One of the foundational myths of ancient Kemet (otherwise known as Egypt) features Ausar (otherwise known as Osiris) and his brother, Set. Ausar is a divine king who presides over Kemet with wisdom and righteousness. However, his younger brother Set grows envious of his position. Thus, he and his henchmen kill Ausar and dismember his body and scatter it across the land.
Ausar’s son, Heru (otherwise known as Horus), from whom we get the term ‘hero,’ avenges his father’s death. Along with the help of his mother, Auset (otherwise known as Isis), they facilitate the ‘re-memberance’ of Ausar (put him back together), resurrect him, and restore righteous governance in Kemet by defeating Set and his followers.
In the Ancient Kemetic text, The Book of Gates, it reads:
“(Horus speaks:) My heart sails upstream to my father. My heart is honest, my father! I protect you against those who have acted against you, and I glorify you with what belongs to you. Power belongs to you, Osiris. Dignity belongs to you, foremost of the Westerners. Your provision belongs to you, Ruler of the Duat, with high manifestation in the Shetit! The Akh-spirits are in fear of you; the dead are in awe of you. Replacement for your headcloth. I am your son Horus. I repair the damage in it” (Hornung & Abt, 2013/ 1305 BCE, p. 120-121).
Furthermore, it states:
“Horus says to [the] gods: ‘Seize for you the enemies of my father, whom you have dragged away to your pits, on account of this pain they have inflicted against the Great One who has been found and who has given birth to me” (Hornung & Abt, 2013/ 1305 BCE, p. 128-130).
In the aforementioned passages, the divine Black man is revered, and Heru is declaring that he must avenge his father’s death. Heru instructs upright people (i.e., gods) to punish those who have done harm to his father. As a brief aside, one can interpret ‘gods’ as upright people because the Ancient Kemites viewed the human being as an emergent splinter of the divine.
Additionally, it’s arguable that the ancient Kemetic literature is the original source material for much of the biblical corpus (although adapted), thus one can glean biblical narratives to corroborate the idea that the term ‘gods’ can refer to human beings (Harpur, 2004). For example, Psalms 82:6 reads:
“I said, ‘You are gods; you are sons of the Most High.’
Furthermore, John 10:34-36 reads:
“Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are ‘god?’ If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son?’”
The passage from The Book of Gates is instructive for Black men. White Supremacists have torn the Black man asunder, and it ought to be the aim of every Black man to ‘re-member’ the self and one’s ancestors. In other words, Black men ought to relate to White Supremacists in the same way that Heru related to Set and his minions. Anthropologists assert that the African or Black man is the oldest man on the planet, whereas the European or White male is the youngest (Cann, Stoneking & Wilson, 1987; Ani, 1994). However, the younger brother (White man) has indeed defeated and dismembered his older brother (Black man) by way of establishing the brutal System of Racism (White Supremacy).
The Black man is the main target of this system (Welsing, 1991/1982). The Book of Gates passage reminds us to embody a heroic (or ‘Heruic’) spirit, unite, and avenge the murdered ancestors. Put another way, Black men ought to engage in resistance against the White Supremacists who have literally and figuratively dismembered the original father of humanity – the Black man. The Black man must repair the Black father (Ausar) by reincarnating as him, but become more alert (leverage the eye of Heru) and become stronger than him, as to better defend against the machinations of the father’s evil younger brother – the White Supremacist (i.e., Set).
In order to defeat White Supremacy, Black love and unity are paramount. The Autobiography of Weni (c. 2250 BCE/ 6th Dynasty) is one of the earliest documented cases of Black unity or Pan-Africanism. It describes the ancient Kemites pulling together Black people from further down in the interior of the continent to defeat their Western Asiatic (Arab) foes. Arabs, otherwise known as Western Asiatics or Indo-Europeans, are the current occupants and face of Egypt today. Hence why it’s called the Arab Republic of Egypt. However, before this occurred, Black people united and defeated these foreign invaders. The Autobiography of Weni reads:
“When his majesty took action against the Asiatic Sand-dwellers, his majesty made an army of many tens of thousands from all of Upper Egypt: from Yebu on the south to Medenyt; from Lower Egypt: from all of the Two-Sides-of-the-House and from Sedjer and Khen-sedjru; and from Irtjet-Nubians, Medja-Nubians, Yam-Nubians, Wawat-Nubians, Kaau-Nubians; and from Tjemeh-land….no one attacked his fellow,.…His majesty praised me for it beyond anything. His majesty sent me to lead this army five times, to attack the land of the Sand-dwellers as often as they rebelled, with these troops. I acted so that his majesty praised me” (Lichtheim, 2019/ c. 2250 BCE, p. 52-53).
This ancient text is a source of encouragement for the Black collective, as it implores us to re-establish our unity as Black people across the globe to defeat those who aim to destroy us. Approximately 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Africans viewed themselves as one Black family in Kemet. However, over time, we came to overly identify with fragmentary ethnic groups, and outsiders (i.e., Arabs and Europeans) were able to exploit this disunity.
To be sure, this is not a call to militaristic violence against any group, but it is a call to unity and a commitment to defend against the plot to oppress Black people.
White Supremacists came to dominate the Black collective by exaggerating and exploiting any differences they found within the group, and then turned us against each other. However, the truth is that just because my right hand and my left foot are different, it doesn’t mean that they’re not appendages of the same unified body. Black people must maintain this view, whether one is classified as a mono-racial Black, bi-racial Black, light-skinned Black, dark-skinned Black, female Black, male Black, Black Hebrew Israelite, Kemite, Christian, Muslim, diasporic African, or continental African.
Surely there will be disagreements within the Black collective, but even in our disagreements, we ought to forgo maltreating each other with our words, tone of voice, or actions, as the White Supremacists have taught us to maltreat each other. We don’t want to be accomplices or co-conspirators with White Supremacy by maltreating Blackness.
In keeping with the aforementioned body analogy, sometimes, there will be cancerous growths that emerge in the body (e.g., tumorous breast cancer), and if the growth cannot be mitigated through less invasive means, the growth will need to be extracted via a lumpectomy so that the rest of the body isn’t infected by the cancer. It would be an error to simply kill a person (i.e., take life from the whole body), just because one part of the body is infected. Similarly, if a person is a threat to the survival or well-being of the group, they may need to be extracted from it.
Unity, self-respect, and group respect are the antidotes to the system of White Supremacy, and all Black people who are intent on thriving as a people, ought to pursue this. This is not about hating White people (as they are not all White Supremacists). This is about re-establishing love for self, and the group (both dead and alive) as a part of the self. We must liberate ourselves from mental enslavement. We must learn from history and remember that we are the Kemetyu (meaning Black people) (Browder, 1992).
Jermaine Thomas, PsyD
Dr. Jermaine Thomas is a licensed clinical psychologist at Cornerstone Counseling Center of Chicago, and founder of MindScribber LLC. He creates content for Djehuti – Kemet University; authored the Amazon bestseller, The Examined Life: A Journal of Questions and Quotes; and regularly contributes to his Patreon page, Promoting Wholeness in a Partisan World.
References:
Ani, M. (1994). Yurugu: An African-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior. African World Press, Inc.
Browder, A. (1992). Nile valley contributions to civilization: Exploding the myths – Volume 1. The Institute of Karmic Guidance.
Cann, R., Stoneking, M., & Wilson, A. (1987). Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution. Nature, 325 (1). doi:10.1038/325031a0.
Harpur, T. (2004). The pagan Christ: Is blind faith killing Christianity? Bloomsbury Publishing.
Hornung, E. & Abt, T. (2013). The Egyptian book of gates. Zurich: Living human heritage publications. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/the-egyptian-book-of-gates/mode/1up. (Originally published c. 1305 BCE).
Lichtheim, M. (Ed.) (2019). The autobiography of Weni. In Ancient Egyptian literature (pp. 50 – 55). Oakland, CA: University of California Press. (Originally published 2250 BCE).
Welsing, F. (1991). The isis papers: The keys to the colors. C. W. Publishing. (Originally published 1982).
