A Professor of Classics’ Refutation of the Afrocentrist Doctrine that Ancient Greece Stole Its Culture from Ancient Egypt

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.

Sargon of Gasbag Blames Plato for SJWs

Okay, I know, I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. I watched another of Sargon of Akkad’s wretched videos. In my defence I can only say that it is important to understand the ideas of the right and extreme right, and what they’re telling people about the left. And some of Sargon’s ideas are so bizarre that there’s a kind of weird fascination about them. Sargon is, of course, the nom de internet of Carl Benjamin, the Sage of Swindon, who broke UKIP by joining it. The scourge of Communists, feminists and anti-racist activists put up a video in which he claimed that the ancient Greek philosopher Plato was responsible for Social Justice Warriors. That’s the term the right sneeringly uses to refer to all the above, or even simply anyone who believes that the poor, unemployed, disabled and the working class are getting an increasingly raw deal and that the government should do something about it.

Sargon’s Libertarianism

For Sargon, anyone who believes in government intervention and in greater equality for women, ethnic minorities are working people is a Communist. But it’s the definition of Communism as used by the American right, which means anyone with vaguely left-wing views. Barack Obama was actually very moderate in his policies. He’s since come out and said that he considers himself a moderate Republican. But that didn’t stop his right-wing opponents attacking him as an evil Maoist Communist, as well as an atheist Muslim Nazi. Sargon himself is a ‘classical liberal’, which means that he’s a Libertarian who looks back to the early 19th century when governments followed the economic doctrine of laisser faire, so that people could work 18 hours per day in factories or the mines before dying of disease or starvation in a cellar or garret in an overcrowded slum. But Sargon, like all Libertarians and Conservatives, believes that if private industry is released from the chains of government bureaucracy, it will somehow magically produce economic expansion and wealth for all. Even though we’ve Tory privatisation and neoliberalism for forty years, the Conservatives have been in power for the past ten, the economy is collapsing and people are being forced in homelessness, debt and starvation. Most weirdly, Sargon somehow continues to believe he’s on the left. He’s a moderate, you see, unlike the far-right SJWs.

Plato and Aristotle

And he blames Plato for the far left on account of the ancient Greek philosopher’s highly authoritarian political views and his theory of forms. Plato believed that beyond this material world there was another, perfect world of ideal forms, of which the entities in this world were only imperfect shadows. For example, these ideal forms included animals, so that there was an ideal cat, of which real, material cats were imperfect copies. But there were also abstract concepts like justice and beauty, in which the beings in this world also participated and reflected. A beautiful woman, for example, was a woman who corresponded to the perfect ideal of beauty in the intelligible world. SJWs were intolerant, because they were idealists. They had impossibly high ideals of justice, and this made them intolerant. Just as Plato himself was intolerant in his idea of the perfect state, which he wrote down in his Republic and Laws. Plato himself believed that government should be left to enlightened absolute monarchs, and his idea of a perfect state is definitely totalitarian. Sargon’s right about that.

Sargon, however, champions Aristotle, because he believed in ‘the republic of virtue’ and democracy. And it was at this point that I stopped watching, because there’s only so much right-wing idiocy you can take. It can sound plausible, but a moment’s reflection is all it needs to show that it’s all nonsense, and Sargon knows less about SJWs, Marxism and Aristotle than he thinks he does.

Aristotlean Democracy Different from Today’s

Let’s deal firstly with the idea that Aristotle is a democrat. He isn’t, or rather, not in the modern sense. He’s not a totalitarian like Plato, but he believed that the only people, who should have a vote and a share of government in his ideal democracy were leisured gentlemen, who didn’t need to work and therefore had the time, education and money to devote themselves to politics. He makes this very clear in his Politics, where he states categorically that artisans and other working people should very definitely be kept away from politics and from mixing with the gentlemen of political class. So firmly did he believe this the he argued the two classes should have two separate forums. And Aristotle, like Plato, also believed in the world of intelligible forms. Which means that if idealism makes someone intolerant, then, by Sargon’s argument, he should also attack Aristotle as intolerant.

Marxism, Communism, Postmodernism and the New Left

Sargon is also, of course, spectacularly wrong about Communism. He uses it to mean anyone, who has what he considers to be extreme left-wing views. But Communism also has a very distinct meaning in that it referred to those versions of Marxism practiced in the former Communist bloc and the parties outside it that followed these forms of Marxist dogma. In the USSR and the European Communist countries, this meant Lenin’s formulation of Marxism; in China, Mao’s. But at the time there were other forms of Marxism that were far more democratic. Karl Kautsky, the leader of the Austrian Marxists, believed that industries should be socialised and taken over by the state when they became monopolies, and that socialism could only be achieved through democracy. He was bitterly hostile to the Soviet dictatorship.

Marxism certainly is an element in some forms of contemporary radicalism, such as postmodernism and Cultural Studies. But this is the Marxism of the New Left, which emerged in the 1960s. The New Left attempted to revitalise Marxism through a return to Hegelianism. As far as I can tell, it was Trotskyite, rather than Communist, although both refer to radical Marxism. But Postmodernism was also strongly influenced by structural linguistics, Freudian psychology and Nietzsche. And, at least in the 1990s, it rejected class politics, which are an essential part of orthodox Marxism.

Modern Feminists and Anti-Racists Not Necessarily Marxists

It’s also problematic how much contemporary anti-racism and feminism owes to Marxism. Some of the Black rights and anti-colonialist movements of the 20th century were influenced by Marx to a greater or lesser extent. But I doubt that the mass of anti-racist or feminist activists in this country have read Marx. For them, it almost certainly has more immediate causes in their experience of being treated as less than and denied opportunities open to White males. One of the landmark cases in British feminism was the strike by women workers at Dagenham in the early ’70s. But I doubt they were interested in creating a Communist utopia. They simply wanted to be paid the same as the men. And as for utopianism, while that does exist among the real extreme left, such as anarchists, communists and Trotskyites, for most people left-wing activism simply means realising that things are badly wrong now, and wishing to change it for the better. But as the books on left-wing organisation and activism I’ve read have argued, that means simply trying to make things a little better, and realising an absolutely perfect society is unachievable. That’s also the point of view Marxists like the economist Bernard Wolf.

The Utopianism of Libertarians and Conservatives

If anyone does believe in a perfect system, however, it’s Sargon and the Conservatives/Libertarians. They really do seem to believe that capitalism is a perfect system, and if people are poor, then it’s their own fault. It reminds me of the 19th century Tories, who talked endlessly about the perfection of the British constitution without thinking that anything could or should be done about the mass poverty around them. Sargon and his allies are thus rather like Dr. Pangloss, the character in Voltaire’s Candide, who believed that all was for the best, in this, the best of all possible worlds. Except in their formulation, all is for the best in capitalism, the best of all possible economic systems.

But capitalism is not perfect. Unregulated, it creates mass poverty, and this has always spurred left-wing activists and reformers to try to tackle it. This includes liberals as well as Marxists. But Sargon doesn’t understand that, and so he thinks that those dissatisfied with capitalism can only be radical Marxists.

He’s wrong, but this view is very influential, and used by the right to discredit everyone on the left. And so, daft as it is, it needs to be fought.