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The origin of “Sophia” is clearly in the African language, Mdu Ntr, the language of ancient Egypt, where the word “Seba,” meaning “the wise” appears first in 2052 BC in the tomb of Antef I, long before the existence of Greece or Greek. The word became “Sebo” in Coptic and “Sophia” in Greek. As to the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, that is precisely what is meant by “Seba,” the Wise, in ancient tomb writings of the Egyptians.

Diodorus Siculus, the Greek writer, in his On Egypt, written in the first century before Christ, says that many who are “celebrated among the Greeks for intelligence and learning, ventured to Egypt in olden times, that they might partake of the customs, and sample the teachings there. For the priests of Egypt cite from their records in the holy books that in the former times they were visited by Orpheus and Musaeus, Melampos, Daedalos, besides the poet Homer, Lycurgus the Spartan, Solon the Athenian, and Plato the philosopher, Pythagoras of Samos and the mathematician Eudoxos, as well as Democritus of Abdera and Oenopides of Chios, also came there.”

Obviously many Greeks who learned philosophy ventured to Africa to study. They came for many intellectual reasons. One can see that the Greeks appreciated the fact that in Egypt were men and women of great skill and knowledge just as the Egyptians appreciated the fact that there were men and women of greater knowledge in Ethiopia.