From: Okenwa R. Nwosu, M.D. <okenwanwosu@covad.net>
Date: 29 December 2010 17:27
Subject: [NaijaPolitics] DE-NOSING THE SPHINXES: DELIBERATE ACTS TO USURP HERITAGE OF EGYPT?
5,000 year-old Sphinx at Giza with nose and left face blown off to destroy its Negroid features |
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Giza Sphinx profile still retains the characteristic prognathic features of the Negroid race |
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Even the sphinx on display at entrance to Cairo Museum is not spared the de-nosing treatment |
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Sphinx standing at Pompey's Pillar in Alexandria, on Mediterranean seashore, is also de-nosed |
Umuibe,
Until recently, anthropometry played a crucial role in ascribing racial background to individuals. Skin pigment alone has become an insufficient parameter to demarcating racial groups, especially in a multiracial society like the US and apartheid South Africa, for example. Anthropomorphic features such as the nasal bones and relationship of jaw bone with rest of the skull as well as thickness of lips are well known criteria for delineating one's racial background even when skin color prove to be inconclusive. Some opinion leaders have in the past gone further to even ascribe intellectual capacity of individuals to these anthropomorphic features.
Egypt, due to its geographical location, has historically between at the crossroads of human migrations through the ages. The Nile valley has been dominated and occupied by racial groups of African, South European and West Asian backgrounds. The earliest settlements in this region was as a result of desiccation of the Sahara from end of the last Ice Age. It is, therefore, obvious that African racial groups, who inhabited the once wet Sahara region were the first group to settle in and dominate the Nile valley. Early Egyptian civilization was the handiwork of our African ancestors. They built monuments that represented their physical attributes, cultural orientation and beliefs.
One of the oldest surviving Egyptian monuments, the Sphinx at Giza, was hewn out of limestone that abound in the area. As is still evident today, facial features of the sphinx's head look exactly like my ancestor's. But the Nile valley had acted as a magnet for populations from Asia Minor, southern Europe and the Near East over the millennia. Today's Egyptian racial mix is a potpourri of population groups that originate from the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe, especially in the Nile Delta region. The racial mix gets darker and more Negroid as one moves south toward the border with Sudan for obvious reasons.
Racism never manifested socioeconomically on a significant scale until emergence of Western Europe as a global power to be reckoned with. Perhaps, the desire for global conquest spurred the exploitation of racial and cultural differences with potential victims to the levels that were unprecedented. Post-Renaissance European opinion leaders had no doubt whatsoever in their minds about the inferiority of non-White races, particularly Black Africans.
One can then imagine what Napoleon Bonaparte felt like inside himself when he stood before the larger-than-life Negroid-headed statue hobnobbing with the Great Pyramid of Giza which was then acknowledged as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Could it be that the look-alikes of the Sphinx's head could also claim responsibility for building the Great Pyramid nearby? That possibility must have been too much for the quintessential megalomaniac of Europe to swallow during his army's 3-year (1798-1801) military expedition to the Nile valley. To obliterate such a possibility in his consciousness and for eternity, Napoleon ordered for an artillery shell to be fired into the sphinx's face and blew the nose and contiguous parts of its face to smithereens.
Perhaps, Napoleon could have simply repeated what some others before him had already done elsewhere along the Nile valley. Napoleon's bravado two hundred years ago still reverberates throughout the Nile valley, from Upper Nile to the Mediterranean seashore. It is indeed a rare find to see human-headed sphinxes, especially the very ancient ones, whose noses are still intact and in situ. Without the nose, the telltale evidence of racial background represented by the masterfully sculptured sphinxes would not be so glaring anymore. Incidentally, many sphinxes where made in solid granite and it, therefore, took more than a casual effort to knock off their noses. But someone did put out the sweat and muscle power to get the de-nosing job done. It must have been that important …. Or isn't it?
Egypt is now universally claimed as the origin of Western Civilization. We are talking about the Egyptian civilization founded, at least initially, by those whose noses and other facial features underscore their authentic African ancestry.
Okenwa.
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