The long odyssey of Maat

The long odyssey of maat

In this book that takes us far from the beaten paths of history, mathematician and essayist Melki Sedek So portrays the dangers that religion poses to African renaissance and continental unity. Reaching far back into history and drawing on evidence from sociology and anthropology, he shows how Africa brought humanity out of darkness by establishing the bases of monotheism and even Buddhism. As others have done before him, he invites the African public to discover this truth, demonstrating that Maât, the moral code established in ancient Egypt and based on the principales of truth and justice, is the light that radiated forth from Africa to illuminate the rest of the world.

Sedek So invites Africans to reappropriate what they have passed on to the rest of the world through the writings of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, who carried a message of unity and progress for Africa. This book also helps popularize the work of Cheikh Anta Diop, the historian who teaches us that the goddess Isis may have been the source of the name of the city of Paris and that an Egyptian scholar contributed to making Alexander the Great the greatest general of all time. More broadly, the reader will discover that many of the so-called discoveries for which the ancient Greeks are famous were in fact taught to them in Egypt, from the poet Hesiod in the 7th century B.C. down to the pre-Socratics.