Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became An Excuse to Teach Myth as History (New York: Basic Books 1996)
Afrocentrism is the pseudo-academic discipline that claims that ancient Egypt was Black and the ultimate source of the cultures of Europe and Africa. One of its doctrines is that major figures in the ancient world, such as Cleopatra and Socrates, were Black and that the ancient Greeks stole Egypt’s advanced culture and civilisation and passed it off as their own. According to Afrocentrists such as Yosef A.A. Ben Yochannan, Aristotle accompanied Alexander the Great on his invasion of Egypt, where he plundered the great library of Alexandria before it was destroyed by Alexander. Lefkowitz is a professor of Classics and teaches Greek at Wellesley College in America. In this book she destroys these claims, and traces the Afrocentrist ideas of ancient Egyptian civilisation back to Black Freemasonry and the 18th century novel Sethos by the French writer, the Abbe Terrasson and their influence on George G.G. James’ 1950’s book, The Stolen Legacy.
Lefkowitz Not Motivated By Racism
Lefkowitz states very clearly in her book that she is not motivated by racism. She believes that Egypt was a Black civilisation, and in her epilogue suggests ways in which Egypt may have influenced ancient Greek culture that could be properly explored and researched by historians. Her objection to Afrocentrism comes from the fact that it is simply wrong. She also points out its dangers to history and society, as it posits different races can write their own history without concern for objective truth, provided that what they are taught serves an ideological function. In this instance, it’s the promotion of Black pride and achievement. But she points out that the same utilitarian approach to history can be used by other people, whose aims the Afrocentrists would definitely not approve of. And teaching such false doctrines also isolates its students in a ghetto of false knowledge away from the mainstream. Needless to say, her critics claimed she was acting out of some kind of racist motive. Despite being Jewish, she was an Aryan supremacist and even part of a ‘Jewish onslaught’.
Lefkowitz states she had no idea of the existence of Afrocentrism until one of its leading academics came to speak at her college. He was billed as an Egyptologist despite having done no proper Egyptological research. When it came to questions, she challenged one of his assertions by asking him how Aristotle could possible have looted the great library of Alexandria, when Aristotle didn’t accompany Alexander on his expeditions outside Greece and the library was built several years after Aristotle’s death.
Cleopatra, Socrates and North African Peoples Not Black
The book also tackles the similar ahistorical claims that Socrates and Cleopatra were Black, as were the inhabitants of North Africa including the Carthaginian general Hannibal, that the Greek city states were founded by the ancient Egyptians, who had invaded the country c. 750. No author actually describes Socrates as Black, and the only times he had travelled outside Athens was when he was part of the army in its wars with other Greek city states. The only evidence that he had Black ancestry were jokes by his students and opponents that he had satyr’s ears, a snub nose, big nostrils and a wide mouth. Yes, the Greeks did depict Black Africans as having snub noses, big nostrils and wide mouths, but so did the paint many Greeks.
Cleopatra was a Ptolemy, descended from one of Alexander’s generals, who seized the Egyptian throne. They took up the Egyptian custom of marrying their sisters. When they didn’t do this, they married other Greeks. Cleopatra’s lineage is thus reasonably well-known, except for the identity of her grandmother. She may well have been Black, except no-one mentions that she was. This contrasts with Didyme, a Nubian woman, who was taken as a concubine by one of her ancestors, but whose child, if she had one, did not inherit the throne. The Greeks were keenly sensitive to difference, and it Cleopatra’s gran had been Black, it would have been remarked upon.
As for the inhabitants of North Africa, the Berbers, they are lighter skinned than sub-Saharan Africans and the Libyans, as they were called by the Egyptians, were portrayed as such in ancient Egyptian art. Carthage was a Phoenician colony. The Phoenicians were a Semitic people from what is now Syria and Lebanon. They were not Black, and neither was Hannibal. One of the founders of one of the Greek city states, Cadmus, was also a Phoenician and so also not Black as claimed by the Afrocentrists. The legendary founders of many of the Greek states did come from Egypt, and were described as dark-skinned, as claimed by the Afrocentrists, but they were Greeks who had fled there a generation or so previously. There is no material evidence for an Egyptian invasion of Greece, but there is plenty of evidence for a Greek presence in the Nile delta from pieces of mosaic.
Ancient Greek Beliefs of the Egyptian Basis of Their Culture
The idea that ancient Egypt was a Black civilisation was held by the Black Masonic organisations that emerged in America. But they took their idea of the civilisation from very dated and outmoded accounts by European writers before Napoleon’s invasion and archaeological expedition started proper, scientific research. Their ideas of ancient Egypt were based on the description of the country by the pioneering Greek historians, Herodotus and Diodorus of Sicily. She states that Herodotus is generally accurate in what he says about Egypt, but there are instances where he is profoundly mistaken, particularly in matters of religion. The Greeks believed the Egyptians had secret mystery cults, whose members had to be initiated, like theirs. But there were no such cults. The confusion came from the ancient Egyptian priests having to be initiated, but the cults themselves were public. The Greeks also associated their gods with those of Egypt on superficial similarities. The Greek goddess Demeter was identified with Isis partly because the worship of both goddesses included processions of women bearing model phalluses.
Both Herodotus and Diodorus took care to question the Egyptian priests themselves. However, this must have been through interpreters as neither could speak or write Egyptian, and so could and did not consult the civilisation’s ancient documents and literature. The Greeks immensely respected Egypt because of its antiquity, and were keen to associate themselves with the older culture. And the Egyptians on their side were willing to confirm this belief. This may partly have been a strategy for maintaining national pride, particularly after their conquest by the Greeks. A similar tactic was used by the Alexandrian Jewish writers Artapanus and Aristobulos, who also claimed that the Jews were the ultimate source of Greek civilisation, so that it was said that Plato’s Republic was simply Moses in Attic Greek. They were wrong, and are now almost forgotten. Why should the similar claims made by the Egyptians be any different?
Black Freemasonry and 18th Century Fiction
Black Freemasonry’s idea of the sophistication of Egyptian civilisation was shared with that of the White Freemasons. During the 18th century it was heavily influenced by the Abbe Terrasson’s novel. This describes how its hero, Sethos, was initiated into the worship of Osiris, Isis and Horus in a huge pyramid, and led to the underground city in which the religion’s priests dwelt. The description of the temple above ground is that of an idealised French university, with lecture halls, an art gallery, a music gallery, research laboratories and a zoo. The initiation ceremony described in the book was adapted and taken over by Masonic lodges in Austria and elsewhere, and influenced the plot and setting of Mozart’s opera, the Magic Flute. The difference between the White and Black Freemasons was that the Whites believed, despite Herodotus, that the Egyptians were White.
Lefkowitz deals with the claim that Europeans rejected the idea of Egypt as the foundation of their culture through ancient Greece because of growing racial prejudice in the 19th century. In fact, European enthusiasm for ancient Egypt remained strong, as shown in the massive popularity of operas set there, such as Verdi’s Aida. One of these, Thamos, was about the love affair between the Pharaoh and a Nubian woman, showing how little fears of racial intermixing affected the popularity of these works. What caused Europeans to become sceptical of Egypt as the foundation of their own culture was the findings of Egyptologists and linguists that showed how different Greek and Egyptian cultures really were.
George G.G. James and The Stolen Legacy
The rising Black liberation of movements of the 19th and 20th century nevertheless held onto the claim that Egypt was the source of White culture, leading to the emergence of the claim that the Greeks had stolen it from the Egyptians. Marcus Garvey, the founder and head of the United Negro Improvement Association, claimed this had happened, but didn’t explain how. It was George G.G. James, a professor of Greek at one of the Black colleges, who supplied the details in his influential book, the Stolen Legacy, of 1954. Apart from claiming that Aristotle and Alexander had looted and destroyed the great library of Alexander, with Aristotle passing off the books he had stolen as his own, James made a number of other claims that are also simply wrong. For example, he claimed that Aristotle’s On The Soul was based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead. But On The Soul is a rational examination of the concept of the soul. The Book of the Dead, or to give it it’s Egyptian title, The Book of Going Forth by Day, is a collection of spells for the deceased to use in order to overcome that obstacles they will find in their journey to the Field of Reeds, the Egyptian paradise, in the afterlife. The two have precious little in common. Many of the supposed similarities between ancient Greek texts and that of Egypt can be explained as simply explorations of similar themes, or based on earlier accounts of Egypt so that the authors of the later works need never have been to the country, let alone been Egyptians themselves. James’ book was rediscovered and republished in the 1980s by Ben Yochannan, and it is suggested that there are 500,000 copies circulating by the time Lefkowitz wrote her book.
In her epilogue Lefkowitz also describes the criticism she faced when the book was published, and answers it, often pointing to an earlier book she co-writer that attacked Bernal’s Black Athena. Bernal took over some of the mistakes of the earlier Afrocentrists while adding a few of his own. He claims that some Greek terms were loan words from ancient Egyptian. Thus, the Greek word bia, meaning force, is supposedly taken from the Egyptian word for soul, ba. Except that scholars of ancient Egyptian state it isn’t, and that there are very few Egyptian loanwords in ancient Greek.
Lefkowitz and Stephen Howe’s Attacks on Afrocentrism
The book predates Stephen Howe’s Afrocentrism, which was published by Verso in 1998. Howe’s book deals with the origins of Afrocentrism more widely in Ethiopianism and pan-Africanism and its similarly mistaken views of the origins of Black African culture in ancient Egypt, as well as the idea that Blacks were the first people in Britain, Europe, China, Japan, Vietnam and the New World, as well as its connections to Black radicalism and nationalism in the 60s and 70s. Lefkowitz deals exclusively with the origin of its claim that ancient Greece was founded on stolen Egyptian culture. In her epilogue, Lefkowitz states that there may well be instances where Egypt influenced ancient Greece, as in its early art, but such influences do not mean that the Greeks stole or appropriated from the neighbours across the Med.
Afrocentrism’s Influence on Black Historiography
Apart from its specific concentration on Afrocentrism, Lefkowitz and Howe are also important for showing the possible source of other false historical claims made by Black writers. These are that various scientific and technological inventions and discoveries were made by Blacks when they weren’t; that various British historical figures were also Black, when they were definitely White, and that Stonehenge was really built by Blacks. The claims that the ancient Britons were Black and that Stonehenge was built by Blacks ultimately derive from Afrocentrism, and based on discredited 19th century White European authors, although given some support from the dark colouring of Cheddar Man.
Afrocentrism seems to have passed on to Black History the attitude that Blacks were responsible for many of the technological advances of the West, including smart phone and helicopters, when they were not, and that they have been robbed of their due credit. It is also responsible for the disregard for the accepted rules of historical research, in that racial pride and social utility is put before historical truth, and that various historical figures may be claimed for Black identity on the flimsiest of evidence.
This is a danger to historical research as a whole, and also to Black History itself. Properly researched Black History has produced some surprising and inspiring figures, such as genuine Black and Asian politicians, medical men and women and lawyers, for example, that predate the wave of new Black British politicos like Diane Abbott in the 1980s. There is a danger that the false claims made by Black Historians and Afrocentrists will lead to unwarranted scepticism towards Black History’s findings and its status as a proper academic discipline as a whole.
Afrocentrism’s Similarity to Fascist Attitudes to History
The situation has become worse through the expansion of identity politics, or IdPol as some of its sceptics are calling it and the pernicious influence of Postmodernism. Based on Foucault, this rejects notions of progress and scientific and historical truth for social utility, the influence of language and power and oppression narratives. The result can include the call for western science to be removed from its place at the centre of scientific discussion and research, in order to include and incorporate the prescientific knowledges of indigenous peoples. The problem with this, as Lefkowitz hints, is that the Nazis and the Fascists also believed in racial science. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was rejected because Einstein was Jewish. And they believed that members of the Volk or the nation would automatically and instinctively recognise the truth of their doctrines simply through their shared membership of the race or nation. This is different from saying, as the Afrocentrists claimed, that Lefkowitz was comparing their doctrines to Holocaust denial. But the racial assumptions regarding history and its uses are the same between postmodern Afrocentrists and Nazis.
Conclusion
Lefkowitz is keen to promote the proper investigation of ancient Greece and Egypt by the public, and Egypt is a fascinating civilisation regardless of what one believes the colour of their skin was. But Afrocentrism is an obstacle to gaining such knowledge and needs to be rejected. As does its influence on Black History, so we can gain a proper knowledge of Black heritage and achievement.
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