Cheikh Anta Diop

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Cheikh Anta Diop (born December 29, 1923 in Thieytou (or Tiahitou or Caytou), in the northwest of the Diourbel region ( Senegal ), † February 7, 1986 in Dakar ) was a Senegalese historian , anthropologist and politician . Cheikh Anta Diop is one of the main proponents of Afrocentrism and is considered one of the most famous Egyptologists on the African continent.

Life and study

Diop was born into a Wolof family in 1923 . At the age of 23 he began his studies in Paris . He spent 15 years there and studied physics at Frédéric Joliot-Curie , the son of Marie Curie , and he also translated parts of Einstein's theory of relativity in his native Wolof .

Anta Diop also studied African history , Egyptology , linguistics , anthropology and economics .

research

Ride of the Oba from Benin (depiction of Milan 1815–1827) Roof decorated with turrets and birds cast in copper with outspread wings.
Queen Mother Idia Oni (King) Obalufon
Queen Mother Idia
bronze head early 16th century,
Ethnological Museum ,
Berlin.
King Obalufon II
bronze head around 12th century,
discovered near Ile-Ife ,
Nigerian National Museum ,
Lagos .

In 1951 Diop submitted his dissertation at the University of Paris . In it he developed the hypothesis that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans and that the high culture they created represented an originally (black) African civilization .

His hypothesis was initially rejected, but Diop worked on his dissertation for nine years and brought new and better evidence. In 1960 he successfully completed his dissertation and received his doctorate .

In 1955 Anta Diop published a book about his hypothesis under the title Nations nègres et culture ( Black Nations and Culture ). This made him one of the most controversial historians of his time.

The relations between Egypt and Greece formed a focus of his research. Accordingly, many Greek scientists, such as Pythagoras , were in Egypt to learn mathematics. Pythagoras is said to have stayed in Africa for 22 years. The debate between Cheikh Anta Diop and his former adversaries is now being continued in the Black Athena debate on the controversial theses of the British historian Martin Bernals , who claims that Egypt had an influence on the culture of Greece in classical antiquity.

In his opinion, the civilization debate led to the fact that many scientists began to regard the African continent as a tabula rasa or to set up the racist Hamite theory . According to Anta Diop, the black Africans not only produced civilizations ( Kingdom of Benin , Kingdom of Kush , Mali , Songhai , Ghana , Swahili , Greater Zimbabwe , Aksum , Kanem-Bornu and especially Egypt), but also mastered the technology of metal extraction and - processing and would have thereby brought about progressive urbanization and also developed a progressive administration. Cities like Benin or Oyo even sent students and ambassadors to Portugal . The situation would have changed dramatically with the discovery of America and the slave trade . According to Anta Diop, the African cultures were gradually destroyed by colonization and the slave trade.

Cheik Anta Diop is the founder of Afrocentric Egyptology. In his opinion, the contact between Africa and Europe did not begin in the 18th century , but centuries before, among other things, the presence of African scholars in Europe is documented very early.

Publications

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

literature

  • Leonhard Harding , Brigitte Reinwald (Hrsg.): Africa - mother and model of European civilization? The rehabilitation of the Black Continent by Cheikh Anta Diop. Reimer, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-496-00489-4 .
  • Cheikh Anta Diop: L'unité Culturelle de l'Afrique Noire. 2nd edition, Présence Africaine, Paris et al. 1982, ISBN 2-7087-0406-0 .
  • Molefi Kete Asante : Cheikh Anta Diop: An Intellectual Portrait. University of Sankore Press, Los Angeles 2006

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cheikh Anta Diop: L'Unité Culturelle de l'Afrique noire. Paris 1982.
personal data
SURNAME Diop, Cheikh Anta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Thieytou
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1986
Place of death Dakar