African History Month (sometimes called Black History Month) is observed during November in Trinidad and Tobago.
It is also celebrated annually during February in the United States, Canada and some Caribbean countries, notably Jamaica, Guyana and Antigua/Barbuda. In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands it is observed in October.
In an article, “Bringing Maāt, Destroying Isfet: The African Diasporan Presence in the Study of Ancient Kmt,” Dr Asa Hilliard applied a Kemetic (read Egyptian/African) principle to the study of African History.
He said that the principle called Maāt was the fundamental guiding idea, value and divine purpose of Kemetic society. Its opposite was Isfet, which means falsehood, disorder and injustice.
He emphasised that truth and balance must be rigorously applied to the scholarship about Africa and Africans. “Truly open dialogue brings Maāt and destroys Isfet. More multi-disciplinary, multi-racial, multi-national meetings of scholars are required if Isfet is to be banished and Maāt restored.”
The problems that Africans face in Trinidad are Tobago are legion. We are entering the midpoint of the International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD), we have an ongoing campaign for Reparations for Slavery & the Slave Trade and Native Genocide, neither of which are among the priorities of the present Government.
What Dr Hilliard and other scholars have stated about this African principle is also important for understanding the ethical foundation of Egypt, the African civilisation, which came northward out of Nubia.
Theodorus von Baaren said that “Maāt represents truth and order, her domain includes not only the order of nature but also the social and ethical orders...Not only must man live according to Maāt but also the gods must live by her truth and order; according to Egyptian texts Maāt is the food by which the Gods live.”
Dr Theophile Obenga, author of “African Philosophy of the Pharaonic Period” and “Ancient Egypt and Black Africa,” concluded that “It is through Maāt that we can transform ourselves to build a new African world order.”
Maāt was represented in ancient Egypt as a goddess. She was regarded as the wife of Thoth (divine intelligence) and the daughter of Ra (the name given to the sun).
Maāt was said to be dear to all the Egyptian gods, themselves, because she was the representation of their highest ideal. Her human devotees were so widespread in Egypt that there was no center which could be claimed as the source of her veneration.
The symbol for Maāt was an ostrich feather, which represented the “lightness of truth.” The figure of Maāt is shown either with the feather on her head or with the feather for a head. In one hand she holds a sceptre and in the other an Ankh, symbol of life.
The Egyptians understood that the Pharaoh or King kept Maāt’s order when he ascended the throne. He was seen as a shepherd who placed the development and protection of his countrymen above every other consideration.
According to the Egyptian’s final judgement, the soul entered the Hall of Double Justice. Within the Hall there was a scale, on one side of which was placed the feather, the symbol of Maāt. The soul of the deceased was placed on the other side of the scale and the person’s life was then weighed accordingly.
The soul of the deceased African then was required to recite the 42 precepts of the Negative Confession, informing the gods that the person had lived according to Maāt.
The Confessions were the moral code of Egyptian society. The Pharaoh Akhenaton, first leader to conceptualise One God, was a devotee of Maāt. He gave himself a personal code of behaviour “Ankh-em-Maāt (“Live in Truth).”
These teachings influenced other peoples throughout the Near East, eventually emerging among the Hebrews, by way of Moses, a former Prince of Egypt, in the laws now called the Ten Commandments.