What your book should have asked is why was it the Greeks and not the Egyptians that created the modern human way of thinking? If they did have an Egyptian origin, how did they overcome the burden of that stunted dead-end civilization?
There is evidence that before the arrival of Indo-European Greek speakers the aborigines of what would become Greece might have come not from Egypt but from Libya and any similarity might be due to the fact that the original Egyptians also may have been cattle herders from around Libya. I have read that may be why the ancient Canary Islanders also had what seems somewhat like Egyptian traditions (mummies, step pyramids).
That is probably a more accurate explanation than the Egyptians being colonizers, something that there is no evidence of them ever doing.
I read your book Richard and it was poor scholarship.
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That is probably a more accurate explanation than the Egyptians being colonizers, something that there is no evidence of them ever doing. >>
Dear Destro:
Did you really read my book? Your post suggests otherwise.
You appear to have no familiarity with my arguments or even with my fundamental worldview (which is both Europhilic and Hellenophilic). When you lecture me on the superiority of classical Greek culture over Egyptian, you are beating a straw man -- something I think you would realize, had you actually read Black Spark.
Instead of attacking my book, you appear to be attacking some mirage of extreme and semiliterate "Afrocentrism," perhaps gleaned from reading a few of the more pig-headed scholarly sound bites quoted in mass-media discussions of Martin Bernal's Black Athena.
You state that there is "no evidence" of the Egyptians being colonizers. That statement alone would get you an "F" in Egyptology 101.
Had you actually read Black Spark, White Fire, you might still disagree with me, but you would at least be sufficiently well-informed to know that:
1. The Egyptians conquered and colonized virtually all of their neighbors, most extensively during the New Kingdom or "Empire" period, and had a well-developed system of imperial administration - a fact which no Egyptologist denies,
2. Certain pharaohs claimed suzerainty -- in writing -- over islands in the Aegean Sea. Conventional scholars dismiss these claims as mere boasts, but, unlike you, they are at least aware that the claims were made. They interpret the evidence their own way, but they do not deny the existence of such evidence, as you do.
If I had to bet, I'd say you never read my book. At most, you may have glanced at some of the promo copy on Amazon.com.