Somalia and the Ancient World (Part 2)

The History of the Ancient Egyptians and their Origins

The Egyptian pantheon was a gradual accretion, the result of amalgamating the various local cults; but these continued predominant in their several localities; and practically the only deities that obtained anything like a general recognition were Osiris, Isis, Horus and the Nile-god Hapi. Besides the common popular religion, the belief of the masses there was another that prevailed among the priests and among the educated. The primary doctrine of this esoteric religion was the real essential unity of the divine nature. The sacred texts known only to the priests and to the initiated, taught that there was a single Being, “the only true Living God, self-originate”, “Who existed from the beginning”, “Who has made all things, but has not himself been made”. This Being seems never to have been represented by any material, even symbolical form. It is thought that he had no name, or if he had, that it must have been unlawful to pronounce or write it. He was a pure spirit perfect in every respect; all-wise, almighty, supremely good. It is of him that the Egyptian poets use such expressions as the following: “He is not graven in marble; he is not beheld; his abode is not known; no shrine is found with painted figures of him; there is no house that can contain him;” and again: “Unknown is his name in heaven; he doth not manifest his forms; vain are all representations;” and yet again: “His commencement is from the beginning; He is the God who existed from old time; no father hath begotten him, he is a God; Goddess created from himself; all gods came into existence when he began.”_[3]

[3]: The story of the Nations page 38

This geographical distribution of the pre-historic remains fits in curiously with the ancient legend concerning the origin of ancestors of the Egyptians in Upper Egypt, and supports the much discussed theory that they came originally to the Nile Valley from the shores of the Red Sea by way of the Wadi Hammamat which debouches on to the Nile in the vicinity of Koptos and Kus, opposite Ballas and Tukh. The supposition seems a very probable one, and it may well be that the earliest Egyptians entered the Valley of the Nile by the route suggested and then spread northwards and southwards in the Valley. The other southern founders of the Monarchy who belonged to the race who had come from the Red Sea by the Wadi Hammamat, and so were the ancestors of the later natives of lower Egypt. Anyhow we have to account for the legends of distant origin on the Red Sea coast, the probability that one element of the Egyptian population was extraneous origin and come from the east into the Nile Valley near Koptos and finally the historical fact of an advance of the early dynastic Egyptians from the south to the conquest of the north. Those who entered the Nile Valley by the Wadi Hammamat came from the Red Sea towards the end of the Neolithic period, and, being of higher civilisation the native neolites, assumed the lordship over them, gave a great impetus to the development of their culture, and started at once the institution of Monarchy, the knowledge of letters, and the use of metals. The chiefs of this superior tribe founded the Monarchy conquered the north, unified the kingdom, and began Egyptian history. From many indications it would seem probable that these conquerors were of Babylonian Sumerian origin, but they themselves were African who came from God’s land or Opone = Ophone= Hafun by way of the straits of Bab El Mandeb, and proceeded up the coast to about the neighbourhood of Kuser, when the Wadi Hammamat offered them an open road to the valley of the Nile. By this route they may have entered Egypt, bringing with them a civilization, which, like that of Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia. The Egyptian civilization of predynastic period resembles well known elements of the civilization of Babylonia. We may instance the use of the cylinder-seal, which died out in Egypt in the time of the XVIII^th dynasty, but was always used in Babylonia from the earliest to the latest times. The early Egyptian mace-head is of exactly the same type as the Babylonian one. In the British museum is an Egyptian mace-head of red breccia, which is identical in shape and size with one from Babylonia (also in the museum bearing the name of Sargon, King of Akkada.