1 Quoted in Bruce Trigger, `Nubian, Negro, Black, Nilotic?', in Sylvia Hochfield and Elizabeth Riefstahl (eds), Africa in Antiquity: the arts of Nubia and the Sudan, Vol. 1 ( New York, Brooklyn Museum , 1978).
2.
2 Edith R. Sanders, `The Hamitic hypothesis: its origin and functions in time perspective' , Journal of African History (Vol. 10, no. 4, 1969), pp. 521-532 .
3.
3 As quoted by Shomarka Keita, `Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships' , History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), p. 145 .
4.
4 Sanders, op. cit., p. 521. Repudiating Seligman's outrageous comments is hardly necessary but, as Trigger drily states, `The idea that pastoralists, rather than agriculturalists, were creators and disseminators of a high culture was a curious one, which has been flatly denied as a cultural historical principle elsewhere'. See Trigger, op. cit.
5.
5 Cheikh Anta Diop, Nations Nègres et Culture (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1954). The African Origin of Civilization: myth or reality? (Chicago, IL, Lawrence Hill Books, 1974) consists largely of selections from Nations Nègres et Culture and Anteriorité des Civilizations Nègres: mythe ou verité historique? (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1967).
6.
6 Cheikh Anta Diop, `Preface: the meaning of our work', in The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. xii.
7.
7 Cheikh Anta Diop, `Evolution of the Negro world', Présence Africaine (Vol. 23, no. 51, 1964), pp. 5-15.
8.
8 Wyatt MacGaffey, `Concepts of race in the historiography of northeast Africa' , Journal of African History (Vol. VII, no. I, 1966), pp. 1-17 .
9.
9 Ibid., p. 4
10.
10 Ibid., pp. 11, 16.
11.
11 Sanders, op. cit. Basil Davidson traces the first sustained attack on the Hamitic hypothesis to Joseph Greenberg's 1963 text The Languages of Africa. While Sanders' was not the first attack on the Hamitic hypothesis (see, for example, Diop), her argument against it seems to be the first that gained wide scholarly acceptance. See Basil Davidson, `The ancient world and Africa: whose roots?', Race & Class (Vol. 29, no. 2, 1987).
12.
12 Sanders, op. cit., p. 531.
13.
13 Davidson, op. cit.
14.
14 Trigger, op. cit.
15.
15 Ibid., p. 28
16.
16 Ibid., pp. 27, 35. It should be noted that Trigger approvingly cites Diop's comments on the fiction of the platonic concept of `ideal' races.
17.
17 Joyce Rensberger, `Nubia: discovering an ancient African civilization' , Washington Post (10 May 1995).
18.
18 J. D. Fage, A History of Africa ( London, Hutchinson , 1978).
19.
19 Ibid., p. 34.
20.
20 Davidson, op. cit.
21.
21 This quote was attributed by the rapporteur to M. Glélé, the representative of the Director General of UNESCO. See annex to Chapter 1, `Report of the symposium on “The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script” ', in G. Mokhtar (ed.), General History of Africa Vol. II: ancient civilizations of Africa (London, James Currey, 1990), abridged version. All quotations are taken from this version.
22.
Jan Vansina, `UNESCO and African historiography' , History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), pp. 337-352 .
23.
23 Rapporteur's comment, op. cit.
24.
24 Jean Vercoutter at the 1974 UNESCO conference. Quoted in Shomarka Keita, `Communications' , American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1355-1356 .
25.
25 Rapporteur's comment in Mokhtar, op. cit., p. 43.
26.
26 For Diop's contribution, see Cheikh Anta Diop, `Origin of the ancient Egyptians', in Mokhtar, op. cit.
27.
27 Rapporteur's comment in Mokhtar, op. cit., p. 49.
28.
28 All quotes from ibid., pp. 45, 49, 46.
29.
29 Ibid., p. 51.
30.
30 Ibid., p. 56.
31.
31 Martin Bernal, Black Athena: the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilisations Vol. I: the fabrication of ancient Greece 1785-1985 ( London, Vintage , 1987), pp. 241-242. Of the three volumes originally projected, volumes 1 and 2 have been published to date.
32.
32 Jasper Griffin, `Who are these coming to the sacrifice?', New York Review of Books (15 June 1989).
33.
33 Martin Bernal, `Black Athena and the APA', in Arethusa special issue, The Challenge of `Black Athena' (Vol. 22, 1989). Bernal followed this statement by quoting the paragraph reproduced here.
34.
34 Glen Bowerstock, `Review of Black Athena, vol. 1' , Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Vol. 19, 1989), pp. 490-491 .
35.
35 Bernal, Black Athena I, op. cit., p. 242, emphasis in original.
36.
36 David H. Kelley, `Egyptians and Ethiopians: color, race and racism' , The Classical Outlook (Vol. 68, 1991), p. 77 .
37.
S. O. Y. Keita, `Black Athena: “race”, Bernal and Snowden' , Arethusa (Vol. 26, 1993), pp. 295-314 .
38.
38 John Baines, `Was civilization made in Africa?' , New York Times Book Review (11 August 1991).
39.
39 Shomarka Keita mentions the absurdity of Baines's position in Keita, `Black Athena: “race”, Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
40.
40 Peter A. Young, `Was Nefertiti black?' , Archaeology (Vol. 45, no. 5, September/October 1992).
41.
41 Ibid.
42.
42 Kathryn A. Bard, `Ancient Egyptians and the issue of race', in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers (eds), Black Athena Revisited ( Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press , 1996).
43.
43 C. Loring Brace, with David P. Tracer, Lucia Allen Yaroch, John Rabb, Kari Brandt and A. Russell Nelson, `Clines and clusters versus “race”: a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile', in Lefkowitz and Rogers, op. cit., p. 150.
44.
44 Bard, op. cit., p. 104.
45.
45 Ibid., p. 111.
46.
46 Brace et al., op. cit.
47.
47 Ibid., p. 153.
48.
48 Ibid., pp. 130, 131.
49.
49 Ibid., pp. 140, 145.
50.
50 See here Richard Poe's excellent discussion of this issue in Black Spark, White Fire: did African explorers civilize ancient Europe? ( NY, Prima Publishing , 1997).
51.
51 Brace et al., op. cit., p. 148.
52.
52 Ali Rattansi and Sallie Westwood (eds), Racism, Modernity and Identity: on the western front ( Cambridge, Polity Press , 1994).
53.
53 See S.O.Y. Keita and Rick A. Kittles, `The persistence of racial thinking and the myth of racial divergence' , American Anthropologist (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 534-544 .
54.
54 Brace et. al., op. cit., p. 156.
55.
55 For Bernal's assessment of Blumenbach, see Black Athena I.
56.
Kush. (Race & Class (Vol. 26, no. 3 1985).)
57.
57 Bernal, Black Athena I, op. cit., p. 436. This comment has given Bernal's opponents plenty of ammunition with which to attack him, see Jasper Griffin, `Anxieties of influence', New York Review of Books (20 June 1996).
58.
58 Frank M. Snowden, Jr., `Bernal's “Blacks” and the Afrocentrists', in Lefkowitz and Rogers (eds), op. cit.
59.
59 Ibid., p. 115.
60.
60 Emily Vermeule, `The world turned upside down', New York Review of Books (26 March 1992), pp. 40-3. For Shomarka Keita's comments, see his article, `Black Athena: “race”, Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
61.
61 An argument made by some early twentieth-century quick-wits in their re-reading of the French Revolution.
63 Robert Young, `Egypt in America: Black Athena, racism and colonial discourse', in Westwood, and Rattansi (eds), op. cit.
64.
64 F. J. Yurco, `Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?' , Biblical Archeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989), pp. 24-29, 58.
65.
65 Bruce Williams, `The lost pharaohs of Nubia', in Ivan van Sertima (ed.), Egypt Revisited ( New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction , 1993).
66.
`Further studies of crania from ancient northern African crania' American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Vol. 87, 1992), pp. 245-254 .
67.
Robert Pounder's article appeared as `Black Athena II: history without rules' , American Historical Review (April 1992).
68.
68 Keita, `Communications', op. cit. Emphasis in original.
69.
69 Robert Pounder, `Communications,' American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1356-1357 .
70.
70 Shomarka Keita, `Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships' , History in Africa (Vol. 20, 1993), pp. 129-130 .
71.
71 Ibid., p. 143.
72.
72 Ibid., pp. 130, 147, 134, 143.
73.
73 Ibid., p. 138.
74.
74 Ibid., pp. 145, 150.
75.
75 Keita, `Black Athena: “race”, Bernal and Snowden', op. cit.
76.
76 Ibid., p. 298.
77.
77 Martin Bernal, `Response to S.O.Y. Keita' , Arethusa (Vol. 26, no. 3, 1993), pp. 315-319 .
78.
78 Shomarka Keita, `Is studying Egypt in its African context `Afrocentric'?' in Were the Achievements of Ancient Greece Borrowed from Africa? Proceedings from a Seminar sponsored by the Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage, Georgetown University, 16 November 1996. Other contributors to this conference included Mary Lefkowitz, Deborah Boedeker, Erich Martel, Stanley Burstein, James D. Muhly, Jay Jasanoff and Frank Yurco.
79.
79 Ibid., pp. 37, 39-40, 43, 46.
80.
pp. 534, 540 .
81.
81 It should be noted that there is no evidence that Keita was influenced by Diop's scholarship.
82.
82 Theodore Celenko (ed.), Egypt in Africa ( Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana University Press , 1996), p. 17.
83.
83 Ancient Egypt is usually taught either as a separate discipline or amalgamated in a `Near Eastern Studies' department. Rarely is it linked with African studies, a bias that extends to exhibitions in museums.
84.
84 Celenko, op. cit.
85.
85 Christopher Ehret, `Ancient Egyptian as an African language, Egypt as an African culture', in Celenko, op. cit. Also see Ehret's recent contribution to African studies, An African Classical Age: eastern and southern Africa in world history ( University Press of Virginia , 1998).
86.
86 Fekri A. Hassan, `The predynastic of Egypt: Africa's prelude to civilization', in Celenko, op. cit.
87.
87 John Ray, `The Mesopotamian influence on ancient Egyptian writing' in Celenko, op. cit., p. 38.
88.
88 Frank Yurco, `The origins and development of ancient Nile valley writing' in Celenko, op. cit., p. 35.
89.
Carole Boyce Davies, `Beyond unicentricity: transcultural black presences' , Research in African Literatures (Vol. 30, no. 2, summer 1999).
90.
Bruce Williams, `The Qustul incense burner and the case for a Nubian origin of ancient Egyptian kingship', in Celenko, op. cit.; Joseph W. Wegner, `Interaction between the Nubian A-group and predynastic Egypt: the significance of the Qustul incense burner', in Celenko, op. cit.
91.
91 J. McKim Malville, Fred Wendorf, Ali A Mazar and Romauld Schild `Megaliths and Neolithic astronomy in southern Egypt' , Nature (Vol. 392, no. 2, April 1998).
92.
92 Leonard Lieberman, `Gender and the deconstruction of the race concept' , American Anthropology (Vol. 99, no. 3, 1997), pp. 545-558 .
93.
93 Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. 236.
94.
94 Diop certainly was not averse to representing ancient Egyptians as uniformly `jet black' when it suited him, see his `Origin of the ancient Egyptians' in Ivan van Sertima, op. cit.
95.
95 The editor of Egypt in Africa uses this term to describe the ancient Egyptian populations, while stating that the terms `black' and `white' are inappropriate for populations that had no concept of race, a position that I agree with. What is tiresome, however, is the inability of many scholars to understand, or to identify, the power that the phrase `the Egyptians were black' has for many African-Americans, in the context of a racist, Eurocentric society, and indeed, to use Lewis Gordon's phrase, an `anti-black' world.
96.
96 John Iliffe, Africans: the history of a continent (Cambridge, CUP, 1995), p. 26. Iliffe was responding to Diop's declaration that `Egyptian culture is to African culture what Greco-Roman antiquity is to Western culture'. Iliffe goes on to give reasons for this apparent lack of influence which include the particularity of the culture to the Nile valley, and the desiccation of the Sahara, which he sees as an impermeable barrier. This is little more than Fage revisited in the 1990s.
97.
O'Connor has emerged as one of the major historians of Nubia, see Ancient Nubia: Egypt's rival in Africa. ( Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press , 1994).
98.
98 The phrase is Basil Davidson's. See Basil Davidson, `The ancient world and Africa: whose roots?' Race & Class (Vol. 29, no. 2, 1987).
99.
99 Michael Rice, Egypt's Making: the origins of ancient Egypt, 5000-2000 BC ( London, Routledge , 1991).
100.
Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (Vol. 82, 1998).
101.
101 Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. xvii.
