Author(s): Kendall, Timothy
Source: Africa; 1999, Vol. 69 Issue 3, p472, 2p
Document Type: Book Review
Subject(s): KUSH, the Jewel of Nubia (Book)
BOOKS
Abstract: Reviews the book `Kush, the Jewel of Nubia: Reconnecting
the Root System of African Civilization,' by Miriam Ma'at-ka're Monges.
Full Text Word Count: 769
ISSN: 00019720
Accession Number: 2605374
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REVIEWS OF BOOKS
MIRIAM MA'AT-KA-RE MONGES, Kush, the Jewel of Nubia: reconnecting the
root system of African civilization. London: Africa World Press, 1998,
212 pp., £14.99, ISBN 0 86543 529 4.
In Chapter II of her book Miriam Monges catalogues the writings of
prominent nineteenth and early twentieth-century Egyptologists and
Africanists, revealing how their contemporary racist ('Eurocentered')views affected the way they interpreted ancient Nilotic history.
Typically, scholars of that era denied or minimised the 'Africanness'
of
ancient Egyptian civilisation and considered it part of the Near East
or
Mediterranean; Nubian civilisation they considered merely an offshoot
of
the Egyptian. These civilisations could never have been created by
'true
Africans'--specifically, 'black Africans'--because, as some asserted,
such people were inferior by nature and incapable of high cultural
achievement. Today such words are painful for all of us to read.
Although such views are no longer held by respected 'white' scholars,
many people of African descent, like Ms Monges, have justifiably
questioned the validity of Egyptology, Nubiology and African studies as
erected by 'Eurocentric' scholarship. For them the racial prejudice
that
has sought to marginalise 'black' African peoples and deprive them of a
distinguished past stands as proof of the continued tyranny of the
'white establishment'. Like many black intellectuals in America, Ms
Monges has thus embraced an alternative approach to ancient African
studies, called 'Afrocentrism', which she believes is the key to
'emancipating' African history.
Afrocentrism is a discipline that espouses belief in African unity and
cultural primacy in antiquity and recasts African history in
contemporary American racial-political terms. Its adherents have
declared war on the old 'Eurocentric' models--as if they are still
being
promoted--and have made their front line the ancient Nile valley. To
the
Afrocentrists it is a straggle for ownership of Egypt's--and now
Nubia's--past. As restated by Ms Monges, the principal tenets of
Afrocentrism are: Egypt and Nubia are African civilisations; their
peoples are 'Africans'. Egyptian civilisation originated in Nubia, and
it was later revived by the Nubian kings of Dynasty 25. Cush and Egypt
shared common ancestors and many 'cultural indices'. The Greek
('Eurocentric') term 'Egypt' must be replaced by the original Egyptianname Kemet (the 'Black Land'), which described the dominant race of the
people; the Nile cataracts must be renumbered so that the first is the
one deepest inside Africa, etc. Naturally, with such a credo, the
Afrocentrists have only become more isolated from the 'mainstream'--and
more ingrown.
It is clear from the title of Ms Monges's book and from her contrived
middle name--the throne name of Queen Hatshepsut--that hers is no
objective, dispassionate work. Chapter I, 'Ancestral beginnings', makes
it clear that she believes her own roots lie beside the Nile, where she
meets Nubians with 'beautiful coal black skin', whom she recognises as
'brothers and sisters'. Such personalising would be silly or absurd in
a
comparable work by a 'white' scholar, but for many African-Americans,
so
long disenfranchised by 'Eurocentred' historians, discovering African
history is a highly personal journey in search of oneself.
It is a problem of the Afrocentric movement today--and a serious
problem
with Ms Monges's book--that the Afrocentrists are generally unaware of
the current research trends in mainstream Egyptology and Nubiology.
Surely there is no 'white scholar' today who would deny the Africanness
of the Nubian civilisation, and Ms Monges could have consulted many
works, long in print, by non-African scholars that would have
demonstrated the point in greater depth and detail than she has done in
chapters III-VIII. Although she advocates uncritically Bruce Williams's
theory of the Nubian origin of Egyptian kingship in Predynastic times,
she fails to discuss the Egyptianisation of Nubia during the New
Kingdom, as if the idea of 'civilising influences' flowing from north
to
south is something to be left unsaid, lest it give offence to her
readers. Nor does she show any awareness or appreciation of the
brilliant pre-Egyptian Bronze Age Nubian culture of Kerma or its
antecedents.
The one lesson Ms Monges and the other Afrocentrists might have learned
from their quite justifiable critique of the Eurocentrists is that
those
who seek to write history or to conduct archaeology must identify and
transcend their own biases before trying to comprehend the past when an
entirely different set of biases and values would have been operative.
Unfortunately they have simply repeated the mistake of the
Eurocentrists. Good history writing requires that we take ourselves and
our politics out of the past and that we desentimentalise,
depersonalise
and depolemicise the past, looking not for what we want to be there but
for what is really there.
~~~~~~~~
By Timothy Kendall, Boston