Response to Robin Walker

September 17, 2009

africanclassicalhistory@yahoogroups.co.uk

Asar Imhotep

http://www.asarimhotep.com

ROBIN: This is NOT the point. The point is did the Egyptians EVER have the Diagram of the Law of

Opposities. So far you have not been able to make this particular Diagram materialise.

ASAR: No this is NOT the point. The point is the Egyptians had a philosophy as expressed in their myths

of the FOUR MOMENTS OF THE SUN (using Robert Farris Thompson’s title) and it is this philosophy that

is expressed through their symbolism.

ROBIN: One way of putting a spin on concepts borrowed is to present some of the concepts

diagrammaticaly and to add your own. If this is what the Greeks actually did then it is THEY who

invented the Diagram of the Law of Opposities and NOT the Egyptians. Since this logically follows from

what you have written this is a most important and devastating concession from you. To understand why

see below.

ASAR: Wrong. For one, the Greeks didn’t call it the diagram of opposites; Dr. Ben did. Aristotle called it

the FOUR HUMORS. This little fact has me confused as to why you keep calling it the Laws of Opposites

Diagram and crediting it to the Greeks? My argument, as well as Dr. George GM James’, is that the

concepts expressed in the diagram are in fact ancient Egyptian. I go further and demonstrate that these

concepts exist on all corners of Africa, with the same style, purpose and function in African societies. I

will demonstrate further how this symbol, The Four Moments of the Sun, has been staring at you in the

face, as a symbol, and you just refuse to see it.

ROBIN: How can you prove the connection between the Yoruba and the Ancient Egyptians? The claim,

now popular, that the Yoruba ancestor Oduduwa was an Ancient Egyptian is a mid to late 20th century

claim i.e. it is modern and opportunistic. Before this, the Yorubas claimed to be of Arabian origin!!! The

Yoruba scholar, Rev Samuel Johnson in The History of the Yorubas, 1921, p.5 cites the early 19th century

Sultan Belo as saying: "The cause of their [i.e. Yoruba] establishment in the West of Africa was, as is

stated, in consequence of their being driven by Yar-rooba, son of Kahtan, out of Arabia to the Western

Coast between Egypt and Abyssinia. From that spot they advanced into the interior of Africa." That the

Yourubas themselves believed this version of events was confirmed by Rev Johnson himself who states

(p.5): "That the Yorubas came originally from the East there cannot be the slightest doubt, as their

habits, manners and customs, etc., all go to prove. With them the East is Mecca and Mecca is the East."

ASAR: One, not all Yoruba claim to be from the Nile Valley, some of them do. The Yoruba are like Blacks

in the United States who have “come together” to be one people called African-Americans. The same

thing with the Zulus of South Africa. The Zulus actually are a mix of ethnic groups, under the terror of

Tashaka Zulu, that came together to become the Zulu nation. You will hear SOME of their lineages going

back to the Nile Valley. Some of them will tell you they came from Angola. Some trace their lineage to

the Great Lakes region. So when you are hearing stories about migrations in Africa, especially among

large ethnic groups, you always have to ask are we talking about migrations of whole people, or are we

talking about migrations of individual families? Or are we talking about migrations of priesthoods? Any

Ifa practitioner will tell you that some of the “myths” of “individuals” are actually composites of a

specific ethnic group or family. Odudua is not only a person but a people; a family: the Oduduas.

To think Rev. Samuel Johnson’s book is the only one on the history of the Yoruba would be a mistake.

You also need to read The Religion of the Yorubas in Relation to the Religion of Ancient Egypt published

by CMS Bookshops, Lagos by Dr. Olumide Lucas. This work was written in 1948, before the so-called

Afrocentric movements in the late 60’s and 70’s. He has another book titled Religions in West Africa and

ancient Egypt. The title speaks for itself. In his book The Religion of the Yorubas pg 353 he states, “The

Yoruba migrated gradually from Northern Egypt to Southern Egypt and then to the Sudan until they

reached their present home.” So how extensive and expansive was Rev. Johnson’s research? Who did he

talk to: the Yoruba priests or the practitioners of Islam?

ROBIN: Now you have come to the heart of the matter! I do not claim that the inner Africans stole these

ideas from the Greeks. It is YOUR presentation of the data that suggests this!

ASAR: No my presentation suggest otherwise. Here is something else I want you to be able to explain

away by ignoring the obvious:

http://hum.lss.wisc.edu/hjdrewal/Ife.html

Child of Obatala (creation divinity). The sculpture probably depicts a ritual specialist indicated by the

bead on his forehead and the skull pendant.

Egyptian God Bes

The first image is from Ile Ife and is dated between 1000-1500 AD. This image is a Batwa (dwarf) and we

clearly see two defining features of the ancient Egyptian God Bes. The first is the signature tongue

sticking out. This is how we can identify Bes all across the world. It’s undeniable. Secondly observe the

“skull necklace” on both images. Explain to me how an ancient Egyptian deity made its way to Nigeria

prior to 1500 AD? Did some random Egyptologists build a time machine, went Back to the Future and

taught these Africans the intricate details of ancient Egyptian religion and taught them how to sculpt

these concepts as well? I await your answer on this one.

So now, to demonstrate that everything isn’t a simple exact copy, we will examine the Greek “version”

of Bes. The Greeks associated Bes with Priapus, god of Fertility. It should also be noted that Bes is a

fertility god, and as caption on the first image states that image is the son of the god Obatala, the

creation divinity (fertility). Here’s an image of Priapus:

I know you’re thinking to yourself, “That doesn’t look like Bes or the Yoruba image above. How can you

say they are the same image?”

The Ancient Egyptian God Bes with erect penis

Again, we are going through this to set a precedence in the reader’s mind that not all ideas taken from

Egypt are exact replicas of the concepts seen. You look for the key distinguishing factors present in both

ideas. As we can see Priapus doesn’t have the exact same features as Bes (the iconography, wings,

crown, etc.), But he does have the distinguishing beard and erect penis. This isn’t “chance

correspondence” to use a term from linguistics. These are “borrowings” from ancient Egypt: Period!

ROBIN: As you know, we are in an ideological war to resurrect our history and culture from the ravages

of Eurocentrism. Your presentation of the data plays straight into their hands.

ASAR: This is why I never pull from one area of Africa. My primary areas of research have been Nile

Valley, Dogon (Bambara, Gourmatche, Dogomba), Yoruba, Kongo and Zulu. Any Eurocentrist would have

to demonstrate how the Greeks introduced these concepts to the Dogon, Yoruba, Kongo and Zulu

people, yet all of the just mentioned ideas are exact, but the Greek’s are different? Where are the Greek

loan words? Where are these symbols in Libya? Where are the Libyan records that state they met up

with the Dogon? Demonstrate these ideas in the practices of the ancient and modern Greeks. Why is the

Yoruba depiction of “Bes” an exact match but Priapus looks nothing like the Egyptian? Besides the beard

and erect penis, Priapus lacks the skull necklace, lacks the signature tongue sticking out and he is not a

dwarf (Batwa). They took the Egyptian idea and made it their own; yet the Yoruba kept the traditional

representation.

ROBIN: Are you also aware that there were Eurocentric scholars who claimed that the Yorubas were

remnants of the Greek civilisation of Atlantis? As Peter Garlake explains: "The calm repose and realism of

the [Yoruba] sculptures were reminiscent of Classical Greece. The pantheon of Yoruba gods, their

attributes, their vivid lives and complex responsibilities echoed Mount Olympus. The architecture of the

houses and palaces, where rooms opened off enclosed courtyards, open to the sky, resembled the

impluvia of early Mediterranean, particularly Etruscan, buildings. The Yoruba concept of the universe,

their educational system, the organization of their society and their statecraft supported a Greek

connection."

ASAR: In reality they could be partially right. As you are familiar, Dr. Winters has argued in many papers

the African origins of Greek civilization. He’s not the only one as this has been argued by Diop and

Bernal. One of the greatest contributions to this aspect of human history, and to this debate in

particular, is the various works by linguist GJK Campbell-Dunn. He takes it further and associates not

only artifacts and cultural elements with Africa, but linguistically connects the Etruscan, Minoan Linear A

and Proto-Indo-European with that of Niger-Congo, in which Yoruba is one of its languages. Here are

some articles available for review from Campbell-Dunn:

ETRUSCAN

The Etruscan Decipherment

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN

Comparative Linguistics: Indo-European and Niger-Congo Note: this is an Adobe Acrobat document (817kb download)

MINOAN LINEAR A

Black Classics o What is Black Classics? o The Pelasgians o Art o Culture o Language

Linear A and Niger-Congo Note: this is an Adobe Acrobat document (355kb download)

With these connections, too detailed to mention here, they could be right and are misapplying the data

trying to associate the concepts with Europe as an indigenous creation when it is in fact the other way

around. As Campbell-Dunn notes on Palasgian art http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/gc_dunn/art.html :

“The use of white paint on women, after initiation, is seen on Minoan representations of women,

but not young girls, whereas men are painted red-brown. Minoan men wear the African

codpiece, which leaves the scrotum uncovered, still worn by the Moba of West Africa. Minoan

painting derives its technique and motifs from Africa. The Minoan palaces are based on Yoruba

palaces”

Your other comments in that section doesn’t make sense in light of the evidence. You, or the proposed

Eurocentrists, would have to demonstrate for me how the Greeks managed to “teach” their philosophy

to the Dogon and the Yoruba, who are in separate areas of West Africa, yet neglect to pass on this

information to all of the other ethnic groups in between or surrounding these groups. Unless one is

willing to argue that the Greeks “sailed” into the middle of Nigeria, or “sailed” in the middle of the

Bandiagara cliffs, I won’t take such challenges seriously. Either way it goes, you would either have to

argue the Greeks came to the West Africa or the Greeks met them in the Nile Valley. Either way one

would try to argue it, they would be proving my point one way or the other.

ROBIN: Good advice but you have STILL not demonstrated how the shape of Horus leads to the Diagram

of the Law of Opposites.

ASAR: So now that we have demonstrated the impossibility of Greeks introducing these concepts to

Africans, let’s get back to the debate at hand. I have already argued that the signs adopted by the

Greeks, as expressed through Plato and Aristotle, are in fact representations of ancient Egyptian

concepts. The diagram under discussion is the Greek misrepresentation of African concepts as expressed

in the following image:

Aristotle’s Four Humors

Here is a variation of the diagram dealing with the same teachings:

http://www.library. umass.edu/ benson/jbgcalt. html.

The added outer rings are the author’s addition to the image. But the core is an original.

The difference here is that the elements and color representations are off in comparison to the African

versions, just like in our example between Bes and Priapus. As noted in the pics above, the “four

humors” can be represented as either a circle demarcated in four sections or as a square within a

square.

Kongo

Musoni - water (conception)

Kala - fire (initiating act of formation)

Tukula - earth (grounding, solidified in purpose) [Nganga - doer, master, specialist]

Lemba - wind (death stage - as death is the ultimate process of "change" - as wind causes things that

were here before, not to be here the same way - think hurricane).

Demonstrating, using the Kongo cosmology as told by Fu-Kiau (1991), that either a circle or “square” can represent

the same symbol. They are both 360 degrees.

In The Pale Fox, Griaule and Dieterlen describes the basic approach of creating using the first symbol in

this section called The Womb of All Signs which represents the God Amma’s “egg.” The approach

includes four phases, stages, of development that applies to ANY creative project: whether it be a

creative act of Amma or an undertaking of man, including the building of a dwelling or town. Just like

the Egyptians divided their state into “upper and lower,” so do the Dogon. Not only that, they also

represent “upper and lower” with color representations: red and white. The red color symbolizes

success in cattle herding and the white color represents success in agriculture.

As Dr K. Bunseki Fu-Kiau notes in African Cosmology of the Bantu Kongo (1991:38), “Nothing in the daily

life of Kongo society is outside of its cosmological practices.” I argue that this is a strongly held premise

and practice in every single indigenous African society; including the ancient Egyptian. As we can see

with the Dogon, the designs of dwelling places and towns are built on the model and stages of the

cosmology associated with Amma’s egg. It is no different in the Kongo as this symbol (the Dikenga) also

represents dwelling places and even the WOMB (like Amma’s womb) (see also Dr. Fu-Kiau’s Mbongi

2007:46).

Keep in mind the association with the above signs/symbols with the concepts of human development,

wombs, and dwelling places (houses or towns). This is real important as one examines the Egyptian sign

for TOWN or DWELLING PLACE: - given as NIW-T.

As Ferg Somo noted in his essay NIWT: ‘The Womb’, The Fortification, and Part II to the essay, the

Egyptian word NIWT is actually a Kiswahili-Bantu word pronounced UAENIWE which means: the people

themselves, inhabitants of a town, householders, village owners, occupants. It derives from the word

UWA or UA which means: a house and an enclosure, courtyard, fence, backyard, open court behind the

house. The plural form of the word NYUWA or NIUWA matches the Egyptian form NIW-t (with the

feminine ending t).

NIW-T

As Ferg notes in essay II:

[-ENIE→ having, possessing] [-ENIEWE→ expressing identity, distinctiveness, personality of a person] [MWENIEWE→ Himself, Owner, Possessor, → Used as MWENIEJI → himself, owner, master, householder, citizen, inhabitant, native] [UA+ENIEWE, (plural) derived from WA+ENIEWE→ WENIEJI → ‘(they) the people themselves’ owners, masters, householders, citizens of a town/village, inhabitants of a town or natives of a town/village]

We have to ask ourselves, why is the same symbol for a dwelling place the same among the Dogon, the

Egyptians and the Kongo - ? Why are all of these symbols associated with families and human

beings? Why are all of these signs associated with architectural development? Why are each of these

symbols, including the ones given by Plato and Aristotle, associated with stages of development or

processes?

As J.L Benson notes in his section The Evolutionary Aspects of Colors, Chapter III concerning the diagram,

he states:

The Four Elements theory can be the starting point for understanding how Greek painting, and for that

matter all Greek art, took form. First a generalization: space divides easily into four parts, e.g., the

cardinal directions, whereas time lends itself into division by three, e.g., past, present and future. But in

the special case of the four elements as primary components of the planetary organism, an evolutionary

sequence, that is, a time factor, is implicitly spread out in space. This sequence corresponds to the major

stages of cosmic evolution, whether one is thinking on the exoteric level of modern science or on the

modern esoteric level of anthroposophy. This latter level is more closely parallel to the thinking of the

Greeks.

Just as fire, air, water and earth are notations for four dynamic processes, so they also suggest - in

that order - an approximate picture of the origin of the universe, that is, from warmth - even if one

insists on this as a kind of primal energy which, by means of a "big bang", released a tremendous heat -

cooling down into gases, condensing into liquids and finally partially solidifying. To this order of events

correspond the colors of two phases of the physicality series (Illustration 12 B-D): air and earth, provided

one thinks of the color sequence referred to in terms of visual density: white, yellow, red, black. Two

directions of thought connect with this observation and must now be pursued.

“This latter level is more closely parallel to the thinking of the Greeks?” Was it actually Greek thought?

How so when the two people these concepts are attributed studied in Egypt? How so, when the diagram

is an Egyptian diagram that marks human development, the creation of the universe, plans for cities,

towns and homes; just like in the Dogon, Yoruba, Zulu and Dogon traditions? How can this be when this

symbol is before the Greeks:

I am Khepera in the morning, I am Râ at noon, and I am Temu at even.

It should be noted that the far left side of this diagram represents the transition stage which universally across Africa is symbolized by the WIND (the goddess Oya in Yoruba). The bottom, just like every where else in Africa, symbolizes the “underworld” or the “realm of the ancestors” as can be seen in the image above. This is represented by WATER (Yemoja in the Yoruba). The far right quadrant symbolizes birth or coming into being - EARTH (Ogun – form). And universally across Africa, the sun at its peak at noon time represents, FIRE (Shango in Yoruba).

You and know the following to be common knowledge among Egyptologists: The dead are buried facing the south (direction heading back to the ancestral quadrant); Burials typical were on the west side of the Nile (the countries dividing line). Rebirth was associated with the east (akhet). Power and maturity was associated with RA who we know represented the noontime sun.

Again, what is a “philosophy” for the Greeks is a living reality/practice for the Egyptians and other African people. The “diagram of opposites” exists in ever aspect of Egyptian art, philosophy and ritual. If YOU can’t see it, then that’s fine. At this point you have no excuse. Read the material I have given you throughout this discussion and come back and try to make your argument. Try to argue how this symbol made its way into Zulu, Kongo, Yoruba and Dogon cosmology via the Greeks who never visited Nigeria or Mali. Demonstrate for me how Libyans could have introduced these concepts to ALL of these African nations and then demonstrate these ideas in ANY Libyan thought in its GREEK form (as they borrowed from Egyptians). And after that, tell me where the Yoruba got the idea to build pyramids:

www.asarimhotep.com