“The Egyptians had electricity”, according to Gims: what lies behind his words

GIMS. The rapper Gims found himself at the heart of a vast controversy after having made conspiratorial remarks on African history, the Egyptians, the myth of Wakanda or electricity from antiquity.

Between revisionism and conspiracy, Gims is remaking history. In the excerpt from a video, posted on the Oui Hustle YouTube channel on March 22, but which exploded this week on social networks, the rapper delivered a far-fetched, even conspiratorial, version of the History of Africa. These smoky theories and revisionist remarks, without any contradiction from his interlocutor, the YouTubeur LeChairman, have since unleashed social networks like the media and other commentators.

But behind the words of the famous rapper Gims, how can we explain what could be described as “historical delirium”, in the words of Jean-Yves Carrez-Maratray, professor of ancient history at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University? ? Here are some answers.

“The Egyptians had electricity”

In the sequence taken from the YouTube video in question, Gims says: “The pyramids that we see there, at the top there is gold. Gold is the best conductor for electricity. was fucking antennae, people had electricity! People, they can’t understand that. The Egyptians, the science they had, it’s beyond comprehension. Historians know that.”

Gims evokes here a theory that regularly surfaces in questionable spheres of the Internet. The Egyptians used gold as decoration, not as building materials per se. The fantasy of an Egypt with electricity since Antiquity, for example, inspired the creators of the universe of the work of science fiction Stargate. But contrary to what Gims claims, no, the Egyptians did not have electricity and the top of the pyramids was not a power station.

Gims therefore relies here on a theory known to conspiracy circles, which is explained by the fascination, still present today, around the Egyptians and their pyramids, which have kept a part of mystery, even for the greatest specialists. , inevitably giving rise to fantasies. This fascination for the pyramids is summed up in one word by Professor Carrez-Maratray: “Egyptomania.” “He would have talked about the Greeks, it would have worked less. From this point of view, social networks have their favorite subjects, and Pharaonic Egypt is one of them, while it has, a priori, no reason to be more mysterious than another culture of the past”, he underlines.

“Renois who are in knight mode”

Gims continues his speech: “50,000 years before the Europeans, we already had the notion of chivalry. Today you find paintings that are hidden in catacombs. Lancelot all that. Of course, it already existed! It’s just that we have to know our history.” He takes up here another conspiracy theory, that according to which certain sources and historical truths, such as paintings, would have been deliberately concealed. However, this is not the case: representations of African knights in the Middle Ages, in paintings, in statues or in writings, are not rare and well known to specialists.

For the professor of ancient history Jean-Yves Carrez-Maratray, these words illustrate a “search for founding myths”, by the Congolese rapper himself in this speech, but “more generally by current Africans.” “As Henri-Irénée Marrou wrote, ‘History is the knowledge of the human past.’ The essential word is ‘knowledge’: one knows the human past. Obviously, this does not mean that one knows all of the human past, but only certain indisputable things about it: for example that the ancient Egyptians did not have the electricity. By claiming it, Gims is inventing a false past”, explains the specialist.

But then, why invent a “false past”? On this question, Professor Carrez-Maratray recalls the distinction made by the Greeks between two very different notions of a discourse: the logos and the mythos.

• “THE logos is the ‘rational discourse’, verifiable by the method” and therefore the historical truths, indisputable. For example, it is anachronistic and false to affirm that the Egyptians had electricity, since this was discovered much later.
• Conversely, the mythos is the “discourse of the unknown”: what we do not know about history. “By definition therefore, mythos mixes the true and the false, false fiction to tell the truth of the mystery… For example that of the gods, of the creation of the world, of the beyond, etc.”, recalls Jean-Yves Carrez-Maratray. Among these fictions, another is mentioned by Gims in the video in question, that of Wakanda, a fictional country in the Marvel universe.

“Africa is Wakanda”

In his speech, Gims therefore evokes this small fictional country of sub-Saharan Africa that is Wakanda, which becomes famous – in the Marvel universe – for its deposits of the metal – fictitious – vibranium. Wakanda is ruled by the superhero known as Black Panther. Gims says: “Africa is Wakanda, damn it! It’s the future normally with us. At the time of the Kush empire (around 1070 BC), there was ‘electricity.”

In the same logic mentioned above, the rapper illustrates here the need for some “to ‘build a mythical past’. It is their right…, explains the professor of ancient history, but it is obviously out of the question that their mythos can be recognized as logosthat is to say as of the reality of the past recognized, it, as of History.

Where do these conspiracy theories come from?

With the rise of the Internet and social networks, such theories, relayed by Gims, are numerous and accessible to all. Here, the rapper’s speech originates from the teaching of Senegalese professor Sheikh Anta Diop. According to him, as Jean-Yves Carrez-Maratray explains to us, “Pharaonic Egypt was a civilization exclusively of black African origin. This theory is universally challenged by Egyptologists around the world. Egyptologists would have tampered with the past to hide this black African reality of the pharaohs (so-called ‘conspiracy theory’ today). This is of course impossible: Egyptology has two centuries of science behind it and it falsifies nothing.”

Are Gims’s words dangerous?

On this point, many commentators agree that yes, Gims’ words represent a real danger. The excerpt in question, repeated thousands of times on Twitter, aroused the indignation of the Web. It must be said that Gims is followed by millions of people (three on Instagram and Twitter, eleven on YouTube and Facebook), including a large majority of young people.

However, this threat needs to be qualified. “The fact that everyone laughs when they hear that the ancient Egyptians had electricity indicates that it is not even worth consulting an Egyptologist to find out what, in fact, everyone knows: that it is false”, emphasizes Professor Carrez-Maratray. And to conclude: “It is to be hoped that very few gullible minds will begin to think that these ‘inspired words’ would, ‘in reality’, be the truth of the past.”