Cheikh Anta Diop born 29 December 1923 to 7 February 1986 a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race’s origins and pre-colonial African culture. Diop’s work is considered foundational to the theory of Afrocentricity, though he himself never described himself as an Afrocentrist.
The questions he posed about cultural bias in scientific research contributed greatly to the postcolonial turn in the study of African civilizations. Diop argued that there was a shared cultural continuity across African people that were more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.
Some of his ideas have been criticized as based upon out-dated sources and an out-dated conception of race. Other scholars have defended his work from what they see as widespread misrepresentation. Born in Thieytou, Diourbel Region, Senegal, Diop belonged to an aristocratic Muslim Wolof
Family in Senegal where he was educated in a traditional Islamic school. Diop’s family was part of the Mouride brotherhood, the only independent Muslim fraternity in Africa according to Diop. He obtained the colonial equivalent of the metropolitan French baccalauréat in Senegal before moving to Paris to study for a degree.
In 1946, at the age of 23, Diop went to Paris to study. He initially enrolled to study higher mathematics], but then enrolled to study philosophy[ in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris. He gained his first degree (licence) in philosophy in 1948, then enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences,
Receiving two diplomas in chemistry in 1950. In 1949, Diop registered a proposed title for a Doctor of Letters thesis, “The Cultural Future of African thought,” under the direction of Professor Gaston Bachelard. In 1951 he registered a second thesis title “Who were the pre-dynastic Egyptians” under Professor Marcel Griaule.
In 1953, he first met Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie’s son-in-law, and in 1957 Diop began specializing in nuclear physics[ at the Laboratory of Nuclear Chemistry of the College de France which Frederic Joliot-Curie ran until his death in 1958], and the Institut Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.
He ultimately translated parts of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof. According to Diop’s own account, his education in Paris included History, Egyptology, Physics, Linguistics, Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology. In Paris, Diop studied under André Aymard[professor of History and later Dean of the Faculty of
Letters at the University of Paris and he said that he had “gained an understanding of the Greco-Latin world as a student of Gaston Bachelard, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, André Leroi-Gourhan, and others”. In his 1954 thesis, Diop argued that Black people had populated ancient Egypt.
He specified that he used the terms “negro”, “black”, “white” and “race” as “immediate givens” in the Bergsonian sense, and went on to suggest operational definitions of these terms. He said that the Egyptian language and culture had later been spread to West Africa.
When he published many of his ideas as the book Nations nègres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture), it made him one of the most controversial historians of his time. In 1956 he re-registered a new proposed thesis for Doctor of Letters with the title “The areas of matriarchy and patriarchy in ancient times.”
From 1956, he taught physics and chemistry in two Paris lycees as an assistant master, before moving to the College de France. In 1957 he registered his new thesis title “Comparative study of political and social systems of Europe and Africa, from Antiquity to the formation of modern states.”
The new topics did not relate to ancient Egypt but were concerned with the forms of organisation of African and European societies and how they evolved. He obtained his doctorate in 1960. Diop served as a member of the UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a
General History of Africa in 1971 and wrote the opening chapter about the origins of the ancient Egyptians in the UNESCO General History of Africa. In this chapter, he presented anthropological and historical evidence in support of his hypothesis that Ancient Egyptians had a close genetic affinity with Sub-Saharan African
Ethnic groups, including a shared B blood group between modern Egyptians and West Africans, “negroid” bodily proportions in ancient Egyptian art and mummies, microscopic analysis of melanin levels in mummies from the laboratory of the Musée de L’Homme in Paris, primary accounts
Of Greek historians, and shared cultural linkages between Egypt and Africa in areas of totemism and cosmology. At the symposium Diop’s conclusions were met with an array of responses, from strong objections to enthusiastic support. Diop’s work has been both extensively praised and extensively criticized by a variety of scholars.
African-American historian John Henrik Clarke called Diop “one of the greatest historians to emerge in the African world in the twentieth century”, noting that his theoretical approach derived from various disciplines, including the “hard sciences”. Clarke further added that his 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”. He later summarised that Diop contributed to a new “concept of African history” among African and African-American historians. S.O.Y. Keita (né J.D.
Walker), a biological anthropologist, contended that “his views, or some of them, have been seriously misrepresented” and he argued that there was linguistic, anthropological and archaeological evidence which supported the views of Diop. The author also stated “Diop, though he did not express it clearly, thought in terms of biogeography and biohistory for his definitions.
He also defined populations in an ethnic or ethnogeographical fashion. Nile Valley populations absorbed “foreign genes”, but this did not change their Africanity”. Stuart Tyson Smith, Egyptologist and professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara regarded his work, The African Origin of Civilization, published in 1974
As “A highly influential work that rightly points out the African origins of Egyptian civilization, but reinforces the methodological and theoretical foundations of colonialist theories of history, embracing racialist thinking and simply reversing the flow of diffusionist models”. Guyanese educator and novelist Oscar Dathrone credits Diop as a “unique unifier” in countering
The “built-in prejudices of the scholars of his time” and presenting a more comprehensive view of African historical development. Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Kenyan historian and editor of UNESCO General History of Africa Volume 5, stated “Cheikh Anta Diop wrested Egyptian civilization from the Egyptologists and restored it to the mainstream of African history”.
Esperanza Brizuela Garcia, professor of history, wrote that he “was most persuasive among intellectuals of African descent in the diaspora” and among Afrocentric scholars who had criticised the omission of Africa in the works of world historians. Garcia also added that his work, The African Origin of Civilization, best represented “Afrocentric
Critique” but “it does so without a serious engagement with the diversity and complexity of the African experience and offers only a limited challenge to the Eurocentric values it aims to dislodge”. Toyin Falola, a Nigerian historian, called Diop’s work “passionate, combative, and revisionist” and “demonstrated the black origins of Egyptian civilisation” in his view.
Firinne Ni Chreachain, an academic in African literature, described him as “one of the most profoundly revolutionary thinkers francophone Africa had produced” in the twentieth century and his radio-carbon techniques had “enabled him to prove, on the contrary to the claims of European Egyptologists, many of the ruling class of ancient Egypt whose achievements
Europeans revered had been black Africans”. Helen Tilley, Associate professor of history at Northwestern University, noted that the academic debates over “The African Origin of Civilizations” still continued but that the “more general points that Cheikh Anta Diop” sought to establish “have become commonplace”
And “no one should assume a pure lineage” can be attributed to “any intellectual genealogy because entanglements, appropriations, mutations and dislocations have been the norm, not the exception”. Dawne Y. Curry, Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies stated, “Diop’s greatest contribution to scholarly endeavours lies in his tireless search for physiological and genetic evidence
To support his thesis. Using mummies, bone measurements and blood types to determine age and evolution, Diop revolutionized scientific enquiry” but she noted that his message was not initially well received but “more and more scholarship began to support Diop’s conclusions, earning him international acclaim”.
Josep Cervello Autuori, Associate Professor and Lecturer of Egyptology assessed the cultural tradition established by Diop and noted that “the West had failed to consider its contributions, sometimes ignoring them completely, and sometimes considering them as the fruits of the socio-political excitement in the era of African independence”.
Autuori argued that the academic contributions of Diop should be recognised as “a recontextualisation and a rethinking of the Pharaonic civilisation from an African perspective” due to the continued parallels between Egypt and Africa. Diop was awarded the joint prize of most influential African intellectual along with W.E.B.
Du Bois at the first World Festival of Black Arts in 1966. He was awarded the Grand prix de la mémoire of the GPLA 2015. The Cheikh Anta Diop University (formerly known as the University of Dakar), in Dakar, Senegal, is named in his honor.
According to Andrew Francis Clark, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and Lucie Colvin Phillips, Professor of African Studies in the University of Maryland, “although Diop’s work has been influential, it has generally been discredited by historians”. Robert O. Collins, a former history professor at University of California, Santa Barbara,
And James M. Burns, a professor in history at Clemson University, have both characterized Diop’s writings on Ancient Egypt as “revisionist”. Diop’s book Civilization or Barbarism was described as Afrocentric pseudohistory by professor of philosophy and author Robert Todd Carroll. According to Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Diop’s works were criticised by leading French Africanists
Who opposed the radical movements of African organizations against imperialism, but they (and later critics) noted the value of his works for the generation of a propaganda program that would promote African unity. Likewise, Santiago Juan-Navarro, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University
Described Diop as having “undertaken the task of supporting this Afrocentric view of history from an equally radical and ‘mythic’ point of view”. Historian Robin Derricourt, in summarizing Diop’s legacy, states that his work “increased francophone black pride, though trapped within dated models of racial classification”.
Stephen Howe, professor of the history of colonialism in Bristol University, writes that Diop’s work is built mostly upon disagreements with Victorian-era thinkers like J.J. Bachofen, Lewis Henry Morgan and Friedrich Engels, and criticizes him for “failing to take modern research into account.”
Kevin MacDonald, a doctor of archaeology, was critical of what he saw as Diop’s “cavalier attitude” in making “amateur, non-statistical comparison of languages” between West Africa and Egypt. MacDonald also felt that such attitude showed “a disrespect for the discipline” and for the “methodology of linguistics”.
He did however state that Diop had asked “appropriate and relevant questions” regarding possible relations between Egypt and the African continent beyond Nubia. Historian Clarence E. Walker criticizes Diop’s claim that Ramses II was black, as being without qualification, a futile exercise and “probably the single most unsuccessful effort on the
Part of a scholar to determine the racial origins of an Egyptian notable”. Mary Lefkowitz, scholar of Classics, accuses Diop of supplying his readers only with selected and, to some extent, distorted information. She criticizes his methodology, stating that his writing allows him to disregard historical evidence, especially if it comes from European sources.
Historian and classicist Frank M. Snowden Jr. states that Diop misinterprets the classical usage of color words, distorts classical sources and omits Greek and Roman authors, whom he claimed, make a clear distinction between Egyptians and Ethiopians. Dr. Diop is best known for his writings on classical African civilizations and his contributions
To the physical sciences. In 1962, he founded the Radiocarbon Laboratory of the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa At the University of Dakar. This scientific institute took four years to complete. It became functional in 1966 with the aim of establishing a low-energy radioactivity research program and chronological dating system for African antiquity.Dr. Diop spent a lot of time working and experimenting in his laboratory.
Because of his outspoken political views and activities against the government of Leopold Senghor, he was never allowed to teach. Thus on depriving Senegal -and the African world- a legion of African-trained scholars to carry on his vast work.
He became one of the very few Africans with access to some of the most advanced scientific knowledge available at that time. This background is essential to our assessment of his contribution to African historical knowledge. He believed in using a pluridisciplinary approach,i.e. utilizing more than one discipline, to his
Research while developing a chemical process for testing the level of melanin in the skins of ancient Egyptian mummies in order to prove their African origins. This vital research led to a publication entitled “The Pigmentation of then Ancient Egyptians: Test by melanin Analysis”.
The goal of this research was to demonstrate that the proportion rate of melanin is a fundamental racial characteristic and that the rate can be measured by various methods in the laboratory setting for all creatures living as well as dead.
This research can be summed up thusly: The ancient Egyptians , along with other ancient Africans, constitute the founders of classical civilizations as we have come to know them. The establishment of the African origin of the Egyptians is indispensable to the struggle
To correct the the historiography of all African people- those at home as well as those in the Diaspora. Dr. Diop was also outstanding in the field of linguistics. Even though Wolof was the language of his people, he also spoke French fluently and
Had a command of several other languages including the ancient Egyptian language which uses the misnomer hieroglyphics instead of the proper term (mDw nTr) or “Divine Speech”. In January 1974, Dr. Diop and his distinguished fellow-African scholar from the Congo, Dr. Theophile Obenga, whose role in these debates is inestimable, organized a conference sponsored
By the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization /UNESCO, to engage in a major discourse-with some of the leading European and Asian Egyptologists in that field-on the question of whether or not the ancient Egyptian people and their ancient language was of African origin as well as that other African languages are genetically related
To ancient Egyptian. At that point, the discussion as to the African ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians should have been exhausted. However, as events over the discourse of the Cleopatra movie have shown, frivolous challenges continue to emerge. It is of interest to all Black people and scholars since it reveals the state of the
European discipline of Egyptology at that time and the defensive stand they had taken, which some of them continue to maintain, over the issue of ancient Egypt’s Blackness. At a time when only a handful of people in the world understood Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity, Dr. Diop had translated a major portion of it into the Wolof language, the language of his people. This was something European scholars had previously argued was impossible to do. Dr. Diop was not only a consummate scholar, he was also a very active and powerful political leader.
In 1960, he founded “The Black of the Masses of Senegal,” a revolutionary political party. The party was later banned, and he was arrested. He founded a second political party in 1964, “The Senegalese National Front.” This party was declared illegal by the Senghor government and Dr. Diop was arrested again.
He founded a third political party in 1976 called “The National Democratic Rally.” His political vision was idealistic and practical in many waysl. Dr. Diop was also a theorist. He worked out a theoretical model for the political, economic, and social reconstruction of the African continent.
He led the struggle for the formation of an African technological consortium out of which he hoped to see the growth of a body of African sciences. This association combined all the sciences and both scholars and scientists directed their efforts toward solving the most vital scientific and sociological problems confronting the Black world.
His thesis is presented in his work: Black Africa: The Social, Political, and Economic Basis for a Federated State. In April 1985, Dr. Diop made his first visit to the United States. In his speech at -“The First Nile Valley Conference”, at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia,
He stated that he was… “convinced that his family had been divided in two. Half in Africa and the other half was here.” He also stated that he…” was very impressed with his contacts in the Black community of America.”
His coming was like the arrival of an African Head of State, and he was received like one. In a classic article on Dr. Diop’s “Two Cradles Theory and the Origin of White Racism,” Vulindela Wobogo assesses Dr. Diop’s theory of two opposing cultures based on two separate
Cradles of civilization: Southern (Africa) and Northern (Europe), in which he delineates the distinctions between traditional African and European societies. In it he elaborates on Dr. Diop’s view that the matriarchal (African) and patriarchal (European) social organizations bred certain axiologies,i.e., values, into each of its inhabitants.
He shows the difference in habits and ways of thinking between those raised in a sedentary, i.e., African environment versus those brought up in a nomadic, i,e., European society. According to Dr. Diop, each has certain distinct features. The Southern Cradle (sedentary societies): -matrilineal descent, -abundance of vital
Natural resources, – One Universal Supreme Deity, collectivity, -xenophilia (love of strangers), -burial, -agrarianism, and a gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature endowed with a spirit of justice, matriarchal family, emancipation of women in domestic life, territorial states, cosmopolitanism, social collectivism, material solidarity of right for individual which makes
Moral or material misery unknown, ideas of peace, justice, goodness and optimism, Literature emphasizing novel tales, fables, and comedy. In contrast, the Northern Cradle (nomadic societies) are distinguished by: – . These distinctions, according to Dr. Diop; are the reason behind the rise of white racism, along
With its associated violence, as a mass- based social philosophy. At the 1974 UNESCO Symposium in Cairo two African scholars, Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga, were able to conclusively demonstrate that ancient Egypt was a Black African civilization and explain the Nubian Meroitic script.
Cheikh Anta Diop was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, and physicist who dedicated his life to studying African history and culture. He believed that ancient Egypt was a Black African civilization and that its achievements had been unfairly attributed to other races, particularly Europeans. Diop’s work was groundbreaking because it challenged the dominant narrative that had
Been established by European scholars, who had claimed that ancient Egypt was a Mediterranean civilization and that its people were not Black. Theophile Obenga, a Congolese historian and linguist, was another African scholar who challenged the Eurocentric view of ancient Egypt.
Obenga’s work focused on the Meroitic script, an ancient writing system used by the people of the Kingdom of Kush, which was located in what is now Sudan. The Meroitic script had long been a mystery to scholars, and many had dismissed it as a “dead” language that could not be deciphered.
However, Obenga believed that the Meroitic script was a key to understanding the true origins of ancient Egypt. At the 1974 UNESCO Symposium in Cairo, Diop and Obenga presented their findings to an international audience of scholars and experts. Their presentations were groundbreaking because they provided evidence that directly contradicted
The Eurocentric view of ancient Egypt. Diop’s presentation focused on the physical anthropology of ancient Egyptians and demonstrated that they were of African descent. He argued that the ancient Egyptians were part of a broader Black African civilization that included other cultures, such as the Nubians, the Ethiopians, and the people of the Congo.
Obenga’s presentation focused on the Meroitic script and demonstrated that it was a direct ancestor of the hieroglyphic script used by the ancient Egyptians. He argued that the Meroitic script was not a “dead” language but rather a living language that was still spoken by the people of Sudan.
Obenga’s presentation also challenged the Eurocentric view that the hieroglyphic script had been “invented” by the ancient Greeks or Phoenicians and that the ancient Egyptians had no real connection to the script. Together, Diop and Obenga’s presentations provided compelling evidence that ancient
Egypt was a Black African civilization and that the Meroitic script was a direct ancestor of the hieroglyphic script. Their work challenged the dominant narrative that had been established by European scholars and demonstrated the importance of African scholarship in the study of ancient history.
The impact of Diop and Obenga’s work was profound, and it continues to influence scholarship today. Their research inspired a new generation of African scholars to study the history and culture of their continent and to challenge the dominant narratives that had been established by European scholars.
Today, there is a growing body of research that supports the idea that ancient Egypt was a Black African civilization, and that the people who built it were part of a broader African cultural and historical legacy. In conclusion, the work of Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga at the 1974 UNESCO Symposium
In Cairo was groundbreaking and transformative. They challenged the dominant narrative that had been established by European scholars and provided compelling evidence that ancient Egypt was a Black African civilization. Their work inspired a new generation of African scholars to study the history and culture of their continent, and it continues to influence scholarship today.
Ultimately, the legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop and Dr Theophile Obenga is that of Afrocentric Scholars who were able to establish the Black African Origins of Ancient Egypt at the 1974 UNESCO Symposium in Cairo. In 1974, Cheikh Anta Diop was one of about 20 participants in a UNESCO symposium in Cairo,
Where alongside Theophile Obenga from DRC, still alive, and a few others he established the African origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization and led all the european egyptologists and anthropologists that claimed kemet a European civilization to surrender. “[t]he arguments put forward in [the] chapter have not been accepted by all the experts
Interested in the problem”, a comment coming from the Arab scientist now occupying the land. He presented his work ten years later at a conference in Niamey, Niger. These are some of his words answering the questions posed by the students: “The evil that the occupant did to us is still not healed.
This is the depth of the problem. Cultural alienation ends up becoming an integral part of our substance, of our soul. And when we think we have got rid of it, we still haven’t done so completely. Often the colonized looks like, or, even, the ex-colonized looks a bit like the slave
Of the 19th century whom when liberated goes as far as the front of the door and then goes back home because he doesn’t know anymore where to go (Since the time he has lost freedom, since the time he has acquired subordination reflexes, since the time he has learned to think through his master).
This is almost what has happened to the African intellectual as a whole. Because, in other words, all the questions you have asked me boil down to one: when will white people acknowledge us? Because the truth sounds white! This is what it is! But what you are inferring is dangerous.
Because if intellectual equality is really tangible, Africa should, on controversial matter, access the truth by its own intellectual investigation, maintain itself to this truth until humanity knows that Africa will not be frustrated anymore. The ideologists would waste their time because they would have met equal intelligences that
Can stand up to them when it comes to research of the truth. But you are persuaded that for a truth to be valid and objective it must sound white! But this is an issue in our soul that must disappear.
I have ideas I have always developed and against which you cannot raise scientific arguments worthy of this name. You can make a conspiracy of silence. Young African generations will remain alienated, until they recover, until they acquire direct knowledge because it is through direct knowledge, through Egyptology that we will move past
This stage of resilience and somnambulism. UNESCO had asked everyone to get their weapons, to do everything necessary for this discussion to be conclusive. And you see [raising a book, not very audible]. As a consequence the white truth that you want is here solid in this document. But you don’t even read!
It is necessary to first learn all the literature that exists in this field. We have called a meeting to the highest level and the results are tangible, here they are! What you were waiting for is before your eyes, read it yourselves.
But even if we didn’t have it and this is what concerns me. Because we needed to reduce to the inconsistency of European ideologists and theorists, that they acknowledge it to a certain measure like in this document, for you to have an opinion. But the adversity is worse than this!
You need to know that the adversary kills you intellectually. He kills you morally before killing you physically. And it is in this manner that they have been suppressing entire groups. You are denied as a moral being, you are denied as a cultural being, our eyes are closed we don’t see the evidences!
They count on your complex, your alienation, on the conditioning! They count on the reflexes of subordination and so many factors of this kind. And if we don’t know how to emancipate ourselves by our own means, there’s no salvation! At this point, the question you ask me you’ve answered it.
Because you’ve answered by actions of inferiority, so in a sense you have proved or suggested the inferiority of the black world! – Because the truth must come from the other side. We have to be careful! If I wasn’t intimately persuaded of the equality of the races, if I wasn’t intimately
Persuaded of the capacity of each race to lead its cultural and intellectual destiny, I would be disappointed. What would we achieve in the world! If there really was this intellectual hierarchy we would have had to expect our extinction in one way or another! Because the conflict is everywhere, it is at every level!
It is in all its debates! It goes as far as our international relations! They lead against us the most violent fight, even more violent than the one that has led to the extinction of some species. And it is necessary that your intellectual sagacity gets to this point.
What I said in the preface of Obenga was this; that through direct knowledge, Africa must be able to seize a truth, to know that she is in possession of a truth no matter the field (It’s not only in the cultural field).
And to maintain herself to this truth by using conservatory methods, until everyone accepts it, until we know that the trickery is over! That they are not facing children or newborns anymore. But it is at the same time an intellectual reaction, a cultural reaction.
It requires the mobilization of all the capacities of the black; a black whom having made abstraction of his alienation has the same capacities as any other being. Look, as soon as you talk about cultural heritage, the left and the right continental collide!
Do the experiment, they bring you an abstract equality, but the idea that negroes could have known a historical promotion in the past, they are refractory to it! It is because their intellectual training, lately acquired, is found at a superficial level, to the level of the cortex, of the intellect.
But the training they have received in their early childhood, the stereotypes they are used to in the environment of their childhood, the caricatures as I was showing you here. All this was keeping them blind to observe truths such as those we were showing them.
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