Isocrates states clearly that Pythagorus on visiting Egypt “became a student of the religion of the people, and was the first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy”.
The pyramids were standing 1000 years before he [Pythagorus] supposedly “discovered” the formula that bears his name (for solving a right-angle triangle). The “Father of Science” Aristotle said “Egyptians and Ethiopians are cowards because of their excessively black colour”.
STILL OUT OF AFRICA
Dr. Charles S. Finch, III, M.D.
Every year about this time one comes out of the wood work, a self-appointed "defender of the faith" of European cultural values, and both the popular and academic media dutifully supply maximum exposure. Last year we endured Charles Murray and The Bell Curve; this year it is Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley College with her Not Out Of Africa. It seems that the surest way for an academic, seeking to break out of ivory tower obscurity, to get a manuscript accepted by a major publishing house is to write a book belittling the intelligence or integrity of some segment of the Black community. The phenomenon is so reliable that even non- white writers, covering the spectrum from Dinesh D'Souza to
Henry Louis Gates, have adopted the ploy to obtain media exposure, enhance academic status and augment bank balances. Afrophobic books of every description represent an industry-within-an- industry and there always seems to be a ready market.
The anti-Afrocentric premises of Mary Lefkowitz are patently absurd. One does not even have to be a classicist to find abundant evidence that the influence of northeast Africa, i.e., Egypt and Ethiopia, on Greece was as formative as that of Greece on Europe.
The number of Greeks who lived and learned in Egypt reads like a "Who's Who" of Greek Philosophy. Solon, Thales, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Plato, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Herophilus, Galen and others too numerous to mention pursued their higher studies in the Nile Valley. As a classicist, Lefkowitz has to know these historical facts because the Greeks themselves recorded them! If she doesn't know, then her bona fides as a classicist is spurious. However, it is more reasonable to assume that she does, so her deep aversion to any kind of an African influence on early Greek culture has to spring from a fundamental Afrophobia that informs her whole thought.
It is possible to discredit Ms. Lefkowitz's reasoning on numerous counts. Concerning Aristotle, to insist that Aristotle never visited Egypt nor was under any significant Egyptian intellectual influence suggests strongly that she heeds to refamiliarize herself with the literature in her own field. Theophile Obenga shows in an article entitled "Aristotle and Ancient Egypt" (ANKH, vol. 2, 1993) that Aristotle, in his Meteorology, describes the topology of the Nile in a manner that leaves little doubt that he had seen in person what he was describing.
Moreover, in his Metaphysics,
Aristotle states in a completely unambiguous manner that "Egypt was the cradle of the art of mathematics." In his On The Heavens, Aristotle states furthermore that the Egyptians and Babylonians were the founders of the science of astronomy. In particular, Aristotle was admiring of the Egyptian's exceptional knowledge of the planetary conjunctions and the nature of comets. Here we find the words of Aristotle himself baldly refuting the contention of Ms. Lefkowitz that Aristotle had never visited Egypt nor had been influenced by Egypt's learning.
After about 600 B.C., when selected students such as Thales and Pythagoras began to trickle into Egypt thirsting for knowledge, the temple learning of the Nile Valley began to flow toward the northern Mediterranean in increasing volume. As Cheikh Anta Diop said, there is no Greek mathematics, philosophy, or science until after the prolonged contact with Egypt.
Even the term "philosopher," meaning "lover of wisdom," was coined by Pythagoras as a consequence of the 22 years he spent studying in the Temple of Amon at Waset (Thebes). According to Theophile Obenga (Ancient Egypt and Black Africa, 1992), the term sophos, meaning "learning" or "wisdom" has no root in the Indoeuropean language family from which Greek sprang. But Pythagoras would have studied under learned men in Egypt called sbau, from the Egyptian sba meaning "to teach" or "to instruct." The word sba became in Greek sophos, from which the term "philosophy" derives.
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