@PLVN and everyone else interested. here are some passages from dr. ivan van sertima's
they came before columbus.
on the blackness of ancient egypt:
"when count volney stood under the shadow of the great sphinx in 1783 and looked at these man-made mountains stretching across the western desert, he was startled and confused. he had walked across the low flat country, dotted with villages and mud-brick huts, where stood the tall date palms. the floor of the land was a vivid green, and through the green ran an intricate network of irrigation canals. brown- and black-skinned men of slender build and dark hair, mostly negroid, "having a broad and flat nose, very short, a large flattened mouth ... thick lips," were seen along the banks of the canals, swaying up and down as they rhythmically lifted irrigation buckets attached to what looked like a wellsweep. these men were native egyptians, with skins and features like many of the slaves of the french empire...
this rediscovery by europeans of ancient egypt, and the disclosures of a powerful negro-african element in the ancestry of the civilization to which europe owed so much, came as an embarrassment. it came also at a most inopportune time. it threatened to explode a myth of innate black inferiority that was necessary to the peace of the christian conscience in a europe that was then prospering from massive exploitation of black slaves. africa was being systematically depopulated. its empires had disintegrated. its history had been buried. its movement in step with other world civilizations had been abruptly halted. only its most backwards and inaccessible elements were left virtually untouched to bear false witness in later tomes to the scale and complexity of its evolution."
on the european distortion of the bible, used to justify slavery:
"the christian conscience of slave-trading in europe had been assuaged for a while by a myth which drew its inspiration not from the christian bible, as some theologians of the day then thought (for the bible makes no distinctions between blac and white) but from a very arbitrary interpretation of a biblical story, the story of ham... noah curses a son of ham, making him and his progeny "a servant of servants" for looking at him in his nakedness...
the curse of ham, it was said, was the curse of blackness. the descendants of the son of ham, according to this interpretation, were the africans and the egyptians (who, at the time the myth began to circulate, had fallen from their pinnacle of power). when, however, the napoleonic expedition uncovered the splendors of ancient egyptian civilization, a new version of history was urgently required. the myth of blackness as a curse had backfired. how could a black and accursed race have inspired or contributed greatly to the development of a pre-european civilization?
christian theologians began to suggest that noah had cursed only canaan, one son of ham, and that therefore the curse lay only on his progeny, the black race. another son of ham, mizraim, had not been cursed. from him issued the marvelous egyptians, the creators of the greatest of early civilizations. the christian conscience could sleep peacefully again."
i will post other passages in separate posts to avoid text walls.
