Cheikh Anta Diop
Cheikh Anta Diop ( born December 29, 1923 in Théytou, in the region Diourbel (Senegal), † 1986 in Dakar ) was one of the most famous Egyptologist of the African continent.
Birth and studies
Diop was born in 1923 in a Wolof family. At the age of 23, he flew to Paris to become a physicist. He spent 15 years there, studying physics under the direction of Frédéric Joliot- Curie, the son of Marie Curie, and also translated parts of Einstein's Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof language.
Diop was further trained in African history, Egyptology, linguistics, anthropology, and economics.
Research
1951, Diop before his dissertation at the University of Paris. In it, he developed the theory that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans and that it is their own high culture represented an authentic African civilization.
His thesis was initially rejected, but Diop worked in the following nine years further on his dissertation, bringing new and better evidence. In 1960 he successfully passed before his dissertation and he was awarded the doctorate granted.
His thesis in a 1955 book titled Nations nègres et culture ( Black Nations and Culture) has been released. This made him one of the controversial historian of his time.
The relations of Egypt and Greece are at the center of his employment. Thus, there were many scientists of Greece such as Pythagoras, in Egypt to learn mathematics. Pythagoras is said to have for 22 years been present in Africa. The debate between Cheikh Anta Diop and his former opponents will now continue in the Black Athena debate on the theories of the British Martin Bernal, who claims to have found an influence of Egypt on the culture of classical Greece.
The civilization debate led his opinion in relation to the African continent many scientists to regard Africa as a tabula rasa, or set up the racist Hamit theory. So Africans have not only stable civilizations (Kingdom of Benin, Kingdom of Kush, Mali, Songhai, Ghana, Swahili, Great Zimbabwe, Axum, Kanem -Bornu, and especially Egypt) brought forth, but dominated early the technology of metal production and metal processing and had developed a progressive urbanization and administration. Cities like Benin or Oyo even sent students and Ambassador to Portugal. The situation had changed dramatically with the discovery of America and the slave trade. First you enslaved the research for the Indians, the Europeans themselves, then the Africans whose civilizations were destroyed gradually with the mutual struggle for slaves and other resources.
Cheik Anta Diop is the founder of the Afrocentric Egyptology. For him, Africa and Europe have not taken in the 18th century for the first time during the modern European time. According to him, the presence of African scholars in Europe and in the history of the church is already occupied; see, for example, Anton Wilhelm Amo.
Publications by Diop
English translations:
- The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality
- Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology
- Precolonial Black Africa
- Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State
- The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity
- Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in African Culture and Development, 1946-1960
- The Peopling of Ancient Egypt & the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script