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“If philosophy remains, rightly understood, the human attempt to achieve orderly thought, and if a civilization may be understood as a social system dominated by a coherent conception of life, then it is incontestably true that pharaonic Egypt was the real cradle of speculative philosophy as we know it. It achieved that level of speculative thinking without recourse to any kind of religious revelation. Shabaka, who lived in the 8th century BC, was a contemporary of Isaiah. But the text which he ordered copied onto stone for eternity goes back to the historical origins of pharaonic civilization. In other words, over 2,000 years before Thales, pharaonic Egypt produced a magnificent philosophy and invented an ordered conception of life, phrased in language which suggests that the tradition already had several centuries of maturity behind it by then.”

Theophile Obenga
“African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period: 2780-330BC”
Page 86