African thought: Did the Greek’s plagiarize our philosophy?

By Nzau wa Musau

Holding Africa and Egypt in particular as the legitimate origin of Western thought, the theory of stolen legacy has excited intense debate key among its proponents George G James, Henry Olela, Cheick Anta Diop and Martin Bernal just to mention but a few. The question however remains whether their claims are credible enough to prove existence of philosophy in Africa and the subsequent plagiarism by the Greeks.

By and large, the evidence they adduce point to existence of philosophy though not properly documented in Africa and particularly in ancient Egypt and its surroundings. The glory of ancient Egypt for instance, was founded on African ideas long before conquest of North Africa by the Arabs between AD 639 and AD 708.

Egypt was a product of afro-ancestral thought and all its pyramids were works of continental Africans such as pharaoh Djoser who commissioned Imhotep his grand vizier and architect of great standing into building the funerary complex at Saqqara. Obviously, Egypt’s systems, beliefs, architecture, religion, social order and political organization demanded some great measure of philosophical backing.

The famed of the Greek philosophers themselves attest to their schooling in Egypt as their source of philosophical prowess. Thales of Miletus who is considered father of Western philosophy traveled to Kemet and in fact advised his students to go to Africa to study. Deodorise Siculus, the Greek writer came and stayed at Anu in Egypt. He admitted that many who “are celebrated among the Greeks for intelligence and learning” studied in Egypt. Homer, the first Greek writer of the Iliad spent 7 years in Africa studying law, philosophy, religion, astronomy and physics. Pythagoras spent over 20 years in Africa. Interestingly, he would later be credited for mathematical theories which for a thousand years before him had been used in Egypt to calculate areas of rectangles, circles, isosceles and trapeziums.

And writing in “Bucyrus”, Socrates himself admits: “I studied philosophy and medicine in Egypt.” So famed was Egypt a centre of high learning and philosophical thought that St. Clement of Alexandria, himself a Greek would write: “If you were to write a book of 1000 pages, you could not put down names of all Greeks who went to Nile Valley in ancient Egypt to study and even those who did not go claim they did because it was prestigious.”

Besides existence of philosophy in abstract sense, Africans in Egypt practiced philosophy in their day to day life and the evidence of this is scattered in technological, scientific, craft and religious inventions evident in Egypt in pre-Socratic times. Egyptians wrote long before Europeans could. In fact, the earliest known medical books such as the Hearst Papyrus (7th dynasty, 2000BC), the Kahun Papyrus (12th & 13th dynasty, 2133-1766BC) and Ebers Papyrus (18th dynasty, 1500BC) show evidence of the practice of medicine which in itself implies scientific philosophy. They practiced medicine in birth (Caesarian Section surgical mode of delivery is attributed to Egyptians), in life (treatment of various ills and surgery) and in death (mummification of the dead). Yet 1000 years after the recorded practice of medicine in Egypt, Hippocrates would be considered as the father of medicine.

The treatment of Greek philosophers upon return from Egypt clearly indicates that the philosophy they sought to practice was alien and unpalatable to Greek tastes. Their government’s policy is proof of the ‘African-ness’ of their philosophy. Plato fled to Megara, Socrates was executed and Anaxagoras fled to Ionia. The lack of their biographical data notwithstanding, their works smacked of plagiarism and possibly from Africa where they spend considerable time. Plato’s philosophy is eclectic and point to Egypt. His conception of four virtues and even the kind of educational system he vouched for reveals, as F. Ochieng’ Odhiambo says “some compatibility with the ancient Egyptian educational system.”

In fact and according to Akinyi Princess of K’orinda-Yimbo, “Phaedros” is what he learned from the fable of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and sacred texts when he (Plato) lived in Anu (Heliopolis) under an Egyptian philosopher priest called Sechnuphis. In her work; Dark Europe and Africa’s Past- A Critical Observation of Neighboring Continents, Akinyi Princes says that while Socrates awaited his condemnation, he admitted to his students that he plagiarized work of an African philosopher Aesop, the Ethiopian (560 BC): “I availed myself some of Aesop’s fables which were ready to hand and familiar to me and I versified the first one of them which suggested itself.” His host at Megara when he fled persecution in Greece; Euclid was an African, a greatest mathematician never mind that Thomas Jefferson (who would later became US 3rd president) would many years write that “no negro could comprehend the investigations of Euclid,” that in imagination blacks are “dull, tasteless and anomalous.”

Aristotle, the most influential of the Greek philosophers to modern Europe is largely a product of the loot of great libraries of Egyptian cities and especially the great library of Alexandria which he converted into a research centre and university for education of fellow Greeks. “Aristotle, together with his students Theophratus and Eudemus took full advantage and did research at the Alexandrian library, but must have helped themselves to some texts”, says F. Ochieng’ Odhiambo.

In conclusion, Greek philosophy points to Egypt as the pedestal of intellectualism and philosophy long before Europe’s. Egypt on the other hand is a product, as Cheick Anta Diop in Negro Nations and Culture: From Negro-Egyptian Antiquity to Cultural Problems of Black Africa Today says, of heartland Africa including Ethiopia.

As I observed severally above, the stolen legacy theory merely points to existence of philosophy in Africa and in reality does not pin-point it or crystallize this pointer. It is not enough to attribute Greek philosophy to Africa without giving concrete evidence to back this up. In my own considered opinion, the stolen legacy theory succeeds in merely inferring existence of philosophy in Africa and not in essentially proving it. Much more work needs to be done to prove the practice of philosophy in antiquity Africa and before the alleged Greek theft or plagiarism.

For it to be credible, Africa will have to trace and indeed produce the works of its famed philosophers whose works, ideas are claimed to have been looted or lost. These include Imhotep (2700 BC), the first recorded physician, architect, counselor to a King; Ptahhotep (2414 BC), the first ethical philosopher who believed in harmony with nature; Kagemni (2300 BC), teacher of right action for the sake of goodness and who came 1800 years before Buddha showed up and revolutionized the Orient; Merikare (1990 BC), classical teacher of good speech; Sehotep-Ibra (1991 BC), the nationalist philosopher. Others include Amen-emhat (1991 BC), the world’s alleged first cynic, Amenhotep son of Hepu (1400 BC), the most revered of ancient Kemetic philosophers and Duauf (1340 BC), master of protocols.

If the philosophical works of these men could be found and their biographies ascertained, the stolen legacy theory would be credible in proving existence of philosophy in Africa. If philosophy is to be proven in Africa, it is not to be sought in Europe but through undivided philosophical examination of African ways, systems, beliefs, history, cultures and reasoning. Stolen or not stolen, the evidence of practice of philosophy in Africa should be very apparent even in the present if indeed it was there. If its not, a lot of questions arise.

Ends…../.