## Monday, April 08, 2013

Who Keeps Saying that the Ancient Egyptians Were Not African?
In 2010, a colossal red granite head of ancient Khemet's (Egypt's) King Amenhotep III (circa 1390-1352 BC) was uncovered in his funerary temple of the Kom El -Hettan area on Luxor's West Bank. It is intact and measures 2.50 meters (or 8.2 ft) high. It is a masterpiece of highly artistic quality, and shows a portrait of the king with very fine youthful sculptured features. These African artists and craftsmen were knowledgeable of the Golden Ratio (and the Golden Rectangle)- a sophisticated mathematical relationship that is central to all things in nature.

The Golden Ratio defined:
Given two quantities, when the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one is equal to the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger one, then the ratio is said to be the golden (or divine) ratio.

Said another way, given two quantities (a and b), a is to b as a plus b is to a.
Expressed symbolically:
a : b :: a + b : a
Expressed algebraically, it looks like this:
a/b = (a + b)/a, where a > b.
The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887.

Thanks to the Eurocentric nature of today's mathematics, the Greek letter phi ($\varphi$) represents the golden ratio.

Its value is:
$\varphi = \frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2} = 1.61803\,39887\ldots.$
These early Egyptians knew that our bodies were constructed by Nature via the Golden Ratio or Mean. They understood that when one measures a person from head to toe and then measures that person from head to belly button, that that ratio approximates the golden ratio = 1.6180339887.

They also understood and used the fact that the golden ratio can be found by measuring from the top of the head to the chin and comparing that with the measurement from the top of the head to the nose.
These masters of architecture, design and sculpture eventually realized that something would look nice or attractive if it was designed with the golden ratio or golden rectangle within it. Take a look at these ancient Khemet/Egyptian giant columns that are designed based on the golden ratio.

They were part of a monumental architectural structure that is, itself, based on the golden rectangle that dwarfs the famed Greek Parthenon. In fact, the Greek architects of the Parthenon went to Khemet to learn their craft!
Above you see the Golden Rectangle enclosing a spiral which is called- thanks again to Eurocentric math, the Fibonacci Spiral (12th Century AD Fibonacci learn all of this from his Arab tutor who had, in turn, learned it from the ancient Egyptian (Khemet) Masters. Just look at the mathematics embedded within the Great Pyramid of Cheops (and this is just some of the embedded math!)
Yes, our ancient Northeast African Brothers and Sisters knew about the centrality of the golden ratio and golden rectangle in Nature and aesthetics. They received this knowledge from even earlier Africans who migrated into what we know today as southern Sudan and Ethiopia.

More on this in a future posting!