Custodianship of Memory: Why Black Scholars Must Reclaim Kemet’s Archaeological Legacy
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Introduction: The Unfinished Revolution of Identity
The reclamation of African consciousness is not complete until Africa reclaims her memory. Names, philosophies, and spiritual revivals are vital, but they are incomplete without the restoration of physical custodianship — the right to touch, study, and guard the stones and soils that hold ancestral evidence. To call the continent Kemet is not a poetic whim; it is an act of historical reclamation. Yet, a name alone does not transform a people. It must be lived, institutionalised, defended, and spread until it becomes second nature.
Renaming the continent Kemet must therefore move beyond philosophical symbolism. It must reshape maps, schools, constitutions, and most importantly, governance over heritage. Only when the children of Africa regain access to their ancestral sites can the revolution of identity be said to have matured. It is here, in the temples of Waset and the tombs of Abdju, in the sands of Saqqara and the papyri of Waset, that the memory of a people breathes. And those memories — by every linguistic, genetic, and cultural measure — are Black.
1. The Verdict of UNESCO 1974: Kemet Was African
This truth was not whispered by poets or Afrocentric dreamers. It was declared by the world’s leading scholars nearly half a century ago. The UNESCO Cairo Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt (1974) brought together linguists, anthropologists, geneticists, and historians. After thorough comparative analysis, they reached a historic consensus:
Ancient Egypt (Kemet) was an African civilisation, in its origin, population, and culture.
This conclusion, co-defended by luminaries such as Cheikh Anta Diop and Théophile Obenga, was monumental. It redefined not only the geographical identity of Kemet but also the moral and intellectual foundation of world history. It declared that Africa was not a latecomer to civilisation — it was its birthplace.
And yet, nearly fifty years later, that verdict remains politically contested. Arab nationalism and Western Egyptology continue to distort this truth, often treating Africa as a passive spectator to its own history. Modern Egypt, an Arabised State formed after waves of conquest, still claims exclusive control over the archaeological heart of the Black world. The result is a deep contradiction: Africa owns the ancestry, but not the access.
2. Custodianship and Illegitimacy: Why Egypt Cannot Be the Gatekeeper
Let the truth be stated plainly: modern Egypt’s Arabised identity does not confer ancestral custodianship over Kemet. It is a political State, not a civilisational descendant. Its language, religion, and demographic composition bear little continuity with the Kemetian civilisation it claims. To deny African scholars access to Kemetian sites is to deny a people access to their own genealogy.
When modern Egyptian authorities grant excavation licences selectively, or when they restrict international Black scholars from archaeological access, they do not act as guardians — they act as usurpers. The world must no longer indulge this imbalance. If Kemet was African, then the custodianship of its legacy must return to Africa and her diaspora.
Indeed, if Egypt insists on continuing to monopolise archaeological findings and rewrite history through its Arab-centric lens, it must accept the global consequences: the credibility of all future excavations will be questioned. Any archaeological “discovery” presented under such monopoly will carry the suspicion of political manipulation.
Already, the public perception of some prominent Egyptian archaeologists has been tainted by accusations of selective disclosure, historical distortion, and deliberate avoidance of evidence pointing to Kemet’s Black African identity. The integrity of their work cannot be separated from the ideology they serve.
3. The Coming Reckoning: AI, Forensics, and the New Archaeology
We live in the dawn of an era where technology will render deceit obsolete. Artificial Intelligence, isotopic lineage tracing, and digital forensics are rapidly transforming archaeology into a science of pure data — immune to human bias.
The age of politically curated history is ending. The genetic signatures of skeletal remains, the linguistic reconstruction of Kemetian dialects, and the mineral composition of ancient artefacts can now be analysed beyond the reach of political censorship. In time, every lie buried in the sand will be exhumed by the algorithmic precision of truth.
Thus, any modern attempt to falsify, conceal, or reframe Kemet’s African identity will collapse under scientific scrutiny. The world will see that the builders of pyramids were not Arabs, but Africans — the same stock that birthed Nubia, Kush, Punt, Yoruba, Akan and Great Zimbabwe. The face of civilisation is the face of the Black world.
4. The Right of Return: A Call to Black Scholars Worldwide
The custodianship of memory must now be reclaimed. Black scholars, archaeologists, linguists, and historians from across the globe — from Dakar to Kingston, from Lagos to Atlanta, from Port-au-Prince to Accra — must unite under a single moral declaration: Kemet belongs to Africa.
The Nile Valley is not an Arab museum; it is a sacred archive of African continuity. Every temple, stele, and tomb is a classroom of civilisation — a curriculum buried in stone. To study them is not a privilege, it is a birthright.
It is time, therefore, for a Pan-African Trusteeship Council for Archaeological and Spiritual Restoration to be established. This body — representing continental and diaspora institutions alike — must work in collaboration with UNESCO and the African Union to negotiate direct access to the archaeological sites of the Nile Valley. Egypt may administer its geography, but it cannot own the Nile and the ancestry buried within it.
5. Kemetian Education and the Future of African Learning
Reclaiming Kemet is not merely about excavation — it is about education. The future of African scholarship must integrate Kemetian studies as the foundation of every Pan-African curriculum. The philosophies of Ma’at, the geometry of Imhotep, the medicine of Pesehet, and the linguistics of Medu Neter are not foreign to Africa; they are Africa.
To exclude Kemet from African education is to amputate the head from the body. The diaspora must also be included — not through geographic ethnopublics, but through shared access, research partnerships, and economic support. The heritage economy of Africa must fund Black universities across the diaspora to study and preserve Kemetian knowledge, ensuring that every descendant of the Black world can find their ancestral reflection in those golden stones.
6. The Third Covenant: Reuniting Spirit, Scholarship, and Soil
If the first covenant was the birth of civilisation, and the second was its loss through conquest, the Third Covenant must be its restoration through consciousness. This covenant calls not for religious revival, but for spiritual unity — a return to Ma’at as moral geometry, to African scholarship as divine stewardship.
To honour Kemet is to live by her principles: truth, balance, reciprocity, and justice. The custodians of this new age will not wear crowns of gold, but the light of knowledge. The pyramids stand not as tombs of kings, but as symbols of moral architecture — reminders that divine order is built, not inherited.
The Third Covenant thus declares: the age of exclusion is over. The Nile shall no longer be a border of denial but a bridge of return. The children of Kemet — scattered by slavery and exile — are coming home, not with chains, but with consciousness.
Conclusion: The Reclamation of Time
The revolution of African identity is not complete until Africa reclaims both the narrative and the terrain of her civilisation. Every grain of sand in the Nile Valley holds a syllable of our memory. Every wall of Waset is a page in the book of African time.
The custodianship of Kemet must return to those whose blood, spirit, and ancestry flow from her source. The scholars of Africa and her diaspora must rise as the new guardians of civilisation — not as imitators of Western archaeology, but as restorers of ancestral truth.
The Nile is waiting. The temples are calling. The ancestors are watching. Let the children of the Black Land awaken — for the reclamation of Kemet has begun.
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