Although Ancient Egypt, whose glorious past, well organized dynasties, sophisticated civilization, rich art, science and superb architecture are well known, European historians have, until recently, always insisted on leaving ancient Egypt out their studies of African history because they claim that its people were never part of black Africa.

The Egyptians of Pharaohnic times, it is argued, were not Negroes; they were therefore not Africans, meaning that their civilization, no matter how firmly implanted it was on African soil, or how deeply immersed it was in African mythology, it should not be included in the African context.

This is a patently clear indication of how long Europeans have been in denial about Africa’ immeasurable contribution to the world in every known sphere of life’s endeavours.

In his scholarly and important book, Africa in History, this is how Basil Davidson, a white Zimbabwean, dismisses this perception: “It has become clear that the familiar attribution of the term ‘white’ to North African stocks (as of the term ‘black’ to other African stocks) is really little more than another mystification of the racist sort. All such categorizations should be dismissed. Consider only the strange case of the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis,’ another myth dear to the epoch of imperialism.

“In countless books and lectures it was preached that any signs of past progress detectable among Africans must have been the fruit of outside intrusion, of intrusion from the north: more exactly of ‘white’ intrusion from Europe.

“This derivative form of the ‘Africans-have- no civilization’ myth was best offered in a scientific guise by a British anthropologist, C.G. Seligman, in a book of 1929 (The Races of Africa), much admired then and after.”

On the insistence by European historians that the people of Ancient Egypt were not black Africans, this is what Davidson has to say: “This view has little to be said for it. If it now seems perfectly clear that the vast majority of pre-dynastic Egyptians were of continental African stock, and even of central-western Saharan origins, there is likewise serious dispute among the authorities even as to whether the hypothetical ‘dynastic race’ associated with the foundation of Pharaonic Egypt had come from outside Africa.

“These early populations undoubtedly included the descendants of incoming immigrants from the Near East. But to argue from this that the vast majority of the inhabitants of old Egypt, not being ‘Negro’, were therefore not African is as little tenable as to argue the same about the Berbers and the Ethiopians, whom nobody has yet proposed to erase from the list of African peoples.

“The old racist categories of ‘white’ and ‘black’ can indeed make no sense in this or perhaps any other connection. Thus the Berbers have been often referred to as a ‘white race.’

“Yet it is ‘quite impossible’, in Capot-Rey’s most expert view, ‘to speak of a Berber race. Either one means, in using this term, a language spoken with much the same grammar and vocabulary from the Mediterranean to the Niger, or one means a moral and material civilization.’ Whatever their pigmentation, or physical appearance, the Egyptians of Pharaonic times were an intimate part of African history.”

Excerpted from an article by Olley Maruma for The Southern Times

Siwa, which in Berber signifies “prey bird”, is known to have been settled since at least the 10th millennium BC, its Ancient Egyptian name, Sekht-am, meaning “Palm Land”. This oasis, about 80km long and 20km wide, located nearly 50km east of the Libyan border between the Qattara Depression and the Egyptian Sand Sea, is in fact home to some 23,000 Amazigh Berbers, who form a separate ethnic group with a distinct language identified as taSiwit, a relative of what is heard in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Berber communities in parts of Niger and Mali. Interestingly, Amazigh means “free people”, and the Siwans have remained just that.

There is history slapping your modernly-comfortable mind at every turn; there are fox tracks around your sleeping bag in the morning; there are dead salt lakes sustaining life all around them; there are dunes that make you scream at the top of your lungs as your stomach jumps on ever- rising crests of sand; there are people who make you forget that you are in Egypt just by greeting each other good morning; there is olive jam and couscous; there are women who walk the streets all wrapped in blue embroidered veils; and others who skid down dunes on sandboards; there are dead bodies buried everywhere; there are sea shells in the middle of the desert; there is mint tea; there are stars elbowing one another for a spot in the night sky; there is the Temple of the Oracle.

Legend has it that Alexander reached the oasis guided by birds across the desert for, insecure about his status as divine king, he made the long journey seeking the divination of the Temple of the Oracle of Amen before he set out on his conquest in Persia. The oracle, whose answer he was exceptionally allowed by the priests to receive in person thanks to his status, is said to have confirmed his query and cleared his mind regarding another which has remained a mystery until this day.

The revelations of the oracle fell into disrepute under the Roman occupation of Egypt, however, and the Romans eventually used the oasis as a place of banishment. This development seems perfectly logical, since Siwa’s remoteness — precisely the factor that helped its people maintain their identity — is also the reason why visitors feel they have stepped out of a time capsule into a different era, which translates into complete abandon and relaxation.

Excerpted from an article by Injy El-Kashef for Al-Ahram Weekly