Exploring the history of Africa and Egypt, people of African descent, spirituality, and its overall influence on modernized Western religion today, “Sacred Nile” was published in 2021 but fits perfectly into today’s landscape, in which religion seemingly is one of the focal points of America’s current political climate, amongst other polarizing topics.
Higgins discusses the 50-year process of completing the historically themed photo book, which began in 1971 when he was in his early 20s, including his inspiration and how scholars and audiences receive the book. For more information about “Sacred Nile,” visit sacrednile.com.
Can you describe your process for gathering the photographs featured in “Sacred Nile” and how you selected the images that best convey the African origins of philosophy, spirituality, and religion?
After my first trip to Egypt in 1973, I noticed that on the stone walls left behind by these great people, they were all Black. I wondered, ‘Why have we not learned this in history books?’. A lot of the information we learn about Egypt was in the Bible and came from a corrupted view. It showed that Black people—without [explicitly] telling us it was Black people—were horrible people. I really had a problem reconciling two things: my discoveries on my travels and what I was taught here in the U.S. It made me wonder about what I was taught here [about African history] in the education system of the U.S. and made me do my own research.
I had to learn how to be an independent Egyptologist and historian. I had to learn everybody else’s history book in order to find and synthesize ours, because what I’ve understood also throughout the world is that Black people are taught everybody’s history except their own. Each year, I just followed the spirit, and I went back to Africa and Egypt. I also collected books and broadened my knowledge. I then used my camera to codify what I’ve learned.
How did your vision for the book evolve over time as you documented these powerful visual images? How has the vision of the book evolved for you?
It evolved… my work is all because of my love for myself and my people. Our people have been stranded intellectually. We don’t get any love, and we learn to internalize the hate that other people have against us, and then we begin to hate ourselves.
We deny ourselves because we don’t know our history. People often say that our history is just slavery, but slavery is not our history. Slavery is a white man’s history.
We did not own those ships. We did not own those banks that made it possible. We did not own the guns that killed people on the continent who resisted.
It’s white history. It’s an interruption of our history.
Also, I love to use the camera since visuals are more effective than words. I use the camera to show us what our history really looked like. If you look at “Sacred Nile,” you would never see a book with these kinds of pictures anywhere else unless others are taking pictures of [famous athletes], for example.
In our culture we’ve learned to accept the humanity of sports figures, but when it comes to Black people, the things that are generally missing have been a sense of decency, dignity, and virtuous character. We saw it a little with the popularity of “Black Panther” and even “Sinners” but that’s about it. It’s great that those depictions received credit but it’s only because of the power structure that managed to make that happen, which is essentially “the white savior” saving the day.
What is the significance of preserving and sharing African history through photography?
Photography is a way of validating our history —as the young people say— “coming with the receipts.” This is really something that is part of us.
We’re not making this up. We’re not fantasizing this. This is really how great our people are and what we come from.
Moving back past slavery, past the beginning of the Bible. It is the history that has gotten lost of who we really were. And these people created the greatest things in our society that we’ve all ever known.
Long before the Eiffel Tower, the tallest structure in the world for thousands of years was a 47-story pyramid. And long before that, we received astrology from Black minds.
The Black mind is the most creative mind that has ever helped invent on the planet. A Black woman gave us GPS. Black scientists have given us everything from George Washington Carver to the soaker gun, traveling in space, astrology, geometry, mathematics, and also jazz. We think our minds are incredible. But because we don’t really have the [knowledge] of how great we have been across time, we get distracted.
How does “Sacred Nile” challenge mainstream historical narratives about the origins of civilization and faith, and what reactions have you encountered from audiences and scholars?
The most obvious is it directly challenges the Bible because it challenges where the Ten Commandments came from.
It challenges where the story of creation comes from. It challenges the concept of ascension to heaven, the concept of the divine. Because in Egypt, 4,000 years before the Bible was written, all of these narratives were a part of the Egyptian stories.
So what a person can see is, once they learn about Egyptian stories, they can then see how these narratives were plucked out, re-edited, and in some cases—corrupted and dumbed down.
And I say this, not because I just “want” to say it or because I wish it was true. We Egyptologists had discovered that there are two tombs in Egypt that are from 2500 BCE. In those tomb walls of two different leaders were aspects of the Ten Commandments, the story of ascension, and the stories of impossible birth. It’s all there. Our ancestors knew we were rich people. They ruled the world. And they knew that we would forget, and they left these messages in so many mediums.
What reactions have you received or encountered from audiences or scholars in regard to your amazing book?
Scholars have responded in two ways. They’re either very ecstatic or, due to having consumed the miseducation, they shut down in the face of the evidence. It’s because they have been under the effect of propaganda, which is what we’ve all been saturated with.
Not only do I show you the pictures and the captions [in the book], but I also tell you exactly where each piece of information is. People don’t have to take my word. They can go there. I want them to go there [various parts of Africa] and see.
What do you hope readers take away from Sacred Nile in terms of understanding the interconnectedness of the ancient Nile Valley cultures and contemporary spiritual practices?
I want readers to see that Black people are a sacred people. We have been polluted. Our minds and our spirits, memories, and aspirations have been polluted because we live in a very polluted world.
But our ancestors invented sacred thought because they themselves are sacred.
The Bible, as we know it, came out of Egypt, which means it has come from Africa. Europe has not produced a Bible. Nobody else in the world has produced the kind of sacred knowledge that African people produced. But we don’t realize that’s who we are.
Ultimately, I pulled together a collection of points in photographs, and I brought back receipts from my travels to say who we are.
CHESTER HIGGIHNS JR.
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