The Sunday Mail
Ibo Foroma Rastafarian Perspectives —
DESIGNATED by the classical Greeks as Mesopotamia, one of the earliest cradles of world civilisation has been acknowledged to be the region between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates encompassing the Garden of Aden (Genesis 2:11-14).
Inheriting the Bible as we did, a great many are brainwashed into thinking that all mighty Biblical characters are white.
However, the originators of Babel, Chaldea, Sumer, Akkad, the Fertile Crescent (a half-moon shaped region that extends from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf), and Garden of Aden etcetera were all black Cushites of Eastern Ethiopia (Asia).
Genesis credits to Nimrod the son of Cush, the establishment of most of the early cities of Mesopotamia such as Babel (Babylon), Erech (Uruk), Akkad (Accad), Calneh identified by some pupils to be Nippur, Nineveh which later became the Assyrian capital and Calah.
During the third millennium BC, the land located within the southern portion of the Mesopotamia Valley was known as Sumer and Akkad. From the second millennium BC to the Hellenistic Age, beginning about the 4th century BC, the region was known as Babylonia.
When the Babylonian civilisation fell in Mesopotamia, the actual existence of ancient Sumer seems to have been forgotten.
Up to the middle of the 19th Century, Hebraic Old Testament records were the only sources which had information about the region. (Amayo 2011)
To the Ancient Hebrews, Sumer was known as the land of Sennaar or Shinah. (Genesis 10:10, Isaiah 11:11, Daniel 1:2).
To the question, “is there any evidence to indicate that the Sumerians were black people?” Amayo (2011) stresses the following points.
First, Sumerians neither spoke an Indo-European noraSemitic language. In this case, they could be classified as either Mongoloids or Negroids, the remaining major races of the world.
Second, the people named themselves “black-headed” or “black-faced people,” meaning black people as portrayed in the Assyrian and Babylonian archaeological inscriptions.
Third, there have been difficulties in the attempt to trace the Sumerians back to their original place before occupying southern Mesopotamia.
Professor George A Dorsey was convinced that the original Sumerians came from the Elamite Hills to the east of Mesopotamia. In this case, if they lived today, they would be called Arabs; whereas they would be Mongols if they lived originally in Afghanistan. (Dorsey 1931)
If the Sumerians original home was in the Elamite region it is very unlikely they were Mongoloids, and would be classified among Ethiopic or black ethnic groups.
This was the position of Sir Harry Johnston.
According to him, the Elamites of Mesopotamia appeared to have been a Negroid people with kinky hair who succeeded in transmitting this racial type to some Jews and Syrians.
He observed that there was a curliness of hair, together with a Negro eye and full lips in the portraiture of Assyrians which conveys the idea of an evident black element in Babylonia. (Johnston 1910)
Fourth, the above opinion expressed by Johnston has been confirmed by some archaeological discoveries.
Prof AC Huddon remarked that while the Assyrians themselves were depicted to be the pure type of Semites among Babylonians, there was a clear sign of Cushite blood.
Huddon cited an Elamite king on a vase found in Susa. The statue was painted black, indicating that he was Cushite. (Huddon 1934)
It has been observed also that up to the present time, there is a strong Negroid strain in the modern people of Elam.
Similarly, Gudea, the most outstanding King of Lagash of the Neo-Sumerian dynasty, is portrayed as black. This has been noted to be one of the finest statues of the Sumerians, depicting him as having most of the qualities of a black man.
His reign (2100 BC) ushered the dynasty of Ur, during which the first two rulers Ur, Nammu and Shulgi, made Ur and Uruk glorious cities of the ancient world. (Mallowan 1965)
Fifth, Sir Henry C Rawlinson, a famous English Near Eastern archeologist who deciphered Behistun Rock, named the Sumerians as Cushites (Ethiopians)and traced their original home to be in Ethiopia and Egypt.
He observed that the system of writing which they brought to southern Mesopotamia had the closest affinity with that of Egypt, and that there was an absolute identity between the two alphabets.
As regards to language, Rawlinson remarked that the language of the primitive Babylonians was Ethiopic, as was the vocabulary of the Sumerian language.
Hence belonging to that stock of tongues which in the sequence were everywhere more or less mixed up with some of the Semitic languages, whose modern specimens can be found in the Mahra of Southern Arabia and the Gala of Ethiopia.
Sixth, Sir Rawlinson’s conclusion was supported fully by the Mosaic Old Testament historical accounts.
The Genesis records dating from the 15th century BC clearly portrays how the nations originated and dispersed to the various parts of the world, during the post diluvian era. Genesis genealogy account states that Kush (Ethiopia), and Mizraim (Egypt) were brothers.
References
A Gershom (2011), “Black Origins of Mesopotamian Civilisation and Education”
G Dorsey (1931), “The Story of Civilisation: Man’s Own Show”
HH Johnston (1910), “The Negro in the New World”
AC Huddon (1934), “History of Anthropology”
HC Rawlinson (1878), “The Origins of Nations”
MEL Mallowan (1965), “Early Mesopotamia and Iran”
