Six Degrees of Archaeopop: Wu-Tang to the Knights Templars

Step 1. The Wu-Tang Clan. (onethirtybpm.com)

Let me introduce you to Six Degrees of Archaeopop. It’s exactly like ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ or 'Hitler Hops' except with history and archaeology themes.  Take a pop culture phenomenon on the one hand, a distant historical event on the other hand (I recommend 300+ years), and figure out how they connect in less than 6 steps.

Step 6. Jacques de Molay, the Templar leader, goes to the stake (Getty)

The first pairing that jumped to mind: the Wu-Tang Clan and The Knights Templar. Actually this one's pretty easy! If I may:

1) Most Wu-Tang Clan members are part of the
2) 5 Percent Nation, who are an offshoot of the
3) Nation of Islam.  Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation, was involved with the
4) Moorish Science Temple, an esoteric offshoot of
5) Freemasonry. And Freemasonry was inspired by, if not directly founded by, the
6) Knights Templars.

4) Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple of America (Wikimedia)

Wasn’t that fun? Maybe this will be a regular feature. I invite your submissions and challenges in the comments or at archaeopop@gmail.com.

Now, to address a philosophy-of-knowledge issue: is it “true” that the Wu-Tang and the Templars are connected?

In every way that matters, yes. The Wu-Tang Clan are as much descendants of the Templars as they are inheritors of Kung Fu traditions from China - actually, more so given their Western cultural origins.

In fact, all historical revivals involve a selection and manufacturing of the past. The Nazis wanted to find Germanic Aryan tribes in the archaeological record, so they decided what archaeological characteristics fit the bill, and then went looking for them. Biblical archaeologists find it hard to see anything that doesn’t fit with a bible story. Israeli archaeologists enjoy excavating the "city of David" under Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem, for obvious reasons.

It's a different approach than archaeologists themselves take, but that's just fine with me. Popular culture is free: we can  decide that we’re the reincarnation of Napoleon, or Seti I's mother, or the high priests of Atlantis, and live our lives as if that was true. I like having these characters wandering around. The challenge for archaeologists is not to eliminate fantasy, but to create versions of the past that are more accurate and just as appealing.

Ancient Egypt in Georgia: Tama-Re

The always-excellent BLDGBLOG profiles Tama-Re, an ancient Egyptian theme city built by cult leader Dwight York in Georgia:

The Urban Dictionary's description of Tama-Re is amazing; it reads like every race-based fear of the white U.S. middle class summed up in one surreal location.

When York and his Nuwaubians moved there and began erecting pyramids and obelisks there was much curiosity about the group. However trouble started when the citizens became aware of the fact that York was an ex-Black Panther and a convicted felon and statutory rapist who was preaching the gospel that whites were mutants and were inferior to blacks. There is also a foam rubber alien on display in the compound that causes problems with public relations. Officials have had problems with the Nuwaubians failing to comply with zoning and building permits that coincide with what they have created. The Nuwaubians feel that this is a racist attack.

It's hard to top a "foam rubber alien," but the fear-factor nonetheless gets ratcheted up a notch:

Many children from upper middle class cities have left college to live in poverty at the cult's compound, Tama Re. This has caused a lot of turmoil in the lives of many families who can't accept the fact that their sons and daughters have left them to follow an alien messiah. Throughout the grounds speakers everywhere emit the humming sound of Egyptian chants 24 hours a day. Inside one of the pyramids you can buy books and clothes as well as a Dr. York doll. The people who live on the land dwell in a trailer park full of double-wides. York claims his people are Moors who traveled by foot from Africa to what is currently Georgia before the continental drift. The only problem with this "indisputable" fact is that the moors were Muslims who existed way after the birth of Christ which was only approximately 2000 years ago.

Ergo, there was no way in plate tectonics that they could have walked all the way to Georgia.

In June 2005, after the compound's governmental seizure, financial forfeiture, and ensuing sale for $1.1 million, outright demolition began. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time, the local sheriff was on the scene, "speaking with relish as he watched crews tear through the series of obelisks, statues, arches and buildings. Many of the dozens of structures were weathered and in disrepair. He said very few of the Egyptian structures or objects were worth salvaging. 'It feels good to tear down the SOB myself,' he said. 'By the middle of next week, there will be nothing but a couple of pyramids.'"

Nuwabia is another permutation of the idea that lost tribes of 'Moors' or Egyptians settled America, first promoted more than a century ago by Noble Drew Ali of the Moorish Science Temple and more recently popularized in the writings of Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson, where the concept of 'Moor' is used in a more esoteric, metaphorical sense of persecuted 'other' condemned to wander and live on the margins of the Babylon that is American society. All combined, of course, with that uniquely American strain of Egyptomania found in a wild range of characters from Joseph Smith of the Mormon Church to Sun Ra's extra-solar odysseys.

One of the best and worst things about America is that people have treated it as a blank slate to build their own versions of the past - or their galleries of how the past ought to have been.