Apartheid - Ancient, Past and Present - A Review

[Euklid]

A review of:

Apartheid

Ancient, Past, and Present

Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations
in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine

By Anthony Lowstedt

I would like to pinpoint a few "quick assumptions" and invalid statements of Mr Anthony Lowstedt on his recent report of Human Rights Violation in regards with the Greek Administration in Egypt during the Hellenistic Era.

First of all, i would like to point-out that the title itself is partly incorrect since one cannot apply the same standards on 3 samples, where the 2 samples lie on the 20th Century A.D., while the other lies on the 3rd B.C- 1st A.D.

Hence, the correlation of these paradigms is not sufficient to be accepted as valid, a priori.

Nevertheless, I would like to point-out that the validity of the correlation of the 3 paradigms can also be questioned since the following statements of Mr Anthnony Lowstedt, are just as (if not even more) invalid as(than) the title.

Dear Sir, you begin your comparison with the following:

Atticism and the ‘Obsession with Language’

Ptolemaic Egypt...remained throughout its history a land of two
cultures which did coexist but, for the most part, did not coalesce or
blend. . . . We discern the manifestations of the two discrete cultures in
every aspect of their coexistence. . . . It would be difficult...to
exaggerate the significance of the fact that, except for some local
designations of places, measures, and so on, no native Egyptian word
made its way into Greek usage in the thousand years that Greek
endured as the language of Ptolemaic, Roman and Byzantine Egypt.554

In fact, none of the words that we commonly use today to describe ancient Egypt are Egyptian themselves, e.g. pyramid, sphinx, pharaoh, Egypt, hieroglyph. (Some of these Greek words, however, have Egyptian etymologies which by far predate Alexander’s conquest. It is, however, unlikely that Greeks in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt were ever aware of this.) Even the Gods and all of the cities were given Greek names, most of which accompany them to this day. The Egyptian kings of antiquity are also still known, ever since the sway of the Greek apartheid system, by their Greek name.

One cannot understand the ill-conditioned purpose that Mr Lowstedt ascribes to this mere fact throughout the flow of his discource, other than that the Greeks drive to record all their observations and accounts, is what allows us today to even have attested names in our disposal, and consequently to be able to assess and discuss, the concourse of History that we are currently entertaining ourselves, with. Avicenna and Averroes, Afro-Semitic intellectuals translated the Greek popular documents that were able to assess, just like the Greeks had translated the popular documents(cultural heritage) of the indigenous Afro-Semitic peoples in the Hellenic domain and consequently support the indigenous cultural element. (Septuagint, Josephus Flavius just to name a few.)

On the contrary, for Mr Lowstedt, the Ancient Greeks attitudes towards the culture of the indigenous Afro-Asiatic people can easily be compared with the 20th Century aggresion of the South African Apartheid and the Israeli attitude towards the Palestinian nation.

In his attempt to make such malicious claims he expresses the following contradictory statements:

(1)Cultural dispossession was later repeated to roughly the same large extent in South Africa and Israel as in Egypt, one difference being that Egyptian, the language of the entire indigenous majority, was eventually wiped out under Greek (and to a lesser extent, Latin) domination. (2)The Persian occupiers of Egypt, prior to the Greeks, did not use their own language, but Aramaic, the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean region at that time, as the language of administration in Egypt. They did this although Persian, an Indo-Iranian language, is very different from Aramaic, which is a Semitic language. And being a Semitic language, Aramaic is also an Afro-Asiatic language, which means it is much more closely related to ancient Egyptian than to Persian, the mother language of the invaders.556
(3) Apparently, an invading power needs at least a sizeable civilian element if it is to impose its language on an indigenous majority, and especially if it is to achieve the demise of an indigenous majority’s language, unless of course the difference in military resources is large enough and a physically genocidal policy is implemented successfully, as was frequently the case in the Americas during the last half-millennium. In other words: a colonialist power – though not neocolonialism – apparently needs to develop into apartheid (or further into physical genocide) if it is to achieve linguistic genocide.
(4)The ancient Egyptian language only lived on during and after the Graeco-Roman period with another name and in a vastly different form as Coptic, which is massively influenced by Greek and by the new Greek-inspired system of writing. At least one quarter of the Coptic vocabulary is Greek in origin. It is no longer being used in the vernacular today, and the lingual blame for that should not only be given to Arabic, which has largely replaced Coptic during the last millennium, but to Greek and Latin, as well. As we have seen, only a negligible amount of Egyptian words ever made it in the opposite direction, into the Greek and Latin languages of the dominant ethnic minority. In comparison, Khoisan languages, with some very limited exceptions, were annihilated in South Africa, whereas the Bantu languages of the majority preserved and survived, though not without also being massively influenced by the white languages.

Mr Lowstedt on (1), i must inform you that the Greeks used the Greek language as the language of administration something that you forget to mention ("administration"), they did not impose their language on a popular level - as the archeological evidence[Rosseta Stone], verify. Since, they were the administrators, they naturally used their own phonographical and simplified(Koine) language to communicate among themselves. Also they used and respected the popular indigenous language as the Rosseta Stone artifact testifies(Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script and Hellenic as the third and last language used for the announcement of one of the Ptolemaic decrees carved in 196 B.C. at an early period of Hellenistic rule and at the same time that "the difference in military resources is large enough" while "a physically genocidal policy is implemented successfully" statement is therefore invalid for one more reason besides the evident one mentioned above(Rosseta Stone); because there are no archeological evidence to support the claim the Hellenic Administrators enacted such policies similar to the "case in the Americas during the last half-millennium".

Therefore, these claims are not substantiated through the scientific method. And the blame cannot fall on Greek Human Right abuse for the extinction of Aramaic since a) Archeology has verified that the Greek administration used all languages(Hieroglyphics, and Egyptian demotic) to announce various announcements(Rosseta Stone) and b) there is no archeological evidence that are able to substantiate ethnic cleansing and/or racism.

On (2) and (3), again you attempt to imply a racial driven discrimination of the Greeks towards the indigenous Afro-Asiatic element which led to the extinction of the Afro-Asiatic semitic language, the Aramaic.

This could be had been accepted as a theory, if you hadn't identified later on your discource that "The Greek scholars of Alexandria made sure that school grammars were generally to be learned and used by a literate and Greek elite. For any of the very few outsiders let into the educated elites, it was necessary to be steeped in Greek culture, language and ideals."

If the Greeks kept their language strictly in between them(elits), then how these "racially driven" measures managed to disposess the popular Aramaic? How can one keep a language among the elit, and at the same time disposses the popular language? Even though, the epigraphies found dating in the Hellenistic Era provide us with evidence that the Greek language did not monopolize the popular domain?(Rosseta Stone).

As you realize your claim is unsubstantiated as well, and its manifesto: "The resolution to
this apparent paradox lies in the power of language as a tool for ethnicism, i.e. its use as an
instrument of power and as a symbol of status. That is what the obsession was all about." is equally a paradoxical. And propably, driven by the same cultural bias that you accuse the Greeks of.

Why is your discrimination driven by bias and an inherent negative attitude towards Hellenism is evident throughout your discource, when you use the following terminology: "Similarly, the Greeks were astoundingly ignorant, not only of ‘foreign’ languages, but also of multi-lingualism. The famous and well-travelled Galen, a very important figure in the history of medicine, wrote: ‘In ancient times there was a man who spoke two languages, that was a miracle: a man who understood and fluently spoke two languages.’ And he apparently meant what he was writing!"

The malicious term "ignorant" in a subject which you have expressed the inability to comprehend illustrates an ill-driven purpose of Historical propaganda. I will not enter to the numerous insults towards the Greek Ethnos because they are apparent.

Again i will only point-out why your argumentation is flawed and consequently driven by bias.

Galen, uses the term in "Ancient Times". From what we know Galen lived during the same period that you claim that the Greeks were intolerant towards multi-lingualism (AD 129 -ca 200 or 216) , how can he possibly refer to the Hellenistic-Roma and Early Byzantine time-span",when he belongs to the same time-span? And uses the term Ancient to describe the monolingualism of exactly that the Ancient Times before HIM and before the era he dwells into?

Through this statement Galen verifies that during his time people were indeed multi-lingual, while in the Ancient Times, people were not multilingual.

On (4) yet again, you try to put the responsibility on the Greeks, for the lesser usage of Coptic in Egypt today, when you write at the same time that "Coptic, which is massively influenced by Greek and by the new Greek-inspired system of writing. At least one quarter of the Coptic vocabulary is Greek in origin." How can the Greeks be responisble for the misuse of a language which is the Greek remnant in Egypt from those times? How one can be held responsible for the extinction of himself?

Therefore, Mr Lowsted once again you misrepresent and misuse Historical data and facts for reasons unknown(Political, Racial, Ethnical probably) and also go as far as to claim that the Greeks enacted similar oppressive methods with the Israelis in Palestine and with the White, South Africans which is utterly flawed, unsubstantiated and driven by bias as illustrated.

The quoted text of Mr Lowstedt "report" is titled, Apartheid – Ancient, Past, and Present: Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, Vienna: Gesellschaft für Phänomenologie und kritische Anthropologie, 2007, 3 rd edition, can be found at : http://www.dada.at/gems/gesellschaft/Apartheid.pdf

At Chapter 8.1 in the pages 241-245.