Dear Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali,
This is only part 1 of my reply and it only addresses your addressing my humble axx as "Cornelius the Wise"
I'll get back to you fully about Hammurabi, Canaanite influence, Mesopotamian myths, and especially deal with your sweet little poem
" I am chosen
For now, here is part 1:
Here it is : A list of people known as "the Wise"
No coward am I, at least not verbally, but I have been erstwhile inspired by the hyperbolic Julius Eto who I'm sure was not flirting when he greeted our precious Professor Toyin Falola with this valedictory salutation as an opening gambit "Very dear Prof. Falola " Who knows, perhaps he will be gathering momentum in the days ahead and he may soon be promoting our precious to " Most Dearest Professor Falola" at which point even a less dear professor or a Nigerian President may be moved to reply,
" Yes. Do you need something? What do you want? ?"
About the wise, once upon a time, one of my best friends was Akintola Wyse - we were classmates from 1958-1965 and roommates at college, 1965-1866) ( I used to lecture him about the meaning of his name, "Wise"
In 1960, we discussed intensely what Touchstone the clown says (in As You Like It)
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." The heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open..."
Of course, were you to address Cornelius Ignoramus correctly, I'm sure that he would gladly wear the crown.
Titles like wise, clown, etc remind me I wrote to one of our fellows as follows. " BTW, I have no objection to our pan-African USA -Africa Dialogue Series being so dominated by Nigerian domestic issues but I'm missing the participation of folks like Pablo Idahosa, Kwame Zulu Shabazz, even the pompous Besserwisser John Mukum Mbaku Esq. from Cameroon posing as the world's most omniscient legal brain. As for that other clown suffering from illusions of grandeur, currently wiping Oga Falola's arxxx, the less said the better. "
I haven't heard from him since. No problem . Since that excerpt does not provide an explanatory context, well , it's extracted from this that has been slightly redacted, so, you be the judge:
"Wishing You & Her Majesty a well-deserved Shabbat Shalom
and bon appétit at the smorgasbord in Kingdom Come
I used to think that it was only Sierra Leoneans and Mama Queen ( Victoria and descendants) that love to award titles. In Sierra Leone, it used to be titles galore, all day long: Sir Samuel Lewis, Sir Ernest Samuel Beoku-Betts, Sir Salako Ambrosius Benka-Coker, Sir Milton Margai, Sir Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston, Sir Albert Margai (they say that his purchase of that knighthood cost the country at least one mighty diamond), Sir Samuel Bankole Jones...
And then there is the preponderant tendency of academic accolades outside of the academies, the citadels of learning, most loved and revered but not always deserved by those with little or no brains: not surprisingly, one of the first things that Ernest Bai Koroma did after ascending to the political throne of Sierra Leone was to raise the salaries of he himself, his ministers, his members of parliament (so that none of them would complain) and then to award himself a long-coveted Honorary Doctorate, to earn him the missing, requisite respect at home and at the many summits at which he would be mingling with the true academics and literati of the international community.
Just for the record, my first real encounter with the Ghanaian Akpeteshie was at George Nelson Preston's wedding, his tying the knot/ jumping the broom with his beloved Akosua, which my Better Half and I had been invited to celebrate at Twifo Hemang. You remember Kerouac with reference to tea, saying that, "The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy."?
Not so with AKPETESHIE! For me at Twifo Hemang , for starters, the FIRST SIP , was a burning sensation of satisfaction as it hit – pierced the inner throat ( years later I found the same satisfaction with Cointreau – instantaneously, it makes you wanna holler or sing)
Achtung, achtung, with AKPETESHIE the serenity is short-lived, the gladness and madness come together, and the ecstasy arrives at the moment when you spontaneously pass out. At George's wedding, I saw this happening right in front of my eyes, one after the other I witnessed some of the local guests passing out and being taken out on a stretcher – apparently, all this was quite normal. As for me, I survived, I did not pass out, but never in my life have I downed so much coca-cola – this was to dilute the intoxicating effects. My Better Half, she had decided to stick to Johnny Walker, whereas I had opted to stick with the real men - the seasoned drinkers, not the boys.
My second real initiation into the rites of Ghanaian Akpeteshie was soon after the final of the 1971 African Cup of Champions Clubs at KUMASI where Asante Kotoko played Engelbert of Zaire to a 1-1 draw, after which we (Better Half & Me) marched to the Kingsway Hotel and finished all the beer there and later on hooked up with some Sierra Leone friends - (Samuel Oju King –Sierra Leonean bassman for The Echoes who were stationed at Kumasi) and there imbibed more Akpeteshie, on top of the previous Star Beer.
Fact is whether you name it Omolé in Sierra Leone, or Akpeteshie in Ghana , o r Ogogoro in Nigeria, as Shakespeare would have said, the same alcoholic beverage by any other name would be as equally intoxicating, and when I woke up that morning (and to this day) all I could remember was that Asante Kotoko had given Engelbert of Zaire a real drubbing.
In those days and right now too, my favourite is Palmy. That's the one I miss most. And coconut juice. And my rose garden. I miss Ghana, I miss Sierra Leone, and I miss Nigeria.
About the Sabuni affair - if it happened at all, then it's possible that the Congolese wench must have seduced the Great Fredrik, or Fredrik the Great may have been singing this kind of sweet Soukous in her ear, in Perfect Lingala:
"Jah knows how much I've tried
The truth I cannot hide,
To keep you satisfied
True love that now exist
Is the love I can't resist
My own personal prayer during Brother Obama's presidency was that they (the Republicans or the racists) would not succeed in sending a Monica Lewinsky on him – especially not a White Monica Lewinsky – then Trump would have been publicly calling for the Brother to be deported back to Kenya…
Much more upsetting of course, is the criminal activities of Nigeria's predatory sex professors. I wonder if that kind of dilemma is being faced in the inter-racial context of power-relations at universities in the United States
BTW, I have no objection to our pan-African USA -Africa Dialogue Series being so dominated by Nigerian domestic issues but I'm missing the participation of folks like Pablo Idahosa, Kwame Zulu Shabazz, even the pompous Besserwisser John Mukum Mbaku Esq. from Cameroon posing as the world's most omniscient legal brain. As for that other clown suffering from illusions of grandeur, currently wiping Oga Falola's arxxx, the less said the better.
My real fear is that what's seen as the Raila Odinga sell-out could also happen in Sierra Leone where the opposition when not sitting on their hands seem to have taken a leave of absence and resorted to some part-time jiving on social media.
I'm afraid that all of the above is far from Sabbath table talk, as is indeed picking upå the pen or pounding the keyboard. Anyway, it's only your own sense of humour in speech and writing that has permitted me certain liberties
Best Regards,
from yours truly,
--Cornelius the Wise,You really got me wrong. In fact I think that this particular law is quite reasonable - though not divine.
Speaking about Hammurabi, there are lots of toxic laws among the 282:
# 15. If a man aid a male or female slave of the palace, or a male or female slave of a freeman to escape from the city gate, he shall be put to death.
Be careful about what you are defending. Of course you can blame it on Canaanite influence in the-devil-made- me do- it mode of thinking.
Having said that let me point to one of the reasonable ones:
# 35 If a man buy from an officer the cattle or sheep which the king has given to that officer, he shall forfeit his money
BTW we are all chosen people.I am chosenYou are chosenHe, she or it is chosenWe are chosenThey are chosen
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.netChief Editor- "Africa Update"www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African StudiesUniversity of Texas at Austin2019 Distinguished Africanist AwardNew York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2019 10:23 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Compensation mattersPlease be cautious: **External Email**
I suppose that it's no coincidence that you'll also find the sun, the moon and the stars there. There is common sense and a divine spark of wisdom that animates all of us living souls. Innately and instinctively we know that some things are right and some things are wrong.
There is the analogy of the four sons...
What Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali has probably found in her Hammurabi is the principle of retaliation, a feature of the corrupt Canaanite religions and codes of ethics that pervaded that area. Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali must understand that Hashem has communicated His legislations through his chosen servant Moses, in order to save Moses and his people from being corrupted by the culture of their neighbours and this they do by distancing themselves from any corrupt system. With the Almighty as the King of Israel, Israel is to be governed by the laws of the Almighty's Kingdom in which those who acknowledge Hashem as king, live, because Israel - all Israel, past, present and future is indeed destined to be "a kingdom of priests, a holy people "
So what you find in Judaism is the equality principle of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" - that the servant's vulnerable eye and his employer's eye are equal, so are the rich man's tooth and the poor man's tooth - that in Judaic justice all eyes and all teeth are equal before the law, so to speak. This principle has never been interpreted to mean cruel, physical retaliation, that the victim should gorge out his assailant's eye – it has always been interpreted to mean compensation, that such injury should be compensated.
--On Thu, 29 Aug 2019 at 14:43, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.emeagwali@gmail.com> wrote:
This legal instruction about animal trespass into a field or vineyard, emerges from the Babylonian, Akkadian and Hebrew context, and although it may not be one of the legal stipulations of Hammurabi, the king of Babylon who claimed that he was inspired by the sun god, it surely sounds like one.--That it should end up in the "holy books" is interesting.
Professor Gloria Emeagwaliafricahistory.net
Sent from my iPhoneCorrections – should read: Wherever it can be established that these breaches have occurred and by whom, isn't it only fair that the affected farmers receive compensation? Some mechanism has to be in place to ensure that this is carried out - human beings are surely more precious to the Almighty than the bovine species. So, these kinds of disputes/ transgressions could be resolved without any recourse to violence, reprisals, bloodshed...
--On Thu, 29 Aug 2019 at 00:21, Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com> wrote:
--In the wake of the salacious & nauseous sex-scandal details about a predatory professor, his sixteen-year-old female undergraduate victim, and the equally serious accusations levelled at what someone has unkindly headlined "Biafrauds or Nigerians: Cyber fraud suspects in USA", the erstwhile beleaguered, all-purpose scapegoat indiscriminately being accused of every imaginable crime under the Nigerian heavens, i.e. our dear Fulani Herdsmen Brethren, who used to occupy so much Naija media space have receded into the background, somewhat, although, perhaps, the respite from the media blaze is only temporarily, even if their alleged pillage, kidnappings, murder, rape, church arsons, obviously being committed by some non-Fulani scoundrels, continues unabated all over the Federation, because the real miscreants are not being apprehended by Naija Law enforcement as they should be...
In the meantime, we are to suppose that there will always be one or two incidents of Fulani cattle straying into /romping over other peoples farm property etc. Last night I was reminded that these type of perennial problems have always existed in agricultural societies, so it was not unexpected to read in Shemot 22 : 4 // Exodus 22: 5
"If a man leads his animals into a field or a vineyard, or lets his animal loose and it eats in another's field, the best of his field or the best of his vineyard he shall pay."
Wherever it can be established that these breeches have occurred and by who isn't it only fair that the affected farmers receive compensation? Some mechanism has to be in place to ensure that this is carried out - human beings are surely more precious than to the Almighty than the bovine species. SO these kinds of disputes/ transgressions can be resolved without any recourse to violence, reprisals, bloodshed...
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