by Dag Herbjørnsrud
New research indicates that Plato and Aristotle were right: Philosophy and the term “love of wisdom” hail from Egypt.
A remarkable example of classical Egyptian philosophy is found in a 3,200-year-old text named “The Immortality of Writers.” This skeptical, rationalistic, and revolutionary manuscript was discovered during excavations in the 1920s, in the ancient scribal village of Deir El-Medina, across the Nile from Luxor, some 400 miles up the river from Cairo. Fittingly, this intellectual village was originally known as Set Maat: “Place of Truth.”
The paper containing the twenty horizontal lines of “The Immortality of Writers” is divided into sections by rubrication. They seem composed to be read aloud, as the Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson points out in his new Penguin Books translation.
The existential message of the “The Immortality of Writers,” written by Irsesh¹, echoes through the centuries and millennia, over sand dunes and oceans, before finally reaching us now in the 21st century. Thinking and writing is more important than religion, materialism, and – even more controversial – one own’s family:
Man perishes; his corpse turns to dust; all his relatives return to the earth. But writings make him remembered in the mouth of the reader. A book is more effective than a well-built house or a tomb-chapel, better than an established villa or a stela in the temple!
This 12th BCE century Ramesside papyrus, from the 19–20th dynasty, is the oldest and most authoritative excuse philosophers and intellectuals of today have for prioritizing reading and writing over securing offspring or respecting priests. Because “the writer is chief.”
For the last decades, the only copy of Irsesh’s manuscript, formally known as “Chester Beatty IV” (EA 10684, verso) and also named “Be a Writer”, has been stored at the British Museum in London. In 1997, it was removed from public display. New translations from hieratic – Egypt’s ancient cursive writing system – have made the text accessible to the public. Yet “The Immortality of Writers” and other significant Egyptian philosophical manuscripts await detailed scrutiny by dedicated philosophers.
After all, Irsesh’s text is symptomatic of the era during and following the revolutionary pharaoh Akhenaten (died 1336 before the common era, BCE) and his wife Nefertiti (1370–1330 BCE). These two New Kingdom rulers abandoned Egypt’s traditional polytheistic religion and introduced a rather monotheistic worship of the Sun, Aten, instead. Shortly after Nefertiti’s death, their successors returned to polytheism.
The ideological upheavals in Egypt caused new ideas and philosophy to flourish. In the tomb of Neferhotep (ca. 1300 BCE) three different perspectives on death are presented in the “Harpist’s Song,” a text initially stating that the ancient tombs were “extolling life on earth and belittling the region of the dead.” A skeptical view on the after-life is also witnessed in the tomb-chapel of Paatenemheb at Saqqara, dating from the era of Akhenaten. This harpist text argues in a rather hedonistic way, a thousand years prior to Epicurus:
Follow your heart as long as you live! … Heap up your joys, Let your heart not sink! Follow your heart and your happiness. Do your things on earth as your heart commands!
One of the most vibrant eras in Egyptian history was this period spanning the two hundred years from Akhenaten and Nefertiti in the mid-14th century until the economic and political decline from the mid-12th century BCE; ancient Egypt’s last “Golden Era.” We can discover this in the love poetry of the middle-class village Deir El-Medina. Based on a reading of these poems from ordinary women and men, Renate Fellinger concludes that the “fairly equally distributed freedom of speech, action and movement as reflected in the poems may suggest that gender roles were perceived as equal.”
After all, women owned property, could buy land, and were equal to men in the ancient Egyptian court. One evidence of this, is the will – dated November 1147 BCE – of the woman Naunakht, who described herself as “a free woman of the land of Pharaoh.” She owned an impressive library of papyri; including the Dream Book, the world’s oldest interpretations of dreams. In Naunakht’s will, presented for a court of fourteen witnesses, she disinherits three of her adult children as they did not care enough for her. One of the disinherited was her workman son; she also rejected to give him any property from her first husband.
Furthermore, one of the most powerful pharaohs in Egyptian history was the woman Hatshepsut (1507–1458 BCE) of the 18th Dynasty. While the female pharaoh Twoseret (d. 1189 BCE) was the last ruler of the 19th Dynasty, as Kara Cooney attests in her new book When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt.
When it comes to writing, the Egyptian texts are “often consciously intellectual, making abundant use of wordplay through homophones and homonyms, in which the Egyptian language is particularly rich,” as Wilkinson underscores. Metaphors, idioms, and epigrammatic utterances are some of the other literary techniques applied.
Hence, it should come as no surprise that not only the oldest but also some of the most original ancient philosophical texts in writing stem from Egypt. A similar point was also made by the foremost of the Greek philosophers: Isocrates (b. 436 BCE) states, in Busiris, that “all men agree the Egyptians are the healthiest and most long of life among men; and then for the soul they introduced philosophy’s training…”
Isocrates was 16 years Plato’s senior, a founder of the rhetoric school in Athens, and he declared that Greeks writers traveled to Egypt to seek knowledge. One of them was Pythagoras of Samos who “was first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy.”
These Greek descriptions of Egypt have often been disregarded in the past couple of hundred years. But the scholarship of the 21st century has opened up a new possibility: the founding Greek word philosophos, lover of wisdom, is itself a borrowing from and translation of the Egyptian concept mer-rekh (mr-rḫ) which literally means “lover of wisdom,” or knowledge.
In 2005, The Book of Thoth was finally collected and translated into English. This text originates partly from the 12th century BCE, as Egyptologist Joachim Quack has pointed out. And in this book, “the-one-who-loves-knowledge” (mer-rekh) is a central figure. The philosopher (mer-rekh) is the scholar who desires to know the wisdom of Thoth, the author of books.
The translators of the Thoth book, Richard Jasnow and Karl-Theodor Zauzich, note the word mer-rekh and its “striking Egyptian parallel to Greek Philosophos.” As Ian Rutherford pointed out in 2016, Quack has demonstrated that the Pythagorean concept of akousmata is indebted to Demotic wisdom, arguing “even that the Greek term ‘philosophos’ is based on Egyptian.”
The Greek respect for the Egyptian love of wisdom, philosophy, is a context that can explain Plato’s statement in Phaedrus that the Egyptian Thoth “invented numbers and arithmetic… and, most important of all, letters.” This also makes it easier to understand Socrates, who in Plato’s Timaeus quotes the ancient Egyptian wise men when the law-giver Solon travels to Egypt to learn: “O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children.”
In addition, Aristotle attests to Egypt being the original land of wisdom, as when he states in Politics that “Egyptians are reputed to be the oldest of nations, but they have always had laws and a political system.”
In 2018, projects are under way to translate several ancient Egyptian texts for the first time. Yet we already have a wide variety of genres to choose from in order to study the manuscripts from a philosophical perspective:
The many maxims in “The Teaching of Ptahhotep”, the earliest preserved manuscript of this vizier of the fifth dynasty is from the 19th century BCE, in which he also argues that you should “follow your heart”; “The Teaching of Ani”, written by a humble middle-class scribe in the 13th century BCE, which gives advice to the ordinary man; “The Satire of the Trades” by Khety, who tries to convince his son Pepy to “love books more than your mother” as there is nothing “on earth” like being a scribe; the masterpiece “The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba” of the 19th century BCE – in which a man laments “the misery of life,” while his ba (personality/soul) replies that life is good, that he should rather “ponder life” as it is a burial that is miserable – recently discussed by Peter Adamson and Chike Jeffers in their “Africana Philosophy” podcast series.
Or we can read Amennakht (active in 1170–1140 BCE), the leading intellectual of the scribal town Deir El-Medina, whose teaching states that “it is good to finish school, better than the smell of lotus blossoms in summer.”
This is the context in which we can understand Irsesh’s “The Immortality of Writers,” found in the scribal village of Amennakht and written in the post-Akhenaten era. We can recognize the praise of writing from Khety, or from Ani’s argument that a scribe’s “companions are his concerns.” The text of Irsesh is distinct but so are many other of the miscellaneous Egyptian texts that are now gradually becoming translated and rediscovered.
Irsesh begins his argument by stating one should be skilled in writing. He then goes on to refer to the “wise writers from the time after the gods,” indicating that the gods are not among us after the creation of the Earth. Irsesh states that the names of these writers “have become everlasting, even though they have departed this life and all their relatives are forgotten.” Hence:
They did not make for themselves pyramid-shaped mausolea of copper with tombstones of iron; they did not think to leave heirs, children to proclaim their names: rather they made heirs of writings, of the teachings they had composed.
By chance, these lines are echoed by the Roman poet Horace some twelve hundred years later, when he begins his last ode (30) in book three as follows:
I built a monument more durable than bronze and higher than the royal Pyramids… I shall not wholly die (Exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum Altius…)
But Irsesh takes the argument a couple of steps further than Horace. Not only will the texts and books give the author eternal life – they are so important that great writers do not think of begetting sons and daughters:
They gave themselves a book as their lector-priest, a writing-board as their dutiful son. Teachings are their mausolea, the reed-pen their child, the burnishing-stone their wife. Both great and small are given them as their children, for the writer is chief.
The best heirs of the writer are the ones who read and remember him after the writer’s death. The pen is their child; the papermaking stone their partner. Writing is everything. Nothing else matters.
Irsesh raises an eternal philosophical dilemma: What is more important, doing good for the humans to come or doing good in life right now?
He continues as follows regarding the great writers of the past:
Their gates and mansions have been destroyed, their mortuary priests are gone, their tombstones are covered with dirt, their tombs are forgotten. But their names are proclaimed on account of their books which they composed while they were alive. The memory of their authors is good: it is for eternity and for ever.
Note how the mortuary priests are mocked. Because neither priests nor tombs live on, only the memory caused by great writing. Accordingly, Irsesh’s advice is clear:
Be a writer, take it to heart, so that your name will fare likewise. A book is more effective than a carved tombstone or a permanent sepulchre. They serve as chapels and mausolea in the mind of him who proclaims their names.
Even though Irsesh rejects materialism, family, and religion – and is skeptical and open-minded regarding what happens after death – one sentence indicates that he is not an atheist as such. Because after this last extract, he adds: “A name in the mouth of the people will surely be effective in the afterlife!”
Irsesh seems to respect the uncertainty of what happens after death. It is following the last statement that he writes the paragraph on how the human and his relatives pass away, which was quoted initially.
Next follows another extraordinary paragraph, in which he names some of the famous, classic Egyptian authors. This is the Canon of the first millennium of Egyptian literature, as treasured by an intellectual in the 12th century BCE:
Is there one here like Hordedef? Is there another like Imhotep? None of our kin is like Neferti or Khety, their leader. May I remind you about Ptahemdjehuty and Khakheperraseneb! Is there another like Ptahhotep, or the equal of Kairsu?
Hordedef was a legendary writer from the 5th dynasty, approximately 2500 BCE. Imhotep was revered as the architect of the first pyramid. The texts of Khety and Ptahhotep are mentioned above. The four others are famed writers.
As a true lover of wisdom, a mer-rekh, a philosopher, Irsesh concludes his immortal text, thus:
Those wise writers who foretold what was to come: what they said came into being; it is found as a maxim, written in their books. Others’ offspring will be their heirs, as if they were their own children. They hid their powers from the world, but it is read in their teachings. They are gone, their names forgotten; but writings cause them to be remembered.
We can notice Irsesh’s claim that if we read and remember an earlier writer’s text, we will be his or her heirs, as if we were their own children. In that respect, we have become – at this very moment, just by reading these words – the children of Irsesh.
All of Irsesh’s original children and grandchildren are dead, and no physical descendant in the world knows who he is. But because of his text, we know parts of his mind and ba now. We read his words; we can discuss the philosophical conundrums of “The Immortality of Writers” 3,200 years later.
Hence, at this very moment, when you read and remember these words, Irsesh has become one of your ancestors. By reading this, you have finally proven his point about the writer: “writings make him remembered.”
We are the ones Irsesh was waiting for. You have become the child Irsesh always wanted. And the philosophy of Egypt can, possibly, envision a new dawn in the 21st century.
Note: The translation of “The Immortality of Writers,” as the text is best known, mostly follows Toby Wilkinson’s version “Be a Writer” in Writings from Ancient Egypt (Penguin Classics, 2016, pp 284–287). Some adjustments are made for clarity or by using the more literal translation (given in the notes).
I thank Egyptologist Joachim Quack at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, for the help regarding this text.
¹The name of the author of “The Immortality of Writers” is not known. In cooperation with Egyptologist Andrea G. McDowell, now at Yale Law School, it is here proposed to name the author Iretsesh, a rendering of the Egyptian words irt sS, which means “Be a Writer.”
Dag Herbjørnsrud
Dag Herbjørnsrud (@DagHerbjornsrud) is a global historian of ideas, former editor-in-chief, and author. His latest journal article is “Beyond decolonizing: global intellectual history and reconstruction of a comparative method” (Global Intellectual History, 2019). Herbjørnsrud is the founder of Center for Global and Comparative History of Ideas (SGOKI).
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This is very interesting, although much of it is not completely new. A few people are trying to deny that Egypt belongs to Africa (racists mostly), but much wisdom travelled up the Nile and reached Nubia, Sudan and Ethiopia, as is notiiceable even today. Furthermore I can add my opinion that although many books are of “eternal” value, too much may be written today. I have bought and read a few chapters in many “Bestsellers”, only soon to discard them. But so much is true: without books, the world would be an empty and lonely place, in spite of all the people who live here.
right, I would just add that research has demonstrated how wisdom/culture orginally travelled down the Nile (from South to North, “with the flow”), cf the first Dynasty, DNA tests, etc. More info & links here – my article, in Norwegian, at Afrika.no (Google Translate will sort out most of it):
https://www.afrika.no/artikkel/2020/01/30/afrikas-ukjente-litteratur-og-filosofi
A thought provoking essay, that introduces a writer who deserves to be known better. Iretsesh has come like bolt from the void, illuminating a path towards immortality that both ennobled the ba/soul, and challenges the reticent to seize the moment and give expression to their inner song. Ancient Egypt’s place as a venerable civilisation is well known. But her place as Mother of Philosophy deserves to be more widely discussed. As we stand on the precipice of new documents being translated, this shortcoming will be corrected. This does not in any way challenge the nectar that is the wisdom of Iretsesh.
thank you – true
The content of the article should surprise the entire world,but should perhaps humble the West on the fact that Greek wisdom that West had adopted was not entirely Western! Its original source was Egyptian.
It is similar to Christianity, West’s religion, that originated in the same region, middle East.
right – and Africa was rather central to the development of Christianity as well: the first desert fathers (like abba Anthony) and mothers (like amma Theodora of Alexandria, who travelled to the south of present-day Egypt).
These hermits inspired St. Augustine of (North) Africa (Thagaste, today’s Algeria, former Numidia), who in his letters happen to define himself as an “African” (as opposed to the Romans from “the other side of the sea). His Christian mother was an Amazigh btw. Not to mention the importance of Christianity in Ethiopia – the country that was Christianized the first, ca 330 (Armenia would challenge that argument, but king Ezena’s coins (w a cross) are a rather decisive proof).
The world’s earliest illuminated Christian manuscript are also Ethiopian (or from that region) – the Garima Gospels (c 500 CE). So much to dig into, also philosophically speaking
Civilization Is Mostly Egypto-Greco-Romano-Frankish…
Our world civilization is not “Judeo-Christian” (Christianism was a creation and subset of degenerating Rome)… We profited from a tremendous inheritance elaborated by Ancient Egypt, in roughly all realms. Egypt crucially contributed to morality, law, basic fables, mathematics, astronomy and the invention of the alphabet, in a society (mostly) without slaves, which feels surprising modern.
Why was Ancient Egypt so intelligent? Because Egypt was anti-sexist: women had equal rights, even 5,000 years ago, and many ended up ruling Egypt (including the revolutionary Nefertiti). Having women equal more than doubled the mental power of the civilization and balanced it neurohormonally. Anti-sexism doesn’t just double the mental power, by having twice more brains: intelligent, responsible, empowered women bring up more clever and moral children. Whereas a sexist society is not just run by half wits, the latter spend much time and mental energy keeping the women in all sorts of unnatural bondage.
The influence of Egypt Mesopotamia, including Sumerian cities, and the Indus civilization, and the symbiosis of egypt with the equally non-sexist thalassocratic Cretan civilization made it the core of the advancement of civilization, for millennia.
Under successive invasions from especially the savage Achaemenid Persians (525 BCE), Egypt lost its female leadership (cruelly exterminated by the sexist Persians). When Egypt was freed by Athenians and then Greco-Macedonians a non-sexist society was not re-established, because the Greeks were too much lost in war to see the interest of being ruled by women. Instead, the Greeks progressively robbed Egyptian women of their rights. In the end, Cleopatra VII made a tremendous effort to save Egypt. She was the last of many female pharaohs… And she could have succeeded, had she been even smarter than she already was. Christian and, three centuries later, Muslim fanatics, erased all traces of ancient Egypt, replacing truth by the jealous, cruel, chaotic Bible god.
To the contrary, the fundamental divinity of Egypt was the goddess of truth. Maat denotes the Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Maat is also the goddess who personified these concepts. The sun-god Ra came from the primaeval mound of creation only after he set his daughter Maat (truth) in place of Isfet (chaos). Pharaohs inherited the duty to ensure Maat (truth, rationality) remained in place and they with Ra are said to “live on Maat” (live on truth). Akhenaten and Nefertiti were accused to carry the concept too far.
Ma’at is good and its worth is lasting.
It has not been disturbed since the day of its creator,
whereas he who transgresses its ordinances is punished.
It lies as a path in front even of him who knows nothing.
Wrongdoing has never yet brought its venture to port.
It is true that evil may gain wealth but the strength of truth is that it lasts;
[from the Maxims of Ptahhotep, 45 centuries ago!]
(Much later, as sexism gained, Maat was paired with the masculine Thoth…)
We must now honor our cultural ancestors, the Egyptians. Not just because they deserve it, not just because they created us the way we think, but because we need to understand where we come from, how natural it was, and which mistakes we made more recently.
It’s a question of what defines humanity, our search for truth. Maat.
Amazingly the idea that Greek philosophy is of African origin is not new. George G.M. James in his masterpiece, my opinion, “Stolen Legacy”, argues just that. This book was published in 1954 by a Black professor teaching at a small college in Arkansas . Of course this book has been completely ignored . Just the thought that Greek Philosophy had its origins in Africa has caused much of this information to be suppressed . Little by little what has been kept in darkness is being exposed by the light.
yes, true – and in the 1770s, Phillis Wheatly wrote “the Egyptians, were Africans or coloured people, such as we are . som of them yellow and others dark – a mixture of Ethiopians and the natives of Egypt” (African Athena, 2011, pp 28). In 1854, Frederick Douglass – building on the Egyptian scholars Denon and Volney from the 1798 exped. – wrote something similar.
Thank you so much for your interesting replies and thoughts. Regarding more philosophy from Africa, here’s one on Zera Yacob, Walde Heywat, and Anton Wilhelm Amo: aeon.co/essays/yacob-and-amo-africas-precursors-to-locke-hume-and-kant
Best regards,
Thank’s for a very insightful article! Hit me just at the right moment.
thank you, appreciate it
Great coverage of the topic!
Thank you for this article!
thank you, appreciate it
Thank you Dag for writing and publishing such a beautiful and eye opening article, for following the path of truth wherever the clues and evidence led you. I now consider myself an heir of Irsesh, like countless of others who have read your article. Keep them coming.
Thank you, appreciate it. Here is my scholarly paper on this and other subjects from the global history of ideas: “Beyond decolonizing: global intellectual history and reconstruction of a comparative method” (in the journal “Global Intellectual History”, May 2019):
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2019.1616310
More info on access to this article (if one does not have a subscription to Taylor & Francis) at this site (which includes other non-colonial articles):
http://www.sgoki.org/no/english/
thank you for the article. I am fascinated by Ancient Egyptian philosophy although so far I have only read the article on wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_philosophy) and this blog entry.
I have a few questions regarding this subject:
1) Where or by what sources can I learn more about Ancient Egyptian philosophy other than the books you’ve cited such as the works of Miriam Lichtheim and Writings from Egypt by Toby Wilkinson?
2) Is Ancient Egyptian philosophy better classified as part and parcel of African philosophy or Middle Eastern philosophy?
3) Can we say definitively that Ancient Egypt is the birthplace of philosophy?
Dear Canlop,
Thank you for some interesting questions. Just a short/quick answer:
1) One book on the philosophy of Egypt/Kemet is M.K. Asante, The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten (Chicago: 2000).
– A very good overview is this Africana phil. podcast by Chike Jeffers (Dalhousie Univ) and Peter Adamson (Univ of Munich), Egyptian phil. starting in ep. 4:
https://historyofphilosophy.net/egypt
When it comes to African philosophy, where Egyptian phil. is included, there are several anthologies.
2) Ancient Egyptian phil. can clearly be defined as African philosophy. There are several reasons; history, etc. In contrast, there are fewer arguments for defining the far later Greek phil. as “European philosophy”; as it was the Arabs that developed Greek philosophy, cf how Raphael etc. presented the connection in his fresco “Causarum Cognitio” (known as “The School of Athens”), c. 1510. Because of the influence of (and the discourse with) Babylonian, Phoencian, Egyptian, and Indian thinking on the Greeks (see McEvilley, 2002, etc.), Greek philosophy can better be defined as “Middle Eastern Philosophy”.
In general, I would say it’s better to be as precise as possible – so Ancient Greek (or Ionian) phil. and Ancient Egyptian phil. should often be enough.
3) Complex question: So, there is a written tradition also in Mesopotamia – which also started to write down their thinking from around 3000 BCE. Based on Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. (see also new works by Quack and Poetsch, Heidelberg Univ, Germany), one could say that Ancient Egypt is the birthplace of the philosophical tradition that reached the Greeks, Arabs, and then the Christian Europeans (Arabs phil.s like Ibn Rushd/Averroes and Jewish phil. like Maimonides operated in Iberia/Europe) (the Arab phil. tradition was more directly influenced from the Persian/Indian/Chinese phil. traditions, not “only” the Egyptian/Greek line).
Another question is: What is philosophy? According to the Egyptian/Greek definition, philosophy is “the love of wisdom”; and the human quest for wisdom/knowledge did start far earlier than the writings in Egypt/Mesopotamia. One can do philosophy without writing it down (it’s actually easier/better that way, as Socrates/the Egyptian Thamus says in Plato’s Pheadrus: “For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, (…)”
So, one might say there is no birthplace of philosophy, except in the minds of all human beings. We may all be philosophers.
thank you for your reply. As a last question, is there an area of study where one study more ‘fringe’ philosophies (or wisdom philosophies) like ancient Egyptian philosophy, but also (or together with) eastern philosophies such as Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and so on? I’ve been looking into programs, but they all seem to be, almost exclusively, focused on western philosophical traditions.
sure, so if you’re based in the US, you might esp. check out the works and courses of Alexus McLeod (Mesoamerican, Chinese, Arabic/Japanese, etc, at Univ of Connect.), Erhan Mills (Indian philosophies), Peter KJ Park (Univ of Texas, global phil.), Bryan W van Norden (Chinese phil., Vassar College) – not to mention the courses at Howard Univ (Wash DC), the philosophies of the North American first nations, etc.)
Here is another APA Blog text of mine, on the different Indian philosophies w a focus on Carvaka/Lokayata: https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/16/the-untold-history-of-indias-vital-atheist-philosophy/
You might also be interested in this fortc. book by Rustom, on global phil: https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/global-philosophy/
More info on my site: http://www.sgoki.org/no/english/
thank you very much for the sources. just to double check, there is no philosophy program that specifically focuses on Ancient Egyptian philosophy, is this correct?
and related to this, is a degree in comparative philosophy or Egyptology better suited to study or inquire into ancient Egyptian philosophy?
so there are not too many (aka far too few) phil. programs esp. on Ancient Egyptian phil., true. but there’s at least this at Howard now (undergrad):
“PHIL 171 : Ancient Egyptian Philosophy
An investigation of the contributions of ancient Egypt to philosophical scholarship; including the mutual borrowings that occurred between ancient Egypt and ancient Greece.”
Link: https://catalogue.howard.edu/philosophy/phil-171
Here’s the course description (2015) by Verharen, Howard: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/inclusiveness_syllabi/Ancient_Egyptian_Philosophy_.pdf
Also at Howard: “CLAS 006 : Hieroglyphs I. Introduction to Middle Egyptian language and writing, including grammar and translation of inscriptions and narratives.”
https://catalogue.howard.edu/classics/clas-006
Dr Kiros has this Africana (inl Kemet) course at Berklee (spring only): https://college.berklee.edu/courses/lphl-384
(an intro to Ancient Egyptian phil. is this 2015 paper by Anke Graeness: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2015.1053799)
Here’s a list by van Norden on “lesser taught” phil (no specific on Egyptian phil here though): http://www.bryanvannorden.com/suggestions-for-further-reading
There just has to be more in this world of today (read 2022). In general, Chike Jeffers (Dalhousie, Canada) might be one to ask for more updates on Ancient Egyptian Phil.
Keep it all up, keep searching
I think this is a very interesting thread. I think the Egyptian texts which survive are clearly influential although they are very basic in a way. Their tenets on how to live are a platform for later Greek protagonist and antagonist approaches. Everything in learning is a progressive journey.
When you say what is philosophy I think sometimes philosophy is the ability to debate – ideas outside of inflexible religious rules which can be argued to progress knowledge and understanding.
I am not sure how relevant definitions of African or European philosophy are> Africa is an artificial construct expanded from the Roman usage for north Africa to more easily define the areas of the world. As is Europe. It does not indicate a culturally or ethnically homogenous area. So I think African or European philosophy as concepts are artificial and a bit meaningless.
When you say the Arabs developed later Greek philosophy, I presume you don’t mean ancient Greek philosophy ? Also what’s the evidence or route for Indian influence on Greek philosophy ? I know there are various post Alexandrian influences from Greece to India but what is the evidence for the other way ?
Not sure of your point about The School of Athens and Arab connection ? It shows classical Greek scholars and Raphael was no expert on ancient history and nobody really was then. What’s the point there ?
It’s difficult with Egypt to assess cultural influences as despite the references to scholars learning there later, Egypt was in many ways a very insular society and was not a parent culture to any of the Aegean civilisations or middle eastern ones.
[…] the Nile from Luxor, some 400 miles up the river from Cairo,” quoted from Herbjornsrud, Dag, “The Radical Philosophy of Egypt: Forget God and Family, Write!”, Blog of the Apa, December 17, […]
Ancient Egypt’s earliest origins probably are from various African cultures. But what one considers Egyptian culture, of course, depends on which period one looks at. There were many different Egyptian societies over the millennia. Egypt, after all, always had attracted diverse peoples or, in some cases, enslaved them.
We do know that over time that Egypt became a center of trade that brought not only material goods but also ideas and practices in from all over, including from the East. This might relate to how Greek thought shows evidence of both Egyptian influence and Eastern influence.
Yet that Eastern influence very well also came to the Greeks through Egypt. That might mean that Egypt came to be among the earliest and greatest of the syncretic cultures that set the precedent for the fertile syncretism during the Axial Age. The idea of an isolated African culture separating Egypt from elsewhere might be more of a modern bias.
The Radical Philosophy of Egypt is a term used to describe the philosophical ideas that emerged in ancient Egypt. It is a unique philosophy that was based on the ancient Egyptian worldview and cosmology.
The radical philosophy of Egypt was primarily concerned with the search for truth and understanding of the natural world, the universe, and the human experience. The Egyptians believed that the universe was ordered and predictable, and that everything in it was interconnected.