The colonial belief that Africa was a continent without a history has given way, in some quarters, to the contention that it once harboured technologically advanced cultures aplenty. While there is still puzzlement about how the pyramids were built there is, in parallel, argument about exactly how African the ancient Egyptians were. There is an understandable desire to counter finally the colonial picture of Africa, and an acknowledgement of its complex cultures is the least one can ask for. But there is also a somewhat more mystical tendency (reliant on the testimony of figures such as Credo Mutwa) drawing its own conclusions about Africa’s history.
Brenda Sullivan (who has a doctorate from “the Mashigo Institute for the Interpretation of Symbols”) believes that today’s San are the descendants of an ancient race that once peopled areas of the African continent, and that there were extensive contacts with the African and European civilisations of the Mediterranean in the distant past.
She tries to prove this through an analysis of rock art and other artefacts, arguing that there is evidence for sophisticated gold- and diamond-mining operations in Southern Africa, operations possibly carried out by the ancient Egyptians, but also perhaps involving the Phoenecians and even the Hebrews of King Solomon’s time. She finds echoes of Egyptian iconography in African rock art (as well as links between, for instance, Zulu and Celtic culture), and uses folktale and mythology to try to explain some of the mysteries surrounding unexplained African artefacts and sites.
Sullivan has accumulated a great tumulus of evidence, but what it adds up to is open to question. Much of what she adduces is suggestive rather than conclusive, and her argument is often confusing. Apart from obvious mistakes (for instance, Imhotep was an architect, not a pharaoh, and it’s pi, not phi, if we’re talking about the ratio — phi is a different letter of the Greek alphabet), and the apparent lack of careful editing, it is hard to know what to make of Sullivan’s contentions.
Some of them seem reasonable or at least possible, while others seem far-fetched. It appears that a certain amount of faith is required. Now and again Sullivan flips into a kind of religious rhetoric about these issues, which won’t help to convince those (like me) who would like to keep things on a solid materialist basis.
Africa Through the Mists of Time pursues a fascinating line of enquiry, but at times it is hard not to think Sullivan is seeing things. A rough engraving on an African rock, for instance, she describes as identical with the Egyptian ankh symbol, but it could just as easily be a quasi-human figure. To give another example, her “typical representation” of the Egyptian god Seth, found on the banks of the Vaal river, just does not look like what she says it does. Either the photographs are bad, or one needs a degree from the Mashigo Institute.