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Egypt as precursor to some of Greek Philosophy
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M: [QB] Don't drag me into this nonsense. Anyone who understands ancient Greece's rise to empire would understand that much of that rise was due to absorbing knowledge and treasure from the ancient cultures of Egypt, Babylon, Persia and India. It is blatantly obvious to anyone who knows anything about history. However, whenever Europeans tell the story, Greeks are always listed as "the father of..." this or "the first to do" that, which totally and absolutely goes against all the facts. In NO HISTORY BOOK is Greece considered among the FIRST countries to be civilized with writing, math and science, yet CONSISTENTLY they are listed as the FIRST to practice these things and this point is STRESSED, not just as being part of a "Western" legacy, but as a WORLDWIDE history. Which is nothing but PURE ABSOLUTE propaganda. The issue is not whether they BUILT ON existing knowledge, which is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS, but whether they were the FIRST to pursue knowledge for knowledge sake or the first to understand the value of knowledge, which is blatantly false. Look at the time lines. Look at the names and dates of the various thinkers. Look at the size of the empire as it spread. It is NO COINCIDENCE that the greatest scholars of Greece happened to exist AFTER Greece spanned 3 continents.... Prior to that most of the Great thinkers are only known about due to second and third hand references with little or NO direct evidence of their writings in existence. Pythagoras is an example of this as well as Socrates and others. The actual written documents of ACTUAL Greek thinkers that has been passed down to us comes MAINLY from the period when Greece controlled much of the East and was MOSTLY written OUTSIDE of Greece to begin with. That should tell you something. Compare the knowledge and accomplishments of the EARLY Greek thinkers, prior to the expansion of the Empire to that of the Greek scholars AFTER the rise of the Empire and you will see to VASTLY DIFFERENT bodies of work both quantitatively and qualitatively. Now why is that? Add to that the fact that Alexander employed armies of scribes and scholars to go over all the written material of the cultures that they conquered and it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to claim the Greeks did everything SOLELY on their own ingenuity. That is stupid. As James points out, Aristotle is considered the originator of "natural philosophy", but Ausar, Heru and Auset ARE "natural philosophy" from thousands of years earlier, tying together agriculture, reproduction, male and female sexuality and the origin of humans into a symbolic tale with powerful hidden truths. The origin stories of all the ancient Egyptian theologies ALL were "natural philosophy", concerning the origin of man, plants, animals, the stars, the universe and the planet and the forces at work in nature that made these things happen. The credit that the Greeks deserve is in writing down their insights in such a way that others could understand it without having to 'decode' the knowledge embedded in the symbolic manner of ancient Egypt. But that does not mean that Egyptians did not have "rational" thinkers of their own or treat knowledge in a rational manner. In fact, you couldn't have developed such a SOPHISTICATED level of cosmological symbolism WITHOUT a rational understanding of the workings of nature. The problem is that MOST of the Egyptian culture that survives are of structures that were of a symbolic nature, whereas their writings and teachings have mostly perished. Conversely, with ancient Greece the opposite is true, most of their physical symbolic structures have perished, while their writings predominantly survived. Ancient Greece is the result of the combination of influences from the cultures of the Levant and Egypt. If you want to the the precursors to Greek architecture, look at Beni Hassan, Dier el Bahri and elsewhere. If you want to see influences in dress and custom look at Babylon and Persia along with Egypt. The big curly beards are EXACTLY like the ancient portraits found in Sumer and Elam. The side view portraits in two or three colors are found all over Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia prior to Greece. The stylistic freezes and borders around depictions of every day life, battles and myths is again straight out of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It ain't brand new stuff unique to Greece. And these cultures made many a life like sculpture long before Greece was thought about, even if most were not lifelike, as earlier cultures were into mass production of imagery covering almost every surface of major temples, tombs and other major constructions. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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