Imhotep, 2700 BC, earliest personality recorded in history. Like the later personalities of Socrates and Jesus nothing of his writing remains, but we know that he understood volume and space, because he was the builder of the first pyramid, the Sakkara pyramid. He was the first philosopher, the first physician, the first architect, and the first counselor to a king recorded in history. The reports of his life and his work on the walls of temples and in papyri indicate the esteem in which he was held.

Ptahhotep, 2414 BC, first ethical philosopher. He believed that life consisted of making harmony and peace with nature. All discourse on the relationship between humans and nature must give credit to the life of Ptahhotep.

Kagemni, 2300 BC, the first teacher of right action for the sake of goodness rather than personal advantage, came upon the human scene as an African philosopher nearly eighteen hundred years before Buddha.

Merikare, 1990 BC, valued the art of good speech. His classical teachings on good speech were recorded and passed down from generation to generation.

Sehotepibre, 1991 BC, the first philosopher who espoused a sort of nationalism based in allegiance and loyalty to a political leader.
Amenemhat, 19991 BC, the world’s first cynic. He expressed a cynical view of intimates and friends, warning that one must not trust those who are close to you.

Amenhotep, son of Hapu, 1400 BC, was the most revered of the ancient Kemetic philosophers. Next to Imhotep, he was the epitome of the philosopher. They people deified him as a god, as they had deified Imhotep, long before Jesus. He was called the most knowledgeable thinker of his day.

Duauf, 1340 BC, was seen as the master of protocols. He is concerned with reading books for wisdom, the first intellectual in philosophical history. Reading he said was the best way to train the mind.

Amenemope 1290 BC promoted the philosophy of manners, etiquette, and success.

Akhenaten, 1300 BC, promoted Aton as the Almighty One God.

All these philosophers were hundreds of years before any Greek philosopher. Indeed, Homer, the first Greek to write something that was intelligible lived around 800 BC. But he was not a philosopher. He traveled and studied in Africa.

Kung Fu Tzu, 551 BC, the great Chinese philosopher, who believed that humans could make the Way great, lived much later than the African philosophers. But Kung Fu Tzu was a contemporary of Siddartha Buddha, 563 BC, the Indian philosopher lived about the same time and Isocrates who lived around 550 BC.

Now as an Afrocentrist I approach the construction of knowledge from the standpoint of Africans as agents in the world, actors, not simply the spectators to Europe. Since Afrocentricity constitutes a new way of examining data, a novel orientation to data, it carries with it assumptions about the current state of the African world. One assumes for example that Africans are frequently operating intellectually, philosophically, and culturally off of African terms and therefore are dislocated, detached, isolated, decentered, or disoriented. One assumes also that this state is useful economically and politically for the West and not so useful for Africa and Africans. There is, consequently, a difference in opinions about the value of Afrocentricity. Those who have kept us off center seek to improve their position on our intellectual and philosophical grounds by cutting the ground from under any movement that teaches Africans to view themselves as centered agents in the world, not marginals to Europe.