Not Out of Africa

Not Out of Africa: How "Afrocentrism" Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History by Mary R. Lefkowitz, Basic Books, 1996. 

This book is a criticism of Afrocentrism, which is an academic phenomenon, where African civilizations are given too much credit for the development of European civilization. Afrocentrists have a political agenda and are not objective scholars. Noted Afrocentrists: Molefi Kete Asante, Martin Bernal, John Henrik Clarke, Cheikh Anta Diop, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, Joel A. Rogers. 

The author uses the term Mystical Egypt to mean what the ancient Greeks imagined Egypt to be. Greeks had difficulty traveling in Egypt, because much of the time Egypt was under the domination of Greece’s rival, Persia. Out of a sense of pride, Egyptian priests told Greek visitors that much of Greek culture originated in Egypt. Many Greeks went along with this false history. During the Renaissance and Enlightenment, there was a rediscovery of classical sources, including the ancient Greek misunderstanding of ancient Egypt. There was no Egyptian Mystery System; it was a projection of Greek mystery cults onto the Egyptian religion. Much of freemasonry was based on a 17th century novel by a French priest named Abbé Jean Terrasson. The novel was based on Mystical Egypt, as described by Greek and Latin sources, which were not accurate.

Ancient Greek contains very few words of Egyptian origin. Before Napoleon’s troops invaded Egypt and saw things first hand, Europeans knew little about ancient Egypt. Europeans did not learn the true history of ancient Egypt until Egyptian hieroglyphics were deciphered in 1836. The ancient Egyptian language lacked abstract philosophical concepts, so ancient Greek philosophy could not have come from Egypt. Egyptian ideas were religious, not scientific and not philosophical. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a compilation of religious ritual, not a philosophical treatise.

Alexandria was a Greek colony in Egypt. Aristotle could not have stolen his philosophy from the library at Alexandria, because the library was not built until after Aristotle died. Cleopatra did not have African blood in her. This myth originates in the fact that Cleopatra’s paternal grandmother was a mistress, not a wife. The grandmother was most probably Greek, because if she had been Egyptian, writers would have commented upon it, as they did the case of the Nubian Didyme, mistress of Ptolemy II. There is no evidence that Hannibal had African ancestors. Hannibal was Phoenician, because Carthage was a Phoenician colony, not a Berber city.