The African Origin of Civilization : Myth or Reality A Deep Dive

By GARRICK A. FARRIA

This chapter by chapter review of Cheikh Anta Diop's foundational work, The African Origin of Civilization, offers some perspective here sixty-two years after the bulk of it was first published.  Diop is largely seen as an intellectual giant across the African world family and worked as a physicist, historian, linguist, and Egyptologist. The arguments and evidence presented time and time again still a make a compelling case for the Nile Valley origins of ancient Egyptian Civilization but Civilization at large. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: GARRICK A. FARRIA
• Release date: Nov 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201758714

Book preview

This book is dedicated to those who have taken up arms and entered

the battlefield for the restoration of African Historical Consciousness.

Special Acknowledgments:

Karen Hunter and Dr. Greg Kimathi Carr, for creating the space on the Knubia platform for us to share our work, workshop ideas, sharpen each other's iron.

The original members of the Black Literacy group and Ipet Isut groups on Facebook, especially my brothers Marius Anton Darrisaw and Bruce Ka Ka Barnes

My brothers: Dr. Kelly Harris, Nathaniel Thompson, John King, Norman Bayard, Brian Endiolapo Jones, and David Norment for encouraging me in this project, and

The brothers and sisters in Knubia who engaged parts of this work without any of us realizing it at the time.

Ya’ll support and contribution has been incredible.

Façade of the Temple Complex built by Ramses II, c. 1300 BCE, 19th Dynastic Period

© Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved

African History — Egyptian History — Literature Review

List of Illustrations:

Profile of the Her-em-Akhet (Heru of the Horizon) on the Giza Plateau-Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0

Façade of Abu Simbel-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Honorary Plaque, Congo Square-Louis Armstrong Park (2019) photo credits-Garrick A. Farria, Esq. Photo Copy of Diop’s African Origin of Civilization-photo credits-Garrick A. Farria, Esq.

Her-em-Akhet, as seen the by first French Mission, found it in the 19th Century-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5

Statuette of Pharoah Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton)- Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Prisoners of Abu Simbel- Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Presentment of Ani, Hun Nefer Papyrus-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Map of the Nile River Basin-Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Painting of Queen-Regent Ahmose-Nefertari-Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Rendering of Hannibal Barca of Carthage-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5

Still shot from The Richard Pryor Show Episode In Egypt- Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5

Statuette Head of Queen Regent Tiye-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Statuette Head of Pharoah Aha Menes-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Rendering of ethnotypes in KMT-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Stelae of Philae-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Modern Day Senegalese-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Statuette of Pharoah Makare Hatshepsut-Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Rendering of a hail to Shabaka-Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Rendering of the Netcherw-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Profile of Dr. John Henrik Clarke-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Portrait of Ahmed Baba-)- Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Photo Ivan Van Sertima, Yosef ben Jochannan, and John Henrik Clarke and Gil Noble-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Sphinx of Amenhemet III-Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Notes on the Author

Garrick A. Farria was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up in Cincinnati, OH. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in African and African-American Studies from Temple University, a Master of Arts degree in African-American and African Studies (after submitting a thesis entitled "A Historiography of Pan-Africanism and its Relationship to the Emigrationist Movement, 1827-1908), a Juris Doctorate from Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, and passed the Texas Bar Exam in 2011. Before completing his legal studies, Garrick spent the better part of 15 years as a union organizer mostly in the area of political organizing through the Deep South and Midwest.

Garrick self-published American Terrorism: A Brief Legal History of the Lynching of Black Folk in the United States.

Commemorative Plaque, Congo Square-Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans, LA (2019)

Introduction

Cheikh Anta Diop was one of the most profound thinkers the African World ever produced. Born in Senegal, he entered the cultural battlefield in Paris and returned to Senegal to wage his final battles. I was first exposed to his thoughts, questions, calls, and scholarship as a young man; still in my teenage years.

It was during the Summer of 1990, while X-Clan’s To The East Blackwards was on repeat in the Walkman and during a summer program sponsored by a local National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) formation, held on the campus of the University of Cincinnati, and attended by a group of about a dozen of us, sisters and brothers from high schools from all over the Cincinnati, OH area, where we were put through the academic paces, think of it as a sort of intellectual rights of passage.

We had a Geometry refresher course (as most of us had it a few years back in 9th grade), a reading comprehension course, and a history course. The summer reading for the history course was Cheikh Anta Diop’s African Origin of Civilization. You can see that all the classes flowed together. I appreciated the Geometry review and the tie-ins to the building of the pyramids (mer) and I always loved to read so that was right on time for the next round of ACT/SAT testing coming up.1

I was literally blown away though by Diop. I had already been set upon the knowledge quest for about a year or so by then, reading everything I could, and listening to everyone I could, and Diop’s evidence amazed me. He posed crystal clear questions around the apparent need to deny African achievement and equally crystal clear answers to those who posed those questions. Needless to say, challenging Sunday school teachers and history teachers was a right of passage for me but a source of heartburn for others.

1 X-Clan, To The East Blackwards, 4th and B’way/Island Polydor (1990)

This book is foundational. As I became involved in a book club on the Facebook platform, Black Literacy, it was agreed that I would lead the online discussions of the book reviews. This book was selected early on and I was brought right back into that fire I felt as a 17-year-old still trying to figure out what the future may hold. The discussions that this book and our reading of it, produced were incredibly rich and thought-provoking. These chapter reviews in this work started out as Facebook posts in that formation but have been expanded upon.

The expansion came as I offered book reviews on Karen Hunter’s social media platform, Knubia. I am still a fairly avid reader and would have been engaging work as I have always done. But Knubia has given me the chance to share my initial thoughts of the content I am reading in real-time. This book developed because, like our big brother Dr. Greg Kimathi Carr always reminds us, the ancestors don’t make mistakes. Some of the books I was reading would provide further context on this critical review and some of the references. During some of the discussions on Knubia, I found myself referring to Diop’s work a lot, especially African Origin of Civilization. It occurred to me that it may have been a good idea to revisit it again.

And it was during a recent zoom call with some of my brothers and the prolific writer Gerald Horne, where my good friend Errol Henderson inspired me to keep writing even as I am planning to self-publish a second print book. This book emerged from organic and authentic engagement with various Africans in various formations, and I am grateful to each and every one of them for helping me galvanize these thoughts and sharpen some literary iron.

My hope for this book is to re-introduce the foundational work to those that may have forgotten about it or introduce this work to others that may have missed it. Again, this is a powerful work, from a brilliant scholar, and powerful ancestor. Diop’s work, especially in regards to the African Origin of Civilization in Kemet and the West, is still largely unchallenged on the merits despite castigation from some white nationalists wrapped in their hooded sheets of academia and the non- whites they have successfully recruited to their side of the war.

The mistakes within these pages are mine alone. May the ancestors be pleased.

The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality, Cheikh Anta Diop; Deep Dive

Notes on the Introductory Pages

"At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit. Historical movements in it — that is in its northern part —

belong to the Asiatic or European World. Carthage displayed there an important transitionary phase of civilization; but, as a Phoenician colony, it belongs to Asia. Egypt will be considered in reference to the passage of the human mind from its Eastern to its Western phase, but it does not belong to the African Spirit. What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History"-Georg Willhelm Frederich Hegel, Speeches on the Philosophy of History; 18372

2 Hegel, Georg Willhelm Frederich, The Worlds Great Classics: The Philosophy of History (New York- Colonial Press, Revised Ed.) 1899, pp.99, I often cite to this quote as it still stands as one of the most clear and concise statements on the West’s views on Africa, her children across the world, her history, and her culture. G.W.F. Hegel is considered to be one of the intellectual giants, and heavily influenced Karl Marx, the post-modernist Michel Foucault, among countless others. And even as this quote is dated, this particular work by still serves as part of the ideological framework for how Eurocentric scholars (and all of their followers whether consciously or unconsciously) have approached the study and analysis of the continent. It helps explain the mindset and attitudes of the early Portuguese travelers who arrived on the African Coast at the tail end of the 15th century and their often brutal encounters with the Africans they found there. It helped to explain the mindset of the participants at the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885. And it helps to explain the mindset of those who are currently poised and ready to re-colonize Africa once more. By setting up the construct of geographical (cultural) spheres of influences and then ranking those spheres based on contributions, it is obvious from the text that Hegel held Africa in nothing but contempt.

What should be even more obvious, even to the most casual observer of African History, is that for the lie of global white supremacy to stand (and keep standing) the clear examples of African Glory (taking cues from J.C.DeGraft Johnson) would either have to be systematically carved out of the continent (like KMT and other Nile Valley Civilizations, Carthaginian civilization, etc.), ignored (like Monomatapa,