Symposium: Historical Roots of Afrocentrism

Gerald Early, WilsonJ. Moses, Louis Wilson,

and Mary R. Lefkowitz
Gerald Early: There is

range of ideas and stances that collectively constitute what is called Afrocentrism. Some are demagogic a n d even fascist
or racist; others are m o r e n u a n c e d and thoughtful, and probably worthy o f
o u r attention and engagement.
T h e most i m p o r t a n t Afrocentric theses that can give us pause are these:
First, there exists a body of scholarship and o f intellectual assumptions that
exhibit a decidedly white or Eurocentric bias in support of a white or Eurocentric
political or social hegemony. Second, there is an African or non-white (or nonWestern) view of the world and of history that has been suppressed in a n d by
the Western world, once again in s u p p o r t o f a white or a Eurocentric hegemony. Third, African peoples can come to full self-determination a n d achieve
full humanity only when they are p e r m i t t e d to overthrow and d e n o u n c e white
or Eurocentric premises and when they can fully realize a n d articulate their
view and their consciousness through their own self-creation.
That, I think, is a reasonable short list o f Afrocentric beliefs, differing f r o m
the pop-culture Afrocentrism-largely an American expression--that speaks o f
constructing identity through acts of c o n s u m p t i o n or makes irrational assertions o f black superiority, a largely nonsensical reassertion of nineteenth-century E u r o p e a n race theories.
What are the origins of these Afrocentric ideas? I am not sure, b u t I suggest
three areas of inquiry. First, there are the intellectual trends of post-modernism, Marxism, deconstruction, and other ideas that became especially p o p u l a r
in many corridors of the post-World War II academy. (Afrocentrism, after all,
has had its biggest effect on education.) These doctrines have suggested that
the bourgeois social order is corrupt, repressive, and, most important, arbitrary, that knowledge is power, that truth is bourgeois and anyone is capable
of f o r m i n g his own truth to suit his own political and social purposes. Therefore, Foucault, Derrida, FredricJameson, and Stephen Greenblatt have been
just as i m p o r t a n t in the rise of Afrocentrism and its offshoot, multiculturalism,
a

Gerald Early is professor of English and director of the African and African-American studies program at Washington University, St. Louis, MO. Wilson J. Moses is
professor of history at Pennyslvania State University, State College, PA. Louis Wilson
is professor of African-American and African History at Smith College, Northampton,
MA. Mary R. Lefkowitz is Mellon Professor of Humanities at Wellesley College,
Wellesley, MA. Please address correspondence to
575 Ewing Street,
Princeton, NJ 08540. These remarks are from an October 1993 conference on
Afrocentrism sponsored by the Manhattan Institute's Center for New American Community and Washington University's Department of African and African-American
Studies. Printed by permission.

AcademicQuestions,

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45

as was, say, the political turmoil of the 1960s. In other words, a climate in the
academy in which the most fashionable "scholarship" is often sharply antiW e s t e r n m a k e s A f r o c e n t r i s m , as a critique o f the West, possible, a n d
Afrocentrism in turn reinforces the intellectual trends that b r o u g h t it into
being.
Second, Afrocentrism is probably i m b e d d e d in earlier forms o f black nationalist t h o u g h t - t h e black aesthetic of the seventies, the black power movem e n t o f the sixties, a n d pan-Africanism in the various forms it has taken since
the eighteenth century. As an ideology it represents the c o n t i n u e d longing
a m o n g black Americans for some set of ideas that would bind t h e m together
as a c o m m u n i t y and offer some alternative to an assimilation that is either
foreclosed by whites or seen by blacks as an admission o f inferiority and defeat.
It must be said, though, that historically n o t all manifestations o f black nationalism are or were anti-Western; some are decidedly pro-Western in many
respects. Nor is there anything inherent in the study of Africans or black people
in the United States that is necessarily anti-Western. It could even be argued
that the d e v e l o p m e n t of these fields of study, as virtual moral or emotional
imperatives, in the past twenty years or so is purely and utterly Western. But
the search by black people for a c o m m o n historical mission, for the elements
that bind t h e m together as a group, other than a c o m m o n history o f oppression, explains why Afrocentrism, as a h e i g h t e n e d form o f nationalism, has
c o m e into being at a time when blacks feel their sense o f physical and spiritual
c o m m u n i t y to be singularly u n d e r siege by many aspects of post-industrial
liberal democratic capitalist culture.
As an academic p h e n o m e n o n , Afrocentrism serves the p u r p o s e o f binding
together the various strands of African and African-American studies, transf o r m i n g t h e m f r o m an interdisciplinary hodge-podge into a unified discipline,
with ideological and intellectual goals, political purpose, a n d a set of commonly u n d e r s t o o d m e t h o d s and theories.
Third, Afrocentrism also has roots in the great American tendency to seek
mental health t h r o u g h right-living and right believing. In that respect Carter
G. W o o d s o n ' s c o n f u s e d a r g u m e n t s a b o u t the t h e r a p e u t i c value o f black
history in his 1933 b o o k The Miseducation of the Negro, a virtual bible for
many Afrocentrists, is as an intellectual construct not unlike the works o f the
great mind-healers and positive thinkers from Mary Baker Eddy to N o r m a n
Vincent Peale, from Father Divine to Elijah M u h a m m a d . W o o d s o n m a d e the
c o n n e c t i o n between black history and black education, properly construed,
a n d black self-esteem, long before "self-esteem" itself became a "cant word" in
the culture.
W o o d s o n ' s contentions are a truism to many blacks. But there is no real
evidence to s u p p o r t the claim that black history taught in a certain way produces black self-esteem. Indeed, it may even be argued that some pedagogical

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approaches suggested by Afrocentrists might simply induce m o r e black resentment or intensify black alienation. And neither resentment nor alienation
is a proper mental or emotional building block for a sense o f community.
Much of the recent attempt to create Afrocentric schools---or, one might
say, the black political equivalent of a Hebrew or Catholic school---comes from
an understandable desperation due to the fact that many black communities
are so beset by social problems that they are ill-equipped to handle.
T h e r e is much to consider in the complexity in Afrocentrism. These few
preliminary remarks hardly do the subject justice. I hope that this discussion
will take it out of the realm of sensational newspaper stories and emotional
outbursts to a measured deliberation of why America continues to be conf o u n d e d by race and befuddled by its inability to educate all o f its citizens well.

WilsonJ. Moses: The Afrocentric tradition must be u n d e r s t o o d as a variety of

utopian or millenarian movement, although the Afrocentric utopia is in a romanticized past, rather than in a chiliastic future. Afrocentrism is not a new
movement. It makes one of its first appearances in an 1827 editorial in Freedom's
Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States, which alleged a relationship between black Americans and the ancient Egyptians. American historians recognize in the latest revival of Afrocentrism patterns described by the
late E. L. Tuveson, o f the University of California at Berkeley, and the late
William G. McLoughlin, of Brown University, who developed useful methods
for looking at the history of American millennial movements, revivals, awakenings, and reforms. The Afrocentric tradition may also be u n d e r s t o o d within
the pattern that Harold Walter T u r n e r describes in his article "Tribal Religious Movements," in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1979 edition. Recently, the
late St. Clair Drake, a distinguished Afro-Caribbean anthropologist at Stanford
University, published a two-volume work, Black Folk Here and There, offering,
a m o n g its m a n y treasures, a r e s t r a i n e d a n d c o m p a s s i o n a t e critique o f
Afrocentric utopianism.
Karl Mannheim, in his classic Ideology and Utopia, defined a utopia as an idea
or m o v e m e n t that resembles a religion m o r e closely than it does a political
ideology. Millennialist movements attract the type of person Eric Hoffer describes in The True Believer. Afrocentrists are true believers who have undergone the charismatic experience that the African-American psychologist William
R. Cross has called "the Negro to Black Conversion Experience." They start
out as Saul and end up as Paul. Those who convert to Afrocentrism often
change their names, as a sign that they, to use St. Paul's language, have "put off
the old man and put on the new man." Afrocentrists are like the people who
come knocking on your door to present you with the good news, the truth, the
real truth. You cannot argue with them, because they are convinced that you
are the one who is confused. They convert because they find the message appealing, and then they work backward from what they need to believe through

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a system of rationalizations, in order to construct "proofs." Converts speak

with prophetic conviction, and the m o r e you argue with t h e m logically, the
m o r e passionately they explain to you why you are wrong. Afrocentrism is not
an intellectual m o v e m e n t ; it is a secular religion. Or, p u t t i n g it in Karl
Mannheim's terms, it is not an ideology; it is a utopia.
Afrocentrism, to a social scientist, is as understandable as Christian fundamentalism. In this connection I must m e n t i o n the work of Professor Dorothy
Nelkin, of the sociology d e p a r t m e n t at Cornell, whose area o f research has
b e e n the p r o b l e m of "creation science" in the schools. I want to make use of
her model, because I think Afrocentrism and "creation science" are in the
same category, evangelical utopian m o v e m e n t s that couch their belief-systems
in pseudo-scientific terms. They sublimate the frustration of their adherents,
as they attempt to cope with the stresses and anxiety of m o d e r n urban life.
Such enthusiasts are often well-educated people, even people with scientific
and technical training, who find in religious fundamentalism some insulation
from a society that is corrupt, prurient, and violent.
In defense of Afrocentrism, it must be observed that the father of contemporary Afrocentrism, Cheikh Anta Diop, in his Civilization or Barbarism (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), demonstrates a respect for the concept
of cultural literacy. He is o p p o s e d to the vulgar stereotype of black culture that
has been d o m i n a n t since the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Diop is also
suspicious of the sentimental black cultural nationalism associated with Leopold
Senghor and the French Negritude school. Like the late African-American critic
Sterling Brown, Diop c o n d e m n s the treatment of black folk as jazzy exotic
primitives and erotic barbarians. Afrocentrists resent the tendency to define
black culture in terms of "primitivism grafted onto decadence." Diop's ardent
followers are also o p p o s e d to the profane, scatological variety of black ghetto
culture that is associated with gangster rap, "signifying monkeys," and "playing the dozens" (word games based on ritualized insult). T h e Afrocentrist
dreams of appropriating the high culture of classical civilization and disdains
the low culture o f gangster rap. Although some may d e f e n d the rap-music
g r o u p 2 Live Crew on First A m e n d m e n t grounds, few are sympathetic to the
proposition that 2 Live Crew represents black culture. Most black nationalists,
including Black Muslims and Afrocentrists, insist, to their credit, that gangster
rap must be u n d e r s t o o d as social pathology. Unfortunately, many o f these
same black nationalists have u n d e r m i n e d their credibility by their f u n d a m e n talist anti-intellectualism and by their paranoid ravings about the ice-man inheritance, Jewish conspiracies, and melanin theory.
O n e of the great ironies of black American life is that historically-not so
m u c h today, but historically-black nationalism, while urging political separatism, has been a conduit for the transmission of high culture. Classical black
nationalists and Afrocentrists since the nineteenth century, including J o h n
Russwurm, Frances E. W. Harper, Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, Ed-

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ward Wilmot Blyden, Pauline Hopkins, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey

were committed to a civilizing mission. They made references to Egyptian civilization hoping to focus the minds of black folk on noble and uplifting universal values, on "the best which has been thought and said in the world." They
were not cultural relativists; they believed that some cultures are better than
other cultures, and they were not amused by the spectacle of illiterate schoolboys insulting one another's mothers, just for fun. Many people feel that at
least this much can be said in behalf of Afrocentrism: that it focuses young
minds on pyramids and temples, rather than on priapic displays and foulm o u t h e d monkeys.
It should be r e m e m b e r e d that the Afrocentric tradition grew up in antebellum America, where nine out of every ten black Americans were slaves. The
editors of Freedom'sJournal were called "Free Africans," but in reality they were
quasi-free Americans, deprived of both their African and their American heritage. Their assertion that knowledge was deliberately kept from them was correct. They and their children were b a n n e d by force of law f r o m schools,
universities, and libraries. As late as 1960, the year I graduated from high school,
there were many universities in this country from which I was barred by force
of law. In the schools and colleges that I did attend I was sometimes driven to
the verge of tears by the cruelty of students and of teachers. If there is a reactive anger and resentment in some Afrocentric writing, it is certainly understandable. Afrocentrism is not hate literature, however. It is a quaint, fantastic
r e m i n d e r of problems that our society has not yet solved, but no m o r e anachronistic than our society's residual racism. Leviticus is not "hate literature,"
neither is Twain's Huckleberry Finn, or Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, or
Milton's Areopagitica, although each of these classics contains some ideas that
most living Americans find embarrassing, offensive, or downright hateful.
Another point to r e m e m b e r is that the classics of the Afrocentric tradition,
which argued that the Egyptians were black, were written at a time when "one
drop of Negro blood" was enough to make anyone a Negro. Even today, this
insane reasoning remains the basis for classifying appreciable numbers of people
as "black" despite their blue eyes and blond hair. Near-white individuals as
fair-skinned as T h u r g o o d Marshall and Lena H o m e are still classified as Negroes. Walter White and Adam Clayton Powell, who were absolutely white in
appearance, were classified as Negroes, by persons who could b e c o m e apoplectic at the idea that the pharaohs were not white. It was in the face of this
illogic that the mulatto authorJ. A. Rogers classified his pharaohs as black. In
fact many of the pharaohs, if transplanted across time and onto the Chattanooga Choo-Choo in 1945, would have had difficulty obtaining a Pullman berth
or being seated in a dining car.
These historical arguments do not, of course, excuse the excesses of a few
atypical cult authors, who shamelessly exploit the fears and resentments of
contemporary readers. Even here it should be r e m e m b e r e d , however, that

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otherwise harmless traditions of Afrocentrism are most likely to be perverted

a m o n g the unlettered, culturally deprived, and slum-shocked classes of black
Americans. It is extremely unlikely that Afrocentrism will gain m u c h o f a following a m o n g the establishmentarian black scholars, who constitute the faculties of the elite universities. They do not have to live u n d e r the vicious, terrifying,
humiliating conditions of Southern segregation and lynch law that drove George
James over the brink during the early 1950s.
But m o s t p e o p l e d o n o t go over the brink. Most black Americans know
Afrocentrism as a quaint, folksy cultural tradition that they e n c o u n t e r f r o m
early childhood, in their h o m e s and churches, their sewing circles, a n d barber
shops. Like most mythologies, it is only half believed a n d simply represents an
attempt on the part of respectable, honest people to create a positive folkmythology. This mythology is no m o r e dangerous than the fictions associated
with Betsy Ross, H o n e s t Abe, or George Washington a n d the cherry tree.
Perhaps it is possible to r e d e e m Afrocentrism f r o m its m o d e r n misuse by
racists, anti-Semites, and pseudo-intellectuals. Perhaps not. I am certain o f o n e
thing: Afrocentrism, in its m o r e disturbing and extremist forms, is a charismatic, n o t an intellectual m o v e m e n t . It is a born-again, true-believer enthusiasm, similar to "creation science," a n d rationalized with the same sort o f
evangelical passion. It is n o t likely to be stopped by intellectual arguments or
politically correct dogmas from the right or from the left.
Louis Wilson: I want to discuss Africa and the Afrocentric m o v e m e n t because I think that many Afrocentrists--and there are many t y p e s - s e e Africa as
the foundation, the basis, the beginning. As a trained African historian, like
Wilson Moses, I want briefly to try to look at that.
T h e term "African" itself is n o t an indigenous term; it is an external term. It
is essentially Latin. Before it came into use, of course, Africans were often
referred to by outsiders as Ethiopians, again an external term. W h e n we use
the terms "African" or "Afrocentric," we need to keep in m i n d that they do n o t
c o m e from the continent.
How did the African people see themselves? They saw themselves in a variety of ways, but mainly as m e m b e r s of a particular ethnic/cultural group, and
clearly the key to that would have been language. For example, we speak of the
Egyptians, we speak of the Yoruba, we speak of the Akan, we speak o f the
Kamba, we speak of the Tiv, we speak of the Ga, we speak o f the Z u l u - w e
speak of people who speak a particular language, and that is part of the culture. It is only with the arrival of the Europeans that these people were forced
to begin to think of themselves as Africans. So, w h e n we ask where the Afrocentrism is in Africa, the answer is that it is n o t there.
W h e n you want to talk about u n d e r s t a n d i n g Africa, when you want to break
Africa d o w n into its various c o m p o n e n t parts, clearly o n e way to do it is by
language. T h e r e could also be a b r e a k d o w n by region. O n e could discuss for-

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est civilizations, o r states or empires c r e a t e d along rivers o r in the desert. So

the e n v i r o n m e n t furnishes a n o t h e r way o f classifying people.
But the c o n c e p t "black" ( m e a n i n g race) is not an African concept; it was
created outside Africa, mainly by Europeans. Color is n o t i m p o r t a n t w h e n we
talk a b o u t the Sudan, the land o f the blacks. It is a descriptive term, relative to
Europe, not a pejorative one. Similarly, w h e n one refers to Ethiopians as p e o p l e
with painted faces, that is using a descriptive term.
Yet a n o t h e r way to think about Africans--how Africans o f t e n t i m e s think
about themselves--has to do with religion. O n e could talk a b o u t the areas in
N o r t h a n d Northeast Africa w h e r e early Christianity h a d an impact. W e k n o w
that in the first t h r o u g h seventh centuries these areas were heavily d o m i n a t e d
by Christian belief; Christianity was i n t r o d u c e d to the rest o f the c o n t i n e n t as
late as the seventeenth century. We could talk about traditional African religions. And, o f course, we could talk about Islam, which h a d s p r e a d across the
Sudan by the eleventh century. But even these religions are n o t monolithic.
A n o t h e r a p p r o a c h is to talk about western African, eastern African, northern African, s o u t h e r n African, or central African peoples. This is i m p o r t a n t
for the Afrocentrist a n d others, because we k n o w f r o m historical, archeological, a n d anthropological records that most o f those we today call African-Americans in the British N o r t h A m e r i c a n colonies o r the U n i t e d States c a m e f r o m
what we call West Africa.
We are talking about a t h o u s a n d different languages. W e are talking a b o u t
a t h o u s a n d different culture groups. T h e r e are people f r o m the grasslands,
p e o p l e f r o m the forests, and people f r o m the coast.
Many o f these people got along, but empires are not c r e a t e d f r o m m u t u a l
a g r e e m e n t . T h e Akan c r e a t e d an empire. T h e same is true for the ancient
Ghanians, the ancient e m p i r e o f Mall. O n e has to recognize that these empires
rose a n d fell as empires did in all parts o f the world. W h e n we talk with a great
deal o f satisfaction about the ancient African empires, o n e n e e d s to k e e p in
m i n d that, w h e n you refer to a p e r s o n as an Asante, there will be o t h e r p e o p l e
in the same area who were d o m i n a t e d by the Asante a n d are anti-Asante. W h e n
you talk about the rise o f the Zulu a n d Shaka, keep in m i n d that Shaka rose
because he d o m i n a t e d his i m m e d i a t e neighbors. It is no d i f f e r e n t f r o m o t h e r
parts o f the world.
I studied the history o f a particular Adangme-speaking p e o p l e in West Africa called the Krobo. T h e question that interested m e was how o n e b e c o m e s
part o f a c o m m u n i t y , how o n e b e c o m e s a Krobo. I tried to r e c o n s t r u c t the
history o f this small-to-medium g r o u p o f about 200,000 people, a n d o n e o f the
things that I realized was that everyone who c a m e into this society w o u l d transform. If you c a m e into this society f r o m the Akan, you w o u l d transform, you
would n e e d to b e c o m e Krobo. If you c a m e f r o m the Ga people, you were
m a d e to b e c o m e Krobo. If you c a m e f r o m the Egbe, you were m a d e to bec o m e Krobo.

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These were n o t "Africans." If you w a n t e d to be a Krobo, you h a d to accept

their values. You h a d to give up y o u r language. You h a d to give up y o u r religion. You had to give up y o u r dietary habits. This is n o t "African," it is Krobo.
T h e Akan society is also inclusive, that is, they admit others into their society, but there is a process o f a c c o m m o d a t i o n that has to occur.
Finally, we n e e d to keep in m i n d that, w h e n E u r o p e a n colonial rule came,
the Africans in West Africa, N o r t h Africa, East Africa, o r any o t h e r region did
n o t rise up as a unified nation. It did not h a p p e n with the Atlantic slave trade,
a n d there are reasons why. T h e Akkans saw themselves as Akkan, a n d the
K r o b o saw themselves as Krobo.
Similarly, w h e n Egypt was colonized, the o t h e r African nations did n o t rise
up in opposition. W h e n colonial rule c a m e to Ghana, the o t h e r African nations d i d n ' t rise up in opposition, because it didn't affect t h e m directly. T h e r e
is no ethnic sense o f unity, there is no biological sense o f unity, there is no
cultural sense o f unity, there is no mutual language for c o m m u n i c a t i o n .
A n d finally, w h e n the various African nations b e g a n to gain i n d e p e n d e n c e ,
particularly after G h a n a did in 1957, individual nations r e s p o n d e d in different
ways. G h a n a h a d its particular needs, the Nigerians had their particular needs,
a n d the people in Kenya had theirs. Within those countries ethnicity, religion,
geography, a n d literacy all were factors.
A f r o c e n t r i s m has no m a j o r position in c o n t e m p o r a r y Africa. So, w h e n
we look at Afrocentrism, w h e r e does it c o m e from? Essentially it c o m e s f r o m
the U n i t e d States. I have no p r o b l e m with that, but we n e e d to be clear about
it.
T h a t does n o t m e a n that there are not artifacts f r o m Africa o n the m a i n l a n d
in the U n i t e d States. I n d e e d there a r e - l a n g u a g e and o t h e r cultural artifacts-a n d we should u n d e r s t a n d w h e r e those artifacts c o m e from. But no artifact is
associated with any sense o f unity. That does not exist o n the continent; n o r
did it exist in West Africa as a region.

Mary R. Lefkowitz: Since its publication in 1954, Stolen Legacy, by G e o r g e

G.M. James, has b e e n a best-seller a m o n g peoples o f African d e s c e n t in this
country. T h e message o f Stolen Legacy is sensational and revolutionary: "the
Greeks were not the authors o f Greek philosophy, but the Black people o f
N o r t h Africa, the Egyptians" [158]. A n y o n e who has studied ancient Mediterr a n e a n history will realize immediately that these assertions are u n t r u e , b o t h
in general and in particular. But to a n y o n e unfamiliar with Egyptian or G r e e k
history, or the works o f the G r e e k philosophers, James's a r g u m e n t seems coh e r e n t a n d plausible, because it appears to be laid o u t in an i n f o r m e d a n d
scholarly fashion, with copious r e f e r e n c e s to ancient source materials a n d
m o d e r n historical studies. I shall try to describe the origin o f the n o t i o n o f a
"Stolen Legacy" a n d to suggest why James, despite his so-called d o c u m e n t a tion, c a n n o t provide scholarly u n d e r p i n n i n g for his sensational claims.

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The basic premise of James's a r g u m e n t is that Greek philosophy is based

directly on an "Egyptian Mystery System," which was copied by Greek philosophers who studied in Egypt. But in reality the notion of an Egyptian Mystery
System is a relatively m o d e r n fiction, based on ancient sources that are distinctively Greek or Greco-Roman and date from the early centuries A.D. H o w these
fundamentally Greek practices came to be u n d e r s t o o d as originally Egyptian
is a fascinating story, which I can present here only in outline.
In fact the earliest descriptions of "mysteries'--that is, initiation rituals--and
academies for Egyptian priests, with large libraries and art galleries, first occur, n o t in any ancient text, but in an eighteenth-century French work o f historical fiction, the novel S~thos by the Abb~ Jean Terrasson, first published in
1732. Terrasson's novel was widely read; it had a p r o f o u n d influence on portrayals of Egyptian religion in later literature, for example, in the libretto of
Mozart's Magic Flute. In particular, the initiation of Terrasson's h e r o into the
Egyptian priesthood served as the inspiration for Masonic rituals. T h e Masons, in the eighteenth century, when these rituals were established, r e g a r d e d
t h e m as b o t h ancient and Egyptian, although in fact they were neither. All
authentic information about early Egyptian religion was inaccessible to them,
because the d o c u m e n t s that described it could not be read. Like Mozart, James
seems to have been inspired by Masonic ritual; he speaks of Egyptian "Grand
Lodges," another distinctive feature of the Masonic Order, and cites Masonic
literature. The vision of a black Egypt p u t forth by James is in fact idiosyncratic
to African-American Masons, who claim descent from ancient black Egyptians.
The "Egyptian" rituals described by Terrasson and his F r e e m a s o n followers
were actually Greco-Roman. Since Terrasson was forced to rely on Greek and
Latin literature for his description of Egypt, the Egyptian goddess Isis assumes
a particular importance in his work, as well as in works derived f r o m it, such as
Mozart's Thamos, King of Egypt and The Magic Flute. But the portrayal of Isis
and her cult on which Terrasson relies is distinctively Greco-Roman in character. T h e twelve-day initiation into the Mysteries of Isis that he describes is based
primarily, not on any Egyptian source, but on the description, in the firstcentury B.c. R o m a n poet Virgil's Aeneid, of the hero Aeneas' visit to the lower
world. Terrasson also relies heavily on the second-century Apuleius' account,
in his Latin novel The Golden Ass, o f his initiation into the R o m a n cult o f Isis.
It would be unreasonable to expect that the Masons, who never p r e t e n d e d
to be serious scholars, would have sought to revise their rituals a n d the notions of their own history in light of the new information about Egypt that
became available after the deciphering of hieroglyphics, in 1836. But James,
who purports to be writing an academic book, ought to have taken recent
discoveries about Egypt into consideration. Nonetheless, instead of concentrating on what is now known about Egyptian myth and ritual, James cites
Anacalypsis (or "Revelation"), by Godfrey Higgins, who died in 1833, several
years b e f o r e the p u b l i c a t i o n o f the definitive version o f J e a n Franqois

Symposium

53

Champollion's deciphering of hieroglyphics. Higgins argues vigorously against

C h a m p o l l i o n a n d even claims that the Rosetta Stone, o n which Champollion's
deciphering was based, was a forgery. He was, o f course, completely wrong.
That James cites Higgins rather than a m o r e authoritative and m o d e r n source
(although he knows about Champollion) is an indication of the hostility he
bears toward Greek civilization.
Higgins a r g u e d - i n v a i n - t h a t Egyptian writing could never be d e c i p h e r e d
because it was a secret system. In Stolen Legacy James likewise insists that no
records, in any language, of the Egyptian Mystery System have c o m e down to
us because it was secret. Since it would not suit his purpose, James does n o t
m e n t i o n the other, and m o r e obvious, explanation for the absence of records,
which is, of course, that no such system ever existed. As we have seen, the rituals
that late ancient writers identified as Egyptian are basically Greek, and it is
these ersatz Egyptian rituals that are the models for the impressive "Egyptian"
rituals, described by the French writer Terrasson, which directly and indirectly
served as inspiration for the Masons. Thus, most ironically, the "Egyptian Mystery System" described by James is not African, but essentially Greek, and, in
its details, specifically European.
In order to show that Greek philosophy was based on Egyptian philosophy,
James needs to show how philosophy was b r o u g h t to Greece f r o m Egypt. Here
he can derive s u p p o r t from ancient Greek sources stating that certain important Greek philosophers studied in Egypt. Since other philosophers studied in
Egypt (though ancient writers are completely inexplicit about what they learned
there), James insists that Socrates and Aristotle must also have gone there,
even t h o u g h no ancient writer says so. James argues that silence about the
presence in Egypt of Socrates and Aristotle is p r o o f of a conspiracy by the
Greeks to conceal f r o m posterity the extent of their debt to Egypt. O f course,
the same evidence of silence has led other scholars to the natural conclusion
that neither of t h e m actually ever went there. In fact, Plato, a close contemporary, says that Socrates never went outside of Athens except when he participated in a military campaign in Greece.
If the great Greek philosophers had stolen their ideas from the Egyptians,
as James asserts, we would expect James to provide texts showing frequent
verbal parallels. As it is, he can point only to some general similarities between
Egyptian religious ideas and Greek theories. Aristotle wrote a treatise On the
Soul; the Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul. But there the similarity ends.James admits that there is no close resemblance, because Aristotle's
theory is only a "very small portion" of the Egyptian "philosophy" o f the soul,
as described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. However, anyone who looks at a
translation of the Book of the Dead can see that it is not a philosophical treatise,
but rather a series of ritual prescriptions to ensure the soul's passage to the
next world. Nothing could be m o r e different from Aristotle's abstract consideration o f the nature of the soul.

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Academic Q u e s t i o n s / S p r i n g 1994

I have treated only a few of the many fraudulent claims m a d e in Stolen Legacy.
Many m o r e examples could be produced; for example, James insists that the
Greeks did n o t win their war against Persia in 490 and 480-79 B.C., as has
always been thought, but states, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the battles o f Marathon and Salamis were indecisive. James misrepresents history in this way in order to depict the ancient Greeks as a quarrelsome
and chaotic people, incapable of p r o d u c i n g philosophy, which, according to
James, "requires an e n v i r o n m e n t which is free f r o m disturbance and worries"
[24]. Such misinformation entitles Stolen Legacy to a place on the shelf with
other hate literature, such as The Secret Relationship Between Blacks anclJews. But
it also deserves to be rated as one of the most successful, and, alas, influential
"myths" in recent history. A n d it is distinctly frightening that school children
are being taught to believe that this myth is true.

ON THE BELFRY
Anna Balakian, one of Comparative
Literature's leading scholars, confronts the
"current zeitgeist" in contemporary literary
studies: the importance assumed by criticism
and its devalorization of the literary work;
the use and misuse of literary texts for
ideological purposes, relativism and
anthropomorphism: and multiculturalism
and the sociological approach to the arts.

Dogma and
Disquietude in
the Critical
Arena

ByAnna Balakian

288 pages, cloth $39.95

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS ~ At bookstores, or call 1-800-842-6796