The image of Black in Antiguity --- for African American History month

(Mafialulu - must speak to you.....o.n.o ghi

    

By

Sampson I. Onwuka

The Image of Black in Antiquity….

 

This topic is realized from the view as a new development of Temples, Buildings and Architecture from Ancient time till at least the fall of Roman Empire. There has always the problem - if not bias associated with interpreting ancient history. One of these problems is the issue of the reader forcing himself or her judgment into a particular subject and from such subjects there are new grounds.

African Studies and the Images of Blacks from antiquity are one those instances that serve opinions and languages the right course of procedure and play all kinds of role in deciding the left and right of Art forms concerned. All objects of Art forced which must be observed, must pass through the plane ticket of the observer and the language of expression, the object when observed must become a subject.

Set in context of several realities ; historical and documentary hypothesis (2) language - historical linguistic (3) the influence of religion or the role of psychology complex – for instance infantile psychology preceding the major religions in Africa and the impact of war in Islam and its 800 years war in Africa offers interesting notions in African history - beginning with arrival of Musa in the 7th century and ending with the rise of Amharic (4) the lacunae of biological and archaeological remains, each capable of translating the gaps in enacting the histories of Africa - through 6th cataract to 1st - vice versa - 1st cataract to 6th appendage with the school of civilization that champion an argument. 

Did for instance the earliest humans migrate from Asia (South Arabia - including Indus Valley) into Africa - a personal forte since Egyptian history pointing to Nun speak of him as a man from the sea of reeds - or did the sparse of historical enactment of earliest African civilization begin with Africans before the great unraveling in Asia and elsewhere. 

There are historical as well as archaeological facts that deny the probability of such historical enactment particular the last Quaternary age converged to the spread of language. There are environmental as well biological factors that point the last evolutionary age as the beginning of migration which recent science of genetic mapping to enhance.

The link between distribution of human beings and their language is so sparing that gaps do not necessarily justify any school of dispersion saving for archaeology and perhaps civilization whose bunions; sculpture, fine art, and architecture and religious encomiums in writing form can be reduction to the barest outlines of at least 100 years to a few decades in the evolving history of world.

In language, I for one, may occasional pay homage to Dwight Bolinger and Donald A. Sears, with respect to how the idea of "conceptualization of any considerable scale is inseparable from language".

Bolinger also speak of "continuity in view of passive resistance in direct speech community" (Aspect of Language; 1981, 75). These group of thinkers point of language as a vehicle of expression is a dislocating interest which we may now which Museum pieces showing affirmative black faces and in fact acceptable interpretation of Blacks in Antiquity are products of sustained cultural imagination. There is continuity in these things.

The presence and absence of Blacks in Antiquity as we have mentioned cannot be measured by fragments of Museum pieces and cannot be measured by Roman-Greco world of Ancient History. In reality, we are experimenting on the need to forestall further inroads into the realms of proper black studies using Greek and Roman ante-facts, particularly Greeks, without exhausting the whole converse that speak of the subject.

 

African Studies is new - African Studies is old. In very recent times, we may argue that there is a sharp divide between Afrocentric, Africology, Black Studies and the New School of Henry Gates and Kwame Appai. There is a possibility of a Fifth School which should include African Historian of note; Ali Mazrui and Theophilus Obenga.

 Like Chancellor Williams, they may be grouped as Pan Africanist and the survival of African Studies with direct note on History may be due to this people. This school is a semi-conservative approach to African History, not unlike the version of Cheikh Anta Diop, but less driven, less gusto and rely more of literary sources such as the Greeks and the Romans, than the enigmas of the Pyramid builders.


It is certain that these schools are product of each other particularly Afrocentric which resulted from Pan Africanist and the Search for Black leadership in North America, South America, and in Europe. It is also reasonable to suggest that the new wave of Afrocentric called Africologists. Afrocentric are believed to have gotten their meaning from this group and may have a falcon in the literary sources of modern day writers such as Molefi Asanti, but his works and other such as Henry Louis gates may be a fraction of Afrocentric in style of the past, but not without the influence of Diop's, whose public thesis and opinions resolve exclusively around the Pyramid, its builders and the persons of Egypt.

They differ somewhat and adopt more to Martin Bernal, with emphasis on classical sources and mono-genesis of African languages and culture from North Africa via the Coast of Eastern Sea, yielding towards the ends of the continent. To be sure, Bernal is considered Afrocentric in spite of his arguments which are beyond doubt in many ways than one.

  

As such it is fair to say that the bone contention of many African historians or at least their mainstay, has been the Ancient History of Egypt and North African, the Pyramids, Slave Trade and its effect and the problem of Race in terms of the Biblical as well as classical opinions, It may seem that these points of dissent is derived from other influences other than academic. These schools of interpretation gave serious influence to the school of Near East and Middle East historians. Of course much of the story relate to the age of archaeological discovery and architecture, to Biblical Archaeology and excavation.


For many years the efforts to retool the studies of Africa fell into the hands of Black leaders, some of them were mostly interested in the Seminal work and helped to encourage the rate of the then the Africans in England and their Mulattos widened the gap on the search of anything authentic about the Continent but the most deciding forays into African historical past and legends were carried by Franco-phon Africans - both in West Africa and in Diaspora. It was not a co-incidence that by the middle of the 20th century, that a Franco-phon country - Senegal, produced Cheikh Anta Diop one of the most outstanding African historian of the last Century.


Diop was undaunted by the works of Gaston Maspero, Auguste Marriette, Karl Richard Lepsius, Shiagarelli, James Breasted, Howard Carter, Flinders Petrie, David Roberts, George Andrew Reisner, and one of the greatest, Jean Francois Champollion. Of course these men were mainly French and German, but their intrusion into Africa began in the context of two stimuli, one of which is the broaching of Egyptian gates by Napoleon and the French expedition, and then the hunt for which occupied the minds of the early diggers.

These early Egyptologist is very important since they brought the world of Palestine Archaeology much closer than ever. In the redeeming ‘Acts’ of Petrie Flinders, whose work of Pottery was to set a lasting standard on the future studies of Ancient History and also Africa and although these days, some of the methods used by Flinders are no longer useful, but the lasting influence of these cultures and the Europeans of some authority that enabled it, made it possible for us to see through the Stethoscope of the cultural and intellectual history of the world. But as far as other law offices are concerned, there is much to be said about the early years of these European giants, how and when they appeared in the country.

There is a persuasion of the fact of Mastabas at Saqqara and Royal houses in Egypt including the arguments of Professor G.A Reinser, J-P Lauer 'Tombs', Alessandro Barsanti who famously excavated King Unas. Is not a record of deeds performed by Archaeologist from those early days till now rather we can say for sure that people had a profound influence on the lives of people and the cultures of the people that came calling intact, Emile Amelineau in 1879-98 and then Sir Flinders Petrie who discovered the first mummy at Meidum. Petrie Flinders like W.F Albright were especially known for their interest in Palestine Archaeology.


It was the occasional forays of the French activists and scientist re-stating their interest in Egypt that led to the rise of Petrie Flinders who crossed over from Palestine Archaeology and the Studies in the Land of the Bible to Alexander and then to Egypt further afield. It was in the course of this whole effort that he was able to cast enough light on the subject of pottery. While the famous Albright continued with his work in Palestine, the likes of Petrie and his new ways of sorting out the plates and archeology leading to the actual dates of these sites brought a whole great world of Europeans into Egypt. 


One of the more important forces from that era is the man by name J-L Lauer who worked on the tombs of Pharaohs and who tried to understand the steps of the mortuary of Egypt and made important contributions to the age of the Pharaohs. This does not prove  that he is mentioned by virtually every Egyptian Historian, particularly those interested in Pharaoh Temples. J-P Lauer spent almost sixty years in Egypt and was kindly spoken by the great I.E.S Edwards. There is meaning to the word I.E.S Edwards - not in as far as his book’

Going chiefly by the book 'Palestine Archaeology', we may begin to cite the presence of an Egyptologist by name Sir Gaston Maspero (Egyptian Antiquaries) and Marriette Pasha as very important to the Palestine Archaeology, but the effort they mounted helped to focus archaeology in Palestine along the lines of a (1) Tell (2) Huyuk (3) Tepe, and towards the Guft (Coptus), some Archaeologist began to train Arabs, particularly under Resiner, that is George Andrew Reisner who excavated Samaria.


The discovery of Ancient Palestine is believed to have started with the Swiss Dominican 'Felix Schmidin 1480 during his (Fabri) Journey into the Middle East and Mediterranean. His Journeys took place at the time that the Muslim of Mediterranean which Muslims dominated - Moors to be sure - was waning in 1480. The same man made forays into the forbidden areas of Venice and then continued on his route to the land of the Bible. There were others who would follow in in his footsteps and in 1483, visiting Jerusalem and in fact Palestine took on added meaning.


Then there was the German Physician, Leonard Rauchwolff in 1575, attempted the natural history of Palestine, interest in Architecture and Archaeology - started with the drawings of Johann Zuallart (1586), made more 'accurate' by Johann Van Kootwyck (Dutchman) 1650, Travelogue - Roman, Pietro della Valle 1639, including the description of the areas concerned by the age of Linguistic Theory and Language connection of Zeoga, the study of archaeology and stories concerning archaeology took on an added meaning. 



This age of interesting archaeological research, by mostly Dutch benefited from the division among the churches especially the question of the re the French Jesuits in (1679), the French Jesuit, Michael Nau, English Protestant (1703) Henry Maundrell, The real revolution according to is Adrain Reland and his book on 'Palestina ex monumentis veteribus. illustrata) Palestine Illustrated by Ancient Monuments. But not until the turn of the 19th century of the French revolution and Napoleon, did anything of useful value come to bear.


Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (1805 - 7) German, the Swiss, Johann Ludwig Burchhardt (1801-12), Englishman, C.L Irby, James Mangles (1817-18). Seetzen (TransJordan) - he discovered 'Caesarea Philippi' and 'Amman and Gerasa (Jerash)' , searching for the Tomb of Aaron, Burchhardt ; discovered 'petra'? First to record (Arab names) correctly (became muslim in the process). Irby and Mangles - discovered (English) 'Arab el-Emir' then came the flood of others such as Edward Robinson -, Eli Smith- and the words of Swiss Taitus Tobler, 1867 (after Albright, that) that "The words of Robinson and Smith alone geography from the time fo Eusebius and Jerome to the early nineteenth century" gave Palestine Archeology a new meaning.

European authorities (1) Pere F.M Abel and Albretcht Alt, on Biblical Archaeology, but according to W.F. Albright praised Robinson indicated that the triumph of Europe as an authority in these places gave the place a new and hopeful meaning to the eventual survival of the continent and it was until Edward Robinson that the popularity of the Palestine as an area of Study took on an added meaning.


Albright however mentioned that he accomplished very little by way of archaeology that it was until F. De Saulcy that modern Architectural carving began, although with some degree of disappointment, he set a new foundation for his archaeologist. Charles Warren - elsewhere did what many before him has done and then set to even accomplish a connection between the Biblical Schools and the influence of the some of the towns in the Middle East and how Archaeology leads the way. The cross over from Palestine School of Archaeology to Egypt using dating system as developed in 19th century was affected to a great extent - and in fact - perfected by Petrie Flinders. 


These schools which include Gaston Maspero, etc., brought this interesting approach to history and archaeology to bear the weight to of the culture of the people at the time and in terms of the excavation which took roots in 1913, we may look at the Bliss (2) Samaria (1924), the Gezer excavation of (1902-9) and Bliss-Macalister Early Pre-Israelite? - 1500 B.C.E

Bliss - Macalister

(A) Early Pre-Israelite? 5000 B.C, c. 3000 - 1800

(B) Late Pre-Israelite c.1500 - 800 C. 1800 - 1000

(C) Jewish C. 800 - 300 c. 1000 - 587

(D) Seleucidan c. 300 Fourth - First centuries

J.L Starkay (died early), Petrie Flinders and company took over the studies in Egyptology leading to B. Maisley – who found Jewish cemetery looking back to the 3rd and 4th century B.C. The studies between the Torah as a commentary on the laws and the Goenim (Egypt) and by those left for in Babylon via Palestine, especially those who Babylon in early fifth century under the associated Rabbinic title – Gaon. We may take the time to Female Archaeologist (a) Dorothy Garrod (b) Gertrude Caton Thompson (c) Heffy Goldman (4) Kathleen Kenyon and it from her work that some connection between Jordan and the Palestinian 'Tell' were achieved.


The point about differs in some respect from 'Mesopotamian tells', all derived from Babylonian 'tillu'. In terms of the Methods we may consider the works of Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Reisner Fisher. They came too early to study of the Egyptian artifacts, they belong to the age of language, the connection between African languages and Hebrew and between Hebrew and Arabic – the latter spared by the religion called Islam and the comparative relationship between Arabic and Syria-Greek and Latin.


The Chain of plausibility is how the land locked territories of Syria and Eastern Deserts proclaim languages that bundle from Syria into Spain and Italy to upper Graeco and Europe before Christ, after Christ and fraction of the early church fathers lending Wufilas the earliest letters or ruins from East into Europe and Danube. The link these nations can be traced to Africa and it was through the biblical archeology and Egypt that the first interest to discover the land of the Bible fostered along with visitors including Scots and later Germans and Reisner Fisher.

(A) Sir Mortimer Wheeler - 'Archeological Results' was used by Kathleen Kenyon and the result was "brilliant"

 [Office1] 

(B) The other method is Reisner Fisher.

(18) Hanna

(19) Falasha-Isha

Influence of Wellhausen Julius Wellhausen, led to new emphasis on the land of the Bible descended from protestant and presented the Catalyst for (French Revolution) 1812 to the near generation of archaeologist interested in the land of the Bible. The understanding that Wellhausen proved a reason to return to literal interpretation of the Bible, does not pale in comparison to the other breakthroughs especially stated in the words of some experts, such as Eli Smith who did a lot of digging but did not publish a lot and according Albright, '...had received a German training in Semitic languages under Gesenius and Rodiger in geography under the incomparable Ritter..."

 

Then the Gezer excavations hundreds of extant volumes (1) Thanks to Josephus (2) The Apocrypha (3) New Testament (4) Mishnah (5) Palestine Gemara were written in Hebrew Aramaic

(1) Greek Papyri (lagides/Ptolemies)

(2) Nabataen Inscriptions

Herodians replaced the Maccabaeus (143 - 135 B.C) in 37 B.C

p.161, Petrie and the Tombs

"The Red and brown sandstone cliffs, between which Petra nestles, are limited with tombs, many of them are monumental in the fullest sense of the term. Among these magnificent Mausolea two stand out by their splendour; el-khazeh and Qasr Far'on. Both may be dated in or immediately after the reign of the greatest Nabataean King, Aretas IV Philo-demus (c.9 B.C - A.D 40), who played with respect to Jerusalem. The Research of ushc eminent historians of Architecture as Wiegard, Wulzinger,a nd Horsfield has conclusively proved that the Principal rock town monuments with architectural facades were Mausolea devoted to the memory and cult of the dead"

(P.216)

Uqal? covering the hard Syria natura non facit saltum 'there is a continuity', Gezer (djezzer), he however suggested that it was Levites...Cities in John XXi and I Chronicle VI, Discovery - Canaanite literary text at Ugarit (Ras Shamrah) on the coast of northern Syria....

The second influence on these groups of early modern historians of Africa came from what is now the Middle East, many of these names historians and archaeologists entered Africa through Middle East, and for them, world history began with their entrance into Egypt. The Middle East or Palestinian School of Archaeology (Biblical Archaeology), proposed several argument about the study of the land of the Bible, models which worked their miracles in Europe, especially in Germany where the theories of Aryan Conquest, Swabian 'migration' and Normad 'Infiltration', were historical models that enabled a synthesis of the Continent of German and of Europe.


These Models then and now are quite popular and historically relevant in dealing with areas of history not well known. But it amount to something if we say that this same themes of Migration, Infiltration, and Conquest Models, held their grounds in the effort at interpreting the Archaeology and History of the land of the Bible, the major instances being the advent of a certain 'Sea people' who as history said were defeated by African Seamen and their leader, Ramses III. There was also the story about Exodus, concerning a people who later became Israel, how and when Israelite left Africa (Egypt) and how they managed to settle in what is now Palestine.

There was the harder bone of contention between the applicable models for the geographical sweep of Israelites in land of Palestine in the years of Joshua, who as Biblical account indicated, conquered several lands leading to the 'promised lands' and the necessity of defending the nearly won territories of these Israelite. The result is a long series of efforts by both parties to make the necessary relevant.

Americans, here that we get a first hint of what and how these individuals that took the yearly attempt of the people to move on with their cultures and the way of life. Every so often an institution will dedicate itself to sorting out the problems of African history and culture that enables it. Apparently this was one the few, to the degree that much of the effort put up by other may have gone the distance of impregnating the specific culture or opinions available.


In the realms of these understanding, such nuances like body types and bone fragment began to make their own case about Africa. The danger associated with these tales about the cultural moonlight in Africa is that it went unchallenged for many decades, largely because of the lack of native experts of African History, bordering on opinion express which by circumstance of the age, mingled with facts that were no longer ease with the more religious past and in kind, the world.


In the instance, we look at the argument about some of the languages in Africa and some of the theories about the 'Physical assessment' of peoples of Africa, for instance the Bushmen theories and theories about of Kenya and the fascination with great hordes of migration like Israelites in Moses and Joshua’s time, sweeping down on their enemies after the departing Egypt and Africa, the fascination with a conquering group of people who move expeditiously through many countries of the world, could not have failed to inspire the themes of migrations as a conquest model in presenting Africa in the current age and time.


Thus, it may be inferred that and overcoming many cities and countries as the Bible did indicate was only expected to be naturally embroidered into the fabric of the discovery which tell their own stories. 


It cannot be exempted from the cultural probability of seething with confidence the search for archeological material which should have been objectives enough, which by article of faith and the story concerning the Exodus may force the new evidences of artifacts and archeological materials to kneel to the grips of faith. As such the meaning behind biblical archeology is that the initial masters on the school of Archeology were towing a certain line, line already made available to them via the teachings of the Bible in spite of the influence of modernity in Europe and America.


As such dim lighted documentary facts of Exodus may by incident to themes of migration and conquest, may have occupied the general fancy of the historians from Christian background and eventually led biblical Archeologist of mostly Christian background to draw all kinds of conclusion about Middle East. In fact the likes of W.F Albright and his students, John Bright, et al, followed the conservative model in describing the ruins of the ancient city of Ai, where in the Bible, Joshua and the Israelites essentially brought Ai and the culture to an end in route to the Promised Land.


W.F Albright account of how Christianity essentially manifested itself is best illustrated in what should be called his ‘Magno-opus’ ‘From Stone Age to Christianity’, where enough emphasis on the movement of the Israelites from the Egypt into the land of the Bible is selected side by side the Archeological discoveries of his time.

The issue that challenged his assumptions is indigene to the history regarding the nature of the Hebrew movement from Egypt to Israel the promised land. He was also motivated by how the eventual arrival or settlement in what is now Israel.

The influence of Biblical Archeology is narrating modern African history is so much that it takes a will of iron to get things going as the willingness to read further than necessary and bring into light some of the information about Africa and Africans. In essence the theories of Ham, Shem, and Japheth have already taken roots in Christian imaginations.


It was only a question of time that the Biblical imaginations of the Ham, Shem, and Japheth managed to compose a new history of the world without the world knowing it.


This is not so easy a point to overlook, it is however easier to overstate given the article of faith and imprinting in our cultural minds. In many shades of similar meaning, we may regard the inference as part of the argument that these intellects came from Europe and then moved in to Africa, and it may seem logical that the movement of people one part of the world.

W.F Albright (Archaeology of Palestine; 1949; 71) citing the work that he did along his mates in Palestine, gave a brush stroke of the familiar names in sciences, archaeology and history that enabled the creation of the school of Biblical Archaeology and eventually Archaeology of Palestine. Historically, Albright is the individual who is believed to have turn Archaeology into a science.

In one similar argument, it has been suggested that it was Petrie Flinders (William Petrie Flinders) who began to record the difference between plates, arguing that it could be used to remotely designate an area or a civilization from one form to another. It is history that Flinders developed this method based on already existing forms of arrangement through pottery. Y

et his scientific approach proved totally useful in the hands of Albright who not showed that a difference between a hill and dung exist, that there is such a thing as a 'Tell' which may be history of materials left over. This seemed improbable at first.

In fact, many Archaeology and geological experts has expressed serious reserves that idea that tells speak of deep reserves of history is entirely a culture that be linked to 19th century. But these possibilities are mere possibilities and take less notice of other matters concerning the influence of the subject comparison at hand and the decision.


If that is true, then these Igbo words; Ofeke (Eng. fake), uwe (Eng. wear), oche (Eng. Chair), odinani (Eng. ordinance), anya (Eng. eye), njo (Eng. injure), anumanu (Eng. animal), nomo (Eng. norms), nkoro(Eng. corrode, corrosion),Uru (rust), isusu (Eng. issue), osimiri (Eng. stream), ichie (Eng. ancient), Obaa(Eng. barn), ogani (Eng. organic), olu;olulu (Eng. hole), apiti (Eng. pit), ozoo (Eng. zone, zoo), oka (Eng. corn), Okwurru (Eng/botanic. Okra), Abacha, Abachi (Eng. batch, abacus) and so on, would all have been loaned directly from English.

Perhaps it is the issue of structural emendation English to Igbo words, where the systemic pattern of English abbreviation and perhaps bad pronunciation from the villages became perpetuated, endemic, and encryption of Igbo words. In other words, the formulation of Igbo words in recent may have been influenced by pattern of evocation and pronunciation evident in English which inadvertently help the formulation of Igbo words in linguistic currency. A

nd such the many corollary words may entirely be by design, in default to English and therefore not organic to its African roots. It is therefore up to the Igbo, to chip away these speculative isosceles or abide by them on the decisive gradient of what they and their Nigerians know too well about this Igbo language. For it may yet seem that the root of English language in the way we understand it today conceal and reveal much of the reason behind the corollary words in Igbo. Not the least, we can insist that the gulf in terms of its comparison between that the linguistic comparison between the two languages is not in-depth and one off corollary of English.

So can we prove that Igbo contains Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and whatever language that is fitting for roots of English, roots like Arabic. This is the ‘Tall Order’ but perhaps not the case since we are staring at Latin, Hebrew, perhaps Berber - Libyan and the Egyptian Coptic at the medieval age. Perhaps we should experiment with Greek first. The Greek word Basilieos, Basilus, is found in English as Basil, same meaning same word and found in Latin as Basilus, all ‘meaning king, or kingdom, or ruler of the kingdom’.


 In Igbo, and in Bini, there is a person they can Oba, an Oba is a chief, a ruler of some sort, and In Nigerian Igbo, Obasi, basi, refers to the ‘most high’. In Calabar (old calabar usually to an era) Abasi refers to ‘most high’, and in Arabic, Abbas refers to the strong one. In Egyptian Coptic Abbas refers to the strong, the main one, and in one example, Abbas refers to ‘stern’ in Egypt and a normative of the same word is discovered in Greek as Sebastian, meaning much of the same thing. There is nothing difficult about Obasi and basil, for the two is seriously close in sound, but in meaning there is a small tilt.


 These languages in writing contain the thorn sign, but were unstable in emission given the wave of migration from 5th through 11th century of conquerors to British Isles. The most popular of these groups were called Dene by the English, as in Denmark and were pacesetters for the Visigoths. The Dedene or Dedanites were not however from anywhere in Europe. There were from North Africa, an African tribe that stretches from the Eastern desert (what is now Arabian Desert, especially Southern Arabia) to what is now Syria, with elements of them torch up Numidia.


The Saxons ‘from the ends of the Earth’ in Moore Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical history of Engla’ were mainly Sassonids - a maritime empire disaffected to mainly Persia covering the Mediterranean and the Black sea in order of Mithradates – and were not too far from what is now Syria and were in contact with other Palestinian-Syrian communities like Melchites, Nestorian, and Estrangela, names that appear in English Society and history like Mercia, Northrumbia, and East Anglia.

These communities were eventually known as Berit, Beret, (Brit) ‘people of covenant’ and were found in many other ports in France and were also business people. Of course, there were other Syrian communities of the 5th through 6th century such as the Nabateans, the Anglia, who mainly dominated the spice and olive oil industry of Mediterranean before the rise of Islam. But it is important to note that the so called Anglo-Saxon community may in my opinion be the same Anglia and Sasson community of near East whose maritime warriors were known for raiding and for mercenary. In Nigerian Igbo, the word Berit, or Be eri, simply mean ‘place of eri’.


Eri is known in Igbo history as sons of covenant. Of course b as in ebe in Igbo is easily for place. Further such example will include, ebe isi; your place, which in English is noted as a base. Base is just be-isi; beis, in Igbo language. The Eris of Igbo society, are people of covenant and for odinani, which in English is ordinance. The Eri keeps nsoani in Igbo society, or better understood nsani, a morpheme of the longer English word Sani-tation. Sanitation have verities of the same word, but it is the root of the word and its meaning that’s makes the different between West Germanic languages and say an Igbo language in respect to English. Some of these things have their history. For instance Spanish is considered a footnote to Arabic among other comparison.

 

The Germans, whose names appear as Yeman, Yamen, (Germaine), may well be an offshoot of Persian maritime empire which collapsed into Sasson, whose soldiers may or may not have selectively and periodically settled around the Mediterranean and in Europe, whose language bore some hint of a Latin vernacular. We can widen on this fact by pointing to the Aryan tribe of Germany, supposedly the same name as Iran of today.


Secondly, their practice of illumination, of abbreviated holiness of light in six particulars, and of the seventh by height perhaps of golden sun, started with Iranians and remained a particular of the Aryan. The Aryans in India and many parts of Germany were just a religious group. The Hindu religion is currently infected by the Races and Caste system of India – by the holiness or initiation codes which started with the Iranians, who were the Persians, who collapsed into Sassonids empire, who carried a version of the religion we later know to be as Mithras, perhaps in honor of the maritime champion by name Mithridades VI of Pontus. Mithridates VI of Pontus was himself a human being, who in the century leading to the birth of Christ and reign of Rome dominated the Black sea and parts of the Danube. Danube was where his headaches with Rome were variously decided. Mithridates occupied the farther reaches of the Caspain but left a legacy of tribes who has long since disappeared.

But from these places not too far from Syria, with Syria separating Europe from Asia and Africa, it was only natural that majority of the languages spoken in the area was eventually lenient to Latin for many reasons including the rise of Western Christianity and rule of Rome. The main point is that the area we call Palestinian Syria, which was until 1920 part of Africa, was home to migrants of Latin vernacular, Syrian variation of the elder Aramaic, a version whose shoot was Arabic and eventually standard Latin and Classic Arabic and it was also from the area that we find a connection between Basra and Kufic separation.


The initial influenced the Gupta, and then on to many Indian languages. Sanskrit also compare directly with neo Sinaitic inscription in Syria. In Syria and Southern Arabia, we also find the Nabataean and crude Arabic structures of the Dedane tribe and their dialectal, Qedan. The people were specialist in spices and in seasoned oil of all kinds. The so-called ‘Neo Sinaitic inscriptions’ of Sinai Peninsula is to be located in Syria and the ‘Valley of the Writings’ -Wady Mukattab - is found in Syria.


The language that is known to us today as Classic Arabic began in Damascus in Syria, which was the first Caliphate in the years leading to the Islamic control of the region and much of the known world. The structure of that Arabic language is Dedane and Qedane, who were family to the Berber. In further quest of this example you should refer to I.M Diakonoff ‘Semitic – Hamitic Languages’ and a refutation or trial of the idea by S. Moscati ‘An Introduction to the comparative Grammer of the Semitic languages’, ‘Writing’ by David Diringer.

 

The Classic Arabic has the benefit of connection to Numidians who were African tribes defeated and colonized by Romans, to the Nabatean tribes who retained parts of pre-classic Latin and quasi Arabic which did not suffer the corruption of Greek due to the presence of Eastern Christians Bible notations considered closer to Hebrew and Arabic and to Latin than Roman and Greek. Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and older Syrian derivative; Phoenician and Ugarit, are always written right to left, as opposed to left to right which was Greek and Roman.


The acquisition of English words in the light of the switch from Latin base English vernacular to Greek based linguistic demonstrate the particulars of Great Vowel change of the 16th century Britain. But from the demarcation between Latin vernacular and Greek, a separation occurred due to the presence of three additional letters from the Anglo – Saxons ‘semi uncial style’ which developed from Irish hand from Syriac Latin.


One of the earliest records with of Syriac Latin known to us is the writings of Moore Bede – assuming he is human being - in the ‘Ecclesiastical history of English nation’. There other letter script available to us through Europe referred to Bede, for instance Leningrad Bede, making the argument clear that Bede is probably what we might call in Igbo, an Abegbde. The presence of words like Aelfric’s Text in 7th century England may not be too far from the word Africa, noting that in later times, Afriqiya (?) was a depository of great books of Moors, among the most exclusive is the book by Ibn Kallon and on the rule of Europe by the African Moors and the Berber.

Afrocentric Argument (I)

Documentary Hypothesis

Most Critics of History such usually find themselves entirely across the divide on a certain version of history. For instance, those who critic history of several kinds usually relapse into the constructive mold of documentary hypothesis from purely literal sources and indicate that it amounts to speculative, that it gives room for purely literal analysis and in the end, it usually leaves the critic an opponent. But this view does not mean that we should turn a blind to some of the assumptions in some of the writings and books that are available to the rest of us. Besides the fact the rest of world has witnessed great moments of history, history of Africa is now available to us through these classics.


We assume that these classics are basic knowledge of say Africa, we need not insist that language  - as according to Emerson - is an 'archive of history', should also play a part in their overall history. There is nothing wrong in suggesting that history from language as we now know it, is not expected to shy from history of the general world, yet is expected to inspire evidence of what is true. The only reason why this is not case is that most of African languages are not considered family to European or Asian languages.

In some sense, African history should involve what the languages are saying about the continent in general, secondary to this is the possibility that archeology must redeem some of the claims made through documented processes. Millions of books are believed to have been lost in the course of human history. Thousands of great authors from Africa to the ends of the world are no longer extant. Author from Islam as well Christian backgrounds, some with Jewish as well Hindu backgrounds are lost in the midst of antiquity and long years of conflict.



The Jews themselves have done better in preserving some of the documents available in this day in age. Muslims tore each other apart, but not were lost. Europeans are new comers to modern world history, saving Italy if not Greece, there is no a whole lot that can said about Europe and its past.

 

But not only the language, African history can also receive the good graces of Archaeology and Architecture, and derive from these areas of study.  But in terms of Documents that are believed to have survived, African history of these days is derived from certain sources which now survive and these sources only give us a abbreviation of the whole. Africa history can be derived from Egypt, Nubia and East Africa, from sources other than existing documents.


That the main documentary sources includes the (A) Papyri and Ostraca of New Kingdom (b) Greek sources and in Hebrew (Bible) (c) Demotic Egyptian language (Ptolemaic period) (d) Latin literature (e) Coptic texts - particular reference to Greek Alphabets and then other written sources should include in his selection (1) Polybius (2) Strabo (3) Diodorus Siculus (4) Roman Policy (5) St Augustine (6) Al-Masudi (7) Ibn-Khaldun and of course these thrown all kinds of light on world history, and above all and African history.


It is important to credit with the point that the first papyri of the Nile predate the papyri of Europe (Ravenna Papyri). It is difficult to see beyond the man's error when he reduced the majestically work of Hanno Periplus, being the account of the travels through Africa, to a work of no historical significance.

 

The account on Hanno's Periplus showed Africa that was surveyed in the 5th century before Christ, in the same century and era that Persians managed to visit the West Coast after the orders of Xerxes, place enormous tension of the claims of a Pre-eminent Arabian influence in Northern Africa and other parts of the Continent. The quarrel is not with the claim that Phoenicians sailed across Africa, the problem is whether or not we have to accept that aspersion cast on the Phoenician claims is only limited to Phoenicians and their travels around Africa. 


 Is there nothing to challenge our grasp of the fact that Africa and its map was well known before the advent of the Phoenicians or the advent of the Portuguese 2000 years later. Is it really possibly the world was only discovered in the 1500 CE by the Europeans. From all accounts of history - without due respect to the age of navigation, we can almost condemn the facts as untrue.

 

According James Westhall Thompson (Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages), the Journey by land from Ephesus to Antioch in Syria certainly took a month. By the beginning of the Empire Roman ships were on every sea.” “Wheat was imported from Sardinia, Sicily, Spain Africa, and especially from Egypt, which annually furnished 20 million Modii. The “Isis”, an Egyptian Corn Ship described by Lucian, was 180 feet long, 45 feet in beam, had three docks, and weighed 1575 tons….There was a whole fleet of these corn ships, the ‘classis Alexandria’ or ‘Alexandrinus Stolus’, whose Ships made regular stops of Malta, at Rhegium”.


While it is not impossible to look at the Rome at the empire of the world, we may never miss the point that then as much at the later days of the Islam was a Maritime Empire, whose travels go back to Pharaoh and who remained in later years, the fecund several ports were known to have existed as Ostia, Portus Urbis, Portus Augusti, part of the whole effort in making rounds about they were cultures of the Spanish corn-fleet, Sardinian Con-fleet, and African corn fleet. African ports in many ways than one included that one, Thabaca, Hippo, Diarrhytus (Bizerta), Utica, Hadrumentum, Leptis Magna, Harrea Coeilia, and Thapsus. These places were variously praised Strabo and Pliny all of them indicating the greatness of the ports of North Africa and so on.

There has always being in parts of the whole in the context of what we can demonstrate as real and interfering, between the demonstration that Africa fed Rome, where at for several centuries, a third of the granaries into Rome and some of its provinces came from Africa, although some have reduced the other part to Egypt within the Cataracts. In the words of J.W Thompson, between the 146 B.C to 429 A.D, that “Africa rivaled Egypt as a granary of the Roman Empire”. But this was not exactly how Ibn-Khaldun expressed it.


J.W Thompson was right in saying that between 893 and 911, that African provinces broke away from ‘Egyptian rule’, for it not impossible to see why this view was the primary motivation for the comments of a two kinds of Africa. In reality this view can only apply to this particular era for a particular reason, for the incidents regarding the rise of the Almoravids and Almorovids in Africa leading to Europe, the incidents of Fatimid’s and the Ishmaelite, adapt itself to the structure of the facts that these Fatimids were present in Africa, and were destined to break free from Arab and Damascus since theirs was also a society of people and culture out of the circumstances of the era of spread of Islam.

There is reason why it is possible to regard as most high and more reliable, some of the book which has survived the ages to our time. Books like the Iliad surfaced after a long lost period, and seem then and now to have served all kinds of purpose for the people we call Greeks. But then, Greek is particularly a language and not necessarily a people. When we say Greeks, we refer to chose who speak the language, for sure, the land we call Greece and its habitable, is known in all Classics as Aegean.


Athena is their moral God-mother and the word Greek was available after the stint of Aristetle and Alexander in Africa sometime in the fourth century. So why is the Iliad a Greek article? This is where criticism and higher criticism makes all the important points. But some of these books are not useful as far as history is concerned, and are in some sense entirely redoubtable or misinterpreted. When it was composed, possibly a century or so after the story and it is necessary to suggest that the Greeks who claim the book 'Iliad' as theirs, and who claim the stories from the Iliad theirs, are mainly implying the facts from the Iliad as theirs.

They are right in so far as the history of the Iliad concerned the Athenians. It is permissible to suggest that since the Iliad rarely used the word Greek - if all, it couldn't be speaking of the people that knew their names from documents discovered in Africa. It would amount to a conflict of reasoning to dive the facts that the word Greece is not different from Ge'ez. That Ge'ez refers to the language popular around the peninsular, perhaps comparable to what was current at the Aegaean.

 

For sure reason as those of Pascal, Spinoza, Wellhausen, Graf, that the historical authority of the Bible has also been questioned. But the Bible is not the only old book that has given people reason to consider its historical importance. There are other books such as the Iliad as we have mentioned, such as the Icelandic Sagas, and commentaries in Koran attributed to Prophet Mohammed. In all reality, these great and sometimes divine books may lead into forms of parties, including for instance the schism of Jewish people, the schism of the early christian church.


As such the J, E, D and P codes of Bible is based on the work Graf and Wellhausen, and indeed it is called today Wellhausen-Graf redactor/documentary hypothesis. These people argue that if the Bible is read as a whole and not as bit, that it should reflect the fact that several people wrote the book - not one. The hole in Wellhausen's argument can be further explored, revealing as it were that those names of God had a history behind them and each name became popular after an alter was erected.


The relationship between the altar and the names of God can help us overcome this error with names, especially if the names have direct meaning in Hebrew by way of Igbo language. Julius Wellhausen is credited with the so-called J, E, D and P theory in organizing the Bible from written sources, bringing the facts to bear against that the names of God used at some point in the story of Genesis, and some of the names were changed overtime, especially in the early Monarch Israel suggesting separate origins where 'Yahweh' as the J tradition was first used in calling of Moses, then there was Elohim tradition of the Bible which he is convinced is written around 850 BCE by Northern Kingdom of Israel. The D may have also been written during the era of reform and the Priestly source written around 500 B.C.E in Babylon, all converging in JE, JED, and JEDP transition of the Torah era.

 

The Bible is one of those Books which has been abandoned by historians as historical complete, and when such article of faith is transgressed as fallible, it spooks tension and forces the objective evaluation of say Christ to be reduction to an individual. But then Christ as an individual is quite interesting. It would seem natural that the history of Christ as an individual should begin with the place of his birth which is Bethlehem of Judea.


The history of Christ as they are told by his disciples should also involve all of the Testimonials by his disciples, but it should also involve the visitation of Christ and his parents to Africa and the upbringing of Christ as an African. That Christ spent his early in Africa (Egypt), is a story that is well known but not told often. As the story begins, we learn that there was a visit of the Magi - 'three wise men from the EAST' (the word East here means Egypt and possibly the area of the ishmus or the Golan Straights, but definitely Africa) -  to the parents of Jesus and the new born Christ. But as the story goes, the Magis were instructed by the angel of God not to return to Herod who asked for the place where Christ was born so that he might come and pay his tribute. Magis advised Mary and Joseph, to take Jesus to Egypt where he would stay until he will come of age. And they did. The name of the place in Africa that they took Jesus to, was not exactly mentioned in the Bible. This sort of scenerio is quite difficult to interpret, since the Bible did not mention Africa at all.

 

But it is not for lack of caring that Africa was not mentioned at all, rather it is because the place we call Africa, didn't exist in name at this time of world history. Africa was mainly known as the East or Misr. We can stray a bit from the paragraph in order to make the point that clear that Africa refers to the Afra region (in person ;an afrarensis/afarensis), which is somewhere in the East and the coast looking to De-ire or Red Sea. Little point must be made out of the fact that when we speak of Scipio Africanus (Publius Cornelius Scipio) for instance, of Diodoros Siculus, or in the Medieval ages, of Leo Africanus, we are really saying in Latin, Scipio the African, Diodoros the Sicilian (of Sicily), or Leo the African. The telltale about Scipio's conquest in Africa and the consequent nickname 'Africanus' is quite a modern marvel -  not historical. In all probability, Scipio is from the Afar or Afra region - and that includes his father, both perhaps are not without a hint of Libya and have attempted to score against a common enemy by siding Rome. It is the domination of the Red Sea by Phoenicians (Carthage) and Hamilcar Barca who successfully defeated a renegade group in Orissa, which include an impressive Roman outfit that led to acts of impunity against them by others.

 

Of course the episode finally came to a head with the Scipio having it out with one of the Best military strategist - Hannibal Barca, in Zama. Scipio's assistant, Massinasi (MaSnSen;Ma'sinsen) was himself African from Numidia -'West of Nubia' (not the King of Numidia till after the war - perhaps as a bargain with Rome, yet his dominion did not survive his death  - no small thanks to Jurgurthen). The point is that there was a reason why Massinasi aborted the camp of Hannibal and switched to Rome, backing Marius and the General, Scipio. Perhaps because of what he stands to benefit but perhaps, the Phoenicians were really a pain in the area. Siding Rome was also possible because of Scipio who survived the same angst for Phoenicians (Cathage). The tumultous oratory by a certain Cato, preceding the war with Rome was a long chain of lobby which induced the Senate to vote for Marius and company against Cathage, was perhaps a routine lobby initiated by private interest groups, but probably independent of the later embroidery of the speech into the evolving affairs of Zama.

 

Rome, at this time, was not the fire power they became sometime later. Rome had spent a century of war and another half of it on conflict with a certain Samnites, and nearly lost the war saving for the Greeks and their sea power. It was the Greeks who saved from defeat and it was the Greeks who brought the first Nike of luck - the 'winged victory' - to Rome after the 120 years of war with Samnia, and Latium - of our Latin. Even at that, Rome's forays into Asia were met with disaster in Orissa India, and it was in Orissa that Hasdrusbal 'the fair' (who possibly assassinated his father-in-law 'Hamilcar Barca'  - Hannibal Barca's grandfather and some sources say 'father' and killed his wife, Hamilcar's eldest daughter. She died by wounds compounded after falling from the horse drawn chariots of Hadrusbal.


She was possibly thrown from the horse after and died within a month of his father's death of thereabout) was also assassinated by his body guards - loyal to Carthage and not a Celtic. It is possible to assert that this body guard was perhaps a witness to the last acts of Hadrusbal the 'fair' and his 'fair' color was strikingly different from other Carthaginians, suggesting a physical prototype dissimilar from the rest. It may also suggest a possibility of a two type of Carthage, where one made itself the greater largely because of Egypt and Africa. Since Hannibal into Europe, it must have been possible that Hannibal was in Orisa and may have organized in Orissa. This late edition is speculative. But the conflict began as a relapse of the power that divided the Sea a=mong its merchants including the people of the Afar region and by interest certain Roman Senators.

 

One more fact is that Leo the African, should also mean that he is from the same region. For sure, he could be called Leo the Moor since he was one - a Muslim at that. If we are to search for Africa in the Bible, it should be in terms of the region called 'Afar' and not the whole of the tropic known as Ethiopia. Joseph E. Harris, with his Ph.D on (Africans and Their History; 1972;98) is part of the same group of interpretation of African history and people. His work is very monumental to the point that only little can be done in terms of its content to expedite on African synthetic history. Yet his work is not deep enough to souse the wrong historical nerve of the continent, but it is important that the outline of his thesis is set in such a way that it does not mislead the untrained historian.


The general outline of African History and syllabus seem to survive at the mercy of any given institution, as such the  history of the continent is challenged to repeat the Age of Slave trade, as the only age of historical significance.  For that the work of any professor of African History and the Classic, must include the wherewithal to show or attempt to show, that even with the known facts about the world from the 17th century, there is African history that should also occupy our time.

 

Perhaps the problem is not with the professor Harris himself - since majority of experts on African on African History, Robert July, Basil Davidson, J.D Fage, Elizabeth Isichei, etc,  are just as culpable. The list may grow and may include other Historians from very different shades of  complex, some of whom are called Afrocentrics, others Africologist. If we pretend that Afrocentric is no more political as it is academic, I would wish to suggest that Africology is the future of any studies in African when it's probably not. But this is the receiving end of the broad stroke. These historians are as good as they come, but the closest they have come is reproducing history as was handed down to them.



One of the more liberal historian of interest is Elizabeth Isichei, notable for her journalistic approach to African history - especially her 'Ibo History' or 'History of the Igbo'. In Her book 'A History of Africa...' she shines through with semi-conservative approach to history. Anyone quite familiar with Ibn Khaldun, or outline of other African writers - including in style -, Chancellor Williams, will not fail to see a corollary between these mentioned individuals and Isichei. Prove of this fact is that she did not bring anything new to African history, and if when Isichei questions if Ibn Khaldun traveled to all these areas that he writes about, she was clearly not the first to have asked the same question. If Basil Davidson asked similar question as Elizabeth Isichei, we are left with the task of accepting what these people have down to us.

 

Joseph Harris, like Elizabeth Isichei, is worthy of all recommendation, unlike a certain John Reader 'Africa; Biographical History of a Continent' - whose book is praised for its readership but denies several versions of African history, these authors did not. To paraphrase John Reader, he denied that African Continent which he writes about has little to do with the age of the Pharaohs. That the age of the of Christian fathers is not African history. Reader like many other historians, - J.D Fage per se - spent over 200 pages of the 800 page book on Slave Trade. That, is  the problem. African historians tend to write with preconceived notion, and tend enjoin the discourses about Africa from impressions of Victorian era, or from the fact that some people will really write as if the world can actually accept that Africans were those by nature of their continent predisposed to hard labor.



When we find a new synthesis between the histories of recent Africans and European, there is a sense of denial that these Africans were any where for any number of reasons part of a certain ideology. This recourse is not always the better critic of world history or the history of the Africans, but when the professor J.E Harris says that "From the fifteenth century on, the Portuguese took shipments of captive Africans to the Persian Gulf region, India, China, and Japan; the Dutch transported them to India and Indonesia; the French shipped them to India and the Mascarene Islands (Bourbon and Mauritius); the British took them to India, Mauritius, and China; and of course all of them and the Danes shipped captive Africans to Europe and the Americas. The Euro-North Americans brought them to the Americas as well", we are left with all kinds of quandary.

The 17th century is where we begin with Professor Joseph E  Harris, and not only the professor, but other important figures of African History. This may explain the reason why these names such as (1) William Bosman (2) James Houston (3) Thomas Philips (4) John Barbot (5) Robin Halleft, were essentially mentioned in the book. These men and some of them women mentioned by Harris, may have investigated the continent for themselves as the sources claim, would have the rest their minds in peace about the continent were in not for the era of slave trade, in which they lived. These men and women are mostly product of their own European Age, an age of academic intensity and awakening, the age of enterprising where Europe dominated much of the world.



The 1750-1850 was as much a time of Slave trade as it was an Age of Enlightenment. And this age is within the limits of the 'Heroic Imagination' of the 18th century, and it changed the world ever since. That age, unlike the world before it, may or may not have started with French revolution but the French revolution gave it a different look. Oddly enough, it was also the century that Africa suffered the most in the hands of others as they say. But it was hardly a Black thing, though it was part of it. The Muslims were fighting and capturing each other; the dissidents. The Muslims of North Africa called each other 'Infidels', arrested these each other as both dissidents and Infidels.

 

These Muslims, especially the Turks; many of whom were Blacks - including their leaders and royalty, feasted on the Moors loosely disfranchised from their base in Europe and locked them up for very lengthy periods of time. Those who were captured and couldn't pay their ransom were sold in Slavery. These included Jews, Romans (many Roman Africans), Greeks, Ethiopians, Arabs, and other dissidents from 'Ottoman Empire'.  These groups would wind up divided among the warring groups, some Jews sided the Turks - especially due to the effort they made to salvage Jews from Spain. But their majority from Spain, logged together with Moors, sided the opponents.

 

One of the Africans who were captured by Sassanids, were a certain Thomas Sallie, who lived to return to Africa and wrote of his memoirs. His book has been a leading testimonials of the earlier devils of the slave gunners (gunthers), whereas was only part problems North Africa faced at the turn of the 16th century. The Moors themselves eventually made contacts with the Berbers from Anti-Atlas of Morocco and began to arrest non-Africans and whoever they considered non-indigence, and many of the captured Turks, Templar, Sassanids, Cisterns, Greeks, Jews, Arabs (a lot of confusion about Arabs of Africa and those Asia and Europe), mostly unarmed were in turn sold into Slavery by renegade Berberini and Africans themselves. The Era continued for hundreds of years, until the eve of European presence.

 

The book is better to be understood as an attempt to document the various important aspects of African history, and it seems to have made its point about the Diaspora of Africans in the Slave trade era. In the general view of the title 'Africans and their History', it seems that the book is perhaps an account of the story of slave trade and about the history of these Africans. It is wrong to say that no action justifies this fate for these, it may seem moralistic, seem humanist, it leads no way in History. Rather, the fate is spotlighted in such a way that the casualties of Slave trade and the era do not fit into the equation of that same era.




But from the consequence of the story without the structure is a history of no uncertain kind. A short and kindly light on the history of slave trade or the history preceding the slave trade era, would exfoliate its evolutionary history. Slave trade did not occur overnight. Slave trade was not decided from beginning by some courageous others, who, for reasons of God given right and more to so, descended upon these Blacks in Africa and made slaves of them.

 

In spite of the general theory of history, Professor Joseph E. Harris mentions in his (Africans and Their History), that for instance, "Pre-Islamic Arabs conducted a trade in Africans from northern and eastern Africa to parts of Europe, across Turkey, the Middle East, India, and as far as China centuries before the Atlantic slave trade peaked in the nineteenth century. They and Muslim Arabs enslaved Africans as domestic servants, concubines, soldiers, sailors, dockworkers, agricultural laborers on date plantations and coconut groves, pearl divers, and on salt flats.



Although the Arab dhows generally carried only about a dozen Africans at a time, and often fewer, the numbers added up over time and left descendants throughout large stretches of the Asian continent, for example, Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, and beyond.", we are impressed with a wealth of particular information. We look at it as a bad tale about the nightmare of been slaves. But read it again, and through, we may begin to hear the whispers of class entering a short tale. It is a tale that took place, and the scale of that history is not unknown, but the sweep with which the story is told, hints of something else. We the lines above constructed with timely accuracy, there was no point in building the history the history leading to that age. In one sentence without knowing, the professor without knowing it, damns a whole generation.

'The above quotations also appears in the article by Harris 'Expanding The Scope of Africa Diaspora Studies; The Middle East and India, a Research Agenda; Fall 2003'.  The summary of the whole about Africa without hinting that Slave Trade was a default to Spanish expulsion of Muslims and Jews from mainland Spain. Of course the problem was no limited to Africa and the fleeing, the problem of Slave trade or capture of these displaced Muslims was the pattern of its existence and the governing dynamics of the Area.  There is an informal re-tooling of all reasons why blacks are littered in Asia, there is a scythe into the doom of a 'has been being'.


It may seem to suggest that Arabs for a start, had always to hung their tough (turf) above these niggardly types, perhaps had made their cring at large in the North and reduced a whole of human others to their form of civilization. That Spectacle of these people will mend its way as far as the years that Zanzibar existed, to the enabled degree that the Kilwa Chronicles that bears nothing to these immigrants, is resolved in a favor. This favor resolves a different favor and the argument that a certain kind moved East from North, suggest the bandwidth of civilization as well. From the Fayyum, the Merindem, and the Pharaohs of the 4300 CE till the 18th century is a gap of 6 thousand years.

Professor Joseph Harris writing on 'The African Diaspora' ( ), which he paraphrased from his book 'Africans and Their History' mentions, p.10 "When the Europeans defeated the Arabs and took control of the Indian Ocean trade routes, they developed their own slave trade from what today are Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar along the Southern route, a round the Cape of Good Hope to Buenos Aires in Argentina, Montevideo in Uruguay, and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Africans were marched overland from Buenos Aires and Montevideo through the passes of the Andean Mountains to enslavement in Santiago and Valparaiso in Chile; from Rio de Janeiro through Paraguay and Boliva to Lima and Callao in Peru." Not only does this damn every Black person in South America as a slave descendant, it spoils the waters for anything African in these areas. Is the above scenario created by the professor wholly accurate? Well it remains to be counted, but need must be made of the fact that majority of the Black People we find in South America are not without History of some sort - some of whom came by Sea, many of whom are actually Natives - like Native Americans.  


Obviously, we are left with the temptation of believing that in the Andes, there is full of Slaves, or that the Indian Ocean is full of Blacks transferred to many parts of the world, first by Arabs and then by Europeans. We have to excuse History from this sort of thing, on the account that the professor hardly mentioned any history of East Africa and the Sind 'the Indian Ocean', never mentioned when and why the Arabs called it the Zanj or Zinj, and perhaps educated on the names Zanzibar, Zambia, Zimbabwe, as cognoscenti developing from the East Africa and the Zanj. Though it is the precinct of language to compare Arabic word 'zanj', to Swahilian 'zinj' and to Indian 'sind, or singh,' meaning Blacks, we are left with the interpretation that the mystical sea of the Hindus is no other than the Singh and none other than the Indian Sea which is so named after the of a people that only leads to one conclusion that they arrive Asia via Slave trade mainly.

By fading the power of language and the authority of the languages, we succumb to the fate of the Empire at the time of to the temptation of reliquary that Hieroglyphics after the dubious but courageous effort of Jean Champollion, is not limited to Egypt and its past, it a reliquary that recondite parts of Meroe and sea ports of Red Sea are inscriptions like those of Egypt and these inscriptions dovetail the meaning of the Hieroglyphics. Going by the history of the Meroe in Africa and the arrival of Greek soldiers to Africa, there is need to have seen that the Hieroglyphics of the Egypt was still in use in Egypt at the time of the Greek overlords in Alexander, but the form of the writing and execution of the writing has already changed.


The kufic or Coptic was the last of those transition in Egyptian language and that language was quite close to Aramaic at least - let alone Greek. But the language may have reached its fullest burnish in the 13th a 14th dynasty where the foundations of Minos and Mycenaean were breaking off to become the Greek. Yet the incident of Abu Simbel and the inscriptions that the locate Carian, Phoenician, and Greeks, to have altogether settled in what was Memphis, suggest that the writings of these people were in their most classic and archaizing form that dependent on Egyptian hieroglyphic and the Saite Kings.



These writings founded in tombs of Carians, Phoenicians, and Greek who made their home in Egypt in the 6th century before Christ, reveal strong comparative Egyptian writings and language of that era, such that the absence of Greek history and culture, Greek writing and art before the 6th century is well understood as part of the lend lease from Egypt. No mistakes therefore exist for other languages such as the Hebrew and the Canaanite, to be that close to Egyptian hieroglyphics or Babylonians Akkadian. No mistakes altogether exist for the relationship between Hebrew and Egyptian Keme, therefore Egyptian Keme can elaborate the meaning of some of the Hebrew words. No surprises exist for these languages to be same and similar with say Igbo language of the far east of Nigeria. This point will mean to indicate that there is no denying the languages of these Africans are as every bit as useful as the language of the people in these parts of Africa as they are with East African languages and the North.

By African languages, we would tend to suggest that Keme (Old Egyptian language) is the parent language of the Semitic languages which are far and few between Asia Minor and Near East. In the end, if at all there is an end, the words such Yahweh, may relate to ultimately relate to Kemet in such a way that Igbo will prove a serious facility in understanding the Bible. But a secondary argument. That African history in this day and age must dig in on history of the evolution of language studies in Africa, that it must on any given be subject to the synthesis of African History.  If the Great Historian Herodotus mentions that Greeks attempted to please the Egyptians by imitating their    comparing Greek to Egyptian language was to enhance that understanding, that the Greeks were not unrelated to Egypt.



The Greeks mentions Bochoris as a wise and intelligent leader and this Bochoris was none other than ‘Baufereret’ of the Egypt. The name for instance Corinthians may appear as name is truly European and possibly Greek descendants. But if the Greek name for Corinthians is ‘Hellenomemphtia’ which is in Egypt is noted as ‘karomemphitia’, the history of the Corinthians become appreciably fair. The Corinthian in history become by the above description Carians (Karia) who were settled in Memphis Egypt by Neco, Psammetichus I and II, along with Greeks and Phoenicians as part of the area allocated to their ancestor in what was then Memphis. Of Meroe, we may also indicate that the place was left to soldiers of the said nations who helped Egypt in many of its military campaigns, especially the Marine, the Ship and Sea Navigators.

Carae or Carians were quasi-Greeks of much reputed popularity. They first appeared in literary history in the Iliad, but ultimately they fought for Egyptian army and eventually became like many other nations from Egypt, a different people and culture. There is a relationship between the Carian alphabets and the Greek alphabets and there is a similarity between those two alphabets systems, and the alphabet system of the Etruscans who gave much hue to Latin and Roman Alphabets. It is from here that a relationship between Latin from Latium and Samna essentially arise. From here the relationship between Latin and Greek, seem to dovetail Carian (Karian) and Karo-memphis, torching in between them the Samna, the Etruscans, the Latium, and Phoenician of much elder state.


These are among the few would-have-nations that straddle Greek and Roman Latin, explicating the inheritance to have gone as back as Memphis, far back as Lower Egypt and then Upper Egypt of Neco presiding Persia. If Herodotus is right, then there Greeks and Carians in the years following the decline and fall of Egypt, became numerous. They reached as some point 30 thousand, navigating between the Nile and the West, between Iona and Egypt. Greek and Karomemphite burials and inscriptions are a letters shy of Keme (Egypt).

It was these Immigrants and travelers that added impetus to what became Greco-Syria, such that the years of ‘Ionians festivals’ and ‘Dionysus Ships’ attracted Africans who knew better, who helped the new world of Greece and Syria to understand the meaning of their language. When the Greeks became to find out about the origins of some people, they were not doing that to accommodate outsiders, they spoke a language was quite different or at least sounded different, but based on the word meaning of names, the Greeks could trace your ancestors, and histories of a certain people past.


What made the Greeks great were their able to compare languages and peoples, based on words that have common glossarial meaning between existing Koine (popular languages) of the day, above all based on their common records. The interesting point of Greek past is that it is based on etymology of words and the learning over the years essentially relates. Among the notable places were historians (Hecataeus) have shown that Greeks and Carians settled also along the Nile called ‘Ephesus, Chios, Lesbos, Cyprus and Samos (FGrH 1 F 310)’, the example here is after CAH.