Kemet was renamed Egypt after Greece conquered Kemet in 332 BCE and then Romans conquered Greece in 30BCE. After Greece conquered Kemet, this area was renamed "Aiguptos" in Greek which is translated "Egypt" in English. Generally, when American historians refer to Ancient Egypt, they are really referring to Kemet.
English as a language didn’t come into existence until mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants of Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
This is worth remembering because many of us are trained to say Ancient Egypt when we should habituate ourselves to say Kemet when we are talking about pharaohs or dynasties from this period of history. Language makes a difference to our minds and can trigger power connections that have laid dormant for generations.
These power connections can be the pathway to your next big idea that can change the trajectory of your life or your children’s lives. Being intentional in understanding history from this vantage point and being willing to speak it helps connect your body and mind to the power and authority of your ancestral heritage.
Hatshepsut, a female Pharaoh came to the throne in Kemet in 1478 BCE. She was the fifth pharaoh in the Eighteenth Dynasty of Kemet and currently to our knowledge, the second confirmed female pharaoh after Sobekneferu. To this day, people study her temple and the art on the wall trying to understand the greatness of who she and her people were. If others feel the need to study her and her people even now, shouldn’t we even the more?
A recent study of the art on the wall of Hatshepsut’s temple was performed by University of Warsaw archaeologist Anastasiia Stupko-Lubczynska and colleagues. They did an in depth analysis of the art on the walls of the temple and they discovered that the art was created by the collective efforts of master-sculptors, artists and novices. Their in depth analysis of the art show that the work on the walls were done in phases by different artists with different skill levels. The study showed the art work was done as a “team” effort. Stupko-Lubczynska reported in Antiquity, “the wig can be awfully done, and in the same figure, the face is perfect.” She further said, “maybe the master artisans came in at the end to finish the figure.”
Wow! We need to start asking ourselves why is it that others can make suppositions about our history but we are afraid to. Many of us are so unaware of our actual black or African history that we are unaware that there are any suppositions that need to be made. We are so used to taking what they say as facts that we have become unwilling to suppose anything different.
For example, by training me to use the term Egypt as a fact of history and visualize all representations of beauty and power within Egypt as white, I was precluded the opportunity to build a strong inner constitution about being black with a direct connection to a rich and powerful ancestral heritage. I was taught my forefathers were slaves, brought here on slave ships, given human freedoms by the American government through the Civil Rights Movement and given a chance of eternal salvation after death by only accepting Jesus Christ as my savior in life. I was taught to view my body and my being as an afterthought.
I was trained to view all of history through English lenses. And I have been trying to fit my entire existence within those lenses every since until one day I accepted that they just don’t fit me.
I searched for something more than what I was taught. I sensed a scream from my ancestors shouting, “get to know me.” And my journey to know Kemet led to a journey of knowing myself.
I was almost 50 years old before I had ever heard of Kemet. Kemet was not in any of my history books and I honestly thought all Egyptian females looked like Elizabeth Taylor. To be very honest, I didn’t even consciously realize until a few years ago that Egypt was actually in Africa. So when I started learning about Kemet, I literally was in a state of cognitive dissonance. I went from angry to sad to eventually empowered. I couldn’t change the past, so it did me no good to remain angry and sad. Instead, I chose the path of power by eagerly and willingly deconstructing my old learning to learn. I became a learner and I became willing to disrupt any knowledge or belief that didn’t advance the construction of a new inner constitution of being a black-female-human-being living in a world of abundance and opportunity.
The people of Kemet perfected the science of astronomy, architecture, and mathematics- they were not primitive. They also developed government, law, social sciences, and religions. We have these ancestral genes running through our veins and we must remember ourselves.
The people of Kemet created the first calendar but to my knowledge, Kemetic people have not ever been credited with this invention.
Even what us attorneys call “the scales of justice” dates back to Kemet when the Goddess Maat weighed the heart on a scale. Even the writings on the temple walls that is actually called netcher in Kemetic language translates in English as nature but we were only taught that it was called hieroglyphics.
It’s one thing if the people who built America wasn’t aware of the rich and vast knowledge of the Kemetic people, but its another thing to know that they knew but consciously chose not to share this knowledge in the textbooks they trained me to believe was history.
Why not teach black people the the history of the Kemetic people? Why not teach me that Egypt was called Kemet and most pharaohs were of dark or caramel skin color?
Even when it comes to black people’s religions, many of us were taught to trust 100% in a Jesus Christ. Never considering that Christ, whether you believe he was real or not, didn’t even come into existence until after Kemet was overtaken by Greece and Roman raiders. By doing this, our desire to know our own history, which in turn helps us to know ourselves, was voluntarily severed with communion because after that we only yearned to serve Jesus Christ and have our own individual relationship with Jesus Christ to earn or ticket to heaven.
This in turn made us a people who became more self-focused to get to heaven and less collectively focused to create heaven on Earth together.
The training of the black personality is diabolically genius I must say and has put us in a collective trance for centuries. But its up to us to break the trance and retrain ourselves and become knowledgeable about our history and about ourselves.
Just like the artisans and the novices in Hatshepsut’s temple worked together to create beautiful art that has lasted for millennia, it is time for us to build the collective, execute as teams, and move as units of power to create a new black personality and future. Our ancestors are calling out to us for us to break the trance and come into the knowledge of our own greater power.
WATCH THIS POWERFUL INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER FISHBURNE DISCUSSING “WHY I LEFT CHRISTIANITY” CLICK PICTURE BELOW
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