At no time up to the present days, the issue of ‘Woe from Wit’ took place among too educated and intelligent people. The masterpiece ‘Woe of Wit’ written by Griboedov in 1822-1824 and published in 1825 stated the case when too clever people lost the interest in their ordinary life and started interfering with the political and historical issues. The matter of African studies was not an exception. Reading the topic of the first chapter of the book ‘Introduction to African studies’ if we look through the list of names of those who did a research upon the matter of the origins of African people, we will definitely face with a quite impressive list of the notables writing about such an issue.
The debates if the Egyptians are a special nation or the only one part of numerous Arab nations has been lasting for half a century. This issue is not related to the academical question. It is connected with an ideology of Arab nationalism, Egyptian nationalism and various topical political problems of the national linguistic policy. The disagreement touched the intellectual layers of the country. In particular, all revolutions and riots have been always initiated by well-fed educated people. James Bruce – a very well educated traveller – or Charles Francois Dupuis – an intelligent scholar - and even a young poetry Volney wrote a lot about the Egyptian identity and ancestors, pointing out that the Egyptian nation led the foundation of the western civilization and the Ethiops as the same nation, but much older, and all achievements and fulfillments of Egyptians were taken from the African countries and introduced into the western countries.
In his famous poem the young American writer, Volney wrote about “people who had been forgotten but still existed such as barbarians, who were rejected by the society founded all scientific laws as well as civil and political institutes that have been still popular nowadays” (Volney, 1792).
The issue of the national identity has always been very challenging because it can be interpreted the current today’s situation in terms of any controversial differences. And, the question who was earlier Egyptian or Ethiopian, for example, is the same as the question who is older: the hen or the chicken. I personally do not think that European people would be glad to hear that they did nothing but adopted all they have from the Egyptian nation. We do not doubt any original Egyptian miracles, but it would be at least not fair not to leave Europe its’ just the ordinary place in the global history, rather than to compare nations trying to fire the flame of nationalism is really not clear. At the same time, Egyptian people will not be in delight if someone tells them that their ancestors were Ethiopians who had been thousands of times smarter than Egyptians.
Nowadays, other Arabic countries treat Egypt as a stranger, but not as a related one. The level of national dignity has always been high, so why people try to fix what was not broken is the matter of surprise. From the topic described in the book, it is clearly seen who raised such a problem – people whose mental level was highly recognized by any authorized bodies and who had a piece of their cake. Those people often started supporting something that was recognized as anything abnormal or bad before. For example, why to compare the level of the hardships of Hebrews in the period of slavery with the slavery period of black people in America, I do not understand.
All people are unique, however, they all have lots of things in common – their families, love to their motherland, relatives and friends. Taking into account that everything in the world goes through the cycle it is pretty clear that the nation having been a really powerful one can suddenly become poor and without any preferences and merits. So, if Ethiopian civilization was rich and powerful as Maya and Inki were before their extinction.
I decided to analyze this topic because I am against all comparison of any nations. People tend to find relatives and ancestors everywhere, whereas those may be happy where they are now. I think, that African nations definitely need any financial help as we as any other one. At the same time, the dignity nowadays is being raised by many radical activities, and it is a real signal to stop exploring such issues and start thinking how to teach different nations to respect each other in raising the level of their awareness in terms of customs and traditions of each other.
It is also obvious that Egyptians is one of the Arab communities that made a significant progress towards the process of turning into the nation. It would be correct to say a lot about Egyptian national culture and discoveries as well as some really talented scientists, but without comparing to any other nations.
Works Cited
Prau, Mark. "Introduction to Africana Studies." University Readers. 2016. Web. 17 June 2016.
Podis, Leonard A., and Yakubu Saaka. Challenging Hierarchies: Issues and Themes in Colonial and Postcolonial African Literature. New York: P. Lang, 1998. Print.
