Film Review

“To be Afrikan is to be a spiritual being.” – Dr Kimani Nehusi

‘Nubian Spirit: The African Legacy of the Nile Valley’ is a journey through ancient Afrika’s golden times with director, producer and narrator, Louis Buckley. We first saw this film at a day of Nubian culture in March and were impressed by how well the issues of Nubian history were covered. The DVD documentary has footage of some of the major sites of Nubian and Kush**e culture from the Sudanese side of the border with Egypt.

While Egypt has a higher profile because of the ruthless exploitation of the multi-millennium dynastic period by the current Arabised rulers and merchants it is a little known fact that there are actually more pyramids – 212, in total – in Sudan than in Egypt.

Contributions come from pan-Afrikanists Anthony Browder, Robin Walker, Dr Kimani Nehusi (UEL), Onyeka, Ife Piankhi, K N Chimbiri, the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Sally-Ann Ashton, the Petrie Museum’s Stephen Quirke, archaeologist Krzysztof Grzymski and the Nubian scholar Rashid El-Sheikh. Themes include: Ancient Religion & Spiritual Mythology; Temples & Education; Technological Advancements; Spirituality & Moral Order; The Nubians in Kemet; Trade Industry & the Royal City of Meroe; and Foreign Invaders & the Split of the Nile Valley Civilizations.

Onyeka pointed out that Egypt, or Kemet as it was then, was the multicultural expression of the Afrikan experience as the civilisation was built on knowledge from migrants from the South (Nubia and the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda) and West across what is now the Sahara desert but was more verdant in the past. Their cosmology was based on the notion of building a replica of the heavens here on earth which they achieved across various parts of Kemet and Nubia.

The first concept of the Trinity of father, son and virgin mother [not the later anti-woman Christian ‘Holy Ghost’] was embodied in the story of Ausar (Osiris), Auset (Isis) and Heru (Horus). That allowed for ideas of justice, fertilisation, regeneration, rebirth, balance and divine order to be embodied in the first examples of agriculture, writing, metalwork, mining, glasswork, physics, biology, chemistry and warfare.

The technological superiority of Afrikan science was probably best embodied in the creation of a near-accurate calendar over 6,000 years ago with the first recorded date being over 4,200 BCE – five centuries before even Jews say their Hebrew ancestors were invented. If we followed that Kamitian calendar of 365¼ days and 12x30 day months with a 13th month of five days our calendar would be around the year 6,250 not the current 2009 of the Gregorian calendar. We would also not be so quick to adopt the anti-Afrikan notion that ‘Black Man Time’ means turning up late for everything. We would never have created such an accurate calendar if we turned up late for observations and miscalculated the summer and winter solstices, spring and autumn equinoxes, solar and lunar eclipses and the inundation of the Nile. Later, the Romans adopted elements of the calendar but made changes and called it Julian, after the emperor Julius Caesar.

To achieve that as well as the skills involved in masonry, building design and geometrical alignment of large structures such as pyramids, the sphinx, castles, temples and houses indicates anything up to 12,000 years of cumulative work, study, recording, testing ideas and confirming recurring trends.

Meroe and Napata were the seats of the Kush**e empire which grew as Kemet became more susceptible to foreign rulers – Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs. The Meroitic script was devised as an alternative to Kemetian hieroglyphs which were being used by the invaders to undermine Afrikans. There are 900 books in Meroitic which has still not been deciphered. Kush had several Kandace queens until its fall to the Christianised Axumite empire in the 4th century AD. Meroe is a planned city and was considered the ‘Birmingham of Afrika’ by Europeans who went there in the 20th century AD.

This DVD is essential for everyone interested in the skills and concepts that embody the Afrikan worldview and as an inspiration towards what we can achieve in the future to put Afrika back on the right path again. For more info on Nubian Spirit contact Louis Buckley, Black Nine Films. Tel: 07957 994 138.
http://www.blackninefilms.com/docs/films.html
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=B7lxbAIiGA8&feature=channel
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oolcyuY8FyA&feature=channel

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