The scandal of the boycott of the Stand-up of the Black-American comedian Kevin Hart gives me the opportunity to return to the past of ancient Egypt and to reaffirm with force, as the Senegalese scholar CHEIKH ANTA DIOP had done in his time, that the brilliant and extraordinary Civilization of ancient Egypt was founded by African blacks. No offense…
On February 21, 2023, I came across an article in Courrier international entitled: Stand-up. En Égypte, un spectacle de Kevin Hart annulé sur fond de controverse*1 (Stand-up. In Egypt, a Kevin Hart show canceled amid controversy*1). And I really fell from the clouds when I discovered the content. The Black-American comedian who was to perform for the first time in his career in Cairo, Egypt on Tuesday February 21, 2023 has, unfortunately, seen an incomprehensible outburst against him on Egyptian social networks. This led to the cancellation of his show the day before it was held. R Productions, the Egyptian event management company behind Kevin Hart's tour, alleged logistical reasons. But it is now clear that this is absolutely not the case. And, while browsing this article which I invite to read including the source newspapers, I discovered that the motive for this cancellation is rather linked to several calls for a boycott which had circulated on Egyptian social networks. The Black American comedian's crime is that he allegedly said: ”We must teach our children the true history of Black Africans when they were kings in Egypt and not just the era of slavery that is cemented by education in America. Do you remember the time when we were kings?” Social networks are not places indicated for validations of theories or historical research that we know. We could still understand this boycott if only this affair was linked to a declaration other than the affirmation of the black African origins of the Pharaonic Civilization.
Assuming Kevin Hart actually said that. How is this statement a historical untruth. In nothing. Absolutely nothing. Rather, it is those who argue against this statement who are at odds with historical truth. I say and I repeat: the ancient Egyptians were black people from Africa. No offense…I personally wrote it in my book: Dictionnaire des concepts de l’Egypte antique : les preuves indélébiles de A à Z que les Egyptiens anciens étaient des Noirs d’Afrique, (Dictionary of ancient Egyptian concepts: the indelible evidence from A to Z that the ancient Egyptians were Black people from Africa), Editions Complicités, Paris, 2021 and I will defend it everywhere, with supporting evidence. This is not an incantation. Far from it !
Courrier international also points out: “ The controversy sparked conversations about history, politics and cultural identity. Whose heritage was ancient Egypt? Who ruled over the Nile civilization? What skin color did the divine kings of the pharaohs have? ” writes New Lines. And to explain that “ Afrocentric scholars claimed that the legacy of the pharaohs belonged to their people and that the ancient Egyptians themselves were black.” Following, Courrier international to add, journalistic precaution obliges, that certain preeminent Egyptologists refute this thought. But who are these preeminent Egyptologists and what are their arguments? The famous symposium organized by UNESCO on The Population of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of Meroitic Writing in 1974 in Cairo will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary next year. There are certainly those nostalgic for an Egyptology imbued with ideology, which is struggling to get rid of its tinsel, and which still clings desperately to what has nourished it for centuries: systemic racism. Nothing more !
Like many Blacks, without any doubt, I followed the broadcast on France 2 of the Documentary “Blacks in France”*2 by Aurélia Perreau and Alain Mabanckou on Tuesday January 18, 2022. In the ensuing debate, the French-Congolese writer and academic Alain Mabanckou said in particular this:
"The History of Ancient Egypt has been studied by one of the greatest African historians who is not known to the French classes. His name is CHEIKH ANTA DIOP. He wrote "Negro Nations and Culture" (Editor's note: Negro Nations and Culture: From Egyptian Negro Antiquity to the Cultural Problems of Black Africa Today). All Black Americans read it. Why don't we read it in France? Because CHEIKH ANTA DIOP demonstrated that ancient Egypt was Negro. And that if we come to study it in France, all the White Egyptologists will loosen the textbooks they have been writing for hundreds of years. And what are they going to do with their doctorates?"
In principle, we should not thank Alain Mabanckou for having said it, but a "BIG THANK YOU" anyway... Especially when we know how many do not dare to say it, not because they are not convinced that this is true, but quite simply for lack of audacity. Because it is no longer the proofs that are lacking today to demonstrate that ancient Egypt was Negro.
Yet…And yet, I know at least two Academics, one is Senegalese residing in France and the other is Nigerian residing in the United States, who flatly refuse to accept even including supporting evidence that the Ancient Egypt was Negro.
Conversely, fortunately for the rest, many Western Egyptologists like the British James Edward Quibell who was one of the very first to recognize it or the French Emile Amélineau, Constantin-François Chassebœuf de La Giraudais, Comte Volney , known as Volney (founder of the Louvre Museum in Paris), Jean-François Champollion known as Champollion Le Jeune (decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs) and among our contemporaries the Frenchman Philippe Charlier or the American Renée Friedman have formally attested to this.
When Alain Mabanckou speaks of WHITE Egyptologists, it is in my opinion a way of speaking and especially of our contemporaries who are quick to mouth the trumpet to hold a rather nostalgic Egyptological discourse of a bygone past. Number of WHITE Egyptologists having been the only ones at a certain time long before the CHEIKH ANTA DIOP to prove and defend the Negro-African origins of ancient Egypt. “We must render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; and to God what is God's. »
A to Z that the ancient Egyptians were Black people from Africa, Editions Complicités, Paris, 2021
CHEIKH ANTA DIOP has indeed demonstrated, with new evidence, that ancient Egypt was Negro. To go further also, I added and I will never stop repeating it enough, supporting evidence, in my book entitled SPIRITUALITE Pourquoi le Yoga n’est pas né en Inde : Les secrets de l’origine des Dravidiens (SPIRITUALITY Why Yoga was not born in India: the Secrets of the Dravidians' origins) Editions Complicités, Paris, 2020 ” that the ancient Indus Valley was also Negro. And I invited all Indianists and other Indian scholars who dispute it to bring me the contradiction. I reiterate here this invitation to contradiction. Great migrations have the advantage that they sometimes mark indelibly the links between the territories of departure and those of arrival. Such are the cases of the connections between the NILE VALLEY and the INDUS VALLEY on the one hand and on the other the NILE VALLEY and the NIGER VALLEY. Anything that allows the Natemba from the depths of Benin Republic that I am to speak a language classified by Linguists in the family of Nigero-Congolese Languages and whose substrate is found today in INDIA (in all its forms of SPIRITUALITY) to be the same both phonetically and semantically, although Cotonou is thousands of miles from New Delhi. By the way, I must also say a BIG THANK YOU to Professor Bernard Sergent, author of the scholarly work "Genèse de l'Inde" (Genesis of India) published on October 14, 1997 by Payot in Paris and who is one of the most honest and open Indianists I have ever met on this subject.
I persist and sign to say that not only Yoga was not born in India, contrary to what we have long believed, but even better that the ancestors of the Dravidians came from the same people as the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians. And they were indeed Black. As CHEIKH ANTA DIOP himself said so well: “…Once said, it is almost forgotten. Because today it will be necessary to show the world on other bases. Each of us must be in full possession of our cultural and ancestral heritage. And it is only from this cultural plenitude that we can sincerely collaborate without any alienation”.
Nevertheless, we cannot accept from now on without reacting that, even in the university or teaching world, we make ideology where we must teach science simply because it concerns the past of BLACKS, glorious which more is. Because the idea of BLACK that we still peddle today is none other than the one that was fabricated from scratch with SLAVERY and COLONIZATION and then disseminated throughout the world and for centuries. But this idea, which was like a sordid idea of marketing for the benefit of Western powers during these centuries of denigration of the BLACK MAN, contrasts fundamentally with the History of ANCIENT BLACK AFRICA when the facts relating to it are stripped of all falsification and all ideology.
Only a few days ago, I wrote in this same newspaper: TRIBUNE - Origin of the word "Sinai": When the history of ancient India sheds light on that of ancient Egypt. And vice versa…*3. After the origins of the name SEBASTOPOL, another one can be added to this list. One of the most used words today in our modern world interconnected by computers, telephones and other smartphones is HACKER and its other derivatives. However this word whose root is HAWK philologically does not belong to any other language than ANCIENT NUBIAN. It is the strict prerogative of the linguistic universe of the ORIGINS of ANCIENT EGYPT. It is neither of English origin and even less American. NEKHEN was also called the CITY OF HAWK. NEKHEN is the City of the origins of the Pharaonic Civilization. And since it was not BLACK PEOPLE who founded the brilliant and extraordinary Civilization of ANCIENT EGYPT, I challenge EGYPTOLOGISTS and LI
And to conclude, there is a Mexican proverb that sums up the whole situation of BLACKS about ANCIENT EGYPT and that I like to quote: "They wanted to bury us, they did not know that we were seeds". Everything else is just what I now call "POUTINERY". Namely: the art of continuing to tell lies while knowing in your heart of hearts that they are indeed lies, but quite simply because your record is scratched and you have nothing more to offer another to be desperately heard. Duly noted!
By Marcus Boni Teiga
*1 - Courrier international : https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/stand-up-en-egypte-un-spectacle-de-kevin-hart-annule-sur-fond-de-controverse?
*2 – Aurélia Perreau, Alain Mabanckou, Noirs en France : https://www.franceinter.fr/culture/noirs-en-france-un-documentaire-diffuse-sur-france-2-le-18-janvier-2022-a-21h10
*3 – AFRIQUE Destinations : https://www.afriquedestinations.com/en/tribune-origin-word-sinai-when-history-ancient-india-sheds-light-ancient-egypt-and-vice-versa
