A concept created by researcher Zenaide Silva, designating the original, initiatory African knowledge system that emerged from Kemet (ancient Egypt) as the “
mother cell” of all subsequent philosophy—including
Greek philosophy. Represented by the Egyptian goddess Sas (wisdom personified), Protosophy is rooted in the wisdom teachings of the
per‑ankh (houses of life), where
Greek thinkers themselves are said to have studied. The term aims to decenter Western historiography (“his‑story”) by reclaiming “her‑story” (the
mother/African root). Protosophy is not merely a historical claim; it is an Afrocentric epistemic framework that values ancestral African knowledge as foundational, initiatory, and non‑hegemonic.
Example: “Her research in Protosophy traced the concept of
Ma’at—cosmic balance—as the original ethical
core that later appeared in
Greek philosophy, arguing that what the West calls ‘the beginning of wisdom’ was already ancient in Kemet.”