AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: THE PHARAONIC PERIOD, 2780 B.C.-330 B.C. by Theophile Obenga
“Scientifically speaking, the objective facts are as follows:
“The cuneiform (nail-shaped) writings of Mesopotamia left no progeny. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics have had an entirely different history, being the source of the Phoenician alphabet. The Bible of Sanchoniathan, which, luckily for us, is a Phoenician book, explicitly acknowledges the fact that writing was invented by the Egyptians, and was later handed down to the Phoenicians. Equally well known is the fact that the Phoenician alphabet was the source of the Greek alphabet. All this is beyond real controversy. In turn, still in antiquity, the Greek alphabet engendered writing systems used by several non-Hellenistic languages: Carian, Lydian, Lycian; as well as the Italic, Gothic, and Slavic alphabets, the oldest of which is called Glagolithic, before the development of the more recent so-called Cyrillic alphabet. The modern Russian alphabet, incidentally, is the result of two simplifications of Cyrillic, the first implemented on Czar Peter the Great’s order in the late 18th century. Rome gave the world the Italic alphabet we use now, but that alphabet was derived from Greek.
“We know, moreover, that the Phoenician script, as derived from Egyptian writing, was adopted by the Aramaeans as early as the 11th century B.C. The square-shaped Hebrew alphabet, now resurrected by Zionism, derives from the Aramaic alphabet, the writing scripts used for Biblical texts inscribed on copper scrolls, discovered in 1947 near the Dead Sea. The Phoenician, Greek, Italian, Cyrillic, modern Russian, Aramaic and Hebrew scripts, along with several other writing systems can all be traced back to the Egyptian writing system. That Egyptian writing was the source is a historical fact, acknowledged by the scholarly community as a whole, and never challenged by any specialist.
“The fact is that writing was an extraordinary human invention. Not only did writing give permanent form to speech, it also opened up the way to the universe of ideas across time and space. Writing is the basic social and intellectual process subtending our entire modern civilization. For that reason, the history of writing is identified with the narrative of human intellectual progress. Against that background, and on the precise issue of the history of human civilization, we can assess the full measure of the important role played by the black African people of ancient Egypt.”
p. 257-258, “Egypt’s Civilizing Role.”
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, THEOPHILE OBENGA
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: THE PHARAONIC PERIOD, 2780 B.C.-330 B.C. by Theophile Obenga
“Scientifically speaking, the objective facts are as follows:
“The cuneiform (nail-shaped) writings of Mesopotamia left no progeny. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics have had an entirely different history, being the source of the Phoenician alphabet. The Bible of Sanchoniathan, which, luckily for us, is a Phoenician book, explicitly acknowledges the fact that writing was invented by the Egyptians, and was later handed down to the Phoenicians. Equally well known is the fact that the Phoenician alphabet was the source of the Greek alphabet. All this is beyond real controversy. In turn, still in antiquity, the Greek alphabet engendered writing systems used by several non-Hellenistic languages: Carian, Lydian, Lycian; as well as the Italic, Gothic, and Slavic alphabets, the oldest of which is called Glagolithic, before the development of the more recent so-called Cyrillic alphabet. The modern Russian alphabet, incidentally, is the result of two simplifications of Cyrillic, the first implemented on Czar Peter the Great’s order in the late 18th century. Rome gave the world the Italic alphabet we use now, but that alphabet was derived from Greek.
“We know, moreover, that the Phoenician script, as derived from Egyptian writing, was adopted by the Aramaeans as early as the 11th century B.C. The square-shaped Hebrew alphabet, now resurrected by Zionism, derives from the Aramaic alphabet, the writing scripts used for Biblical texts inscribed on copper scrolls, discovered in 1947 near the Dead Sea. The Phoenician, Greek, Italian, Cyrillic, modern Russian, Aramaic and Hebrew scripts, along with several other writing systems can all be traced back to the Egyptian writing system. That Egyptian writing was the source is a historical fact, acknowledged by the scholarly community as a whole, and never challenged by any specialist.
“The fact is that writing was an extraordinary human invention. Not only did writing give permanent form to speech, it also opened up the way to the universe of ideas across time and space. Writing is the basic social and intellectual process subtending our entire modern civilization. For that reason, the history of writing is identified with the narrative of human intellectual progress. Against that background, and on the precise issue of the history of human civilization, we can assess the full measure of the important role played by the black African people of ancient Egypt.”
p. 257-258, “Egypt’s Civilizing Role.”