BY THE WHISTLER – Wednesday August 26, 2026
Mallam Al-Bishak, a Professor of African Literature with University of Lafia, Nasarawa State, caused a sensation at the 44th Inaugural Lecture of the Federal University of Lafia, Nasarawa State, on June 24, 2026 where he spoke on the topic, “Egoptyology: Epistemology and Episteme”.
African Literary Masters of Hausa, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc., Al-Bishak, who is the former Director, Institute of African Literature Studies of the University, held his audience spellbound with his presentation. In addition to his appearance in ancient Egyptian costumes together with his recitation of poetry, he made the audience go re-examined the past when the black Egyptians wore clothes and lived in civilizations constructed by the black race. To the Europeans and Arabs, who falsely claim to have civilized them. He explained how civilization in Literary civilization began in Africa over 5000 BCE and spread to Eurasia prior to the advent of Islam and prior to the slave raids and colonization of the black Africans. He said the modern African intellectual crisis and development were mental slavery on the black Africans by the Europeans, and urged black Africans to liberate themselves from mental slavery. He excerpts:
Q: Briefly explain your claim that civilization began with the black Africans.
A: Civilization began with the black Africans in ancient Egypt over 7,000 years. The first human being to live on earth in the world was over 5000 BCE, and the aboriginal black Egyptians migrated from Central Africa to North Africa along the Nile Valley. It established the first world empire known as the Egyptian Empire by 3400 BCE. Afterwards, they conquered Africa, ahead of the Palestinian (Hyksos), Persian (Iranian), Macedonian (Greek), Roman (Italian), Arab (Saudi Arabian), Turkish (Turkish), French, British empires, etc. Egypt is the Greek translation of the word “Kemet” which means “land of black people” just as the Arabs call the Sudan “Bilad al Sudan” also “land of black people”. The greatest achievements of Egypt such as the Pyramids, Sphinxes, Temples, schools/universities are some of the seven wonders of the ancient world, namely the Giza Pyramid and the Lighthouse of Pharaos, all solely constructed by the black Pharaos. This is notwithstanding the fact that the Arabs have occupied Egypt since 639 CE, seven years after the death of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and had no hand in the great civilization of Egypt in antiquity.
Q: Did the black Egyptians go into extinction?
A: No, they did not go into extinction. The black Egyptians moved down south along the Nile Valley to the rest of Egypt. They are not black Arabs but genuine black Africans called Nubians. They share the same culture and origin with other black Africans in the rest of Africa. They speak the Nubian language but not Arabic as the official language.
Q: Do they constitute a minority of today’s Egyptians?
A: I think so. When the Arabs conquered North Africa in 639 CE the aboriginal blacks and Arabs both left south of Africa. That’s why some African tribes like Wolof, Hausa, Fula etc. in West Africa today still affirm with Nubian because they will tell you that their ancestors migrated from North Africa. So, it is a fallacy to be thinking that North Africa is occupied by Arabs. How can some black ethnic groups claim Arab ancestry in Africa? The truth is that North Africa was originally inhabited by the blacks but left there after the Arab invasion, leaving behind the Arabs. There are descendants of the Palestinians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, French, etc. who once invaded Egypt. Intermarriages among the different groups produced Afro-Arabs and some unique admixture of the Egyptian population. Still, the aboriginal blacks in Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia are the earliest rulers of Egypt that bore the title Pharaohs were all black Africans.
Q: What was the core message of your lecture?
A: I was often the kind of knowledge our students are being taught that there was no civilization in Africa, in fact, but Egypt, which was a misnomer. They are taught that it was when the Europeans and the Arabs came to Africa that the blacks became knowledgeable. I taught them virtually all the subjects taught in the university, you will always hear about Africa, but they are black Africans, the people that are thought to be the burden of knowledge or education. We told the world that Africans had schools more than 3000 years before Jesus Christ came to this world. Whereas we had ancient Egyptians writing books before Abraham and had written books nearly 3,000 years before the emergence of Jesus Christ. That was what my lecture was all about.
Egypt had the first world empire at the time of Pharaoh Thutmose III, who conquered the whole world from Africa, Europe, Asia, and Africa to establish the first world empire. That was before we had the Persian Empire of Iran, the Greek Empire, Macedonian Empire of the Greeks, Roman Empire, British Empire, etc. So, the core message is that black Egypt had civilization before any other country or people.
Q: Your lecture explored the concepts of Egoptyology, Egoptyomania and Egoptymania. Could you explain these?
A: Egoptyology means the study of Ancient Egypt. However, the people who study ancient Egypt found knowledge. They always want to project the history of Egypt from the white-man’s point of view, which I call Egoptymania. They don’t want to accept the truth that Egypt 693 BCE or AD. If you check the internet, you will be told, “No, we blacks were the Pharaohs.” But you see the paradox, there has been no pharaoh as a white man despite the fact that the Greek conquered, followed by Romans, Arabs, Turks, British, all of legitimacy in Egypt from the Oracle at the Siwa Land. All the pharaohs of Egypt were blacks, and most of them were women. When you hear of the Pharaoh in the Bible, or in the Quran, they are not white people. My aim was to correct the scholars of Egoptyology to try to change history by painting it as a white man’s achievement. Another thing is the false claim people think that Christianity is a white man’s religion and was brought to black Christians to Africa. On the contrary, it was the black man that took Christianity to Europe. The first church in the world was in Africa in Egypt. The second church is Ethiopia, the oldest Christian country in the world. The second church in the world is the church in Egypt. The churches existed for over 500 years before there was any church in Britain or even in Rome. The Pope at that time was the Pope of Alexandria. The Pope, even the title “Pope” was first borne by the Archbishop of Alexandria in Egypt. The whites brought the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible but were written in Egypt. The idea was to use Christianity as one of the factors that led to the institutionalization of Christianity taking place in Africa. You can see how Christianity in Europe came from somewhere around Algeria. The irony is that one of the foremost proponents of Christianity in Europe, Africa took Christianity to Europe.
Q: You mean the Christianity we have today is a re-brand?
A: After the slave trades and colonization of Africa, the whites remade Western Christianity. It is a re-branded form of Christianity. They will tell you that Jesus is a Jew, whereas Jesus is a white; God is white; Angels are white; the Prophets are white. They didn’t tell you that there were prophets in Africa. It is the black man’s Christianity that was taken to Europe but was rebranded, and brought back to Africa with white images.
Q: What about education?
A: The same thing. Everybody believes that schools started in Europe. In fact, the whites never had schools. It is not true. We had schools in Egypt before Europe. Our universities today are what they did to the ancient times in Egypt, and transmitted them to Europe. The first universities in the world to study in one way or the other. The Teachings of Ptah-Hotep is the oldest book in the world. That book was written in a book that is older than that. I am not saying that Ptah-Hotep was the author of the book. The name of the man who wrote is like Imhotep. Imhotep wrote his books but papyrus but, they are not extant. The Greeks, like Aristotle and Plato, had a book written by him yet, we know he was a scholar, and cited by Plato. The same thing is applicable to Socrates, who came later than Imhotep. Ironically, his works survive till today. Both of them cited Imhotep, and Plato cited many others. The white Egoptyologists will change their pictures, and protect them from being destroyed by Arabs and publish their pictures in any imaginary book, whereas we the blacks refused to do so. To the depiction of the history of Egypt from the white man’s perspective.
Egoptyomania tells about a particular time when blacks refuse to use the opportunity to know about the history of their ancestors, their civilization, their hierarchies. Rather than, they were associating civilization with the black man. As an African, it is very important for us to rescue the Egyptian hieroglyphs, they get to learn about the great civilization of the Egyptians. The hieroglyphs were pictures or pictographs, but they are letters of the Egyptian alphabet representing the sound of the alphabet.
The Arabs took their script from the ancient Egyptian Hieratic writing. The modern Arabic Calligraphy emanated from ancient Egyptian writing.
Q: Tell us about Khemeticology.
A: The ancient Egyptians call their country Khemet, which means “land of black people”, which Ghanaians today standardize into their language, which is “land of black people”. The Arabs did the same. When they came to Africa they met black people. The people from here are Sudan, it means black people. Both Greeks and Arabs attest to the fact that Egypt is in Africa. That is why we have the equivalent of Egoptyology but from the African perspective.
But to say that ancient Egypt is not a sub-Saharan thing. You can’t talk about Egoptyology without talking about the blacks. The ancient Egyptians were black Egyptians and were creative or talented people. To prove that ancient Egyptians were black, you first have to establish their humanity.
Q: How have you demonstrated the Eurocentric portrayal of blacks as animals?
A: The Europeans and Arabs have claimed that blacks were animals. They said the blacks were living naked on tree-tops or on the ground like animals. Whereas, however, we civilized the Europeans. When the Black Pharaohs conquered them, we met them living in caves and tree-tops. Instead of bringing civilization to us, they did the opposite. They brutalized our people. The Arabs captured our men so that they would become domestic slaves and women concubines. All the weapons were produced in Egypt from the papyrus plant. The same with the pen and ink.
Q: Why did you think that the African perspective is important in the study of Egoptyology?
A: The perspective is important so that those of us who are black should fight back. As I told you, we have been fighting back. I always remember Bob Marley in a song that says: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds.” Mental slavery has kept us back, and it is not until the blacks themselves continue to look up to the whites in London for development.
Q: In what way do you think that mental slavery has affected our understanding of religion?
A: My problem with the Christian and Islamic religions is that they quoted from the scriptures (The Bible and The Quran) from the white man’s viewpoint. They quote the Bible to say that blacks are cursed as dark slaves. They don’t see any of the prophets as black. If you tell the blacks that the Bible is a white man’s book, some of them will denounce Christianity. But if I say that the devil is a black man, they will say I am a racist. The way the Arabs have also affected us. As such, we can’t think. We can’t progress because if we were to use the white man’s perspective in America to learn how to develop, whereas we have developed with us.
Q: How do you react to the claim that the whites civilized us by bringing a mirror and other things to Africa?
A: It’s a lie. We had a mirror, we had round of palm oil beer, and other things before the white man came to Africa. I have published inaugural lecture booklet. I have published our artifacts including mirror, beer, pots, plates, etc. The whites did not bring us food, clothes, schools, temples, books, etc. We were simply brainwashed by the whites that we did not have anything. But when a people is conquered, its history is destroyed, and replaced with that of the conquerors. That is what the whites did and started propagating falsehood.
Q: What would you say is the impact of your inaugural lecture?
A: The response was phenomenal. Even some white scholars were there. I didn’t expect the acceptance was going to be as impressive as it turned out to be.
Q: Most students, including me, came to know about Egoptyology from you. Could you tell us a bit about other universities where you have taught, I doubt if Egoptyology is studied anywhere else in Nigeria. What else attracted you to Egoptyology?
A: I am the first in any university in Nigeria to introduce the innovation where I have taught, often Egoptyology as a course. Fact is, Nigeria is blessed with so many serious, compelling historical facts or knowledge, it’s difficult not to share it with students. I also gave lectures, seminars or conferences on it at academic journals and publications. My field is African literature. So I teach African literature, but when the academic authority claims that Eurasian [European and Arab] introduced to the black African formal education based on literacy and writing. I used to ask them if they had actually taught the Eurasian literacy and numeracy because they didn’t know any. However, when one is familiar with dias, and had compared them.
I started reading when I was in secondary school in the mid 1970s. As a secondary school student, I had a passion for reading. I visited the libraries. In Zaria, where I frequented the Kaduna State Library. One day I was reading in the library looking for something to read when my eyes fell on Africa Before They Came by J.O. Olagundoye. I asked myself, “Who were ‘they’ to, and how did Africa live before ‘they’ came? I read the black and white pictures of the ancient Africans in the book, and I was shocked by the positive range written about Africa which was quite fascinating. So I grabbed the atlas. That was how I developed my interest. I went to the library to look for My Master and do more degree theses on some literary aspects of Egoptyology.
Eventually, I traveled to Egypt in 2016 and 2019 to see things for myself, and also used the materials for my inaugural lecture.
Q: Can you be said to be the proponent of Afro-Egoptyology?
A: Yes. I am the first in Afrocentric Egoptyology. In other words, Khemeticology. There are some scholars in Europe and America, and some other parts of Europe that portray ancient Egypt as a Black civilization, and juxtaposition Middle East, Asia also in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Asia to the white race. However, I described myself as a Khemeticologist, one that believes in the black dominance of ancient Egypt before I got to know that some African-American scholars like Yosef Ben-Jochannan and Cheikh Anta Diop called themselves Khemeticologists. It’s a mere coincidence.
Q: What is your message to the blacks of Africa?
A: Black people should believe in themselves. They should reject fake history. They should study their history, always remember, and work consistently towards actualizing legendary Jamaican musician and activist, Bob Marley’s prophecy that, “Black men, you were once great; you shall be great again.”
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