COPTS AND ROBBERS

COPTS AND ROBBERS In 1983, while visiting Cairo, Egypt, I walked from the Ramses Hilton Hotel, where I was staying, to the Coptic section of Old Cairo. I had read about this very old group of Christians, and thought they might have some iconography of black saints and patriarchs that were being "hidden" from us blacks, by nefarious persons unknown. When I finally arrived at the Coptic headquarters and entered, I was disappointed to find no such black iconography. What I saw looked like the standard art-book fare of icons: Mediterranean looking personages, not African. At any event, I had been there, so that satisfied my curiosity. Last night, December 15, 2013, CBS' "60 Minutes" ran a segment of its program on the "Coptic Christians" in Cairo, Egypt. I had recently done some reading on this most ancient of Christian sects, once known as "Followers of Jesus" in the book, IMHOTEP THE AFRICAN: ARCHITECT OF THE COSMOS by Robert Bauval and Thomas Brophy, Ph.D. While that book is primarily concerned with the legacy of the 2400 B.C. priest-scientist, Imhotep, architect of the Steppe Pyramid complex at Saqqara, and true "Father of Medicine," it spoke of the Copts, too. Their 2013 book had to mention the Copts, in passing, for several reasons: 1. The final remnant of the ancient city of Heliopolis [also known as "On, Onnu, Innu," and other epithets], that was once the world's center of learning--over which Imhotep presided as chief Royal Astronomer to Pharaoh, and chief Priest--consists of a 120-ton granite obelisk (called "El-Massalah" by locals) in Cairo, very near the Copt's Church of the Holy Family in Cairo's Matareya district. 2. The Copts claim that the Holy Family fled to that very Matareya district from Palestine, to escape the "Slaughter of the Innocents" under Herod. 3. That district is being swallowed up by the ever-encroaching slums, built by the Arabs subsequent to their conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, whose Muslim adherents now overwhelm Coptic Christians by a 10-1 margin, subjecting Copts to sporadic religious persecution. The black history which I had sought clearly predated the Copts, I concluded. That invigorating and ancient black history that I sought, suffuses and antedates Coptic tradition. That tradition laves baby Jesus' early life in its vital spiritual streams, very near the obelisk of Heliopolis. Jesus thereby joins such other Hebrew progenitors like Abram, Joseph, Jacob/Israel, Moses, all of whom went down into Egypt or had come up out of Egypt, better, for having been there, spiritually, physically, and financially nourished and robust personages. The Greeks, who predated the Christians by hundreds of years, were similarly nourished, by black civilization. The above mentioned authors, Bauval and Brophy, write: "For thousands of years, luminaries like Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Cnidus, and even, it is said, the great Plato came to be taught the sacred sciences of ancient Egypt: geometry, mathematics, medicine, divination, and above all, astronomy. ... So important was Heliopolis as a seat of high learning that, even though some of the great scholars from Greece may not actually have made the journey to study there, their biographers nonetheless feigned that they had in order to enhance their scholarly image." (P. Adding to this the recent controversy and ensuing "apology" by Fox News commentator, Megyn Kelly, that Santa Claus and Jesus are "white," indelibly underscores the need to study black history outside of the pablum and untruths served up by most whites and many blacks. This is due to the deliberate dumbing-down-for-profit/control, purposes in education, history, religion, and mass media. Such a deliberate "dumbing-down" process robs humanity of its soul, as it subverts the truth: stunting human growth, stymying human justice, and promoting human impoverishment. Whence then "Copts and Robbers."