The Ancient Egyptians and the Origins of their Culture
The Egyptian art of the earliest dynasties bears again a remarkable resemblance to that of early Babylonia. The conquering race brought to Egypt the religion and a culture originally derived from that of the Sumerian. The legends which seem to bring the ancestors of the Egyptians from the Red Sea coast have already been mentioned. Now the Egyptians always knew that they were from the land of the God – Somalia; in the time of the XVIIIIth Dynasty they depicted the inhabitants of God’s land as greatly resembling themselves in form, feature, and dress, and as wearing the little turn-up beard which was worn by Egyptians of the earliest times, but even as early as the IVth dynasty was reserved for the God kings. The statues of Min are older. The crioceras-shells belong to the Red sea. This theory, which would make all the Neolithic inhabitants of Egypt one people, who were conquered race bringing a culture of Sumerian origin to Egypt by way of the Wadi Hammamat, is that generally accepted at the present time. Sumerians did not bring the civilisation to Egypt; the Sumerians and Egyptians both migrated from the land of God, or present day Somalia.
It seems likely that the delta dwellers established themselves at Egypt at a slightly earlier date than the Upper Egyptians and brought their agriculture and science more rapidly to perfection. Some scholars nevertheless refuse to accept this hypothesis of the early supremacy of the Delta. They prefer to believe that the predominant influence was exerted by Upper Egypt, whose inhabitants may have reached Egypt from the direction of the Red Sea. The larger extent and better state of preservation of the pre-dynastic culture of Upper Egypt is advanced as an argument in favour of this view. It may be noted that the ancient Egyptians themselves appear to have been convinced that their place of origin was African rather than Asian. They made continued reference to the land of God Hafun (Punt) as their homeland. In dynastic times, ambitious trading expeditions were dispatched to (Punt) Hafun which has been identified as modern Somaliland. [1]
Hatshepsut required Senmut, a man whose architectural gifts resembled and were not inferiror to those of Imhotep, to build an imposing monument which would enhance her disputed claim to the throne, and Senmut hit upon a design which lent grace and distinction to the grandiose intention of the building. He sent an expedition to the land of God (Punt) or Hafun on the Red Sea to procure Myrrh trees, while on his airy terraces he disposed palm trees, sacred persea trees and papyrus beds. One of his colonnades was devoted to carved pictures of the expedition to Somali country, another to representations of the allegedly divine birth of the Queen. [2]
[1]:Ancient Egypt Jon Eubank Manchip White-P.141
[2]:Ancient Egypt Jon Eubank Manchip White-P.77
While Crete kept the Bull-cultas central for another 600 years, Egypt abandoned the royal cult of Mont with the rise of the 12th Dynasty soon after 2000 B.C. The new dynasty had the upper Egyptian Ram-God Amon as its patron. I believe that it is from influence of the period that most of the ram-cults found around the Aegean and generally associated with Zeus were derived, drawing both from Amon and from the lower Egyptian cult of the ram/goat Mendes.
Herodotos and later authors wrote at length about the widespread conquests of a pharaoh he called Sesostris – whose name has been identified with s-n-wsrt or Senwosret, that of a number of 12th dynasty pharaoh Heredotos claims on this, however, have been treated with especial derision. The same treatment has been given to ancient legends concerning wider-ranging expeditions by the north-eastern African or Egyptian prince Memnon, whose name could well derive from Imn-m-h3t (written Ammenemés by later Greek writers), the name of other important 12th dynasty pharaohs. Both legendary cycles now seem to have been vindicated by the recent reading of an inscription from Memphis which details the conquests, by land and sea, of two 12th dynasty pharaohs, Senwosret I and Ammenemés II. There is also an intriguing resemblance between Hpr KiR; an alternative name for Senwosret and Kekrops, the legendary founder of Athens whom some ancient sources said was an Egyptian. To investigate the claim for conquest in the Caucuses we have to look at another class of evidence. This is the Tater tradition. Herodotus believed that the inhabitants of Colchis on the eastern shore of the black sea were descendants of troops from Sesostris army who had settled there. He based this claim on a number of factors, including that this was what the Colchians claimed to be their origin and that they were black with tight curly hair; which was how he identified the Egyptians. It also suggests Herodotus was erring on the side of caution when he said that Egyptians, unlike the Colchians, were unaware of any connection between their two countries. A long passage from the Argonanautika attribute the foundation of Colchis to an Egyptian Pharaoh who had ruled before there was any Greece. This and a number of reported aspects of Colchian culture attended to confirm Herodotus’ picture, at least to the extent that the Colchians in the fifth century BC believed themselves to be descendants from soldiers in Sesostris army if not that their tradition was essentially accurate. A still more remarkable fact is that, even today, there is an African black local population in from the subtropical coast near the resort of Sukhumi. The people, who survived Stalin’s attempts to scatter them and to force inter-marriage, speak the local Caucasian language of Abkhaz and are fiercely Muslim.
The next wave of influence, about which tradition was much more clear-cut, took place during the Hyksos period. The Hyksos, whose name came from the Egyptian Hkst, rulers of foreign lands; were invaders from the north or from the Red sea who conquered and ruled at least Lower Egypt from about 1720 to 1575 B.C. Although other, possibly Hurrian, elements seem to have been involved, the Hyksos were predominantly Semitic or Hamitic speaking?
In the 12th century B.C. there was a more disruptive historical break. In antiquity, what is now called the ‘Dorian Invasion’ was much more frequently termed ‘The return of the Heraklids’. The incomers undoubtedly came from the north-western fringes of Greece, which had been less affected by the Middle Eastern culture of Mycenaean palaces which they destroyed. Black Athena Volume II Chapter VIII is concerned with the Hyksos or Hykas in Somali language, the people from the northeast, who invaded or infiltrated Egypt at the end of the Middle Kingdom and who controlled at least Lower Egypt for over a century and a half until they were expelled by the Egypto-Nubian 18th dynasty at some point near 1570 B.C. The first problem considered is that of chronology, which is very uncertain from the Egyptian records. I argue, on the basis of Palestinian ceramic periods, that the Hyksos or Hykas had arrived in at least the Eastern Delta by 1740 B.C. The second problem is that of the ethnicity of the Hykas or Hyksos. I approach this by considering the historiography of the Hykas-Hyksos. The standard classical text on this, written by the Egyptian priest Manetho, described by the Hykas-Hyksos as from the regions of the East, invaders of obscure race who invaded and ruthlessly conquered Egypt. As mentioned above, from at least Hellenistic times writers have associated the Hikas-Hyksos rule in Egypt with the Israelite captivity or Sojourn in Egypt so that, until the end of the 19th century, it appears to have been assumed that the invaders were Israelite or proto-Israelites, in any event Semitic speakers. With the systemisation of anti-Semitism, however, this picture of northerners sweeping town on prosperous river valleys seemed typically Aryan and not at all Semitic, if as the late 19th century scholars did, one discounts the Arabs for the purpose of this argument. This view of the Hyksos-Hikas had the backing of Manetho’s statement that they were of “obscure race” and of an 18th dynasty inscription which was read as stating that the Hyksos-Hikas capital contained SM3W, the standard Egyptian term for the Semitic speakers of Syro-Palestine, with the SM3W, wonderers or foreigners in their midst. This was interpreted as an indication that the Hyksos-Hikas had a non-Semitic core. This was quickly indentified with the newly discovered Hurrians, speakers of a language that was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, who were supposed to have migrated to the northern Mesopotamia from the third millennium and probably much earlier still. Scholarly enthusiasm for the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni that was contemporaneous with the 18th dynasty became even greater when it was discovered that some Mitanni royal and divine names and chariot driving terms were Indo-Iranian if not Indo-Aryan. Black Athena Volume III Page 12,
Of the languages itself and of the laws by which it was governed a few words must be said. The actual source of the Egyptian language is wrapped in obscurity. Some great authorities make it of Aryan origin, while others class with Semitic tongues. In all probability, neither classification is strictly correct. The Egyptian belongs, however, to what is called the Hamitic family of tongues – a group which includes the Somali, Libyan, Berber, and other African languages. In all these the feminine takes the letter T, either as a prefix or a suffix and they all conjugate the verb by agglutination. The one and only real certain fact is that the Hamitic and Semitic languages are derived from a common source. Their grammatical system is in certain essential points, the same. Many of their roots are identical, their plural forms are closely related, and in all the feminine determinative are alike; but these two linguistic families offshoots from one parent stem separated in the ages before history, that parent being itself but a prehistoric idiom of very limited range and unknown antiquity. Its home must be somewhere in northeast Africa.
Macro historical linguistics; the most generally accepted and most relevant super families, is Afro-asiatic, previously known as Hamito-Semitic. This huge range of languages includes the following families; Semitic spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrean as well as in south west Asia, Chadic, Hausa and other languages around and to the west lake Chad: Berber the original languages of north west Africa still spoken in its mountains and remotes oases; east Cushitic, Somali and related languages; Cushitic, the language of the Oromo people; south Cushitic spoken by scattered groups of Somalis in Kenya; and Omotic , spoken in south west Ethiopia. Some branches are made up of single languages; beja, spoken between the Nile and the red sea, an ancient Egyptian. Linguists have discovered enough common features among all these branches to postulate a single, though very ancient, ancestral language. Strong etymological evidence suggests that this very ancient; ancestral language, parent language is the root language which is now spoken in modern day Somalia. The Somali language remains mostly unchanged from the original ancestral language. Other linguists have found even larger super-families.
Somali and Egyptian languages in ancient times shared remarkable similarities in both language and culture; many of which are still evident in the modern day Somali language and culture. This phenomenon is also apparent between the ancient Sumerians and the Somalis; both of which share similarities in language and culture. There are insurmountable historical, archaeological and etymological evidences indicating the similar cultural and linguistic roots of the ancient Sumerians and the ancient Egyptians with the ancient Somalis. These evidences and the fact that both; the ancient Sumerian; and ancient Egyptian civilisations had no form of contact between each other for over 2000 years, lead to the discovery of a civilisation of origin for both the ancient Sumerians and the ancient Egyptians. This ancient ancestral, original civilisation is the ancient Somali civilisation.
| Ancient Sumerian | Somali | English Translation |
| Eabe | Eabe | God |
| Iriddu | Irid | Exit |
| Ina | Ina | Son of |
| Asari | Asar/ausar/asair | Head/king |
| Nin/ninbu’bu’ | Nin | Man |
| Ancient Egypt | Somali | English Translation |
| Ab | Ab | Drink |
| Aar | Aar | Lion (male) |
| Usha | Ul/Usha | A stick (e.g. walking) |
| Hes | Hees | Song/sing |
| Rah | Qorah | The sun |
| Hun/hunnu | huuno | A title for children |
| Ausar | Asar/ausar/asair | Head/king |
| Barkin/barsi | Barkin | Wooden pillow |
No comments:
Post a Comment