The man who returned the Black Pharaohs back to our Mother Africa

“The Kemetic story of the abuse of Truth by Falsehood symbolically anticipates the life work of Cheikh Anta Diop. He found his father, Truth, shackled and abused, and he set out to avenge him. Diop saw African Heritage slandered and dethroned, with an impostor in its place, and he dedicated himself to overthrow the impostor and the re-enthronement of the African truth.”
Jacob H. Carruthers, Intellectual Warfare
We must reclaim, restore, and resurrect our Black history now–more than any time before. The national attempt to assault and erase our history is in full operation, and our kujichagulia (self-determination) will determine the future progress and improvement of our race. As I write this article, countless institutional and administrative mandates to remove the works and scholarship of our brilliant Senegalese historian and Anthropologist, Cheikh Anta Diop–have saturated certain racist agendas.
The question I would like Scoop readers to continually ask themselves is, Why?
Why have European scholars, teachers, writers, invaders, and conquerors attacked the truth of
Black excellence?
Why was it necessary to distort and blow off the noses and facial features of colossal Black monuments of grandeur such as the mighty Heremakhet (Sphinx)?
Why were the great libraries of ancient Kemet and Songhai burned, looted, and destroyed?
Why was it deemed necessary to tell the world that Pharaonic Egypt was absolutely not an
African Civilization?
History teaches that classical European writers, such as Herodotus, Aristotle, and Diodorus, at some point in time, had permission from our African ancestors to study in Egypt.
The Greeks visited Egypt as students to actually learn about us! Plato studied in Egypt for 13 years; Pythagoras studied philosophy, geometry, and medicine for 22 years; Thales, the Greek philosopher, studied there for 7-years; and Hypocrates, who is called the father of medicine in the Western world, recognized the African muti-genius Imhoptep as the true father of medicine.
Our ancestors opened the doors of our African nations to foreign people. The strange guests were welcomed with respect and honor according to our traditions–but we made the terrible mistake of letting them use our innate kindness as an invitation for destruction and even cause division amongst our Nation.
Cheikh Anta Diop informs us that “around the year 1820, on the eve of the birth of Egyptology, white writers, and scholars became increasingly aware that the slavery of our people actually created a loss of memory concerning the glorious past of our people. Soon after this recognition, Egyptology emerged as a tool for scholars who would use it to achieve a grotesque crime against science with the conscious falsification of the history of humanity.
He goes on to teach us that Egypt became “white” a European creation, and Africans were pushed systematically beyond the pale of history. Unfortunately, this false science was supported by the governments of Europe and merged with the new ideology of imperialism and racism that dominated the 19th century. As a result, Egyptology was easily able to drown out the voice of science by covering historical truth with a cloak of falsification.”
Cheikh Anta Diop was born on December 29, 1923, in the Thietou, Diourbel region of Senegal, West Africa. He made his transition with the ancestors on February 7, 1986, at the age of 62. He was raised in a Muslim Wolof family and was educated in a traditional Islamic school. In 1946, at the age of 23, Diop traveled to Paris to study. He earned his first degree in Philosophy in 1948, then received two more degrees in chemistry in 1950. According to his own account, his education in Paris included History, Egyptology, Physics, Linguistics, Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology.
During his student years, he was an avid political activist. In 1950, he was the Secretary-General of the Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) and helped to establish the first Pan-African Student Congress.
In 1951, he registered a thesis titled “Who Were the Pre-Dynastic Egyptians?” In his 1954 thesis, he argued that ancient Egypt had been populated by Black people. Diop would go on to become a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the origins of the human races and pre-colonial African Culture.
Historian John Henrik Clarke called Diop “one of the greatest historians to emerge in the African world in the 20th century”, noting that his theoretical approach derived from various disciplines, including the “hard sciences.” Clarke also informed us that Diop’s work, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, challenged contemporary attitudes “about the place of African people in scholarly circles–around the world” and relied upon historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support his thesis.”
Kenyan historian Bethwell Ogot stated that “Diop wrestled Egyptian civilization from the Egyptologist and restored it to the mainstream of African history.”
Negro Features!
In 1974, his book ‘African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality was finally published in English. This effort would begin a domino effect of historical African truth. It was also in 1974 that Diop, with assistance from his colleague Theophile Obenga, collectively, soundly, and scientifically proved at a UNESCO-sponsored forum in Cairo, Egypt, that Ancient Egypt was exclusively populated with Black people.
Diop’s main contribution was his tireless efforts to search for physiological and genetic evidence to support his theory that ancient Egyptians were Black!
Diop called for a thorough analysis of mummies, melanin grains, and blood types, which he believed and confirmed a Negroid ancestry and appearance. Relying on ancient pharaonic iconography, linguistics, invoking craniometry, the study of blood groups and skin pigmentation from the epidermis of Egyptian mummies, Diop scientifically proved and asserted that the Egyptian population was Negro during the pre-dynastic period, and it was the same during the dynastic period (the time of the pharaohs). Using bone measurements and blood types also enables our brilliant Diop to determine the age and evolution of our African ancestors. He simply revolutionized scientific testing.
When Egypt is shown today, we don’t see what the original inhabitants looked like. It can now be proven that the Pharaohs and Queens of Egypt looked exactly like the sisters and brothers we see every day walking down Broad and Girard. Pharoah Menes, Queen Hatshepsut, and Pharoah Rameses looked just like brothers and sisters on 52nd and Market, Broad and Olney, and 22nd and Diamond!
Today, if many Black people were asked “Where is Egypt?” they would answer, “In the Middle East.” Sadly, there are countless educated Black working class that have been brainwashed to geographically and even subconsciously take Egypt out of Africa. Yes, the beautiful daughter of the Nile (Kemet) was placed in the wrong place on the map of white cultures. For centuries, the white world has claimed Egypt.
Thanks to Cheikh Anta Diop, they can’t do that anymore!
Baba Khabyr Hadas is a teacher, author, and developer of African-centered curriculums. Baba Khabyr is a (20) year-dedicated member of UNIA-ACL, founded by the Honorable Marcus Garvey in 1914. He currently serves the post of Archivist for Thomas W. Harvey Division #121 located at 1609-11 Cecil B. Moore Ave. khabyrhadas@gmail.com