L-R: Professors Hope Eghagha, HOD; JP Clark, his wife, Ebun, Mr Ogeah, representing former Delta Gov, Emmanuel Uduaghan and others including G G Darah

The Grand Temples in ancient Egypt were those of Luxor, the Temple of Carnak, and the Temple of Delphi. “As mighty as the Temple of Luxor was” says James, “it was exceeded in magnitude and grandeur by that of Carnak. The distance between these two great structures was a mile and a half. Along this avenue was a double row of Sphinxes, placed twelve feet apart, and the width of the avenue was sixty feet. When in perfect state this avenue represented the most extraordinary entrance that the world has even seen. If we had the power to picture from the field of imagination the grand processions of Neophytes constantly passing through and taking part in the ceremonies of Initiation, we would be powerless to produce the grandeur of the surroundings, and the imposing sight of colour and magnificent trappings of those who took part. Neither can we produce the music that kept the vast number of people in steady marching order. Crude it might have been to the cultivated ear of the 20th century. But could not the palpitating strain sung by the massed voices on the lapse of time, whose history launches the profoundest aspirations of the human heart, like the trend of mighty river, because the grand currents of Universal Law, imparting the desire to the Shadowy Past, as it steps forth from the pages of history, dim with age?…(p. 34).

The African moral values encompassed by the academic disciplines and physical infrastructure described above have survived into modern times all over the world. As Professor Onyewuenyi remarks,

These values were adopted by the Greek scholars who were
educated in Egypt under the priests of the Mystery System.
This is evidenced by Plato’s recommendations for the
education of the philosopher-king; his ‘Divided Line’ and
Allegory of the Cave. Today higher institutions of learning
in Europe and America cling to these African values in drawing
up their curriculum. The three levels of man’s experience towards
perfection are adopted as fundamental principles in practically
all the religions and secret societies such as the Knights of
Columbus of the Roman Catholic Church, the Freemasons, Elks,
and others in Europe and America. It is interesting to note that
the pyramid and the eye, ancient Egyptian symbols, are still to
be seen on the Great Seal of the United States of America and
the dollar bill (pp. 55 – 56).

Relying on Professor James’ work, Onyewuenyi concludes the Black Egyptian origin of all the traditions of learning and scholarship in the ancient world. This assertion was necessary because of attempts by Eurocentric racists to deny the black African sources of the vast fields of knowledge examined so far. According to Onyewuenyi,

The written testimony of Greek philosophers, scientists, and
historians all support the claim that philosophy and other
disciplines originated in Egypt. The great role – intellectual,
theoretical, practical and material – that Egypt played in shaping
the glory that was Greek has been revealed. The very words of
the so-called pillars of Greek philosophy, Thales, Plato, Aristotle,
Pythagoras, and Hippocrates make it clear that they sought
instruction at the feet of Egyptian philosopher-priests. The stamp
of historical confirmation has been put on these claims by
respected ancient Greek and Western historians such as
Herodotus, the father of history, Isocrates, Plutarch, and
Diogenes Laertius. They have recorded that philosophy –
king of subjects considered an intellectual field for the ‘better’
minds of the Caucasoid race, but not one blacks were considered
capable of mastering – originated in Egypt after all. George G. M.
James’ words are appropriate here, “The Greeks were not the
authors of Greek Philosophy but the people of North Africa
commonly called the Egyptians (p.56).

The humanities and sciences originated, developed, and refined by ancient Black Africans have been spread through the agencies of human migration and adaptation to all continents of the world in the past 5,000 years. From their native sources of the Nile Valley civilizations, the ideas, ideals, and structure of the humanities have fertilized creativity and innovation across the millennia. The Nile Valley civilizations associated with Egypt lasted tor about 3,000 years under black thinkers, philosophers, engineers, and administrators. History records that from the initial united Kingdom of Egypt under Menes in 3020 B.C. there were 26 Dynasties. For most of the era, black kings were in charge except after the conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. when the Greek General, Ptolemy established his regime. The Greek rulers after him had to marry black Egyptian women in order to be able to govern. When the Roman rule started. Several decades before the birth of Jesus, Emperors, Generals Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony could not resist marrying Queen Cleopatra, the last African Pharaoh of Egypt.

That long history of Egyptian greatness and dominance in the ancient world was hallmarked by the emergence of geniuses and innovators to whom the world is indebted for the civilizations that humanity has enjoyed. We have already given the example of Imhotep during the Fourth Dynasty about 5,000 years ago who excelled in the sciences of medicine, architecture, philosophy, and literary arts. The regimes of the Thutmoses from the Eighteenth Dynasty saw Egypt spread, through conquest, to all the then known ancient world of what is now the Middle East. Thutmose III is described by J.A. Rogers as the first nation builder and internationalist in history. At the height of its glory, Egypt had about 100 external colonies in the Middle East and Europe

The geniuses in political engineering and administration included King Akhenaton who became Pharaoh at 17. He so abominated the material corruption of the Temple priests exhibited through the worship of multiple gods during his father’s reign that his first royal ordinance on coming to power was to decree the worship of one god (monotheism). When Akhenaton made this law about 1,350 B.C. the Jewish immigrants were resident in Egypt. Contrary to the folklore in the Bible, the Jewish exiles were not held in captivity. They voluntarily migrated to Egypt to enjoy the privileges of education and security of life afforded by the regimes of the Pharaohs. The land of the Jews was impoverished and famished and they lived on it as herdsmen and nomads. By that time civilization had flourished in Egypt for about 2,000 years. It was therefore the desire of the impoverished Jews to seek to be connected with Black Egypt and they sold slaves to merchants from there.

As the biblical account shows, Joseph the dreamer was one of the first to be sold into slavery by his envious brothers. Joseph was beloved of his Egyptian masters and he received good education that earned him the prestigious position of Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, even advancing to the halcyon position almost equivalent to that of a deputy Pharaoh. Following Joseph’s good fortunes, more Jewish migrants went to Egypt. The Jewish immigrants stayed for 400 years in Egypt. They were not captives of war and they were not tortured or deliberately exploited as the Old Testament account misinforms us. In fact, by the time the Jewish communities settled in Egypt about 1600 B.C., the building of the pyramids and other gargantuan public structures had been completed. As Professor Diop has pointed out, about 12 Jewish immigrants first settled in Egypt; they lived and multiplied there for four centuries and by the time of their Exodus under the leadership of Moses, the population was 675,000. Note that the Egyptian government had capacity to enumerate all the foreigners who left the kingdom.

As already pointed out, the Jewish immigrants were in Egypt when Pharaoh Akhenaton initiated the theology of monotheism. It would appear that the immigrants admired the idea of serving a single god and monotheism was one of the enduring ideas they took from the land of Egypt. The Jewish returnees also copied the Egyptian monarchical system of government; soon after they got back to Judah they asked God to give them a king like the Egyptian pharaoh. Saul was the first, followed by David and his son, Solomon. Like the scholar-pharaohs of Egypt, David and Solomon were famous for composing psalms and songs (poetry).

Egyptian education also produced Moses. He was an Initiate of the Egyptian Mystery System at the age of seven. Professor James has a helpful account of this process:

All the great religious leaders from Moses to Christ were Initiates
of the Egyptian Mysteries.
This is an inference from the nature of the Egyptian Mysteries and
prevailing custom:
(a) The Egyptian Mystery System was the one Holy catholic Religion
of the remotest antiquity.
(b) It was one and only Masonic Order of Antiquity, and as such,
(c) It built the Grand Lodge of Luxor in Egypt and encompassed the
ancient world with its branch lodges.
(d) It was the first University of history and it made knowledge a
secret, so that all who desired to become Priests and Teachers
had to obtain their training from the Mystery System, either
locally at the branch lodge or by travelling to Egypt.
We know that Moses became and Egyptian Priest, a Hierogrammat,
and that Christ after attending the lodge at Mount Camel (Palestine)
went to Egypt for Final Initiation, which took place in the Great
Pyramid of Cheops (Khuffu). Other religious leaders obtained their
preparation from lodges most convenient to them (Stolen Legacy,
p. 178).

Nigeria’s Benin-born Egyptologist, NaiwuOsahon adds more details about Moses in his book, The Cradle: The Ultimate Cosmology – Healing the Mind, Body and Soul (Lagos: Heritage Books, 1998). Osahon argues that Moses was a prince of Pharaoh Seti born out of wedlock, adding that “Pharaoh Seti and his daughter contrived the abandoned baby in a basket scenario to have the opportunity to look after Moses in the palace without moral stigma” (p. 63). Continuing Osahon observes that,

Moses went into the Lodge (the Mystery System) at age 7 and could
not have come out until aged 47 because it required 40 years to train
as a priest in all the disciplines. Moses then spent a few years in
Ethiopia…

Moses became the spokesman for the Hebrews and introduced
them to a monotheistic type of religion which he had learned as
an Egyptian priest from the teachings of Akhenaton. Moses appears
to have first preached his religious adaptation to the Egyptians who
considered him a fake and largely ignored him. He then turned to
the Hebrews who were more receptive. Moses skilfully modified
Akhenaton’s monotheism to fit his Hebrew followers. Moses pledged
the Hebrews to one God… (pp. 64 – 65).

The intellectual rigour of multidisciplinary training undergone by Moses is confirmed by the editors of Modern World History: Patterns of Interaction
(Boston: McDougal Little Inc., 2001):

Moses is considered by many to be the greatest figure in Jewish
history. He was a diplomat, a law maker, a political organiser, and
a military leader, as well as a judge and religious leader. The
Hebrew Scriptures record that Moses led the Hebrews out of
slavery in Egypt, perhaps between 1300 and 1200 B.C.

It is known that Moses produced the 10 Commandments that constitute the moral anchor of the religion of Judaism. It is logical to say that Moses derived his ideas about the 10 Commandments from the virtues and moral mandates he learned as an Initiate of the Egyptian Mystery System. The theology of Judaism was developed by the Hebrew people about 700 years after the return of their exiles from Egypt. Judaism benefited from the knowledge the Hebrew got from Egypt. The influence of Black Egyptian philosophy on Judaism and Christianity is attested to by Diop, especially in the relation to the concept of post-mortem trial and residence in paradise:

The religion of Osiris is the first, in the history of humanity, to invent
the notions of paradise and hell. Two thousand years before Moses
and three thousand years before Christ, Osiris, the personification of
the Good, was already residing over the judgement of the dead in the
world beyond the grave, wearing on his head the Atew or Atef. If the
dead person during his terrestrial life satisfied the sufficient moral
criteria that are too many to enumerate here, he gained the Aaru or
Aar, a garden protected with an iron wall with several gates and a
river running through it (Civilization or Barbarism, p. 331).

Judaism is an adaptation of ancient Egyptian philosophy and myths. The creation story in the book of Genesis is a recreation of Egyptian myths of creation. The biblical story of Cain and Abel is a variety of the Egyptian story of Osiris and Seth known more two thousand years before the Bible was composed. Seth is sterile and kills Osiris, the god of plenty and agriculture. Osiris rises to the status of a saviour god or god of salvation. The notion of death and resurrection is central to the theology of Christianity. Diop’s description throws some light on the similarities:

Osiris is the god who three thousand years before Christ dies and
rises from the dead to save men. He is humanity’s god of
redemption; He ascends to heaven to sit at the right hand of his
father, the great god Ra. He is the son of God. In The Book of the
Dead, it is said fifteen hundred years before Christ: “This is the
flesh of Osiris”. Dionysus, Osiris’s replica in the northern
Mediterranean will say five hundred years before Christ:
“Drink, this is my blood, eat this is my flesh” (p. 312).

It is clear from these references that the rites of death and resurrection celebrated in the Christian Easter season are re-enactments of traditional festivals already known in ancient Egypt and other Nile Valley cultures.

Sunset for the Egyptian Mystery System:

Through the millennia of the dominance in world history and culture of the Nile Valley civilizations, there were no peoples or nations known as Europeans.
After about 3,000 years the Egyptian system was overwhelmed through conquest by better organised nations. First were the Assyrians, followed by the Persians. In 333 B.C. Alexander the Great for Macedonia invaded and conquered Egypt. He established the Greek or Hellenic regime. Aristotle of Greece had been the tutor of the young Alexander and he accompanied his pupil to the conquest in the hope to loot libraries and temples. As Onyewuenyi reports, “the temples and libraries of the great cities of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis were looted and sacred books and manuscripts carried off to Macedonia and Athens…Hence, Aristotle possessed thousands of papyri dealing with philosophy and other subjects which were to appear in the Aristotelian corpus” (p.157). Professor Diop shows that Aristotle was made the rector of the Royal Library in Alexandria which they turned into a research centre and later a university. Aristotle closed down his school in Athens and asked the students to join him in the copying of Egyptian books. This act of intellectual piracy accounts for the “miracle” of about 400 books being ascribed to Aristotle who lived for only 62 years!

The Roman empire succeeded that of the Greeks. The Romans inherited the knowledge systems of Africa and the Greeks. The General Julius Caesar who conquered Egypt was so enamoured of the high culture and grandeur of the Africans that he had to marry Queen Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt. The marriage produced one son, Caeserius. Jesus of the Jews was born when the Romans were ruling Egypt and the Middle East nations. Judea was a colony of Rome. Anthropological research has shown that the family of Jesus had black African roots in Egypt. When the Roman governor, Herod, ordered all babies to be killed Mary had to take infant Jesus to Egypt for safety.

As we have shown in earlier section, Jesus was enrolled as an Initiate in the Egyptian Mystery System in order to prepare him for his evangelical mission. He was trained in all the ten African virtues and the Seven Liberal Arts specified by Professor James for the Initiates, namely, Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. The content and idiom of the teachings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament show that he was indebted to the Egyptian Mystery System. His commitment to morality, to justice, and defence of the poor and oppressed is evidence that he was a faithful pupil of the ancient black African university system. Jesus’ method of recruiting his apostles and the oral medium of instruction are features of the secrecy of the Egyptian Mystery System. No less important is that point that Jesus never said anything negative or derisive about Africans throughout his career. He never abused Africans as idle worshippers or pagans as is common with black African pastors of today.

Black African Humanism in Christianity:

The humanistic ideology of Christianity helped it to take firm roots in Africa soon after the death of Jesus. It is known that Peter, the son of Jonah from Bethseada, Galilee, declared himself Pope of the Church in 42 A.D. and set up the papacy in Rome. But the Roman emperors ruthlessly persecuted early Christians, killing them and feeding them live to carnivorous beasts at the amphitheatres in the city. Owing to the violence against Christians, the church did not fare well in Europe at the early stage. The persecuted Christians fled to North Africa nations of Egypt and Tunisia to have respite. The first North African church was in Carthage, now Tunis. At the time all of North Africa was peopled by blacks; the Arab invaders of Islam came about 500 years later. Africans welcomed the church because it was reincarnation of the ancient systems of morality and justice associated with the Nile Valley civilizations. But they also supported the church because it was connected with Jesus, their grandson. The African American Professor Henrik John Clarke explains the connection thus:

….among the first to hear and embrace the Christian religion were those
living in North Africa. Jesus had spent some of his early years in Egypt to
escape the murderous design of Herod, the Roman governor. This event
was well remembered and later helped to gain acceptance for the church
in Africa (“Introduction” World’s Great Men of Color).

The hospitality offered the church by Africa was one reason why black Africans featured in its early leadership. There were three Black African Popes in the first 500 years of Christendom: Pope Victor I (189 – 199 A.D.), Pope Miltiades (311 – 314), and Pope Gelasius (492 – 496). For more than 1,500 years since Pope Gelasius, no black African has been made pope of the Catholic Church. African scholars and activists of humanistic causes contributed to the foundational ethics and principles of the church. The best known was Aurelius Augustinus, or St. Augustine. He was a black African born in Tagate, Tunisia, in 354 A.D. being a black genius he attained the position of a professor at 27 at the University of Milan, Italy. He was ordained the Bishop of Hippo, North Africa, in 395. He is the author of the principal books of theology used by the Church, including The City of God, which defines the aesthetics of paradise, and Confessions, a pioneer work of autobiography in the Christian era. St. Augustine died in 430 A.D.

The humanistic tenets of Africa permeated the Catholic Church from inception. However, the church became an instrument of conquest and oppression when the Roman Emperor, Constantine got converted to Christianity in A.D. 312. He proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the empire and used the instrumentality of the church to expand the imperial rule of Rome. With his edict Constantine declared all other religions pagan and unworthy of the attention of the subjects of the empire. Emperor Constantine was the one who convened Nicene Bishops Conference in 329 at which the history of the Church was revised to disinherit Africa of its claims. Henceforth, the church became a solely European institution for political domination and exploitation. The skin colours of Jesus and his mother, Mary, were also altered to suit the racist theory. J. A. Rogers cites a passage from page 113 of Professor J.H. Breasted’s 1911 History of Egypt, which reveals the original blackamoor colour of Mary and Jesus:

The child-Christ remained starrily bejewelled blackamoor as the
typical healer in Rome. Jesus, the divine healer, does not retain
the black complexion Iu-emhotep (Imhotep) in the canonical
gospels but he does in the Church of Rome when represented
as a little black bambino. A jewelled image of the child-Christ
as a blackamoor is sacredly preserved at the headquarters of
the Franciscan order, and true to its typical character as a
symbolical likeness of Iusa, the healer, the little black figure
is taken out in with its replica on to visit the sick and demonstrate
the supposed healing power of this Egyptian Esculapius, thus
Christianized.The virgin mother, who was also black, survived
in Italy as in Egypt. At Oropa, near Bietta the Madona and her
child-Christ are not white as they so often were in Italy of old
and not as the child is yet conditioned in the little black Jesus
of the Eternal City (World’s Great Men of Color, pp. 40 – 41;
the emphasis is mine).

Further proof of the distortion of the original black colour of Jesus comes from the painting of him done by the Italian artist, Michelangelo, in 1,609, that is, over 1,500 after the death of Jesus. The Benin-born Egyptologist, NaiwuOshaon, is categorical in his condemnation of Michelangelo’s mischief. In his opinion, it “was the European artist, Michelangelo who used family and friends to paint his image of Jesus in the Gisen Temple in 1609 A.D. He was commissioned to do the painting by Pope Julius II and he became famous with his blue-eyed, blond man, flowing hair and bearded image of Jesus Christ. This image was replicated by European Christian organizations all over the world” (The Cradle: The Ultimate Cosmology, 1998, p. 69).