Onwuchekwa Jemie
Having exhaustively demonstrated that the Pharaonic Egyptians were black, Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop argued that “the moral fruit of [Egyptian] civilization is to be counted among the assets of the Black world. Instead of presenting itself to history as an insolvent debtor, that Black world is the very initiator of the ‘western’ civilization flaunted before our eyes today.” –[Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, p. xiv]
This essay presents a sampling of culture items (concepts, techniques, tools, symbols, artefacts, etc.) which the Greeks and Hebrews learned, borrowed or plagiarized from Black Egypt (Kemet) and passed on to modern Europe. IV: Plagiarisms in the Bible of the Hebrews
A) The Proverbs of King Solomon and The Teachings of Amenemope: Texts of the Teachings of Amenemope date back to Dyn. XX, i.e. to the 12th and 11th centuries BC. This was one or two centuries before King Solomon, 10th century BC, the putative author of the Book of Proverbs, and some six centuries before the Book was actually compiled in the 6th century BC, some four centuries after Solomon. Yet, as is displayed in the table below,
” We find in the book of Proverbs literally dozens of sayings to which there are parallels, sometimes almost verbal [i.e. word-for-word], in the Teachings of Amenemope as well as, though to a less extent, in other Egyptian Wisdom writings. Among these Psalms, too, i.e. those which partake of a Wisdom character, there are also parallels; to a less extent, but also noticeably, in the book of Deuteronomy. To illustrate this fully would take up many pages; we shall, therefore, restrict ourselves to some of the most interesting parallels between the book of Proverbs and The Teachings of Amenomope. Among the various collections of wise sayings gathered together in the former is a short one comprised in xxii. 17–xxiii. 14; it is to this that we now draw attention; the most profitable way of illustrating the parallels will be to place the relative passages side by side”. 62 [62 W.O.E. Oesterley, “Egypt and Israel”, in S.R.K. Glanville, ed., The Legacy of Egypt, London: Oxford University Press, 1942, pp. 246-248.] * [NASB] = New American Standard Bible; [AKJV] = Authorized King James Version Commenting on this extreme similarity, the Encyclopaedia Britannica observed:
“The Hebrew author apparently used this work [The Instruction of Amenemope] as a model – the Egyptian work comprises 30 chapters, and the Hebrew text refers to its “thirty sayings” – and as one of the sources in compiling his own anthology.63 [63 Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1993) Macropedia, Vol. 14, pp. 947-948.]
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An African scholar, noting the same extreme similarities, has said: “Paradoxically, enough of Amenemope’s wisdom has descended to the world and Western civilizations in the Bible’s ‘Book of Proverbs’ and it is attributed not to Amenemope, the Egyptian sage, but to King Solomon of Israel. How did this wrong attribution come about? It is now widely acknowledged by competent and unprejudiced Egyptologists and archeologists that the Wisdom of Amenemope was translated into Hebrew, it was read by Hebrews, and an important part of it found itself into the Old Testament’s Hebrew Book of Proverbs.” 64 [64 J.V.B. Danquah, “Ancient Egyptian Systems of Thought”, in Joseph Okpaku et. al., eds, The Arts and Civilization of Black and African Peoples, Vol. 2., Lagos: CBAAC, 1986, p. 42.]
B) Psalm 104 and the “Praise of Aton”: Akhenaton, the composer of the “Praise of Aton”, was a 14th c. BC Pharaoh of Dyn. XVIII. He was the earliest monotheist known in history. David, the putative composer of the Psalms, was King of Israel in the 10th century BC, some four centuries later. Actually, the Psalms, whoever in fact composed them, were given their final form in the 6th century BC, some eight centuries after Akhenaton. Commenting on Pharaoh Akhenaton’s hymn, “Praise of Aton”, James Henry Breasted said: “The one hundred and fourth Psalm of the Hebrews shows a notable similarity to our hymn both in the thought and the sequence….”65 [65 James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt, p. 371.]
