"INNOVATION" OF EGYPT?

"It is clear in working from the legacy of ancient Egypt, one area where we need to innovate most seriously is the social domain. Ancient Egypt was a theocratic kingdom. The organization of society into kingdoms and empires may have been a humanizing step forward many thousands of years ago . Today, humanity has learned enough from damaging inequalities and injustices inherent in royal and imperial systems to know that we need something better in the way of social organization . In plain terms, we think of the royal and imperial aspects of ancient Egyptian culture as negative constraints , useless for our present purposes. Empire seems be back in fashion, but look closely and you will see that it is a fashion led by idiots. We are ready for more intelligent uses of our past.... "The ancient Egyptian theocracy has gone where it deserves to go . What we value in the heritage is the art, the science, the knowledge and the intelligence. Religious mystification might have worked in the past. For us today it is dead. From the humus over its grave we can pluck philosophical ideas for the future. Practically all invaders who entered Africa bent on pillage rubbed pepper into our wounds by trashing our religions. Such cruelty might, in the long run, have turned out to be helpful. It should have shaken us awake, and brought us out of our torpor of religious belief , into intelligent thinking. "But then something funny happened. The same thieves who came to take our gold, our diamonds and our history, brought us their trash , and told us to embrace it as a new and better religion. Trash is trash, wherever it comes from. In the search for solutions, we will gain by looking at our continental traditions, filtering out the dross, and keeping in the valuable parts of the heritage. Africa is phenomenally well endowed in intellectual and spiritual resources. In revitalizing 'Per Ankh,' the house of life, what we aim to do is to breathe new vitality into our best values." P. 304-306, "Per Ankh--Home for Life," THE ELOQUENCE OF THE SCRIBES by Ayi Kwei Armah (2006)