– THE INDIVIDUAL DUTY TO THE HISTORICAL MEMORY TO PROTECT ITS GENUINE ARCHIVES

IT is commendable the effort of British Parliamentarian (of Guyanese roots) David Lammy to request a pardon for 21 of the victims of 1823. It was a British crime and they must act. What though is surprising is the inclusion of the term ‘1823 slave rebellion Convicts’ because, based on all the data I have explored that includes what is considered the first recorded narrative, by Joshua Bryant, writer and artist, who was here at the time, no mention of criminals and convicts was assumed. He did refer to the rebelling/ protesting masses as “rebels.” The facts according to what was recorded, would deem 1823 as a rebellion against the continuation of slavery. That was the belief, though it was misguided. The underlining situation was that the governor was also a plantation owner. The British army was recovering from its defeat in Haiti some 22 years before, so there was suspicion, anger and hatred that fired many of the planter-class citizenry of Demerary at that time against the enslaved Creole -African population with murder and savagery. There is a new book on the subject, ‘White Debt’ by Thomas Harding, an English writer, that adds to the understanding of 1823. The 1823 protest can be declared by all means by Guyana as the era of the ‘Atlantic Slave Trade’s only peaceful protest, followed by Damon, who was hung on the eve of Emancipation before the Public Buildings, for protesting the concept of ‘Apprenticeship,’ which was an insult to abolition and a human-labour stimulus to the post-emancipation plantocracy. Why it is necessary for a comprehensive pool of clarifications on New World and continental African sources is because one of the most comprehensive directives of colonisers was to eliminate or confuse and de-emphasise the original knowledge of self of those forcibly defeated and colonised, and replace it with a self-contemptuous interpretation of self-misunderstanding. Thus, the majority of the self-entitled colonial mentality emerged among the oppressed as guardians of the ‘Great House.’

The projection of the European self on Egypt [Khemet], which has always been the inspiration and envy of the ancient world, began in earnest after that world had lost its former self to Persian-Greek – Arab incursions etc. But it was the post-Napoleon adventure 1798-1801 that generated a tremendous projection of Europeanism on the original people of ancient Khemet- mostly generated by art and its modern development of movies. Most victims of this propaganda, for instance, do not know that there has never been a statue or mummy that points to the ‘Cleopatra’ of the Mark Anthony-Julius Caesar romance. The entire ‘Cleopatra’ drama and imagery are products of applying heightened poetic licence. From the historical position of a Greek hierarchy with a native presence, the then Cleopatra (the subject Cleopatra) would have most likely have been a native African of mixed heritage. I wish to include a quick and not lengthy excerpt from an academic publication- “Professor Obenga replied that the Greeks applied the word Melas to the Egyptians, which means Black. None of the participants explicitly voiced support for the earlier theory, referred to by Professor Vercoutter in his paper concerning a population (Khemet) ‘which was ‘white’ with a dark, even Black pigmentation’. There was no more than tacit agreement to abandon this old theory” see ‘THE PEOPLING OF ANCIENT EGYPT & THE DECIPHERING OF THE MEOROITIC STRIP.” This and the mediaeval exploration of the Islamic MOORS will require a center of exploration that does not exist now in Guyana, except in a knowledge pool of private hands. The tech -mechanisms do exist. Whether the finance and commit do, is another question. We must understand the creation of distortion. It served and serves the attainment of coherence for people with primarily unreal contentions with Afro-peoples.

Another area where popular assumption in entertainment and pseudo historical poetic licence, rivals science is with the ‘Phoenicians.’ Who were they? Were they a nation or of many nations? They did not call themselves Phoenicians, this was a name the Greeks gave them, because they manufactured a purple dye they called “Royal Purple” that the Greeks called “Phoenix”-thus Phoenicians. Terence Wise of OSPREY military books interpreted the Greek word ‘Phoenicians’ as meaning ‘dark skinned.’ They established Cartage. There is a tradition that they came from the land of Punt, are West Africans, then the Semetic projection was caste (Cartage is today’s Tunisia in North Africa, the local Arab population can be traced to Islam). Punt was an ancient African peopled nation based on Khemetic illustrations. Modern Archaeologists and historians (according to an interesting article in National Geographic October 2004) are seeking the Phoenicians through DNA, from what source is unsure to my lay man’s curiosity.

In closing, I present a son of our soil, born in British Guiana, suspected of having his origins in either the East Coast Demerara village of Golden Grove or Georgetown. Professor George Granville Monah James researched and presented a pioneering work titled “THE STOLEN LEGACY” in 1954, that presented the obvious evidence why many of the works accredited to Greek sources were indeed the works of centuries; executed by the Khemetic mystery systems. Ph.D. George James taught at the University of Arkansas. He died mysteriously after his book was published. A reprint of this pioneering book is on sale currently at Austin’s Bookstore.