WORLD HISTORY
Tarik ibn Ziyad from is from Morocco, which is a country located in Northwest Africa below the Mediterranean Sea; Tarik was a General of the Moorish Army based in Morocco, Algeria, Spain, Portugal, Italy and parts of France. The Moorish soldier, who were under the command of General Tarik ibn Ziyad are primarily, natives from Morocco and Algeria (Northwest Africa). Spain, Portugal, Italy and nearly all of southeast Europe were conquered by the Moors, under the command of the great General Tariq ibn Ziyad. These soldiers were Africans(moors) from the northern and western parts of Africa, some of them were African with a mixture of Arab descent.
Compiled by Trinicenter.com
Ancient Black Chinese From East Africa
by Professor Jin Li – Fudan University Shanghai
An international study has found that the Chinese people originated not from Peking Man in northern China, but from early humans in East Africa who moved through South Asia to China some 100,000 years ago, Hong Kongs Ming Pao daily reported yesterday in a finding that confirms the single origin theory in anthropology.
According to the newspaper, a research team led by Jin Li (of Fudan University in Shanghai has found that modern humans evolved from a single origin, not multiple origins as some experts believe.
In China, school textbooks teach that the Chinese race evolved from Peking Man, based on a theory that humans in Europe and Asia evolved from local species.
But Jin and his fellow researchers found that early humans belonged to different species, of which only the East African species developed into modern humans.
This new finding nullifies the theory that the ancestors of the Chinese people were Peking Man who lived in northern China 400,000 years ago.
Based on DNA analyses of 100,000 samples gathered from around the world, a number of human families evolved in East Africa some 150,000 years ago, said Li Hui, a member of Jins team.
About 100,000 years ago, some of those humans began to leave Africa, with some people moving to China via South and Southeast Asia, Li said.
According to the newspaper article, it has been proven that the 65 branches of the Chinese race share similar DNA mutations with the peoples of East and Southeast Asia.
It said that the Shanghai scientists were part of an international team comprised of researchers from Russia, India, Brazil and other nations in a five-year project studying the geographic and genealogical routes related to the spread and settlement of modern humans.
CONTACT INFO:
PROFESSOR JIN LI – Fudan University Shanghai
Fudan Office Liren Biology Building, Rm 220 School of Life Sciences Fudan University 220 Handan Rd. Shanghai 200433, China 86-21-65642800 (Office)
In honor of the Little Black People
The Saisiyat tribe of Hsinchu and Miaoli will perform a solemn rite this weekend to commemorate a race of people that they exterminated
By Jules Quartly, taipeitimes.com November 27, 2004
Drinking, singing and dancing are expected to take place deep in the mountains of Miaoli and Hsinchu when the “Ritual of the Little Black People” is performed by the Saisiyat tribe once again this weekend.
For the past 100 years or so, the Saisiyat tribe has performed the songs and rites of the festival to bring good harvests, ward off bad luck and keep alive the spirit of a race of people who are said to have preceded all others in Taiwan.
In fact, the short, black men the festival celebrates are one of the most ancient types of modern humans on this planet and their kin still survive in Asia today. They are said to be diminutive Africoids and are variously called Pygmies, Negritos and Aeta. They are found in the Philippines, northern Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra in Indonesia and other places.
Chinese historians called them “black dwarfs” in the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220 to AD 280) and they were still to be found in China during the Qing dynasty (1644 to 1911). In Taiwan they were called the “Little Black People” and, apart from being diminutive, they were also said to be broad-nosed and dark-skinned with curly hair.
“The Negroid races peopled at some time all the South of India, Indo-China and China. The South of Indo-China actually has now pure Negritos as the Semangs and mixed as the Malays and the Sakais…”
Similarly, this scholar declares:
“In the earliest Chinese history, several texts in classic books spoke of these diminutive blacks; thus the Tcheu-Li composed under the dynasty of Tcheu (1122-249 B. C.) gives a description of the inhabitants with black and oily skin…
The Prince Liu-Nan, who died in 122 B.C.,speaks of a kingdom of diminutive blacks in the southwest of China.”
Moreover, he states:
“In the first epochs of Chinese history, the Negrito type peopled all the south of the country and even in the island of Hai-Nan, as we have attempted to prove in our study on the Negritos, on Black men of this island.
Chinese folklore speaks often of these Negroes, and mentions an Empress of China named Li (373-397A.D.), consort of the Emperor Hsiao Wn Wen, who is spoken of as being a Negro.”
Professor Chang Hsing-Lang revealed in an article entitled, “The importation of Negro Slaves to China under the Tang Dynasty A.D. 618-907,” that:
Even the sacred Manchu dynasty shows this Negro strain.. The lower part of the face of the Emperor Pu-yi of Manchukuo, direct descendant of the Manchu rulers of China, is most distinctly Negroid. “Chinese chroniclers report that a Negro Empire existed in the South of China at the dawn of that country’s history.”
Early migrations out of Africa:
People first migrated from East Africa around the regions of Ethiopia and Somalia to Yemen, Oman, Southern India, Burma, China, Malaysia, The Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, The Solomon Islands and all the little islands in between.
The migrations and trade westward by sea started declining only about 11,000 years ago when the world sea level rose, recovering from the last deep marine regression caused by global cooling and the locking-up of water in continental glaciers.
There were the Northern migrations, from Ethiopia through the Saudi Arabian region and the migrations down the Nile and through the Sahara region.
Those who traveled over land mixed with other Africans who went through physiological changes as they traveled at earlier periods. Those who made the journey by sea, in one trip, entered foreign lands with the original Black looks.
Examining the migrations through both land and sea routes will allow for a better understanding of the complex exchanges between groups of people who evolved and continued to evolve while migrating out of Africa. Some groups entered China with their original form and others evolved along the way and entered China looking different to their ancestral form.
All people on this earth are connected to the indigenous African people and the migrations of people today can be proven not only by examining the historical records but also through DNA studies.
Newly Released Study Traces Arrival of First Chinese
September 29, 1998
WASHINGTON — Genetic studies that show the first modern human arrived in China about 60,000 years ago support the theory that people first evolved in Africa, researchers say.
In a study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say that an analysis of genetic samples from throughout Asia suggests that people there sprang from common ancestors, the modern humans who appeared first in Africa and then spread throughout the world.
“Our work shows that modern humans first came to southeast Asia and then moved later to northern China,” said Li Jin, a population geneticist at the University of Texas in Houston. “This supports the idea that modern humans originated in Africa.”
Jin said the study is based on analysis of the gene patterns from 43 different ethnic groups in China and Asia. He said the technique gives an indication of how people moved and mixed over thousands of generations.
Migration clues are carried in genetic patterns, called microsatellites, that change rapidly over time. By analyzing these changes and linking them to earlier genetic patterns, researchers are able to plot the migration of ancient humans.
Based on the research, Jin said it appears that modern humans first moved from central Asia, following the Indian Ocean coastline across India, to southeast Asia. Later, they moved to south China. Descendants of these original Chinese then migrated north and northwest, populating northern China, Siberia and eventually the Americas.
“This is important research because it supports the out-of-Africa theory about the origin of modern humans,” said Ranjan Deka, a population genetics researcher at the University of Cincinnati.
Deka said the results of the study weaken an alternative theory that modern humans arose independently on different continents at about the same time. If this were true, he said, there would be little or no genetic continuity among the various populations of the world.
Instead, said Deka, the findings by Jin and his colleagues show genetic continuity in China, even though that vast country has dozens of different ethnic populations and more than 200 different languages.
Jin said he believes modern human migration into Asia was probably affected by glaciers that invaded much of the Northern Hemisphere during an ice age that lasted thousands of years.
It may have been only after the glaciers retreated, more than 15,000 years ago, that modern humans were able to migrate to far northern Asia and across the Bering Strait to the Americas.
Pyramid Built 5000 years ago Found in Inner Mongolia
July 7, 2001 – People’s Daily
A three-story pyramid dating 5000 years back has been discovered in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The pyramid, which looks like a trapezoidal hill from afar, is located on a hill one kilometer north of Sijiazi Town, Aohan County. The pyramid is about 30 meters long and 15 meters wide at its base.
This is considered the best-preserved pyramid built during the Hongshan Culture period that has been found so far, said Guo Dasun, an archaeologist in charge of the excavation.
Seven tombs and one altar were also found on the top of the pyramid. Archaeologists also discovered a number of pottery pieces with the asterisk character inscribed on the inner wall. The asterisk character is believed to be related to the understanding of ancient people on astrology.
Among the culture relics excavated from one of the seven tombs are a bone flute and a stone ring and a full- sized stone statue of Goddess unearthed from another tomb.
What astonished the archeologists is a one palm-sized stone genital found on the inner wall of a tomb with a small stone statue of Goddess below.
Guo Dasun said that most of these relics are found for the first time and will shed light on studying the origin of Chinese civilization. (Photos and other articles)
Although the island nation of Japan is assumed by many to have been historically composed of an essentially homogenous population, the accumulated evidence places the matter in a vastly different light. A Japanese proverb states that: “For a Samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of Black blood.” Another recording of the proverb is: “Half the blood in one’s veins must be Black to make a good Samurai.” Sakanouye Tamura Maro, a Black man, became the first Shogun of Japan.
In China, an Africoid presence in visible from remote antiquity. The Shang, for example, China’s first dynasts, are described as having “black and oily skin.” The famous Chinese sage Lao-Tze was “black in complexion.”
Submitted by Professor Akhnaton Pert M Hru Tutankhamun Bey
The June 28 and July 15, 1786
Treaty
Of Peace and Friendship
The First West African Slave Trade Agreement Uniting The Old Kingdom of Morocco and The New United States in America:
Among the many ways and means of extending diplomacy between sovereign powers, it is the contract of a Treaty between nations which ranks supreme among Constitutional Laws. There are many forms of treaties and each are tailored to respect a system of honor between governments. The “Barbary Coast” was a region of northern Africa on the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and Gibraltar. The Muslims of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli ruled, pirated and controlled well the watery Straits of Gibraltar from the 14th to 19th centuries. The taking of hostages and other human cargo for ransom on these water ways became a custom. The signing of Treaty Agreements between the Kingdom of Morocco and the sea-lined nations of Europe, to secure the sailing of ships, was a common practice in those days. This Treaty of Peace and Friendship, also known as the Barbary Treaties, with additional article; also Ship-Signals Agreement, was originally established as an International Agreement of Trade and Commerce. The treaty was sealed at Morocco with the seal of the Sultan Muhammed of Morocco June 23, 1786 (25 Shaban, A. H. 1200), and delivered to Thomas Barclay, American Agent, June 28, 1786 (1 Ramadan, A. H. 1200). Original in Arabic. The additional article was signed and sealed at Morocco on behalf of Morocco July 15, 1786 (18 Ramadan, A. H. 1200). Original in Arabic. The Ship-Signals Agreement was signed at Morocco July 6, 1786 (9 Ramadan, A. H. 1200) and later (July 18, 1787) was ratified by the USA into “Forever and a Day.”
This 1786 Treaty is now being transliterated to the Moorish Peoples of the Americas because far too many of them have been deceived, hoodwinked and (in most cases when many are still suffering from the insufficiency of knowledge) just-out-right lied to. For example: some are taught “We (The denationalized Negroes, Blacks and Colored People and other nationless Moorish descendants) have a Treaty with the USA.” Oh really?? The Holy Prophet, Noble Drew Ali taught “From 1779 to 1865 that ‘We’, were those SLAVES lawfully made by European Slaveholders, officially through this said Treaty as contracted in 1786, during the time of slavery.” Moorish Americans please be advised of the following: Slaves do not write treaties. Slaves do not have their own national flag. Slaves do not have their own governments. Also, Slaves did not write the Constitution of the USA which claims slaves as 3/5 of all other persons. Now, this Treaty of Peace and Friendship, between The Sultan of the Moroccan Government and George Washington, himself a Slaveholding Western Freemason and President of the new USA; This Treaty Agreement, of Trade and Commerce, was not FOR us but ABOUT us. The most popular merchandise notably worthy of an international Trade and Commerce Agreement between these two governments: The West African Nationals Stolen In Order To Supply Their Christian/Islamic Slave Trade. Now let us study this document with our free open eyes.
Certified English translations of the treaty and of the additional article were incorporated in a document signed and sealed by the Ministers Plenipotentiary of the United States, Thomas Jefferson at Paris January 1, 1787, and John Adams at London January 25, 1787. Treaty and additional article ratified by the United States July 18, 1787. As to the ratification generally, see the notes. Treaty and additional article proclaimed July 18, 1787. Ship-Signals Agreement not specifically included in the ratification and not proclaimed; but copies ordered by Congress July 23, 1787, to be sent to the Executives of the States (Secret Journals of Congress, IV, 869; but see the notes as to this reference. Certified Translation of the Treaty and of the Additional Article, with Approval by Jefferson and Adams).
To all Persons to whom these Presents shall come or be made known- Whereas the United States of America in Congress assembled by their Commission bearing date the twelfth day of May One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty four thought proper to constitute John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson their Ministers Plenipotentiary (Note: All of these Pale Skinned European Males are Western Freemasons aka Slave Holders), giving to them or a Majority of them full Powers to confer, treat & negotiate with the Ambassador, Minister or Commissioner of His Majesty the Sultan of Morocco concerning a Treaty of Amity and Commerce (Peace and Trade [meaning Business, marketing, export-import, exchange, retail, wholesale harmoniously] INTERNATIONALLY), to make & receive propositions for such Treaty and to conclude and sign the same, transmitting it to the United States in Congress assembled for their final Ratification, And by one other (commission bearing date the Eleventh day of March One thousand Seven hundred & Eighty five (March 11, 1785) did further empower the said Ministers Plenipotentiary or a majority of them, by writing under the* hands and Seals to appoint such Agent in the said Business as they might think proper with Authority under the directions and Instructions of the said Ministers to commence & prosecute the said Negotiations & Conferences for the said Treaty provided that the said Treaty should be signed by the said Ministers: And Whereas, We the said John Adams & Thomas Jefferson two of the said Ministers Plenipotentiary (the said Benjamin Franklin being absent) by writing under the Hand and Seal of the said John Adams at London October the fifth, One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty five, & of the said Thomas Jefferson at Paris October the Eleventh of the same Year, did appoint Thomas Barclay, Agent in the Business aforesaid, giving him the Powers therein, which by the said second Commission we were authorized to give, and the said Thomas Barclay in pursuance thereof, hath arranged Articles for a Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States of America and His Majesty the Emperor of Morocco, which Articles written in the Arabic Language, confirmed by His said Majesty the Emperor of Morocco & sealed with His Royal Seal, being translated into the Language of the said United States of America, together with the Attestations thereto annexed are in the following Words, To Wit.
In the name of Almighty God, (The Constitution of Theocracy commands all praises first only to the Great God, then honors to Prophets and Holy Books and allegiances to man).
This is a Treaty of Peace and Friendship (An International Contractual Agreement founded upon diplomatic harmonies, mutual relationship and alliance) established between us and the United States of America, which is confirmed, and which we have ordered to be written in this Book and sealed with our Royal Seal (The Grand National e.g. “Royal Seal” of Morocco contained the Five-Pointed Open Star of the Amexem God-In-Man) at our Court of Morocco (Theocratic Government) on the twenty fifth day of the blessed Month of Shaban, in the Year One thousand two hundred, trusting in God it will remain permanent. (Later this Treaty of Commercializing the Human enslavement of West African Nationals was perpetually extended to ‘Forever and a Day’).
.1. We declare that both Parties have agreed that this Treaty consisting of twenty five Articles shall be inserted in this Book and delivered to the Honorable Thomas Barclay, the Agent of the United States now at our Court (Moroccan Government), with whose Approbation it has been made and who is duly authorized on their Part, to treat with us concerning all the Matters contained therein.
.2. If either of the Parties shall be at War with any Nation whatever, the other Party shall not take a Commission from the Enemy nor fight under their Colors.
.3. If either of the Parties shall be at War with any Nation whatever and take a Prize belonging to that Nation, and there shall be found on board Subjects or Effects belonging to either of the Parties, the Subjects shall be set at Liberty and the Effects returned to the Owners. And if any Goods belonging to any Nation, with whom either of the Parties shall be at War, shall be loaded on Vessels belonging to the other Party, they shall pass free and unmolested without any attempt being made to take or detain them.
.4. A Signal or Pass shall be given to all Vessels belonging to both Parties, by which they are to be known when they meet at Sea, and if the Commander of a Ship of War of either Party shall have other Ships under his Convoy, the Declaration of the Commander shall alone be sufficient to exempt any of them from examination.
.5. If either of the Parties shall be at War, and shall meet a Vessel at Sea, belonging to the other, it is agreed that if an examination is to be made, it shall be done by sending a Boat with two or three Men (not Property) only, and if any Gun shall be Bred and injury done without Reason, the offending Party shall make good all damages.
.6. If any Moor shall bring Citizens (not Property, effects, provisions, supplies e.g. SLAVES) of the United States or their Effects to His Majesty, the Citizens shall immediately be set at Liberty and the Effects restored, and in like Manner, if any Moor not a Subject of these Dominions shall make Prize of any of the Citizens of America or their Effects and bring them into any of the Ports of His Majesty, they shall be immediately released, as they will then be considered as under His Majesty’s Protection.
.7. If any Vessel of either Party shall put into a Port of the other and have occasion for Provisions or other Supplies, they shall be furnished without any interruption or molestation.
.8. If any Vessel of the United States shall meet with a Disaster at Sea and put into one of our Ports to repair, she shall be at Liberty to land and reload her cargo (Slaves etc.), without paying any Duty whatever.
.9. If any Vessel of the United States shall be cast on Shore on any Part of our Coasts, she shall remain at the disposition of the Owners and no one shall attempt going near her without their Approbation, as she is then considered particularly under our Protection; and if any Vessel of the United States shall be forced to put into our Ports, by Stress of weather or otherwise, she shall not be compelled to land her Cargo, but shall remain in tranquility until the Commander shall think proper to proceed on his Voyage.
.10. (PEACE) If any Vessel of either of the Parties shall have an engagement with a Vessel belonging to any of the Christian Powers within gunshot of the Forts of the other, the Vessel so engaged shall be defended and protected as much as possible until she is in safety; And if any American Vessel shall be cast on shore on the Coast of Wadnoon (1) or any coast thereabout, the People belonging to her shall be protected, and assisted until by the help of God, they shall be sent to their Country.
.11. (PEACE) If we shall be at War with any Christian Power and any of our Vessels sail from the Ports of the United States, no Vessel belonging to the enemy shall follow until twenty four hours after the Departure of our Vessels; and the same Regulation shall be observed towards the American Vessels sailing from our Ports.-be their enemies Moors or Christians.
.12. (PEACE) If any Ship of War belonging to the United States shall put into any of our Ports, she shall not be examined on any Pretence whatever, even though she should have fugitive (Slaves) on Board, nor shall the Governor or Commander of the Place compel them to be brought on Shore on any pretext, nor require any payment for them.
.13. (PEACE) If a Ship of War of either Party shall put into a Port of the other and salute, it shall be returned from the Fort, with an equal Number of Guns, not with more or less.
.14. (Business) The Commerce (of African Slaves) with the United States shall be on the same footing as is the Commerce (of African Slaves) with Spain or as that with the most favored Nation for the time being and their Citizens shall be respected and esteemed and have full Liberty to pass and repass our Country and Sea Ports whenever they please without interruption.
.15. (Business) Merchants of both Countries shall employ only such interpreters, & such other Persons to assist them in their Business, as they shall think proper. No Commander of a Vessel shall transport his Cargo (of African Slaves) on board another Vessel, he shall not be detained in Port, longer than he may think proper, and all persons employed in loading or unloading Goods (of African Slaves) or in any other Labor whatever, shall be paid at the Customary rates, not more and not less.
.16. (Friendship / Recognized The difference between Citizens and Slaves) In case of a War between the Parties (USA & Moroccan Governments), the Prisoners (Recognized Citizens of the 2 Ruling Parties) are not to be made Slaves, but to be exchanged one for another, Captain for Captain, Officer for Officer and one private Man for another; and if there shall prove a deficiency on either side, it shall be made up by the payment of one hundred Mexican Dollars for each Person wanting; And it is agreed that all Prisoners shall be exchanged in twelve Months from the Time of their being taken, and that this exchange may be effected by a Merchant or any other Person authorized by either of the Parties.
.17. Merchants (USA & Moroccan Governments) shall not be compelled to buy or Sell any kind of Goods but such as they shall think proper; and may buy and sell all sorts of (African Slaves) Merchandise but such as are prohibited to the other Christian Nations.
.18. All goods (African Slaves) shall be weighed and examined before they are sent on board, and to avoid all detention of Vessels, no examination shall afterwards be made, unless it shall first be proved, that contraband Goods have been sent on board, in which Case the Persons who took the contraband Goods on board shall be punished according to the Usage and Custom of the Country and no other Person whatever shall be injured, nor shall the Ship or Cargo incur any Penalty or damage whatever.
.19. No vessel shall be detained in Port on any presence whatever, nor be obliged to take on board any Article (of African Slaves) without the consent of the Commander, who shall be at full Liberty to agree for the Freight of any Goods he takes on board.
.20. (PEACE) If any of the Citizens of the United States, or any Persons under their Protection, shall have any disputes with each other, the Consul (Diplomat Lawyer, Government Rep.) shall decide between the Parties and whenever the Consul shall require any Aid or Assistance from our Government to enforce his decisions it shall be immediately granted to him.
.21. (PEACE) If a Citizen of the United States should kill or wound a Moor (Duly Recognized Citizen), or on the contrary if a Moor shall kill or wound a Citizen of the United States, the Law of the Country shall take place and equal Justice shall be rendered, the Consul assisting at the Trial and if any Delinquent shall make his escape, the Consul (Diplomat Lawyer, Government Rep.) shall not be answerable for him in any manner whatever.
.22. (PEACE) If an American Citizen shall die in our Country and no Will shall appear, the Consul shall take possession of his Effects, and if there shall be no Consul, the Effects shall be deposited in the hands of some Person worthy of Trust, until the Party shall appear who has a Right to demand them, but if the Heir to the Person deceased be present, the Property shall be delivered to him without interruption; and if a Will shall appear, the Property shall descend agreeable to that Will, as soon as the Consul shall declare the Validity thereof.
.23. The Consuls of the United States of America shall reside in any Sea Port of our Dominions that they shall think proper; And they shall be respected and enjoy all the Privileges which the Consuls of any other Nation enjoy, and if any of the Citizens of the United States shall contract any Debts or engagements, the Consul shall not be in any Manner accountable for them, unless he shall have given a Promise in writing for the payment or fulfilling thereof, without which promise in Writing no Application to him for any redress shall be made.
.24. If any differences shall arise by either Party infringing on any of the Articles of this Treaty, Peace and Harmony shall remain notwithstanding in the fullest force, until a friendly Application shall be made for an Arrangement, and until that Application shall be rejected, no appeal shall be made to Arms. And if a War shall break out between the Parties, Nine Months shall be granted to all the Subjects of both Parties, to dispose of their Effects and retire with their Property. And it is further declared that whatever indulgences in Trade or otherwise shall be granted to any of the Christian Powers, the Citizens of the United States shall be equally entitled to them.
.25. This Treaty shall continue in full Force, with the help of God for Fifty Years and then, to forever and a day.
We have delivered this Book into the Hands of the before-mentioned Thomas Barclay on the first day of the blessed Month of Ramadan, in the Year One thousand two hundred. I certify that the annexed is a true Copy of the Translation made by Issac Cardoza Nunez, Interpreter at Morocco, of the treaty between the Sultan of Morocco and Government of the United States of America. “THOS BARCLAY”
——————————————————————-
Remember, all Citizens of The Moorish Americas:
The enslavement of any nation has always been a Divine Issue, a Karmic Punishment and Course of Justice from The Great God for their adopting sinful ways. Because of this Treaty, The United States extended slavery for another 150 years after her 1865 Abolishment and In 1871 It would lose all Sovereign power and was reduced again to Corporate Status under the United Kingdom. As for Morocco’s divine punishment for Spearheading the 1492 West African Slave Trade and authorizing the enclosed 1787 Treaty with the new United States, by 1912 had lost all sovereignty as a Ruling Government, to France and The UK and for the next 44 years (until 1956) could no longer hoist her “Fallowed Flag” on land nor sea. Hence, from the UK and French Colonies to Corporate UNITED STATES in the America, The USA has never been without her staple of African Slaves and nationless Moors. Slaves has forever been those persons rejected and made into powerless property. This is why Slaves do not write treaties. Slaves do not have their own national flag. Slaves do not have their own governments. Also, Slaves did not write the Constitution of the USA; which claims ownership of all African slaves as 3/5 of all other persons.
Submitted with Love Divine;
Professor Akhnaton Pert M Hru Tutankhamun Bey, Swift AngEl #1
Divine Minister, Grand National Chairman of Moorish America
What is the big deal about the Moors anyways?
Check out these historical facts and see for yourself.
By NICK SNELLING
One of the curiosities of Spain is the seeming denial by the Spanish of the past existence of the Moors in their country.
Certainly, much is made of the ‘heroic’ Christian Reconquista, but rarely is the Moorish invasion of Spain looked upon as having provided any intrinsic benefit.In fact, apart from a few scintillating buildings, such as the Alhambra and the Cordoba Mezquita, it would be easy to imagine that, during their 780 years presence, the Moors contributed nothing of consequence to Spain.
In fact, the Moors had a profound influence not just upon Spain but the whole of Western Europe. Indeed, it has been said that they laid the foundations of the Renaissance that brought Europe out of the intellectual and physical gloom of the Middle Ages.
In the 10th Century, Cordoba, for example, was not just the capital of Al Andalus (Moorish
Spain) but also one of the most important cities in the world, rivaling Baghdad and Constantinople. It boasted a population of 500,000 (200,000 more than now) and had street lighting, fifty hospitals (with running water!), three hundred public baths, five hundred mosques and seventy libraries – one of which held some 500,000 books. All of this, at a time when London had a largely illiterate population of around 20,000 and had forgotten the technical advances of the Romans some 600 hundred years beforehand. More importantly, the Moors brought enormous learning to Spain which, over the coming centuries, would percolate through to the rest of Europe. In fact, it was the intellectual achievements of the Moors that were to have a lasting effect, well beyond their more prosaic contributions towards construction, irrigation systems and agriculture. Indeed three of the greatest thinkers of the Middle Ages emerged from Moorish Spain: Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn Arabi and the Jew Maimonides.
Strange though it may seem now, Islam actively promoted learning and scholarship during its Golden Age (750 – 1258) with rulers across the Arab world vying with each other to develop and patronise great centres of learning. This was totally consistent with the teaching of the founder of Islam, Mohammad, who believed that ‘the scholar’s ink is holier than the martyr’s blood’ and that ‘seeking knowledge is required of every Muslim’. So dynamic was Islam during its Golden Age, that Arabic became both the international language of scholarship and the language into which original, and often ancient and nearly forgotten, manuscripts in Greek, Latin, ancient Egyptian and Chinese were translated. The vast body of work created was of the first importance, as it preserved ideas and thoughts from previous ages and amalgamated them into a form capable of rigorous study. In turn, this nurtured an environment that generated great intellectuals, who were able to expand upon a range of vital matters from philosophy to astronomy through to medicine, the development of higher mathematics, navigation and dramatically new farming techniques.
The Umayyad Moorish rulers of Spain ardently wanted their Al Andalus possessions to equal Page 2 of 5 that of Baghdad in both splendour and learning and, in Cordoba, actively sought out and patronised scholarship. By the time Abd al-Rahman III had established a formal Caliphate,Cordoba had become a magnet for scholars from both the East and Western Europe, irrespective of religion. This tradition reached its apogee during the reign of his son Al Hakim, before the Umayyad dynasty collapsed and Al Andalus descended into anarchy.
However, by good fortune, the libraries of Toledo, in particular, survived the conquest of that city by the Christian King Alfonso VI in 1085 and Toledo quickly became a European center for the translation of Arabic texts into Latin – the universal, educated language of Western Europe. Under some enlightened rulers, most notably Alfonso X (The Wise), the scientific and philosophical works of the Moors were translated and their knowledge dispersed around Europe.
One of the most influential Moors was the philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) who was born in Cordoba. He translated the largely lost works of Aristotle (perhaps the greatest thinker the world has known and someone committed to logic and intellectual rigour; personal opinion) whilst commenting upon the texts. These had a lasting effect upon Western philosophy, were taught in universities for the next four hundred years and were highly commended by St Thomas Aquinas himself.
Meanwhile, an almost contemporaneous philosopher, Ibn Arabi, born in Murcia was to have a possibly greater impact on the Muslim world. A prolific writer of some 800 texts, Ibn Arabi was a radical thinker and teacher who is still revered today for his articulation and development of Sufism, the Islamic tradition of mysticism.
Finally, in this hot-house time for philosophers, Moses Maimonides, a Jew from Cordoba was writing seminal works on Jewish philosophy, law and ethics. So influential were his writings that even today he is considered one of the foremost Rabbi’s and thinkers of the Jewish religion. Somehow, at the same time, he also managed to rise to such pre-eminence as a doctor that he was also considered to be the greatest medical practitioner of his era.
But, of course, the Moors did not just support great translators and developers of ideas and cerebral concepts. Moorish Spain was nothing if not diverse and produced a range of important practical advances, particularly in the field of medicine. Spurred on by Mohammad’s order to: ‘make use of medical treatment, for Allah has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it…’ a real urgency to improve medical care occurred throughout Muslim controlled territories.
In Spain, the ‘father of modern surgery’, Abu al-Quasim (Al Zahrawi), was born in Cordoba. During a practice that lasted fifty years, he developed a range of innovative and precise surgical instruments, whilst writing a text book that was to be a cornerstone of Western medical training for the next 500 years.
Around the same time Ibn Zuhr (Avensoar) 1091 – 1161, from Seville, was practising as one of the greatest physicians of the Middle Ages and using inhaled anesthetics on his patients. He was the first person to describe diseases caused by parasites, was an expert in anatomy and wrote books that, when translated into Latin, were used until the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, al-Baytar (died 1248) wrote authoritatively on drugs and medicinal
plants, al-Nafis (1213 – 1288) was the first to discover the pulmonary circulation of blood and Ibn Hasim tackled medical ethics and hygiene (a concept virtually unknown in Western Europe).
The Moors in Spain were also famous as astronomers and mathematicians. Indeed, algebra comes from the Arabic al-jabr and the previously unknown, and critically important, Eastern concept of zero (probably originating from Babylonia) was introduced to Europe via Spain. Certainly, the Moors had a keen interest in mathematics and in al-Zarquali (Arzachel) from Toledo they produced a man of prodigious gifts who contributed to the Toledan Tables (a compilation of astronomical data). He also developed a flat astrolabe, precision astronomical instruments and compiled tables of latitude and longitude.
The Moors scientific curiosity had even extended to flight with the polymath Ibn Firnas
making the first scientific attempt to fly, in a controlled manner, in 875. This evidently worked, although the landing was less successful.
Of more practical daily use, was the introduction by the Moors, into Spain, of new food crops such as rice, hard wheat, cotton, oranges, lemons, sugar and cotton. Importantly, along with these foodstuffs came an intimate knowledge of irrigation. This was complemented by sophisticated metalworking and weaving techniques and complex interior design skills that took buildings to new heights of intensive and intricate decoration. Paper making was also brought to Spain, allowing the growth of books and,thereby, the accurate preservation and dispersal of knowledge – with Xativa, in Valencia, having the first paper factory in Europe.
Of course, now, much of what the Moors achieved has been lost in time and largely appears to be restricted to a few ostentatiously gorgeous buildings. However, we still meet traces of the Moors in the language of Spain, as it is peppered with Moorish words. Hola derives, from the Middle Eastern greeting of ‘Allah’, Ojala from ‘in sha’Allah’, Madrid was Majrit (water channel) and Beni, which is used in many place names, is Moorish for ‘son of’. Perhaps, they should act as daily reminders of the past importance of Moorish influence and make us a little more tolerant of Islam’s current dangerously hysterical intellectual insecurity.
The Moors were important and contributed greatly, ironically, to the development of Christian civilization in Western Europe. In the Dark Ages, when Europe had descended into medieval ignorance, it was the Moors who kept alive the lost philosophy and analytical powers of reasoning of the Greeks, together with the learning of ancient civilizations. They preserved this knowledge and, through their burning desire for scholarship and advancement, greatly improved upon what was then known, across multifarious spectrums.
Accidentally, though it was, they kept alive the flame of Western progress when it was most in danger of being extinguished. It was a flame that was, during the Renaissance, to explode the West to the forefront of world civilization.
TIMELINE
711 Moors cross into Spain. Tariq ibn-Ziyad brings Moorish army Moors defeat last Visigoth King (Roderick 1 at Battle of Rio Barbate)
719 Moors control almost all of Spain and their control reaches to the Pyrenees
732 Moors defeated by Charles Martel at Poitiers in France – the limit of their northern advance
750 – 1258 The Golden Age of Islam
756 Abd al-Rahman I (Umayyad prince from Syria) makes Cordoba the capital of Al Andalus
912 – 961 Reign of Abd al-Rahman III. Established Caliphate and intellectual tradition of Cordoba
1031 Umayyad dynasty collapses
1031- 1086 Anarchy
1085 King Alfonso V1 captures Toledo
1118 Christians capture Zaragossa
1145 Almohad Dynasty come to power
1147 Almohads capture Sevilla and make it the capital of Al Andalus
1212 Moors defeated at the Battle of La Naves de Tolosa by the united armies of Castille,Aragon, Navarre and Portugal
1232 – 1492 Granada is the only Moorish territory on the Iberian Peninsular
1232 King of Granada is Muhammad 1
1238 – 1358 Construction of the Alhambra palace (Granada)
1238 Valencia re-captured by the Christians
1492 Moorish rule ends with the fall of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella.
PERSONALITIES
Muhammad 570 – 632
Prophet
Founded the religion of Islam
Promoted the importance of learning and scholarship
Abd al-Rahman 731 – 786
Reigned 756 – 786
Founder of Umayyad dynasty that ruled Iberia for 300 years
The ‘Falcon of Andalus’
Started construction of the Mezquita of Cordoba
Abd al-Rahman III 891 – 961
Reigned 912 – 961
Caliph and greatest Umayyad ruler
Patron of the arts and fine administrator
Cordoba became the greatest centre of learning in Europe
Al Hakim unknown – 976
Reigned 961 – 976
Had a library in Cordoba of over 500,000 books
Expanded Cordoba’s mesquita
Alfonso X of Castille 1221- 1284
Nicknamed ‘El Sabio’ (The Learned)
A writer and intellectual
Patronised The School of Translators of Toledo
Abbas Ibn Firnas 810 – 887
Born Ronda
Polymath – scientist, musician , inventor
The first man to try flying scientifically
Abu al-Quasim (Al Zahrawi) 936 – 1013
Born in Cordoba
Father of modern surgery
Wrote a 30 volume medical encyclopedia (Kiab al-Tasrif)
Influenced medicine for 500 years
Designed new surgical instruments and techniques
Al Zarquali (Arzachel) 1028 – 1087
Lived in Toledo
Mathematician, astronomer and inventor
Contributed to the Tables of Toledo
Influenced the re-birth of mathematical astronomy
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) 1126 – 1198
Born Cordoba
‘The Commentator’
Father of secular thought in Western Europe
Intellectual and polymath
Brought Aristotle’s ides of logic and analytical thinking back to the West
Moses Maimonides 1135 – 1204
Born in Cordoba
Jewish scientist and philosopher
Considered the greatest doctor of his time
Greatly influenced by Averroes
Ibn Arabi 1165 – 1240
Born in modern day Murcia
Philosopher and mystic
Wrote some 800 works
Has exerted a huge influence on Islamic spiritual thought
Sharif Ali ☪ ✡ – 2:50 PM
BY NICK SNELLING (www.culturespain.com)
Submitted by C.M. Jabez Ali El
Hittite period (19th century B.C.) – From the collection of The Museum of Anatolian
Medieval Rough Leather Boots, Renaissance Shoes, Armor Costume Boots, Riding Boots, Viking Boots
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft3779n8rw;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print
Next Chapter
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pob/pob_ch14.html
“Brutus called the island, after his own name, ‘Britain,’ and his companions ‘Britons. …. is a survival of the famous timbered Hittite houses of these ancient Britons. …. inBritain bearing this favourite name, so there were others in the Troad and …
Troy
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/troy
Jul 10, 2008 – 4 Excavation campaigns; 5 Hittite evidence; 6 Tourism; 7 Notes … the Trojans were the ancient citizens of the city of Troy in the Troad region of … Kings of the Britons to a supposed descendant of Aeneas named Brutus.
Troy (Greek: Τροία, Troia, also Ίλιον, Ilion; Turkish Truva, Troya; Latin: Troia is preferred, but Ilium is a more poetic term) is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. The archaeological site at Hisarlik in Turkey, identified by Heinrich Schliemann as historical Troy, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998. This site, which represents much of the cultural history of the Western world, is an inspiration to those who yearn to believe that the legendary accounts in Greek mythology have a basis in reality. Even if every detail is not true, the ideals and morals expressed in these tales are foundational to western culture, and the artifacts and remains that have been unearthed at the site provide an illuminating experience of life in ancient times. Thus the finding and preservation of this site is of great value to humankind.
According to mythology, the Trojans were the ancient citizens of the city of Troy in the Troad region of Anatolia (now Turkey). Although part of Asia, Troy is presented in the legend as part of the Greek culture of City states. Troy was known for its riches gained from port trade with east and west, fancy clothes, iron production, and massive defensive walls.
The Trojan royal family was started by the Pleiad Electra and Zeus, the parents of Dardanus. Dardanus, who according to Greek myth was originally from Arcadia but according to Roman myth was originally from Italy, crossed over to Asia Minor from the island of Samothrace, where he met King Teucer. Teucer was himself also a colonizer from Attica, and treated Dardanus with respect. Eventually, Dardanus married Teucer’s daughters, and founded Dardania (later ruled by Aeneas). Upon Dardanus’ death, the Kingdom was passed to his grandson Tros, who called the people Trojans and the land Troad, after himself. Ilus, son of Tros, founded the city of Ilium (Troy) that he called after himself. Zeus gave Ilus the Palladium. Poseidon and Apollo built the walls and fortifications around Troy for Laomedon, son of Ilus the younger. When Laomedon refused to pay, Poseidon flooded the land and demanded the sacrifice of Hesione to a sea monster. Pestilence came and the sea monster snatched away the people of the plain.
One generation before the Trojan War, Heracles captured Troy and killed Laomedon and his sons, except for young Priam. Priam later became king. During his reign, the Mycenaean Greeks invaded and captured Troy in the Trojan War (traditionally dated from 1193–1183 B.C.E.). The Maxyans were a west Libyan tribe who said that they were descended from the men of Troy, according to Herodotus. The Trojan ships transformed into naiads, who rejoiced to see the wreckage of Odysseus’ ship.
Trojan rule in Asia Minor was replaced by the Herakleid dynasty in Sardis, which ruled for 505 years until the time of Candaules. The Ionians, Cimmerians, Phrygians, Milesians of Sinope, and Lydians moved into Asia Minor. The Persians invaded in 546 B.C.E.
Some famous Trojans are: Dardanus (founder of Troy), Laomedon, Ganymede, Priam and his children Paris, Hector, Teucer, Aesacus, Oenone, Tithonus, Antigone, Memnon, Corythus, Aeneas, Brutus, and Elymus. Kapys, Boukolion, and Aisakos were Trojan princes who had naiad wives. Some of the Trojan allies were the Lycians and the Amazons. The Aisepid nymphs were the naiads of the Trojan River Aisepos. Pegsis was the naiad of the River Granicus near Troy. “Helen of Troy” was born not in Troy but Sparta.
Mount Ida in Asia Minor is where Ganymede was abducted by Zeus, where Anchises was seduced by Aphrodite, where Aphrodite gave birth to Aeneas, where Paris lived as a shepherd, where the nymphs lived, where the “Judgement of Paris” took place, where the Greek gods watched the Trojan War, where Hera distracted Zeus with her seductions long enough to permit the Achaeans, aided by Poseidon, to hold the Trojans off their ships, and where Aeneas and his followers rested and waited until the Greeks set out for Greece. The altar of Panomphaean (source of all oracles) was dedicated to Jupiter the Thunderer (Tonatus) near Troy. Buthrotos (or Buthrotum) was a city in Epirus where Helenus, the Trojan seer, built a replica of Troy. Aeneas landed there and Helenus foretold his future.
Such was the fame of the Trojan story in Roman and medieval times that it was built upon to provide a starting point for various legends of national origin. The most famous is undoubtedly that promulgated by Virgil in the Aeneid, tracing the ancestry of the founders of Rome, more specifically the Julio-Claudian dynasty, to the Trojan prince Aeneas. Similarly Geoffrey of Monmouth traces the legendary Kings of the Britons to a supposed descendant of Aeneas named Brutus.
Troy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TroyWikipedia
Troy VII has been identified with the Hittite city Wilusa, the probable origin of the …. Antigonus Monophthalmus took control of the Troad in 311 and created the new ….. kings of the Britons from a supposed descendant of Aeneas called Brutus.
Canaanite Prisoners of War
In the Iliad, the Achaeans set up their camp near the mouth of the river Scamander (presumably modern Karamenderes), where they had beached their ships. The city of Troy itself stood on a hill, across the plain of Scamander, where the battles of the Trojan War took place. The site of the ancient city today is some 15 kilometers from the coast, but the ancient mouths of alleged Scamander, some 3,000 years ago, were some 5 kilometers further inland,[1] pouring into a bay that has since been filled with alluvial material. Geological findings have revealed what the Trojan coastline would look like, indicating that Homeric geography of Troy is accurate.[2]
Silver tetradrachm from Troy during the Hellenistic period, 188–160 B.C.E. Head of Athena in Attic helmet. Reverse female figure and owl with inscription: ΑΘΗΝΑΣ ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ, ΚΛΕΩΝΟΣ ΙΛΙΟΥ.
Besides the Iliad, there are references to Troy in the other major work attributed to Homer, the Odyssey, as well as in other ancient Greek literature. The Homeric legend of Troy was elaborated by the Roman poet Virgil in his work the Aeneid. The Greeks and Romans took for a fact the historicity of the Trojan War, and in the identity of Homeric Troy with the site in Anatolia. Alexander the Great, for example, visited the site in 334 B.C.E. and made sacrifices at the alleged tombs of the Homeric heroes Achilles and Patroclus.
Ancient Greek historians placed the Trojan War variously in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth century B.C.E.: Eratosthenes to 1184 B.C.E., Herodotus to 1250 B.C.E., Douris to 1334 B.C.E..
In November 2001, geologists John C. Kraft from the University of Delaware and John V. Luce from Trinity College, Dublin presented the results of investigations into the geology of the region that had started in 1977. The geologists compared the present geology with the landscapes and coastal features described in the Iliad and other classical sources, notably Strabo’s Geographia. Their conclusion was that there is regularly a consistency between the location of Troy as identified by Schliemann (and other locations, such as the Greek camp), the geological evidence, and descriptions of the topology and accounts of the battle in the Iliad.[3] A small minority of contemporary writers argue that Homeric Troy was not in Anatolia, but located elsewhere: England,[4] Croatia, and Scandinavia have been proposed. However, these theories have not been accepted by mainstream scholars.
Kenneth J. Dillon has argued that the Trojans were originally a steppe people related to the Magyars.[5] After attacking and destroying the Hittite Empire, they came to control the Straits. During the Trojan War, the Greeks used a naval blockade to prevent Trojans on the European shore and on Lemnos from coming to the aid of Troy. Once Troy fell, the Trojans on the European shore fled northward and ended up as the Etruscans in Italy.
“Trojan Horse” at the site of Troy
The events described in Homer’s Iliad, even if based on historical events that preceded its composition by some 450 years, will never be completely identifiable with historical or archaeological facts, even if there was a Bronze Age city on the site now called Troy, and even if that city was destroyed by fire or war at about the same time as the time postulated for the Trojan War. No text or artifact has been found on site itself which clearly identifies the Bronze Age site. This is probably due to the planification of the former hillfort during the construction of Hellenistic Ilium (Troy IX), destroying the parts that most likely contained the city archives. A single seal of a Luwian scribe has been found in one of the houses, proving the presence of written correspondence in the city, but not a single text. Scientists’ understanding of the geography of the Hittite Empire makes it very likely that the site corresponds to the city of Wilusa. But even if that is accepted, it is of course no positive proof of identity with Homeric (W)ilion.
The name Wilion or Troia does not appear in any of the Greek written records from the Mycenean sites. The Mycenaean Greeks of the thirteenth century B.C.E. had colonized the Greek mainland and Crete, and were only beginning to make forays into Anatolia, establishing a bridgehead in Miletus (Millawanda). Historical Wilusa was one of the Arzawa lands, in loose alliance with the Hittite Empire, and written reference to the city is therefore to be expected in Hittite correspondence rather than in Mycenaean palace archives.
The dispute over the historical accuracy of the Iliad has been very heated at times. The more scientists discover about Bronze Age history, the clearer it becomes that it is not a yes-or-no question of verification, but one of educated assessment of how much historical knowledge is present in Homer. The story of the Iliad is not an account of the war, but a tale of the psychology, wrath, vengeance, and death of individual heroes that assumes common knowledge of the Trojan War to create a backdrop. No scholars assume that the individual events in the tale (many of which centrally involve divine intervention) are historical fact; on the other hand, no scholars claim that the scenery is entirely devoid of memories of Mycenaean times: It is rather a subjective question of whether the factual content is rather more or rather less than one would have expected.
The ostensible historicity of Homer’s Troy faces the same hurdles as with Plato’s Atlantis. In both cases, an ancient writer’s story is now seen by some to be true, by others to be mythology or fiction. It may be possible to establish connections between either story and real places and events, but these connections may be subject to selection bias.
Iliad as essentially legendary
Some archaeologists and historians maintain that none of the events in Homer’s writings are historical. Others accept that there may be a foundation of historical events in the Homeric stories, but say that in the absence of independent evidence it is not possible to separate fact from myth in the stories.
In recent years scholars have suggested that the Iliad and the Odyssey represented a synthesis of many old Greek stories of various Bronze Age sieges and expeditions, fused together in the Greek memory during the “dark ages” which followed the fall of the Mycenean civilization. In this view, no historical city of Troy existed anywhere: The name derives from a people called the Troies, who probably lived in central Greece. The identification of the hill at Hisarlik as Troy is, in this view, a late development, following the Greek colonization of Asia Minor in the eighth century B.C.E..
Iliad as essentially historical
Another view is that Homer was heir to an unbroken tradition of epic poetry reaching back some 500 years into Mycenaean times. In this view, the poem’s core could reflect a historical campaign that took place at the eve of the decline of the Mycenaean civilization. Much legendary material would have been added during this time, but in this view it is meaningful to ask for archaeological and textual evidence corresponding to events referred to in the Iliad. Such an historical background gives a credible explanation for the geographical knowledge of Troy (which could, however, also have been obtained in Homer’s time by visiting the traditional site of the city) and otherwise unmotivated elements in the poem (in particular the detailed Catalogue of Ships). Linguistically, a few verses of the Iliad suggest great antiquity, because they only fit the meter if projected back into Mycenaean Greek, suggesting a poetic tradition spanning the Greek Dark Ages. Even though Homer was Ionian, the Iliad reflects the geography known to the Mycenaean Greeks, showing detailed knowledge of the mainland but not extending to the Ionian islands or Anatolia, which suggests that the Iliad reproduces an account of events handed down by tradition, to which the author did not add his own geographical knowledge.
Plate 27: Two Canaanite Prisoners flank a Philistine captive; mortuary temple of Ramesses III
The Greek Age of Bronze – trojan war
http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/war.htm
The city of Wilusa under the Hittite King Muwattalli II (about 1295-1272 BC) become what the Hittite called “soldier servant” that is a Hittite vassal state with …
The Trojan war tales, handed down through the centuries by Homer and other Greek and Latin bards and poets, have excited the collective imagination representing the most worldwide famous myth.
Which historical reality is behind these tales? A conflict or a series of local wars in a period and location which can be archaeological related with the Homeric Troy really happened?
Comparing some documents and sources as well as analyzing the esametric rules and linguistic form of the Iliad, it is now possible to make a reasonable reconstruction of a series of facts which, when placed in a specific historical context, can provide us with some answers reducing the possibilities.
THE ILIAD COMPOSITION IS OLDER THAN HOMER
One of the question matter of discussion between the scholars is about the origin of the Homeric poems. Which material inspired a poet to produce a work of such great quality? Where did it come from? It has seemed implausible that the poet should have completely invented it. Have the bards of the eighth century BC. take reference and gave continuity to works and oral compositions originated many centuries before them?
Linear B tablet from Pylos Since the British architect Michael Ventris deciphered the Linear B tablets in 1959 found in several Achaeans settlements in Greek mainland and Crete, it was clear that this language used by the Helladic population of the late bronze age (1600-1100 BC.) was an early form of Greek-language. The Linear B was thus an archaic Greek- 500 years older than Homer- and written in rather abbreviation form, but Greek nevertheless (*1).
Furthermore Ventris’ early deciphering and interpretation of the Linear B was reviewed and elaborated by others linguistic scholars whose research eventually demonstrated that the Linear B was actually a Greek-language
The importance of these discoveries leads to the fact that the bearers of the Achaean culture were ethnically identical with those of the revived Greek culture of the eight century BC. Comparing the linguistic form of the Linear B and the later Greek form of the Homer’s time the most obvious difference is the loss of the digamma “W”. In the old form the “W” is still written, and thus at that time pronounced; in the later form it has been lost, meaning that by this time it was no longer pronounced.
As well explained by Prof. Joachim Latacz in his book (*2) this fact leads to a very interesting discovery about the origin of the Homeric poems.
Homer’s verse is written in hexameter lines. The basis of this versification lies in the difference between long and short syllables. The hexameter (six-measure) comprises the six-time-repeated dactylic foot [- ~ ~], which may be replaced by a spondee [- -]. This means that a hexameter can be formed only by a series of six feet in the form ” one long syllable followed by two short syllables” [- ~ ~] or of feet in which the two short syllables are replaced by a single long syllable [- -]. It is therefore never possible to use a measure consisting for example of one long syllable, one short syllable, and one long syllable [- ~ -] or of three short syllables [~ ~ ~].
But in Homeric text there are several hexameter which exhibit precisely these impossible measures, thus violating the hexameter rule. What can have happened here? Any Homer scholar know that Homer does not usually make mistakes!
The answer was found by the British scholar Richard Bentley he established that in all these cases the apparent error could be accounted by the loss of digamma “W”; a Greek bard of the eighth century BC. like Homer, who did not pronounce the sound “W” and therefore did not write it, composed his lines as if he did pronounce and write it. This means, firt of all, that the poet of our Iliad cannot have been the inventor of the genre in which he writes. If he had been the “W” would have played absolutely no role. Thus the poet inherited the genre from his predecessors who practised the genre at a time when the “W” was still pronounced. This takes us back to the Achaeans Greek when , thanks to Ventris’ decipherment, we know that the “W” was written in Linear B and therefore pronounced at that time.
There are also some archaeological evidences that the Homer’s poems had origin in the Achaean period. The poems mentioned several un-doubtful elements coming from the Late Helladic time like the boar tusked helmet (see the pages dedicate to the helmets), full body shields (see the page dedicated to the body shields), abundance of gold elements, huge walls well constructed defending the cities, important rule of the women in the palace style society. Furthermore the continuous list of people, objects, number of dead, and the elaborate structure of the ships catalogue shows a striking resemblance to the bureaucratic and administrative record-keeping in the Achaean palace cultures as we encountered in the Linear B tablets.
In the famous ships catalogue (*3) twenty-nine contingents of attackers are listed, each forming a geographical and political entity. Each of these shows the same structure: (1) name of the region and enumeration of the places furnishing men for the expedition (2) names of the respective commanders, (3) the number of the ships and the crew number for each. This list embraces 267 hexameters and record not less than 178 geographical names which have been largely retained until today, so that in this list of troop contingents we can recognize Greece.
Through the catalog of the ships we can now try to determine the time when the tales of Troy was originated. So far not one of the 178 geographical names in the catalogue of ships has been proved to be fictitious. Moreover the majority of these location are knows to us from sources outside Homer. An important point is also that the area cover by these names enclosed almost the entire area of Greece, though its political division and area of settlements in some cases do not correspond to the one of eighth century BC.
The Greeks of the historical time were unable to locate almost one quarter of the places named in the catalogue, which can only mean that, by the eighth century, these places were no longer populated.
The most likely solution of the problem is to assume that these place-names and places indeed no longer existed in the Homeric time (or later), yet had once existed and were large enough to provide crew for a war expedition. In the nature of things, this time could not have been the as call ” Dark Age” (1000-900 BC.) but only that of the Achaean age. The modern Archaeology give us new confirmations about this assumption being some places named in the catalogue abandoned before the Dorian occupation (about 1000 BC.) and after and never resettled have been now discovered like for instance the Lakedaimon near Sparta or Eutresis and Elenion mentioned in a Linear B tablet found in the 1990s near Thebes.
Furthermore we now know that also elements generally considered prerogative of the early iron-age like the cremation of the dead peoples (*3a), the utilization of iron weaponry or the proto-hoplite tactics were also know by the Acheans of the Late Helladic time as well as in Anatolian areas. All these elements give us a reasonably evidence of the period when the Trojan war tales had their origin, but of course they can’t prove alone the historicity of the war and the existence of a city called Ilios.
TROY EXCAVATIONS.
Troy area in the late 13th Century BC Since the ancient Greek time the site of Troy located in the north-west of Anatolia close to the narrow straits known as Dardanelles (the Greeks called this straits “the Helles-pontos”) was treated as a site of national triumph and pilgrimage. Alexander the Great paid homage to the shrine when he crossed into Asia in 334 BC. By Roman times Julius Caesar visited the Sigeum promontory and the semi-derelict remains of Ilion. Under the Caesars a new phase of construction began the site was intensively visited and honored by Greeks and Romans.
Even if the settlement fell into disuse, in the sixth century AD. it continued to be honored. Many travelers accounts (Cyriac of Ancona, Mehmett II, Elizabeth’s ambassador John Sanderson etc…) survive from the Middle Ages and the story of Troy never lost its appeal. Even if the precise topographical location of Ilios was apparently almost forgotten by the academic world, with the birth of the modern archaeology the site of Ilios was again excavated and rediscovered by several archaeologists like Frank Calvert, Heinrich Schliemann, Wilhelm Doerpfeld, Carl Blegen and recently by Manfred Korfmann and Ernst Pernicka with the team of the Troia Project.
The settlement consisting of nine stratied cities built in some cases one over the ruins of the other (see also the page dedicated to Troy). Two of these stratifications, named as Troy VIh and Troy VIi (formerly called Troy VIIa) dated between 1300 and 1180 BC., seem to be compatible with the city described in the Homeric poems. It was a well-built Bronze Age Anatolian style citadel with large streets, strong walls and towers. The fortifications around the royal citadel consist of gently sloping walls of well-cut masonry with vertical offsets and massive towers (cf. Homer’s “angle of the lofty walls”, and “strong towered Ilios”).
The recent excavations leads by Manfred Korfmann had disclosed a possible existence of a lower town in the south-west area from the upper citadel excavated by the first archaeologists. With this lower town the total area of the city covered about 40 hectares, with an estimated population of 10,000 inhabitants. By using new technique like geo-magnetic imagine (a form of X-ray photography which made it possible to obtain an extensive picture of the lower strata without disturbing the surface strata) it has been possible to determinate the position of two defensive ditches the first was about 400 meters south of the citadel, which probably enclosed the total area of Troy VI, the second a hundred meters beyond the first, at the very bottom of the hill. Even if further excavations and evidences would be necessary to precisely identify the structure of this lower town, some remains in the north-east bastion of the citadel seem to be the meeting point between the bastions of the upper citadel and the defensive wall around the lower town. Additional evidences of the lower town and the defensive ditch have been found by the team of professor Ernst Pernicka. His team uncovered a trench 1.4 Km long, 4 meter wide and 2 meters deep. Furthermore trace of a southern gate, southeastern gate and southwestern gate have been also found. Parts of two ceramic “pithoi” were also found in the trench near the edge of the lower town, suggesting that houses in the lower town stretched to the trench, another indication that Troy’s lower town was fully inhabited .
Based on this discoveries Troy VI was more than a citadel-a kind of cliff-top eyrie with the function of a “Knight’s castle” but a large Anatolian royal seat and trading centre, located in a strategically area to control the sea-trade routes of the Dardanelles between the Mediterranean areas and the Black Sea.
Spearheads and arrowheads from Troy VIh/ VIi strata Around 1300 – 1270 BC. Troy VIh was severely damaged by an earthquake, as is evident from the large vertical cracks in the surviving fortification walls. Nevertheless, Doerpfeld found evidence for fire or fires at various places in the destruction level of Troy VIh. Likewise Korfmann’ s excavation has also revealed signs of war, namely a thick charcoal layer dated roughly to 1250 BC. as well as slingshots, bronze spearheads and arrowheads scattered in the debris and lodged in the fortification walls.
The remains of houses of Troy VIh and the citadel fortifications, were hastily repaired and reused and many new ones built in former empty spaces. There is no cultural and political break and change of population between Troy VIh and Troy VIi even if a considerable drop in quality for the new domestic structures is evident. The new houses are smaller and cramped, while the rebuilt ones are partitioned. All the evidence points to an increase in population, and the number of large storage-vessels (pithoi) set deeply into the ground, inside the citadel could represent a sign that the Trojans of this period did not feel secure and thus had adopted a “siege mentality”.
Troy VIi was sacked and destructed by fire in a date between 1220 and 1180 BC (more likely 1210 BC). Human skeletons in the burned rubbish as well as arrowheads and slingshots have been found.
The destruction by fire, the traces of bodies, the weaponry- put them together with the overcrowded conditions and the storage jars, give the image of a threatened community desperately laying in supplies to withstand a siege, and than the evidence of their final destruction. Was this the archaeological proof that the Trojan War had actually taken place? The citadel discovered in the Hisarlik hill was actually the ancient Ilios and the Homeric Troy?
HOMERIC ILIOS IN THE HITTITE TABLETS
Remarkable discoveries in central Turkey have lead to the decipherment of the Hittite language and have revealed the existence of a great empire which stretched from the Aegean to the Euphrates valley at the precisely the time when more likely the Trojan War occurred. In the Hittite archives we have thus real historical texts to interpret: diplomatic letters, treaties, annals and royal autobiographies where the relationship between the Hittite empire and their neighbors (places and populations) are often described. Several Hittite tables make reference to the city or the area of Wilusa one time also associated with the name Taruwisa (*4). This city was located in the Assuwa country in the North western area of Anatolia. This area was involved in some conflict with the under expansion Hittite empire. The Hittite king Tudhaliya I (Late 15th-Mid 14th BC) defeated some of the local population which were absorbed into the Hittite kingdom, while other countries remain independent even if under the Hittite political influence.
For the above mentioned phonetic laws of Greek the name Ilios was before Homer Wilios which is phonetically comparable with the Hittite form Wilusa. Furthermore, even if the name Taruwisa can’t be fully phonetically associated with the Greek Troia the similitude is at least reasonable. The city of Wilusa under the Hittite King Muwattalli II (about 1295-1272 BC) become what the Hittite called “soldier servant” that is a Hittite vassal state with military responsibilities and with a promise of Hittite military protection in return. (the Hittite tablets also mentioned Wilusa troops/chariots fighting in the Qadesh battle of 1274 BC).
Following the Hittite tablets description and comparing them with some archaeological evidences it is now possible to connect Wilusa with the city excavated in the Hisarlik hill traditionally identified as the Homeric Troy.
Hittite tablet from Hattusas (Bogazkoy)
One of the most clear evidence was found years ago by Professor David Hawkins of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In the Karabel pass which takes the road from Ephesus to Sardis over the Imolus range, not far from the modern Turkish city of Izmir, there’s an ancient sculpture of an armed human figure cut into the rock. However, no one knew what it meant, because until Hawkins’ breakthrough, no-one had been able to decipher the inscription associated with the sculpture. Hawkins’ translation identified the human figure as the King of a powerful western country called Mira. The sculpture probably marked Mira’s northern frontier with another kingdom called the Seha River Land. We now know that this kingdom extended north from the Karabel pass towards the northwest corner of Anatolia. When taken in conjunction with a letter, this new information helped scholars to locate the kingdom of Wilusa. The letter was written by a king of the Seha River Land called Manapa-Tarhunda to his Hittite overlord. It describes how a notorious local trouble makers called Piyamaradu (*5) has attacked Wilusa. The Hittite King orders Manapa-Tarhunda to drive Piyamaradu out, but he fails dismally and the Hittites send out an expeditionary force to do the job themselves. Before reaching Wilusa, the Hittite force arrives first in the Seha River Land and from there march directly into Wilusa. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that there is only one possible location for Wilusa – in the far Northwest corner of Turkey, the precise location of the site of Troy. It seems likely that Wilusa and Troy are one and the same.
Furthermore in the Hittite treat with Wilusa of Muwattalli II (about 1295-1272 BC) an underground watercourse is mentioned (The Troy watercourse is also mentioned by Homer and it has been actually found by Manfred Korfman excavation), the Wilusa deity is Appalliunas (The Apollo deity protector of Homeric Troy?) and the Wilusa governor or King is Alaksandu (which recalls the Greek name Alexandros the other name of Paris). Also the name Paris seems to be the Hittite/Luwian name Pariya (or Priya) as well as the Priam’s name too may be Pariya-muwa (or Priya-muwa) composed from a place-name or adverb plus-muwa “strong” even if these names are given without further context.
Western Anatolian based on Hittite tablets There are several Hittite diplomatic documents showing references with the city or the area of Wilusa:
1) Wilusija (later called Wilusa) appeared in the Hittite text under King Tudhaliya I (Late 15th-Mid 14th BC) when this King defeated a coalition of 22 Luwian countries and cities located in the Assuwa, Arzawa, Seha river and Haballa areas. In this damaged annals also the name Taruwisa is mentioned.
2) On a letter dated around 1295-1272 BC by King Manapa-Tarhunda of Seha river land (*6) to a not specified Hittite King (more likely Muwattalli II) Wilusa and the surrounding areas are mentioned because the mercenary called Piyamaradu had depose the governor of Wilusa Kukkunni and he is also moving to attack the island of Lazpas (Lesbos) but the Hittite army moved in the area defeating the mercenary. In this letter Wilusa is described as a city located up to north of the land under Manapa-Tarhunda control, thus in the Troad area.
3) Also during the Kingdom of the Hittite King Muwattalli II (about 1295-1272 BC) a tablet describes the alliance treat between the Hittite empire and the new governor or King of Wilusa named Alaksandu. In this document the Wilusa deity Appalliunas (Apollo ?) and the underground watercourse of the land of Wilusa (actually found by archaeological excavation) are mentioned.
4) In the Tawalagawa letter the Hittite King Hattusili III (about 1267-1237 BC) wrote to the Great King of Ahhiyawa (Achaeans) about his concern for the activity of Piyamaradu who in collusion with the Ahhiyawa king’s brother Tawagalawa (which seems correspond to the Greek name of Eteocles) based in Milawanda (Miletus) are making raids in Lycia. Hattusili II is thus obligate to send his army in the Milawanda area, and Piyamaradu with Tawagalawa have fled overseas. In this letter a past hostile situation in the Wilusa area is also mentioned.
5) Another reference to Wilusa said that the deposed governor of the area Walmu (successor of Alaksandu) was refugee to the Myra King but Tudhalija IV order him to return back to Wilusa.
6) The last mention of Wilusa in the Hittite text is in a letter from Suppiluliuma II (after 1207 BC) to the King of Myra about some contrast for the throne of Wilusa.
7) An interesting reference about Wilusa it has been also found in another Hittite table with religion locutions about the holly city of Istanuwa. In that area was recite a song which starts: AH-HA-TA-TA A-LA-TI A-U-I-EN-TA U-I-LU-SA-TI “When steep they comes wilusa”. Unfortunately the text is incomplete but if the song makes reference to something happened in Wilusa more likely it was a glorious military event. But since the city of Istanuwa wouldn’t precious located or other elements will be discover, this possible “Wilusiad” will remain just a speculative hypothesis.
It is now clear that in the Bronze Age the area traditionally identify as the Homeric Troy was know to the Hittites as Wilusa and the Greeks as Wilios. Moreover, in the “land of Wilusa” at the end of the fifteenth century BC, the Hittites knew an area called Taruwisa, which can scarcely be distinguished from the Greek Troia. This city was an important political-economical Luwian center and that it was, since about 1290 to 1215 BC, allied with the near Hittite empire. We know from the Hittite tablets and archaeological excavation that war actions, destructions and diplomatic crisis occurred in that area. The city that Homer’s Iliad tells of is therefore certainly a historical reality, and in the Bronze Age it lay in precisely that area of north-west of Anatolia where the tradition places it.
But were the Achaeans involved in these events? Were the Homeric Achai(w)oi mentioned in some historical documents and were they involved in warfare activity in the western Anatolian area during the late Bronze Age?
Reconstruction of Troy VIh/VIi (Wilusa of the Hittite text)
Copyright by Christoph Haussner Munich
THE ACHAEANS IN THE HITTITE TABLETS.
Possible representation of Ahhiyawa warrior on Hittite pottery (about 1350 BC) In Several Hittite texts the population of Ahhiyawa, which occurred at an early date as the name of a country, is mentioned. Not only does this name bear an obvious phonetic resemblance to the Achai(w)oi found in the Iliad and the A-KA-WI-JA-DE on Linear B tablet C 914 from Knossos “…a hecatomb of cattle is sent to akhaiwian..” which seems to be a unique Cretan reference to the mainland Greeks (*7). But this word also, considered geographically and politically, seems to point to the people we know as “Greeks”. In the so-called Taswagalawa letter the Hittite King Hattusili II (about 1265-1240 BC) consistency addresses the King of Ahhiyawa formally, using the style ” my brother”. The significance of this is that the King of Ahhiyawa is placed on the same level as the Kings of Egypt, Babylon, Assuria and the Hittite King himself (*8). Furthermore it is clear that, at least at the time the letter was written, the Ahhiyawa were a political and military force to be reckoned with. Some expressions like “By ship” and “crossing” suggested that the Ahhiyawa were located overseas most likely to the west of Asia Minor. Based on some Hittite tablets the Ahhiyawa operational center in Anatolia was located in the city of Millawanda following the Hittite army trip of King Hattusili II to reach the area and based on some other places mentioned in association with Millawanda, that can be located in the inter-land of Miletus, it is clear that the geographical location of Millawanda correspond to the city of Miletus (*9).
In Miletus an Achaean style citadel as well as pottery, and other Mycenaean elements have been actually discovered. Based on the above mentioned Hittite documents this settlement was attacked and sacked around 1315 BC by Mursili II and by Hattusili II around 1250 BC. Evidences of destruction in the Achaean Miletus are in fact also attested by the archaeological excavations. In these periods the Achaeans settlements in the Anatolian coast and the relevant diplomatic relationship with the Hittite empire seems to be lead by the Achaean city of Thebes. In the letter of Hattusili II the name of the Ahhiyawa’s Great King brother is Tawagalawa which has been interpreted by some scholars as the Hittite version of the Achaean name E-te-wo-ke-le-we or E-te-wo-ke-we-ios. These two occurrences of the name in the Pylos tablets seems to supply an evolutionary link between Tawagalawa and this early version of Eteokles who is traditionally related with the Achaean kingdoms of Orchomenos and Thebes. Another evidence is in a letter from the Great King of ahhiyawa to Hittite King Hattusili II. In this document (written in Hittite but the linguistic features of the text confirm that the writer spoke Greek, rather than Hittite, as his mother tongue) the Ahhiyawa King call himself heir of Kagamuna. This name has been interpreted by some scholar as the Hittite version of the name Kadmos who is traditionally the founder of the Achaean city of Thebes. This is archaeological reasonable being the city of Thebes, before its destruction (about 1250 BC) (*10), comparable in size and political/military power with Mycenae.
Bronze Achaean and Hittite swords from the Achaean acropolis of Miletus dated 13th Century BC
Miletus is associated with Thebes also in the archive Linear b tablets which contain repeated reference to a certain “Miletian”; this man was involved in ritual sacrifices and occupied, possibly, a certain position in the Theban palace.
In this Achaean pottery fragment from Miletus dated LH IIIB2 (about 1250 BC) a typic Hittite style high helmet or pillar seems to be represented.
It has been suggested that this inscribed bronze sword dated around 1370 BC found at Hattušas Anatolian, is a Mycenaean B Type sword. The present independent investigation of the sword indicates that it may well be a variant of an Aegean B type sword, but might reflect Achaean influence rather than outright manufacture.
The inscription on the blade is dedicated to the god of the storm by the Hittite king Tuthalia II after the conquest of the Assuwa land. A variety of evidence suggests that the sword must be interpreted in the light of events occurring some two hundred years prior the Homeric Trojan war. As recorded in contemporary Hittite documents It is possible that Ahhiyawa involvement in the Assuwa rebellion in 1400-1375 BC (see also the page dedicated to the swords).
There are several Hittite documents in which Ahhiyawa appears:
1) The earliest is an Oracle Report (AHT 22). It dates late 15th-early 14th century BC under the reign of Tudhaliya I/II. In this tablet the name Ahhiya is associated with an enemy ruler of them.
2) The second one is the so-called Indictment of Madduwata (AHT 3). It dates late 15th-early 14th century BC under the reign of Arnuwanda I, even if many of the events narrated in this text had taken place under the preceding king Tudhaliya I/II, and recounts Hittite dealing with a certain Madduwata, forced to flee his country by Attarissiya (Forrer sought to identify this name with the Achaean king Atreus) whom the Hittites called Man of Ahhiya(wa). Madduwata was installed as a Hittite vassal ruler somewhere in southwestern Anatolian; however, he proved to be an ungrateful and overambitious person, who caused serious trouble for his overlord by attacking Hittite posesions in what appears to have been the area of classical Lycia and Caria. Later he even invaded Cyprus in alliance with his former enemy Attarissiya. In this table is also indicated that Attarissiya fought in the area with 100 chariots and thousand infranty and that one of his officer was killed.
3) In another tablet known as Ten-Years Annals of Mursili II (AHT 1A) dated late 14th century BC, it is mentioned that a man called Piyama-Kurunta son of the Arzawan king Uhha-ziti come out from the sea, and he entered (into exile) with the King of Ahhiyawa.
4) The next reference which is correlated with the previous tablet comes from the Ten-Years Annals of Mursili II (AHT 1B). He conquered the country of Arzawa, which lay in the area of classical Lydia, with its capital Apasa (classical Ephesus). Relying on the King of Ahhiyawa, it engaged in hostilities against the Hittites and incited the land of Millawanda to rebellion, but was defeated and its prince probably handed over to the Hittites by Ahhiyawa King.
5) Other references of Ahhiyawa are present in the Oracle Report (AHT 20) dated late 14th-early 13th century BC (Mursili II). In this report the rituals prescribed include summoning the god of Ahhiyawa and the god of Lazpa, and determining the appropriate ritual to be used for them. We do not know which particular gods of Ahhiyawa and Lazpa were fetched.
6) In the so-called Prayer of Mursili II/Muwattalli II/Urhi-Teshshup(?) (AHT 12) dated late 14th-middle 13th century BC the fragmentary text seems to constitute a self-justification of the speaker, certainly a Hittite King, before the gods. In this prayer the King said that while his father was still alive , and because (s)he became hostile to his mother, his father dispatched him/her to the Land of Ahhiyawa, beside the sea.
7) The survived portion of letter (AHT 9), dated Mid 14th-13th century BC from a king of Hatti (perhaps Mursili II or Hattusili III to a king of Ahhiyawa), appears to deal with someone (Piyamaradu ?) or something , brought from Ahhiyawa to another place . There is reference to a legal dispute, and to a tablet perhaps connected with it that the writer has separately dispatched to his addressee.
8) In the letter (AHT 7), from Manapa-Tarhunta of the Seha River Land to a King of Hatti (probably Muwattalli II) dated early 13th century BC, the main topic is the defection of a group of skilled Hittite craftsmen, dyers, to a ruler by name . Although Ahhiyawa is not mentioned in the preserved lines, the missive definitely belongs to this corpus, as demonstrated by the appearance of Piyamaradu, Wilusa, and Lazpa (Lesbos).
9) In the letter (AHT 6) dated Early-to mid 13th century BC from a King of Ahhiyawa to Hittite King (probably Muwattalli II) (written in Hittite but the linguistic features of the text confirm that the writer spoke Greek, rather than Hittite, as his mother tongue) the King of Ahhiyawa cites a previous letter from his correspondent. This means that by the time this letter was written a regular exchange of correspondence was established between Hattusa and Ahhiyawa. The letter deals with the matter of the islands which originally belonged to Assuwa. The Hitite King asserted in his message that these islands belonged to him. The King of Ahhiyawa objects that an ancestor of his received the islands from the King of Assuwa. These islands were very likely Lemnos, Imbros, and/or Samothrace. Furthermore the Ahhiyawa king explains that a forebear of his had given his daughter in marriage to the then King of Assuwa (which after the chronology of Kings know to us must have been in the fifteenth century) and that consequently the islands had come into possession of Ahhiyawa. The mentioned forebear is Kagamuna who has been interpreted by some scholars as the possible Hittite name for Kadmos who as above mentioned is inseparably linked with Thebes(*11)
10) Probably the most important, and certainly the longest, Hittite text regarding Ahhiyawa is the so-called Tawagalawa letter (AHT 4) dated Mid-13th century BC. It is the letter of the Hittite King Hattusili III (about 1267-1237 BC), to the Great King of Ahhiyawa, whose name is unfortunately not preserved. The letter is named after the first person mentioned in it, which is Tawagalawa, brother of the Ahhiyawa King. A more suitable label, however, would be “the Piyamaradu letter” because it is a complaint of the Hittite King to his fellow sovereign in Ahhiyawa about the depredations of Piyamaradu on Hittite territory, apparently committed with the tacit approval of the Ahhiyawa King. The most prominent feature of the letter is the apologetic and conciliatory tone used by the Hittite King to address the King of Ahhiyawa, probably a proof that the country of the latter was a respectable military power beyond Hittite reach. All this compatible with the facts known to us about the Achaeans of that age.
11) In a letter (AHT 8) dated Mid-13th century BC from a Hittite official to a King of Hatti (Hattusili III ?) there is a passage refers to the dispatch of gifts to Egypt and to the King of Ahhiyawa, within the context of the conduct of diplomatic relations between the Hittite King and his counterparts in Egypt and Ahhiyawa. It is clear that at the time of the letter’s composition, the Hittite King who was its recipient enjoyed peaceful relations with both Egypt and Ahhiyawa. This makes it likely that the man in question was Hattusili III, and that the letter is probably to be dated to the period shortly before or in the aftermath of the treaty which he concluded with the pharaoh Ramesses II in 1259 BC .
12) In another letter (AHT 15) dated 13th century BC from a King of Hatti (Hattusili III?) to another Great King is mentioned the King of Ahhiyawa and Piyamaradu, who long acted as an agent of Ahhiyawan interests in the west.
13) In the votive prayer (AHT 26), dated Mid-13th century BC, of Poduhepa? (wife of Hattusili III) there is no reference to Ahhiyawa but its references to Piyamaradu, who had been supported by the Ahhiyawan King in his anti-Hittite enterprises, indicates the Hittite regime’s continuing concern over his activities.
14) In the “Boundary” list (AHT 18) dated Mid-to late 13th century BC (Reign of Hattusili III or Tudhaliya IV) there are references to the lands of Tarhuntassa, Mira and Ahhiyawa and other kingdoms of western and southern Anatolia. That Ahhiyawan-controlled territory in western Anatolia bordered on the kingdom of Mira can be inferred from the fact that a King or Kings of Ahhiyawa exercised for a time sovereignty over the land of Millawanda (Miletus), which lay directly south of Mira.
15) In the Extract from a letter (AHT 14) dated Mid-to late 13th century BC, from a King of Hatti (Tudhaliya IV?) concerning Urhi-Teshshup, it is mentioned that following Urhi-Teshshup’ removal from the Hittite throne by his uncle Hattusili III, the deposed King was assigned a place of banishment in the Nuhashshi Lands in Syria. He was determined, however, to get his throne back, and in his bid to do so sought the support of both foreign kings and his former vassal rulers. In a passage of the leter it seems that Urhi-Teshshup had also made approaches to the king of Ahhiyawa. This suggests that Ahhiyawa still had a significant presence in the Nera Eastern world, at least i the westernmost part of it.
16) In the letter (AHT 11) dated Late-13th century BC, Offenses of the Seha River Land (royal edict of Tudhaliya IV?) a personal involvement of the Great King of Ahhiyawa to support the rebellion of the Seha River Land. It may well be that Ahhiyawan support for the rebellion finally induced Tudhaliya IV to force a military showdown with the Ahhiyawan regime-an action that may have resulted in the elimination of Ahhiyawa’s sovereignty over Milawata, and the end of an effective Ahhiyawan political and military presence anywhere in western Anatolia.
17) In the survived fragments of a letter known as “Milawata Letter”(AHT 5) dated Late-13th century BC from a king of Hatti (probably Tudhaliya IV) to a western Anatolia ruler (Tarkasnawa, king of Mira?) the Ahhiyawa are not mentioned but there is reference to several individuals and political entities deeply involved with them. The rogue Piyamaradu, the land of Wilusa, and the city of Milawata. The reinstallation of Walmu as King of Wilusa leads us to conclude that the Great King here was probably one of the successors of Muwattali II, in whose reign Wilusa was governed by Alaksandu. The most likely author of the dispatch is Tudhaliya IV.
18) In the Treaty (AHT 2) between Tudhaliya IV and Shaushga-muwa king of Amurru dated Late-13th century BC there is a reference to the king of Ahhiyawa in the list of foreign rulers whom Tudhaliya IV considers his equlas. Unsurprisingly, the rulers of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria are included in the list. And originaly the list also contained the King of Ahhiyawa-the name subsequently being erased. A possible conclusion is that the Ahhiyawan King had indeed enjoyed the status of one of the Great Kings of the Late Bronze Age world, at least in Hittite diplomatic terminology, but had recently lost this status.(*12)
19) The two letters (AHT 27A and B) dated Late-13th century BC respectively from Suppiluliuma II (1207-? BC) and Penti-Sharruma, a Hittite official, to Ammurapi king of Ugarit, deals about an unacceptable delay of shipment of (copper) ingots from Ugarit to Ahhiyawans currently present in the land of Lukka. This is the last known reference to Ahhiyawa in Late Bronze Age sources. By this time the Ahhiyawan kingdom referred to in earlier Hittite text had lost its Anatolian territories. The Hiyawa-men were no doubt private groups of adventurers who remained n the Anatolian mainland in the wake of the loss of Ahhiyawan sovereignty in the region or came their living as freebooters or as mercenaries in a foreign king’s hire.
20) The Ahhiyawa are also mentioned in other very fragmentary tablets (AHT 10, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25) dated durign the 13th century BC which are too fragmentary for translation or comments.
21) In the inscription (AHT 28) dated Mid-to late 8th century BC of Warika king of (Ah)Hiyawa this king calls his kingdom Hiyawa. The kingdom was located in southeastern Anatolia, in the region called Cilicia in classical sources. Some scholars have noted that Hiyawa is simply an aphaeresized form of Ahhiyawa, and it is possible that the name reflects a migration of populations of Ahhiyawan origin from western Anatolia or the Aegean world to Cilicia at the beginning of Iron Age. If commonly assumed link between the Hittite name Ahhiyawa and the Greek Achaia is valid, then the migration theory would appear to tie in with the claim by Greek historian Herodotus that the Cilicians were originally known as Hypachaians (“Sub-Achaians”).
Achaean arrowheads from Troy VIh/VIi strata
Citadel under siege on the silver rhytom from shaft grave IV at Mycenae dated around 1550-1500 BC Unfortunately no similar diplomatic style documents were produced by the Achaean palace administration or at least no evidences have been so far attested. Nevertheless on some of the linear B tables from Pylos seem provide evidence of female slaves coming from the eastern Aegean. The women were either captured during seaborne raids, or brought from slave traders. The fact they are usually mentioned with their children but not with men implies the familiar raiding pattern of predatory war-bands, when the men are killed and the women carried off. These groups of women are recorder doing menial tasks such as grinding grain, carding flax and spinning wool. Their ration quotas suggest that they were numbered in the hundreds (about 700 women with their 400 girls and 300 boys who…”belong to them”). Many are distinguished by ethnic adjectives, probably denoting the places they came from, and though some of these are still not understood, several of the women come from eastern Aegean island or the western seaboard of Anatolia- Knidos, Miletos, Lemnos, Halikarnassos, Chios and AS-WI-JA which seems to be related the Assuwa (Lydia) of the Hittite tablets. Recorded on one tablet from Pylos (PY Ep 705.6) there is even the enigmatic name TO-RO-JA (woman from Troy?). Other possible references of a woman or a man from Troy are also attested on one tablet from Knossos and one from Thebes. These descriptions often use the term LA-WI-AI-AI “captives” which is the same word used by Homer to describe women seized by Achilles at Lyrnessos during a predatory foray south of Troy (*13).
It was now clear from the Hittite tablets and from several archaeological evidences that the Achaeans of the 14th and 13th centuries BC (the heyday of their civilization) were largely involved in trade, diplomatic and armed foray along the shores and islands of the western Anatolian. Based on these elements is it thus possible to make some reasonable hypothesis about the historicity of the Trojan war also taking into account the traditional Myth?
Hypothetical reconstruction of Ahhiyawa army lead by Tawagalawa with his mercenary Piyamaradu under negotiation with Wilusa governor (Alaksandu?) and Hittite ambassador in the land of Wilusa. This plate reconstructed by A. Salimbeti and R. D’Amato and drawn by G. Rava is published by Osprey in the warrior serie n. 153 BRONZE AGE GREEK WARRIOR 1600-1100 BC
TROJAN WAR LANDSCAPE AND ACHAEANS CAMP
Combining an interest in the classics with expertise in the sedimentary geology that defines coastlines, John C. Kraft, H. Fletcher Brown (*13a) Professor of Geology University of Delaware researcher has discovered that Homer’s Iliad presents an accurate account of the geography of ancient Troy, information that may end a centuries long debate.
Kraft writes in the February 2003 issue of the journal Geology, which is published by the Geological Society of America, that the area’s sedimentology and geomorphology do indeed complement the features described in Homer’s Iliad. “The reality of Homer’s description of place, event and topography correlated with geologic investigation helps show that the Iliad is not just a legend but regularly consistent with paleogeograhic reconstruction,” concluded the research team, which also included George Rapp of the University of Minnesota, Ilhan Kayan of Ege University in Izmir,Turkey, and classical scholar John V. Luce of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Kraft has been studying the ancient coastlines of the eastern Mediterranean Sea for more than two decades and has always been interested in the classics, and particularly in their descriptions of geography. However, some years ago he met Luce, a noted classicist who Kraft said “understands the Iliad backwards and forwards.”. He asked him if in his reading he had encountered incidents that indicated in any way topography.
A map showing Professor Kraft discoveries
After discussions of the basics of geography and geology as related to archaeological settings, Luce began to uncover “dozens and dozens of such incidents,” Kraft said. Kraft said archaeologists working around Hissarlik in western Turkey have found evidence of a city of the right age to be Troy. One problem with pinpointing the exact location of the Achaeans camp in relation to the city is that the landscape has changed drastically over thousands of years because of siltation caused by the Scamander (now called the Kara Menderes) and Simois (Dumrek) rivers. Researchers now know that Troy once stood alongside a large bay, a portion of which was already filled by silt by the time of Homer, Kraft said, adding that today the bay is completely filled. Using borings to determine the geomorphic environment, the researchers were able to develop maps of the changing coastline and found that the landscape at the time of the Homeric account of the Trojan War, about 1250-1180 B.C., does indeed match descriptions in the Iliad and in Strabo’s later “Geography”. It appears that from the epic tale Strabo correctly calculated at about four kilometers the distance of Troy from the camp and ship station manned by the invading Achaeans. He also spoke of blind mouth marshes and saltwater lagoons and marshes, which Kraft said are “very precise determinants of the shape of the coastline and ancient landscape at the time of the Iliad.” From the Iliad itself, Kraft’s paper notes several descriptions, including the terrain covered by the line of defense established by the Trojans and their allies as described to the Greeks by the captured Trojan spy Dolon. “I will answer your questions truly and exactly. On the wings towards the sea are Carians, Paionians with their crooked bows, Leleges, Kaukones and devine Pelasgians. On the wing towards Thymbra lie Lycians, proud Mysians, and Phrygian and Maeonian charioteers,” Dolon said. And from another passage, “Outside the town…there is a high mound…which men call Thorn Hill (Batieia)…It was here that the Trojans and their allies now formed up in battle order.” Kraft said that shows the Trojan line of defense extended from the sea in front of Troy southeastward, covering the possibility that the Greeks would attack anywhere along the Scamander Plain. He said it is apparent from the writings that the Achaeans camp and ships station were in clear sight of one another, and cited two passages that describe the encampment and the ship station: “Whenever he looked toward the Trojan plain, he wondered at the many watch fires blazing before Ilios, at the sound of flutes and pipes, and at the murmuring from the host of men.” And, “The ships had been beached on the shore of the surging sea well away from the fighting. They dragged the first ones inland and built a wall at their sterns. For the beach, though broad, could not contain all the ships, and the force was cramped. So they ranged them in rows, and filled as the long mouth of the shore between the enclosing headlands.” Kraft noted that in antiquity, the Greek commentator Aristarchus compared the rows of beached ships to “seats in a theater” and “rungs on a ladder.” The Iliad also describes the Kesik Cut, a great wall and ditch proposed by the ancient Greek warrior Nestor as a protective device “to hold back horses and fighting men so that the stout Trojan battle line may not overwhelm us.” The poem describes how horses were “brought up short on the edge of the ditch and stand whinnying in fear, unable to jump it or pass over it.” The section that tells of the battle at the Scamander Plain notes that when the Trojan line broke, many warriors “were pinned back against the deep stream with its silver eddies. In they tumbled with loud splashes, and the din resounded from the depths of the pools and from the banks on the other side. With piteous cries they swam here and there, whirled round by the current.” Such a dramatic description of a deep river with cut banks and strong currents can only fit the middle and upper stretches of the Scamander Plain before Troy, Kraft said. Given the vivid images painted in the Iliad, Kraft said he believes the author had seen the landscape firsthand. “You can’t have really detailed descriptions of areas without having seen them.” Kraft said.
TROJAN WAR HYPOTHESIS
Let us review at this point what we learn from the Anatolian sources which may have some bearing on the Trojan war tradition.
1. Achaean Greek were closely involved in the political and military affairs of western Anatolia, particularly in the thirteenth century.
2. During this period the Hittite vassal state Wilusa was subjected to a number of military actions in which Achaeans may have been directly or indirectly involved. On one or more occasions its territory was perhaps occupied by outside troops; on one or more occasion its king was dethroned.
3. Wilusa lay in north-western Anataolian in the region of the Classical Troad.
4. In philological terms, Wilusa can be equated the Greek (W)ilios or Ilion.
5. At some point within the period of the recorded hostilities against Wilusa, Troy VIh and Troy VIi was destroyed. These levels are the best in accord with Homer’s description of the citadel of Troy.
Considering these and the others above mentioned elements coming from the historical documents and the archaeological sources we can thus express two main hypothesis about the Trojan war:
1st hypothesis:
Since the 14th century BC the Achaeans under the leadership of Thebes have extended their control in several western Anatolian shores and eastern Aegean islands. In these areas their most important logistic and military centre was Miletus. The Achaeans were allied with some local populations but they also entered in conflict with the near Hittite empire with which they kept regular diplomatic relations. The continuous raids and the war action of the Achaeans and their most important Anatolian ally Piyamaradu forced the Hittite King to send his troops to destroy the citadel of Miletos. The Achaeans thus move their attention to the strategic city of Wilusa and the other nearby islands and areas (Lesbos, Seha river land, Arzawa). The city of Wilusa was attacked and partially damaged around 1300-1270 BC (Troy VIh) also due to an earthquake that could have weakened Troy’s walls and left them open for attack. This first event was probably conducted by the Theban’s Achaeans together with their ally Piyamaradu. The Epic echo of this first destruction could be represented by the myth of Herakles (himself also related with Thebes) who destroyed Troy one generation before the Homeric Trojan war. In that period the citadel of Wilusa was a Hittite vassal state so the Achaeans were soon obligated to withdraw by the intervention of the powerful Hittite army.
Around 1250-1230 the citadel of Thebes was destroyed by a coalition of other Achaeans reigns (Epigons Myth), after which Mycenae took the leadership of the Achaeans states. The diplomatic relations with the Hittite empire were interrupted (The Achaean Great King was in fact deleted in the Hittite treaty of Tudhalija III). Around this period the Hittite empire started to enter in crisis and the reciprocal diplomatic treaty with the city of Wilusa ended. The Achaeans under the leadership of Mycenae moved again to the Anatolian shore and they besieged Wilusa and the other surrounding areas. If we consider the earliest possible date of Troy VIi (formerly Troy VIIa) destruction, Wilusa was conquered, destroyed and burned around 1210 BC. But the Bronze Age society was almost at its end around this time, and most of the Achaeans citadels in different times and modalities also fell some decades later because of internal conflicts, migration flows, and the changes in the economical and social status. This threw not only in the Greek mainland but all the Mediterranean areas into confusion. But the Epic echo of the war against Wilusa was already part of the late Achaeans society tales and the Iliad started to take consistency as a oral transmitted poems.
2nd hypothesis:
For two centuries the Achaeans have extended their control on several western Anatolian shores and eastern Aegean islands. These campaigns were mainly conducted under the leadership of Thebes and after its destruction under Mycenae. The Achaean main centre of control for their raids and war actions was located in Miletus. It is attested that the Achaeans operations were conducted together with some local allies first of all the mercenary Piyamaradu. These actions forced the Hittite king to send his troops to destroy the citadel of Miletos. The Achaeans thus move their attention to the strategic city of Wilusa and the other nearby islands and areas (Lesbos, Seha river land, Arzawa). The city of Wilusa was attacked and partially damaged around 1300-1270 BC (Troy VIh) also due to an earthquake that could have weakened Troy’s walls and left them open for attack. Because the Hittite intervention the city was not completely damaged and conquered even if during the next decades it was again under siege by the Achaeans and their ally Piyamaradu. The diplomatic relations with the Hittite empire continued until the death of the Great King of Ahhiyawa (Agamemnon ?) when he was deleted in the Hittite treaty of Tudhalija III.
During the collapse of the Bronze Age society the flow of migrating populations in different Mediterranean areas (see also the page dedicated to the Sea People) in which also the Achaeans were involved, was the cause of the destruction of the Luwian city of Wilusa which was attacked, destroyed and burned around 1180 BC. (If we consider the latest possible date for the destruction of Troy VIi, formerly Troy VIIa). The memories of the previous Achaeans sieges on the Wilusa land and the surrounding Anatolian areas plus its final destruction, also caused by the Achaean Sea People, take form in a poem which starts to be orally composed by the bards in this very late bronze Age sub-Mycenaean period as a memory of the heroic past time.
THE TROJAN HORSE
Several theories have been made about the famous Trojan horse, for some scholars it could have been a kind of war siege machine even if no evidences exist that large and elaborate siege machine were used by the Greeks of the Bronze Age. Indeed documentary evidence from Syria and Hattusa does indicate that such machines were in use as early as the 18th century BC and that they were named after animals (the wild ass or the wooden one-horned animal). An interesting and plausible theory is the one about the Trojan horse as a metaphor and a symbol of the God Poseidon (*14) who damaged Troy VIh by an earthquake. For other people the Trojan horse could be just a symbol on a city gate left unlocked by pro-Achaeans Antenor or a huge gift to some Deity left on the beach by the Achaeans for a safe home return. Many of these theories sound convincing nevertheless we can not completely exclude that a real object existed and that it played a role in tricking the Trojans into leaving their city without defenses. Thus was a real example of unconventional warfare, Bronze Age style. Probably we will never know if this object was actually a huge horse with warriors hidden inside it or just an empty statue carried inside the city as a trophy at the end of the siege. It was in fact a trick to relax the Trojans and allow one or more disguised Achaeans inside the city to light a signal fire to bring the Greeks back.
Huge horse on a cetula from Konossos dated around 1200 BC
In Archaeology there is an interesting seal from Knossos dated more likely in the final phase of LM III (about 1200 BC). This seal, probably used as a warranty mark for the traded goods, shows a huge Achaean style horse placed over a single mast ship with oarsmen (*15). Furthermore in a late Achaean pottery fragment which was exhibited in the Nauplion museum a huge horse surrounded by men seems also depicted, but of course the interpretation of these elements as a genuine Achaean representation of the Trojan horse, without any other evidences, is just speculative.
TOP
(*1) Michael Ventris-John Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek ( II edition); Cambridge University Press (1973).
(*2) Joachim Latacz, Troy and Homer, Towards a solution of an old mystery; Oxford University Press (2004).
(*3) Iliad, II 494-759.
(*3a) At Mueskebi on Halicarnassus peninsula several typical Achaeans chamber tombs and graves dated from LH IIIA-C have been found. Inside these tombs at least three cremations have been attested dated around LH IIIA, 2-B. It has been suggested that this Anatolian rite was introduced into southern Aegean via Mueskebi. For cremation burials in the Dodecanese see Mee 1998. For possible LH IIIA cremation in chamber tomb at Ialysos see Benzi 1992.
In the cemetery at Besik Tepe in the Troad dated LH IIIC inumations and several cremations have been also attested together local Achaean pottery, bronzes, sealstones and jewellery. These cremation burials have been also found at Panaztepe and Bakla Tepe and are similar to the ones already discovered by Belgen in the small Troy cemetery at Hissarlik.
Near Mycenae at Khania, E. Palaiologou has excavated a tumulus that contained urns with cremated remains (as in the burial of Patroclus in the Iliad) and finds dating to LH IIIC Middle and Late.
(*4) Taruwisa only occurs once, in the damaged annals of Tudhalija I (about 1420-1400 BC), the first Hittite King to visit this region, in a list of towns of the land of Assuwa on the west coast of Anatolia. These towns are apparently listed in geographical order starting from the border with Lukka land, and this puts Taruwisa, the last in the list, in a northery location in the Troad, in fact.
(*5) Piyama-radu (Piyama means gift and Radu was a good deity) was probably a Luwian price belong to the “Apta” population. He seems to be a dangerous mercenary alied with the Ahhiyawa (The Achaeans). He is mentioned in several Hittite tables associated with the reigns of Muwattali II, Hattusili III, and Tudhaliya IV.
Given that Muwattali’s reign ended ca. 1272 BC and Tudhaliya’s began ca. 1237 BC, Piyamaradu’ career as an anti-Hittite activist in the west must have covered at least three and half decades. The longevity of his career is extraordinary enough in itself. But even more extraordinary is the fact he could for so long have so successfully defied Hittite authority, resisting all efforts by his adversaries to run him to ground-and perhaps ending his days peacefully in an island haven provided by his Ahhiyawan supporters, whose interests he served so well.
(*6) It is know by other documents that this region correspond to the modern Mysia.
(*7) The mainland Greeks referred to the Cretan as “Kretes” (Bennet 1999 11-30).
(*8) Hagenbuchner 1989: I. 45f – Kings of equal status usually address on another as …”My brother”-.
(*9) In some place the name is Milawata suggesting an early Greek form Milwatos. In fact Millawanda/Milawata and Milwatos share the same stem, Mila-. The name, as mentioned in the foundation myth of the city, was either imported from Crete, replacing its original termination -tos with the Luwian wanda, or was an indigenous name (Milawata) pre-dating the arrival of the Cretan settlers who then used their own place-name Milwatos on the basis of the resemblance of the two appellatons.
(*10) As for the traditional Epigons mith Thebes was destroyed by a coalition of Achaean reigns some decades before the Trojan war. For this reason it was not mentioned between the kingdoms involved in the expetion lead by Mycenae King Agamemnon against Troy.
(*11) The Greeks have always held Kadmos to be the founder of Thebes, and the royal city of Thebes was and is still caled Kadmeia.
(*12) If, as seems plausible, the relations of the Hittite empire were maintained with the High King of Ahhiyawa from Thebes this Achaean city just loose his power in that period.
(*13) Iliad XX, 193. It is also a remarkable fact that Homer names a number of islands in the eastern Aegean as homes of women taken on Achaian raids, including Lesbos, Skyros and Tenedos (Iliad: IX, 128-130, 270-272, 664-665; XI, 625-627)
(*13a) Kraft joined the UD faculty in 1964. He holds a bachelor’s degree in geology and mineralogy from the Pennsylvania State University and both a master’s in geology and sedimentology and a doctorate in geology and micropaleontology from the University of Minnesota.
(*14) For the Greek mythology Poseidon, also personified as a horse controlled, from his sea-domain, the devastating force of the earthquake. This ability to summon earthquakes earned Poseidon the epithet of “Earth Shaker”.
(*15) Based on Homer also the Cretan king Idomeneus was one of the warriors hidden inside the wooden horse.
http://www.researchgate.net/…/00463538ca9003a006000000.pdf
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Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Volume 67
than we can glean from the scattered notices of the Bible forty years a 0 regarded the Hittites as a kind of Mrs Harris To him Mr ayce is able to reply that the Hittites were a very real power But if real they were ugly as their own sculptures and those of Egypt declare while the Amorites were a tall handsome peolple of the same race Mr Sayce thinks as the white Libyans it may cast some light on a passa in sacred history if we remember that the first husband 0 Bathsheba being a Hittite was probably not a beau aabreur The Hittites in Palestine were but a colony in the mountains of Judah their true strength lying far away in the North The Egyptian records contain more copious and earlier information about the Hittites In Egyptian they are styled Kheta or Khata which to frantic etymologists may suggest the Chatti and Clan Chattan and a general ypothesis that Khata is a clan name the Cats But these are somewhat provincial speculations In the eighteenth dynasty Egypt having got rid of the Shepherd Kings carried the war into Asia and assailed the Hittite hold of Carchemisli Amenophis III married a foreign princess a Hittite lady a parentlv and hence came the short lived heres of the solar dis Certainly Ramses II married a Hittite Ur aa Noferu Ra and Mr Sa ce remarks that if ever her tomb is discovered a Hittite co yo the treaty with Egypt may be among its contents mm the time of Ramses I Mr Sayce finds that it is possible to s ak of a Hittite Empire The rude mountaineers of the auras had descended into the fertile plains of the South interrupting the intercourse between Babylonia and Canaan and supersedin the cuneiform characters of Chaldina b their own hieroglyp ic writing which is nearl as undecipherable as the inscriptions of Easter Island The battle of Ramses II with the Hittites is famous by virtue of the Aristeia written bv Pentiiur and translated into spirited English verse by ltlrs Woods According to this poem the Dardanians and Misonians fou ht for the Hittites so we are on comparatively familiar un The Hittite Empire was already a reality extending rom the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the JE ean and including both the cultured Semites of Syria and the ru e barbarians of the Greek seas One may doubt whether if Mr Sayce means the Achieans and Argives they were exactly rude barbarians at the date of the second Ramses 1383 nc not so long before Homer’s time In the twenty first year of Rameses was concluded the treaty with the Hittites and the marriage of their Princess with the Egyptian King If we could only find the Hittite version their mscriptions would soon be legible But it was indented on silver and may now be circulating in shillings in any case it has probably one to the melting pot or been oxidised into oblivion Syria came the legitimate possession of the Hittites By the date of Ramses III the Hittites Mr Sayce thinks had repealed the Union as it were and were divided into independent States So their Empire came to grief not that analogy is argument The Assyrian monuments now take up the tale under Ti lath Pileser 1 I io 11.0 Tiglath was checked in an attack on a Hittite stronghold Carchemisli at all events he never took it Assiirnatsir pal put the city to a heavy ransom gods of copper in the form of wild bulls twenty talents of silver small images of gold the local corps dc ballet zoo slave girls blades of gold talents of iron and so forth it was delightful loot including ivory and precious stones If only that treasure could be found we might see Ilittite art in a much more pleasant light But the Ilittites fell with Carchemish 717 Bc and so ended utterly the strange empire of a race apparently Mongoloid among Semites and Egyptians Leaving the records of Greece and Assyria Mr Sayce turns to those dumb monuments of tlieperished peo le Hehimselfhasvisited the so called Sesostris of Herodotus in te Pass of Karabel the road through which runs from Ephesus to Smyrna The explorer had to be guarded by Turkish soldiers for more than twenty bandits were lurking in the hrushwood above Mr Sayce had already conceived that the Sesostris carved on the rock was Hittite and the hieroglyphs Hittite a suggestion which had also been made by Dr Vright though Mr Sayce had not then heard of it The story of the waifs and strays of Hittite monuments and inscriptions is of the most curious interest but cannot well be abri ed The turned up toes of the shoes in the monuments are fami iar Mr Sayce calls them snow shoes or mocassins but of course a mocassin is not a snow shoe but a very different article and in fact nothing can be less like a snowshoe than a Hittite shoe But perhaps Mr Sayce has not the long flat projecting snow slioe of America in his mind The celebrated Niobe of Homer is not far from the false Sesostris of the Karabel Pass The fi re was originally that of the great ddess of Asia Minor nown sometimes as Atergatis or Der eto sometimes as Kybelé sometimes by other names There are Hittite characters in the niche of the Niobe and we presume that the people who cut the characters also carved the image Priestesses of that Asian goddess according to Mr Sayce are the m thic Amazons who came to the aid of Troy after the death of ector But if this be true it was Greece who made them beautiful A Hittite Penthesilea would scarce have moved in death the heart of Achilles Mr Sayce says at all events Ve cannot explain the myth of the Amazons except on the supposition that they represented the armed priestesses of the Hittite dess and that a tradition of the Hittite Empire has twined itself around the story of their arrival in the Vllest In a book not purely popular it might have been well to give the essav testiinoriia vcterum about these armed priestesses Some passages on the subset will be found in Preller Grieckiache Mythologie i 254 an Preller seems inclined to be ieve that the Amazons were the fierce priestesses of a Moon goddess The elder Greek ets do not appear to have re rded them as beautiful The n lish reader will find in r Villiam Morris’s Story of Bel erophon Amazons who are far from lovely and who may well have been Hittites The boot which is really a snowshoe a somewhat incorrect description may have been worn by these martial ladies and testifies Mr Sayce thinks to an originally cold and mountainous habitat But a snow shoe is so extremely unlike a boot that we can scarcely form an opinion as to their cluzussure The double headed eagle of the German Em ror is another example of borrowing from the Ilittites for the Tur omans may have seen it onHittite monuments and the Crusaders brought it to Euro e with them in the fourteenth century Meanwhile the capita of this illustrious peo le was lately sold for the price of a cow and the city that defie the Ramesids was judged to be worth no more than the price of a beast of the field Mr Salyce illustrates Hittite religion by aid of the Lucianic e Dea S ria The tem 1c of Mabo carried on he thinks the ritual o the older Carc iemish the Ioly City But by Lucian’s date all Eastern faiths had become so mixed that we cannot advance with any confidence in this direction The rites of Attys familiar from Catullus appearto have been part of Hittite worship Their art was a modification of that of Babylonia The figures shoes and all are clearly drawn from the daily experience of the sculptor’s own life The Niobe of Sipylus is said to show Egyptian influence Bronze Hittite figures ve rude and conventional have been discovered by M Perrot e bronze bull in the Louvre speaks ill for the bronze bulls looted by the Assyrians Their gems can be traced across the Egean to the shores of Greece and examples were found at Mycenm the characters wearing the upturned boots of the period Even the Mycenaean lions are of Hittite origin Perhaps the Cycle s who built Mycenie were Hittites P It is a ity te never didniinything half so good at home Mr Sayce thinks t at Mr Gladstone ma be right in seeing the Hittites in the Keteians of Homer d xi 521 Eurypylus was the leader of those Keteians it may have been a Hittite name but sounds rather the reverse However these are matters only not beyond conjecture As to the inscriptions Mr Sayce justly remarks that as the are always in relief they were probably made at first on meta Yet even on metal it seems easier to incise than to adopt the method of repousaé work The lines are read or rather are not read boustropliedon that is alternately from right to left and from left to ri ht Ve think it highly improbable that the early Greeks adopte this method from people using the Hittite script The Greek alphabet is of course Phoenician in ori in and it is almost incredible that a race which took an alpha et from one people took the method of usin it from another Mr Sayce thinks that the system was invented in Cappadocia perhaps after contact with Egypt One Hittite literary character is known by name from an tian record Khilip sira described as a writer of books of te vile Kheta The only fragment of a bilingual inscription is the noted silver boss of Tarkondemos whereof the history is a little romance It was Mr Sayce who discovered its Hittite character The llittites used the svastika in ornament Vas it an invention of the Hittites Mr Sayce asks or was it of barbarous origin It occurs we believe in Peru Much of the history of this curious people is still quite conjcctural But we may well believe that the excavation of their ancient sites will add to our knowledge of a race which was comppratively so strong and yet made so faint a mark on the world i eanwhile Mr Sayce who discovered the Hittites has produced infinitely the best and most clear and entertaining account of the vile Kheta 7 cnuaso TZU IT is commonly observed by the professors of philoso hy at our Universities that Indian students show a greater aculty for philosophical research than the natives of any other land studying at those seats of learning Their minds show a natural tendency towiirds metaphysicalsubtleties and this mental chamoteristic far from being the growth of yesterday has dist ished the ancestors of the Aryan race inhabiting northern Indiat rough all time From them was sent forth the torch which set fire to the genius of the philosophers of ancient Greece and which illumined the less congenial intellects of the Taoist mystics of China In Greece its flame roduced a brilliant light which for centuries reflected the triump of the writers of that favoured land but in China it burnt with a fitful s lendour which was sufiicient only to reveal the barrenness 0 the material upon which it fed To the unimaginative and prosaic Chinaman the mystic subtleties which to the Indian are congenial ideas and by the Greek are easily assimilated are foreign and difficult conceptions and thou h for a brief space among a small school they were studied and preached they soon ceased to attract and were speedily debased to the levels of necromancy and idolatry Cliuang T217 ll_i stic Jfomlisl and Social Reformer Translated from the Chinese by Herbert A Giles London llemard Quaritcli 1889 January 26 1889 105 The Saturday Review< a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qlQxAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA105&ots=iJGoAB4Mcc&dq=Scottish%20clan%20chattan%20Hittite&pg=PA105#v=onepage&q=Scottish%20clan%20chattan%20Hittite&f=false" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=qlQxAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA105&ots=iJGoAB4Mcc&dq=Scottish%20clan%20chattan%20Hittite&pg=PA105#v=onepage&q=Scottish%20clan%20chattan%20Hittite&f=false
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Educational Foundations: A Text Book for the Professional Teacher, Volume 24
of improvement and made a beginning of popular education under State direction The Palatine School established at the court of the Empire was Charlemagne’s model Alfred laid the foundation for Oxford University It was the avowed purpose of Charlemagne to advance the interests of the church and Alfred based his legal system on moral principles as espoused by the church Thus passed ten centuries of our era and nowhere is there any attempt to divorce religion from education Religion needed the services of education for her defense and advancement education concerned itself with religion even more zealously than with science literature and art The next type of educational discipline was that of chivalry It furnishes rather a sharp contrast to monasticism Physical development was sought for its own sake and gallantry became the popular form of goodness The young knight was trained in manly sports hunting fencing swimming riding Religion was by no means neglected An important peace was assigned to it in the general educational scheme The knight was compelled to study religion even while he pursued his military training and was finally inducted into his office by taking solemn vows to defend the church Chivalry concerned though it was with temporal things did not stand for education minus definite religious instruction Before we consider the period of the Renaissance it may be well to spare a few words to certain other aspects of intellectual development in the period preceding it itemizing as follows Scholasticism Burgher Schools Guild Schools Schools of the Saracens Universities Scholasticism had a theological genesis and purpose Philosophy and logic were seized upon as weapons for the defense of the faith Scholasticism made for the development of a rational philosophy for the purpose of substantiating the doctrines of the church It was an intellectual movement under a religious impulse was guided by able scholars such as Anselm Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas and called forth weighty doctrines such as Conceptualism Nominalism and Realism It prepared the way for the Renaissance Guild Schools arose in response to the needs of the multiplying artisan classes Burgher Schools had to do especially with ecoromic Discussion and Comment 553
romic questions The former were supported by trade guilds but they were usually taught by the clergy Civil authorities finally controlled these schools and they come nearer to a resemblance of our modern public schools than any of the schools of the Middle Ages They stood for practical education but neither practical education nor State control meant the severance of religion and learning The problems of a democracy f mong a heterogeneous people are modern and not medieval and the educators of that day were not facing twentieth century difficulties Among the Saracens the schools were associated with the Inosques Far afield as they went into the broader reaches of knowledge expert as they were in mathematics physics chemistry astronomy and medicine they were marked above all things else by their devotion to Allah and to the teachings of Mohammed his prophet All of these influences conspired to produce the university in the twelfth century independent alike of church and State yet affording instruction in both civil law and theology Church and monastic origins can be traced and while the universities were thoroughly democratized they were under the sway of noted religious leaders and teachers and in turn were recognized as a powerful force in religious controversies So we come to the period of the Renaissance that age of phenomenal changes crowning the old order and initiating the new Feudalism had had its day and ideals of government changed Columbus crossed the Atlantic and geography was changed Gunpowder changed methods of warfare printing changed bookmaking and methods of disseminating knowledge The telescope changed astronomy and the mariners compass changed navigation Education conceived new aims Henceforth there was to be more freedom more individuality more personal culture Medieval methods were found wanting New attention was given to ancient literature and to the study of the arts and sciences Europe experienced an intellectual new birth a renaissance in all that made for liberal education It was certainly a testing time for religion as men were emboldened to renounce what did not fit the new conditions And how fared religion then Was it divorced from education or did it maintain itself as an indispensable elemenf in the broadened life of the new age The question is raised but to indicate the plainness of the answer 554 Educational Foundations
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Glasgow, past and present: illustrated in Dean of guild …
https://books.google.com/books?id=S-EHAAAAQAAJJames Pagan, Robert Reid – 1856
This was done, and Mrs. Graham became sole proprietrix of the Saracen’s Head, … When the foundation-stone of the first Jamaica Street Bridge was laid, …
historical notes on spanish gypsies – flamencoshop.com
http://www.flamencoshop.com/gypsy/historicalnotes.htmThe term gypsy refers to an ethnic group which calls itself the Rom and speaks a … When the official persecution began against moors and jews in 1492 as an … as well as well being excluded from public office and from craft membership.
Gypsies Although intermingled with other populations, the …
http://www.ufomind.com/area51/desert_rat/1995/dr29/rat_29_gypsy.txtThey were excluded from all craft and trade guilds, and the Roman Catholic church … INQUISITION was aimed at Gypsies as well as at the Jews and the Moors.
“Lazy, Improvident People”: Myth and Reality in the …https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0801444624
Ruth Mackay – 2006 – History
Attempts to exclude certain racial or religious groups can, on the one hand, … Guildsbegan excluding those descended from Jews and Muslims only at the end of the … a small minority (all from the textile trades) excluded blacks, Jews, Moors, … to have included Gypsies, perhaps because it went without saying that such.
Submitted By: Jabez Ali El
Negro Fisherman.From Antakya.2nd
Did You ever notice how often You read about Hamites in lands other than Africa Proper , the authors give the pat answer that slavery is the reason ,however My reasearch says that they are usually indigenous and then slaves were brought there to cover it up like The Afro -Turks, Iranian Moors, Moorish Americans[Afro-Anyone from SW Amexem] ,Siddis of India etc . lol
Sanxingdui was a Bronze Age civilization that flourished in China’s fertile …
Hittites / Hatti (Kheta)
The Hittites were an Indo-European people who emerged in circa 1800 BC, perhaps from the Russian Steppes and Ukraine, although this is far from certain and very little else is known about their origins. They spoke an archaic Indo-European dialect which was closer to Proto-Indo-European than any other variant which has been discovered to have existed at this point in time. Their name is taken from the King James Bible, translating ‘Children of Heth’, the son of Canaan, but equating them or the later neo-Hittite states with the Bible’s Hittites is still a matter of contention.
The Hittites should be distinguished from the Hatti, who were an earlier people who inhabited the same region. They were conquered by the Hittites, who to all intents replaced them in their homeland, taking on their civilisation, gods, and way of life. However, the Hittites were known as the Hatti by themselves and their neighbours throughout their existence as a nation, and their state as ‘The Land of the City of Hattusa’.
early 18th cent BC
Pithana / Pitkhana
Tribal leader. Became king of Hatti Kussara and then Kanesh.
Pithana, the earliest-documented Hittite ruler, and his son rule their newly conquered domain in Anatolia from the unlocated city of Kussara. Pithana later conquers the Hatti city of Kanesh, centre of the Assyrian trading colonies in Anatolia, perhaps moving his capital there (and probably ending Assyrian trading there too).
mid-18th cent BC
Anitta
Son. King of Kussara & Kanesh.
At the very start of his reign Anitta defeats Piyusti, king of Hatti. A second battle at the city of Salampa sees Piyusti defeated again. He retreats and fortifies his capital at Hattousha (Hattusa), but Anitta storms and conquers it after famine has weakened the defenders. Anitta also attacks the city of Zalpa, recapturing the Kaneshan god and ending the threat from the north..
Next, Anitta turns his attention southwards and defeats the city of Salatiwara in two campaigns (which lies on a road connecting the kingdoms of Wahsusana and Purushanda). In the final stage of his campaigns, Anitta marches against the important city of Purushanda and the king surrenders without offering battle.
The city of Hattusa seen from the southern fortifications, with the ruins of the huge temple of the storm god in the centre.
With these victories he brings the entire valley of the River Kizil Irmak up to its mouth on the Black Sea under Hittite control. In composing a text celebrating the victory, Anitta creates the first Hittite inscriptions, and the earliest-known Indo-European writings. Anitta’s kingdom at Kussara collapses soon after his death, but his descendants remain based there for another century.
Peruwa
Son. At Kussara? May never have become king.
Zuzzu
At Kanesh?
Kanesh is destroyed around this time by a king of Salatiwara, perhaps at the end of Zuzzu’s reign. This point represents the definitive end of the Assyrian trading colonies. Kanesh fades completely as the Hittites withdraw to Kussara.
Old Hittite Empire
c.1740 – 1500 BC
Following their initial defeat of the Hatti, and a century of obscurity, the Hittites bounced back to quickly centralise power in Asia Minor and create a state of their own. They were culturally influenced by the Hurrians on their eastern border during this period, with several rulers bearing Hurrian names and Hurrian Vedic gods being worshipped (for instance at Yazilikaya). As in Egypt, their king was both the Supreme Judge and High Priest. Hattusili I founded a new capital at Hattousha (Hattusa – modern Boazkale in Turkey), which would remain the centre of the empire until its fall. While the Hittites destroyed the Amorite Old Babylonian empire, they also absorbed much of Mesopotamian culture, and were later responsible for disseminating it throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
All dates for the Old Hittites are approximate and are taken from three lists and various notes. All names can also be spelt to end with an ‘s’. Following the collapse of the earlier Hittite kingdom of Kussara, little is known about them until Hattusili I created the Old Hittite empire.
c.1740 – 1710 BC
Tudhaliya I?
King of Kussara.
While not very powerful at this stage, the Hittites appear to make a tentative step towards expansion by establishing a colony at Yadiya, not far to the east.
c.1710 – 1680 BC
Pusarruma?
King of Kussara.
c.1680 – 1650 BC
Labarna I
King of Kussara. First confirmed Hittite king.
c.1670? BC
The city state of Zalpa, resurgent after the Hittite victory under Anitta, is finally defeated by Labarna I.
Labarna II?
Reign uncertain. He may have renamed himself Hattusili.
c.1650 – 1620 BC
Hattusili I
Nephew/adopted son of Labarna, but which is uncertain.
Under Hattusili, heir to the throne of Kassura, the Hittites rapidly defeat their competitors in central Anatolia, probably inflicting a final defeat on the Hatti and establishing a new capital at Hattusa (a theory is that Labarna II takes the name Hattusili in recognition of the victory). Then they invade Arzawa in western Anatolia, and march across the Euphrates to destroy cities in Ishuwa. This is followed up by the attack and destruction of several vassals of the Syrian state of Yamkhad over a span of several years, extending their own domains south into Syria. A Hittite viceroy is placed in control of the Syrian state of Carchemish, while in Amurru a local king is allowed to govern as a vassal. Ebla is also destroyed, either by Hattusili or his son. Later claims are made that ties of friendship with Wilusa date from this period.
c.1620 – 1590 BC
Mursili I
Grandson/adopted son.
c.1595 BC
Taking advantage of the increasing decline of Babylon, Mursili takes his army down the Euphrates and sacks the city. On the way he ransacks and destroys the city of Alep in Syria, and passes through Terqa.
When he returns home he is murdered by his brother-in-law, who himself is also killed. Various parties then contest the throne and this internal instability prevents the Hittites from gaining any benefit from their conquests in Syria and Mesopotamia. The Hittite state does not re-emerge as a major power until the fourteenth century BC.
c.1590 – 1560 BC
Hantili I
Assassin and brother-in-law of Mursili I. Murdered.
c.1560 – 1550 BC
Zidanta I
Son-in-law of Hantili.
c.1550 – 1530 BC
Ammuna
Son of Hantili.
c.1530 – 1525 BC
Huzziya I
Son?
c.1525 – 1500 BC
Telipinu
Son of Zidanta I? Or brother-in-law of Ammuna.
Telipinu concludes a treaty with his south-eastern neighbour, the state of Kizzuwatna.
Tahurwaili
His reign is uncertain. Some place him after Hantili.
Tahurwaili agrees a parity treaty with Eheya of Kizzuwatna.
Middle Hittite Empire
c.1500 – 1450 BC
Unable to consolidate their previous conquests, the Hittites now found themselves restrained by the successful Hurrian empire ofMitanni, and unable to gain direct access to Syria. Relations were initially good with the neighbouring kingdom of Kizzuwatna on their south-eastern border, but at some point after about 1470 BC the Kizzuwatnans were conquered by Mitanni, and the Hittites were even more cut off and unable to respond. While at this low point, Hittite record-keeping for this period was very sparse.
c.1500 – 1490 BC
Alluwamna
Son-in-law of Huzziya I.
c.1490 – 1480 BC
Hantili II
Son.
c.1490 BC
Hantili renews the treaty of friendship with his south-eastern neighbour, Kizzuwatna, and its king, Paddatisu.
The Lion Gates of the Hittite capital were of a style popular throughout the ancient Middle East, with an example being found in Mycenae and a later version existing in Jerusalem
c.1480 – 1470 BC
Zidanta II
Nephew?
c.1480 – 1475 BC
Although relations with Kizzuwatna are initially rocky, with both kingdoms grabbing territory from each other, Zidanta agrees a new parity treaty with King Pilliya.
c.1470 – 1460 BC
Huzziya II
c.1470 BC
Subject to frequent raids from Alakhtum, the faction-torn Hittites are unable to respond. Huzziya is killed by Muwatalli, perhaps the first break with the ancient royal bloodline.
c.1460 – 1450 BC
Muwatalli I
His reign is uncertain. Most lists place Tudhaliya at 1460 BC.
c.1450 BC
Muwattalli is killed in a palace coup by Himuili, the Chief of the Palace Servants, and Kantuzili, the Overseer of the Gold Chariot Fighters. A succession struggle follows which is scarcely documented at all. Muwa, Chief of the Royal Bodyguard and probably the brother of the dead king, flees to Mitanni and solicits their help. On the other side of the struggle, Kantuzzili joins forces with a man named Tudhaliya. The two factions meet in battle, and Tudhaliya and Kantuzzili emerge victorious. Of the conspirators, it is Tudhaliya who becomes Great King.
New Hittite Empire
c.1450 – 1200 BC
The previous century had been one of domination by the Hurrian empire of Mitanni. Now a resurgent Hittite empire began to change the balance of power, with the Assyrians further east doing the same. At the same time, Indo-European barbarians such as theKaskans began to strengthen in northern Anatolia, and Ahhiyawa was first mentioned on the Anatolian coast of the Aegean.
Geographically, the state’s borders shifted constantly. The capital city was in central Anatolia in the basin of the River Kizil Irmak, and military expansion efforts focussed mainly on the south in Syria. It is unclear precisely where the northern and western borders lay, but the Kaskans in the north were at times clients of the Hittites, although barely manageable ones. As the state’s organisation was not by direct territorial control but by domination over vassals, the borders were determined by the level of control which could be exercised over those vassals. The southern region of Tarhuntassa in particular began to exercise more independence as central power declined towards the end of the empire, and on the south-western Mediterranean shore, the Lukka were never entirely tamed.
(Three different dating theories are available for the New Hittites. The one used here matches most closely with the ‘middle list’, the others adding ten or twenty years onto these dates, or taking twenty years away from them, although gaps are plugged from other sources. The uncertainties surrounding Hittite dating are still very great, so no one list can be said to be definitive.)
c.1450 – 1420 BC
Tudhaliya II (I)
Son of Huzziya II? Shown as Tudhaliya I in some lists.
c.1430 BC
Tudhaliya begins a restoration of Hittite power, conducting his third campaign against the Kaskans in the north.Arzawa concludes a treaty with Tudhaliya, but when Ahhiyawa conquers Madduwattas’ kingdom of Alashiya, Tudhaliya installs the latter in the mountain country of Zippasla and supports his attempts to capture the Arzawan throne. Ishuwa is defeated by the Hittite king, and then sides with Mitanni. Tudhaliya is unable to take Ishuwa, so he successfully attacks Kizzuwatna, a Mitanni possession, instead.
Mattiwaza / Madduwattas
A Hittite-backed contestant for the throne of Arzawa.
c.1420 – 1400 BC
Arnuwanda I
Son-in-law.
c.1400 BC
Kizzuwatna falls to the Hittites when Arnuwanda’s army overruns it. On the western border, Arnuwanda continues the support of Madduwattas, aiding him in eventually winning the throne of Arzawa. Madduwattas then expands his state right up to the Hittite borders. However, Arnuwanda has serious problems with the Kaskans, with many northern territories falling into their hands, including the cult centre of Nerik.
c.1400 – 1380 BC
Tudhaliya III (II)
Son. Not in all lists and his rule is uncertain.
c.1392 BC
The Hittites wrest control of the Assyrians from Mitanni, possibly annexing the territory to Kizzuwatna.
c.1400 – 1380 BC
Hattusili II
Precise position in the list is uncertain.
c.1380 – 1370 BC
Tudhaliya IV (III)
Son of Tudhaliya III.
c.1375 BC
The Kaskans join up with Hayasa-Azzi, Ishuwa, and the Lukka, as well as other Hittite enemies. They burn down the Hittite fort of Masat, as well as the capital, Hattusa, and possibly the secondary capital at Sapinuwa. The Kaskans make Nenassa their frontier. Despite being an able and active ruler before illness keeps him off the battlefield, events are against Tudhaliya. The Hittite state loses its international standing, and loses most of its possessions near and far as well, to the extent that the Egyptians wonder if the state has fallen entirely.
c.1370 – 1336 BC
Suppiluliuma I
Took the throne in coup. Son of Tudhaliya III. Died of plague.
Upon seizing the throne, Suppiluliuma pushes back an invasion by the Kaskan barbarians and invades Hayasa-Azzi. Then he inflicts a shock defeat on the Hurrian empire of Mitanni (working with his son, Piyashshili), initiating that powerful state’s decline and effectively creating the Hittite New Empire. Piyashshili is given the territory of Ashtata to rule from Carchemish. However, Suppiluliuma is not entirely successful at first in pushing backArzawa, which is very powerful at this stage.
During his reign, the Hittites also solidify their control over the south and east of Anatolia (including inTarhuntassa and Ishuwa), play politics in Arzawa, gain Mitanni territory in northern Syria, and suppress a rebellion in Kizzuwatna. The city state of Alalakh is drawn directly under Hittite rule, removing the local rulers, while Amurru, Emar, Qadesh, and Ugarit become vassals, Carchemish and Alep are ruled by sons of Suppiluliuma, and Hittite control extends as far south as Damas, while Wilusa remains an ally.
c.1339 BC
The Syrian Mitanni territory falls completely under Hittite overlordship, to all intents and proposes ending Hurrianculture. At the same time the Assyrians regain their independence. The subject state of Amurru switches allegiance to the Hittites.
c.1336 – 1333 BC
Arnuwanda II
Son of Suppiluliuma. Incapacitated by plague.
c.1333 – 1308 BC
Mursili II
Brother. May have initially shared power with Arnuwanda.
c.1326 – 1321 BC
Devoting attention to the areas of Anatolia which had been ignored by his father, Mursili defeats the state ofArzawa in about 1325 BC, with the result that it disappears as a state. The Hittites now border Ahhiyawa in the west. Mursili also attacks the Kaskans to the north, but in the seventh year of his reign, Hayasa-Azzi raids the land of Dankuwa on the Hittite border, capturing the area’s population and beginning four years of warfare.
Treaty between Mursili II and Talmi-sharruma of Aleppo to regulate future relations between the two states
c.1308 – 1282 BC
Muwatalli II
Son of Mursili II.
c.1300 BC
The now-independent Assyrians begin to take control of Mitanni, while Muwatalli moves his capital to the previously obscure city of Tarhuntassa in southern Anatolia (possibly due to the Kaskan sacking of Hattusa). He leaves his brother, the future Hattusili III in charge of the northern areas, from where he re-conquers Hattusa and the cult centre of Nerik, allowing the capital to be returned to the north. Muwatalli is also in contact with his ally, Alexandros of Wilusa, regarding the remaining Arzawan client states.
1286 BC
The battle of Kadesh/Qadesh (the earliest surviving report of a major engagement) sees the forces of Egypt, under Ramses II, and the Hittites together with their various allies, including troops from Arzawa and the Lukka, clash for control of former Mitanni Syria. The battle ends with no clear outcome, although the Hittites come out on top, gaining uncontested control of Syria, and also raiding further south into Canaan. Kadesh is given over to the Hittite subject state of Ashtata. The victory, though, seems to spark the beginnings of a civil war in the Hittite nobility which lasts for about three generations.
c.1280 BC
Muwatalli concludes a treaty with his ally, Alexandros/Aleksandu of Wilusa, regarding the remaining Arzawanclient states.
c.1282 – 1275 BC
Mursili III (Urhi-Teshub)
Son by a concubine. Deposed by his uncle.
c.1282 – 1275 BC
In the north, Hattusili uses his powerbase to undermine Mursili III, eventually deposing him, seemingly with the help of the deposed Benteshina of Amurru. This is unheard of, and it shatters the bond of trust between kings and nobility – the kingship is no longer sacred and untouchable. Mursili makes his powerbase in Arzawa, where he is supported by the populace. Hattusili makes Mursili’s son, Karunta, ‘king of Tarhuntassa’ in the south, while exiling Mursili himself to an outlying part of the state.
c.1275 – 1250 BC
Hattusili III
Brother of Muwatalli II.
Hattusili’s queen, Pudu-Hepa, formerly a priestess from Kizzuwatna, aids the integration of the Kizzuwatnan pantheon into the Hittite one, with the goddess Hebat becoming very important. To the west, Ahhiyawa first becomes a major regional power at this time, and the Hittite ally in Wilusa is overthrown.
1258 BC
Egypt and the Hittites (under Hattusili) agree the earliest known peace treaty, allowing them to peacefully shareSyria (including what is now Lebanon) and lasting for forty years. From Hattusili’s point of view, the agreement might be important in legitimising his rule, as well as guaranteeing a level of security against the threat ofAssyrian aggression, now that they have conquered much of eastern Mitanni.
c.1250 – 1241 BC
Tudhaliya V (IV)
Son of Hattusili III. Deposed?
c.1241 – 1240 BC
Karunta
Son of Muwatalli / cousin of Tudhaliya V.
Karuta, king of Tarhuntassa, may temporarily depose his cousin, as he appears as ‘Great King’ on seals found at Hattusa. Tudhaliya regains the throne, but Assyria attacks the state from the east, and vassals in the west and south-west of Anatolia rebel. Trouble in the regions adjoining the Aegean may be inspired by an elusive ‘king ofAhhiyawa’, situated between the coast and the former state of Arzawa. He is a major player, but hard to pinpoint in any detail, and Tudhaliya is unable to suppress him, despite taking Milawata (classical Miletus).
c.1241 – 1220 BC
Tudhaliya V (IV)
Restored? Confirmed Karunta’s rule in Tarhuntassa.
c.1230 BC
Amurru concludes a treaty with the Hittite king, preventing seaborne trade between Assyria and Ahhiyawa.
c.1220 – 1215 BC
Arnuwanda III
Son of Tudhaliya V.
c.1215 – 1200 BC
Suppiluliuma II
Son of Tudhaliya V.
Tarhuntassa attacks the Hittite state, but no further details are known. Suppiluliuma II is occupied with engagingAlashiya in sea battles as he attempts to invade the Cypriot kingdom.
c.1200 BC
Decaying from late in the thirteenth century BC, as Assyria rises and instability grips the Mediterranean coast, the Hittite empire is looted and destroyed by various surrounding peoples, including the Kaskans and the Sea Peoples (and perhaps even selectively by its own populace). Some important Hittite cities and states, such asTarhuntassa and Ugarit, disappear, but others, such as Carchemish, survive. Hittite elements, now homeless, appear to join the Sea Peoples in subsequent raids on Egypt.
Small Hittite (or ‘neo-Hittite’) states form out of some territories: in western Anatolia, Maeonia emerges as an independent kingdom; in the south-west, Lycia; in south-central and eastern Anatolia, Kummuhu, and Tabal; while north-east of Maeonia, an Indo-European people who are allied to the Kaskans form the kingdom ofPhrygia; the Sea Peoples ravage eastern Anatolia and Syria (and some scholars associate them with Tabal). The Philistines, more displaced settlers, arrive on the coast of Canaan. Further neo-Hittite states continue to survive in Northern Syria, and some are mentioned in the Bible. This is also the generally accepted period in which the Israelites begin creating a kingdom.
http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/AnatoliaHittites.htm
Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and …https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0567441172K. L. Noll – 2012 – Religion
The common elements of Canaanite culture, as well as any distinctive features associated with … North of Canaan was Anatolia, home of a culture called Hatti.
Egyptian relations with Canaanite vassals (Amarna Letters)
http://www.academia.edu/…/Anth.310_Ppt._lecture-9_Egyptian..
Anth.310 Ppt. lecture-9: Egyptian relations with Canaanite vassals (Amarna Letters), neighbouring kingdoms (Aegean; Anatolia [Hatti]; Cyprus [Alaysha]; Mitanni; …
Canaan
Historical region, Middle East
Written by: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 10 Last Updated 11-19-2014
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Canaan, area variously defined in historical and biblical literature, but always centred on Palestine. Its original pre-Israelite inhabitants were called Canaanites. The names Canaan and Canaanite occur in cuneiform, Egyptian, and Phoenician writings from about the 15th century bc as well as in the Old Testament. In these sources, Canaan refers sometimes to an area encompassing all of Palestine and Syria, sometimes only to the land west of the Jordan River, and sometimes just to a strip of coastal land from Acre (Akko) northward. The Israelites occupied and conquered Palestine, or Canaan, beginning in the late 2nd millennium bc, or perhaps earlier; and the Bible justifies such occupation by identifying Canaan with the Promised Land, the land promised to the Israelites by God.
The origin of the term is disputed, but it may derive from an old Semitic word denoting reddish purple, referring to the rich purple or crimson dye produced in the area or to the wool coloured with the dye. Biblically, Canaanites are identified in Genesis as descendants of Canaan, a son of Ham and grandson of Noah. See also Phoenicia.
The human habitation of coastal Canaan can be traced back to Paleolithic and Mesolithic times, and excavations have revealed that a settled community and an agricultural way of life existed at the site of Jericho by 8,000 bc. More widespread settlement in fixed towns and villages appears not to have occurred until the Neolithic Period (c. 7000c. 4000 bc). The following period, called the Chalcolithic Age (c. 4000c. 3000 bc), was characterized by the use of pottery and copper and by houses of uncut stones, with walls of mud brick.
The introduction of bronze in the Early Bronze Age (c. 30002000 bc) brought about a cultural revolution, marked by the development of metallurgy and by a decline in painted pottery. Semitic peoples first appeared in Canaan during this period. With the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000c. 1550 bc), recorded history in the area began. The Semitic Amorites, who penetrated Canaan from the northeast, became the dominant element of the population during this time. Other invaders included the Egyptians and the Hyksos, a group of Asian peoples who seem to have migrated there from north of Palestine. The Hurrians (the Horites of the Old Testament) also came to Canaan from the north.
The Late Bronze Age (c. 1550c. 1200 bc) was mainly one of Egyptian dominance in Canaan, although their power there was contested by the Hittites of Anatolia. The period was also marked by incursions of marauders called Hapiru, or Habiru (Egyptian: Apiru). This term was apparently applied by the Egyptians to other peoples or social groups who were of foreign origin. Many scholars feel that among the Hapiru were the original Hebrews, of whom the later Israelites were only one branch or confederation.
By the end of the 13th century bc, Egypt’s domination over southern Canaan had waned, and the Hittites collapsed under the assault of enemies from the north. During the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Ageprobably about 1250 bcthe Israelites entered Canaan, settling at first in the hill country and in the south. The Israelites infiltration was opposed by the Canaanites, who continued to hold the stronger cities of the region. In the following century, Canaan suffered further invasion at the hands of the Philistines, who appear to have come from Crete. They eventually established a coalition of five city-states on the southern coast of Canaan. Under the leadership of King David (10th century bc), the Israelites were finally able to break the Philistine power and at the same time to vanquish the native Canaanites, taking the city of Jerusalem. Thereafter Canaan became, for all practical purposes, the Land of Israel.
Modern knowledge of Canaans history and culture is derived from both archeological excavations and from literary sources. Excavations, mainly in the 20th century, have unearthed the remains of many important Canaanite cities, including Bet Sheʾan, Gezer, Hazor, Jericho, Jerusalem, Lachish, Megiddo, and Shechem. The most important literary sources for the regions history are the Old Testament; the Ras Shamra texts discovered at the site of ancient Ugarit, on the north coast of Syria; and the Amarna Letters, a set of dispatches sent in the 14th century bc by governors of Palestinian cities and Syrian cities to their Egyptian overlords.
Canaan was situated at the crossroads of several cultures, and throughout its recorded history its art and literature illustrate a mixture of many elements: Egyptian, Mycenaean, Cretan, Hurrian, and Mesopotamian. Most of what is known about Canaanite religion is derived from a series of tablets discovered at Ras Shamra. The principal god was El, but the jurisdiction over rainfall and fertility was delegated to Baal, or Hadad. Other important deities included Resheph, lord of plague and the nether world; Kothar, the divine craftsman; Asherah, consort of El; and Astarte, goddess of fertility.
The language of the Canaanites may perhaps be best described as an archaic form of Hebrew, standing in much the same relationship to the Hebrew of the Old Testament as does the language of Chaucer to modern English. The Canaanites were also the first people, as far as is known, to have used an alphabet. In Late Bronze Age strata at the site of Lachish, archaeologists have found a form of script that is recognized by most scholars as the parent of Phoenician and thence of the Greek and Latin alphabets. They also found that a curious cuneiform alphabet was in use at Ugarit. Side by side with these innovations, however, the traditional syllabic cuneiform of Mesopotamia was regularly employed.
WORLD HISTORY LINKS
Correcting_Rewritten_History MindStation X : Renaissance
Ancient African Civilizations Educational Posters & Art Prints
Dr. Ivan Van Sertima Italy – Italian Renaissance – Zoological studies Re: For Sale: A DNA Test to Measure Racial Mix
KAM Africans in Early Europe The TRUE Black History Home Page
European Crusades, Christianisation, and Colonisation West Africa
William Greaves: Documenting The Truth In Film – Global Black News …
African Contributions to World History Sephardim and their History The Iberian Golden Age, European Expansion
Origins of Islamic Intolerence by Mark Silverberg African American and Ancient Egyptians
ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY ROME The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy – Chapter II
Great Homepage of Alexander, or Something Like That Alexander The Great – Links
Alexander the Great on the Web Alexander the Great History Project Alexander was Great
The Third Great Race War: The Moors Invade Europe History Timelines on the Web … The History Beat
Information and facts about Cleopatra History of Alexandria: Cleopatra
Queen Cleopatra – Last Pharaoh of Egypt – Queen Cleopatra VII Raising the lost city of Cleopatra
The House of Ptolemy: Caesar, Cleopatra, & Marcus Antonius THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND
The Moors in Europe Moor Info Latin American Muslim Unity: History of Islam in Latin America
Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Table of Contents
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers Adolf Hitler and The Holocaust Hitler Was Not An Atheist
WAS HITLER A ROTHSCHILD | The controversy of the occult reich IS AMERICA
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER Hitler’s Christianity African Timelines Part II
The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives
Hitler’s Rise to Power The OMEGA File : HITLER ESCAPED Henry the Navigator
Dr Edward Scobie: African Presence in Early Britian: Dominica political figure
The African Presence in the Americas many centuries before Columbus
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004
AFRICA
The Zulu Appropriation of the Imperial: The Imperial, The Colonial, and the creation of “White” Power
The Great Boer War by Arthur Conan Doyle 1 massacres
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD – NI 196 – Carving up the world South Africa
History 386: The Military and War in America–Lecture Outlines
THE MIND THINKING OF HITLER
Hitler’s Religious Beliefs and Fanaticism
Arcanacon 1800’s: 1800s timeline Multiculti http://www.harunyahya.com/fascism3.php
The Future Of African Gods: The Clash Of Civilizations
WHO ARE THE REAL LATINOS OR SO CALLED LATIN PEOPLE
FROM THE WEBSITE
“Latino” denies us our true Nican Tlaca (Indigenous) identity and heritage. It keeps us slaves to European interests and Spaniard culture.
Collectively, we have no Latin genealogy, Latin blood group, Latin history, or a common Latin culture of food or mythology.
The “Latino” labeling of our people is a colonialist-racist act of Genocide—an attempt to “kill off” our people’s true identity, history, independence, and our rights to our land and its wealth. Notice how this is not about “Latino Americans” in the U.S. This is about all of the “Spanish speaker” European Spaniards and their colonies of Nican Tlaca and Africans in the “Americas”. What they are in fact doing is separating us from our Anahuac Heritage (Mexican and “Central American” Nican Tlaca identity and history) and enslaving us to their needs.
THE CONCEPT OF HISPANIC
is even more racist than “Latino” because it completely denies us our true Nican Tlaca heritage by not even referring to our colonized condition of being in “Latin America”. We now become direct possessions of Spaniards. This is an attempt (successful so far) to actively reactivate the Spanish colonial empire through their colonials on our land. The media is their main tool in this parasitic renewed colonialist machine of the European Spaniards.
A side note: A Mixed-blood is not a Criollo or a European.
WE DECLARE INDEPENDANCE FROM
Spaniards, Europeans, And Their Squatter Descendants On Our Land Who Force Their Eurocentric, Racist, & Anti-Indigenous “Hispanic” & “Latino” Labels On Our People!
Eurocentric, Racist, & Anti-Indigenous Cuban-Miami Television & Mexico City Criollos (White People) Who Control Our Knowledge, Identity & Future!
Eurocentric, Racist, & Anti-Indigenous Concepts of “Mestizo” & “Raza” That Enslave Our People To European Interests & Identities!
The Europeans And Their Descendants Who Have Denied Us The Beauty Of Our True Anahuac Heritage And The Ownership Of The Wealth Of Our Land!
1) THEFT OF OUR LAND
was the initial crime of the Europeans. We did not ever give up the ownership of our land, nor did we ever invite Europeans onto our lands.
2) DECEIT AND DISHONOR
by Europeans (along with the violation of our laws) and their unethical and immoral behavior, were what brought about their taking of our land, the genocide of our people, the enslavement of our remaining population, and all of their uncountable crimes against us.
3) RACIST TERRORISM
has been the European method that was used to shock us into submitting to their control of our land and our lives.
4) PIRACY
(looting, taking what is not yours to take) has been the European profession of choice by which they stole our people’s wealth of precious jewels, gold, silver, and other valuables, along with the wealth of our land.
5) VANDALISM
has been another signature of European barbaric assaults on our civilization and culture. This defacement was done upon our physical landscape and upon the psychological well-being of our people.
6) KIDNAPPING
of our people (as a prelude to extortion and /or enslavement) has been a violation of all nations’ sense of decency, law, and civilized behavior.
7) EXTORTION
(usually for gold) from our lands has been another favorite crime of the Europeans. They mostly killed their victims, even when ransom was paid.
8) MURDER OF OUR LEADERS
was a peculiarly vicious and dishonorable ongoing crime of Europeans. This crime exhibited the total failure of a sense of honor amongst the Europeans. Deceit was usually involved in the murder of our leaders.
9) MASSACRES
of unarmed civilian men, women, and children on our lands. This at first happened in the dozens, then hundreds, and eventually it led to routine slaughters in the thousands.
10) GENOCIDE
of our people became possible when they discovered that they had built-in biological weapons of mass destruction in their bodies’ exposure to smallpox and other diseases—for which we had no immune defenses. They used this biological weapon which was 90 to 98% effective in killing us.
11) TORTURE AND MUTILATION
was initially used to get us to surrender all gold objects to Europe. This technique was later used by the church to force conversions and to get confessions out of our people.
12) GRAVE ROBBERY
has been an ongoing habit of Europeans from the beginning. This was a way of quickly stealing wealth that was not guarded.
13) ENSLAVEMENT OF OUR PEOPLE
to do the work that they were too lazy to do themselves, has been another nasty European habit.
14) DESTRUCTION OF CITIES
to take away our pride in our heritage, has been an almost totally successful European crime.
15) BURNING LIBRARY BOOKS
in the tens of thousands by Europeans, has been one of the most devastating crimes that can never be mended or reconstructed.
16) UNIVERSITIES & SCHOOLS DESTROYED
as a means of enslaving us to ignorance and to serving the interests of Europeans.
17) RACIAL RAPE
of our people defiled us as a nation and tainted our people with the filth of their racism that says: More European blood is better.
18) CULTURAL CASTRATION
in which laws were decreed that prohibited our people from learning our own culture, our languages, or even the simplicity of having our true names and identity.
19) PROHIBITION OF OUR THEOLOGY
which forced the hypocritical version of Christianity on our people.
20) CONTINUATIONS OF THESE CRIMES
up to the present day without guilt, reparations, or the “reality thought” that Europeans were in any way evil or monstrous in their actions.
APOCALYPTO!!
Body: QUIENES SOMOS!??
Let’s put the movie itself aside for a second and set the record straight about this one thing we call our “identity”. Many people around the world refer to those of us who come from certain parts of the Carribean, Central, & South America as “Latin, Latino, Latin American, Hispanic, and even Spanish”. Most of them identify us that way simply out of respect for “us” because we identify ourselves that way. So i will now take a moment to STATE THE OBVIOUS.
We ARE NOT, NOR HAVE WE EVER BEEN “Latin”! Point Blank! And I am speaking here for myself and those like me.
Director, Mel Gibson, gives his staff their “due” respect and shouts them out in his promotional interviews about the movie by sayin’ something like “behind the scenes and in front of the camera in this film are mostly Latinos”… Mind you, he is refering to the indegenous peoples of Central America here. INDIANS for those of us who will only understand it this way…
I invite you to see this movie, then take a good look at the actors in it and strip them down to their birthday suits… Then be honest and look at yourself and your family… and what you will notice is that in the movie APOCALYPTO you see your mothers, your fathers, your grandmothers, grandfathers, your aunts, your uncles, your cousins, your nieces, and your nephews! Just give the sisters a 2007 makeover, and give the brothas a shapeup, a fitted, some sean jean or rockawear – and you will never tell the difference, simply because there is NONE! We are the children of the indigenous peoples of America, as well as Africa and its all over our children’s faces, not to mention our own – and nowhere in precolumbian America do you find LATINOS! THEY CAME WITH COLUMBUS WHO HIMSELF CAME FINANCED BY THE SPANISH! THEY WERE OUR CONQUERORS!
Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire which eventually became what we now know as Spanish, Portuges, French, and YES ITALIAN for those of you who complain about there being no Latinos in Scarface (“except Manolo”)… They were ALL LATINOS, AL PACINO IS ITALIAN… ITALY, ROME, LATIN! HELLLLLOOOOO! What they weren’t, was US!
They invaded Boriken, raped the land of its riches for themselves at our expence and renamed it PUERTO RICO – so someone please tell me, a Taino from Boriken where i fit in this to identify myself as a Puerto Rican….
A DOMINICAN is a CATHOLIC PRIEST, one of the many orders of the ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH such as the JESUITS and FRANSISCANS… so someone please tell me how an African and Indian became Dominican.
The same goes for COLUMBIA and a host of others…. even those who kept their indigenous roots in their names to nevertheless become LATIN AMERICA.
A NOTE TO THOSE WHO STILL BELIEVE THAT THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE CARRIBEAN WERE WIPED OUT AND AS THE DEFINITIONARIES (DICTIONARIES) USED TO SAY “EXTINCT”:
It does not take any schollarly investigation, research or academia to see the children and lineage of indigenous peoples in the Carribean… all we have to do is look in the mirror and/ or take a trip over there and look at the people there!
Hakum
Land And Water
From: Alaman5375
AMINA QUEEN Of ZARIA (1588-1589)
This queen of Zazzua, a province of Nigeria now known as Zaria, was born around 1533 during the reign of Sarkin (king) Zazzau Nohir. She was probably his granddaughter. Zazzua was one of a number of Hausa city-states which dominated the trans-Saharan trade after the collapse of the Songhai empire to the west. Its wealth was due to trade of mainly leather goods, cloth, kola, salt, horses and imported metals. At the age of sixteen, Amina became the heir apparent (Magajiya) to her mother, Bakwa of Turunku, the ruling queen of Zazzua. With the title came the responsibility for a ward in the city and daily councils with other officials. Although her mother’s reign was known for peace and prosperity, Amina also chose to learn military skills from the warriors. Queen Bakwa died around 1566 and the reign of Zazzua passed to her younger brother Karama. At this time Amina emerged as the leading warrior of Zazzua cavalry. Her military achievements brought her great wealth and power. When Karama died after a ten-year rule, Amina became queen of Zazzua. She set off on her first military expedition three months after coming to power and continued fighting until her death. In her thirty-four year reign, she expanded the domain of Zazzua to its largest size ever. Her main focus, however, was not on annexation of neighboring lands, but on forcing local rulers to accept vassal status and permit Hausa traders safe passage. She is credited with popularizing the earthen city wall fortifications, which became characteristic of Hausa city-states since then. She ordered building of a defensive wall around each military camp that she established. Later, towns grew within these protective walls, many of which are still in existence. They’re known as “ganuwar Amina”, or Amina’s walls. She is mostly remembered as “Amina, Yar Bakwa ta san rana,” meaning “Amina, daughter of Nikatau, a woman as capable as a man.
Contributed by Danuta Bois
Even before becoming legal ruler, Hatshepsut, was actively pushing things dearest to the hearts of all Africans leaders: the expansion of foreign trade, international diplomatic relations, perfection of national defense, vast public building programs, securing the South and the North through either peace or war and, one of her “pet projects”, building a great navy for both commerce and war. Her success on most of these fronts made her one of the giants of the race.
Although most of Black history is suppressed, distorted or ignored by an ungrateful modern world, some African traditions are so persistent that all of the power and deception of the Western academic establishment have failed to stamp them out. One such story is that of Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of Israel. Black women of antiquity were legendary for their beauty and power. Especially great were the Queens of Ethiopia. This nation was also known as Nubia, Kush, Axum and Sheba. One thousand years before Christ, Ethiopia was ruled by a line of virgin queens. The one whose story has survived into our time was known as Makeda, “the Queen of Sheba.” Her remarkable tradition was recorded in the Kebar Nagast, or the Glory of Kings, and the Bible. The Bible tells us that, during his reign, King Solomon of Israel decided to build a magnificent temple. To announce this endeavor, the king sent forth messengers to various foreign countries to invite merchants from abroad to come to Jerusalem with their caravans so that they might engage in trade there. At this time, Ethiopia was second only to Egypt in power and fame. Hence, King Solomon was enthralled by Ethiopia’s beautiful people, rich history, deep spiritual tradition and wealth. He was especially interested in engaging in commerce with one of Queen Makeda’s subjects, an important merchant by the name of Tamrin.1 Solomon sent for Tamrin who “packed up stores of valuables including ebony, sapphires and red gold, which he took to Jerusalem to sell to the king.”2 It turns out that Tamrin’s visit was momentous. Although accustomed to the grandeur and luxury of Egypt and Ethiopia, Tamrin was still impressed by King Solomon and his young nation. During a prolonged stay in Israel, Tamrin observed the magnificent buildings and was intrigued by the Jewish people and their culture. But above all else, he was deeply moved by Solomon’s wisdom and compassion for his subjects. Upon returning to his country, Tamrin poured forth elaborate details about his trip to Queen Makeda. She was so impressed by the exciting story that the great queen decided to visit King Solomon herself.3 To understand the significance of state visits in antiquity in contrast to those of today, we must completely remove ourselves from the present place and time. In ancient times, royal visits were very significant ceremonial affairs. The visiting regent was expected to favor the host with elaborate gifts and the state visit might well last for weeks or even months. Even by ancient standards, however, Queen Makeda’s visit to King Solomon was extraordinary. In I Kings 10:1-2, the Bible tells us: “1. And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. “2. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bear spices and very much gold, and precious stones. And when she was come to Solomon she communed with him of all that was in her heart.” I Kings 10:10 adds: “She gave the king 120 talents of gold, and of spices very great store and precious stones; there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.” We should pause to consider the staggering sight of this beautiful Black woman and her vast array of resplendent attendants travelling over the Sahara desert into Israel with more than 797 camels plus donkeys and mules too numerous to count. The value of the gold alone, which she gave to King Solomon, would be $3,690,000 today and was of much greater worth in antiquity. King Solomon, and undoubtedly the Jewish people, were flabbergasted by this great woman and her people. He took great pains to accommodate her every need. A special apartment was built for her lodging while she remained in his country. She was also provided with the best of food and eleven changes of garments daily. As so many African leaders before her, this young maiden, though impressed with the beauty of Solomon’s temple and his thriving domain, had come to Israel seeking wisdom and the truth about the God of the Jewish people. Responding to her quest for knowledge, Solomon had a throne set up for the queen beside his. “It was covered with silken carpets, adorned with fringes of gold and silver, and studded with diamonds and pearls. From this she listened while he delivered judgments.”4 Queen Makeda also accompanied Solomon throughout his kingdom. She observed the wise, compassionate and spiritual ruler as he interacted with his subjects in everyday affairs. Speaking of the value of her visit with the King and her administration for him, Queen Makeda stated: “My Lord, how happy I am. Would that I could remain here always, if but as the humblest of your workers, so that I could always hear your words and obey you.
“How happy I am when I interrogate you! How happy when you answer me. My whole being is moved with pleasure; my soul is filled; my feet no longer stumble; I thrill with delight.
“Your wisdom and goodness,” she continued, “are beyond all measure. They are excellence itself. Under your influence I am placing new values on life. I see light in the darkness; the firefly in the garden reveals itself in newer beauty. I discover added lustre in the pearl; a greater radiance in the morning star, and a softer harmony in the moonlight. Blessed be the God that brought me here; blessed be He who permitted your majestic mind to be revealed to me; blessed be the One who brought me into your house to hear your voice.
Solomon had a harem of over 700 wives and concubines, yet, he was enamored by the young Black virgin from Ethiopia. Although he held elaborate banquets in her honor and wined, dined and otherwise entertained her during the length of her visit, they both knew that, according to Ethiopian tradition, the Queen must remain chaste. Nevertheless, the Jewish monarch wished to plant his seed in Makeda, so that he might have a son from her regal African lineage. To this end the shrewd king conspired to conquer the affection of this young queen with whom he had fallen in love. When, after six months in Israel, Queen Makeda announced to King Solomon that she was ready to return to Ethiopia, he invited her to a magnificent farewell dinner at his palace. The meal lasted for several hours and featured hot, spicy foods that were certain to make all who ate thirsty and sleepy (as King Solomon had planned.) Since the meal ended very late, the king invited Queen Makeda to stay overnight in the palace in his quarters. She agreed as long as they would sleep in separate beds and the king would not seek to take advantage of her. He vowed to honor her chastity, but also requested that she not take anything in the palace. Outraged by such a suggestion, the Queen protested that she was not a thief and then promised as requested. Not long after the encounter, the Queen, dying of thirst, searched the palace for water. Once she found a large water jar and proceeded to drink, the King startled her by stating: “You have broken your oath that you would not take anything by force that is in my palace. The Queen protested, of course, that surely the promise did not cover something so insignificant and plentiful as water, but Solomon argued that there was nothing in the world more valuable than water, for without it nothing could live. Makeda reluctantly admitted the truth of this and apologized for her mistake, begging for water for her parched throat. Solomon, now released from his promise, assuaged her thirst and his own, immediately taking the Queen as his lover.”6 The following day as the Queen and her entourage prepared to leave Israel, the King placed a ring on her hand and stated, “If you have a son, give this to him and send him to me.” After returning to the land of Sheba, Queen Makeda did indeed have a son, whom she named Son-of-the-wise-man, and reared as a prince and her heir apparent to the throne. Upon reaching adulthood, the young man wished to visit his father, so the Queen prepared another entourage, this time headed by Tamrin. She sent a message to Solomon to anoint their son as king of Ethiopia and to mandate that thenceforth only the males descended from their son should rule Sheba. Solomon and the Jewish people rejoiced when his son arrived in Israel. The king anointed him as the Queen had requested and renamed him Menelik, meaning “how handsome he is.” Though Solomon had many wives, only one had produced a son, Rehoboam, a boy of seven. So the king begged Menelik to remain, but the young prince would not. Solomon therefore called his leaders and nobles and announced that, since he was sending his first born son back to Ethiopia, he wanted all of them to send their firstborn sons “to be his counselors and officers.” And they agreed to do so. Menelik asked his father for a relic of the Ark of the Covenant to take back with him to the land of Sheba. It is said that while Solomon intended to provide his son with a relic, the sons of the counselors, angry at having to leave their homes and go to Sheba with Menelik, actually stole the real Ark and took it to Ethiopia. Menelik returned to Sheba and, according to tradition, ruled wisely and well. And his famous line has continued down to the 20th century when, even now, the ruler of Ethiopia is the “conquering lion of Judah” descended directly from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Written by Legrand H. Clegg II
Her marriage to the great Rameses II of lower Ancient Egypt is known as one of the greatest royal love affair ever. This marriage also brought an end to the hundred year war between upper and lower ancient Kemet (Egypt), which in essence unified both sections into one great Kemet which was the world leading country. Monuments of this love affair still remains today in the temples that Rameses built for his wife at Abu Simbel.
The immense structures known as the two temples of Abu Simbel are among the most magnificent monuments in the world. Built during the New Kingdom nearly 3,000 years ago, it was hewn from the mountain which contains it as an everlasting dedication to King Ramses and his wife Nefertari. Superb reliefs on the temple detail the Battle of Kadesh, and Ramses and Nefertari consorting with the deities and performing religous rituals. The rays of the sun still penetrate to the Holy of Holies in the rock of the main temple on the same two days of the year: the 20th of October and the 20th of Febuary. This timing is probably connected to the symbolic unification, via the rays of the sun, of the statue of Ra-Herakhty and the statue of Ramses II. Up to today these structures remains as the largest, most majestic structures ever built to honor a wife.
Nefertiti could not relegate herself to the traditional role of subservient-queen. She envisioned an active role for herself in reshaping civilization. This was later manifested as she is shown participating in all the religious ceremonies with Akhenaten. It was only through the combined royal pair that the god Aton’s full blessing could be bestowed. Nefertiti is displayed with a prominence that other Egyptian queens were not. Her name is enclosed in a royal cartouche, and there are in fact more statues and drawings of her than of Akhenaten. Yet the priest with their materialist model were powerful and they dominated the higher government offices. In this arena women were incapable of divinity. Akhenaten and Nefertiti countered a revolt by the priest and emerged victorious and created a new capital for Kemet called Akhetaten a city that could give birth to their scared mission, a mission in pursuit of Divine life. She insisted on being portrayed has a equal divine partner to Akhenaten and their exist many illustrations of her riding a chariot with Akhenaten during major rituals. While Akhenaten’s ideas wanned without him their to defend them. The priest still considered Nefertiti’s heresy a greater threat. The concept of a woman bypassing the male priest hood via a mother-goddess to worship the divine was totally unacceptable. And sadly enough continues to be unacceptable in the major religions that dominate the world today. Nefertiti though her devotion and her demand for respect proved she deserved a special place in the history of women.
500,000 to 150,000 B.P. (Before Present)
Homo Erectus develops in Africa.
150,000 B.C. to 100,000 B.C.
The first Homosapiens who were of the Black Africoid race appear at Omo region in Ethiopia.
100,000 to 70,000 B.C.
Africans initiate a cultural renaissance in the Congo Region and South Africa. Well crafted tools of stone and bone are created. Writing and the etching of stone is done. Red ochre is used for body paint and body decoration. Migrations to other parts of the world begin around this period.
ASIA
No Homosapiens in Asia
AUSTRALIA
Negroid migrations to Australia begins
EUROPE
No Homosapiens in Europe
AMERICAS
No Homosapiens in the Americas
——————————————————————
80,000 to 50,000
AFRICA
Development of advanced tool making in parts of Africa (evidence found in Congo; 1994: South Africa 2001: age range 100,000 to 70,000 B.C.)
Homo Erectus enters Europe from Africa Neanderthals thrive in Africa. They migrate to Europe and Asia African “Adam and Eve,” (per Mitochondrial DNA), are the first modern-like humans to migrate out of Africa. They include the various types of Black peoples:
Black Australoids, Pygmoids and Negroids enter Europe, Asia, Siberia, Australia, Melanesia and the Americas
Culture begins in Africa, migrations of Africans to other parts of the world
ASIA
First Homosapiens occupy Asia, Europe and the Americas from Africa.
50,000 B.C.
Grimaldi Negroids enter Europe with advanced African culture called the Arignacian Culture. Arts such as paintings, cloth making, advanced tool making and other advanced crafts from Africa is brought to Europe, the Americas, Australia and the South Pacific/Melanesia.
African Paintings of animals and scenery in Upper Paleolithic Period about 30,000 years ago.
Black Australoids from Australia and proto African Blacks from the South Pacific reach South America (Brazil) and spread to the rest of the Americas.
Early horticulture practiced in the Sahara. Pastoralism and hunting also practiced.
—————–
40,000 B.C.
AFRICA
Iron ore mined in Swaziland about 40,000 years ago for the purpose of making red ochre for decoration and body paint.
ASIA
Black Grimaldi Negroids migrate to the Middle East and Asia bringing the Aurignacian culture from Africa to Europe as well
EUROPE
Grimaldi Negroids enter Europe bringing in the AUrignacian Culture. They later evolve into the Cro-Magnon People after about twenty thousand years of
living in the cold, damp ice and loosing the need for dark black skin.
AUSTRALIA/MELANESIA
Ancestors of Black Australoids, Pygmies and Melanesians from the Sahara and East Africa migrate to Australia about 100,000 to 60,000 thousand years ago.
Descendants of Tasmanian Blacks arrive thousands of years before.
Melanesians arrive from the coast of East Africa about. They establish cultures throughout Asia and are the only Homosapiens in the region. Many occupy China, India, and South East Asia.
————–
AFRICA
30,000 B.C.
Negroid type dominates all Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East. This type is said to have been a more Negroid
Cro-Magnon, who had not been affected as yet by the Ice Age conditions which led to the change in skin complexion.
Blacks bring horticulture and early agricultural practices from Africa to Melanesia, Papua New Guinea and the Region.
ASIA
20,000 B.C.
First ‘white” Cro-Magnon types appear in Europe among a Black population in much of the warmer parts of Europe and Asia.
Pacific Blacks sail to the Americas after sailing from East Africa.
First Black cultures and civilizations called the Aquatic Civilizations developing the Sahara.
First evidence of a more advanced culture in the region.
Blacks from Sahara sail to the Americas across the Atlantic
EUROPE
First “white” Cromagnoids appear in Europe. These Homosapiens evolved from the Black Grimaldi Negroids who migrated from Africa
—————-
AFRICA
17,000 B.C. to 10,000 B.C…
Beginning of Nile Valley cultures and prehistoric civilizations.
Civilizations begin in Sudan and spreads down-river to the middle part of Egypt. The Delta is still covered with water.
ASIA
Black cultures in SW Asia, India, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific and Southern China thrive. Ice Age still affects northern Asia.
15,000 B.C.
Zingh Empire exists in West Africa while part of Sahara is still covered with Lakes and an inland sea that supports boats and a maritime culture.
Zingh Empire spreads its influence over much of the Sahara, tropical Africa and the Middle East, and establishes their standard; the red, black and green flag over the entire region, (Blisshords Communications)
EUROPE
Blacks control much of Europe especially southern and central part. Ice still in Northern Europe, Cro-Magnon and early Cacausoids in the far northern regions and north Central Europe.
————
10,000 B.C. to 8,000 B.C.
AFRICA
Kingdom of Ta-Seti (Nubia) reaches a peak of culture. Glass is produced, astronomy is studied, observatories are built, and trade and commerce is established.
Sahara and Nile Corridor continue to develop. Painting, carving, homes, monuments, early disciplines, the horse and chariot, building in stone.
Neolithic culture moves on. Agriculture develops further. Some forms of metal working, making of jewelry and decorations. Buildings of towns, villages and cities begin in the Sahara and elsewhere.
Sphinx built about 10,000 B.C., Year of Leo
6280 B.C.
Towns and cities spread throughout Ethiopian Empire (Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Mesopotamia, and South Arabia, India).
ASIA
Mongoloid race develops from combination Negroids and Caucasoids in Mediterranean region, during the Mesolithic Age. First evidence of Brach cephalic (trait found among Mongoloids and Semites. round-headed races).
Trade and travel between West Asia and Africa.
10,000 B.C.
Great Black civilization exists in Southern India. Culture is Africoid and part of what was a great cultural region that connected the Ethiopian Empire with India.
EUROPE
Black Matrilineal cultures in Southern Europe. Worship of Black female deity (Black Virgin) in Europe. Africoids occupy vast areas of Europe. Caucasians in the Northern regions of Europe.
AMERICAS
Blacks continue to build culture and civilization in the Americas. Washitaw Moundbuilders of the South-western U.S.
Black Giants inhabit the Mississippi Region. These Africans are engaged in agriculture and maritime activity as well as trade and commerce.
8000 to 4241 B.C.
AFRICA
Khemetic Calendar invented 6786 B.C.
Civilizations of Ta-Seti in Nubia. Natufian and Badarian Culture in Egypt, Abacus invented in Ishongo, Congo (Central Africa) Horse, elephant, donkey used in early transportation.
Khemite New Year established in 4241 B.C.
Improvements made in sciences, mathematics, technology, agriculture.
Cities expand, trade with world and colonies established around the Mediterranean.
African Khemetic New Year established in the City of On (Iunu), Egypt. Many great cities exist Nubian Kingdom of Ta-Seti Continues to thrive and prosper. Colleges, temple universities, laws and religion improves.
Manufacturing trade and commerce advances.
Nok Culture develops further in West Africa Africans with West African and Nile Corridor connections sail to the Americas and carry their calendar dated 3113 B.C., to Mexico.
West African civilizations build industries trading in gold and salt, textiles, with the Sahara and Egypt. Age-grade system of education, trade guilds and secret societies connected with trades and religions develop further.
ASIA
Mongoloids develop further in the Northern part of Asia. Southern China occupied by Black Negritoes, Negroids and Black Australoids.
AMERICAS
Black cultures continue to develop in Mississippi Valley, particularly Washitaw Nation. America’s population consists of Black straight-haired Australoids (as those of India and Australian Aborigines) see
www.aboriginalaustralia.com Black Pygmies and Africoids from West Africa.
3500 B.C. to 3000 B.C.
AFRICA
Nubian Dynasty at Qustul 3400 B.C. to 3200 B.C., War of Unity (Northern and Southern Egypt).
Khemet and Nubia united. Narmer Pharaoh.
Memphis (Ineb-hedj) as capital.
Large magnificent temples built to Ptah at Memphis, Niet at Sau (Sais).
Books on the body composed Pharaoh Edimu improves stone construction. Industries, trade with Mesopotamia, India.
West African civilizations expand. Gold, terrcotta industries, trade, towns in Ghana, Mali areas.
ASIA
Black Cushitic civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley of India.
Black Cushitic civilization in Mesopotamia, India, East Asia. Sumerians consisting of Black Cushites and Black Semitic Speakers from Ethiopia dominate region.
Groups of Africans sail to Fiji and other areas of South Pacific, continuing a tradition that is tens of thousands of years old.
Mongoloids and Oceanic Blacks mix in SE Asia to create Polynesian People.
They spread to the Pacific Islands, a region that had already been occupied by Black nations.
EUROPE
3000 to 2000 B.C.
Caucasian Scythians spread throughout Europe from North Central Eurasia, after horses are tamed and introduced by Khemites (Black Egyptians, (see Michael Bradley, “The Black Discovery of America,” also the works of Herodotus).
Whites still concentrated around the Caspian Sea Region, but continue to spread westward and southward in what would be called the Aryan migrations.
Gold craftswork in Southeastern Europe continues after being established about 4000 B.C.
Black matrilineal system continues to thrive among whites. Worship of female Goddesses and Black virgin mothers continue.
AMERICAS
Black cultures in the Americas continue to thrive. Races up to about 2000 B.C. continue to be Black Australoids and other Black nations.
Black Olmec or Shi culture carried to Mexico from West Africa.
Black Olmecs establish first calendar about 3113 B.C. (see Sitchin www.ancientamerica.com )
Olmec civilization contains features in race, religion and cultural practices identical to the Nok Culture of West Africa, including scarification marks, cornrows, Black African racial features, and even an alphabet identical to the Mende script of West Africa.
Wave of Mongoloids from Siberia enters the Americas. Fishing, hunting and early agriculture practiced by Mongoloids. Some conflict between the Mongoloids and the Negro-Australoids. Mixing of races occur in parts of North America, however Blacks in places like the Mississippi Valley, the South Eastern U.S., California, Mexico, Central America and South America resist mixing and remain distinctly Black. (See pictures of such groups http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire “Black Civilizations of the Americas.”
3000 B.C. TO 2000 B.C.
AFRICA
Sun temples built.
Shabaka Inscriptions: Influence and power of men like Sahure.
Coffin texts written.
Hennu, Snefru sail to Puntite kingdom, trade, commerce with town’s cities along East African coast all the way to S. Africa.
Books written by philosophers Kagemani, Ptahotep, and Pyramid Texts written.
Book of the Dead (Book of the Coming Forth by Night) written about 2300 B.C.
Nok Civilization thrives over West Africa and parts of Southern Sahara. Art, bronze casting, trade, government and culture strengthened.
Great flourishing of Khemite/Nubian civilization.
Wars between Khem and Nubia as well as Libya.
Zoser builds step pyramid. Imhotep improves architecture, medicine, science; the priesthood is world’s first scientist/doctor.
Khemite troops guard Sinai against red-haired barbarians.
Pyramid built at Sakkara and Dashur. Eleven pyramids built during the period.
Khemite trade with Fenkhu (Phonecia). Sahure sails to Asia and may have established contact with people in China.
ASIA
Black Elamites, Sumerians and Mesopotamians rule in the Fertile Crescent.
Black Elamites conquer Ur. Babylonian Dynasty formed; Hammurabi is king; he writes codes, conquers Sumeria and Elam.
Mohenjo-daro flourishes in India,
Black Xia Dynasty of China 2800 B.C. to 2200 B.C.
Black Shang Dynasty of China; 2200 B.C. to 1100 B.C.
Shang Dynasty Blacks developed first Chinese civilization introducing culture from the Cushite regions of Mesopotamia and Khemet as well as Black Cushite India.
Series of Mongoloid Dynasties and rulers such as: Fu Hsi, Sheng Nung, Yao, Shun, Yu.
Khemite/Nubian and Black Kushite Dravidian influences enter China and influences culture further.
Golden Age of Ur; Semitic speakers invade Black Canaan from Arabian deserts.
Black Cushite civilizations develop in Sabena and South Arabia. Sargon of Akkad as first Semite King. Sumeria united
EUROPE
Barbarians dominate Northern and Central Europe.
Black Egyptians occupy Greek Isles, including Crete (Khepra)
Barbarians sweet into Eurasia. Aryan speakers migrate into India and Southern Europe.
Barbarian horsemen spread over wide area of Europe. Blacks loose control of Crete to invaders from the northern lands. Black cultures in Southern Europe begin to be overwhelmed by northern peoples. Khemites and Phoenicians mine tin in Cornwall, England, Iberia and parts of Western Europe. Black colonies established in Britain, including Black giants called Formorians, who migrate from North Africa.
AMERICAS
New group of Mongoloids enter North America from the China/Japan region of Asia. These types are related to the Algonquin (see African Presence in Early America,” by Ivan Van Sertima)
Conflicts with Blacks occur, yet Black sedentary and agricultural communities remain intact in the Southern, Western and Eastern U.S., as well as the Mississippi Valley, while most Mongoloids pursue a lifestyle of hunting and nomadic movements, fishing and agriculture in the North-Eastern U.S.
Maya Indians live north of Black Olmec areas in Central America and Mexico. Indians cultures develop.
2000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.
AFRICA
Khemites/Kushites invade S.W. Asia; barbarians from Europe defeated in the Delta; internal conflict occurs in Khem. Waset (Thebes) becomes the most important city in Khemet (Egypt) as well as capital.
Improvements in religions and schools. Asiatics are forced out of the Delta.
Hyksos invade from Arabia. Sea Peoples invade and are defeated by Ahmose 1. Ahmose the Scribe copies math formulas on papyrus.
Invaders control northern Egypt Blacks rule south. Amenophis composes “hymn to Atum.” Hyksos driven out.
Reunification occurs.
Colossi of Memnon constructed (Menes?) More naturalistic art.
Nok civilization flourishes in West Africa and continues trade with Sahara, Egypt, Kush and the Americas. Trade between Egypt and Mexico continues from ancient times (Mexico may have been the “Manu” of Egyptian texts).
Sailing across Atlantic by Nubians, West Africans and Egyptians as well as Phoenicians. Cities in West Africa (Mauritania region). Gold and salt trade with coastal kingdoms.
Famine in Khemet (Egypt); food prices rise.
Chemistry highly advanced, books kept; Nubians build first ever massive domes, reservoirs, pyramids.
Nubian ships dominate parts of Mediterranean and Indian Ocean as well as Atlantic Ocean.
Nubians control both army and government of Egypt from 1100 B.C. to about 650 B.C.
Egyptians (Khemites) use iron by 1500 B.C… Nubians use iron during same period but not for weapons, since Bronze is more popular. Khem becomes rich and powerful. Egyptian Capital at Pi-Ramses.
Tale of Two Brothers written.
Revolting Nubians defeated by Khemites.
Phoenicians spread from Canaan.
Ethiopians develop Sabean civilization.
Makeda is Queen of Sheba; other kings rule.
ASIA
Black Shang Dynasty rule China for 643 years, up to 1122 or 1123 B.C. Book of Changes rewritten from the original Cushite Book of Changes from Mesopotamia.
Chou Dynasty, first purely Mongoloid Dynasty starts rule from 1122 B.C. Laws of Chou written; Indo-Aryans invade Black India. Blacks defeat Aryans but floods destroy Harappa and Mohenjo daro, making it easy for the invaders to sweep into India.
Ancient Vedas composed by Black Negro-Australoids of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, and copied later by invaders.
Black Babylonian Dynasty and civilization thrives Hittites in Turkey; Black Canaanites flourish in what is today Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon
Mongoloid Chinese Dynasties continue to rule in northern China. Black Dynasties rule southern part, mainly descendants of Shang Dynasty who were pushed out of their capital city, An-Yang about 1100 B.C.
First Mongoloids arrive in Japan from Korea. Mongols mix with Blacks, Polynesians and Ainu, who were the original inhabitants of Japan.
Black Melanesians and Polynesians sail over Pacific Ocean, occupying islands and reaching parts of South America.
Mixed Black/Semitic race rules Assyria.
Shamshi Addad II is King; Black Sabean civilization in South Arabia. Black civilization in South Pacific, India, Australia, Jews in Egypt.
Hebrews/Jews invade Black Canaan (present-day, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon.
Saul and David become Kings of new Israelite nation.
Phoenicians continue their maritime activities are hired by both Egyptians and Nubians for commercial purposes.
Salomon Jewish King establishes relations with Abyssinia.
EUROPE
Middle Minoan to 1180 B.C. Egyptian Blacks continues civilization in Minoa Crete. Etruscans develop. Black colonies in Spain, England. Indo-Europeans such as the Dorians and Latin’s invade Italy from north-Central Europe and Asia
Barbarians roam over Central Europe; Indo-Europeans established in parts of Europe. Greeks under Black Khemite influence, some are mercenaries in Khem. Parts of Western, Southern and Brit. Isles occupied by Blacks; Mycenaean’s destroy Crete; Black colonies formed in Spain including Black Phoenicians.
Rise of Greek City-States Greek culture adopts Khemetic styles; Minoans no longer a power.
AMERICAS
Mayans in Meso-America; Khemites, Nubians and West Africans begin settlement in Mexico by 1200 B.C.
Heads of basalt carved, temples, pyramids, religious centers are built.
Mayan city of Kaminaljuyu established. Thousands of Blacks in Vera Cruz, South Mexico. Cities of San Lorenzo built by Black Olmecs. Black Olmec culture starts in 3113 B.C. and continues to about 400 A.D.
Black Olmec-Nubian Dynasties continue their rule. Blacks are at all levels of Olmec society. They spread their culture to the rest of Central America.
Both Mayas and Black Olmecs continue to build in Central America, each group controlling their own areas and yet having trade and commercial contact.
Black Olmec centers built in San Lorenzo. New wave of Black shamans arrives from West Africa and introduces the Venus worship and thunder God religions.
Indian civilizations develop in South America. First Mongoloid Indians move into the Caribbean Island region.
1000 B.C. to 500 B.C.
AFRICA:
Journey by Wenamen to Canaan composed.
Herihor is first Prophet of Amen.
Civil war between Khemites; Sheshonk is Pharaoh for 52 years.
Relations with Spain. Libyan Dynasty rules Egypt (Khemet) from 1000 B.C. to 725 B.C.
Khemite Dynasties from850 B.C. to 745 B.C.
Nubian Dynasty rules Egypt from 745 B.C. to 685 B.C.
Nubians revive Egyptian culture, build monuments, cities, and temples; rebuild country.
Tarharka, Nubian Pharaoh encourages use of demotic script.
NUBIAN-KUSHITE PHAROAHS OF EGYPT
720 B.C. to 658 B.C.
Piankhi – 720 B.C.
Shabaka – 713 B.C.
Shibitku – 701- 698 B.C.
Shabataka – 698-690 B.C.
Tarharka – 690-664 B.C.
Tunoutamon – 664 to 658 B.C.
NUBIAN-KUSHITE PHAROAHS OF THE NUBIAN -KUSHITE EMPIRE (present-day Arab occupied Sudan)
Atlanarsa – 653 to 643 B.C. (Before Christ)
Senkamanisken – 643 to 623
Anlamani – 623- 593
Aspelta – 593 – 568
Amani-nete-yerike = 431 to 45 B.C.
Harsiotef – 404 to 369
Natasen – 335 to 310
Ergamenos – 250 to 125 B.C. Ergamenos abolished the practice of royal
suicide, eliminating the Pharaohs after a period of about ten to 20 years of rule
Taniydamani – Between 200 to 100 B.C.
Nubian Queens and Queen-Mothers;
Queen Mother Nasalsa – Mother of Pharaohs Aspelta and Anlamani = 593 B.C.
Queen Mother Pelekhs = 335 to 310
Queen Sakhakh wife of Natasen – 335 to 310
Queen Shanakdakhete = 170 B.C. o 160 B.C.
(starts female Pharaoh rule which lasts for three generations to about mid 100’s A.D.
Pharaoh Natakamani and Queen Amanitere, 12 B.C. to 12 A.D. Great builders of cities monuments, temples. They rebuilt Napata after the Roman (Petronius) destruction of the Kushite Capital. They Build Naga Lion Temple.
Queen Amenitere
Queen Sherakerer
Queen Amanisheketo
Pharaoh Tegorideamani – 246 A.D. to 266 A.D.
The Nubian-Kushite civilization and system of Kingship extends back to the time of Ta-Seti (8,000 B.C. to about 4500 B.C. followed by the Nubian-Kushite Kingdom about 4500 B.C. to 1500 A.D. The Nubian Monarchy still exists today and their present King is the oldest line of kingship by any culture on earth today. THIS IS THE CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE THAT NUBIANISTS AND PAN-AFRICANISTS AROUND THE WORLD ARE SUPPORTING. Nubia-Kush is the core, the heart and soul of Pan-African culture and CIILIZATION) Nubian civilization is over ten thousand years, according to excavations and findings carried out in Sudan in the year 2000 (see Time Magazine)
Assyrians Invade About 685 B.C.: Series of European and West Asian invaders rule Egypt, including the Assyrians, Saites, Babylonians, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Romans until about30 A.D.
ASIA:
1000 B.C. t0 500 B.C.
Feudal Age begins in China: Chou takes over from Black Shang Dynasty.
Sargon King of Assyria; Babylon burned by Sennacherib.
Assyrians invade Khem in 671 B.C., They destroy Memphis; Chou Dynasty is first Mongoloid dynasty. They rule from 771 B.C. to 256 B.C.
Remnants of Black Shang found Black (Nahkhi) Dynasties in Southern China Chinese use coins, build drainage projects.
Black kingdoms in Southern India: Greeks, Romans occupy parts of Asia; wars between Persians and Indians.
660 B.C., Jimmu forms first Japanese state.
EUROPE:
Illyad, Homers epics written
Lydians us coins;
Khemites (Egyptians) recruit Greek warriors
Celts dominate Central Europe
Tarharka, Nubian Pharaoh invades Spain, Nubians ( also known as Ethiopians)
dominate Atlantic and Mediterranean
Tarharka, Nubian Pharaoh occupies Spain
Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Nubians meet in Mediterranean.
Trade and conflict occur in the region
AMERICAS:
Journey of Nubians and West Africans to Mexico, possibly under Tarharka.
Black Olmecs establish another Calendar in 747 B.C. New Year celebrated on April 26th. Mayans build more settlements away from Black Olmec areas.
Black Olmecs or Xi rule in Mexico till about 400 A.D. (3113 B.C. to 400 A.D.)
Chavin and other cultures in South America.
Black Washitaw build ceremonial sites throughout Southern and Midwestern U.S. Black Tribes in California and South-Eastern U.S. thrive through trade and commerce.
500 B.C. to 1 A.D.
AFRICA:
Plato studies in Egypt under Black Egyptian priests Manetho writes History of Egypt;
Alexandrian library built and founded by African named Eratosthenes, a scholar and librarian. He charts earth’s circumference and also composed Canon of Kings of Thebes.
Nubia flourishes under female Pharaohs called Ka’andakes (Candaces).
Ethiopia (Axum) in golden Era, relations with Jews
Massinissa rules Numidia (200 B.C. to 148 B.C.)
Trade continues between West Africa and Americas and between West Africa and Mediterranean; East Africa to Zimbabwe develops city states and trades with Asia and Mediterranean, the rest of Africa.
Hannibal defeats and occupies Rome.
Stone cities built in Southern Africa.
ASIA
Black kingdoms in South India; cultures in the Pacific, Nakis Kingdom flourishes in Southern China.
New Period of Philosophers and poets.
Han Dynasty begins 206 B.C. to 221 A.D.
Romans occupy Israel. Jewish religion has offshoots and sects; Christianity develops out of Jewish religion.
Armenia flourishes.
EUROPE:
Romans build Empire in Europe, North Africa.
Pax Romana or Roman Peace is established; Romans occupy much of Europe and dominates territories. Roman influence spreads to parts of India.
Pastoralists in Central Europe; Barbarians occupy large areas of Central Europe.
Barbarian conflicts with Roman ambitions. War breaks out.
AMERICAS:
The Black Olmecs continue to rule in parts of Mexico. Africans continue to sail to Mexico/Central America from Africa and possibly the Pacific Region.
Olmecs and Mayas create great cultures, stone monuments, hieroglyphic writing, Mayans adopt Black Mende Olmec (Xi) cultural forms, including pyramid building, which the Mayans develop into another style.
Cultures in South America and other parts of the Americas continue to develop.
Contacts from Africa and the Pacific Islands.
Black groups and nations form throughout the Americas from Olmec Empire.
Choco People in Columbia, Afro-Darienite in Panama, Black Californians of California and the South-West (see Legend of Queen Calfia), Jamassee in Georgia and Washitaw of Louisiana are all existing groups of pre-Columbian Black nations who still exist or are blended in with the later slave-era African arrival to the Americas.
Mayas thrive in Yucatan; Toltec’s in Central Mexico; Teutonic culture.
500 BC. TO 1 A.D.
AFRICA:
Nok-Wagadu Kingdom trades with Phoenicians (see Herodotus detail about Hanno’s trip around Africa to the Cameroon region, (Nok Culture 3000 B.C. to 500 A.D. Most Africans kingdoms in the Sahel and forest kingdoms of West Africa, such as Benin, Ashanti, Oyo, existed earlier than 1200 B.C. according to African sources).
People in Nok region continue ancient contact with the Americas. Shaman and worshippers of Shango and the Venus Complex migrate to Mexico from West Africa. Migrations began about 725 B.C. and continues to 400’s A.D. (see picture of ancient figurine of Oni or Priest-King of ancient West Africa at http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire)
NUBIAN-KUSHITE PHARAOHS
In 525 B.C., Nubians defeat Persian King Cambysis at Batn-al-Hadjar
Aspelta is Nubian-Kushite Pharaoh
Queen Mother is Nasala
Sacred Temple of Amun at Jabel Barkel is rebuilt and refurnished 593-568
Two years after the reign of Nubian Pharaoh Aspelta, Psamtik II of Egypt invades Kush with Greek and Carian mercenaries under command of Amasis and Potasimto. Napata, the Nubian-Kushite capital is captured.
Nubian-Kushites transfer capital from Napata and move southward to Meroe.
Phoenicians and Carthaginians continue trade with West Africa: Hanno sees evidence of Harvest Festival (Kwanzaa) in Cameroon in 450 B.C. (see “The Histories, by Herodotus).
Trade in Gold, salt. African gold, iron, bronze industries thrive in West Africa.
400 B.C.; Ghana Empire spread over large area of West Africa particularly in what is today Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and other parts of West Africa.
Trade across Sahara continues. Agriculture well established in the region. Cities built.
Greeks and Persians kept out of Kush (Nubia) Ptolemy V attempts to Invade Kush.
Meroe made Kushite (Nubian) capital. Nubians, East Africans (pre-Swahili Africans of Punt) and Abyssinians trade with China and India.
Ethiopians (Sabeans) create large empire which extends from Ethiopia, through Arabia, all the way to Armenia and Southern Russia. Black Ethiopian Jews thrive in Ethiopian Highlands.
Greeks, Jews, Europeans and others study in Egyptian Temple Universities (e.g. Ipet-Uset)
Last Black Khemite (Egyptian) Dynasty 378 to 341 B.C. Nectanebo 1 is Pharaoh. Nectabebo is defeated by Persian Ataxerxes 111, in 343 B.C.
Alexander the Great invades Khemet (Egypt) 322 B.C.
Aspelta is Pharaoh of Nubia-Kush in 525 B.C.
Amanoteyerike is Pharaoh in 400 B.C. He is a warrior-king, builder of cities and temples. He improves Nubian -Kushite culture.
Phonetic alphabet developed further about 170 B.C.
Nubians sack Aswan, in Roman occupied Egypt and carry off statue of Augustus.
Roman Prefect Petronius captures Napata, Nubian capital in 23 B.C. A peace treaty is signed and the Romans withdraw in 20 B.C.
Queen Amanishaketo rules with Natakamani, Pharaoh of Nubia-Kush from 12 B.C. to 12 A.D.
Golden Era of Nubian-Kushite civilization, including the development of an Industrial Age in which the use of iron and the manufacture of iron goods was very important and widespread That period was from about 600 B.C. to 325 A.D.
ASIA
Buddha teaches in India. Buddha is believed to be of Black Kushite stock, similar to the Negroid peoples who still inhabit many parts of India today.
Buddha comes from the Sakya Clan.
Confucius, Chinese philosopher teaches in China.
Bureaucratic system peaks in China.
Persians dominate West Asia eastern Mediterranean from 500 B.C. to 300 B.C.
Persian Kings include, Cyrus, Darius, Cambisis, Xerxes, and Ataxerxes:
Greeks invade India with Alexander the Great.
Black Indians dominate South India.
(Negro-Australoids Kushite speakers).
Wars between Chinese states.
Black Nakhi Kingdom, remnants of ancient Shang People exist in Southern China/Indo China.
Melanesian cultures develop in South Pacific, Papua New Guinea, including development of agriculture/horticulture, boatbuilding, the building of large settlements, sea trading and travel including contacts and trade with East Africans.
Ashoka is King in India. He changes in outlook after a war in which about 100,000 lives are lost.
273-232 B.C. Tang Dynasty influences Japanese culture, including writing, art, religion and language (some African historians point out that the core of Japanese language is East Africa).
Period of Philosophers and Poets
Han Dynasty 206 B.C. to 221 A.D.
Romans occupy Israel
Christians emerge from Jewish religion
Armenia flourishes
EUROPE
Romans in Europe
Conflict between Romans and various European Tribes
Nubian and North African troops in Europe and Britain. Rise of Bodacia,
British Queen who leads struggle against Roman occupiers.
Spread of Christianity in the Mediterranean
AMERICAS
Black Olmec Civilization continues to flourish in Mexico, Central America and elsewhere.
Mayas and other groups of Mongoloid “Indians,” gain prominence.
Teotihuacán culture prospers in Central Mexico
Nomadic and coastal Indian peoples inhabit parts of the Great Plains and both the Eastern and Western U.S. Migrations from Siberia trickles into the American Continent from Alaska.
Black nations continue to trade by sea and by land in the Mississippi Valley region, California and the South-Eastern U.S.
Arawak and Mongol Carib Indians conflict in Caribbean Islands.
1 A.D. to 1000 A.D.
AFRICA:
Egypt under Roman occupation. Black Khemetic culture still dominant in Egypt except in places where descendants of Jews, Greeks and others live.
Romans bring in people from the Arabian region into Egypt.
Nubian civilization continues to flourish: Natahamani is Pharaoh From12 B.C. to 12 A.D.
Period of about 400 B.C. to 200 A.D., African priests from Nubia and Khem (Egypt) teach science, art, technology and history to Demetrius of Phalere, Diodorus Cronos Hegesias, Euclid, Manton, Aristech’s of Somas, Archimedes, Sextons, Plutarch us, Plato, Aristius, Eratosthenes, Claudius Maximus, St. Augustine and many others.
Thousands of ancient books written by Nubian Ethiopian and Khemite priests over thousands of years were copied during this period at Alexandria Golden era of Nubian civilization; large cities built. Temples, colleges and schools improved. Highly advanced arts and crafts. Nubians continue their maritime trade and commerce. Build strong army with expert archer regiments on horseback.
Nubia invaded by Axumites led by Azana in 325 A.D.
Axumite Empire is established in Ethiopia from about 200 B.C. to 800 A.D., as a continuation of the Black Sabean Empire of ancient times.
Ethiopia sees a Golden Age of culture, religion, trade, commerce from about 300 A.D. to 1100 A.D. During that period, huge churches carved out of solid cliff rock are built in the Lilebella Region of Ethiopia.
Ethiopians carry out trade and commercial activities with Nubians, other Africans, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, East Indians, South Africans, Swahili, Arabians and others.
Christianity officially established in Nubia and Ethiopia between 300 A.D. to 500 A.D. Christianity in its early forms reached Nubia and Ethiopia as early as the time of the Apostles and Ethiopian Eunuch. Judaism reached Ethiopia about the time of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 950 to 1000 B.C.
Swahili city-states grow rich and powerful and continue an ancient tradition in trade and commerce that extends back to the time of Hatshepsut and Queen Ati of Punt. Swahili cities stretch from Somalia to Mozambique. Many are more than two thousand years by the time the Arabs and Persians arrive to trade in the Region (see Egyptian paintings of Hatshepsut’s expedition to Punt) (about 300 A.D. to 1000 A.D.)
Zimbabwe Empire spreads in Southern Africa. First stages of building of Zimbabwe stone enclosures begins about 300 B.C. Vakaranga People continues to expand buildings over much of Zimbabwe during the 1000’s to 1100’s A.D. Shona People add to construction later on.
Zimbabwe Empire trades with Swahili, Chinese, coastal and interior Africans and other peoples.
Commodities traded include steel (the world’s first steel and the blast furnace to create steel were invented by the East Africans in Kenya about 200 B.C.). The trade in Zimbabwe also included gold, ivory, iron tools and weapons, rice, jewelry, cloth and manufactured products. Products were sold to China, India, Europe, the Middle East, Arabia (the famous “Damascus steel,” was created in Zimbabwe.
WEST AFRICAN EMPIRES EMERGE
The ancient kingdoms of West Africa and West African culture itself has existed since prehistoric times. In fact, the earliest civilizations on earth, the Aquatic civilizations of the South Western Sahara began over 20,000 years ago. They were master ship builders and practiced agriculture. They also may have made significant contributions to the building of advanced civilizations in the Americas, such as the Olmec and the Washitaw of the Mississippi, both ancient American cultures that show African influence from the West Africa/Sahara region.
Great kingdoms established as early as 3000 B.C., by 1500 B.C. kingdoms that gave rise to empires such as Oyo, Benin, Ashanti are established. They trade with Egyptians and other Africans as well as with people in the Americas.
West Africa enters a golden era between 400 B.C. to 1600 A.D.A number of kingdoms reemerge. They include Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem Bornu, Congo, Angola, Ashanti and others.
West African Kings
Tenkamenin King of Ghana 1000th Century
Tenkamenin was one of the Kings of Ghana who reigned when Ghana was going through another cultural renaissance.
Sunni Ali Ber 1464 to 1492.
He built the Songhai Empire into a large and powerful empire in West Africa and one of the richest on earth. He had a large army of full-time professional soldiers including horse and camel cavalry units. He captured Timbuktu (a magnificent city where books were manufactured ought and sold and where students from all over the world studied) and the university city of Jenne, after a seven-year siege on the city of Jenne.
Askia Muhammad Toure 1493 to 1529
Askia Muhammad was a great leader and king. He was an honorable man and was righteous. During his reign, he created provinces out of his vast country and established an efficient system of administrators and judges. He lowered taxes making it easier for the common people to pay.
Alfonse I, King of Congo 1506 to 1540
Affonso I was the first African leader to begin the process of modernizing Africa. He encouraged the learning of a number of skills and subjects and established the most modern school system in Africa. Affonso ‘s objective was to create a powerful state that excelled in technology and knowledge. Affonso was against the slave trade and worked to stop it in his kingdom.
Idris Alooma Sultan of Bornu 1580 to 1670
The Kingdom of Kanem-Bornu, near present-day Chad, was created through the union of two states, Kanem and Bornu. Aloma united these two states. He was a strong leader and had a large army with a cavalry of knights and horseback in armor. He also used muskets as one of his weapons.
Shamba Bolongongo (1600 to 1620)
King Shamba as one of the Greatest kings of the Congo region. His main objective was making sure peace was kept throughout his kingdom/Shamba believed in the most highly cherished aspects of African religion, that being the right to live. He created a very effective system of government, using the traditional system of African democratic traditions including checks and balances. Shamba’s government included sections such as the military, judicial, and administrative branches. During his reign, Shamba Bolongongo contributed to making the arts and crafts of the highest quality and level through his promotion and support.
Osei Tutu, Ashanti King; Ghana 1680 to 1717
The Ashanti are also remnants of people who lived in West Africa as well as people who migrated from the Sahara. Osei Tutu united the Ashanti People and established a strong military and trading nation. Ashantis were successful in defeating the British during the late 1800’s and they like the Dahomey (Benin) trained women soldiers in their armies. The British were able to defeat the Ashanti after many ears of warfare.
Powerful Nubian Christian Kingdoms of Mukuria, Nobadia and Alwa emerge from Nubian Empire. Nubia enters crusades on side of Christians. Arabs defeated in Nubia by Emperor Kalydosos during the 600’s A.D., yet their attempt to infiltrate Nubia continues
Treaty holds till 1500’s A.D. until Arabs attack Funj Empire.
End of Nubian Kingdom after 10,000 years of existence.
Ethiopians in the Crusades while a religious renaissance takes place in the Ethiopian kingdom. They create rock-hewn churches, monastic traditions, writing of encyclopedias, books, scrolls, and a tradition that extends earlier than the 500 A.D.
Ethiopians defeat Gallas and Arabs; Turks defeated at Asmara during the 1500’s. Portuguese defeated.
Black African population dominant before Arab invasions:
Black population in Egypt is supplanted with people from the Arabian region.
Mixed races dominate northern part of Egypt, Blacks dormant in the southern part. Islam gains a foothold in Egypt after invasion of 600’s. Coptic’s continue Christian tradition.
Malians send ships to the Americas between 1200 to 1300’s
Mali becomes powerful maritime trading empire: Abu Bakari sends 2000 ships to the Americas in 1305 to 1308.
More on West African Civilization, see “African Glory,” by J.C.deGraft-Johnson, pub. Black Classics Press, Baltimore MD.
ASIA
712 A.D., Africans and Arabs conquer Sind, India; Black kings from the Ethiopian region rule the region.
Ganges, Ethiopian emperor, establishes an empire that stretches from Ethiopia to Ganges River in India.
Abraha Al-Ashram, ex-slave becomes emperor of Yemen and Ethiopia. He defends Yemeni Christians against Jews in 569 A.D.
Golden Era of Black Civilization (Khmer) in Cambodia (for more see http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html )
From about 800 A.D. to 1300 A.D. Black Negroid Black Negro-Australoids (also found in Bangladesh and other parts of India) and Negrito kingdoms dominate Cambodia and South East Asia. They include:
Funan,
Chenla, 802 A.D. to 850 A.D.
Anghkor, 802 A.D. to 1431 A.D.
Champa 100 A.D. to 1200 A.D.
(see also the book, “African Presence in Early Asia,” by Ivan Van Sertima; Transaction Publishers)
Blacks of SE Asia trade with East Africa, India,
500 A.D. to 1185 A.D. Yamato Clan rules Japan; Reforms in Japanese government around 645 A.D.
700 A.D. to 1000 A.D., Classic Age of Japanese culture, art, literature.
Feudal Age in Japan
Samurais take power
Chinese use gunpowder
1274 – Mongol invasion of Japan repelled.
1404 Chinese trade with Asia and with Africa continues
Onin War; feudalism in Japan 1467 to 1477
Portuguese visit Japan in 1543
Other Europeans visit Japan
Chinese Admiral Chengo Ho visits East Africa in a great fleet of Chinese ships. African ships from Mediterranean Region continue 3000 years of trade and visits to China.
Marco Polo in India 1288 to 1293 A.D.; He visits China in 1269 A.D.
Mongol Dynasty of China 1260 to 1328
Portuguese visit Canton 1517
EUROPE
400’s A.D. Romans withdraw troops from parts of Europe. The fall of the Roman Empire commences in the West.
Europe enters Dark Ages (400’s to 711 for Spain/Iberia) 400’s to 1000’s rest of Europe.
711 A.D. Black Moors from Senegal led by their General Gabel Tarik, invade Spain and Portugal. They introduce science, art, technology, agricultural sciences, animal husbandry, the university and college system, new methods of maintaining hygiene.
First Arab invasion (white Semitic Arabs) of Spain occurs in the 1000’s
Black Moors make Spain Europe’s most advanced nation and sets the seeds for the renaissance in Spain. Spain declines after 1492, when Black Moors and Arabs, Jews are expelled to Africa and the Americas.
Black Moorish noblemen begin many European aristocratic families (their heads are usually on the family crests of names such as Moore).
Astrology, mechanics, chemistry, geology, early robotics, optics and many sciences are introduced by Black Moors.
Charlemagne’s Empire in Western Europe begins in 814 A.D.
1066 A.D. Normans conquer England. Crusades against Muslims in the Palestine Black Moors still in Spain, they spread over Europe and contribute to European cultural development. See http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html Moors build universities in Toledo and Salamanca, Spain.
Moorish Spain flourishes along with Italy. Various massive buildings, cities, castles, forts are built using African Moorish architecture (still common in Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco)
1488 Portuguese sail to Africa Conflicts between Goths and Moors. Conflicts between Black Moors and Arabs in Spain.
Italian city-states grow in power. They trade with other nations and build their wealth.
European Renaissance
European Renaissance takes back around 1400 to 1600’s A.D. due to Black Moorish technological input and scientific contributions to Spain and the rest of Europe.
Moors expelled from Spain; many went to southern France and other parts of Europe, the vast majority return to Africa, others go to the ;Americas or are shipped there as slaves.
Columbus hears of African voyages to Americas from Moors . In 1492, he sails to Cape Verde Region (near Senegal) stocks his ships and sails to the Americas led by his ship’s captain, the Christianized Black Moor named Afonso Nino
AMERICAS
Africans from West Africa sail to the Americas and trade with American Indians of the Caribbean, South America, Mexico and the Southern U.S.
Africans and Aztecs establish trade during the reign of Quaquapitzuak (African Presence in Early America: Van Sertima)
Trade in almaizer cloth, iron and glass beads, vegetables and fruits including corn and cotton, trade in guanin (gold, copper silver alloy.
Africans trade with South America, Colombia and Panama on the very day that Columbus arrives in the West Indies.
Mandinkas and other Africans continue their centuries-old trade with Indians. Trade bass in South America, Caribbean , Mexico, California, S.W.
United States, Cahokia region of South East U.S.
Arawak Indians of Caribbean and the Black Kalifunami (ancient Mandinkas seafarers who sailed to the Americas) unite in West Indies and bring about new group of people called “Black Caribs.
Inca civilization in Peru; various American Indian kingdoms including Chokia, Pueblo culture, Black Washitaw Moundbuilders. Black Jamassee Nation of the South-eastern U.S. African ships trade with Peru.
1200’s A.D. Mongol Caribs attack Arawaks in South America initiating a period of attacks on Arawaks that lasts until the coming of Columbus in 1492.
Columbus in Bahamas looking for gold; Indians tell him that African merchants were selling gold and cloth in the region and had come to the region from the Southwest.
PICTURES:
http://community.2.webtv.net/NUBIANEMCHARTOFBLACK/page2.htm
http://community.webtv.net/barnubianempire
http://community.webtv.net/nubianem3
2. Egypt Revisited, by Ivan Van Sertima; pub. By Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick NJ U.S.A.
3. The African Origin of Civilization, by Cheikh Anta Diop; pub. by Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, Il. U.S.A
4. Susu Economics: The History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth: pub. by 1stbooks Library, Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A.
www.1stbooks.com
5. A History of the African-Olmecs; pub by 1stbooks Library, Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A.
www.1stbooks.com
6. The Black Untouchables of India; pub. by Clarity Press, Atlanta Georgia U.S.A.
www.claritypress.com
7. African Glory by J.C. deGraff-Johnson; after word by John Henrik Clarke: pub. by Black Classics Press, Baltimore MD. U.S.A
8. African Presence in Early America; by Ivan Van Sertima: Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
9. Pillars of Ethiopian History by William Leo Hansberry: published by Howard Univ. Press Washington D.C., U.S.A.
10. Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization, by Anthony T. Browder; pub. by Institute of Karmic Guidance, Washington D.C. U.S.A
11. General History of Africa Ancient Civilizations of Africa Vol. II, Edition by James Curry and M. Mokhtar; UNESCO; Universtiy of California Press
12. The Columbus Conspiracy, by Michael Bradley: pub. by A&B Book Publishers, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
13. The Black Discovery of America, by Michael Bradley: pub by Personal Library, Toronto, Canada
14. Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Kushite Empire, by Drusilla Dunjee Houston: published by Black Classis Press, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A
15. Susu and Susunomics: The Theory and Practice of Pan-African Economic, Racial and Cultural Self-Preservation: pub by
www.iuniverse.com also available at
www.barnesandnoble.com California, U.S.A.
16. 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro, With Complete Proof, by J.A.Rogers: Helga Rogers Publishers, St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A.
Nubianem3@webtv.net
http://community.webtv.net
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
www.raceandhistory.com
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI* DEDICATED TO DR. ALICE WINDOM
“For the complexion of men, they consider black the most beautiful. In all the kingdoms of the southern region, it is the same.”
—
Early Chinese Chronicler
On December 7, 1999 I returned to San Antonio, Texas from a two-week educational tour to Thailand and Cambodia. It was my second trip to Thailand and my first trip ever to Cambodia. Indeed, until 1999 I never really thought that I would have a chance to go to Cambodia, and so my trip there was something of a dream come true.
Quite naturally the trip was a search for African people. I am particularly interested in African migrations. We know now, for example, that the first humanity emerged from Africa and that streams of African people have continued to flow across the world from ancient to modern times. It is therefore very important for us to address the questions of exactly where did those Africans go, what did they do when they got there and what has subsequently happened to them. I consider such an approach Pan-African in its nature, African-centered in character and an earnest attempt to reunite a family of people separated far too long.
THE KHMERS OF ANGKOR
The most prominent and enduring kingdom of early Southeast Asia was Angkor (ca. 800-1431), located primarily in Cambodia. The builders of Angkor were an Africoid people known as Khmers–a name that loudly recalls ancient Kmt (pharaonic Egypt). Noted Harvard anthropologist Roland Burrage Dixon wrote that the Khmers were physically “marked by distinctly short stature, dark skin, curly or even frizzy hair, broad noses and thick Negroid lips.” In remote antiquity the Khmers established themselves throughout a vast
area that encompassed portions of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos.
The Khmers of Angkor were sophisticated agriculturalists, aggressive merchants and intrepid warriors. They created a splendid irrigation system with some canals as long as forty miles. They engaged in extensive and ongoing commerce with India and China. For purposes of war they had machines designed to hurl heavy arrows and sharp spears at their enemies, and rode into battle atop ornately decorated elephants.
In the Khmer language, Angkor means “the city” or “the capital.” In 889 king Yasovarman I constructed his capital on the current site of Angkor, and over the centuries consecutive Hindu and Buddhist Khmer kings augmented the city with their own distinct contributions. Angkor eventually covered an expanse of 77 square miles and was designed to be completely self-sufficient. The Khmers were magnificent builders in stone, and for more than six hundred years, successive Khmer dynasties commissioned the construction of stupendous temple islands, marvelous artificial lakes and incomparable temple mountains, including Angkor Wat–the crown jewel of Angkor, estimated to contain as much stone as the Dynasty IV pyramid of king Khafre in Old Kingdom Kmt.
ANGKOR WAT
My first full day in Cambodia began with a morning tour of the regal Angkor Wat temple. The temple of Angkor Wat, the most famous of Khmer stone structures, is truly magnificent to gaze upon and took a grand total of 37 years to build. During this period the millions of tons of sandstone used in the temple’s construction were transported to the site by river raft from a quarry at Mount Kulen, 25 miles to the
northeast. Angkor Wat rises in three successive stages up to five central towers that represent the peaks of Mount Meru–the cosmic or world mountain that lies at the center of the universe in Hindu mythology and considered the celestial residence of the Hindu pantheon. The towers of Angkor Wat, the tallest of which rises about 200 feet above the surrounding flatlands, are Cambodia’s national symbol. The temple’s outer walls represent the mountains at the edge of the world, while the moat surrounding the temple represents the oceans beyond.
The Angkor Wat temple dates from the twelfth century reign of Suryavarman II (1113-1150). This was a time when the Khmer dominion over Southeast Asia was at its very pinnacle, with an empire known as Kambuja “stretching from the South China Sea to modern Thailand, as far north as the uplands of Laos and as far south as the Malay Peninsula. King Suryavarman II built it as a funerary temple for himself, and dedicated it to the Hindu god Vishnu, whom the king represented on Earth and with whom he integrated on his death.”
Angkor Wat is decorated throughout with intricate bas-reliefs depicting stories from the epic Hindu poems, the Mahabrarata and the Ramayana, with marching armies, fantastic demons and vivid and sensual depictions of the celestial female dancers of the Khmers known as “apsaras.” French architect and archaeologist Henri Parmentier gave his opinion of the apsaras of Angkor Wat in 1923 when he said that “to me they are Grace personified, the highest expression of femininity ever conceived by the human mind.” During the era of Khmer rule over Cambodia a walk to the center of Angkor Wat was a metaphorical trip of the spirit to the center of the universe.
FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO:
African Presence in Early Asia, edited by Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima
*RUNOKO RASHIDI is an historian, lecturer, research specialist and global traveler. He is always in search of African people and is currently organizing a major tour to Southeast Asia in April 2005. For more information on the tour, to schedule lectures and order audio and video tapes contact Runoko at Runoko@yahoo.com or call Runoko at 210 337-4405. And visit Runoko’s award winning web site at http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
Here you will see Gandhi’s racist views towards the blacks.
SUMMARY: To understand Gandhi’s role towards the blacks, one requires a knowledge of Hinduism. Within the constraints, a few words on Hinduism will suffice: The caste is the bedrock of Hinduism. The Hindu term for caste is varna; which means arranging the society on a four-level hierarchy based on the skin color: The darker-skinned relegated to the lowest level, the lighter-skinned to the top three levels of the apartheid scale called the Caste System. The race factor underlies the intricate workings of Hinduism, not to mention the countless evil practices embedded within. Have no doubt, Gandhi loved the Caste system.
Gandhi lived in South Africa for roughly twenty one years from 1893 to 1914. In 1906, he joined the military with a rank of Sergeant-Major and actively participated in the war against the blacks. Gandhi’s racist ideas are also evident in his writings of these periods. One should ask a question : Were our American Black leaders including Dr. King aware of Gandhi’s anti-black activities? Painfully, we have researched the literature and the answer is, no. For this lapse, the blame lies on the Afro-American newspapers which portrayed Gandhi in ever glowing terms, setting the stage for African-American leaders Howard Thurman, Sue Baily Thurman, Reverend Edward Carroll, Benjamin E. Mays, Channing H. Tobias, and William Stuart Nelson to visit India at different time periods to meet Gandhi in person. None of these leaders had any deeper understanding of Hinduism, British India, or the complexities of Gandhi’s convoluted multi-layered Hindu mind. Frankly speaking, these leaders were !
no match to Gandhi’s deceit; Gandhi hoodwinked them all, and that too, with great ease. Understanding of Hindu India with our black leaders never really improved even considering years later in March 1959, much after Gandhi’s death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his wife, and Professor Lawrence D. Reddick visited India and to our way of analysis, they fared no better than their predecessors. We are certain, had Dr. King known Gandhi’s anti-black and other criminal activities, he would have distanced his civil-rights movement away from the name of Gandhi. We recommend the following:
1. Grenier, Richard. The Gandhi Nobody Knows published in Commentary March 1983; pages 59 to 72. This is the best article on Gandhi briefly outlining his war activities against the blacks.
2. Kapur, Sudarshan. Raising up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi; Boston: Beacon Press, 1992 Excellent research book into the perspective of distant American blacks with respect to their new hero, Gandhi. However, this book has one major flaw: The author seems to be unaware of Gandhi’s anti-black activities in South Africa.
3. Huq, Fazlul. Gandhi: Saint or Sinner? Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya Akademy, 1992.
Superb book. Really gets into the Gandhi’s anti-black ideology with a sense of history setting intact. This book can be purchased from the International Dalit Support Group, P.O Box 842066, Houston, Tx 77284-2066.
This book’s second chapteróGandhi’s Anti-African Racismóis a superb analysis of Gandhi’s anti-black thinking. We bring to you the whole chapter for your review:
Gandhi was not a whit less racist than the white racists of South Africa. When Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress on August 22, 1894, the no. 1 objective he declared was: “To promote concord and harmony among the Indians and Europeans in the Colony.” [Collected Works (CW)1 pp. 132-33]
He launched his Indian Opinion on June 4 1904: “The object of Indian Opinion was to bring the European and the Indian subjects of the King Edward closer together.” (CW. IV P. 320)
What was the harm in making an effort to bring understanding among all people, irrespective of colour, creed or religion? Did not Gandhi know that a huge population of blacks and coloured lived there? Perhaps to Gandhi they were less than human beings.
Addressing a public meeting in Bombay on Sept. 26 1896 (CW II p. 74), Gandhi said:
Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.
In 1904, he wrote (CW. IV p. 193):
It is one thing to register natives who would not work, and whom it is very difficult to find out if they absent themselves, but it is another thingó-and most insultingó-to expect decent, hard-working, and respectable Indians, whose only fault is that they work too much, to have themselves registered and carry with them registration badges.
In its editorial on the Natal Municipal Corporation Bill, the Indian Opinion of March 18 1905 wrote:
Clause 200 makes provision for registration of persons belonging to uncivilized races (meaning the local Africans), resident and employed within the Borough. One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured Indians who have become free, and for their descendants about whom the general complaint is that they work too much? (Italic portion is added)
The Indian Opinion published an editorial on September 9 1905 under the heading, “The relative Value of the Natives and the Indians in Natal”. In it Gandhi referred to a speech made by Rev. Dube, a most accomplished African, who said that an African had the capacity for improvement, if only the Colonials would look upon him as better than dirt, and give him a chance to develop self-respect. Gandhi suggested that “A little judicious extra taxation would do no harm; in the majority of cases it compels the native to work for at least a few days a year.” Then he added:
Now let us turn our attention to another and entirely unrepresented communityó-the Indian. He is in striking contrast with the native. While the native has been of little benefit to the State, it owes its prosperity largely to the Indians. While native loafers abound on every side, that species of humanity is almost unknown among Indians here.
Nothing could be further from the truth, that Gandhi fought against Apartheid, which many propagandists in later years wanted people to believe. He was all in favour of continuation of white domination and oppression of the blacks in South Africa.
In the Government Gazette of Natal for Feb. 28 1905, a Bill was published regulating the use of fire-arms by the natives and Asiatics. Commenting on the Bill, the Indian Opinion of March 25 1905 stated:
In this instance of the fire-arms, the Asiatic has been most improperly bracketed with the natives. The British Indian does not need any such restrictions as are imposed by the Bill on the natives regarding the carrying of fire-arms. The prominent race can remain so by preventing the native from arming himself. Is there a slightest vestige of justification for so preventing the British Indian?
Here is the budding Mahatma telling the white racists how they can perpetuate their Nazi domination over the vast majority of Africans.
In the British imperialist scheme, one important strategy was to divide and rule. Gandhi advised Indians not to align with other political groups in either coloured or African communities. In 1906 the coloured people in the colonies of Good Hope, the Transvaal and the Orange River colony, addressed a petition to the King Emperor demanding franchise rights. The petitioners showed clearly that, in one part of South Africa, namely the Cape of Good Hope, they had enjoyed the franchise ever since the introduction of representative institutions.
Commenting on the petition, the Indian Opinion of March 24 1906, declaring that “British Indians have, in order that they may never be misunderstood, made it clear that they do not aspire to any political power,” added:
It seems that the petition is being widely circulated, and signatures are being taken of all coloured people in the three colonies named. The petition is non-Indian in character, although British Indians, being coloured people, are very largely affected by it. We consider that it was a wise policy on the part of the British Indians throughout South Africa, to have kept themselves apart and distinct from the other coloured communities in this country.
In a statement made in 1906 to the Constitution Committee, the British Indian Association led by Gandhi (CW. V p.335) said:
The British Indian Association has always admitted the principle of white domination and has, therefore, no desire, on behalf of the community it represents, for any political rights just for the sake of them.
Commenting on a court case, the Indian Opinion of June 2 1906, in its Gujrati section, stated:
You say that the magistrate’s decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate’s decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court’s decision, only clean Indians (meaning upper caste Hindu Indians) or coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams. (Italic portion is added)
Apartheid defended: Gandhi accepted racial segregation, not only because it was politically expedient as his Imperial masters had already drawn such a blueprint, it also conformed with his own attitude to the caste system. In his own mind he fitted Apartheid into the caste system: whites in the position of Brahmins, Indian merchants and professionals as Sudras, and all other non-whites as Untouchables.
Though Gandhi was strongly opposed to the comingling of races, the working-class Indians did not share his distaste. There were many areas where Indians, Chinese, Coloured, Africans and poor whites lived together. On February 15 1905, Gandhi wrote to Dr. Porter, the Medical Officer of Health, Johannesburg (CW. IV p.244, and “Indian Opinion” 9 April 1904):
Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension.
Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.
Dr. Porter replied that it was the Indians who sub-let to Africans.
Commenting on the White League’s agitation, Gandhi wrote in his Indian Opinion of September 24 1903:
We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do, only we believe that they would best serve these interests, which are as dear to us as to them, by advocating the purity of all races, and not one alone. We believe also that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race.
Again, on December 24 1903, Indian Opinion stated:
The petition dwells upon `the comingling of the coloured and white races’. May we inform the members of the Conference that so far as British Indians are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is the purity of type.
In his farewell speech at a meeting held in the house of Dr. Gool in Capetown, which was reported in the Indian Opinion of July 1 1914, Gandhi said:
The Indians knew perfectly well which was the dominant and governing race. They aspired to no social equality with Europeans. They felt that the path of their development was separate. They did not even aspire to the franchise, or, if the aspiration exists, it was with no idea of its having a present effect.
Gandhi joined in the orgy of Zulu slaughter when the Bambata Rebellion broke out. It is essential to discuss the background of the Bambata Rebellion, to place Gandhi’s Nazi war crime in its proper perspective.
The Bambatta Rebellion–Background
The spiritual foundation of Nazism was the superiority of the Aryan race or its modern version, the Anglo-Saxon race. When Disraeli was Prime Minister, Britain enunciated a doctrine, like the Monroe Doctrine, warning other European powers that Africa would be a British preserve, and that from the Cape to the Limpopo, if not to Cairo, only white people would have local political power. Successive British Governments pursued this policy.
In the 1870s, the Zulu Kingdom was by far the most powerful African State of the Limpopo. Cetewayo, who succeeded his father in 1872, was an able and popular ruler. He united the kingdom and built up a most efficient army. He followed a policy of alliance with the British Colony of Natal. The Zulu Kingdom and the Boer Republic of the Transvaal had been feuding for a long time. The Zulus were defeated twice by the Boers, in 1838 and 1840. By 1877 Cetewayo was ready to invade the Transvaal. But the British stepped in and annexed the Transvaal in 1877, only to prevent Cetewayo from doing it first and becoming powerful and a challenge to white supremacy.
Some contemporary reports throw light on the relative strength of the Zulus and their Boer enemies. Colonel A.W. Durnford wrote in a memorandum on July 5 (“The Secret History of South Africa” by Abercrombe. The Central News Agency Ltd., Johannesburg South Africa. 1951 p.6):
About this time (April 10th) Cetewayo had massed his forces in three corps on the borders, and would undoubtedly have swept the Transvaal, at least up to the Vaal River if not to Pretoria itself, had the country not been taken over by the English. In my opinion he would have cleared the country to Pretoria.
Shepstone, the British Administrator, himself wrote concerning the reality of the danger on Dec. 25 1877:
The Boers are still flying, and I think by this time there must be a belt of more than a hundred miles long and thirty broad in which, with three insignificant exceptions, there is nothing but absolute desolation. This will give some idea of the mischief which Cetewayo’s conduct has caused.(Ibid p.7).
The above facts explode the myth that the British protected the Zulus from the Boers.
British barbarity on Blacks: After annexing the Transvaal, Shepstone turned his attention to destroying all the independent African states in that region, particularly the Zulu Kingdom. Before annexation of the Transvaal, Shepstone sided with the Zulus in their border disputes with the Transvaal. After annexation he made a volte-face and used those disputes as excuses to invade Zululand. The British public was told that the Zulu War was to liberate the Zulu people from a tyrannical ruler, and South Africa from a menace to “christianity and civilisation”.
In 1879, the British invaded the Zulu Kingdom and defeated Cetawayo. Then they started their complete subjugation. First the army was broken, thus destroying their ability to defend themselves. The country was then split into thirteen separate units under the nominal control of the chiefs, salaried by the Government. The white magistrates supplanted the chiefs as the most powerful men in their districts. Most important of all, the land was partitioned. Before the war, Shepstone had expressed the hope that Cetewayo’s warriors would be “changed to labourers working for wages”. It makes a sad story, how this was accomplished. In 1902-4, the Land Commission delineated a number of locations for the Zulus, and threw open the rest of the country to white settlement. Out of a total acreage of more than 12 million acres, the Africans held some 2 million acres. They numbered, at the lowest reckoning, over three hundred thousand. The Europeans, who were less than 20,000, owned most of !
the best land. A large proportion of the African population was forced to live upon land to which it had no legal claim. Where the Africans lived upon private or crown lands, they lived there entirely upon sufferance and without legal title. By this time, other independent African states in that region were also destroyed by the British army. Wheresoever, they marched, in Basutoland, Zululand or Bechuanaland, the Queen’s horses and the Queen’s men were like unto a “Salvation Army” ministering to the welfare of the colonists. The sufferers were the Africans.
Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha in South Africa (p.15):
The Boers are simple, frank and religious. They settle in the midst of extensive farms. We can have no idea of the extent of these farms. A farm with us means generally an acre or two, and sometimes even less. In South Africa, a single farmer has hundreds or thousands of acres of land in his possession. He is not anxious to put all this under cultivation at once, and if any one argues with him he will say, `Let it lie fallow; lands which are now fallow will be cultivated by our children’.
Also in his Indian Opinion (March 15 1913), he wrote:
General Botha has thousands of acres of land … (there is) a big company in Natal which has hundreds of thousands of acres of land.
Thou shalt not steal but rob.
It did not seem to occur to Gandhi how these people came into possession of thousands of acres of land, whereas Africans were cooped in locations like chicken in pens.
Grabbing the land was not enough: it needed manpower to cultivate that land. The cry of the farmers was for labour. Naturally it found a favourite response from Shepstone, whose dream it was to convert Cetewayo’s warriors into labourers for white men. His native policy was to meet the demands of the European farmers. He agreed that Europeans could not expand or grow in wealth unless they could draw more fully upon the reservoirs of labour in the African reserves.
In the process of European colonisation, the swiftly expanding land-hungry Europeans turned the bulk of the African population into a proletariat. Due to the congestion and landlessness in the reserves, created deliberately by the white rulers, their agricultural return was not sufficient for bare existence. Then there were the taxes on huts, cattle and what not. On the other hand, working for white men did not provide them with adequate sustenance. In Natal, the sugar farmers of the coast relied upon the Indian indentured labour, whereas the stock farmers of the interior relied exclusively on Africans, and regarded the failure of Africans to work for them as a criminal offence. In a report to the Chief Commissioner of Police in 1903, the Police Inspector W.F. Fairley wrote: “With regard to crime, the principal complaints made by Dutch farmers to patrols was of the refusal to work on the part of the natives.” (Department Reports 1903 p.67 cited “Reluctant Rebellion” by Marks!
p.17. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970). Complaints about the shortage of African labour were voiced in all parts of the country. The farmers were later joined by the mining industries. The most obvious change was the broadening of the economic base from being entirely agricultural to one in which mining played a more and more important part. Diamond, gold, coal became major industries, and with this development, the deeper involvement of the big finance houses, particularly Rothschilds. So the fate of the Africans as the source of cheap labour, and the fat dividends derived from mining by the British ruling class, became interlinked. This still continues in a modified form. Now it is Anglo-American corporations.
Cheap labour from India: Europeans assumed that Africans lived only to meet their requirements of cheap labour, and as such they had no right to establish themselves as self-sufficient and independent farmers because this conflicted with European interests. Famines in India facilitates the recruitment of indentured Indian labourers for white employers in the Colonies. It was no different in relation to Africans. In a Report of the Native Affairs Commission, (Native Affairs Commission Report 1939-40 cited “Oxford History of South Africa” p.182. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1969) it was admitted that “African reserves were regarded by whites as reservoirs of labour, and congestion, landlessness and crop failure were welcomed as stimulants to the labour supply”. Similar situations among whites were viewed as national calamities. The Government lent millions of pounds to white farmers, gave them tax relief in times of famine, paid subsidies, facilitated the export of their produce, !
and wrote off their debts. But what about Africans? Famine would be rampant, crops ruined, food exhausted, thousands of Africans and their cattle would starve to death, but the government would not raise a finger.
The whites not only stole the land from the Africans, and used them as cheap labour, but also looked to them for revenue. They drew a relatively large and growing income from the Africans. “The Native population of Natal”, Shepstone admitted (“Imperial Factor” by De Kieweit p.193. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970), “contribute to the revenue annually a sum equal, at least, to that necessary to maintain the whole fixed establishment of the Colony for the government of the whites as well as themselves.” Taxation is a financial measure to gather revenue to meet the expenditure of the state. But in South Africa it was used to reduce Africans to slavery. The sole motive behind the extra taxation imposed on Africans was to force the Africans to work on terms dictated by the whites.
Always there was resentment against any measure which would allow the Africans to settle in locations instead of keeping them as labourers. It was not only the farmers’ conferences, the press owned by the mining magnates joined the outcry of the farmers to enact special laws to compel the Africans to come out of their locations and work for the whites. The press was in the forefront to arouse the sentiments that Africans not in European service were necessarily living in idleness. Gandhi’s Indian Opinion played second fiddle to the white press in this respect. To Gandhi, the imposition of taxes upon the Africans to compel them to work for the white employers was “gentle persuasion”.
By a stroke of the pen, the major part of the available land was taken away from the Zulus and given to Europeans. Some of the dispossessed Zulus were allotted locations and others remained on the land of European landlords on sufferance. Bambata was one of these unfortunate chiefs. He became Chief in 1890 and he and his people were placed in private locations on very high rents. The land was useless for any agricultural purpose. To make things worse, the Boer farmers suspected Bambata of informing the British about their pro-Boer activities, and naturally they tried to victimise him and his people. But after the war, the British rulers leaned backwards and went out of their way to kiss and hug the Boers. So Bambata was caught in a cleft stick. By 1905 the tension between Bambata and his white landlords reached crisis point. The Assistant Magistrate of Greytown, H. Von Gerard, wrote to the Under Secretary of Native Affairs recommending the allocation of a location for his pe!
ople. Gerard described how people were being oppressed and squeezed by the landlords, what useless land it was for agricultural purposes, and how summons after summons was being issued against people who were unable to pay high rents. Finally he remarked (“Reluctant Rebellion” by Marks. P.201):
A most desperate state of affairs, the more so as there seems no remedy for it….My sympathies with Bambata’s people…but I see no way out of the difficulty.
The military and civilian leaders of Natal were consciously developing a picture as if an uprising was imminent. Not that they could foresee one, but they wanted to foresee one because that would give them a golden opportunity to inflict severe punishments on Zulus who, according to the colonists, were growing insolent. They drew up a plan to deal with this imaginary uprising swiftly, and all agreed that was the way they could save not only Natal but North Africa from the “barbarities which only the savage mind can conceive.” (Ibid p. Xvii)
Zulu Revolt: But outside Natal, people were not so sure. Styne, President of the Orange Free State, called it “hysteria”. Smuts, Botha and Merriman expressed concern as to whether the whites of Natal would spur a rebellion. Some churchmen and many radical humanitarians in Natal, as well as England, produced volumes of irrefutable evidence proving that it was a conspiracy to goad the Zulus into rebellion and then massacre them. In this, Hariette Colenso, the famous daughter of a famous father, Bishop Colenso, made the most outstanding contribution. There was a cry of imminent native revolt in the press long before active rebellion broke out.
As far back as 1902, Lieu. G.A. Mills in his report (GH18/02. Cited “Reluctant Rebellion” p.158) to the Chief of Staff, Natal, on July 1 informed him:
Every Boer expresses the most bitter hatred of the Zulus. They all express a wish that the Zulus would rise now while the British troops are in the country so that they may be practically wiped out. The Boers all say that in the event of the rising, every one of them would join the British troops in order to have a chance of paying off old scores against the Zulus. When I first came here, I visited farms and asked the Boers what they thought of the advisability of keeping troops here. They all said it was most necessary, as they were afraid of the Kaffirs and it would not be safe to stay on their farms if the troops withdrew…. Taking everything into consideration, I cannot help being forced to the opinion that many Boers intend to provoke a Zulu rising if they can do so.
It was Colonel Mackenzie, the military supremo before the rebellion, who was prophesying a native uprising and cleaning the barrels of his guns to use the “golden opportunity” to inflict “the most drastic punishment” on leading natives he found guilty of treason, and to “instill a proper respect for the white man”. (C.O. 179/233/12460. Dispatch 9.3.06 cited “Reluctant Rebellion” p. 188).
On June 14, Charles Saunders, Chief Magistrate and Civil Commissioner in Zululand (1899-1909) wrote to C.J. Hignet, the magistrate of Nqutu (“Reluctant Rebellion” p.241):
I quite agree with your conclusions as to our men trying to goad the whole population into rebellion, and you have no idea of the difficulties we had in Nkandha in trying to protect people one knew perfectly well were faithful to us.
In his communication of July 10 1906 to the Prime Minister, (PM 61/15/66 Governor to PM 10.7.06) the Governor described the “sweeping actions and the mopping-up operations as continued slaughter. Fred Graham, a permanent civil servant in the Colonial Office, in his Minute of July 10, described it as “massacre”.
Nazism & racism: The most revealing was the long letter of July 24 1906 (CO 179/236/24787 minute 10-7-06) sent by the Anglican Archdeacon, Charles Johnson, from St. Augustine’s in Nqutu division, to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels in London. He was a man of the British establishment and not known to have excessive zeal for standing up for the rights of the Africans. He wrote (cited “Reluctant Rebellion” p. 241):
Many thinking people have been asking themselves, what are we going to do with his teeming population? Some strong-handed men have thought the time was ripe for solving the great question. They knew that there was a general widespread spirit of disaffection among the natives of Natal, the Free State and the Transvaal, but specially in Natal, and they commenced the suppression of the rebellion in the fierce hope that the rebellion might so spread throughout the land and engender a war of practical extermination. I fully believe that they were imbued with the conviction that this was the only safe way of dealing with the native question, and they are greatly disappointed that the spirit of rebellion was not strong enough to bring more than a moiety of the native peoples under the influence of the rifle. Over and over again it was said, `They are only sitting on the fence, it shall be our endeavour to bring them over’; and again, speaking of the big chiefs, `We must endeavour t!
o bring them in if possible! Yes, they have been honest and outspoken enoughó-the wish being father to the thoughtó-they prophesied the rebellion would spread throughout South Africa; had they been true prophets, no doubt the necessity of solving the native question would have been solved for this generation at least.
John Merriman was a veteran Cape politician. He was one of those so-called liberals who accepted Nazism as a doctrine, or in other words Anglo-Saxon superiority, but regretted its consequent atrocities and thus fumigated their consciences. He wrote to Goldwin Smith (Merriman papers NHo. 202, 16.9.06 cited “Reluctant Rebellion” p.246) in September 1906:
We have had a horrible business in Natal with the natives. I suppose the whole truth will never be known, but enough comes out to make us see how thin the crust is that keeps our christian civilisation from the old-fashioned savageryómachine-guns and modern rifles against knobsticks and assagais are heavy odds and do not add much to the glory of the superior race.
In the letter of the Archdeacon the expression “practical extermination”, and in a letter of Lieutenant Mills “practically wiped out”, have been used. This was what the German Nazis wanted to do to the Jews: to exterminate them. Does it make any difference whether the victims of racial slaughter are Jews or blacks?
Conspiracy to massacre Blacks: Gandhi was well aware of the conspiracy to massacre the Africans. When there was war hysteria in the colonial press, this prophet of non-violence did not apply his mind as to how to stop such a conflict. On the contrary, he did not want Indians to be left behind, but wanted them to take a full part in this genocide.
In his editorial in the Indian Opinion of Nov. 18 1905, long before the actual rebellion broke out, Gandhi complained that the Government simply did not wish to give Indians an opportunity of showing that they were as capable as any other community of taking their share in the defence of the colony. He suggested that a volunteer corps should be formed from colonial-born Indians, which would be useful in actual service.
Indentured Indians lived in conditions worse than slavery. Gandhi during his 20 years’ stay in South Africa, did not raise a finger to ease their sufferings. But he was quick to suggest using them as cannon fodder for racists against Africans.
In his Indian Opinion in Dec. 2 1905 he referred to Law 25 of 1875 which was specially passed to increase “the maximum strength of the volunteer force in the colony adding thereto a force of Indian immigrant volunteer infantry”. To assure the Europeans that such Indians would only kill Africans, he pointed out that “section 83 of the Militia Act states that no ordinary member of the coloured contingent shall be armed with weapons of precision, unless such contingent is called to operate against other than Europeans”.
Gandhi defends massacre: Many years later, he wrote (p.233) in his autobiography:
The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything like the vividness that the `rebellion’ did. This was no war but a man-hunt, not only in my opinion but also in that of many Englishmen with whom I had occasion to talk. To hear every morning reports of the soldiers’ rifles exploding like crackers in innocent hamlets, and to live in the midst of them, was a trial.
Then to justify his participation in this massacre, he went on (Autobiography p. 231):
I bore no grudge against the Zulus, they had harmed no Indian. I had doubts about the `rebellion’ itself, but I then believed that the British Empire existed for the welfare of the world. A genuine sense of loyalty prevented me from even wishing ill to the Empire. The righteness or otherwise of the `rebellion’ was therefore not likely to affect my decision.
What about the Nazi war criminals? Did they not have a genuine sense of loyalty to Hitler and Nazism?
In Great Britain another storm of protest was raised against the atrocities perpetrated in Natal. The only time Gandhi mentioned the Zulu suppression was on August 4 1906, when he wrote in his Indian Opinion:
A controversy is going on in England about what the Natal Army did during the Kaffir rebellion. The people here believe that the whites of Natal perpetrated great atrocities on the Kaffirs. In reply to such critics, the Star has pointed to the doings of the Imperial Army in Egypt. Those among the Egyptian rebels who had been captured were ordered to be flogged. The flogging was continued to the limits of the victim’s endurance; it took place in public and was watched by thousands of people. Those sentenced to death were also hanged at the same time. While those sentenced to death were hanging, the flogging of others was taken up. While the sentences were being executed, the relatives of the victims cried and wept until many of them swooned. If this is true, there is no reason why there should be such an outcry in England against Natal outrages.
One may notice that the article was very cleverly written. First Gandhi stated that people in England believed that the whites of Natal perpetrated great atrocities on Africans, as if he himself did not know what happened, and also gave the impression that it was the local Natal Army and not the Imperial Army which was involved in the atrocities, which is not true. Even at this stage, he was not willing to tell the simple truth, that atrocities were committed. Then he borrowed the description of hanging and flogging in Egypt from the Star as if he did not know about that either. Did or did not Gandhi know that those Egyptians were not common criminals to be flogged and hangedóthat they were the patriots, the flowers of the Egyptian nation?
If Gandhi unequivocally accepted or found out that the Imperial Army committed those atrocities, then he could not claim that he believed the British Empire existed for the welfare of mankind. The last and the vilest of all was the subtle suggestion that if the Imperial Army did what they were accused of doing, then there was no reason why there should be such an outcry in England against the Natal outrage. Why could this Imperialist-manufactured Mahatma not say clearly that both were crimes against humanity?
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“I would rather be a member of this [Afrikan] race than a Greek in the time of Alexander, a Roman in the Augustan period, or Anglo-Saxon in the nineteenth century.” – Edward Wilmot Blyden
“However much we may detest admitting it, the fact remains that there would be no exploitation if people refused to obey the exploiter. But self comes in and we hug the chains that bind us. This must cease.” – Mohandas Gandhi
UHURU!
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BY RUNOKO RASHIDI* DEDICATED TO DR. IVAN VAN SERTIMA
–J.C. DeGraft-Johnson, African Glory
Of my recent travels in Europe I suppose that it is appropriate that we start with Rome, for it was to Rome that I flew to on the first leg of my European journeys that began in January 2003. And so it was, that after connecting flights from New York to London to Amsterdam to Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci Airport, and a late night check in at the Royal Gambrinus Hotel in the city center, I was ready to begin my tour of eternal Rome–one of the world’s most celebrated cities.
Actually I had not even planned to visit Rome at the time. I thought that I had secured a speaking engagement in Stockholm through some African brothers in Sweden, but when that fell through and with time in Europe on my hands, Rome became an attractive prospective destination. And much to my delight, I found that someone special would be looking out for me when I got there and that was none other than Samia Nkrumah–Kwame Nkrumah’s youngest daughter! During the course of several days I really came to like sister Samia and not only because of her father. She was described to me even before the trip not just as “the only daughter of Kwame Nkrumah. She is a bright, young, and very energetic political journalist, who I am sure can give you some insight during your tour!”
Indeed, Samia turned out to be a beautiful and charming and really good sister, and I enjoyed her company immensely. She even arranged for me to give a slide presentation at a local bookstore and you know I liked that! So I not only visited Rome but lectured there also! And the lecture, translated by Samia’s husband, was followed by dinner, coffee, cocktails and conversation that lasted well into the night, Thanks so much sister Samia. for she was a sort of African oasis in a kind of Roman desert, as I saw only a scattering of other Africans during my visit, mostly Somalis and Ethiopians, a handful of Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians, a few Senegalese, one brother from Ireland and an occasional African-American tourist.
ROMAN ANTIQUITIES
As stated earlier, the attraction that Rome had for me was her vast store of antiquities and there was really far too much to be taken in during the course of a week’s time. But I did get to see a bunch of wonderful sites and monuments that ranged from the Roman Coliseum to Trajan’s Column, to the Baths of Caracalla, to the City Walls, to the Imperial Forums, to the Circus Maximus, to the Pantheon, to the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, to the obelisks of Thutmose III and Ramses II and quite a few other places too. These were all impressive structures and I was happy to see and photograph them but I must say that as a whole they paled in comparison to the mighty monuments of ancient Egypt. I also visited and glanced at, although it was heavily scaffolded, the great Axumite obelisk taken to Rome from Ethiopia by the Italians during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1941 and waiting for its long overdue return to Mother Africa.
And of course I went to all of the major museums in Rome. These museums included the Vatican Museums, the Capitolini Museum, the Etruscan Museum and at least two national museums–the Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme and the Museo Nazionale Romano.
The Vatican Museums have a vast collection that includes a number of excellent Greek and Roman pieces and some exquisite pieces from ancient Egypt, including a larger than life statue of Queen Tuya (wife of Seti I and mother of Ramses II) of Dynasty Nineteen. The statue was originally in Ramses II’s mortuary temple (The Ramesseum) only to be taken from Egypt to Rome by Emperor Caligula.
The Capitolini Museum, with its stunning collection of marbles and described as the “oldest public collection of ancient artworks in the world”, also has a set of ancient Egyptian artifacts and a superb image of Diana/Artemis of Ephesus in the form of a multi-breasted Black fertility goddess. And I must say, giving credit where it is due, that the Romans worked wonders with marble and probably the best representations of such works are housed in the Capitolini Museum.
The Etruscan Museum was splendid also and I was able to wander its halls towards the end of my trip to Rome. The Etruscans were the precursors of the Romans in Italy and their culture reflects a considerably closer relationship with ancient Africa than their successors. As in ancient Egyptian art, the Etruscan men are consistently dark while the Etruscan women are portrayed much lighter. Etruscan women seem to have enjoyed a freedom far greater than that of later Roman women, and women and men in general are frequently portrayed as happy and loving couples in Etruscan art. I was hard pressed to find anything of the sort among the Romans themselves.
There were in the museum, I believe, two or three Etruscan vases with obviously Africoid faces depicted on them, and one of the more interesting of the Etruscan exhibits, dated to 275 B.C.E., depicts what appears to be an African elephant.
DISTINGUISHED AFRICANS IN EARLY ROME
I suppose that you could accurately say that African people can be found everywhere on the planet in either ancient or modern times or both. And certainly I had been finding information about the African presence in early Rome for quite a while now.
Ancient African people, sometimes called Moors, are known to have had a significant presence and influence in early Rome. African soldiers, specifically identified as Moors, were actively recruited for Roman military service and were stationed in Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Many of these Africans rose to high rank. Lusius Quietus, for example, was one of Rome’s greatest generals and was named by Roman Emperor Trajan (98-117 C.E.) as his successor. Quietus is described as a “man of Moorish race and considered the ablest soldier in the Roman army.”
In addition to this background, I also knew that by the end of the second century of the Christian Era more than one third of all of the members of the Roman Senate were born in Africa and Africans were dominant in Rome’s intellectual life. And going all of the way back to my first reading of of Joel Augustus Rogers’ World’s Great Men of Color I found out about the African-Roman writer Publius Terentius Afer (190-159 B.C.E.). It was this African, Terence, who penned the immortal words, “I am a man and nothing human is alien to me.”
THEOLOGIANS, MARTYRS AND SAINTS
In addition to all of the above, I also knew, regarding the African presence in early Rome, about saints and theologians and martyrs like Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine. Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian, for example, was the first of the church writers to make Latin the language of Christianity. Tertullian was born into a rich family in Carthage in 170 C.E. He wrote Greek and Latin fluently and was “well trained in the school of rhetoric where Apuleius (another African), had been a pupil a generation before.” Tertullian’s wife was a Christian and he himself a convert. A man of fiery temperament and evangelical spirit, Tertullian is said to have lived to an advanced age. In 197 C.E., during the reign of Septimius Severus, Tertullian’s Apologia was published.
St. Cyprian is called the “greatest of the bishops of Carthage, the first African martyr-bishop and the man who, more than anyone, organized the African Church.” His reputation was such that the Churches of Gaul and Spain appealed to him as an arbiter. Like Tertullian before him, Cyprian was born of a prosperous family in Carthage in 200 C.E. He eventually held a chair in rhetoric at Carthage and in middle age, after reading the works of Tertullian, he converted to Christianity. Following his conversion Cyprian distributed most of his fortune to the poor. As an orator he was such that only three years after becoming a Christian he was elected bishop of Carthage. Sixty of Cyprian’s letters have survived as testament to his great intellectual gifts. On September 14, 258 C.E., St. Cyprian, after paying his executioner twenty-five gold pieces and surrounded by a large crowd of Christians, was beheaded.
Susan Raven, in her wonderful book Rome in Africa, refers to St. Augustine, born in 354 C.E. in Thagaste, North Africa, as “the greatest African.” Augustine was the son of St. Monica and largely because of her desires he converted to Christianity in 386 C.E. In 395 C.E. he became Bishop of Hippo, North Africa. His teaching on free will, original sin and the operation of God’s grace has been in illuminated in numerous publications, particularly in his City of God, published in 397 C.E. St. Augustine died in August 430 C.E. during the Vandal siege of Hippo.
AFRICAN POPES
There were at least three African Popes at Rome. St. Victor I became the first known African bishop of Rome in 189 C.E. and reigned until 199 C.E. Victor I, the first pope to write in Latin and the first pope known to have had dealings with the imperial household, is described as “the most forceful of the 2nd-century popes.” According to the late scholar Dr. Edward Vivian Scobie:
“Although nothing is known of the circumstances of his death he is venerated as a martyr, and his feast is kept on July the 28th. Today, in the history of the Roman Church he is remembered, not only for his ruling that Easter should be celebrated on Sunday, but he has also been named in the canon of the Ambrosian Mass, and he is said by Saint Jerome to have been the first in Rome to celebrate the Holy Mysteries in Latin.”
St. Miltiades, a Black priest from Africa, was elected the thirty-second pope after St. Peter in 311 C.E. Under Miltiades, after the issuance of an edict of tolerance signed by the Emperors Galerius, Licinius and Constantine, the great persecution of the Christians came to an end and they were allowed to practice their religion in peace. St. Miltiades is regarded as a Christian martyr and died in early January 314 C.E.
The third of the African popes and the forty-ninth pope overall was St. Gelasius I. He was born in Rome of African parents and governed from 492 to 496 C.E. He is described as “famous all over the world for his learning and holiness” and “more a servant than a sovereign.” He died on November 19, 496 C.E. and like St. Victor I and St. Miltiades, St. Gelasius I was canonized. As a Saint, his Feast-day is held on the 21st of November. Again, according to Dr. Scobie, “St. Gelasius I has been described as Great even among the Saints.”
BLACK POWER IN ANCIENT ROME: THE SEVERAN DYNASTY
The crowning highlight of my trip to Rome was the National Roman Museum, where all of the information that I had been reviewing for all of these years was validated. For here, on the last day of my trip I found evidence of an African dynasty at the very height of imperial Rome.
I had been in Rome for almost a week by then, and while it had been for the most part a pleasant experience I had not made the major and meaningful find that I had hoped that I would. I had seen no really Africoid images of Hannibal Barca or any Black Madonna statues or anything like that. And then it happened. Walking methodically through the museum galleries I gazed into Room XIII and there it was! Even at a glance I thought that one bust, in particular, looked strikingly Africoid. I looked closer and read the caption on the bust. It read Alexander Severus. I was familiar with that name–Severus. And then I turned around and saw a marvelous bust of Septimius Severus. And then I saw busts and statues of Septimius’ two sons–Geta and Caracalla and they all looked Africoid too, some more so than others. I had stumbled (or was I divinely led?) into a room that I had no prior knowledge of filled with these images of African looking Roman emperors!
This dynasty, known to historians as the Severan Dynasty, began with the accession to the throne of Septimius Severus in 193 C.E. In actuality, Septimius shared the throne for two years with Pesennius Niger. Indeed, could Pesennius Niger, another of Rome’s outstanding military commanders, himself have been an African? His name certainly indicates that possibility.
Records state that Septimius was born in Leptis Magna on the North African coast (modern day Libya) on April 11 in either 145 or 146 C.E. And Septimius was not just born in Africa. Numerous pictures, busts and statues of him show him to be phenotypically Black. Here, I have to say that the information that I was able to gather in Rome in March 2003 was further augmented by the acquisition of a color post card of a wood panel of Septimius Severus and his family, done around 200 C.E., that I obtained seven months later in the Antiquities Museum in Berlin. Again, there is no doubt that he was a Black man and the painting itself shows him as what I would describe as somewhere between copper colored and deep burnished brown.
Young Septimius, coming from a family of Romanized Africans, received a education rooted in Roman literature and quickly learned to speak Latin. After his formal education was completed he adopted an official career and became a civil magistrate. Later, he became a military commander, and this took him to Rome where he proved himself an able and popular and conscious military leader.
Around 199 C.E., six years after becoming emperor, Septimius even journeyed to Egypt. Can you imagine Emperor Septimius sailing on the Nile? Consider what he might have thought as he gazed at the pyramids and walked through the Karnak and Luxor temples.
Around 203 C.E. Septimius had a mighty arch constructed in the Imperial Forum. This monument is considered one of Italy’s most important triumphal arches.
He is even said to have built a marble tomb for Hannibal Barca–early Rome’s African nemesis. Indeed, because of his own African origins, Septimius has been referred to as “Hannibal’s revenge.”
After a distinguished career characterized by administration reorganization, exploits on the battlefield and the intensification of Christian persecution, Septimius died conducting yet another military campaign, this one in York in Britain, on February 4, 211 C.E. He was of sixty-five years old and and had been in poor health, suffering severely from gout, for years. His reign was seventeen years, eight months and three days and he was the last Roman emperor to die of natural causes for almost a hundred years.
Septimius Severus was succeeded in 211 C.E. by his sons Lucius Septimius Geta (211-212 C.E.) and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus aka Caracalla (211-217 C.E.). These brothers are said to have constantly plotted against one another and Caracalla finally had Geta murdered in 212 C.E. It was under Caracalla in 212 C.E. that Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the Empire. Caracalla was also responsible for refurbishing roads and the construction of a triumphal arch in Algeria, as well as his already mentioned enormous public baths. Caracalla was himself murdered by the military in 217 C.E.
Geta and Caracalla were followed by the Mauritania born Marcus Opellius Macrinus (217-218 C.E.), the Praetorian Prefect and the first non-senator to become emperor. Heliogabalus (218-222 C.E.), said to be either the son or nephew of Caracalla and a man of dubious character, followed Macrinus, and then came Severus Alexander (222-235 C.E.), who restored the Roman Coliseum to its ancient status and with whose thirteen year reign the era of the Severan domination of Rome came to an end.
This line is known as the Severan Dynasty and the National Roman Museum busts and statues and sculptures of the representatives of this dynasty strongly testify to their African identity. They are powerful images and like many of the statues and busts and sculptures of ancient Egypt I found the noses missing on all of them save one of Septimius’ son Caracalla. And the face adorning the bust of Severus Alexander, the last member of the dynasty, is even more Africoid looking than that of Septimius Severus, the dynasty’s founder.
I guess that you say that I was elated and pretty much blown away by my discovery of the Severan Dynasty, and I was able to leave Rome on a very high note. Actually the whole trip had been a high note, and as other horizons beckoned me I thought of my visit to Rome as a very successful endeavor. I felt good about having gone to Rome. I had seen a part of the world that until recently I never had serious aspirations about seeing and had spent an exciting week exploring what was for me a brand new city. I had lectured there and been well received in yet another country. I had been hosted and in part accompanied by the youngest daughter of one of our greatest leaders ever. And I had found that a small cadre of African men had ruled over the Roman Empire during the height of its imperial glory. Yes, indeed, this was a most successful trip.
May 10, 2004
*Runoko Rashidi is an African historian and research specialist very much in love with Africa. He is currently coordinating an educational tour to Peru scheduled for November 2004. For more information go to Runoko’s award winning Global African Presence Web Site at http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI* DEDICATED TO JAMES E. BRUNSON AND WAYNE B. CHANDLER
–Chancellor James Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization
“Most of the population of modern China–one fifth of all the people living today–owes its genetic origins to Africa.”
–Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1998
2001 was one of my biggest travel years ever. It was a year that I decided to visit some of the world’s world great antiquities including those in China, Egypt, Peru, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam. China was the first leg on the journey.
How many of us have wanted to visit China? I certainly did, and when the opportunity availed itself in March 2001 there I went. I was already in Hawaii anyway and I was excited about going farther. Not only was China the center of a great and ancient civilization, it was a land with a deep history of African contributions, and me being a man with a keen interest in the global African presence, especially Asia, I felt that I simply had to go.
And so it was that, buoyed by the fact that the trip had been handled by an African travel agency (I love to recycle Black dollars), I arrived, all alone, in Beijing on March 4, 2001. Sure enough, sisters and brothers, it was not long after landing in China that I found myself on the “Great Wall.” It was another dream come true–I was actually standing on the Great Wall of China. But beyond the excitement of being there, how was it really? Actually, I was not that impressed. I suppose that I had been spoiled by Egypt and I’ve come to the conclusion that after you’ve visited Egypt a few times everything else pales in comparison.
Indeed, since my first trip to Egypt in 1992 I have visited India’s Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri and Pink City, mighty Angkor in Cambodia, Great Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, Bagan in Myanmar, the rock churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia, Cusco and Machu Picchu in Peru, and a whole lot more. And these are impressive areas indeed but nothing really matches up to the pyramids, tombs and temples of Egypt. But at least I could say that I was there–that I stood on the Great Wall! Good for me.
Following the Great Wall I journeyed to the Ming Tombs, which I found interesting but not really awe inspiring. But it was during my visit to the Ming Tombs that something happened that in many ways set the tone for the entire trip. People started to follow me! Both men and women, but especially young women, started following me! Finally, I just stopped in my tracks and asked my tour guide what was going on. He told me that my followers were in admiration of me and thought that I must be some kind of celebrity! Well, with that explanation handed to me I quickly calmed down and went about the important business of sight seeing. But the people continued to follow me and it soon got to the point where folks were shaking my hand and asking to take photographs with me. Well, worse things have happened to me and I pretty much took it in all in stride. But a lot more was to follow on my Chinese odyssey and not all of it was as pleasant.
And so I got through my first day in China. I had had a long trip, checked into a fabulous hotel, climbed China’s Great Wall, visited the Ming Tombs and been mistaken for a celebrity. All in a day’s work in the life of Runoko Rashidi, fast on his way to becoming a legend in his own mind. Next day, fresh and relaxed I went to the Forbidden City. I remember a lot of things about that second day. First, that it was cold and windy. Second, I found not a scrap of litter on the streets. Third, that language was going to be a big barrier. Fourth, I never saw any women in tight and revealing clothes. And, perhaps more than important than all of the rest, I had not seen any Black people yet–neither depiction nor actual person! There were none in the Forbidden City, just as there had been none on the Great Wall or in the Ming Tombs. So much for antiquity. And then it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t seen any in the hotel or in the restaurants or in the streets or anywhere.
What was going on here? Trust me when I say that a brother was starting to feel a little lonely.
Next day I visited the Temple of Heaven and the Lama Temple. I was impressed with both places. And this was followed the next day with a trip to the Reed Moat Bridge, the Summer Palace and Tianamen Square. I went to different restaurants every day and the food was great. So far, pretty good. But still, no Black folks! What could have happened to them I wondered? Wasn’t this the place where Chancellor Williams said that we were once powerful enough to build a kingdom of our own? And didn’t my brothers James E. Brunson and Wayne B. Chandler document the existence of Black people here? Hadn’t Clyde Ahmed Winters done some pioneering work on the subject? And hadn’t Rev. James Marmaduke Boddy written about the African presence in ancient China way back in 1905? And what about that 1998 DNA study that concluded that most of the people of modern China had African genetic origins? What was going on here? I was starting to feel confused.
Next day I took an excursion about 128 kilometers out of Beijing to visit the East Qing Tombs. I thought that if I couldn’t find Black people in Beijing itself that I might have better luck elsewhere. The tombs were splendid and it was well worth the journey, although I still had not found what I was looking for. On the other hand, the people that I met that day were said to be peasants of Manchu stock and they weren’t friendly at all. Indeed, for the first time on the trip I met folks who actually seemed cold and even a little hostile. I didn’t like it. When I asked my tour guides what the local people were saying about me they just shrugged and requested that I not worry about it. I liked it even less.
Well, I guess that you could say that by this time I had seen about enough of Beijing and the surrounding areas and it was more than time to go. And so away I went to city of Xi’an. You know the city–the one with the terra cotta soldiers. I didn’t see the soldiers that day but I did make a long anticipated visit to the the Shaanxi Provincial Museum of History–said to be China’s best museum. What a disappointment! Not a sister or brother–ancient or modern–in the place. Damn!
And then I went to the Tang Dynasty Museum. The Tang Dynasty represents one of the great high points in Chinese history. But there was nothing that I could say was distinctly Africoid in the Tang Museum! They even brought the Museum Director himself out to meet me. I was told that it was his official day off but when he heard that I was coming he showed up anyhow. He told me that he was honored to meet me and that I was the first Black man to ever visit the place. But when I asked him about African people in the history of China I drew a complete blank. He claimed that he knew nothing about such a possibility. At least he was consistent.
Of my three guides, all of whom professed great stores of knowledge regarding early China, I could jar nothing loose from them regarding an ancient African presence. At the same time, however, they all knew about the anti-African riots that took place in China in the mid-1980s. I was beginning to wonder if all of this, I mean the whole experience, was a kind of dream or something.
The following day was my best in China! I went to the Banpo Neolithic Village and drove past the the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, and finally got to the museum of terra cotta soldiers and horses. They were magnificent and represent another high point in Chinese history, and I was impressed by the fact that both the tomb and soldiers and horses belonged to the same man who began construction of the Great Wall, and thought that closest comparison that I could make was to the great pyramid builders of Old Kingdom Egypt.
For lunch that day in Xi’an I went to another great restaurant followed by a visit to an actual Chinese tea house. This time all of the waitresses paused in their attention to the needs of the other diners to give me a peep and even the chef came out of the kitchen to take a look. And, oh yes, by this time I can seen a couple of African-American tourists and what appeared to be an African diplomat and one of them actually talked to me! Wow!
The next two days I saw the Xi’an city walls, a Han tomb complex, a drum tower and another museum. And I noticed a few other things too. It seemed that the Chinese, in general, smoked like chimneys, that they were highly disciplined, that there were lots of unemployed laborers, that there was a great deal of industrial pollution and the skies always seemed hazy, that there were many things to buy with aggressive vendors at every site, and that the people as a whole seemed very proud to be Chinese.
Well sisters and brothers, my trip to China was coming to an end and I suppose that it was just as well. I was glad that I went but I had found no documentation of the African presence and had spent quite a lot of money in my search. I suppose that I should have been better prepared but based on all the work that had gone into my African Presence in Early Asia anthology I really thought that it would have been a simple process with the African imprint everywhere. It turned out to be far from the case. Even the artifacts that I saw dating from the Shang Dynasty period did not seem Africoid. At least they didn’t to me.
And so, rather downcast, I returned to Beijing for one more night before an early morning flight back to the United States. Settling down in Beijing’s Mandarin Hotel I got a fabulous suite and then went out in search of what I hoped would be a really special meal before I departed the People’s Republic of China. But it did not turn out that way. As a matter of fact, I never did get to eat that evening. The first two restaurants that I went to were in the hotel itself. In the first one I waited about thirty minutes for service and never having received any I simply got up and walked out. In the second hotel restaurant I felt distinctly unwelcome. I don’t believe in spending money where I don’t feel comfortable and so I soon left that place too. And then I walked around the block thinking that I would have more success outside of the hotel. But the result was just more of the same. At one restaurant that I stopped at I was quickly ushered in with a smile and what appeared to
be words of welcome. But then all of a sudden all of the waitresses started to giggle and laugh and I soon got the heck out of there too.
Sisters and brothers, I was livid! I not only let the front desk at the Mandarin Hotel have it at what I considered my overall rude treatment at the hands of the Chinese but I had plenty of venom left for my tour guides the next morning too. All they could do was tell me how sorry they were and rather lamely explain that the local people were just not used to seeing Black folks. And so I blasted them some more.
So I guess that you could say that my trip to China was a kind of bitter sweet affair. I am glad that I had gone because there is nothing like seeing it for yourself. And many of the monuments that I saw there were indeed impressive. But I left China thinking that I would never go there again and I could not help wondering again and again about what happened to all of the Black people in China.
*Runoko Rashidi is a historian and world traveler engaged in a life long love affair with Africa. He is very active Online and is the editor, with Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, of the African Presence in Early Asia. Runoko is currently coordinating an educational-cultural tour to Peru in November 2004 entitled “Looking at Peru through African Eyes.”
For information on the tour and/or to follow Runoko’s doings please visit his award winning Global African Presence Web Site at
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI* DEDICATED TO THE IMMORTAL SPIRIT OF FRANCISCO CONGO
As a bit of background, I can tell you that I first remember becoming aware of the African presence in Peru about twenty years ago. I was watching a weight lifting competition during the Olympic Games when I noticed a Black man on the Peruvian team. My first reaction was, Wow! We really are everywhere!
But the big revelation came in July 1999 as a participant and keynote speaker at the Second International Reunion of the African Family in Latin America. This was a truly historic gathering and was held in the Maroon community of San Jose de Barlovento, Venezuela. The theme of the Reunion was “People with an Ancient Past Working in the Present for a Glorious Future.” The Reunion was sponsored by Afro America XXI and lasted for a week. It was both one of the greatest events that I have ever participated in and one of my finest hours. All of the forums were wonderful and while doing the presentations I was in top form. During the height of the Conference I did keynote presentations on three consecutive nights. The first presentation was on the “African Presence in America before Columbus.” The second was on “Ancient African Empires.” And the third and biggest of them all was entitled, “Unexpected Faces in Unexpected Places: The Global African Presence.” I will never forget how after the last presentation the various national delegations lined up to shake my hand and have take their photographs taken with me. And then the very last delegate and the oldest person in attendance, a small Black woman from Jamaica, walked up with great dignity and embraced me and told how proud “your mother is of you.” We were both overcome with emotion and I confess that I cried for a long time that night.
This Reunion brought together African people from as far away as Ethiopia but the vast majority of the attendees were Africans from the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, from North America came African people from Canada, the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. From Central America came Africans from Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. And from South America itself emerged sisters and brothers from Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Guyana, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Columbia and the host nation Venezuela, and Peru.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Reunion was the revelation that many of these sisters and brothers seemed completely unaware that African people lived in the neighboring countries. And this was the first time that I met African people from Peru.
With this background in mind, for ten days in June 2001 I toured Peru and found it to be a fascinating place. I had already been to Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana but I was hungry for more and Peru was my first destination on South America’s western side. To begin with, the museums were excellent and I was astounded by the Africoid features of many of the Moche portrait vases. And the churches and cathedrals weren’t bad either. First of all, there were a lot of them and I was especially impressed with the Church and Monastery of Santo Domingo with its life-sized statue of the black St. Martin de Porres. And who could ever forget the sacred Urubamba Valley and the mysterious city of Machu Picchu? And equally impressive, perhaps even more so, were the ceremonial centers of Sacsayhuaman and the ancient urban complex of Ollantaytambo.
THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN ANCIENT PERU
Contrary to popular belief, the first Africans to come to Peru did not come as captives, that is enslaved people. Rather, the country that is now called Peru in all likelihood became home to many of the first waves of Blacks who crossed into the Western Hemipshere tens of thousands of years ago. We have already found the bones of these ancient Blacks in Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil. Why would Peru be an exception? And then there is the Moche civilization.
Peru is probably the most archaeologically rich country in South America and one of the most important phases of its history is the Moche period. The Moche (or Mochica), a militaristic people little known to all but a few of us, erected their empire along the Peruvian coast around 100 C.E. and were not eclipsed for seven hundred years. They built their capital in the middle of the desert around what is now the city of Trujillo. It featured the enormous pyramid temples of the Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna (The temples of the Sun and the Moon). The Temple of the Sun, one of the most impressive adobe structures ever built in the Western Hemisphere, was composed of over a hundred million mud bricks.
The Moche roads and system of way stations are thought to have been an early inspiration for the Inca network. The Moche increased the coastal population with extensive irrigation projects and skillful engineering works were carried out, such as the La Cumbre canal, still in use today, and the Ascope aqueduct, both on the Chicama River.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Moche was their art, especially their amazingly life like portrait vases. In June 2001 I managed to view a number of these Moche pieces in the Lima museums, many of them so Africoid that I thought that they could have easily been manufactured in the Congo. I am talking here about vase after vase after vase. Indeed, based on this artistic evidence alone one could say that the Moche are among ancient America’s best kept secrets.
AFRICANS IN COLONIAL PERU
Although some Africans came to Peru with the Spanish invaders as soldiers and translators, beginning in the sixteenth century significant numbers of enslaved Africans were being taken to Peru. During the 1550s there were an estimated three thousand enslaved Africans in Peru, about half of them residing in Lima. And wherever there are enslaved people one can also find slave resistance. Colonial Peru is no exception here and the one name that seems to most personify that resistance is Francisco Congo. He must have been extraordinary man and I am trying diligently to find information on him.
Because of its geography and the fact that Peru was not on the direct colonial slave trade routes (mostly on the Atlantic Ocean) the majority of Africans in Peru were not brought over directly from Africa but were bought from the British, Dutch and Portuguese after they were already in the Americas. Even under the background of poverty and enslavement, however, some of these Africans achieved great distinction. One such person was Martin de Porres.
Martin de Porres, eventually to become St. Martin de Porres, was born December 9, 1579 in Lima, Peru. He was the son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed African slave mother. At age eleven, he became a servant in the Dominican priory. Promoted to almoner, he begged for more than $2,000.00 a week from the rich to support the poor and sick of Lima. Placed in charge of the Dominican’s infirmary Martin became famous for his “tender care of the sick and for his spectacular cures.” Because of him the Dominicans dropped the stipulation that “no black person may be received to the holy habit or profession of our order” and Martin took his vows as a Dominican brother.
For Lima’s poor Martin de Porres established both an orphanage and a children’s hospital. And, interestingly enough, he set up a shelter for stray dogs and cats and nursed them back to health. He lived in self-imposed austerity, never ate meat, fasted continuously, and spent much time in meditation and prayer.
In 1639 Martin de Porres died of fever. He has been venerated since the day of his death. He was beatified in 1873 and canonized on May 16, 1962. He is the first African-American saint.
AFRICANS IN PERU TODAY
Today, the African presence in Peru numbers about two million people out of a total population of about twenty-three million. During my visit, however, I saw only a handful of these sisters and brothers. I did manage, with some expenditure of effort, though, to find one African taxi driver, brother Enrique. Unfortunately, the only words of English that brother Enrique ever uttered were “Black power” but that was enough for me to hire him. I saw no Africans working in the airport, in the markets, in the museums, in the banks, in the hotels or on TV.
So, the reports of pervasive and rampant anti-African racism in Peru will not come as much of a surprise to us. What else is new? According to one account, “It is systematic and permanent. It goes from patronizing attitudes to outright discrimination: blacks are dirty, thieves, all the stereotypes.” In August 1996 New York Times correspondent Calvin Sims documented some of the racial bias directed against Africans in Peru, pointing out that:
“Although nightclubs feature Afro-Peruvian musical groups and a third of Peruvian soccer players are black, the number of black professionals is estimated at fewer than 400, and there are no black executives of Peruvian companies, no blacks in the diplomatic corps, judiciary, or the high ranks of the clergy or military. The country’s even smaller Japanese community has produced the current President, but no black politician has risen even as far as Congress.
While incidents of open discrimination are far less common in Peru than in the United States and Brazil, which has the largest black population in Latin America, Peruvian blacks say they encounter racism daily.
In public, they say, they are frequently called derogatory names like `son of coal’ or `smokeball.’ At job interviews, they say, they are often told that their experience and references are excellent but that the owners are looking to hire people with `good presence’– a euphemism for someone who is white.”
RETURN TO PERU
In spite of all that, perhaps even because of it, I tell you now that I am looking forward to returning to Peru in November 2004 and I want to take you with me. I want to see a lot more of the Moche and their marvelous portrait vases. And this time I will be visiting both the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon. And I am going to enter more churches and cathedrals, where I understand that in addition to statues of Black Saints there are depictions of Black Christs as well. And this time I will be accompanied by local African activists and will visit the African community of Chincha, south of Lima. And, of course, I will be returning to Cusco and Machu Picchu high in the Andes Mountains.
So come along with me. Join me and get your education. Come along with me as we further document the global African presence and write one more chapter in the greatest story never told.
May 10, 2004
*Runoko Rashidi is a traveler and historian engaged in a love affair with African people. He is very active Online and is the moderator of the Global African Presence egroup. He is currently coordinating an educational-cultural tour to Peru scheduled for November 2004 entitled “Looking at Peru through African Eyes.”
For more information on Runoko and all of his travels please visit Runoko’s award winning Global African Presence Web Site at http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
By KWAME NKRUMAH (ACCRA, GHANA–DECEMBER 1962) Posted by RUNOKO RASHIDI
— Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
If we have lost touch with what our forefathers discovered and knew, this has been due to the system of education to which we were introduced. This system of education prepared us for a subservient role to Europe and things European. It was directed at estranging us from our own cultures in order the more effectively to serve a new and alien interest.
The central myth in the mythology surrounding Africa is that of the denial that we are a historical people.
It is said that whereas other continents have shaped history and determined its course, Africa has stood still, held down by inertia. Africa, it is said, entered history only as a result of European contact.
Its history, therefore, is widely felt to be an extension of European history. Hegel’s authority was lent to this a-historical hypothesis concerning Africa. And apologists of colonialism and imperialism lost little time in seizing upon it and writing wildly about it to their heart’s content.
To those who say that there is no documentary source for that period of African history which pre-dates the European contact, modern research has a crushing answer. We know that we were not without a tradition of historiography, and, that this is so, is now the verdict of true Africanists. African historians, by the end of the 15th century, had a tradition of recorded history, and certainly by the time when Mohamud al-Kati wrote Tarikh al-Fattash. This tradition was incidentally much, much wider than that of the Timbuktu school of historians, and our own Institute of African Studies here at this University, is bringing to light several chronicles relating to the history of Northern Ghana.
The Chinese, too, during the T’ang dynasty (AD.
618-907), published their earliest major records of Africa. In the 18th century, scholarship connected Egypt with China; but Chinese acquaintance with Africa was not only confined to knowledge of Egypt. They had detailed knowledge of Somaliland, Madagascar and Zanzibar and made extensive visits to other parts of Africa.
The European exploration of Africa reached its height in the 19th century. What is unfortunate, however, is the fact that much of the discovery was given a subjective instead of an objective interpretation. In the regeneration of learning which is taking place in our universities and in other institutions of higher learning, we are treated as subjects and not objects.
They forget that we are a historic people responsible for our unique forms of language, culture and society.
It is therefore proper and fitting that a Congress of Africanists should take place in Africa and that the concept of Africanism should devolve from and be animated by that Congress.
Between ancient times and the 16th century, some European scholars forgot what their predecessors in African Studies had known. This amnesia, this regrettable loss of interest in the power of the African mind, deepened with growth of interest in the economic exploitation of Africa. It is no wonder that the Portuguese were erroneously credited with having erected the stone fortress of Mashonaland which, even when Barbossa, cousin of Magellan, first visited them, were ruins of long standing.
One of the Germanic languages, Yiddish is written in Hebrew characters (some of them used differently than for writing Hebrew).
Yiddish (meaning “Jewish”) arose between the 9th and 12th centuries in southwestern Germany as an adaptation of Middle High German dialects to the special needs of Jews. To the original German were added those Hebrew words that pertained to Jewish religious life. Later, when the bulk of European Jewry moved eastward into areas occupied predominantly by Slavic-speaking peoples, some Slavic influences were acquired. The vocabulary of the Yiddish spoken in eastern Europe during recent times comprised about 85 percent German, 10 percent Hebrew, and 5 percent Slavic, with traces of Romanian, French, and other elements. Many English words and phrases entered Yiddish, becoming an integral part of the language as it is spoken in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries. Apart from vocabulary changes, modern Yiddish differs from modern German mainly in the simplification of inflections and syntax, the acquisition of a few grammatical traits influenced by Slavic speech, and its looser pronunciation of Germanic words. Yiddish pronunciation was also significantly influenced by Slavic languages. In its word formation and use of auxiliary verbs Yiddish is similar to English, which also is a Germanic language with a simplified grammar and a variously enriched vocabulary.
Yiddish exists in two groups of dialects, one of which is further subdivided. The western dialect, with few speakers, is centered in German-speaking areas of western Europe. The more widely distributed eastern group has a northeastern branch and a southern branch. The northeastern branch includes the Yiddish spoken in the Baltic countries and in the northwestern areas of Russia, and by Jewish immigrants or descendants from those areas. The southern branch-which has central and southeastern subgroups-includes the dialects spoken in Poland, Romania, and Ukraine.”
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In a message dated 6/6/2003 12:28:17 AM Eastern Standard Time, EMANSMYRNA writes:
>
> 6. Hebrew ceased to be spoken by the common people during the Babylonian captivity. It was practically a “dead language” as early as B. C. 250. In the absence of expressed vowels, its pronunciation was likely to become lost. So the Scribes took four consonants, “a h w and j,” and inserted them into the text to indicate the vowel sounds. While this device helped to some extent, in the end it led to confusion, often raising the question: “Is this letter a consonant, belonging to the original, or is it a vowel-letter, added by the Scribes?” Moreover the insertion of these vowel-letters did not prove sufficient; then, as late as 600-800 A. D., a whole system of vowel-signs was added, most elaborately indicating the vowels of each word as tradition had preserved it. These vowel-signs were interlinear, and therefore did not confuse the text, as did the vowel-letters. With vowel-signs we might indicate the pronunciation of Gen. 1:1, as given above, something like this (separating the words) :”
http://www.godswordtowomen.org/lesson1.htm
“Additionaly, the letters ‘Y’ and ‘V’ are frequently inserted in modern unpointed Hebrew to make reading easier, this is called full pointing and gives rise to alternate spellings. Foreign words are often partially pointed to indicate the pronounciation. The rules of pointing are very strict and complicated. They were introduced in the early Middle Ages to aid pronounciation in a language that largely died out in spoken form; the Hebrew of the Bible and the Talmud is not pointed, though the later commentaries are.”
Page 159-160, Hebrew Phrase Book and Dictionary, Berlitz
The first article tells us that, to save the Hebrew language from certain death, the scribes inserted certain letters to point to a particular vowel sound. Though that may have appeared as something new, it was only a new version of an old pointing used when Hebrew was originally developed from the theophoric Hamitic Ethiopian language. Thus to save at least a written form of Hebrew, the scribes had to revert back to the roots of the language. For instance, most Hebrew scholars mistakenly interpret YHWH to mean Yahweh. The truth is that the ‘Y’ points to the vowel sound ‘E’ and the ‘W’ points to the vowel sound ‘U’. Thus the true interpretation of YHWH is He-hu. The God was called He-hu and the people who worshipped the God were called He-hu-ba-ru. One of the original Hamitic Ethiopian names for Jehovah was He-hu-ba. I can’t be sure of how the ‘B’ sound became ‘V’, but surely that was one of the original Hamitic Ethiopian names for Jehovah. In Exodus 6:3, we learned that God was not known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as Jehovah, but as God Almighty. That tells us that the most original name of the God of the Hebrews was simply He. Remember that, in the theophoric Hamitic Ethiopian language, He meant infinite, which also means unlimited and almighty.
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During the Babylonian captivity of Israel, many Indo-European members of the Middle-East Hebrew family were assimilated into Babylonian society. After the captivity, many of those who had been assimilated migrated towards western Europe—while those who kept the faith written in Cushite Hebrew went back to build the temple in Jerusalem (originally known in Pale Cushite Hebrew as Heru-sa-tem). The Indo-European members of the Hebrew family that traveled westward came under the influence of the Germanic languages. Thus the new language that was being developed in Babylon by assimilated Indo-European Hebrews became the Germanic language now known as Yiddish, or the Jewish language. Therefore, in a European dominated world, these Yiddish speaking people became the people the world turned to for the purpose of translating Paleo Cushite, Phoenician, and Chaldee Hebrew. Thus the Jews became the world’s leading authorities in such translations and transliterations.
Starting with YHWH and YHWS’, let us take a look at how the Yiddish speaking people developed their translations and transliterations of Paleo Cushite, Phoenician, and Chaldee Hebrew:
Note, in the picture above, that the letters are written from right to left. But when using English alpha bets written from left to right, it reads YHWH and YHWS’. As stated earlier, pointing to vowel was present in Paleo Cushite, Phoenician, and Chaldee Hebrew long before the Yiddish form of pointing was developed. Thus, in YHWH, the Y pointed to an E sound and the W pointed to the U sound, and in Paleo Hebrew, the name was pronounced He-hu. Though the Yiddish translators had some knowledge of the ancient system of pointing borrowed from the Hieroglyphs of the Hamitic language, they translated YHWH as Yahweh. Now let us take a look at YHWS’, the Hebrew name Jesus gave himself. Note that it contains a W that would point to an U sound after the S. The last letter ‘ is , which is ayin, a guttural sound that is generally transliterated as an A sound. The use of guttural sounds as vowels and glottal stops also derived from the Hamitic language of the hieroglyphs. YHWS’ also contains an S, which was mistakenly interpreted to be an SH sound. That is easily understood when we see the Hebrew letters for S and SH, = sin = S, = shin = SH. The position of the dot that distinguish between the S and SH was not present in the Hebrew of the time of Jesus. Yet many Yiddish translators translated YHWS’ to be Yahshua and sometimes Yehshua or Yeshua. But what happened to , the W? Note that it is used in YHWH to yield Yahweh, but is not used likewise in YHWS’. In YHWS’, they reverted back to the ancient system of using W to point to a U sound. Thus the S (which some interpret to be SH) is followed by a U. Some Yiddish translators tried to tried to cover up not using W in YHWS’ as it is used in YHWH by translating YHWS’ to be Yahushua. Such a translation of W could have only come from someone who knew that W was originally used to point to U sound in the Hu of He-hu (YHWH). Therefore, it should be clear that the name Jesus gave himself was He-sa or He-u-sa, which, in the Hebrew of his day, could have been interpreted as Eesua—seeing that , the Hebrew letter for H, was also used for an E sound. That is also the reason why the Arabic transliteration of the name Jesus gave himself is found written as both Eesa and Esa. Using Shua in the translation Yahshua or Yahushua no doubt derived from efforts to clearly identify Jesus with being the Messiah, which derive from the Hamitic term Maa-shua.
By: Emmanuel Afraka
WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?
Though all sort of tropical plants and flowers may have grown there 7,500 years ago, today the Garden of Eden is not a garden at all. It is a rather harsh land that on the eastern border of the greatest swamp on earth called the Sudd. The Sudd is the physically manifestation of Nu, the watery mass of Creation. Since the Sudd is quite possibly the watery mass in which all life on earth began, it could truthfully be said that the Hamitic Ethiopians came out of the watery mass of Creation where all life began. The Garden of Eden is also known as the land of the Nuer tribe-situated in southwest Sudan and west of present day Ethiopia. Even until today, the Nuer still adorn their huts with the watery hieroglyphic symbol for Nu-as well as other symbols that were used in the development of the original Hamitic Ethiopian hieroglyphs. The Nuer also hold an important clue as to what is the actual object that symbolizes Neter. Neter implies God on earth or God that came out of Nu to reign on earth, which the Hamitic Ethiopians no doubt pronounced as Nu-te-ra or Nu-te-ru instead of Neter. There are many Egyptologists who believe that the symbol for Neter is an axe. Recently a few Egyptologists have form the opinion that it is actually a roll of cloth attached to a stick or handle. The latter opinion is much closer to the truth. The Nuer had a custom of adorning their huts with distinctive ornaments that served as the family-crest of a given family. The Hamitic Ethiopians adopted this custom to identify the hut of God on earth (Heru) and also the huts of the sons of God (the direct descendants of Heru). Only the Hamitic Ethiopians used a roll of cloth attached to a pole to fly over the hut as a flag. They were perhaps the inventors of the first flag used to identify a king or kingdom.
From a land east of the Garden of Eden, armed with the Gospel of Heru, the twelve Hamitic Ethiopian tribes of Heru set out to propagate his gospel around the world (Genesis 3:24 and 4:16). South they traveled into Central Africa and possibly even South Africa. East they traveled into Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen, Oman, India, Sri Lanka, and the Bay of Bengal. North they traveled into Nubia, Egypt, and the Middle-East. I don’t find much evidence of them traveling west. All I’ve found is God warning Adam (or Heru) to stay on the east border because of a prophesied evil that would develop among his seed in the west (Page 35, Forgotten Books of Eden). This was no doubt a prophecy of African people being brought to the Americas as slaves and, afterward, becoming apart of the evil system of their slave masters and equally wicked and ungodly.
HOW DID THEY LOOK?
In Genesis 6:4, Moses tells us that the sons of God were giants. In Deuteronomy 3:11, he tells us that King Og was the last of these giant Hamitic Ethiopians to be found in the Middle-East. The giant Hamitic Ethiopians were no doubt the product of marriages between Dinka, Nuer, Hamar, Moru and perhaps even Shilluk, which no doubt went on for thousands of years before producing Heru, as the genetic perfection of all their best genetic contributions. Rwanda and Burundi provides us with a living picture of the physical appearance of the ancient Hamitic Ethiopians.
“History textbooks might snub this connection. But we derived it from the direct observation of our friends the Giant Watussi of Rwanda. And these tallest, handsomest, keenest of all Africans, undoubtedly are the purest “Surviving Pharaohs” on earth.”
When and why the far ancestors of the Watussi left Ancient Egypt still is a matter of speculation. How they managed to reach Rwanda and there to maintain intact all the essential traits of their race, is another of the many question marks presented by Central Africa.
At any rate, the incontrovertible fact is that there the Giant Watussi are, in the middle of vast masses of Bantu natives, like a small unique island of thoroughbred Hamites.
Pages 138-139, “Here Is Africa,” Ellen and Attilio Gatti
THE HAMITIC CURSE
The giant Hamitic Ethiopians (Watutsi) of Rwanda and Burundi also give us a living picture of the ungodly philosophy of racial superiority that spawn the Hamitic curse that has ultimately fallen upon the entire Black race. Though it is popular belief that the Watutsi only migrated from Ethiopia to Rwanda and Burundi in the 14th or 15th century A.D., the truth is that Hamitic Ethiopians have been living in that region of Central Africa for more than 7,000 years. Thus for thousands of years, the Watutsi, Hutu, and pygmies (Twa) of the region lived in please-even to the point that many of the people now classified as Watutsi are part Hutu and vice versa. Yet many of the Watutsi retained the perfect physical Hamitic Ethiopian form of Heru (also known as Osiris, the Lord of the Perfect Black). In search of another place on earth were the Prefect Black could still be found in its purest form, many giant Hamitic Ethiopians migrated from Ethiopia to Rwanda and Burundi in the 14th or 15th century A.D. They brought with them all the elements that were the source of the Hamitic curse. They taught the resident giant Hamitic Ethiopians that they were superior to their Hutu and Twa neighbors, and therefore had a god given right to make these inferior people their servants and slaves. Thus the recent conflicts between the Watutsi and Hutu, and the Hutu genocidal campaigns against the Watutsi also give us a living picture of God’s wrath against the ungodly philosophy of racial superiority. The ungodly philosophy of racial superiority introduced into Rwanda and Burundi by a Hamitic Ethiopian faction and the servitude and slavery that accompanies it is the same thing that certain Hamitic Ethiopia factions did in Egypt thousands of years earlier. History repeats itself until someone sees the truth and teaches the solution.
Genesis 9:21-25 tells us that a curse was placed on a descendant of Ham because Ham laughed at the drunkenness and nakedness of his father Noah. The truth of that story has more to do with a Hamitic Ethiopian faction that promoted an ungodly philosophy of Hamitic Ethiopian racial superiority. Thus they laughed at Noah’s failed attempt to establish the Gospel of Heru and the Divine Science therein among an inferior race of Oriental people that lived along the Bay of Bengal. Since there is no such thing as a superior race or an inferior race, a curse fell the descendants of Ham that has ultimately fallen upon the entire Black race. However, it is important to note any and all ungodly philosophies of racial superiority are eternally condemned no matters who promotes it-as the Europeans will soon see.
As for the Black race, there is no need to despair. Jesus told us clearly that our curse will be brought to an end. You are currently willing in the time when Jesus’ promises and prophecies concerning us will be fulfilled.
REVELATION 22:3
“And there shall be No More Curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:”
REVELATION 5:9-10
“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood [which is the Hamitic Ethiopian blood of Heru] out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;”
“And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.”
It is truth that the Everlasting Gospel of Heru, which is currently being restored, will redeem us out of kindred, tongue, people, and nation that have held us in subhuman and inferior circumstances, as though we are an inferior race of people. It is also true that it was God’s plan that the sons and daughters of Heru should reign on earth. But God’s plan also includes the spiritual sons and daughters of Heru and not just the biological ones. Furthermore, God’s plan to have the sons and daughters of Heru reign on earth has nothing at all to do with a reign through force or military might. Neither does it have anything to do with us subjugating other races of people or any other ethnic or cultural group and making them our slaves. The reign that God had in mind is a reign through service and example to humanity-the most powerful and everlasting reign possible. As the firstborn of Creation and the first loved of the Heavenly Father, it has always been the responsibility of his sons and daughters to lead the rest of humanity into path of self-realization and liberation. Self-realization is where and when a human being can truly recognize his or her self as a forever-living son or daughter of God himself.
“The Hamitic subfamily is generally considered to include ancient Egyptian and its descendant, Coptic; the Berber languages; and the Cushitic languages. Ancient Egyptian and Coptic are extinct. Some linguists also place the Chad languages within the Hamitic subfamily. Those Hamitic tongues are or were spoken in N Africa, much of the Sahara, the Horn of E Africa, and parts of central and W Africa. They were named after Ham, the second son of the biblical Noah, whose descendants supposedly were the original speakers of the Hamitic languages…
The name Cushitic is derived from Cush, a son of Ham. The two principal Cushitic languages are Oromo, the tongue of 20 million people in Ethiopia and Kenya, and Somali, spoken by 9 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Among the many other Cushitic languages are Saho-Afar, Agau, Beja, Burji, Geleba, Gimira, Janjero, Konso, Kaffa, Maji, and Sidamo. Oromo is written in the Ethiopic script; Somali, in the Roman alphabet.
Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0858548.html
Though the author states that the Hamitic language was named after Ham and The Cushitic after Cush, the true is that name Ham was used to associate one of Noah’s sons with Hamitic culture and Cush was used to associate one of his later descendants with Cushite culture. Also note that the author states that all the descendants of Noah spoke the same Hamitic language. Though Heru and his more immediate descendants were the original speakers of the original Hamitic language, the author’s observation well help to disprove the belief that Japheth was associated with Europeans or Indo-Europeans.
“Hamito-Semitic languages , family of languages spoken by more than 200 million people in N Africa; much of the Sahara; parts of E, central, and W Africa; and W Asia (especially the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel). Since four of the Hamito-Semitic tongues, Arabic, Hebrew, Coptic, and Syriac, are also respectively the languages of Islam, Judaism, and two sects of the Christian faith, the language family reaches many millions in addition to its native speakers.
Traditionally, the Hamito-Semitic language family is said to have two subfamilies: Semitic and Hamitic. Although some scholars regard Hamitic and Semitic as two distinct language families, they possess a number of grammatical similarities and have a larger common vocabulary than borrowing would account for. The most satisfactory explanation is that the Hamitic and Semitic groups, despite their divergences, are subfamilies of a single Hamito-Semitic linguistic family, as evidenced by their marked grammatical, lexical, and phonological resemblances.
The languages of the Hamito-Semitic family are thought to have first been spoken along the shores of the Red Sea. Another theory holds that the Hamito-Semitic, or Afroasiatic, language family came into being in Africa, for only in Africa are all its members found, aside from some Semitic languages encountered in W Asia. The existence of the Semitic languages in W Asia is explained by assuming that the Semites of Africa migrated from E Africa to W Asia in very ancient times. At a later date, some Semites returned from Arabia to Africa.”
About the very same time the Hamitic Ethiopian descendants of Heru were establishing their first dynasty in Memphis his Hamitic Ethiopian descendants in the Middle-East were laying the foundation for the first Babylonian empire-north of Heru-sa-tem.
“Ham – warm, hot, and hence the south; also an Egyptian word meaning “black”, the youngest son of Noah…
One of the most important facts recorded in Gen. 10 is the foundation of the earliest monarchy in Babylonia by Nimrod the grandson of Ham (6, 8, 10). The primitive Babylonian empire was thus Hamitic, and of a cognate race with the primitive inhabitants of Arabia and of Ethiopia. (See ACCAD ).
The race of Ham were the most energetic of all the descendants of Noah in the early times of the post-diluvian world.”
Source: http://www.htmlbible.com/kjv30/easton/east1601.htm
“Accad – the high land or mountains, a city in the land of Shinar. It has been identified with the mounds of Akker Kuf, some 50 miles to the north of Babylon; but this is doubtful. It was one of the cities of Nimrod’s kingdom (Ge 10:10). It stood close to the Euphrates, opposite Sippara.
It is also the name of the country of which this city was the capital, namely, northern or upper Babylonia. The Accadians who came from the “mountains of the east,” where the ark rested, attained to a high degree of civilization. In the Babylonian inscriptions they are called “the black heads” and “the black faces,” in contrast to “the white race” of Semitic descent. They invented the form of writing in pictorial hieroglyphics, and also the cuneiform system, in which they wrote many books partly on papyrus and partly on clay. The Semitic Babylonians (“the white race”), or, as some scholars think, first the Cushites, and afterwards, as a second immigration, the Semites, invaded and conquered this country; and then the Accadian language ceased to be a spoken language, although for the sake of its literary treasures it continued to be studied by the educated classes of Babylonia.”
Source: http://www.htmlbible.com/kjv30/easton/east0060.htm
Note that the author stated that the black face Hamitic Ethiopians of the original Babylon came from the Mountains of the east, where the ark rested. But Mt. Ararat is to the northwest of Babylon. So why are there two different theories about where the ark came to rest? The Biblical version of the ark coming to rest on Mt. Ararat is born out of a straight out lie told by Indo-Europeans (probably of Aryan descent) to begin campaign of promoting their ungodly philosophy of white supremacy. For what better way to propagate such a philosophy than to convince Indo-European that they had received a commission from God to replenish and rule the earth. It is too bad that Moses didn’t see the racism behind the Mt. Ararat lie, or someone else tampered with his writings. Thank God Almighty that, before Moses, I AM. The other theory that the ark came to rest on a mountain east of Babylon gave birth to the name Hindu-Kush at a much later date. It may very well have resulted from a comprise made the defenders of the Cushite legacy and Hindi speaking Aryans. The key to understanding the truth is in remembering that the word Ham was also associated with south. Though the story of Noah did indeed occur in the east, it occurred much further east than Hindu-Kush, and was brought to the Middle-East from the south by Hamitic Ethiopians.
A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming;
published by Xlibris,
436 Walnut Street, 11 Floor
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106 U.S.A.
1(888) 795-4274
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“The Faith, Power and Struggle of a People”
In these times when the questions and concerns about the right of some to make symbolic statements (eg cross burnings, confederate flags, ect..) is being debated and when historical trends of a dark era in American history seems by some to be repeating, the book, “A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming,” is one of the most powerful books written on the origins and developoment of racism from ancient times to the present and how retaliation, rebellion and revolution against racism was crucial to saving the existance of Blacks around the world. The book begins wih how and why racism or “color consciouisness” or “varna” was invented in one particular nation that has had a racist system intertwined with religion for over three thousand years. It looks at how invaders from Eurasia invaded the glorious Black Cushic Dravidian-Ethiopic civilization of the Indus Valley and used the religion and culture of India’s ancient Black Negro-Australoid people to subjugate them. This series of invasions began about 1700 B.C., the same time that the Hyksos and other Eurasian/Semitic barbarians were infiltrating Egypt and the “Middle Eastern” Black civilizations such as Sumer, Elam and Mesopotamia. These invasions and genocide in India continued till the 300’s B.C. (Read more on this subject also from “Susu Economics: The History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth,” pub. by www.1stbooks.com also at www.barnesandnoble.com One of the most important figures in Black Cushic-Ethiopian East Indian history between 500 to 300 B.C. was Gautama Bhudda of the Sakya Clan who contributed to the upliftment of the oppressed castes in India.
Racism as a factor during the Greek and Roman times was not as devastating to Blacks in the Roman, Greek or the regions they had contact with. In fact, both the Greeks and Romans saw the “Ethiopians” (a term for all Black Africans) as the most accomplished people and as the creators of culture and civilization. The Romans and Greeks were more concerned about the Slavs, Celtics, Germanics and other Europeans. In fact, the Romans refused to carry out a war with Nubia/Cush because their warriors were devastating to the Romans. The Roman Garison at Asan was destroyed by a Nubian Queen and the Roman statue was carried off to Napata the Cushite capital (see http://community.webtv.net/barnubianempire )
The book tracks the beginning of racism from the late Roman period in Egypt when the Africans and others who refused to accept the Roman/Greek version of Christianity were considered “infidels” or “pagan” a term used today in the genocidal war against Africans carried out since the 600’s A.D., by the Semites (“Arabs”) in Sudan and other parts of Africa.
Racism throughout the writings of the Hebrews/Jews and those who translated the Bible is carefull discussed in this great book. In fact, the myth called “The Curse of Ham,” (which was actually on Canaan, the father of most Middle Eastern and Southern European “whites,”), was used to justify the invasion, colonialist agenda and enslavement of Blacks by the Europeans as well as the Semites. This idea of Blacks being slaves of Shem and Japhet came from ancient corruptions of the Biblical writings.
RACISM AND SLAVERY IN EUROPE/AMERICA AND THE REBELLIONS AGAINST IT
This great book takes a thorough look at how the English and other Europeans designed a potent form of racism based on religion as well as a system of surfdom that existed in Europe before African slavery. In fact, the book points out that some of the same racist techniques used on Africans, such as refusing to educate and punishing Blacks for reading was used on Irish surfs in Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages.
The enslavement of Black tribes and nations who were in the Americas before Columbus is well explained based on expert research. This finding uncovers a fact in European history, and that fact is that both gold and Black slaves were being searched for by the early European explorers. Those Blacks aboriginal to the Americas, Melanesia, Africa, India and elsewhere who had Negroid features were targeted for enslavement. Hence, millions of Blacks found in parts of the Americas were enslaved even before Africans were brought to the Americas. Some of these Black American nations such as the Waschitaw Nation, the Black Californians, the Afro-Darienite of Panama, the Califu of the Caribbean, the Choco of Colombia, the Black Caribs of Honduras/Central America and the many Black Nations mentioned by I. Rafinesque in his work, “Black Nations of America,” (Friends Society, Philadelphia 1833), were owners of lands in the Americas. In fact, the Waschitaw Nation of the Louisiana region still continues their fight for their lands to this very day. For a complete reference on the ancient Black nations of the Americas, see the book, “A History of the African-Olmecs,” pub. by 1stbooks Library, 2595 Vernal Pike, Bloomington, Indiana 47404 U.S.A. www.1stbooks.com also at www.barnesandnoble.com
BLACK REBELLION AND REVOLT AGAINST SLAVERY
The book emphasizes and discusses the fact that from the time Africans were put on slaveships, they revolted, escaped slavery and created their own separate communities throughout the Americas. The revolution in Haiti, the rebellions in Jamaica, Guyana, Cuba, Mexico, the Caribbean, the Quilimbos in Brazil, the revolts throughout the Americas is discussed in this great work.
PAB
paulnubiaempire@webtv.net
http://community.webtv.net/nubianem
http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire
The following speech was delivered by the AFRIKAN WORLD REPARATIONS & REPATRIATION TRUTH COMMISSION’S (AWRRTC) Co-Chair, Master Teacher H.M. Maulana, 19 November, 2000, at the Accra Technical Training Centre, Accra, Ghana West Africa. Excerpts of that speech are cut herein below.
For a better perspective and understanding of how the Aryan-White European race mutated out of the original Black Africoid race, please read: Dr. Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, pages 11-25; Dr. Charles S. Finch 3rd.(M.D.), Echoes of the Old Darkland, pages 1 through 57, and John Jackson, Man, God,
and Civilization, pages 16 – 28, Carol Publishing Group, 1990, N.Y. USA.
According to British anthropologist, Christopher Stringer, of Britain’s Natural History Museum: Africa is the only region that has continuity of evolution from primitive to modern humans – first modern Europeans and Asians do not show up before 40,000 years Before Present (B.P) -Times Magazine, March 14, 1994). Also, geneticist, Dr. Luigi Cavelli Sforza of Stanford University California, USA, states that the Caucasoid (Aryan White) and Mongloid (Yellow race), did not come into existence until about 26 thousand (26,000) years ago. They are both products of the Black Africoid race’s mutation during the last Ice Age (Dr. Luigi Luca Cavalli Storza, New York Times Newspaper, July 27, 1993: article entitled – “A geneticist maps Ancient Migration.” Moreover, Newsweek Magazine USA and International, January 11, 1988, published the results of a twenty years genetic research project under the title: “Search for Eve”. The front cover of this magazine and the inside story revealed that ‘Eve’ was a small Black skinned woman, dating back as far as 250 thousand years ago in Africa. Adam was depicted as a Black man. The research analyis was done by extracting the ‘Mitochondrion DNA’ from the female placenta of Black Africans, Aryan-white, and the Mongloid yellow race as well all mixtures in between. The black female was the oldest and strongest evidence amongst the lot.
Ancient Greek poet Hesiod writes – there once was a “golden race.” “All good things, “Hesoid writes, “were theirs. The Fruitful earth poured forth her fruits unbidden in bondless plenty. In peaceful ease they kept their lands with good abundance, rich in flocks and dear to the immortals.” The golden race were the blacks and the golden age was the period before the arrival of the Whiteman. (Hesoid, Works and Days, quoted in, John mansley Robinson, An Introduction to early Greek philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968, pp.12-12; from Paul L. Guthrie, making of the Whiteman, page 22,1992, Beacon Communication, San Diego, CA, USA) Around 15,000 years Before Present, interbreeding between the Black Aficoid and the mutated Aryan-White European race created the Chancellade man (prototype of the yellow race). This contact was first made around the Caspian Sea area (Caucacus Mountains), during the Reindeer Period in the Magdalenian-age (Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, page 16)
BLACKS EARLY PRESENCE AROUND THE EARTH The Americas: It has been proven by numerous scientists of various disciplines that the oldest civilization known in the Americas, the Oldmec, was of Black Africoid origin. The Oldmec was the parent culture and science of the Maya, Aztec et al. This civilization flourished at least five thousand years or beyond, Before the Christian Era (John Jackson, Man, God, and Civilization, page 288). The Black Oldmec Civilization was ethnologically connected to Africa’s Nile Valley Civilization (Ancient Kush, Nubia and Egypt, Diop, Nations, Negres et Culture, page 116).
They were noted in the Americas for their high order of Mathematics, Pyramids and the Calendar.
The disappearance or extinction of these ancient Black Africoid peoples in Europe (6,000 years ago); Asia (2500 B.C.E._800B.C.E.) and the Americas (3,000 B.C.E.), has come about only as a result of the mutated Aryan-White European race’s barbaric assaults of genocide, against Black Africoid Civilization in those regions. (Diop, Civilization or Babarism, page 19). Thus, many of the Black Africoid peoples who survived these barbaric assaults, after centuries or even millenniums of fighting against these invading hordes of Aryan-Whites, coming from the steppes of the Caucasus Mountains; they were forced to flee back to their ancestral Motherland Continent, Africa, for safety.
ANCIENT EGYPT: THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD – (EAST & WEST) Posterity should thank and honor one European-American writer and researcher, Gerald Massey (1828-1907), for such profound scholarship and honesty in writing his book: Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, First Published 1907 – Again, published 1992 by Black Classic Press, Baltimore, MD. 21203 USA. In this book, Massey shows indisputable proof that Western and Eastern Civilizations, today, were founded and are operating on the sciences and philosophy of Ancient Egypt, Above all, Massey proves that Ancient Egypt was created by an all Black Africoid people whose roots lead back to the interior of the African Continent around the Great Lakes (Khui (twi) Land) taken from Massey’s “Book of the Beginning”).
Ancient Egypt’s true name was Kamaat – spiritual people of Truth, Justice, Law, Order and Righteousness (from Teacher Maulana’s abstract, the Theft of African Civilization: And Its Ramification Towards The Year 2001 A.D., Accra, 1997).
Correcting_Rewritten_History MindStation X : Renaissance Dr. Ivan Van Sertima
Italy – Italian Renaissance – Zoological studies Re: For Sale: A DNA Test to Measure Racial Mix
KAM Africans in Early Europe The TRUE Black History Home Page
European Crusades, Christianisation, and Colonisation West Africa
William Greaves: Documenting The Truth In Film – Global Black News …
African Contributions to World History Sephardim and their History The Iberian Golden Age, European Expansion
Origins of Islamic Intolerence by Mark Silverberg African American and Ancient Egyptians
ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY ROME The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy – Chapter II
Great Homepage of Alexander, or Something Like That Alexander The Great – Links
Alexander the Great on the Web Alexander the Great History Project Alexander was Great
The Third Great Race War: The Moors Invade Europe History Timelines on the Web … The History Beat
Information and facts about Cleopatra History of Alexandria: Cleopatra
Queen Cleopatra – Last Pharaoh of Egypt – Queen Cleopatra VII Raising the lost city of Cleopatra
The House of Ptolemy: Caesar, Cleopatra, & Marcus Antonius THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND
The Moors in Europe Moor Info Latin American Muslim Unity: History of Islam in Latin America
Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Table of Contents
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers Adolf Hitler and The Holocaust Hitler Was Not An Atheist
WAS HITLER A ROTHSCHILD The controversy of the occult reich IS AMERICA
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER Hitler’s Christianity African Timelines Part II
The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives
Hitler’s Rise to Power The OMEGA File : HITLER ESCAPED Henry the Navigator
Dr Edward Scobie: African Presence in Early Britian: Dominica political figure
The African Presence in the Americas many centuries before Columbus
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004
published by Thomas C. Mountain, 1997
The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors to the Blacks but they were aggesssive, developed sophisticated military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid, caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their White conquerors. This vicious new world order was cold-bloodely racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one’s societal status and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed “that his 1970’s visit to India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White race.”
Caste law in India, based originally on race, regulated all aspects of life, including marriage, diet, education, place of residence and occupation. This is not to deny that there were certain elements of the Black aristocracy that managed to gain prominence in the dominant White social structure. The masses of conquered Black people, however, were regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were said to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for the Black masses in conquered India. It was written that:
“A Sudra [Black] who intentially reviles twice-born men [Whites] by criminal abuse, or criminally assaults them with blows, shall be deprived of the limb with which he offends. If he has criminal intercourse with an Aryan woman, his organ shall be cut off, and all his property confiscated. If the woman has a protector, the Sudra shall be executed. If he listens intentionally to a recitation of the Veda [a traditional Hindu religious text], his tonque shall be cut out. If he commits them to memory his body shall be split in half.”
Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism.”
“THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA: THE WORLD’S MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE” The greatest victims of Hinduism have been the Untouchables. Indeed, probably the most substantial percentage of all the Black people of Asia can be identified among India’s 160 Untouchables. These people are the long-suffering descendants of Aryan-Sudra unions and native Black populations who retreated into the hinterlands of India in their efforts to escape the advancing Aryan sphere of influence to which they ultimately succumbed. India’s Untouchables number more than the combined populations of England, France, Belgium and Spain.
The existence of Untouchability has been justified within the context of Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of Karma and rebirth. Indus believe that persons are born Untouchables because of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts describe these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact with them was regarded as polluting.
Untouchables were usually forced to live in pitiful little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu communities. During certain periods in Indian history Untouchables were only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu communities at night. Indeed, the Untouchables’ very shadows were considered polluting, and they were required to beat drums and make loud noises to announce their approach. Untouchables had to attach brooms to their backs to erase any evidence of their presence. Cups were tied around their necks to capture any spittle that might escape their lips and contaminate roads and streets. Their meals were taken from broken dishes. Their clothing was taking from corpses. They were forbidden to learn to read and write, and were prohibited from listening to any of the traditional Hindu texts. Untouchables were denied access to public wells. They cound not use ornaments and were not allowed to enter Hindu temples. The primary work of Untouchables included scavenging and street sweeping, emptying toilets, the public execution of criminals, the disposal of dead animals and human corpses, and the clean-up of cremation grounds. The daily life of the Untouchable was filled with degradation, deprivation and humiliation.
The basis status of India’s Untouchables has changed littled since ancient times, and it has recently been observed that “Caste Hindus do not allow Untouchables to wear shoes, ride bicycles, use umbrellas or hold their heads up while walking in the street.” Untouchables in urban India are crowded together in squalid slums, while in rural India, where the vast majority of Untouchables live, they are exploited as landless agricultural laborers and ruled by terror and intimidation. As evidence of this, several cases from 1991 can be cited: On June 23, 1991 fourteen Untouchables were slaughtered in the estern state of Bihar. On August 10, 1991 six Untouchables were shot to death in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. On August 16, 1991, an Untouchable woman was stripped in public and savagely beaten in the southern state of Andra Pradesh. On September 6, 1991, in the western state of Maharastra, an Untouchable policeman was killed for entering a Hindu temple. Official Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against Untouchables have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of atrocities by caste Hindus against Untouchables in 1989 alone.
However, Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities against Untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and murders, are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed, justice for Untouchables is rarely dispensed.
LuÃs Gonzaga Pinto da Gama foi um brilhante advogado. Mais que isso, porém, foi um corajoso abolicionista e poeta que lutou bravamente para libertar milhares de pessoas de sua raça. Era filho da mãe negra livre LuÃza Mahin (uma das principais figuras da revolta do Malês e da Sabinada) e pai branco e nasceu em Salvador, no dia 21 de Junho de 1830 e viveu, no entanto, até 24 de Agosto de 1882- na cidade de São Paulo.
Depois que sua mãe foi exilada por motivos polÃticos, LuÃs Gama foi vendido pelo próprio pai português como escravo, aprendeu a ler e escrever e superou sua condição social.Fundou alguns jornais, inaugurando a imprensa humoristica paulistana, dando inicio a uma cruzada contra a escravidão.
Começou a carreira jornalÃstica, na capital paulista, junto ao caricaturista Angelo Agostini; ambos fundaram, em 1864 o primeiro jornal ilustrado humorÃstico daquela cidade, intitulado Diabo Coxo.
Através de poesias satÃricas ridicularizava a aristocracia e os homens de poder da época. A história de LuÃs Gama deve ser acessivel a população, poi é um exemplo de firmeza e de coragem.
Já seu amigo Raul Pompeia notara que Gama não ia bem de saúde; três dias antes de sua morte observara que este já não descia sem amparo as escadas de seu escritório, socorrendo-se do apoio dos amigos e pelo próprio, Raul.
Gama tinha diabetes, e esta foi a causa de sua morte em 24 de agosto de 1882, atestada pelo médico dr. Jaime Perna.
Seu tumulo, no cemitério da Consolação, em São Paulo, também faz parte desta história.
Danificado há alguns anos pela ação de vândalos, foi restaurado graças ao empenho do Quilombhoje-Literatura e da Fundação Cultural Palmares â vinculada ao Ministerio da Cultura. O trabalho, feito pelo Grupo Museu do Restauro, contribui para preservar a memória desse verdadeiro gigante que foi LuÃs Gama, um ser humano cuja lição de vida serve para elevar a auto estima, especialmente a dos jovens afro-brasileiros, os quais têm uma história rica em exemplos positivos.