt that this list of conspirators includes local Egyptian government workers, who are carrying out many acts of destruction on a regular basis. These men either work for the Egyptian government on “conservation” projects, or for various European or North American archeological teams. On several occasions in the 1980s and 1990s, these unsupervised minimally-skilled government workers have been caught on video tape plastering over temple images and inscriptions! In fact, it is impossible to visit the Karnak Temple in Luxor and not see the recent defacement, and it is suspicious that with rare exception Egyptologists are silent about this matter.

WHAT ARE THEIR MOTIVES
After examining a vast body of artifacts, it seems evident that the ultimate motives of these groups of conspirators from the 19th century to the present is to eliminate the Black images from the ancient Egyptian historical record. This motivation is consistent with the racist views of many of the 19th and early 20th century Egyptologists who made many ridiculous assertions about Black people having little to no role in ancient Egypt, and that this was a civilization founded by white or Semitic people from the North. These baseless claims were widespread within the ranks of Egyptologists, and they helped inspire both H. M. Herget’s 1941 National Geographic Magazine paintings of pale-skinned Egyptians and the imaginary white images created by Hollywood, which together have deceived the public for the past half century.[3] This nonsense was exposed in the 1950s by the late Senegalese scholar, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop. Diop assembled an awesome body of evidence to document the Black foundation of ancient Egypt and to expose the dishonest discourse of Western Egyptologists who were, as he put it, “performing intellectual acrobatics” to avoid dealing with concrete evidence to support their contentions about the Northern origins of ancient Egyptian civilization.[4] The mainstream Egyptologist Bruce Trigger in The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt (1995) discusses Diop’s impact and that it is because of his work that ancient Egypt is now seen by mainstream scholars as an African nation. Trigger also comments that “the white racist rhetoric that permeated most early twentieth-century writings about the development of Egyptian civilization has long been abandoned, [but] ideas formulated at the time have continued to influence thinking about the origins and nature of Egyptian civilization.”[5]
The “white racist rhetoric” that Trigger describes as permeating early twentieth century writings is simply a continuation of the same racist views held in the 19th century, and it is within this climate that the behind the scenes handlers had both the motives and the opportunity to deface images, alter facial features, and create racist forgeries.

RESPONSE TO THE SERIES
Since I first wrote "The Vanishing Evidence" series in 1995-1996, there has been much discussion, and many individuals across the country have indicated to me that they have also observed both the human-aided deterioration and the deliberate acts of destruction against Black images and artifacts. I have examined photographs of several of these individuals who have traveled to Egypt at various times, and for the most part only a very small percentage of their photographs are useful, because the individual photographers are not trained on how to systematically document the damage. However, some of the images are invaluable as they document the ongoing assault on Black images at major temple sites. It is now known by many that the physical evidence of classical African civilizations is vanishing before our eyes in essentially every geographical area. Many people are now aware that the human-aided decay, distortion of the artifacts, and deliberate defacement is widespread and this damage is most obviously visible at popular temple sites throughout Egypt.
Predictably, there have been a few white writers who have made ignorant comments about the “The Vanishing Evidence” series without even looking at the artifacts in question! They have not examined the first-hand evidence that I outline in the series, but they attack without anything other than empty emotion. They are in blind support of the fraudulent activity and racist scholarship of the 19th and 20th century. These people subscribe to Western colonial scholarship, eventhough this scholarship was born and bred in the brutal period of European expansion and colonialism. Egyptology as a discipline originated in this shameful 19th century era, and still maintains -- with little improvement -- its arrogant colonial discourse about African culture and civilizations. Any research that challenges this Western paradigm is automatically attacked by the apologists of this paradigm as “wrong” “misinformed,” or “pseudo-scientific.” These individuals are willing to do whatever it takes to ignore evidence, and in some cases lie and mislead the public.
PREVIOUS DOCUMENTATION
After I had begun organizing my information on the vanishing evidence theme that had emerged from my museum and field work, I later found out that a portion of my work of documenting the ongoing deterioration and destruction in Egypt had already been anticipated by the accomplished Egyptologist John Romer nearly 20 years earlier.[6] On his website, Romer republished a 1997 essay which summarizes his many years of work in the King’s Valley and is entitled “The Valley of Death,” wherein the author wrote: “The warning has been sounded. Loud and clear. Egypt’s famed Valley of the Kings...is in danger itself of the death it silently encloses. In less than 25 years—unless something is done urgently—the valley of priceless ancient tombs could become the valley of ochre mud. And responsible is the planet’s prime agent of destruction—man himself.” Lastly, there is also video footage shot by Ashra Kwesi in his video series on “The African Origin of Civilization” that I recall viewing in the 1980s. Kwesi’s short footage showed local Arab workers chopping and plastering over wall material at one of the Luxor area temples. Kwesi's footage was probably my first exposure to the documentation which shows the vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations.
An updated version of “The Vanishing Evidence” series, complete with numerous photographs, form an important section in my upcoming book on Modern Fraud, which concerns the Ra-Hotep and Nofret forgeries.
Prof. Manu Ampim
October 2001
Prof. Manu Ampim is a historian and primary researcher on African and African American culture & history. He is director of Advancing The Research and can be reached at PO Box 18623, Oakland, CA 94619. Email: Profmanu@acninc.net. Telephone: (510) 482-5791 or 1-(888)-822-3449 x9939.
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Notes
[1] I list some of these rules in Manu Ampim, “Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the Cairo Museum?” in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), pp. 207-212. I will discuss the full body of these rules in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret.
[2] For details see: Mark Jones, ed., Fake: The Art of Deception (1990), pp. 160, 162. The “Tetisheri” statue was first suspected to be a forgery in 1984 by Mr. W.V. Davies, Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum. See Davies, British Museum Occasional Paper (no. 36, 1984). For the significance of this forgery see Manu Ampim, “Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the Cairo Museum?” in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), pp. 207-208. [Return to text]
[3] William Hayes, “Daily Life in Ancient Egypt,” National Geographic Magazine 80 (1941): 419-515. H. M. Herget’s 32 imaginary color paintings with pale-skinned Egyptians are used as illustrations for Hayes’ article, eventhough Hayes states “the Egyptians are, and always have been, Africans,” and that they are a “brown” and “brunet” (i.e. Dark brown or reddish brown) skinned people. This deliberate public deceit and racism is still being carrying on by KMT Magazine, which uses these same dishonest images created by Herget more than a half century ago. For example see: KMT premiere issue (spring 1990), pp. 9, 11, 16; and KMT vol. 5, no. 4 (Winter 1994-95), pp. 45-46, 60. KMT now seems to have adopted a new favorite set of modern racist drawings by Winifred Brunton to illustrate its various articles; for the complete set of the Brunton drawings, see KMT, vol. 1, no. 4 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 52-61. Also see KMT, vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 1997), p. 31; and vol. 12, no. 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 1, 74. [Return to text]
[4]Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1974), trans. By Mercer Cook. The African scholars C.A. Diop and Theophile Obenga solidified their position of Egypt as a Black civilization at the historic 1974 “Peopling of Ancient Egypt” Symposium. See: UNESCO, The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script: Proceedings of the Symposium held in Cairo, Egypt from 28 January to 3 February 1974 (The General History of Africa, Studies and Documents, no. 1, 1978), p. 102. [Return to text]
[5]Bruce Trigger, “Egyptology, Ancient Egypt, and the American Imagination” in The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt (1995), pp. 21-35. [Return to text]
[6]John Romer had already done thorough work in documenting the deterioration of the monuments, with his publication, Physical Deterioration of the Royal Tombs in the Valley of the Kings: A Progress Report on the 1977-1978 Season of the Brooklyn Museum Theban Expedition (1978). Along the same lines, Romer wrote The Rape of Tutankhamun (1993), which was later turned into a one-hour PBS television documentary in 1994. [See: John Romer Resource Page] [Return to text]
Note, if any portion of this text, or any of the graphics in this article are used, please credit Prof. Ampim. Also, please do not use the photos without the accompaning captions.