Antenor Firmin, The Equality of the
Human Races, pp.244-246, “Egypt and Civilization” (University
of Illinois Press, Champlain: 2002).
“To
sum up, every time we visit an Egyptian museum, every time we thumb
through a volume on ancient Egyptian monuments, we come out with the
irrepressible conviction that we are facing a people that was Black.
Only obstinate bias or self delusion could inspire a contrary
conclusion. 'Egypt is all African and not in the least Asiatic.' Thus
spoke Champollion, and he was right. He loved too passionately that
world he had revealed to modern science to have misunderstood it.
Everywhere in Egypt the color black and other dark colors
predominate. This becomes immediately apparent if we take a brief
tour of the Egyptian section of the Louvre Museum after a visit to
other sections, such as that of the ancient Assyrians.
“For
the Retous,
the Nile was Egypt. Ampere makes this categorical comment on the
subject: 'Almost all the names given to the Nile in different eras
contain the concept of black or blue, two colors which are readily
confused in many languages. Such an appellation could not have come
from the river's water, which is yellow rather than black or blue. I
prefer to see in it an allusion to the complexion of the people who
live in an area along the river's shores and who were black, just as
another river is named Niger because it flows through the country of
the Negroes.' Ampere's words take on even greater significance when
we consider them in conjunction with this comment by Bouillet: 'The
Egyptians always had a religious respect for the Nile; they
considered it a sacred river. In antiquity at the time of the Nile's
floodings, the celebrated a festival to in its honor at which time
they sacrificed black bulls
to it. At Nilopolis there was a magnificent temple with a black
marble statue which represented the river in the form of a gigantic
god wearing a crown of laurels and ears of wheat and leaning on a
sphinx.'
“If
the truth be told, in what other part of Asia and Europe, both
ancient and modern, do we find such a pervasive and consistent use of
the color black as we do in Egypt? Is not this an obvious proof that
the people of the pharaohs, far from being different from other Negro
peoples, represented in both their physical appearance and their
artistic conceptions, the ideal of the black continent? Is it
rational to continue to separate the ancient Egyptians from the
Ethiopian race and its Sudanese branches? If Egyptologists and
anthropologists stubbornly hold on to their doctrine, there is
evidence from another source that will confound them. The only way
the truth can be suppressed is by smothering the light of scholarship
and erasing all traces of ancient literature and history. Such a task
is beyond the power of just a few men. All measures to hide the truth
will remain vain therefore, and even if no one volunteered to unveil
such a well-kept secret, the very reeds would shout the truth about
Midas' ears.”
