Historical Facts about ancient & modern Afrikans

Posted: June 15, 2001
By Dr Kwame Nantambu

History dictates that if you do not know your past, then you cannot analyze the present and plan for the future.

History also suggests that correct, historical information empowers a people, while incorrect, a historical albeit mis-information only leads to the powerlessness of a people.

These historical facts about the Afrikans (our ancestors) of ancient Kemet (Egypt) and modern Afrikans seek to empower Afrikan-Americans:

1. The stark historical reality is that during the B.C. era when the Emperor of Rome, Julius Caesar, had a sexual liaison with the ruler of Kemet (Egypt), Queen Cleopatra VII, a son named Caesarion was born on 23 June 47 B.C. in Kemet as a result of that sexual encounter. However, what is historically vital and relevant is that the birth of this boy child, Caesarion, was not a natural birth. In other words, the High Priests of ancient Kemet had to perform a special surgical procedure to deliver Caesarion; this surgical procedure that the ancient Egyptian High Priests/physicians performed in 47 B.C. to deliver Caesarion is what is called the "Caesarean Section" in modern A.D. medicine today. The ancient Egyptian High Priests named their medical procedure in honor of Caesarion's father, Caesar.

Cleopatra was born in Alexandria, Egypt, during the winter of 69-68 B.C. in the luxurious apartments of the concubine of the Pharaoh Ptolemy XII and given the Greek name, Cleopatra. She was descended from the long line of Macedonian rulers, known as the Ptolemies. Six princesses before here were called Cleopatra, whose name means "her father's glory," Thus her heritage was Greek, though there were "barbarians," or non-Greeks, in her lineage. Her great-grandfather was one the king of Syria's daughters, a Seleucid with Persian blood. When Ptolemy XII Auletes died in 51 B.C., his will named as his successors his two eldest children: Cleopatra, who was eighteen years old, and Ptolemy XIII, who was ten, and whom she must marry, according to Ptolemaic dynastic law. This marriage in name only left her perfectly free to rule as she chose. She became Cleopatra VII, "mistress of the two lands," that is, reigning over Upper and Lower Egypt. She died in 30 B.C.

2. The word mummy, derived from the Persian word Mummia, means pitch or bitumen. Bitumen was one of the substances used by the people of Kemet in the ancient embalming process.

During the mummification process, the brain was extracted via the nostrils by means of a hooked tool The eyes were removed and replaced by porcelain substitutes.

A small incision was then made in the left side of the body and all the organs removed. The four organs that are preserved are the lungs, intestines, stomach and liver. Each of them was then dipped in the seven sacred oils and wrapped in linen. Each was then placed in a labeled canopic jar and put in the tomb with the Pharaoh.

The heart is the only organ left in the body because it reflected the center of knowledge, love, faith, belief and the mind; to give the heart utmost protection, it was covered by a golden scarap. The brains were sucked out by means of two hooked tools through the nostrils and thrown away.

This was done so as not to destroy the head. The cavities in the gut and stomach were carefully washed with palm wind, dried with a powdered mixture of aromatic plants and filled with myrrh or perfumed sawdust. The body thus prepared was placed in a solution of natron (sodium carbonate) and left for 70 days.

After this treatment, the flesh and muscles had completely dissolved away and nothing remained except the skin attached to the bones. The hair of men were cut short, while that of women were left in all its splendor. Bandages impregnated with resin were wound around each finger then around the hand and finally around the arm. The same procedure was carried out on the other limbs.

The face was covered with several layers of cloth and the degree of adhesion was so perfect that when removed it could be used as a model to make a plaster cast of the dead man's features. The whole body was then wrapped in the same way.

The body was arranged in an extended position either with the hands crossed on the breasts or with the arms extended along the flanks. The bodies of the Pharaohs were wrapped in a sheath of repousse gold work which reproduced the shape of the body in relief. The oldest known mummy is that of Sekkeram-Saef, son of Pepi I (IVth dynasty), which was discovered at Saqqara. Anubis is the god of mummification.

3. The French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion was the first to decipher/decode the ancient Egyptian/Kemetic Medu Netcher alphabet in 1822. He said: "The Egyptians of old thought like men a hundred feet tall. We in Europe are but Lilliputians (little people)."

4. Sakhu is the ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) root of the Greek word "psyche." The psyche came to represent the composite of the entire self. In Sakhu, the Greeks adopted a synthesized abbreviation of the self process that was contained in the Kemetic spiritual system. The term "Psychology" today is therefore the way of describing the synergy of Kemetic mind and spirit which represented the whole self working as a unit.

5. The first Olympics was held in Olympia, Greece, in 776 B.C. not to reward sportsmanship, physical brawn or brinkmandship but as a public ceremonial worship of the original Afrikan deity, Amon, (the "ruler of the gods").

6. The "Three Musketeers" one of the most popular novels ever published was written by an Afrikan named Alexander Dumas. Dumas also wrote the "Count of Monte Cristo."

7. What western scholars call the Pythagorean Theorem was developed centuries before Pythagorus' birth by the Afrikans in Kemet and Babylon. It was known throughout antiquity as the "Theorem of the Square of the Hypotenuse."

8. Publius Terrentius Afer (Known as "Terrence the Afrikan") circa 185 B.C. to 159 B.C., is "the greatest of the Latin stylist" who wrote comedies, i.e. five act-structured plays that were later imitated by the European William Shakespeare, the world's putative "greatest" playwright.

9. In 10,000 B.C., Afrikan astronomers produced the first calendar (Stellar type), and introduced agriculture and the beginning of high culture along the Nile Valley, Egypt. In 4,100 B.C., they introduced the Solar Year calendar consisting of 365 1/4 days.

10. Euro-Rome had ten Afrikan (Black) Emperors. They were Macrinu, Firmus, Emilianus, Septimus Severus, Pescennius Niger, Aquilus Niger, Brutidius Niger, Q. Caecilus Niger, Novius Niger and a legal counselor of the imperial family name Niger, who accompanied the sister of Emperor Octavius Anthony, who had deserted her for Cleopatra VII of Egypt.

11. The ancient Greeks were a dark people. Sir. Arthur Evans, the excavator of the Minoan sites, shocked Western scholars when he uncovered this fact in 1894 hidden among the ruins of ancient Crete. According Evans:

The Grecians whom we discern in the new dawn were not pale-skinned Northerners, but essentially a dark skinned brown-complexioned race.

12. Herodotus, the so-called "Father of History," visited Egypt between August-November 450 B.C. He spoke no Egyptian and had to rely on local interpreters of doubtful competence and on Greeks - merchants and mercenaries already settled in Egypt - for much of his information; he was never introduced to the higher circles of the Egyptian government administration and was totally unaware that Aramaic was the administrative language of Egypt. Herodotus "was not a Greek. (He) was an Ionian by birth and had gone to Greece after receiving his education in Egypt."

13. In ancient Egypt boys married as usually 15 years and girls at 12 years. The average life-span for women was about eighteen to twenty years so that early maturity was a biological necessity.

14. In ancient Egypt midwifery was a recognized profession. There was a school of midwifery in the Temple of Neith at Sais in which women were trained by the temple staff.

15. The ancient Egyptian word for doctor was "sinw" and there were four categories of specialist: the "sinw irt" or eye doctor; the "sinw ht" or belly doctor; the "sinw ibh" or tooth doctor; and the "nrw 'phwt" or "shepherd of the hindquarters" (rectal area) - a necessary branch of medicine in a society in which intestinal troubles were endemic.

16. The ancient Egyptians had a test for pregnancy. A woman was asked to urinate daily on two cloth bags, one containing emmer (wheat) and the other barley. If both germinated she was said to be pregnant, if neither did, then she was not. It has been known since 1927 that a particular hormone is present in the urine of a pregnant woman and so modern pregnancy tests are based on this ancient Egyptian medical practice. The ancient Egyptian doctors first tested the effect that urine had on grain simply because they associated grain with life and they expected that a woman who was carrying new life would have a spiritual affinity with the grain. They therefore observed then what medical science only knows today that the urine of pregnant women can sometimes cause grain to germinate, whereas that of women who are not pregnant always causes it to wither.

17. "When the Europeans first saw the cities of Afrika, they reported that these cities were well designed and that the Afrikan was civilized to the marrow of his bones. Fifty years later, when they wanted to justify the slave trade, they started the myths about savage Afrika with no organized societies, not cities, even no knowledge of the wheel."

18. In 711 A.D., the Afrikan general, Jebel Tarikh, Tarikh ben Zaid or Gibral Tarik (also known as the "Rock of Gibraltar"), the governor of Mauritania and his army of 10,000 Afrikan Muslims invaded Spain and routed the "savage" Europeans. They also made Spain the most advanced society in Western Europe for 700 years and these Afrikans introduced the common bath and undergarments to the Europeans. In 900 A.D., these Afrikans (Moors), built the first university in Europe (Spain) called the University of Salamanca.

19. In 1050 A.D., Arab Moslem slave traders forced Islam on their Afrikan victims under the rallying cry of "Islam or Death." Arab Moslem slavers also traded Afrikan Moslems to Saudi Arabia and Europe.

20. The good ship "Jesus," the "personal property" of Elizabeth I, Queen of England, was commanded by Captain John Hawkins during the British involvement in the Afrikan Holocaust or MAAFA. Christopher Columbus also named one of his ships the Santa Maria ("Holy Mary") during his authorized genocide of Afrikan people.

21. The Grandees, "the money managers of Spain, mostly Sephardic Jews," financed the Afrikan Holocaust, "the greatest single crime in the world" against a people. Over 100 million human beings died during this Holocaust. Many Jews converted to Catholicism. They practiced Catholicism by day and Judaism by night. They were called the Marranos or the "silent Jews."

22. During the Berlin Conference, November 1884 to 26 February 1885, the following European countries participated in the collusive/imperial "scramble"/partitioning of Afrika: Britain, France, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the United States as "a most interested observer." This is one of the primary reasons why Afrikans on the Continent speak different European languages today.

23. On 7 June 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed between Spain, Portugal and the Roman Catholic Church. By this Treaty, it was agreed that the imaginary line drawn by Pope Alexander the Sixth should be shifted to a position 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, that is approximately halfway between the Afrikan Islands (Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde) which were the most westerly portions of the 'Old World' and the island of Hispaniola, the most easterly of the discoveries of Columbus in the 'New World'. This Papal decision not only prevented war between Spain and Portugal but also assigned all lands 'discovered' to the east of this line to Portugal and all to the west of it to Spain. And that's the reason why Afrikans in Brazil speak Portuguese today. Brazil has the largest contingent of Afrikans outside of the Continent, about 96 million.

24. "Ethiopia was the first established country on earth; and the Ethiopians were the first who introduced the worship of the gods, and who established laws". The Ethiopians were the first who invented the science of stars, and gave names to the planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect state, to the Egyptians." Cush is the Biblical name for Ethiopia.

25. "Man was originally a Negro (Black) and he improved as years advanced and he travelled westward, gradually changing from jet black of (Afrika) . . . through all the intermediate shades of Syria, Italy, France to the fair white and red of the maid of Holland and Britain. Negroid stock is even more ancient than Caucasian or Mongolian man. Recent discoveries seem to indicate that the Negro (Black) element preceded the white and yellow everywhere. European man (is) an Afrikan man changed by the effect of European environment."

26. Tiro, an Afrikan, was born about the year 103 B.C. on the estate of Roman Emperor Cicero. Cicero found his slave, Tiro, to be very intelligent and educated him. In 63 B.C., he became a secretary to Cicero. It was the Afrikan Tiro who first invented shorthand writing. When Cicero died, Tiro open a shorthand school in Rome. He died in 4 B.C.

27. "Hercules" was a Black man. He was born in Cuba and his real name is Joseph Dominque. He was brought to France by his father. During Napoleon Bonaparte's first Italian campaign, he was a sergeant. Hercules was with Napoleon on his Egyptian invasion, fought well and was one of the few soldiers who went back with Napoleon to France. He was promoted to command the "Black Pioneers." He was in the French army throughout the reign of Napoleon. Napoleon had over twelve Black generals.

28. "Theodore of Tarsus with the aid of Hadrian, the (Afrikan), organized the Church of England in the Seventh century." Hadrian is buried in St. Augustine's Chapel, Canterbury, England. "England (owes) the real beginning of her culture to Theodore of Tarsus and Hadrian. 29. Ireland had an Afrikan Bishop named Diman. He died in Ulster in 658 A.D. and is a Saint.

Stonehenge, "the most famous ancient monument in England," was built by an Afrikan architect named, Marien. Indeed, England's national dance, the "morris-dance" is of Afrikan origin. "It is indisputable that this dance was the invention of the Moor(s)" (Afrikans). It's (Afrikan) origin is further seen in that White (British) dancers blackened their faces to dance it."

In addition, Queen Elizabeth I of England,was so much in love with Francis, Duke of Alencon, an Afrikan, that when told by her ministers she could not marry him, she wept. The reason was religious. He was Catholic; she was Protestant. The Duke who is described as "Black with woolly hair" was the son of Catherine de Medici, Queen of Euro-France.

The Scottish people, in their earliest chronicles, claim descent from the Egyptians. Scotia, an Egyptian princess, married a Greek and from whom the name Scotland, originated. Scotia is believed to be the ancestress of the Scots. Up to the 10th century, three islands in Scotland were entirely Black. One of the Scottish kings was an Afrikan called Alban. Afrikans both conquered and ruled Scotland.

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

Dr. Nantambu is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University, U.S.A.

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