Ancient Egyptian Civilization in a Foreign Land

By Kunle SDB

Correct Connect Africa Foundation (CCAF), is known for having a strong connection with the SANKOFA principle, based on the inevitable journey back to our African root. This obviously has a lot to do with ancient Egypt, her culture, and civilization.

Since we could not afford a trip to Egypt, we settled for an alternative option, and that is, to visit the second biggest Egyptian Museum after the one in Cairo.

In these years I have gradually fallen in love with ancient Egypt, not only about her civilization but also her culture, heritage, and patrimonies.

The museum in Turin-Italy boasts of having a collection of thousands of artifacts originating from the ancient Egyptian civilizations, dating as far back as three thousand years before the birth of Christ. It is the largest collection of artifacts of the ancient Egyptian civilization after the one in Cairo. One may ask, how did these artifacts get to Turin-Italy? We are not very sure, however, the narrative is that they were sold out by the Egyptians.

On that faithful morning, we employed four good hours, moving from one floor to the other, observing and contemplating the wonders that came out of the hands, toils, and sweat of our ancestors. The most surprising and amazing were the gigantic statues of kings and deities carefully arranged in the gallery of kings – the section right at the basement, alongside with the temple of Ellesiya on the right and the Nubian room on the left. We were left dumbfounded! The immensity of those statues perfectly carved out from huge rocks were so frightening and at the same time appealing. In the middle, stands the statue of Seth, a sight that sticks to the memory. In addition, we saw over 20 same statues representing the litany of Ellesiya.

We are Africans. We must trace our shared history back to ancient Egypt. The great African Senegalese Scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop corroborated this statement by saying: “… The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in the air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt.”