Response to Robin Walker

September 17, 2009

africanclassicalhistory@yahoogroups.co.uk

Asar Imhotep
http://www.asarimhotep.com

ROBIN: This is NOT the point. The point is did the Egyptians EVER have the Diagram of the Law of
Opposities. So far you have not been able to make this particular Diagram materialise.

ASAR: No this is NOT the point. The point is the Egyptians had a philosophy as expressed in their myths
of the FOUR MOMENTS OF THE SUN (using Robert Farris Thompson’s title) and it is this philosophy that
is expressed through their symbolism.

ROBIN: One way of putting a spin on concepts borrowed is to present some of the concepts
diagrammaticaly and to add your own. If this is what the Greeks actually did then it is THEY who
invented the Diagram of the Law of Opposities and NOT the Egyptians. Since this logically follows from
what you have written this is a most important and devastating concession from you. To understand why
see below.

ASAR: Wrong. For one, the Greeks didn’t call it the diagram of opposites; Dr. Ben did. Aristotle called it
the FOUR HUMORS. This little fact has me confused as to why you keep calling it the Laws of Opposites
Diagram and crediting it to the Greeks? My argument, as well as Dr. George GM James’, is that the
concepts expressed in the diagram are in fact ancient Egyptian. I go further and demonstrate that these
concepts exist on all corners of Africa, with the same style, purpose and function in African societies. I
will demonstrate further how this symbol, The Four Moments of the Sun, has been staring at you in the
face, as a symbol, and you just refuse to see it.

ROBIN: How can you prove the connection between the Yoruba and the Ancient Egyptians? The claim,
now popular, that the Yoruba ancestor Oduduwa was an Ancient Egyptian is a mid to late 20th century
claim i.e. it is modern and opportunistic. Before this, the Yorubas claimed to be of Arabian origin!!! The
Yoruba scholar, Rev Samuel Johnson in The History of the Yorubas, 1921, p.5 cites the early 19th century
Sultan Belo as saying: "The cause of their [i.e. Yoruba] establishment in the West of Africa was, as is
stated, in consequence of their being driven by Yar-rooba, son of Kahtan, out of Arabia to the Western
Coast between Egypt and Abyssinia. From that spot they advanced into the interior of Africa." That the
Yourubas themselves believed this version of events was confirmed by Rev Johnson himself who states
(p.5): "That the Yorubas came originally from the East there cannot be the slightest doubt, as their
habits, manners and customs, etc., all go to prove. With them the East is Mecca and Mecca is the East."

ASAR: One, not all Yoruba claim to be from the Nile Valley, some of them do. The Yoruba are like Blacks
in the United States who have “come together” to be one people called African-Americans. The same
thing with the Zulus of South Africa. The Zulus actually are a mix of ethnic groups, under the terror of
Tashaka Zulu, that came together to become the Zulu nation. You will hear SOME of their lineages going
back to the Nile Valley. Some of them will tell you they came from Angola. Some trace their lineage to
the Great Lakes region. So when you are hearing stories about migrations in Africa, especially among
large ethnic groups, you always have to ask are we talking about migrations of whole people, or are we
talking about migrations of individual families? Or are we talking about migrations of priesthoods? Any
Ifa practitioner will tell you that some of the “myths” of “individuals” are actually composites of a
specific ethnic group or family. Odudua is not only a person but a people; a family: the Oduduas.

To think Rev. Samuel Johnson’s book is the only one on the history of the Yoruba would be a mistake.
You also need to read The Religion of the Yorubas in Relation to the Religion of Ancient Egypt published
by CMS Bookshops, Lagos by Dr. Olumide Lucas. This work was written in 1948, before the so-called
Afrocentric movements in the late 60’s and 70’s. He has another book titled Religions in West Africa and
ancient Egypt. The title speaks for itself. In his book The Religion of the Yorubas pg 353 he states, “The
Yoruba migrated gradually from Northern Egypt to Southern Egypt and then to the Sudan until they
reached their present home.” So how extensive and expansive was Rev. Johnson’s research? Who did he
talk to: the Yoruba priests or the practitioners of Islam?

ROBIN: Now you have come to the heart of the matter! I do not claim that the inner Africans stole these
ideas from the Greeks. It is YOUR presentation of the data that suggests this!

ASAR: No my presentation suggest otherwise. Here is something else I want you to be able to explain
away by ignoring the obvious:

http://hum.lss.wisc.edu/hjdrewal/Ife.html

Child of Obatala (creation divinity). The sculpture probably depicts a ritual specialist indicated by the
bead on his forehead and the skull pendant.
 Egyptian God Bes

The first image is from Ile Ife and is dated between 1000-1500 AD. This image is a Batwa (dwarf) and we
clearly see two defining features of the ancient Egyptian God Bes. The first is the signature tongue
sticking out. This is how we can identify Bes all across the world. It’s undeniable. Secondly observe the
“skull necklace” on both images. Explain to me how an ancient Egyptian deity made its way to Nigeria
prior to 1500 AD? Did some random Egyptologists build a time machine, went Back to the Future and
taught these Africans the intricate details of ancient Egyptian religion and taught them how to sculpt
these concepts as well? I await your answer on this one.

So now, to demonstrate that everything isn’t a simple exact copy, we will examine the Greek “version”
of Bes. The Greeks associated Bes with Priapus, god of Fertility. It should also be noted that Bes is a
fertility god, and as caption on the first image states that image is the son of the god Obatala, the
creation divinity (fertility). Here’s an image of Priapus:

I know you’re thinking to yourself, “That doesn’t look like Bes or the Yoruba image above. How can you
say they are the same image?”

The Ancient Egyptian God Bes with erect penis

Again, we are going through this to set a precedence in the reader’s mind that not all ideas taken from
Egypt are exact replicas of the concepts seen. You look for the key distinguishing factors present in both
ideas. As we can see Priapus doesn’t have the exact same features as Bes (the iconography, wings,
crown, etc.), But he does have the distinguishing beard and erect penis. This isn’t “chance
correspondence” to use a term from linguistics. These are “borrowings” from ancient Egypt: Period!

ROBIN: As you know, we are in an ideological war to resurrect our history and culture from the ravages
of Eurocentrism. Your presentation of the data plays straight into their hands.

ASAR: This is why I never pull from one area of Africa. My primary areas of research have been Nile
Valley, Dogon (Bambara, Gourmatche, Dogomba), Yoruba, Kongo and Zulu. Any Eurocentrist would have
to demonstrate how the Greeks introduced these concepts to the Dogon, Yoruba, Kongo and Zulu
people, yet all of the just mentioned ideas are exact, but the Greek’s are different? Where are the Greek
loan words? Where are these symbols in Libya? Where are the Libyan records that state they met up
with the Dogon? Demonstrate these ideas in the practices of the ancient and modern Greeks. Why is the
Yoruba depiction of “Bes” an exact match but Priapus looks nothing like the Egyptian? Besides the beard
and erect penis, Priapus lacks the skull necklace, lacks the signature tongue sticking out and he is not a
dwarf (Batwa). They took the Egyptian idea and made it their own; yet the Yoruba kept the traditional
representation.

ROBIN: Are you also aware that there were Eurocentric scholars who claimed that the Yorubas were
remnants of the Greek civilisation of Atlantis? As Peter Garlake explains: "The calm repose and realism of
the [Yoruba] sculptures were reminiscent of Classical Greece. The pantheon of Yoruba gods, their
attributes, their vivid lives and complex responsibilities echoed Mount Olympus. The architecture of the
houses and palaces, where rooms opened off enclosed courtyards, open to the sky, resembled the
impluvia of early Mediterranean, particularly Etruscan, buildings. The Yoruba concept of the universe,
their educational system, the organization of their society and their statecraft supported a Greek
connection."

ASAR: In reality they could be partially right. As you are familiar, Dr. Winters has argued in many papers
the African origins of Greek civilization. He’s not the only one as this has been argued by Diop and
Bernal. One of the greatest contributions to this aspect of human history, and to this debate in
particular, is the various works by linguist GJK Campbell-Dunn. He takes it further and associates not
only artifacts and cultural elements with Africa, but linguistically connects the Etruscan, Minoan Linear A
and Proto-Indo-European with that of Niger-Congo, in which Yoruba is one of its languages. Here are
some articles available for review from Campbell-Dunn:

ETRUSCAN

The Etruscan Decipherment

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN
 Comparative Linguistics: Indo-European and Niger-Congo
Note: this is an Adobe Acrobat document (817kb download)

MINOAN LINEAR A

Black Classics
o What is Black Classics?
o The Pelasgians
o Art
o Culture
o Language
Linear A and Niger-Congo
Note: this is an Adobe Acrobat document (355kb download)

With these connections, too detailed to mention here, they could be right and are misapplying the data
trying to associate the concepts with Europe as an indigenous creation when it is in fact the other way
around. As Campbell-Dunn notes on Palasgian art http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/gc_dunn/art.html :

“The use of white paint on women, after initiation, is seen on Minoan representations of women,
but not young girls, whereas men are painted red-brown. Minoan men wear the African
codpiece, which leaves the scrotum uncovered, still worn by the Moba of West Africa. Minoan
painting derives its technique and motifs from Africa. The Minoan palaces are based on Yoruba
palaces”

Your other comments in that section doesn’t make sense in light of the evidence. You, or the proposed
Eurocentrists, would have to demonstrate for me how the Greeks managed to “teach” their philosophy
to the Dogon and the Yoruba, who are in separate areas of West Africa, yet neglect to pass on this
information to all of the other ethnic groups in between or surrounding these groups. Unless one is
willing to argue that the Greeks “sailed” into the middle of Nigeria, or “sailed” in the middle of the
Bandiagara cliffs, I won’t take such challenges seriously. Either way it goes, you would either have to
argue the Greeks came to the West Africa or the Greeks met them in the Nile Valley. Either way one
would try to argue it, they would be proving my point one way or the other.

ROBIN: Good advice but you have STILL not demonstrated how the shape of Horus leads to the Diagram
of the Law of Opposites.

ASAR: So now that we have demonstrated the impossibility of Greeks introducing these concepts to
Africans, let’s get back to the debate at hand. I have already argued that the signs adopted by the
Greeks, as expressed through Plato and Aristotle, are in fact representations of ancient Egyptian
concepts. The diagram under discussion is the Greek misrepresentation of African concepts as expressed
in the following image:
 Aristotle’s Four Humors

Here is a variation of the diagram dealing with the same teachings:

http://www.library. umass.edu/ benson/jbgcalt. html.

The added outer rings are the author’s addition to the image. But the core is an original.

The difference here is that the elements and color representations are off in comparison to the African
versions, just like in our example between Bes and Priapus. As noted in the pics above, the “four
humors” can be represented as either a circle demarcated in four sections or as a square within a
square.
 Kongo

Musoni - water (conception)

Kala - fire (initiating act of formation)
Tukula - earth (grounding, solidified in purpose) [Nganga - doer, master, specialist]
Lemba - wind (death stage - as death is the ultimate process of "change" - as wind causes things that
were here before, not to be here the same way - think hurricane).
Demonstrating, using the Kongo cosmology as told by Fu-Kiau (1991), that either a circle or “square” can represent
the same symbol. They are both 360 degrees.

In The Pale Fox, Griaule and Dieterlen describes the basic approach of creating using the first symbol in
this section called The Womb of All Signs which represents the God Amma’s “egg.” The approach
includes four phases, stages, of development that applies to ANY creative project: whether it be a
creative act of Amma or an undertaking of man, including the building of a dwelling or town. Just like
the Egyptians divided their state into “upper and lower,” so do the Dogon. Not only that, they also
represent “upper and lower” with color representations: red and white. The red color symbolizes
success in cattle herding and the white color represents success in agriculture.

As Dr K. Bunseki Fu-Kiau notes in African Cosmology of the Bantu Kongo (1991:38), “Nothing in the daily
life of Kongo society is outside of its cosmological practices.” I argue that this is a strongly held premise
and practice in every single indigenous African society; including the ancient Egyptian. As we can see
with the Dogon, the designs of dwelling places and towns are built on the model and stages of the
cosmology associated with Amma’s egg. It is no different in the Kongo as this symbol (the Dikenga) also
represents dwelling places and even the WOMB (like Amma’s womb) (see also Dr. Fu-Kiau’s Mbongi
2007:46).

Keep in mind the association with the above signs/symbols with the concepts of human development,
wombs, and dwelling places (houses or towns). This is real important as one examines the Egyptian sign

for TOWN or DWELLING PLACE: - given as NIW-T.

As Ferg Somo noted in his essay NIWT: ‘The Womb’, The Fortification, and Part II to the essay, the
Egyptian word NIWT is actually a Kiswahili-Bantu word pronounced UAENIWE which means: the people
themselves, inhabitants of a town, householders, village owners, occupants. It derives from the word
UWA or UA which means: a house and an enclosure, courtyard, fence, backyard, open court behind the
house. The plural form of the word NYUWA or NIUWA matches the Egyptian form NIW-t (with the
feminine ending t).

NIW-T
As Ferg notes in essay II:

[-ENIE→ having, possessing]

[-ENIEWE→ expressing identity, distinctiveness, personality of a
person]
[MWENIEWE→ Himself, Owner, Possessor, → Used as MWENIEJI →
himself, owner, master, householder, citizen, inhabitant, native]
[UA+ENIEWE, (plural) derived from WA+ENIEWE→ WENIEJI →
‘(they) the people themselves’ owners, masters, householders, citizens of
a town/village, inhabitants of a town or natives of a town/village]

We have to ask ourselves, why is the same symbol for a dwelling place the same among the Dogon, the

Egyptians and the Kongo - ? Why are all of these symbols associated with families and human
beings? Why are all of these signs associated with architectural development? Why are each of these
symbols, including the ones given by Plato and Aristotle, associated with stages of development or
processes?

As J.L Benson notes in his section The Evolutionary Aspects of Colors, Chapter III concerning the diagram,
he states:

The Four Elements theory can be the starting point for understanding how Greek painting, and for that
matter all Greek art, took form. First a generalization: space divides easily into four parts, e.g., the
cardinal directions, whereas time lends itself into division by three, e.g., past, present and future. But in
the special case of the four elements as primary components of the planetary organism, an evolutionary
sequence, that is, a time factor, is implicitly spread out in space. This sequence corresponds to the major
stages of cosmic evolution, whether one is thinking on the exoteric level of modern science or on the
modern esoteric level of anthroposophy. This latter level is more closely parallel to the thinking of the
Greeks.

Just as fire, air, water and earth are notations for four dynamic processes, so they also suggest - in
that order - an approximate picture of the origin of the universe, that is, from warmth - even if one
insists on this as a kind of primal energy which, by means of a "big bang", released a tremendous heat -
cooling down into gases, condensing into liquids and finally partially solidifying. To this order of events
correspond the colors of two phases of the physicality series (Illustration 12 B-D): air and earth, provided
one thinks of the color sequence referred to in terms of visual density: white, yellow, red, black. Two
directions of thought connect with this observation and must now be pursued.

“This latter level is more closely parallel to the thinking of the Greeks?” Was it actually Greek thought?
How so when the two people these concepts are attributed studied in Egypt? How so, when the diagram
is an Egyptian diagram that marks human development, the creation of the universe, plans for cities,
towns and homes; just like in the Dogon, Yoruba, Zulu and Dogon traditions? How can this be when this
symbol is before the Greeks:
 I am Khepera in the morning, I am Râ at noon, and I am Temu at even.

It should be noted that the far left side of this diagram represents the transition stage which
universally across Africa is symbolized by the WIND (the goddess Oya in Yoruba). The bottom, just like
every where else in Africa, symbolizes the “underworld” or the “realm of the ancestors” as can be seen
in the image above. This is represented by WATER (Yemoja in the Yoruba). The far right quadrant
symbolizes birth or coming into being - EARTH (Ogun – form). And universally across Africa, the sun at its
peak at noon time represents, FIRE (Shango in Yoruba).

You and know the following to be common knowledge among Egyptologists: The dead are buried facing
the south (direction heading back to the ancestral quadrant); Burials typical were on the west side of the
Nile (the countries dividing line). Rebirth was associated with the east (akhet). Power and maturity was
associated with RA who we know represented the noontime sun.

Again, what is a “philosophy” for the Greeks is a living reality/practice for the Egyptians and other
African people. The “diagram of opposites” exists in ever aspect of Egyptian art, philosophy and ritual. If
YOU can’t see it, then that’s fine. At this point you have no excuse. Read the material I have given you
throughout this discussion and come back and try to make your argument. Try to argue how this symbol
made its way into Zulu, Kongo, Yoruba and Dogon cosmology via the Greeks who never visited Nigeria or
Mali. Demonstrate for me how Libyans could have introduced these concepts to ALL of these African
nations and then demonstrate these ideas in ANY Libyan thought in its GREEK form (as they borrowed
from Egyptians). And after that, tell me where the Yoruba got the idea to build pyramids:
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