Was Genghis Khan the Last Afro-Asiatic Kingdom Builder?

Alice C. Linsley


Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227) was born "Temujin" in Mongolia. He united warring clans to become leader of the Mongols in 1206. After his death, his descendants expanded his empire until it stretched from China to Hungary. His grandson Kublai Khan expanded the Mongol empire to southeast Asia and became the first emperor of China's Yuan Dynasty.

Genghis may have been the last Afro-Asiatic kingdom builder. Among his people, Genghis was known as a skilled smith. The nomads of Central Asia highly esteemed the trade of the metal smith. Genghis probably made metal arrow heads with holes.These holes made the arrows "sing" as they were launched through the air. The whistling arrows had the added benefit of frightening the enemies' horses.

There is a strong linguistic connection between the Yuan and the Nilo-Saharan languages. Y was a solar symbol among the Nilo-Saharans, some of whom were Anu (Ainu), so Y-an might refer to the Ainu who moved out of the Nile into Mongolia. This connection is confirmed by DNA studies. Genghis Khan and his descendants are in Haplogroup C-M217 which comprises more than ten percent of the total Y-chromosome diversity among the Manchus, Koreans, and Ainu. The ruling families of the Ainu of Northern Japan and the elders of the Ainu (Micmac) of Eastern Canada are kin, as I have demonstrated through my research.

Further, Khan is a variant of Kain/Cain or Kayan/Qayan, and it means king. The descendants of Cain are noted to have been metal smiths (Genesis 4). Genghis may be the last of the "mighty men of old" described in Genesis. These dispersed out of the Nile Valley and Southern Arabia and became the rulers over territories in the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

Genghis Khan followed the kingdom-building pattern of Nimrod and may have been a descendant of Nimrod. Hungarian origin stories suggest that he was a descendant of Noah through Japheth, and he was allied with the Keraits, a Jewish sect that rejected the authority of the Talmud (Oral Torah). Many Keraits became Christians. These may have been the only Christians native to Central Asia. Several Kerait women became influential in the Mongol court. Chinggis Khan’s mother had converted to Nestorian Christianity. Toghrul or Ong Khan was a Karait leader.

Sorghaghtani Beki married a son of Genghis Khan, and they had four sons. Two sons, Kublai Khan and Mongke Khan, were prominent leaders of the Mongolian Empire which formed a cultural and religious bridge between the East (especially Tibet) and the West. In their youth, these sons may have looked much as this Mongolian warrior.

His hair, red skin tone, and dress resemble that of the Nabataean warriors of Edom,
one of the ancestral homes of the Biblical Horites (Genesis 36).

Genghis Khan means King Genghis. Khan is related to the biblical words Kain and Kandake (Candace in English), meaning king/queen. He was like his namesake Cain in that he killed his half-brother Bekhter during a fight over hunting spoils. This incident cemented his position as head of the household.

Like Cain, Genghis Khan built an empire with settlements at sacred locations marked by stone structures and sacred heaps of stones. He named his first-born son Jochi which is a variant of the biblical name Joktan (Yaqtan), the name of Abraham’s first-born son.

Names common among the Uralic, Turkish, Pashtun and Mongolian peoples include Jochi, Beri, Malik and Khan. Today Khan is a common surname in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Mongolia. It is equivalent to Kayan, a spelling that resembles Qayan in the Hebrew. Genghis Khan’s name is more accurately spelled Činggis Qaγan. Here we see a connection to the Arabic word for a metalworker, which is qayin.

Some of the Pashtun clans adopted Malik as the ruler's title instead of Khan. Malik is equivalent to the Afro-Asiatic Melek, meaning king.

At age 16, Genghis married a woman of the Olkut Hun, meaning Hun Tribe. (In the Mongolian language, Hun means adult male, or man, and Hunij means human being.) This marriage was arranged to consolidate an alliance between Genghis’s people and the Olkut Huns of Central Asia. Genghis’ mother encouraged him to form many alliances through marriage.

The word ogur also means clan, community or tribe, and appears to be equivalent to the Pashto word orkut, meaning community. So, the words ogur, orkut and olkut seem to be linguistically related. Possibly Ogur Hun means the Hun clan or the Hun community of Og. Og is one of the clans in the three-clan confederation of Og, Gog and Magog. These names are found in Hungarian narratives, as well as in the Bible.

The languages of the Huns and Hungarians are classified in the Uralic group, not the Afro-Asiatic group. The Uralic family includes the languages of western Mongolia, Finnish and Hungarian. The Hungarian call themselves the "Magyar" and claim to be descendants of Noah through Noah's son Japheth.

Drawing found in Hungary showing the symbols of the Sun, Cattle and the Tree of Life

In the Hungarian origin stories, Nimrod had two sons: Magor and Hunor. Magor is the equivalent of the Afro-Asiatic name Magog. The word Magyar is linguistically related to Magog and is the name for the Hungarian people. Some Magyar still live in the Upper Nile area where they are called the Magyar-ab, the Magyar tribe. Typical of Nilotic people, important symbols among the Magyar are the Sun, cattle, and the Tree of Life.

Though Hungarian is a Uralic language, it has connections to the Afro-Asiatic language family, suggesting that Japheth’s descendants moved north toward the Ural Mountains. Here they developed a different religious practice – shamanism, which preserves some elements of the older Afro-Asiatic priest-religion, but which is significantly different. Priests and shamans serve similar functions in their communities but have different worldviews. (For the difference between priests and shamans, go here.)

While there is evidence of syncretism between the shamanic and priestly worldviews, the element of the Sun as an emblem of the Creator appears in both. Solar discs or solar boats are found on artifacts from ancient Egypt, Nubia, India and Mongolia.

Some rulers among these peoples are designated by an initial Y - a solar cradle indicating divine appointment. Yaqtan (Joktan), Yishmael (Ishmael), Yitzak (Isaac), Yetro (Jethro), Yacob (Jacob), Joseph (Yosef) and Yeshua (Joshua/Jesus) are examples. Solar symbols appears on the deer stones of western Mongolia shown below.

Deer stones mark burial ground at Ulan Tolgoi in Mongolia

Deer stone with Sun symbol in western Mongolia

Related reading: Ket-Navajo Linguistic Connection;  Noah's Sons and Their Descendants; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; Kushite Kingdom Building; A Tent for the Sun; Ido, Edom and Idumea