Progress and Achievements of the Colored People / Containing the Story of the Wonderful Advancement of the Colored Americans—the Most Marvelous in the History of Nations—Their Past Accomplishments, Together With Their Present-day Opportunities and a Glimpse Into the Future for Further Developments—the Dawn of a Triumphant Era. A Handbook for Self-improvement Which Leads to Greater Success

by Kelly Miller; Joseph R. Gay

It appears now that Egypt took its civilization from Ethiopia, the black empire south of it.

The old theories have been smashed into atoms, and it now appears that the black nations of certain regions of the continent of Africa were not races in their infancy, but the descendants of a powerful civilization gradually broken by misfortunes and disastrous wars against it.

The Egyptians have always contended that their forefathers learned their arts and largely received their laws from the black empire farther south. Throughout the pages of Homer, the Ethiopians are spoken of with great respect, as the friends of the gods, the “blameless Ethiopians” being a common phrase.

The great Greek historian, Herodotus, who has been charged with drawing upon his imagination in his accounts of Africa, is now demonstrated to have been truthful. His extraordinary stories about the ancient empire of Ethiopians, south of Egypt, are being verified from the recently unearthed monuments, as having been erected by the very people of whom the historian wrote, to celebrate their victories and honor their gods.

Although the most ancient inscriptions on the monuments along the upper Nile have not yet been deciphered, the story of the Land of the Blacks is well known as far back as eight hundred years before Christ.

THE BLACK KINGS

As showing a common civilization, in fact, perhaps a common origin, the doings of the Black Kings were chronicled after the same fashion as those of the Egyptian kings.

The writing of the people of the Great Black Empire, is like that of the Egyptians, and the gods they worshiped were closely related to the gods of Egypt.

Inscriptions on these monuments that have been deciphered, tell us that Piankhi, the black king, conquered Egypt 750 B. C., and that he worshiped without question in Egyptian temples, and the carvings in the excavated ruins, which show men and women unmistakably Negro, give evidence of the similarity of religion.

We have always supposed, as told by the scientists, that civilization went up the Nile, whereas, it is now proven that it came down the Nile, that is, from Ethiopia to Egypt, instead of the other way.