Professor Bashir Al-Bishak, a renowned African literary scholar, theorist and Egyptologist with the Federal University of Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria, has joined the call on the Eurasian countries to return the African historical artefacts including Khemetian manuscripts stolen from Africa by Eurasia (Europe and Asia).
He made the call in Copenhagen, Denmark, when he spoke as the Distinguished Speaker at the Professional Development Workshop (PDW) on Egyptological Methods for Management and Organization Scholars organized by the Africa Academy of Management (AFAM) at the recently concluded annual meeting of the global Academy of Management (AOM).
Al-Bishak lamented the absence of ancient historical artefacts in Africa because they have been taken away illegally by the Eurasians to their own countries. He explained his frustration during his recent trip to Egypt to look for the original manuscripts of the Khemetian “medu-netjer” translated by Greeks as “hieroglyphs” but was told that they were not available in their country of origin as they have been taken away to Eurasia.
Al-Bishak earned tumultuous applause from his global audience when he explained that even among the Egyptologists they are divided along the ideological lines of Eurasiocentric and Afrocentric perspectives in their account of history.
He said that for so long the black history and African achievements have been distorted by Eurasian scholars thereby forcing African scholars to come up with their own theories to correct deliberate misrepresentations.
He cited the example of Western scholars such as the Oxford University History Professors, late Hugh Trover-Roper and the recently retired Edmond Harrington, who in March this year at a global forum claimed that “black Africans have contributed nothing to human civilization.” It was this tendency for a false narrative that made African scholars to create their own theories.
He gave example of Professor Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University, USA, who created Afrocentrism; Al-Bishak came up with “Leoparditude” as a “bulwark against mental slavery”; Shamsudeen O. O. Amali and Ebele Amali invented the “Amalian Two Theories of Cultural Creativity and Change” and “Gendernomics” respectively; while Baniyelme Zoogah propounded the “Afrocentric generative theory”.
He said the real black identity of the ancient Egyptians is called to question by Eurasiocentric construct that denies their original black race to make them either of the Eurasian races of white Mediterranean or Asian. However, he said that the ancient Egyptians actually emerged from the Negroid race that occupied the Nile Valley made up of ten (10) countries.
They include Sudan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, South Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, Burundi and Rwanda.
He celebrated the monumental achievements of the black Egyptians who founded human civilization over 7000 years ago, and called their country “Khemet” (land of blacks), which has the same meaning as the later Greek phrase, “Hoi Aiguptoi” or “Hoi Aegyptus” as well as the Arabic “bilad as Sudan”. He said those sterling achievements are the reasons for the divergent claims of the origins of the ancient black Egyptians because every race wants to claim them.
However, backing his position with textual evidence and footages of his recent trip to Egypt to source for materials for the Denmark workshop, he affirmed the black origin of the Egyptians, and gave incontrovertible evidence of their pioneering roles in human civilization. He therefore called for a closer cooperation among the Egyptologists to neutralize their prejudices and assert the truth about the Negroid origin of the Egyptians who built the great pyramids and lighthouse of Pharos among the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Royal Library of Rhacotis renamed Alexandria after the Macedonian (Greek) emperor, ‘Alexander, the great’ and other monuments.
The Royal Library was a university in 4th century BCE where Greek scholars like Plato, Aristotle, etc attended.
The stand-in-speaker at the session, Dr Rune Olsen, an Egyptologist from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, merely fielded questions but made controversial statements disputed by Al-Bishak.
For instance, he denied Olsen’s claim that the first writing in the world was the Mesopotamian (ancient Iraq) cuneiform. Al-Bishak referred him to his outstanding book, “BLACK PAPYRUS: Global Origins of Writing and Written Literature Traced To Black Africa”, a postdoctoral publication, where he has addressed the issue with historical facts, pointing out that “medu-netjer” (hieroglyphs) is the first writing script in the globe.
He further said that “cuneiform” had been invented by the blacks in the Fertile African Crescent notably among the Kushites (ancient Ethiopians) where it was used to write before some of the Kushites including the Dravidians, Sumerians, Elamites, etc migrated to Mesopotamia.
Another point of divergence with Olsen was the doubt he posed on the authenticity of the hieroglyphic reports about the achievements of the Khemetians because, according to Olsen, “some of the ancient scripts were broken or lost and had a wide gap of the historical periods between them.” Al-Bishak informed the audience that those Khemetian scripts had greater credibility than those of ancient Greek scholars like Aristotle whose celebrated book, “Poetics”, was a “guess work” of modern European editors and translators because he left mere “fragmentary notes and broken scripts whose authentic information was alleged to have been copied by Aristotle from the Khemetian mystery school.”
On Olsen’s claim that _medu-netjer_ might be seen as graffiti, Al-Bishak said that all forms of writing could be seen as graffiti to those who don’t understand them just as the Chinese or Arabic scripts might seem to some people as mere inscriptions. He said that even the conventional European or Roman orthography of A – Z is a graffiti or inscription to those that don’t understand it.
Earlier on, Professor Zoogah, the immediate past President of the Africa Academy of Management (AFAM), the organizers of the session, had welcomed the guests to the workshop, and explained its importance. He said, “Egyptology is a possible way to learn about the management and organization methods of ancient Egyptians from which to distill information that will be beneficial to modern scholars and business executives interested in doing business in Africa.”
In attendance at the workshop were current executives of AFAM led by its President, Professor Moses Acquaah, and high profile professors and academics who made the session quite intellectually robust and engaging.