Kushites of Sumer and Akkad
By
Clyde Winters Ph.D
Controversy surrounding the Kushite/African/Black origins of the Elamites, Sumerians, Akkadians and “Assyrians†is simple and yet complicated. It involves both the racism exhibited toward the African slaves in the Western Hemisphere and Africans generally which led to the idea that Africans had no history ; and the need of Julius Oppert to make Semites white, to accommodate the “white†ancestry of European Jews.
To understand this dichotomy we have to look at the history of scholarship surrounding the rise of Sumero-Akkadian studies. The study of the Sumerians, Akkadians. Assyrians and Elamites began with the decipherment of the cuneiform script by Henry Rawlinson. Henry Rawlinson had spent most of his career in the Orient. This appears to have given him an open mind in regards to history. He recognized the Ancient Model of History, the idea that civilization was founded by the Kushite or Hamitic people of the Bible.
As result, Rawlinson was surprised during his research to discover that the founders of the Mesopotamian civilization were of Kushite origin. He made it clear that the Semitic speakers of Akkad and the non-Semitic speakers of Sumer were both Black or Negro people who called themselves sag-gig-ga “Black Headsâ€. In Rawlinson’s day the Sumerian people were recognized as Akkadian or Chaldean, while the Semitic speaking blacks were called Assyrians.
Rawlinson identified these Akkadians as Turanian or Scythic people. But he made it clear that these ancient Scythic or Turanian speaking people were Kushites or Blacks.
A major supporter of Rawlinson was Edward Hincks. Hincks continued Rawlinson’s work and identified the ancient group as Chaldeans, and also called them Turanian speakers. Hincks, though, never dicussed their ethnic origin.
A late comer to the study of the Sumerians and the Akkadians was Julius Oppert. Oppert was a German born of Jewish parents. He made it clear that the Chaldean and Akkadian people spoke different languages. He noted that the original founders of Mesopotamia civilization called themselves Ki-en-gi “land of the true lordsâ€. It was the Semitic speakers who called themselves Akkadians.
Assyrians called the Ki-en-gi people Sumiritu “the sacred languageâ€. Oppert popularized the Assyrian name Sumer, for the original founders of the civilization. Thus we have today the Akkadians and Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia.
Oppert began to popularize the idea that the Sumerians were related to the contemporary Altaic and Turanian speaking people, e.g., Turks and Magyar (Hungarian) speaking people. He made it clear that the Akkadians were Semites like himself . To support this idea Oppert pointed out that typological features between Sumerian and Altaic languages existed. This feature was agglutination.
The problem with identifying the Sumerians as descendants from contemporary Turanian speakers resulted from the fact that Sumerian and the Turkish languages are not genetically related. As a result Oppert began to criticize the work of Hincks (who was dead at the time) in relation to the identification of the Sumerian people as Turanian following the research of Rawlinson.
Oppert knew Rawlinson had used African languages to decipher cuneiform writing. But he did not compare the Sumerian to African languages, probably, due to the fact that he knew they were related given Rawlinson’s earlier research.
It is strange to some observers that Oppert,never criticized Rawlinson who had proposed the Turanian origin of the Ki-en-gi (Sumerians). But this was not strange at all. Oppert did not attack Rawlinson who was still alive at the time because he knew that Rawlinson said the Sumerians were the original Scythic and Turanian people he called Kushites. Moreover, Rawlinson made it clear that both the Akkadians and Sumerians were Blacks. For Oppert to have debated this issue with Rawlinson, who deciphered the cuneiform script, would have meant that he would have had to accept the fact that Semites were Black. There was no way Oppert would have wanted to acknowledge his African heritage, given the Anti-Semitism experienced by Jews living in Europe.
Although Oppert successfully hid the recognition that the Akkadians and the Sumerians both refered to themselves as sag-gig-ga “black headsâ€, some researchers were unable to follow the status quo and ignore this reality. For example, Francois Lenormant, made it clear, following the research of Rawlinson, that the Elamite and Sumerians spoke genetically related languages. This idea was hard to reconcile with the depiction of people on the monuments of Iran, especially the Behistun monument, which depicted Negroes (with curly hair and beards) representing the Assyrians, Jews and Elamites who ruled the area. As a result, Oppert began the myth that the Sumerian languages was isolated from other languages spoken in the world evethough it shared typological features with the Altaic languages. Oppert taught Akkadian-Sumerian in many of the leading Universities in France and Germany. Many of his students soon began to dominate the Academe, or held chairs in Sumerian and Akkadian studies these researchers continued to perpetuate the myth that the Elamite and Sumerian languages were not related.
There was no way to keep from researchers who read the original Sumerian, Akkadian and Assyrian text that these people recognized that they were ethnically Blacks. This fact was made clear by Albert Terrien de LaCouperie. Born in France, de LaCouperie was a well known linguist and China expert. Although native of France most of his writings are in English. In the journal he published called the Babylonian and Oriental Record, he outlined many aspects of ancient history. In these pages he made it clear that the Sumerians, Akkadians and even the Assyrians who called themselves salmat kakkadi ‘black headed peopleâ€, were all Blacks of Kushite origin. Eventhough de LaCouperie taught at the University of London, the prestige of Oppert, and the fact that the main centers for Sumero-Akkadian studies in France and Germany were founded by Oppert and or his students led to researchers ignoring the evidence that the Sumerians , Akkadians and Assyrians were Black.
In summary, the cuneiform evidence makes it clear that the Sumerians, Akkadians and Assyrians recognized themselves as Negroes: “black headsâ€. This fact was supported by the statues of Gudea, the Akkadians and Assyrians. Plus the Behistun monument made it clear that the Elamites were also Blacks.
The textual evidence also makes it clear that Oppert began the discussion of a typological relationship between Sumerian and Turkic languages. He also manufactured the idea that the Semites of Mesopotamia and Iran, the Assyrians and Akkadians were “whitesâ€, like himself. Due to this brain washing, and whitening out of Blacks in history, many people today can look at depictions of Assyrians, Achamenians, and Akkadians and fail to see the Negro origin of these people.
To make the Sumerians “white†textbooks print pictures of artifacts dating to the Gutian rule of Lagash, to pass them off as the true originators of Sumerian civilization. No Gutian rulers of Lagash are recognized in the Sumerian King List.
To the question of, ‘Why is it that no ancient Mesopotamian or Persian artwork depicts any black people? They all have big noses, which is a semitic/Indic trait.”
What is important to note is Ephraim Speiser and others have commented on the apparent discrepancy between ancient numerically predominant skulls of the ancient Mesopotamians (which were Ethiopic) while the monuments shown in books are of a prominent nosed Eurasiatic type. This is because of what was said by Dr. Winters on one of these blogs about when the art was made.
It is clear now that the art and sculpture was made for the most part much later than the Sumerians existed and it was not made by early Akkadians either but belongs to non-semitic Guti some other late coming people which makes some sense since supposedly early “semites” thought it taboo to sculpt or paint the human image .
In 1972 historian William Langer wrote, “The population of both Upper and Lower Mesopotamia in prehistoric times belonged to the brown or Mediterranean race. While this basic stock persisted in historical, times especially in the south, it became increasingly, mixed especially with broad-headed Armenoid peoples from the northeastern mountains owing to the recurrent incursions of mountain tribes into the plain.” In William L. Langer – An Encyclopedia of World History, Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 1972 .
In the “Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Sumer were parts of the original domain of the Brown Race” p. 145-146. Grafton Elliot Smith What does that mean? Was Smith delusional?
Historian Ephraim Speiser also mentions in his book Oriental Studies, the monuments appear to represent an Armenoid type while the bulk of the early Mesopotamians were in fact of the long-headed Mediterranean which is the “brown” or East African i.e., hamitic type. The same is the case with Anatolia or Turkey (Asia Minor).
1911 – anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith wrote – “the physical characteristics of the present day Nubian, Beja, Danakil, Galla, and Somali populations are …are an obvious token of their undoubted kinship with the proto-Egyptians.”” . Found on page 75 in The Ancient Egyptians and the Origin of Civilization (London/New York, Harper & Brothers) 1911.
An O. R. Gurney mentioned in 1952 that , “Examination of the skulls which have been found on several sites in Anatolia shows that in the third millennium the population was preponderantly long-headed or dolichocephalic, with only a small admixture of brachycephalic types. In the second millennium the proportion of brachycephalic skulls increases to about 50 percent.”” (6) Gurney, O.R.; The Hittites, Penguin Books, 1990, First Ed. 1952 p. 284
Carleton Coon who was one of the first to misinterpret this “Mediterranean race” terminology was also one of th efirst to admit that dolichocephaly is “no where to be found on a regional based in Europe”. Among fair-skinned North Africans as well heads tend toward the mesocranic and brachycephalic unlike the ancient peoples there. This is because dolichocephaly is basically a trait of Africans. So wherever you see populations in the ancient world that were predominantly dolichocephalic you can rest assured that they were dark in color like modern sub-Saharans.
People need to understand that the early neoltihic world and the earliest civilizations throughout most of the Bronze Age across the world were basically “black African” affiliated and continued to be so well into the history period and that includes Europe, the Near East and southern Asia extending well into East Asia. That also includes the people who made the megaliths of Europe, the Stone Henge and those of Asia and North Africa.
Elliot Smith – “a description of the bones of an Early Briton of that remote epoch might apply in all essential details to an inhabitant of Somaliland… The people were longheaded of small stature, skull is long, narrow and coffin shaped, brow ridges poorly developed, forehead is narrow, vertical and often slightly bulging…” p. 58 -59
The earliest megalithic astronomical ruins – the prototype of the Stone henge is found 1000 year searlier in the Nabta Playa or Nubian desert. Needless to say these sites are associated with African physical types. And that is not some African American making this up. That is a fact that Western scholars have concluded.
It doesn’t mean there was some biological disposition that dark-skinned people possessed that led to the development of early civilizations. It just so happens dark skinned African-looking people were the numerically predominant people of the world in that time.
The Bronze Age North African, such as Naqada man which was related to neolithic and bronze age Saharans and who spread out over Egypt directly before the rise of the pharoahs was unquestionably related to modern peoples of the Horn of Africa but also to the neolithic North Africans and Europeans and Near Easterns. That is not some African saying that , that is what has been discovered by European scholars. So most people who are coming to Afrocentric sites as they are called really need to get a grip and learn what science is actually saying. Why should people in the horn of Africa be taught that ancient Egyptians looked like Turks or like the rendition of ancient Egyptians presently in National Geographic’s April 1990 issue.
Said Loring Brace 2005 and 2006, ““Modern Europeans ranging all of the way from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe and throughout the Mediterranean on to the Middle East show that they are closely related to each other. The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants…”
Elsewhere in the same article he writes, “Basques and Canary islanders are clearly related to modern Europeans.” That article is, “The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form, C. Loring Brace,*† Noriko Seguchi,‡ Conrad B. Quintyn,§ Sherry C. Fox,¶ A. Russell Nelson, Sotiris K. Manolis,** and Pan Qifeng Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 January 3; 103(1): 242–247.
Also in the same article we are told these same people that had no significant connection to modern peoples of Europe and the Near East were related to – guess who?
Brace et al. says, “”It is a further surpise that the Epi-palaeolithic Natufian of Israel from which the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to sub-Saharan Africa.” He mentions these sub-Saharans as being of the Niger-Congo group. and “The Niger-Congo speakers, Congo, Dahomey and Haya, cluster closely with each other and a bit less closely with the Nubian sample, both the recent and the Bronze Age Nubians, and more remotely with the Naqada Bronze Age sample of Egypt, the modern Somalis, and the Arabic-speaking Fellaheen (farmers) of Israel. When those samples are separated and run in a single analysis as in Fig. 1, there clearly is a tie between them that is diluted the farther one gets from sub-Saharan Africa” (Brace, 2005)
He is saying that the so called “true Negro” is closely linked to the Natufians and Nubians while the people of the horn of Africa are related to the early Egyptian or proto-Egyptian and agriculturalists who’ve recently moved up from the Arabian peninsula – or am I just misinterpreting something.
Understand what European physical anthropologists in general are saying! It is not that subtle :
“”There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas.” (Nancy C. Lovell, ” Physical Anthropology of Egyptians,”” in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York Routledge, 1999, pp 328-332.
So it is not that people like Dr. Winters or so called Afrocentrics are making things up. The fact that African types were predominant in the Near East Southern Asia and North Africa have been called Mediterranean has been misconstrued by many people over the last century who have expertise in only one area of the anthropology. Geneticists are a good example of this and there is now a debate taking place among scholars about the obvious discrepancy between the genetic sciences and the physical anthropological findings also founded now today genetic based morphological change.
“Hanihara (1996) also shows that ancient West Asians resembled Africans.(Hanihara T., “Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups,” Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)” What does that mean? Why would Hanihara find ancient West Asians related to Africans. Why does he not say modern West Asians (Middle Easterners, etc).
Because THEY WERE NOT THERE!
I know this has been hard for some of us to grasp but that is to say they were not the predominant population of that area yet – period!
That was also what said by the early anthropologists. Yet if someone like Dr. Winters repeats what has been discovered by Europeans they are supposed to be something radically Afrocentric.
Understand the relationship that ancient Egyptians biologically and culturally before the Ptolemaic period had with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa goes back for thousands and thousands of years, as does their culture. “”We also compare Egyptian body proportions to those of modern American Blacks and Whites… Long bone stature regression equations were then derived for each sex. Our results confirm that, although ancient Egyptians are closer in body proportion to modern American Blacks than they are to American Whites.. Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks.” (“Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature.” Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
So beware what you read in blogs –
It is important to understand that Egyptian culture can only be studied in the context of an African one. That is why it is not doing anyone any good to send a tour of Tut around the world with a forensically recast version in white as if there were some scientific proof of it , or to show photos in books wear the paint has been worn of ancient Egyptians or soft Ethiopian hair made straighter and redder from hair chemicals and then have the audacity to get upset when some “Afrocentric” proclaims the Egyptians were “black”.
Thus we read: ” “…2 years was found to be the maximum duration of Caucasian hair buried under the ground” in Rogers Spencer Lee – Personal Identification from Human Remains 1987.
Also the breakage of bond in the human hair of the mummies,”was related to mummification and cosmetic teatments embalming materials . See “Microbeam Synchrotron Imaging of hairs from Ancient Egyptian Mummies” Bertrand, L. Dumas P Synchrotron Radiation 2003 Spet. P. 387-92 from the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration de Musees de France UMR 171
“Afrocentric ” history explains why Brace and other physical anthropologists from the beginnings of anthropolgy until now have said that the majority of the ancient neolithic people, Cro-Magnons and their Mesolithic descendants were not directly ancestral to modern Europeans or Eurasians of the Middle East who also moved into India.
What do the anthropologists say about Egyptians until very late period in Egypt when other physical types had become numerically significant in Palestine, “If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans.” (Barry Kemp, “Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
The anatomist G. Elliot Smith said of the modern east Africans: “The essential identity to the early Neolithic Europeans and of the proto-Egyptians is generally admitted” p. 20
The works of Krogman, Haddon and other early physical anthropologists make clear that there is no way in heaven or on earth that modern European or even fair-skinned people now living in the Near East were even a significant number of the early Bronze Age populations. Thus people reading about the ancient world need to revise their own thinking when reading into genetic studies and come to terms with what is really being said. How were African haplotypes and genes really transferred to present Europeans and Near Easterners? It is obvious that the early haplotypes in Europe and Eurasia belonged to people with no strong link to modern Europeans. So what does that mean for genetics that they were transferred so late .
What does it mean for linguistics when the Nostratic theory says that the semitic culture and for that matter the Indo European language group began to spread from the Natufians 8 to 9,0000 years ago or people from that period in the Levant – a people that have been long known to have been of “Negro” and Negroid. What does that really mean? Does everyone really want to know? No – I think people would rather turn history around so that it fits into their MGM picture view of what ancient peoples like “semites”, and Akkadians and Philistines and Phoenicians, and Moors and Persians and the builders of stone henge really looked like. I won’t say Olmecs since they haven’t done a film on them yet.
So – sorry that Afrocentrics are as one book title reads – in search of “an imaginary past”. But as early Africans were well aware the ancestral ties were the ties that bind and that’s a link thats not going to be broken – not even through time.
Well researched, well constructed, just a magnificent amalgamation of evidence to support your thesis. I have read myriad books of ancient history and one of the facts that I outline to those who debate me and denigrate me is that, the vast majority of evidence to support Black Africans pioneering achievements in antiquity come from white scholars. Therefore, “Afrocentrism” as many people call it, is rooted in large part, on white scholarly evidence; talk about bitter irony.
Keep up the good work I beg, beseech, and implore you to do so.
Thank You
Right on Ms. Dana! You tell ’em!
Sorry should have said Natufians 8-9,000 years ago. Just writing my letter too quick .
Another interesting thing about the Natufians who first lived 10,000 -12000 years ago or 8,9,000 B.C.. The crania Brace studied he described as “robust” while the later Natufians that were more gracile were also “Negroid” and were either influenced by the Mushabians from the Nile or were the Mushabi. It probably needs to be made clear if the pre-Mushabians were related to teh Niger -Congo group or if the latter ones were.
Later Ubaid skeletons that spread the neolithic culture over Mesopotamia and Arabia had the same skeletal markings as the Natufians and were also described as robust, large bodied and “negroids” by s few early antrhopologists.
oh yes indeed dana marniche ,the confirmation information reality be mad tight ,,,360 degrees,,,,,,,,,,,,,,this is terrell ali bey ,.indeed
To put it bluntly. A man by the name of Dr. Malachi Z York wrote over 500 books, many saying all of this same information about the Sumerian Doctrine. His first book was written in 1967 and Zachariah Sitchen first book “The 12th Planet” was written in 1976 – 10 years later, so he didn’t bite Stichens work. He has pretty much covered all of this information. Much respect to the brother who wrote this article because the information still needs to be brought forth. If you are looking for many of Yorks books, sorry, they are out of print, or cost several hundreds of dollars. It’s amazing that all these years later, both black and white scholars are confirming things he talked about over 30 years ago. Absolutely Phenominal.
Brother Kush said it…. Dr. York has been on the track of Ether peoples liberation for over 35 years now. His freedom has been compromised for it as well. The world will behold the facts revealed.
Many of Dr. Yorks books are out of print, while others are hard to find, yet alleyesonegipt.com, factology.com and heisinnocent.com will provide anybody seeking the profound writing of Dr. york. You may also become aware of the tremendous price he pays for raising “Niggazs to GOD’S”. He need our aid and assistance. Hotep Hau
We’re all waiting for your book Queen Dana !!!