Classicists of the 18th and 19th centuries European Enlightenment, were inspired by intellectual ideas and the democratic principles of ancient Greece. This awareness combined with the French Revolution heaped the praises of Greece in books, schools, and universities. They adopted their political aspirations and the art and architecture that were so well admired and acclaimed.
Were they wilfully ignorant or wilfully blind?
If they knew their Greek well, they must have heard of their famous historian Herodotus who visited Egypt in 454 BC. So amazed and astounded by what he saw in Egypt he dedicated his second book of his three works on “Histories”. He witnessed 3000 years of civilisation and made his famous and widespread observation that “Egypt is the Gift of the Nile”. He looked at such an advanced world and declared that the beginning of civilisation comes from Egypt, calling it the “cradle of civilization” — a less famous quote. On both points he was right. However, a third observation that Egyptians were Ethiopians, Herodotus was fundamentally misguided. On this matter all experts claim there is no trace of Ethiopian culture, language or artefacts.
Why has the West forgotten, or ignored that Herodotus named Egypt the cradle of civilisation?
Out of the halls of Academia a sole voice was heard claiming that Greece civilisation is derived from Egypt. Pandemonium broke out, but he stood his ground.
Professor Martin Bernal, a Brit and a Jew, went on an academic expedition in search of his roots. That led him to a four-volume series of books titled Black Athena. Pandemonium indeed. Stating that Greek civilisation came out of a vacuum, developed solely as an indigenous European culture, but was founded upon significant roots from Egypt. Bernal argued that these influences were deliberately downplayed or erased by Western Academia in the 18th and 19th centuries, due to racism and Eurocentrism.
A primary motivation for his work was to challenge the idea of a “pure” European intellectual heritage; above all to acknowledge the debt Western civilisation owes to African and Asian cultures.
For some, there was a sigh of relief, an expressed sense of gratitude, for most, all hell broke loose. Bernal’s beliefs generated an intense controversy among purists. The debate across various academic fields was hot and angry, including the classics, archaeology, linguistics, and history. They huffed and puffed, claiming one excuse or another to preserve their lily- white civilisation, unsullied by Africa or Africans.
Bernal himself adopted Herodotus’ mistaken theory that Egyptians were Ethiopians. His feud with Robert Bianchi of the Metropolitan Museum is but a childish temper tantrum that Greece has no relation to the Pharaohs, a naïve concept as Bernal states, “of racists and anitisemitics”.
Even Oxford and Harvard universities are in a red-hot debate over the role that Egypt played in shaping the “glory that was Greece”.
Concerning the most famous Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, the boy king Tutankhamen, you can rest assured. Geneticists in Zurich-based DNA Genealogy: IGNEA has reconstructed the DNA profile of King Tut and has been identified as belonging to “Y-DNA haplogroup R1b 1a2” a group that is also found in over 50 per cent of men in Western Europe. An overwhelming number of 70 per cent British men share King Tut’s DNA. It is believed that this originated in the Black Sea region around 9,500 years ago, indicating they share a common ancestor.
It is unmistakable that Egypt’s influence over the Greeks, the Romans, and others is plain as day, no ifs ands or buts. Whether Cleopatra, Socrates or King Tut are pink, white or black is irrelevant — it is their legacies that live through the ages.
Consider the monuments of Egypt. They comprise one third of the world’s monuments according to UNESCO. What about the great museums of the world? Apart from the recently launched Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, what other museums hold as many artefacts? The British Museum holds 100,000 artefacts of Egypt, though not all are displayed for the public. The Louvre Museum has 50,000 artefacts from ancient Egypt. The Metropolitan Museum has a similar number. No decent museum cannot include an Egyptian section to boast of.
Have the Western intellectuals taken notice?
Have you heard of Egyptology? It is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. Its history, art, architecture, languages, astronomy, mythology, religion, medicine studied at many universities, is a pride to Egypt.
If everyday use of Western traditions is of Egyptian origin, consider medical practices and natural remedies you may still use in your daily routine, like your herbal medicine.
Surgeries are practised every hour by Westerners using sutures for closing wounds. The first recorded use of surgical sutures come from ancient Egypt around 3000 BC, now evolved from flax and animal sinew to modern synthetics. We can tell you of a variety of surgical tools remarkably similar to their modern counterparts, still used today.
We can tell you of Aspirin or Morphine, or the use of honey, mint or garlic. Better still, tell you of Egyptian perfumes that dazzled the Greeks, the Romans and all of the West and the East combined. Those fragrances are the closest Egyptian discovery you use all day.
We would never deny the Glory of Greece. Just a reminder that before the glory of Greece came the glory of Egypt — the cradle of civilisation.
“I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and I have the power to be born a second time.”
Book of the Dead (1550-50 BC)
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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