Writing in Egypt evolved along the Nsibidi example you cite. It took time (millenia) to transform from pictograms to ideogram and was the exclusive preserve of the priestly cast as in Nsibidi you cite, exclusiness which followed the priestly class of the Moses train to the promised land and the derivative priestly class of Islam.
All of these prove tbat historical processes and historical forces are largely similar world wide.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Date: 03/09/2017 22:14 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Writing Systems
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyin.adepoju@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info Thanks for all contributions.
The sad truth is that no other form of expression can replace a portable object, inscribed with text, also known as a book.
I remain disturbed in spite of explanations given as to the scarcity of a book culture in classical African cultures, beyond the example of Ethiopia.
Inscriptions on cloth, on human and animal bodies, on walls, on sand etc cannot equal the cognitive range enabled by the book.A relatively permanent store of information , a point of reference which others can readily build upon through commentary and expansion etc.
The most famous oracle in the world is perhaps the Chinese I Ching, an example of text divination, based on verbal texts, the texts of the I Ching being nowhere near in scope the textual corpus of the Yoruba Ifa, yet one can easily trace the history of I Ching back for centuries, examining the various developments of the text extant today as well as the various intertwinings between the oracle and Chinese thought.
With Ifa, however, documentation in the relatively permanent, portable form represented by books did not begin until the 20th century, using the alphabetic system and paper brought by the West. The same is likely to be true for the variants of the larger system to which Ifa belongs, from the Igbo Afa to the Benin Oguega, the Fa of Dahomey, Afa of the Ewe of Ghana, if I recall accurately the ethnic origins of these variants.
Why?
In India, the Rig Veda, the Mahabarata and the Ramayana, foundational ancient texts, all carefully recorded as books. Among other examples.
A civilization that does not appreciate the absolute necessity of the book makes a grave mistake. The book,whether physical or digital, a page or thousands, but all based on the representation of speech in terms of coherent, sequential script, is the ultimate method developed so far by humanity for the preservation and transmission of knowledge.
Do pre-Western contact African texts in Arabic necessarily represent classical African thought? Are they not better understood as fruits of infusion from another civilization, inspired by its religion, Islam, rather than developing the level of endogeneity represented by ideas developed primarily by people living on the African continent, even if at times in dialogue with other civilizations?
The book represents an effort to escape from the limitations of human memory, the vicissitudes of time, the varieties of space, a time capsule relatively independent of the vagaries of material existence, facilitating the transmission of knowledge across space and time.
Why did the Egyptian and Ethiopian achievements in widespread writing and its attendant book culture not permeate the rest of Africa?
Why did many African civilizations rely so heavily on memorization, on inscriptions on materials not readily amenable to the recording of density of thought facilitated by the book- cloth, the human body, architecture, artistic artifacts?
Why did other widely dispersed civilizations, from Asia to Europe, develop a culture of the book that spanned the continent, but that of Africa is more localized than pervasive?
Was it because of conservative attitudes to knowledge, suppressing innovation? Could these attitudes have included a fixation on the esoteric possibilities of knowledge, accessible to only a select few?
The Nsibidi example nags me. A wonderful system the expansive understanding of which has not gone beyond the memories of Ekpe initiates in Nigeria's Cross River and in Cameroon, yet a central currency in history and today in particular, is ideas, various vantage points for viewing the world.
thanks
toyin
On 3 September 2017 at 21:51, 'Patrick Effiboley' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Dear all,
I like very much the post on African Writing Systems emailed to us by sister Gloria and I also appreciate the reaction from Toyin Adepoju. He raises two fundamental questions:
1- "Why is it easy to point to books in classical Asian cultures, for example, books produced at the time of the existence of those cultures, but difficult, if not impossible to find the same for knowledge produced using African writing systems, apart from Egypt'' and
2- '' Was it the absence of a means of making the equivalent of parchment or paper? Animal hides could have been used, wall inscriptions, etc as in Egypt, could have been more evident''.
In my view, the answer to the questions lays into how Europe got into contact with Africa in early 15th century through missionaries whose mission was to disseminate Christian religion and later on colonialism. Then every cultural production from the African indigenous societies were demolished. When we make the parallels with African art works, early voyage reports indicated how they were firstly burned in the first decades of evangelization before being exported to Lisbon, Roma, and other European capitals through cabinets of curiosities and later on ethnographic museums (cf. Maurice Gaudelier, Robert Cornevin, etc. on the history of the kingdom of Kongo).There are chance that the keys to access the knowledge inbeded in these writings been burnt with other materials or that archives in these European institutions might contain original materials that could help decode them.In the case of Egypt as Toyin was referring to, I can make two comments. The first is that, given the fact that Europe wanted to find the roots of her civilizations in Ancient Egypt, she tried to preserve most of the materials there in contrary to what happened in Sub-Saharan Africa. The most interesting is that we know that ''la pierre de Rosette '' that helped decode the hieroglyphs were discovered by French Napoleon missions but sent to London for analysis and the British kept it for their own. It is since decades in the British Museum.Thank you to professor Ayele Bekerie for giving us an opportunity to learn about his research and this interesting aspect of African heritage.PatrickDr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEYAssistant Professor,Department of History and Archaeology, University of Abomey-CalaviAndrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand,Johannesburg,(2014-2016)
De : Victor Okafor <vokafor@emich.edu>
À : usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc : Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>; Ayele Bekerie <abekerie@gmail.com>
Envoyé le : Samedi 2 septembre 2017 23h46
Objet : Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Writing Systems
Yah let the debate rage. What a special moment for Professor Ayele Bekerie for his original contribution to knowledge!
On Sat, Sep 2, 2017 at 5:16 PM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
Thanks GE for your illuminating riposte. I had just gone through Toyins rejoinder about 30 min ago and was preparing to respond when I saw yours.
It now seems convetional for any group that lays claim to civilization to show proof that it has a writing system equal to the West in evolutionary stages or in a completed format
It is convenient to forget that the West did not always have this type of writing. People did not invent this type of writing because they did not think it was necessary for their ways of life.
I was glad that Prof. Bekerie pointed to the indigenous non Arabic and non Gregorian West African writing systems that predated both extant monotheisms in the region yet both colonialists continue to maintain the lie that they brought civilization and writing to a 'benighted' oral people.
Trust me, you do not know how many western American and European faculty still deal with us in the condescending manner undergirded by these false assumptions that when you dare to want to relate to them as equals they react in a scandalised manner (how dare you!)
Late Dr Eluyemi took me to a site in Ile-Ife in the early 80s where the religious inscriptions akin to the Ethiopian example shown in the video was carved on a rock.
As for parchment and writing I was also gratified to see welts of writings on human flesh decipherable by people in the cultures. I can read the tribal marks of many people of Nigeria (particularly Yoruba) and know where they come from. I
can read the narrative of an Abiku on their faces. When a tribal marked Ogbomoso stands in front of me Id be stupid to ask the ready question of a westerner regarding an unfamiliar person: where are you from originally? The answer is written in his face!
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>Date: 02/09/2017 21:29 (GMT+00:00)To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroup s.com>Cc: Ayele Bekerie <abekerie@gmail.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Writing Systems
Thank you for these insightful comments. I shall direct the questions to Professor Bekerie - andshare some of my thoughts on this as well.
Firstly, there is no unanimity around the world about the subject matter and content of what is written,or the format of the written, in antiquity. The idea of conveying written thoughts in a bound text is not universal.I believe that the bound text first began with Buddhist monks.
Some civilizations see the written word as a medium for documenting history while for others, as seems to be thecase of Ethiopia, spirituality and theology are the guiding force. So we have the odd case where historians may lament the absence of writtenhistorical information about a particular place in Ethiopia, while recognizing that there exist numerous written manuscripts dealing withtheology, spirituality and biblical themes, in that very locality. There may well be as many written manuscripts emanating from classical Ethiopiaas there are from ancient Egypt. You visit the hundreds of monasteries dispersed throughout that region and find countless manuscripts in each of them,from Axum to Bahir Dar, Lake Tana, Gondar, Lalibela and so on. Many are driven by religious themes andare written in Giiz (Geez) and Amharic - that we know now, may have influenced the rise of Sabaean -and not the other way around. One scholar estimated that there may be about a thousand monasteries.Some of the manuscripts are accessible to museum and monastery visitors and speakers of Giiz and Amharic.Many of the monasteries tend to have a mini-museum with various artifacts.
In the case of Nubia recall that some of its thoughts are intermingled with those of Egypt and sometimes labeled Egyptian - as is the case of some of its artifacts.Then there is the issue of the deciphering of one of the writing systems used by the Nubians, Meroitic. As in the case of the South Asian Indus script,the problem here is our ignorance of the writing system. We cannot fully decipher it.
As we shift westwards, it is important to note that one of the goals of some of the scripts such as Adinkra was clearly to convey deep thought, whilstfor others, covert and secret communication, for members only, seemed to be the principal aim - rather than expositions and socio--political narrative.This also affected the medium. Classical African thought is also embedded in Ajami.
Experts in USA Dialogue such as Prof. Fallou Ngom, can provide more scholarly details on this.
So we have:a. writings of a spiritual & esoteric natureb. secular/philosophical writings
Note also writings and inscriptions on rocks, temples, walls, cloth, metal objects, gourds, livestock, skin etc(and even sand), that may be classified as miscellaneous, tentatively, that are also importantsites of written documentation.
Professor Bekerie went into this issue in the video presentation.
Thank you for the references to Jordan Fenton, Amanda Carlson and Eli Bentor.I share with you the hope that practitioners, and others in the region would share with us" the cognitive architectures "associated with these various systems, as you elegantly stated.
(Although this discussion is about indigenous scripts, we note that in the terrainonce associated with the Malian and Songhay empires, we have about a million Arabic manuscriptswritten by Africans - and maybe an equivalent amount or more- in other parts of West, East and Central Africa.To view classical African thought you have to look there, too.)
GE
Professor Gloria EmeagwaliProfessor of History
History DepartmentCentral Connecticut State UniversityGloria Emeagwali's Documentaries onAfrica and the African Diaspora8608322815 Phone8608322804 Fax
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups .com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroup s.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2017 8:43 AM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Writing SystemsBeautiful.
In the light of what may be described as the ubiquity
Professor Gloria EmeagwaliProfessor of History
History DepartmentCentral Connecticut State UniversityGloria Emeagwali's Documentaries onAfrica and the African Diaspora8608322815 Phone8608322804 Fax
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups .com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroup s.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 2, 2017 8:43 AM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Writing Systems--Beautiful.
In the light of what may be described as the ubiquity of African writing systems, why has classical African thought not been seen as accessible as that of ancient Egypt, for example?
Why is it easy to point to books in classical Asian cultures, for example, books produced at the time of the existence of those cultures, but difficult, if not impossible to find the same for knowledge produced using African writing systems, apart from Egypt?
Was it the absence of a means of making the equivalent of parchment or paper? Animal hides could have been used, wall inscriptions, etc as in Egypt, could have been more evident.
One of the world's richest expressive systems and still very much in use in its traditional contexts is Nsibidi of Nigeria's Cross-River. Relative to the scope of content, variety of expressive strategies and geographical range of this system, however, literature on it is severely limited, the most detailed work known to me coming from US based researchers Jordan Fenton, Amanda Carlson and Eli Bentor, along with Ivor Miller who has worked in Nigeria.
Online, apart from contributions represented by the online name Nsibiri, general documentation on such blogs as Okporu Before and references related to the art of Victor Ekpuk, along with my own efforts in integrating these contributions,not much is evident from within the parent communities of Nigeria and Cross River on this system, although more work might be present in the research projects of tertiary institutions in the region and other parts of Nigeria.
This inadequate visibility might be due to the fact that it is largely controlled by an esoteric order, what is more conventionally known as a secret society, in this case Ekpe in its various forms.
It would be wonderful if such systems were made more accessible, the experts in the traditional institutions that manage the systems sharing with the world their own cognitive architectures built through its use.
thanks
toyin
On 2 September 2017 at 03:21, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
--Dear Colleagues,
Comments are welcome.
African Writing Systems
GE
Professor Gloria EmeagwaliProfessor of History
History DepartmentCentral Connecticut State UniversityGloria Emeagwali's Documentaries onAfrica and the African Diaspora8608322815 Phone8608322804 Fax
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