Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Ancient Gay Lovers - in Africa

As a history lover one of the things that drives me crazy with the Christianists is their total disregard for true historic facts and never ending endeavors to re-write history to match up with their theocratic agenda. A case in point is the efforts of homophobic Christianists in Uganda and other parts of East Africa to depict homosexuality as something "imported from the West." Unfortunately, too many of their countryman know apparently little or no history and are easily duped by such fabricated stories. I stumbled across something this morning via GayAgenda and Living on the Real that highlights the ridiculousness and disingenuousnress of this false story line. The truth is that homosexuality has a long history on the African continent going back at least 4,400 years. As Living on the Real notes:
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Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum are considered the to be the first same-sex couple in recorded history. Considering they were brothers; which was very common in ancient times, they signify the starting history of gay culture.
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Once again those pesky facts get in the way of the Christianists revisionist story line, suggesting yet again that if the lips of a professional Christian are moving, most likely they are lying. They seem to think they has a self-granted exemption from the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness. Wikipedia has this on the ancient gay couple:
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Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum were ancient Egyptian royal servants and are believed to be brothers and probably twins.[They shared the title of Overseer of the Manicurists in the Palace of King Niuserre during the Fifth Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, circa 2400 B.C., and are listed as "royal confidants" in their joint tomb. They are considered to be the first recorded same-sex couple in history.
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The tomb of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum was discovered by Egyptologist Ahmed Moussa in the necropolis at Saqqara, Egypt in 1964, during the excavation of the causeway for the pyramid of King Unas. It is the only tomb in the necropolis where men are displayed embracing and holding hands. In addition, the men's chosen names (both theophorics to the creator-god Khnum) form a linguistic reference to their closeness: Niankhkhnum means "joined to life" and Khnumhotep means "joined to the blessed state of the dead'" and together the names can be translated as "joined in life and joined in death"[5]
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In a banquet scene, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are entertained by dancers, clappers, musicians and singers; in another, they oversee their funeral preparations. In the most striking portrayal, the two embrace, noses touching, in the most intimate pose allowed by canonical Egyptian art, surrounded by what would appear to be their heirs.
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Of course, many other parts of the ancient world also had same sex couples and relationships including but by no means limited to Ancient Greece and Rome, Persia, and East Asia. To say that homosexuality is a western import to Africa is categorically untrue.

1 comment:

Stephen said...

Ah, but this was before either Christ or Mohammed delivered Truth. Christianists and Islamists are not interested in history (Christianists are also not interested in the Gospels, but that's another story, as is the reliance on hadiths rather than the Qu'ran for Islamist repressions).