The Myth of a ‘Stolen Legacy | Transhuman Cosmic Conscious …

(George G.M. James's revisionist book about Greek and African history)

Brief Summary: James's 1954 book 'Stolen Legacy' is a deliberate perversion of history to support the false claim that black Egyptians were the true originators of Greek philosophy. James's unsupported theories have been taken as fact by many people unfamiliar with Greek history.

Mary Lefkowitz Society, March-April 1994 v31 n3 p27(7)

Since its publication in 1954, Stolen Legacy by George G. M. James has been a bestseller among people of African descent in this country. James was an Afro-American teacher of Greek, whose other writings deal explicitly with racial issues. Stolen Legacy also deals with the status of black people, but in ancient rather than in modem times. The message of the book is as sensational as it is revolutionary: "The Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the black people of North Africa, the Egyptians." This novel thesis explains "the erroneous world opinion that the African continent has made no contribution to civilization, and that its people are naturally backward; the misrepresentation that has become the basis of race prejudice, which has affected all people of color." James offers in its stead a "new philosophy of redemption for black peoples."

James's account of ancient history redirects to the black people of Africa the praise traditionally given in all Western educational institutions to the ancient Greeks: "The term Greek philosophy, to begin with, is a misnomer, for there is no such philosophy in existence." Traditional educational policy, James argues, "has led to the false worship of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as intellectual gods in all the leading universities of the world." James urges black people to stop citing the Greek philosophers because we know that their philosophy was stolen" from the black peoples of Egypt, and demands that they resign from fraternities and sororities and presumably any other institutions that honor ancient Greece. The Greeks, James insists, "did not possess the native ability essential to the development of philosophy." What is called Greek, he claims, is in fact Egyptian philosophy, plagiarized from Egyptian sources by Greeks who studied m Egypt with Egyptian priests and who learned from them the philosophy and science of die Egyptian Mystery System.

Anyone who has studied ancient Mediterranean history will realize that these assertions are untrue, both in general and in particular Anyone who has studied the works of Plato and Aristotle, even in translation, will wonder why their instructors never referred to the Egyptian background of these philosophical works. Anyone familiar with the history of ancient philosophy will know that the "Egyptian" Mystery System James describes in his book is in fact based on an eighteenth-century French reconstruction of neoplatonic philosophy, which contains a few Egyptian elements, but is fundamentally Greek.

Anyone who has studied ancient Egyptian art is aware that the population of Egypt was racially mixed, which is to say not exclusively black at any time, though several pharaohs from Nubia and considerable cultural exchange took place with that area. To anyone unfamiliar with Egyptian or Greek history, or the works of the Greek philosophers, James's argument seems coherent and plausible, because it appears to be laid out in an informed and scholarly fashion, with copious references to ancient sources and modern historical studies. Of course, the principal reason for the success of the book is that most people who read it want to believe its thesis that an African people made the original discoveries that led to the development of what has always been known as Western thought. These readers are willing to assume that the population of ancient Egypt was black, although no evidence is presented to support this contention.

Another reason for the book's appeal is its conspiracy theory, which casts the people conspired-against in the role of innocent victims. "Had it not been for this drama of Greek philosophy and its actors, the African Continent would have had a different reputation, and would have enjoyed a status of respect among the nations of the world." If it could be shown that ancient Greeks stole or copied, without due acknowledgment, Egyptian ideas and documents, not only would the Greeks cease to be revered for their accomplishments, but credit for their great discoveries would go to the people of Egypt, an African country, and the notion that ancient African peoples produced no significant body of scientific and humanistic learning could be finally and decisively discredited.

The methods James uses to establish this erroneous and misleading thesis deserve careful study, because they have been and continue to be influential. In order to make his case as convincing as possible James does not proceed in chronological order, as is the practice in conventional histories of philosophy. Instead, he relies first of all on the tried-and-true rhetorical method of beginning with the simplest and most dramatic illustration. This he offers first in a brief summary: the Greeks began to study in Egypt when that country was occupied by the Persians, but the main transfer of information occurred after the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great, when Aristotle was able to take books of Egyptian philosophy and science from the library of Alexandria and convert that library into a Greek research center.

The story of Aristotle's theft is told again later in the book. Here we see how James relies on insistence," another tried-and-true rhetorical technique. Sheer repetition served as a form of proof for the Bellman who led the expedition in Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark: "What I tell you three times is true." James insists that the Greeks had no interest in philosophy or science; they were an ambitious, envious, people who persecuted their philosophers. They were, he says, belligerent though incapable of victory over a major power like Persia. Selective use of repetition also provides a useful, if fraudulent, means of historical documentation, since the same fact can be made to support two different and mutually exclusive claims.

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