USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010720.1539 (On Screen): I find "Afrocentrism" to be intellectually ludicrous. Africa has given us much, but to try to claim (as some do) that everything important that the Romans and Greeks came up with was stolen from Egypt is preposterous. I have this fantasy of having a discussion with an Afrocentrist and gently rebutting point after point with historical evidence, then we'd get to this:

"And besides, the most beautiful woman in history was Egyptian."
Helen was a Greek from Sparta. You know, "the face that launched a thousand ships" and all that?
"No, no, no. I mean Cleopatra. Helen is a creature of legend, but we know that Cleopatra existed."
Cleopatra was Greek, too.
"What are you talking about? Cleopatra was Egyptian!"
Cleoptra ruled Egypt, but she was descended from Greek invaders.
"What???"

So let's go way back, to Philip of Macedon. Actually, at that time Macedonia wasn't considered part of "Greece", because it was instead part of "Thrace". But they spoke the same language and had the same culture, and they're generally considered Greek now, especially after Philip conquered all of Greece and brought it under his own rule. During those wars, his son Alexander showed great courage and skill as a leader. Philip died, and Alexander ascended to the throne. There was a revolt, which he put down, and then he decided to conquer the world. (He wasn't the first, and he wasn't the last.) So he set off with his army to the east, fighting and conquering as he went. After each conquest, he'd put a governor in place, leave some of his men behind as a garrison, recruit from the locals to replenish his army, and then move on. The kingdoms of Turkey fell, and he moved down through the nations of modern Lebanon and Israel, and eventually he conquered Egypt. He left behind a governor named Ptolemeus, after establishing the city of Alexandria. Since there wasn't anything west of Egypt worth owning, he marched back up to modern Israel and headed east, conquering the areas of modern Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and eventually reaching the westernmost reaches of modern India. At which point, his men politely (sort of) asked him when all this was going to end, and convinced him to turn around. On the trip back, Alexander caught some unidentified disease and died from it. Legend has it that his men carried his body back to Alexandria and interred it in the catacombs beneath the city, but no-one knows for sure. The catacombs are much too dangerous to enter and are closed off, and they have not been explored in modern times.

After Alexander's death, the governors he left behind set themselves up as local kings and established their provinces as kingdoms. Ptolemeus began to rule Egypt and established a dynasty that lasted 300 years, ending when Egypt was conquered by the Romans during the reign of Cleopatra.

The Rosetta Stone dates from between the time of Alexander and the time of Cleopatra. It was the key to interpreting the hieroglyphics because it contained the same inscription in three forms of writing: Hieroglyphic, Demotic (a more advanced and less stylized Egyptian writing form), and Greek, because Greek was one of the official languages of the realm. The Royals did not cross-breed with the locals, and Cleopatra's genes were almost certainly pure Macedonian. Genetically speaking, she was about as Egyptian as I am American (my ancestry being European, with no trace of Indian blood of which I'm aware). Even her name was Greek; Alexander had a sister named Cleopatra.

So if you claim Cleopatra as Egypt's contribution as the most beautiful woman of all time, then you also have to acknowledge her as a Greek import, which isn't exactly what the Afrocentrists want to hear. (Besides which, the Egyptians themselves and nearly all the other Africans living north of the Sahara were Caucasian, which shows how silly it is to even talk about this kind of retroactive cultural imperialism.) (discuss)