Content area
Full Text
MIRIAM MA'AT-KA-RE MONGEs, Kush, the Jewel of Nubia: reconnecting the root system of African civilization. London: Africa World Press, 1998, 212 pp., 14.99, ISBN 0 86543 529 4.
In Chapter 11 of her book Miriam Monges catalogues the writings of prominent nineteenth and early twentieth-century Egyptologists and Africanists, revealing how their contemporary racist ('Eurocentered') views affected the way they interpreted ancient Nilotic history. Typically, scholars of that era denied or minimised the Africanness' of ancient Egyptian civilisation and considered it part of the Near East or Mediterranean; Nubian civilisation they considered merely an offshoot of the Egyptian. These civilisations could never have been created by 'true Africans'specifically, 'black African s'-because, as some asserted, such people were inferior by nature and incapable of high cultural achievement. Today such words are painful for all of us to read. Although such views are no longer held by respected 'white' scholars, many people of African descent, like Ms Monge@, have justifiably questioned the validity of Egyptology, Nubiology and African studies as erected by 'Eurocentric' scholarship. For them the racial prejudice that has sought to marginalise 'black' African peoples and deprive them of a...