[Music] kimet the Glorious Jewel of ancient Africa her story is locked behind doors that are more than 5,000 years old behind each door lies a maze of data that can found even experienced researchers but we'll unlock those doors with master keys Dr ASA G Hillard III one of the leading researchers in the field of chatology and the Fuller e Callaway professor of urban education at Georgia State University we should use the term Kemet rather than the term Egypt because that is the name that the kiic people use to refer to themselves the name Egypt was used by Greek people and is therefore a foreign name not a native African or a native Egyptian name lelt Middleton one of the leading educational television producers on African history why is ancient chemet so important to the world and to black people African people in particular ancient Kemet is important because it's humankind's oldest civil ization it's the development of the best effort of a group of people to organize themselves and for Africa that's especially important since African people have been so defamed even to the extent that some have said that African people had no civilization in fact African people developed the first civilization which was Kemet it is as important to African people as Greece is to European people what did these Africans develop in the way of science and well of course in the development of civilization we would refer to Kemet as a high technical civilization uh The Sciences as we know them were well advanced in Kemet uh thousands of years before they had that kind of development before the art of writing uh astronomy uh the uh mu music any area that we now consider to be an important academic area already had its uh beginning in Kemet and it was very welldeveloped now you know a lot of African-Americans watching this will say now what do the descendants of African slaves in the United States have to do with these ancient Africans in Kemet or Egypt well it's important for any group of people to have a sense of or to have the ability to answer three questions about themselves and these questions are Booker T Washington Coleman A Washington DC historian's questions that he uses in organizing his educational experiences for children he says every human being ought to be able to answer the question who am I where in the world am I how in the world did I get here now most welldeveloped Nations spend Millions maybe billions of dollars answering those questions for themselves that's why you have Smithsonian Institution for the United States uh that's why you have libraries that's why you have universities that invest in history departments and so forth uh African people have almost forgotten because we haven't had the resources to take care of that part of our existence it is the knowledge of one's history that gives a strong sense of belonging and identity which provides the basis for group Unity which provides the basis for political and economic power what is the the connection the genetic connection the cultural connection uh between the the Africans who are now in in the United States and those of ancient Kemet or Egypt well it's fairly clear that the pattern of movement of people on the African continent and it moves from uh it'll go to the map it moves from uh Beginnings here in the Nile Valley Beginnings okay where the Nile River actually starts right here and it will go down here joined by another Nile the white the Blue Nile coming from Ethiopia the white now coming from here joining here and coming this way so the M migration pattern of human beings was down this River into Egypt and then there were migration patterns over into West Africa many times and some of the time the migration actually went from Egypt into across the top of the Sahara and into these parts and we believe there are people here now who are quite similar and probably as was said in the book uh by Felix Duo timbuk to the mysterious they're probably both the culture and the genetic descendants of the people of Egypt and they're the Dogan people here in Mali let me ask you to go over that again just to make sure that right that we that we uh get all of it okay we be early man begins here in this area and we're talking about the cultural we're connection the genetic connection we're talking about the people first the genetic connection and then of course they carry their culture down the river these were black people here they carry their culture down the river before they went out and populated the rest of the earth then of course they migrated not only North but they also migrated from here out into parts of West Africa into the South they then also migrated from Egypt which is here or Kemet as we should call it across the Sahara into areas of West Africa Molly would be a case in point okay now some African-American parents will say our children are maming each other our children are on drugs and here you are talking about ancient African history why is this relevant how do how do you respond to that it's one of the major pieces it's not the only piece uh you can't say that if someone takes a course in chatology that they will stop drugs tomorrow but you can say that if uh a group of people has no sense of being a part of the historical world that is if we see ourselves as mere Spectators that we just sat on the sidelines as the march of humanity went by that has an effect on how you live your life and one way we know this is that we watch what happens when children and adults learn this information about African people the difference in Attitude the difference in selfesteem self-concept self-image we you can almost see those things change before your very eyes what what are you seeing what have you seen well I I get uh I get letters from uh young men in prison who upon reading some of the work of great African historians and seeing some of the illustrations that we have to offer who are abruptly uh uh shocked changed and almost put on a new Mission they almost take a take up a new purpose and I I have many letters like this as well as uh people who are are well educated um uh maybe uh even uh people in universities and colleges who have spent 20 and 30 years in their discipline but when they learn this information they talk about having a transformation experience and they are very explicit about how these things affect them so um you know we have abundant uh uh examples of how this works and it would be really wonderful to figure out a way to be able to show that okay now master keys to the interpretation of data on CET what is this concept of master keys and how did you arrive at it okay the idea of a master key is simply that in the face of the fact that there are there is so much information on Ancient kimt so much information on Africa for that matter uh and it comes to us in bits and pieces like little episodes in order to give a sense of order and coherence to it it's necessary to identify certain key Concepts key principles guiding ideas that will organize all of this information so that it makes some sense to the person who is trying to it's a study tool a guide for the analysis of information right okay let's take a look at the first uh graphic committee culture was pre-dynastic um what this let me go to the timeline for this because okay um let us wait a minute for the time for the okay okay here we have a time chart that shows this line here which is a line that starts way before 3000 BC and it comes to a period of time after Christ and this is the line of culture showing that the way of life of the ancient kemites remained the same for over 3,000 years this of course is their political control now these are the four Golden Ages of ancient kimt but this is the dynastic period that begins here after which we have these four Golden Ages when we say pre- Dynasty we mean before Dynasty 1 things were going on back here that are not well Doc dasty before Dynasty which was before the founding of Kemet as a nation in the year and this would go back as many years we don't know some people say uh another 5,000 years some say another 20,000 years in fact the uh uh commic historian mayor in Judi or Manito suggested that you could go back to 25,000 years uh at the time that Kemet was ruled by the gods and then finally by these uh uh wise people and then finally it was organized as one nation in Dynasty one so for example we know that not 3000 BC but at 4236 or some people say 4241 BC the calendar that we use now was already in operation in the Nile Valley 4,100 uh 42,0 36 or 4241 BC that calendar was already in place that is an incredible uh thing to to realize the technology the mathematics the number of years of observation that would take to create that calendar and that shows that the culture is older than the nation in other words so committed culture is pre-ic predynastic so the main point of this master key is that we should look in in Africa for a a long period of development and we should not begin our analysis with the beginning of the nation of Kemet we should look for what went before it okay okay the uh New York Times uh had uh interesting uh article which was about the oldest nation in the world and this is an example of what I was just talking about back to the back to the Chart here's kimet 3100 BC beginning but in the New York Times They tell us there was another nation that is somewhere around 3500 BC uh at least 200 maybe three or 400 years older than kimet there's this nation called TTI and this nation is further up south on the river in an area called Nubia and that is called the oldest monarchy in the world and of course they excavated the Great Graves of these Kings in Nubia and these Kings in Nubia were said to be tall black skinned people the Goddess Isis and her child were already in place at the beginning of kimet which was you said uh which was 3100 BC and then that's Dynasty K so Dynasty kimet begins after the religion that was the primary religion of kimet had already been created so when you when you uh go to TTI for example uh there is gor god Horus this this child that's being held by the virgin mother is already recorded in tetti south of kimt uh and it's much older than kimt so the religion is in place astronomy is in place writing the hieroglyphics or medu is in place all of those things are already in place so the culture is in place before the political organization of kimet as a nation okay Osiris is the god uh who was associated with Isis the husband of Isis uh symbolically uh you see Osiris here with the uh Shepherd's Crook and the flail and he was then the supreme god who was married to Isis so that becomes the the God who is married to a virgin and they have an offspring and so we have the first holy family and so that's an example of a of a religious story that is similar to the Christian story but it's 3,000 years older than the Christian story and is there a resurrection element here also uh Osiris was resurrected he was crucified by his brother cut up into 14 or 28 pieces depending on the story his evil brother set jealous of him for several things cut him up and he was again uh he was risen from the dead to rule over the dead and that was The Story of O the earli story of the Resurrection before the chrisan again that goes back about 3,000 years before Christ okay master key number two okay the second concept that we need to keep in mind uh commic culture remained intact through the 7th Century ad the culture that's this cultural line that I showed you on the chart and if we can go back to the Chart here okay let's hold it a minute let's let our people get in place okay okay so here's the 3,000-year line it stays the same the way of life this religion this philosophy up to this point right here and it's at this point that we get a rather abrupt change in the culture of KT the reason for it is that the convers was the conversion of Africans in kimet to the religion of Islam this is after the prophet Muhammad and uh then you get at this point a change in belief but you also get a change in population at this point you get large numbers of arabic speaking people Arab people with Arabic culture that come into the Nile Valley and join those that were already there and give to what is now Egypt rather than Kemet its essential character which we see still present in Egypt today okay let's go on okay on the third master key generally in Kemet if you look at the the the data the older things are the better they are in other words the first cultures were more perfect than later cultures so if I go to this time chart here and I get back to Dynasty 1 come to Dynasty 3 when they started building pyramids the earliest pyramids are the best pyramids and they're still standing okay let's see if we have an example already the last pyram here's an example of the early pyramid uh the step pyramid that's the first pyramid that pyramid is still standing it was not the most perfect pyramid the most perfect pyramid would be the Great Pyramid and the Great Pyramid is that one in the far uh part of the slide and that is the Pyramid of Giza but we see two other pyramids with it now these are some of the best formed pyramids these pyramids would be around 2500 BC after this there were about uh another 75 or so pyramids and they began to deteriorate in quality so that's one example of older being better well we have this graphic up there the pyramid how tall is that that pyramid uh the Great Pyramid is about 40 three stories tall built when built uh the Great Pyramid was built around 25 a little uh longer than 2500 BC okay if we look again at older is better if we look at the tech this is the text of the oldest Bible in the world written on the walls of the tomb of unas and if you read what becomes from this and other tombs a book called The Book of the Dead its formal name name is the perim hu or the book of coming forth from Darkness into light then you'll see that for example you see no pornography there you see uh in fact you don't even see pictures there you see pure text and if you go back the text was pure in not only in written form but in symbolic form it was better looking text it looked better as it was carved into the walls and colored and some of those colors are still there there okay and in addition to looking better the ideas were less contaminated with Superstition and what have you okay we see for example older is better here again in terms of the uh Temple at Sakara this is the ferary temple at Sakara of King Zer that was done approximately 2700 BC and we see here also the antecedence of Greek architecture if you see the columns here these columns dating now from 2700 BC compared to the uh paron on the Acropolis which would uh not appear until around 500 BC so here we have something more than 2,000 years older than that building that we call the parthan in Greece and it's already present in the arit when we see columns we're seeing African African columns they're copies of African architecture okay the fourth master key is that you always have to remember when looking at any information from Kemet that their orientation was up South are you going to be using the map for this we can show you on the map let let our folks get in place okay go ahead that the uh that this River starts here and goes this way which means it flows from south to North so it's going downhill when we go go this way that means it's going up hill to go this way the ancient cites always look back this way up River as the source of their home their inspiration and so forth for example for them the word South and face were the same the word left and East are the same the word right and West are the same so their General orientation was to the South with their back to the North Pole and and they that was what they used as their main point of of of orientation we must keep that in mind okay uh this would be an example of the the Nile River for example which is very interesting in kimt uh one of the beauties of this river is that they have winds that blow uh uh from the north going south so that if you want to go north you just float if you want to go south you get help from the wind and so that was helpful because if you floated one way you wanted to be able to get back okay okay the fifth principle or master key fifth concept organizing concept is that the origin of the people and the culture like the orientation is also up South so we look in order to show this for a cultureal Unity between the commited people and the pudan people for example now that great egyptologist ewes budge used to say that he felt that he understood the commic writing better and the at least the commic religion was understood better by him when he studied the religion of sudin people the further south he went and watched the religion that was being practiced at that time the better he understood the ancient kitic religion so in other words you didn't go to Saudi Arabia or to Europe and study those religions to try to understand commic religion because they were not like the commic religion the cultural Unity was between kit and the people up South uh the sixth uh organizing principle is that generally significant leaders are Southern and I'm going to go to the time chart on this again uh those who founded just watch this for example those who founded D the king who founded Dynasty 1 was a southern King Mina the the Kings you say Southern you're talking about that means he came from up South that means he would come from the area today that we call somewhere near luor are even some cases as far south as as one sometimes even outside the country but what I'm saying is that each of the that the founding Dynasty plus the dynasties of the four Golden Ages which are which are the Old Kingdom or the pyramid age the Middle Kingdom or the literary age the New Kingdom or the temple and Imperial age the late Kingdom or the Revival age each of these four Golden Ages was initiated from the south and were their kings their family the royal family at that time came from the south that's a very important fact who were clearly black because they were then black and they are now black even in 1990 the uh luxer population is a black population and definitely when you get to ask one that's a black population okay okay the Imperial age was centered at waset the restoration age was centered at waset and Maro which is even further south in it's even out of the country marway is all the way up almost to Sudan our cartoon I like that name waset I wonder what does that mean it means the scepter why do you like the there's something about it I don't know what it means the scepter now you got to tell us what that means uh was said of course today is called luar and before that the Greeks called it thibes but the Africans called it waset and waset meant the scepter the the symbol of authority and rulership and power okay um the literary age was started at waset the priesthood at waset was the that was the home base of the preaches you know they why and why is that significant significant it's it's very important because uh you had uh this uh peculiar kind of thing where uh what Plato was driving for in his Republic the idea of philosopher king was a reality in kimat that the priests were the ones that disciplined royalty in other words the Pharaoh contrary to what many people believe did not have a free reign that he had to uh uh gain in effect the approval of the high priest of the time and so this High priesthood had as its Center base waset and from there subsidiary lodges uh with be found all over the country especially from the 12th from the 11th Dynasty onward prior to that time of course they had several major centers okay okay this is one of our uh uh first pharaohs early pharaohs and of course this is the pyramid pharaoh zoer who founded uh uh who founded the who built the step pyramid and whose ferary complex we looked at before that had those uh so called Greek columns we can see clearly here this is an African man okay if we skip from Zer to this Pharaoh we have skipped from uh the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom and this is the pharaoh who founded the Middle Kingdom uh the second golden age and it was from waset that this family lived and ruled and that was Dynasty 11 motep II he's a very important Pharaoh but several other important pharaohs also lived in this same city of waset and they also were critical not only to kimet but also to other parts of the world such as this one this is Pharaoh senos R the first who is known in history according to Martin Bernal who wrote the book Black atina this is the pharaoh who is the legendary Greek figure uh he's a kiic figure but the Greeks referred to him as key crops his name in kitic is kear sin wett the first and he is the one that Bernal credits with the founding of the Greek city state of Athens so that there is this external relationship between kit and the rest of the world uh as far back as 2000 BC this is in the Middle Kingdom mhm okay here we have in that same Kingdom uh pharaoh who is also known to the Greeks according to Martin bernal's work and others his name is aminat III and aminat III is that legendary character who fought with Agamemnon in the Trojan War in uh the Greek Trojan War we had Ethiopian troops and Greeks call chiic people and other Africans black people and the word for that in Greek was Ethiopian so this is the figure here he is again am minimat III and am minimat III is the legendary mnan of the Greeks okay nefatari is the Queen Mother of the third golden age she was married to Pharaoh Ms or she sometimes refer to his amho nefatari you see that she's clearly black but she's also a part of that waset family this UPS South family showing again the southern origin of leadership and so here you have this key Dynasty the 18th which is sometimes called the Grand Golden Age the biggest of all the four Golden Ages the age of Imperial expansion the age of architectural expansion and so forth so she would be one of the major figures illustrating this point about the UPS South nature of the leadership okay here here we have uh uh Pharaoh am uh amen hotep III with his wife Queen T this is the mother and father of pharaoh akatan who was married to nefatiti most of the people who know kimet they know about Nefertiti but they should really know about Nefertiti's in-laws because they were really important people especially the wife the wife is uh um uh Queen T and Queen T is the woman who literally rued KET along with her husband co- Regent with her husband there are letters from Asian Kings in kayah form where when they got into some difficulty this is the woman they asked for help they didn't write to her husband they wrote to her so that you could say that she was a co- Regent with her husband and therefore became very important this is the mother of that's the mother of pharaoh aatan and some people also say the mother of King Tut and the Mother-in-law of Nefertiti okay uh again these are waset families these are UPS South families here's another UPS South uh uh uh Priestess Anu tawi who is uh a priestess of ancient KET but again she's up South so if you notice that the center of power at this time is in the middle of the country or in the uh part of the country least infiltrated by outside influence is less mixed racially less Mi mixed culturally and that would uh be examples of what we've been talking about people are so used to seeing white Egyptians right one must ask where do these people come from right well see those people have been there all the time they're just not in the books the books that show pictures of white Egyptians normally show pictures of the Egyptians not the Kites and that means they're showing pictures of people who were ruling or who were in Egypt during the Greek and Roman times and after that and so it's always important to date the picture and to know whether you're talking about royalty or not okay this virtually all creativities are in indous and the invasions are destructive the Greco Romans were imita so if I go back to the Chart here and let's take a look Golden Age number one Golden Age number two in Invasion this is the first Invasion this was a destructive Invasion from Asia uh they are not given the credit with building temples with building pyramids with building religion they were very destructive and then there is a return in Dynasty 18 and 19 which is the third golden age and uh the Greco Romans don't actually get to Kemet and begin to impose their name Greece and their culture and their political control until here you see the Greeks come in 332 BC which is after all four Golden Ages but they didn't destroy they're the exception to the invasion being destructive what they did was imitate now the Romans that come in after the Greeks beginning about 30 years before Christ they're the ones that begin to destroy again and particularly they destroyed the educational and religious institutions to the extent that they were able to do that over the course of 2 to 300 years now at that 332 BC is that basically when you see the white right this is when you'll see uh large numbers of white well you also see it here with the Persians in 525 uh BC but then you're talking about large numbers of settlers here with the Greeks Alexander the Great and then the Caesars here with the Romans and you had large numbers of people fil infiltrating into Alexandria and around Cairo generally they didn't go very far up South but uh nevertheless uh they some did and it's not until you get the Arabic population that you begin to get that large infusion of foreigners up South okay this is uh part of the literature during the uh uh period of the uh uh in fact this dates all the way back to the beginning of kitic uh times but that this was in place this would be in place and it's it's a part of the culture all the way through and it's an example of uh what people destroyed you know they the the Invaders were destructive rather than creative they didn't create this religion it was already in place the Egyptian Book of the Dead deals with what the Egyptian Book of the Dead is really much like the first five books of Moses or the pentat and the Old Testament deals with the creation it deals with uh uh some people say they are spells you know uh but you have to really get into the study of committing religion uh to understand that these things are are part of a very uh deep symbolic uh studies that uh you don't you don't just talk about you have to go through a training process in order to understand them okay uh this is an example of the Immaculate Conception of uh with the god Horus or god Osiris lying down on his back and you'll see the god Isis who is uh hovering above him with his erect penis and that is the actual Immaculate Conception uh in stone and this is at the Temple of abidos and that's a a story of course that we'll pick up in Christianity and that was already created by Africans long before it appeared anybody else's religion uh here's an example of the imitation you know all of these are examples of imitation The Book of the Dead was imitated in the religious literature of other people the creation story was imitated here's the imitation uh with uh uh a god giving life to now a Greek Pharaoh this Greek Pharaoh is this is outside the Temple of Horus at edu which is a reconstructed Temple under the authority of the Greeks with their money when they took over they followed the desires of the priest and uh they began to reconstruct that's imitation this is after Alexander the Great this is Alexander the Great here at least one of the statues of Alexander the Great and you can see how different this is who goes into Egypt he goes into Egypt and um and in fact welcomed by the chedic people of the time as the deliverer from the Persians they were happy to see him come and generally speaking you could say the Greeks were fairly respectful of the chedic people uh but they were basically imitators of the commited people so when the Greeks went in there the Africans were already out of control uh the yes they had already lost control to the Persians and they never regained control again after that okay master key number eight master key number eight is that if you want to understand the thinking of Kit you must think in terms of symbolic thought and metaphorical thought if you take things literally you'll be mistaken so that if you think that just because you see a God that has a man's body and an animal's head for example that this is animal worship you will be missing the entire point because there's much more to it than that and so here we have examples of the use of things like look at keera there for example the beetle you know that is this that is comes from a study of biology so so they noticed that this Beetle the dung beetle a particular Beetle would bury its eggs and then uh would uh bury them in the sand and then adds the sun came out it would heat and then all of a sudden these eggs would break open and so they Associated that with birth and creativity and creation and so the Kea then becomes The God Who is coming forth so you show the beetle but you don't mean Beetle so you're not worshiping a beetle you're using the beetle as the symbol of the idea of creation okay uh this is another example here's a man with a dog's head uh you're not worshiping the animal the dog but that dog the The Jackal according to scha dubit and others who studied this uh uh is the symbol of of is used as a symbol associated with the preparation of the Dead in this case and bombing his name is Anu or some people the Greeks call him an nuus uh that dog is the is the symbol is used as a symbol because he can dig up dead meat and eat it before it purifies and is of no value so that he makes fine distinctions he he he can discriminating he can discriminate between what is lifegiving and which is life taking and so they say well why not use him as a symbol for judgment for making fine judgment so you see him here but you will also see him at uh handling the scale of Justice Where The Heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of Truth so that is a symbolic thought not not to be taken literally but most people who try to study uh chitic religion tend to try to take it literally and they will make a mistake every time so aren't aren't Christians sometimes refer to as the sheep and the fs Shepherd she sheep and the shepherd right in Christianity and you don't you don't expect that people are actually calling people animals but they're they manifesting sheeplike qualities you know and the shepherd is uh is uh is uh acting in relationship to people the way the shepherd acts in relationship to sheep okay okay the last uh not the last but the ninth master key science generated religion philosophy and general culture in other words it's really important in looking at ancient KT to know that the basis of the culture was totally scientific in other words pain painful observations tireless observations over literally thousands of years produce insights into how nature works and it's Nature's pattern that reflects a Divine will according to the Kites and so when they express religion what they were trying to do was to capture the essence of what they had understood through Revelation from scientific study and so it's extremely important to realize that it was through the work of science that people became spiritual we have it almost backwards in Western culture from this particular point of view in other words we receive in many cases religion without having to do anything for it we don't have to study anything other than catechism so to speak but to with the exception of a very few religions you seem to have an idea that study of the natural world is in fact also associate with study of the spiritual world and that one uh depends upon the other or both depend upon each other if you would put it that way so that's a very important Point okay master key number 10 number 10 is that uh the committing people I I I mention this because so often uh you hear interpretations of committed religion as being a polytheistic religion and uh without theistic meaning meaning the belief in many gods as opposed to the belief in one great God uh and again you can believe whatever you want to believe but just to be historically accurate the cites were always monotheistic never polytheistic and because people don't understand master key number nine symbolic thought they misinterpret this principle and they see with all of these different gods instead of seeing different aspects of one God they see different gods and uh to the ancient cites uh they were people who tended to think holistically and there was always a great hidden God who had many powers or manifestations there was no difference between for example uh and thinking in holistic ter between science and religion they were all the same you couldn't separate science from religion between the s and the secular all life was sacred so there's no secular you know we'll be behave ourselves on Sunday and let the rest of the we take care of itself uh uh no cast system uh no church State separation no school science and religion separation you know the idea of the separation of church and state would have been Unthinkable to the cite so that they thought holistically and at the center of that holism was a spiritual base because their whole whole purpose of the society was to seek the Divine okay that's okay um another master key or principle is to be aware of chronological order especially the Golden Ages and compare the Golden Ages to the period let me go to this chart here because we've talked about this before okay minute if we look at the this is chronological order 3,000 2,000 1,000 birth of Christ 1,000 after Christ and 2,000 after Christ well if we look at the Golden Ages of Kemet first golden age and compare it to the period you know we look at the pictures of the Pharaohs who were here and we compare it to the absence of data here for example there's very little data about this intermediate period although it wasn't a foreign Invasion it was an internal upheaval this is a period of disorder so you have very little to to point to you don't have great pyramids of this time 10th Great temple the sth through the 10th Dynasty but when you go to the 11th and 12th Dynasty suddenly you have this explosion of literature and culture again then you get this Invasion and that's where you don't have any try to go to a museum and get something from the 13th 14th or 15th Dynasty you can't find it then ask yourself in the dynasties where you have the data who were the Pharaohs and the Queens that's what I've been showing you same thing here uh suddenly the 18th and 19th Dynasty are the grand Dynasty rames II nephr tutmosis all of those look at who's ruling and then here's the period you know this is the second intermediate period of an invasion this is another period the period being the gap between the Golden Ages see and you could also call this a period too kind of a late period which is after the 25th Dynasty which was an native black African Le Dynasty and this is a period and then you know that that if you look for the people here you'll see Alexander you'll see persans and you'll see so and so but the Hightech High developed periods are always the native periods and so it's very important to keep the chronological order otherwise you will have uh people who will confuse what was happening uh in Greece with what was happening during the pyramid age and you have people saying that Africans got help building the pyramid and there was nobody no no major group of people no large group of people even in Africa at the time of the pyramid other than African people that's why you have to have the chronological order this is the remainder of number okay and the rest of that note that the Greco Roman period comes at the end of KET culture KET is still in operation in other words at during the time of the Greeks the commited people were still operating their culture the Greek didn't change that uh although the Greek culture changed you know Greek culture Changed by because they came to Africa and copied African people uh also note that this period being the most recent is the source of most of the material in museums so this will confuse you if you go to museums you'll see many busts of Greek people dressed up like Africans Roman people dressed up like Africans uh they're mummifying their bodies they're in uh they're burying their bodies in these uh these caskets that are copied on the style of the the Greeks they have their pictures inscribed on the wall and so if and there's so much of this material from 300 BC and so little of the material that survived from 2700 BC that unless you're careful you would think that the Greek period was the typical period it is not the typical period it's the exceptional period okay let us let us go on right so this then sums it up as the dynastic chart then we can see uh where the Greeks and Romans fall in this and you can see that they fall clearly toward after after literally after all the developmental periods are over there is literally no committed cultural development after the 25th Dynasty after that it's all it's all imitation or destruction okay master key number 12 master key number 12 is that in order to get a real picture of who the people were you need to get as many pictures of a king queen as possible more than one picture like with Nefertiti we only usually see one picture we see two pictures of her you will see that the one picture has to be in error so that you always get as many pictures as possible so that you can sit them side by side and that will give you an answer to the question of whether these were black or white people so if you look here this would be a picture of a minat the uh I'm sorry I'm in hotep the third uh the second the grandfather of King tutan uh the next uh slide uh will show am in hotep the uh third the father of aanat and King Tuton and so if you show this as a family sequence then you begin to get a sense of who what the racial makeup is this would be I'm in hotep the thir and his wife te which we showed before the next would be uh that son aanan so you can see if we put them together now then the son looks like the parents if you see this picture of aanan by himself many people can't explain him except as a departure from the norm as they've said so if we look at the next slide we'll see U because they're looking at pictures that are outside the family right because they're looking at pictures outside the family so they say he he looks abnormal for a white person and that's true but he wasn't a white person master key number 13 okay the last master key is that egyptology and notice I refer to myself as a chologist I'm a student of ancient KET uh egyptology uh takes the name of the that the Greeks use Egypt for the name of the academic discipline that so that must mean they're studying the period after the natives apart from the Native they really don't think that they are but I you know I'm I'm I'm very um insistent on this terminology egyptology which comes largely after Napoleon is mainly the product of European scholars that emerged during the slavery and colonization period that point cannot be overemphasized the meaning of that uh for example if Africans are precluded from doing the research from digging up evaluating publishing disseminating information and if the people who have ulterior motives designs on the African continent are the ones who are writing the history of the African continent doing the research on the African continent you have bias uh almost on its face but we don't even have to look at bias on its face we can look at Martin bernal's excellent work in black atina and we can look at in particular at the chapter that he does on the racism in the science of egyptology to show that the egyptology work was influenced by the fact that these nations that were doing egyptology were stealing bodies and stealing lands from African people so we can never forget that the academic discipline is colored by its time okay now uh there are 11 ways I've been saying uh I've been emphasizing and that's part of the purpose of this whole program is to reclaim for Africa and for African people the comitic civilization uh and there are 11 ways that uh one of our great Scholars has shown that you can answer the question that people have you know how do we know you know that these were really native black African people so I call this 11 categories of converging evidence showing that ancient KET was native black African this is very important uh because you can't just say that they were black you have to know what is the evidence for it and so that's our our purpose now and it falls into these 11 category and I'll run through them briefly evidence from physical anthropology uh this is she's uh first um point that if you measure the skulls from graveyards before the nation of Kemet and that population didn't change after Kemet got started that the skulls in terms of their length withth face nasal length stalic index and so forth that what you find is that those were black people in other words that's uh some people would argue that they were a mixed group but then you would have if you use that criteria you know those criteria then you would have to say that most American African Americans are not black people you know but in in other words because because that there there will be um a range of of skull shapes a range maybe if you could see the skin color which you can't there would be range skin color changes in facial angle and things like that so there would not be what they call the true negro you know whatever that's supposed to be but check on Diop uh uh went through that evidence quite well and it's uh reported in his article the origin of the ancient Egyptians and that's a very important article for people to get it's found in the book great African thinkers in the joural of African civilization the second point is that if you look at the comedic images that's what I've been showing the the painting of nefari the painting of of the carving of Amen hotep the carving of aminat the carving of of zoer pre-dynastic and early dynastic when you look at the natives if they're clear according to cantad Diop they are always black and I think I showed that by picking the Golden Ages and sticking with them okay the third uh uh way that we know is that you can actually find mummies and test the mummies for the amount of melanin content in the skin of the mummy and and check out to the app created the melanin test did that test and found that the mummies that he was able to test were in fact black people and uh here's an example of T of T mosis the first um here's uh the example of uh there's another one yes here's the example this is tutmosis I fourth you know he's even darker than tutmosis the first these mummies are black skinned and and it and some people have argued that well they're only black skinned because of the way they embal them but that's why uh Professor cze anab was able to create a dosage test for melanin because the melanin molecules remain uh firm over a long period of time and uh he did that and showed that the mummies were were indeed black the ones that he tested and uh if he had been able to test the others we feel certain that the same thing would have been true okay then this is bone evidence uh there is a rule by one of the old egyptologists and paleontologists that said that the typical chitic type was Shard arm and nego if you look at all the skeletal remain then uh the uh fifth U we go to the next I think we have we go to the next uh this would be a slide of the uh uh from the tomb of ramises III showing uh the two black figures in there one is chiic and the other is Nubian uh showing that there's no uh difference between the kite and the Nubian but the other two are Asian and kind of European and there is a a pictured difference in that tomb between the Asians and Europeans but not between the Egyptians and the Nubian okay okay the fifth way that we know is that you can still check blood type in the skins of mummies and so what you're looking for if they were black you're looking for blood type B if they were white you would be looking for blood type A that work to the extent that has been done according to Czech onop shows that the Egyptians even today are mostly B and uh that there's no point where we ever had a predominant or even a significant a population in kimt as far as any evidence then um after the blood group the next U um category of proof has to do with the testimony of classical and Greek and Roman Arthur so here just a list of some of the the people who saw the kites with their own eyes Herodotus saw them in the 5ifth century BC Aristotle saw them in the 4th Century BC Lucian saw them in the 2 Century BC strabo in the first and deodor in the 1st Century ad all of them referred to the ancient cites as black people so it would be not until according to Bernal again in his study of why some Scholars seem to be saying something different he said they changed the story be at giringan University beginning around 1750 when giring was founded and you had a group of professors there who apparently wanted to rationalize German nationalism so that they began to deny what the old Greeks and Romans had said who were eyewitnesses by the way and these professors were not okay uh then the chedic people call themselves black people and C Anto Diop again has gone through the um um proof of that through the analysis of certain medu hieroglyphic uh designations uh in particular the name kimet kmt not just km km is black but when you add the T to it as a determinative and you and are when you add the key to it Kimu uh and when you add the determinative uh little man and a little woman with three Strokes under them that's the plural so that's man and woman plural that means people and Kimu means the black people not not the black land and that argument has been made in in Cairo by the way at the Symposium sponsored by UNESCO where everybody was invited to talk about the color of the ancient Egyptian or the race of the ancient Egyptian uh Divine epith or names given to uh good gods and black Gods as uh check out check out to thepp has shown is that the good gods are always shown as black Gods the evil gods are always shown as Red Gods in different color so people generally turn tend to associate the color of their Divinity with themselves so that would be another piece of evidence any one of these by itself is not enough but if you take them all collectively then we have something that's very important uh Divine uh Divine epitus so uh beneficial gods are shown as black ones um hippopotamus set is read and uh so forth okay the next uh piece of evidence would be from the Bible biblical evidence says that Kim chiic people were black people because according to the interpretation ham is the father of the black race and Shem is the father of the mixed race and jaffet is the father of the white race and Ham's children then would be the black children and that would be uh Kush which is uh Ethiopia foot which is uh Somali land misraim which is uh kimet and Canaan which is present day Palestine so all of those were Black Lands according to your reading of the Bible so that would be another piece of evidence so number 10 then is that uh the culture that I showed you was 3,000 years long of Kemet is is very close to the culture of the rest of Africa not to Europe not to Asia but to the rest of Africa for example circumcision was present all up and down the Nile Valley even before 4,000 BC then number 11 uh there's a linguistic Unity this another ECT of culture there the language of ancient KT is closely tied to the language of the rest of Africa especially to the languages in West Africa and shadap was able to show that kinship between this and his own language uh and U more recently Greenberg's classification of language talks now not about a htic language anymore but a but a uh afroasiatic language and the only non-african Lang language in the afroasiatic family is the Arabic language but all the other languages chadic for example uh kiic and kushitic uh that's Ethiopian Egyptian Chad Libyan those languages all fit together as a family of languages and uh they are basically all anchored on the African continent so to say afroasiatic is really kind of misleading because there's not much Asia in any of those uh groups so the unity of language also shows the unity of culture and suggest the unity of people okay now you've talked quite a bit about this chart you referred to it quite a bit right but I want you to go through this chart and give chart its own special place okay you want the chart to have a special place in the pram that's right that's because your people work so hard to create okay okay this is a summary then of the commited timeline related to other important African events once again cultural commit over 3,000 years political commit is a less a shorter period of time in other words the nation gets organized here and they go through some troubles but basically natives control during these four Golden Ages breakdown period a foreign Invasion Abraham is uh given a date according to biblical is somewhere around 1750 just so people who know their Bible will know where that fall and it's suggested that he may have come in with this invading group and Moses is around 1300 BC somewhere around there no one is certain and uh one of these pharaohs in here is supposed to be the Pharaoh of The Exodus so that that will give uh some sense of chronology with respect to biblical events but when Abraham came on the scene right um what had these Africans already achieved well you had two Golden Ages already finished the pyramid age was finished and the literary age was already finished by then uh the the Bible was in place the pyramid were in place astronomy was in place language was in place uh writing was in place Etc the Africans there they were already already belied in Resurrection already believed in one God and they already believed in Resurrection right okay yeah okay okay uh the Persians then come in here and this is the death blow to ancient ket's governance not to its culture see the culture still last that's this line here here's the Persians and the cult they didn't change the way of life the Greeks come in they didn't change the way of life the Romans came in and tried to change it but didn't change it substantially even though they destroyed temples and schools and churches the way of life didn't really get changed until their conversion to Islam down here uh so that we will now let's take a look at this European slavery doesn't really start until 1500 ad and so here's all of this ancient African history back here that's left mostly out of our children and our adults education as well Arab slavery needs to be put on the board too because on in East Africa there was a very vicious and brutal Arab slavery in in East Africa and then European colonialism begins in 188 84 and is still going on as far as southern Africa is concerned so we see these events in relationship to the ancient km one more thing which has to do with the University of sanor that it was in different territories in the same territory called by a different name Ghana Sanga and Mali but the city of timbuk to becomes very important as one of several major university cities in West Africa and I just wanted to make sure that we knew roughly where sanare was it begins somewhere around 1200 and goes all the way up till after 1600 that's the end of sankare and this is important because it was a great University in the ancient world and uh many of its faculty were taken to Morocco uh and they were and they had this University by the way when many European nations didn't have much in the way of Universities at all and these these Africans already knew that a mind was a terrible thing to wait yeah back then I wonder if they made any money now obviously the reason that you research all of this is not just so that African people can feel good about ourselves what is the ultimate objective well the ultimate objective is to force a truthful rendition of The Human Experience that in in other words we must know what the truth is about Humanity so that we can know what the truth is about ourselves so that we can be not just feeling good about ourselves but that we can become whole people and you can't be a part of the human family unless you are a creative part of the human family and therefore you must claim your own creativity don't claim any more than you created but you must claim your own creativity is there some value to the process of studying ancient African history it's a very liberating process uh the process of studying ancient African history is one that will take you into many waters for example it will take you into the Waters of the defamation of African people you will begin to see the calculated way that some people have tried to destroy African memory and African culture and it's very important for us to understand that these things have not happened by accident it's important so that we will recognize when defamation occurs that it is occurring and that we will understand the motivations of those who do that and that we will know who the people are who do those things and how they do it and that's the only way that we can defend ourselves against these kinds of things do you think we understand how much effort has been put forth to keep this inform information about ancient Egypt and Nile Valley Civilization out of the hands and minds of African people do you think we understand no I don't think we have any idea uh of the mechanisms or the intensity of the effort how long it's been going on and the fact that it's still going on in other words for example most of the pictures that I've shown in this slide presentation so far are are pictures that most people have never seen before not because they weren't there but the decision was made to use other pictures the decision to use neferti rather than T is a is is a decision that you have to evaluate in terms of its meaning for Egyptian history or or chedic history for example Queen T was more important than Nefertiti but Nefertiti stands as the symbol of the typical kite and that has to do with the uh I think the uh ulterior motives of people who do the research now now how has the writing of History by European writers historians helped to promote what some have called the europeanization of human consciousness well uh if the total source of your information is from a group of Scholars that comes from one culture they're imprisoned in their own culture and most of them even don't have the capacity to stand outside the culture and to view it critically in the first place and some don't even have the intent to do that so there's nothing that they can present other than a focus that comes from their own Center which we call European centered um and if if I as a person who studies do so uncritically or if I don't participate in the production of scholarship raising the kinds of questions and PRI ities that I need to know about as an African person a person of African descent from an African centered perspective then there's nothing left for me but a European centered information base which will produce in my head a way a European way of viewing the world even though I'm a person of African descent let's break it down how does European Consciousness manifests itself in our lives a couple of examples uh it manifests itself in self-hatred where African people actually accept the doctrine of white supremacy and believe that white people are superior to black people so much so that they reject their own historical memories they reject identification with their brothers and sisters they reject identification with Africa they reject identification with African culture you know this is uh this is literally uh cultural suicide and the reason is that so pain painful sometimes to be associated with the kinds of images that are projected about African people the false images when I wrote this question down I had no idea your answer would be that great I didn't know it was that great do you think we realize the extent to which we are controlled by European uh thinking no uh you see the the the control that we experience is so subtle uh it seems natural if a professor has a PHD is in a prestigious University and teaches the classics and I'm a student at that University and I take this course in the classic he must know what he's talking about he has a PHD this great University it's been here for a long time so so it's natural to go through Homer and never ask the question what is an Ethiopian why did the Greeks call him that why did Homer spend so much time studying and talking about Africa why was the relationship between Africans and Greeks so good you see if if if I if I'm not critical then those kind of thoughts will never occur to me and that's a very subtle kind of process we are not aware of that process at all uh mainly by virtue of the kind of socialization process that most of us have gone through you have said that this is all about a battle for the mind what what do you mean by that of course is uh the question of whether we have the independence to raise our own questions and to project our own priorities you know uh I don't you know there's a song that many of us remember papa may have blue song right Mama may have but God blessed the child that's got his own so the blue singer understood better than many of our academics that it was essential not to be dependent uh it was uh Garvey used to say any people that accepts the ideas of another people automatically will become the slave of that people to what do you attribute this need on the part of Europeans maybe more specifically European scholars others within the European Collective um to put down belittle the African history well that's a that's one of the universal rules of Oppression mhm any group of people that wants to control another group of people must destroy the historical consciousness of that group of people Dr John Clark is f is famous for saying it is impossible to continue to oppress a consciously historical people and so oppressors know that and one of their main military tactics is historical uh is historical is a historical attack the Eraser the suppression of history is a military tactic uh it's it's the chief way of disabling a population and so that is well understood what do we mean by African Consciousness and what does it mean in terms of a value system briefly well of course African Consciousness would grow out of an intimate knowledge familiarity with study of the cultural experience of African people and and what comes from that is a point of view it's unavoidable if I spend time studying the Poetry of my people the music of my people the philosophy of my people the religion of my people the science and contributions of my people doesn't mean I have to reject anybody else's science and contributions and so forth but what it does do for me is it gives me a firm base in my own creativity and that unavoidably will produce in me an African Consciousness and that's very important now African Consciousness is is the ethnicity of African people and there are characteristic values and I think those are summed up in many ways and some of the work that uh has been done on theza Saba you know and the seven principles sometimes we see associated with Quanza we are collective people for example uh we take care of each other I mean these are there are typical cultural traits that that that people have identified with African people for a long periods of time that grow out of our Southern cradle environment in the African continent we welcome The Stranger for example cheop in his book the cultural Unity of black Africa identified some of these parameters the the the the fear of the stranger is typical of the northern cradle the love of the stranger is typical of the Southern cradle Southern cradle the northern cradle being the European the southern cradle being the African the Africans always welcome strangers you know you could you could uh you could go to Africa leave your bag come back two years later if you left books there they present you with your book when you came back you know that that is actually an example that comes from the book The strong Brown God uh by The gont Who uh talks about this Explorer clapperton and that actually happened to him where he he had left some things and came back two years later and his things were presented to him uh that's how welcome he was made to feel so there are many values I can't go into all of them but uh this this business of a people using the study of history to reclaim its mind yeah it's its Consciousness how unique and undertaken is undertaking is that and how do we know it will work well it's not unique at all in fact you named me a successful group nationally and I will name you a group that's invested heavily in the Reclamation of its history one example of that would be German people who uh the Grim Brothers for example are said to have collected fairy tales in order to reconstruct the ancient history of German people so that they would have a basis for identifying themselves ethnically as a people to mobilize nationally uh that happened with the Jewish people and the the Reclamation of their history and the development of the state of Israel it's happened with the Japanese people in recent times and so forth there is no group of people who ever become strong and powerful without an investment in its history you have mentioned the positive things that will flow right from a study of African history but are there some negative things that can flow from uh there are there are some negative things that can can flow for example if we if we allow ourselves to glorify at the expense of Truth you know in other words we're so hungry for an appropriate positive identity that we begin to give uh false meaning or false interpretation to the facts of our experience so for example that we would skip over the negatives in our experience and see everything isn't positive about Africa some things were positive some things are negative say that again everything isn't positive about Africa nothing is positive to toally about any group of people we have our pluses and we have our minuses like all other people if I'm blinded by the search for glorification so that I can't honestly appraise what my true experience has been I will be misguided in the use of History even though it may feel good and so that's one of the dangers that uh uh uh for example a lot of people talk a lot about uh we were kings and queens yes we were kings and queens but we were also Ordinary People we were common folk and that that was just as good as being kings and queens and we need if we are going to give value to the experience to give value to the total experience and and if you have to feel as though you are a descendant of a king or queen maybe something is wrong I mean if that's the only way you can be be ego strong there's something wrong with that right yeah this history which shows the greatness of African people frightens some African people right how how do you deal with that well and why do you think that is people who are oppressed you know they have something called the Stockholm syndrome that talks about how hostages react after they come out of captivity that many of the hostages act almost as if they don't want to come out of captivity and when asked how they were treated as hostages they start talking about how well they were treated as hostages in fact it's called a Stockholm syndrome because one of the Stockholm hostages uh married one of their captors you know so there was uh that close an identification and intimacy between those who oppressed and those who were oppressed so that's that is very typical oppressed Behavior to lose track of one's Moorings and to uh glom on so to speak so that example says what about the African-American experience and and the relationship that that that many of us may have become too comfortable with the dependency relationship and that Independence is frightening you know that taking on the responsibility associated with making your own choice that you not only make your choice but you have to live with the choice that you make it's sometimes much easier to have someone else uh take care of youself what have you found to be the best way of sharing this information with people who are just now uh coming into this to this to this information well I don't know one way to go and that's straight ahead and I found it straight ahead it doesn't hurt anyone you know I don't mince words I don't hold anything back from the I talk to the children just like I talk to the adults and I found that uh people are amazingly strong and and able to pick up the conversation if it's presented to them I don't think you have to sugarcoat it you you there are preachers as you know there are preachers let's just mention preachers for a second who know that the that the Africans that Africans many Africans believed in the resurrection right but at the same time and they know the uh that that that uh but many times they don't want to let their membership their members know this how do you yeah well see you you have to ask the question how much they know see they may know the conclusion but they may not feel comfortable with the information that supports the conclusion so when they start telling this story to the congregation they get lost not being able to support the kind of thing see I've worked with a lot of preachers who have uh taken this information and have begun to educate their congregation I mean this is one of the most remarkable things that I've seen in the last 10 years is the openness of both congregation for example I was in Florida and there's uh one Minister there Reverend Carter who who uh had uh sat on the front row himself and had his congregation go through a two-day workshop on this ancient African history and other thing and told them if they didn't come they were Sinners all right by the way some of my best friends of ministers Oh I thought you going to say Sinners no no we got we got less than two minutes okay what are some of the things briefly that we need to watch out for where the study of Egyptian ktic history is concerned well you knowly right now and in the in the years ahead you know one of the main things is that um as people begin to jump on the bandwagon so to speak uh we need to watch out for those who would use this thrust for their own personal ends rather than as a search for truth because you find a lot of people who uh find they can make money you know doing things with respect to Egyptian don't have any problem with people making money but if we betray the uh the essence of the thrust uh by uh material making M materialism the reason for doing the study of ancient commit that's the thing probably that wor me more than anything else okay thank you very much it's a pleasure always look around you black child your creation is everywhere though painted distorted given new names they bear your prince just the same so sharpen your eyes tune your ear so you know what you see understand what you hear you were the first to write the first to read Humanity sprang from your black seed for 10,000 years you were here alone and then the Caucasian man was born behind the ice inside the cold a chill set in this new man's Soul other Minds have been credited