Alice C. Linsley
Archaeogenetics has shown conclusively that a vast Kushite dominion extended from the Niger-Benue Trough southwest of Lake to
India during the late Holocene Wet Period. I have termed this the “Afro-Asiatic Dominion.” Kushite is a biblical term that refers to Nilotic and Proto-Saharan peoples, and in particular to the ruler-priest descendants Noah by his grandson Kush (Gen. 10:6-11). Kush was the father of the Kushite king Nimrod who established his kingdom in the Tigris River valley. This explains the
linguistic connections between the Nile and Mesopotamia.
The term "Kushite" should be taken as a general term since it refers to Nubians, Sudra, Nilotes, Egyptians,
Ainu, Canaanites, and the Akkadian rulers of Mesopotamia. There is evidence to suggest that the Dravidian priest-scribes were linked to the Kushite ruler-priests and their religion which reflects
Proto-Saharan beliefs and practices.
The Greek writer Homer alluded to the two Kushite empires, when he wrote “a race divided, whom the sloping rays; the rising and the setting sun surveys.” In reality there was but one vast dominion which stretched from West Africa to India and it was dominated by rulers and priests who were ethnically Kushite. By Homer's time, the Afro-Asiatic Dominion had become fragmented and so he didn't recognize that there had been a single empire stretching from ancient Kush to India. In part this is because the land that bridged Arabia and southern Pakistan and southwestern India had subsided below the ocean, burying the evidence of Kushite expansion out of Africa.
A common worldview and religious practices related to the deity Horus are found from west central Africa to India and as far as Cambodia where they established a Horite shrine at
Anghor Wat (ankh-Hor means "May Horus Live!"). There is also the evidence of key words associated with the Horite priesthood throughout this ancient world. The word
sarki is an example. The word designates a divinely endowed ruler from Africa to Nepal. In ancient Egypt the words
sarki and
harwa refered to orders of priests. In Hausa
sarki means king. The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who spread their religious beliefs far and wide.
These ruler-priests were called
Hapiru in Akkadian and Habiru (Hebrew) in the Kushitic languages. The Egyptians called these temple attendants ˁpr.w, the w being the plural suffix. This has been rendered '*wap'er' by the Afro-Asiatic expert Christopher Ehret. The *wap'er had significant political authority alongside the ruler. They presided over the rituals directed toward the High God and acted as intercessors and prophets. The Hapiru were devotees of Horus, whose worship originated in what is today Sudan.
The oldest known center of Horite worship is Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Sudan. At the temple of Nekhen, votive instruments were ten times larger than the mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. This is the likely origin of the sun blessings in Hinduism (the Agnihotra morning ritual) and in Judaism (the Birka Hachama, or “Sun Blessing” ritual performed every 28 years).
The Dravidian east-facing temple was termed
O-piru, meaning Sun House or House of the Sun. The sun was the emblem of the creator God. The Arabic
yakburu means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix:
yukabbiru means "he is enlarging." Likely this is a reference to the morning ritual of the Horite priests who greeted the rising sun and watched as it expanded across the horizon.
Many Dravidian settlements and monuments are now submerged under the sea, but originally they were on a land bridge between the Arabian Peninsula and Southern Pakistan. This is sometimes referred to as the "Har-appa" civilization. Har refers to Horus and "appa" is the Dravidian word meaning father. The origin of Dravidian religion was apparently Egypt and ancient Kush. The Indian historian and anthropologist
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has written: "We have to begin with the Negroid or Negrito people of prehistoric India who were the first human inhabitants. Originally they would appear to have come from Africa through Arabia and the coastlands of Iran and Baluchistan." According to the Matsya, an ancient book from India, the world belonged to the Kushites (Saka) for 7000 years.
In the ancient Afro-Asiatic world, a temple was considered the mansion—hâît, or the house—pirû—of the deity. The Horites and Hapiru maintained temples and shrines throughout the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Carol A. Redmont has noted that Hapiru influence was felt "from the Tigris-Euphrates river basins over to the Mediterranean littoral and down through the Nile Valley during the Second Millennium, the principal area of historical interest is in their engagement with Egypt." (Carol A. Redmount, 'Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt' in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed: Michael D. Coogan, Oxford University Press: 1999, p.98)
Comparative Linguistics Tells the Story
A comparison of the languages of Saharan Africa, Semitic languages, Sanskrit and Dravidian suggests that the Horites dispersed among many peoples and their presence cemented a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. Afro-Asiatic languages include Accadian, Amharic, ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Berber, Chadic, Kushitic, Ethiopic, Hahm, Hausa, Hebrew, Omotic, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. These “cognate languages" appear to share a common ancestor language. Because this is so, linguists are able to compare the languages and draw conclusions about the older “proto” Afro-Asiatic language and dialects spoken before 10,000 years ago.
One expression of the common worldview of the Afro-Asiatics is the linguistic affinity of their languages. Consider the following examples:
The Hebrew
rison adam = ancestral man is
adamu orisa = ancestral Adam in Hahm/Hausa languages of Nigeria and Niger. The Hausa word for human being is
dan adam. Related is the Babylonian word for blood:
dhama. The Sanskrit word for male human is
manu which resembles the African word
adamu.
The Hebrew
bara = to begin, is related to the Yoruba/Hahm word
bere = to begin. There is a relationship between the verb "to begin" and the Hebrew word for Creator which is
Bore and the African Twi dialect is
Borebore = Creator. The Sanskrit
kr = ‘to create/to make is related to the Igbo
kere = created.
The Hebrew
hay = “living being” is related to the Hausa/Hahm word
aye = life, created world. Likewise, the Hebrew
iya = mother, corresponds to the Dravidian
ka ayi = mother, and the Hausa/Hahm
eyi = gave birth.
The Hebrew
hayah = "Let there be…" is rleated to the Igbo
haa ya = "Let it be…/let there be"
The Hebrew
amar = "commanded" is related to the Igbo
hamara = "commanded"
The Hebrew
abba = father, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm
baba = father, to the Dravidian
appa/appan = father, and to the Mundari
apu = father. The original root is likely AP.
The Hebrew
ha’nock = the chief, corresponds to the Hahm word
nok = “first ancestral chief”. The original root is likely NK.
The Semitic word
wadi = river, corresponds to the Sanskrit
nadi = river. The original root is likely AD.
The Semitic root
mgn = to give, is the same as the Sanskrit
mgn = to give.
The Hausa word for hunter is
maharba. Compare this to the Hebrew word that appears in the Targum
nah shirkan = hunter, and note the similarity to the Hausa word
sarkin maharba = lead hunter.
The Sanskrit
svah = sky or heaven, corresponds to the Semitic
svam or
samyim = sky or heavens. The Semitic resembles the Proto-Dravidian word
van = heaven. The Arabo-Spanish
desvan (attic or upper room) is likely related to the root SVN.
The Hebrew
yasuah = salvation, corresponds to the Sanskrit words
asvah,
asuah or
yasuah = salvation.
Yashua means salvation in the Urdu language also.
The Hebrew root
thr = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm
toro = clean, to the Amarigna (Ethiopia)
anatara = pure, and to the Tamil
tiru = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian
tor = blood. In some Kushitic languages
mtoro means rain and
toro refers to God. The Egyptian
ntr = deity is probably related.
The Hebrew
echad or
ehat = one, corresponds to the Syrian
eka and to the Sanskrit
eca = one. It is a cognate to
ikka = one in the Gonga languages of southeast Ethiopia. In the Proto-Saharan
ikki is a directional element = to and has the Creator as the reference. In the ancient world the number
one was reserved for or assigned to the deity.
The number six in Proto-Dravidian is
caru. This correlates to
koro in Proto-Saharan, a directional element (the cardinal poles were associated with numbers); to
karkia in some Chadic Languages; and to
korci in Meidob (a language of eastern Sudan). The most striking similarity is between the Kanembu (another language of Sudan)
araku and the Dravido-Tamil
aarru.
We can verify the connection between the Nile and Indus Valley by comparing the Egyptian and Indus pottery inscriptions in which
17 figures are virtually identical (see below).
In addition to the linguistic evidence for the spread of Kushite beliefs there is evidence from ethno-astrology, number symbolism, and in analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham's Horite people, using the geneologies of Genesis. My research shows that the marriage pattern of Abraham’s Kushite people drove Kushite expansion and the diffusion of the proto-Gospel. Diffusion of the belief concerning the miraculous birth of an eternal King-Priest was driven by four historically identified factors: Kushite migration out of Africa, Kushite commerce, Kushite conquests, and marriage alliances between the Kushite ruler-priests.
Who were the Afro-Asiatics?
The term "Afro-Asiatic" is a general classification of peoples who speak Afro-Asiatic languages. The majority of these languages is spoken in Africa. There are three main groups: Saharan Africans, Afro-Arabians, and Aramean Afro-Asiatics. The last two can be traced back to the region of Africa known as ancient Kush. There is much evidence for the Kushite migration out of Africa, i
ncluding DNA studies. The Kushites were great kingdom builders who controlled the major water systems at a time when this part of the world was much wetter.
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Afro-Asiatics ranged in skin tone.
Asiatic/Nubian/Babylonian/Egyptian |
The original context of the story of the creation of Adam is Nilotic. Adam is derived from the root DM which refers to blood (
dam in Hebrew). The words e
dom and a
dam both mean red or reddish-brown. In Hausa the word for reddish-brown is o
dom. (Esau who married a Horite bride,
Oholibamah, was designated e
dom.) This is a reference to the color of the soil from which Adam was made. Abraham's Kushite ancestors lived where the soil was reddish-brown. This is likely the red soil that washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon.
Chromic Cambisols have a strong brown or red colour.
Abraham's ancestors migrated from the Upper Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa to the coastal areas of Arabia. There they became established in separate territories which took their names from their rulers: Dedan, Sheba, Joktan. etc. Centuries later, these clans became separated into Afro-Arabians and Afro-Asiatics. Genesis says that this took place in the time of Peleg.
Cultural Diffusion and the Afro-Asiatic Dominion
How is it that people living across this vast expanse share so many important words? Genesis 11:1 tells us that the descendents of Noah who are listed in the Table of Nations (Gen. 10) were one people and spoke one language. In fact, all the peoples listed in the Genesis 10 are Afro-Asiatics and at one time they used virtually the same words, that is to say, they spoke closely related languages that shared a common system of roots.
One explanation for this is cultural diffusion over a large area resulting in common features. Diffusion is the process of spreading knowledge, skills, and technology from one culture to another. Cultural diffusion explains the linguistic affinities between languages as different the Asian Tamil and the African Hausa. The diffusion process begins when different cultures initiate regular contact through
migration, commerce, marriage alliances and conquests. Let us consider the evidence for each of these aspects of diffusion.
Kushite Migration
Archaeogeneticists employ genetics, archaeology and linguistics to examine the origin and spread of people groups. Haplogroup R-M173 is of particular significance because this pertains to the ancient Kushite and Nilotic peoples who are genetically related.
At least three migrations out of Africa have taken place in the past 120,000 years. The
first that has been documented took place in the Late Pleistocene (120,000-12,000 B.C.). Here the movement was from the Upper Nile Valley and the Horn into the coastal areas of Arabia. Evidence indicates that Nilotic peoples moved out of Africa in several directions.
Thomas Strasser and his team have found hundreds of stone Age tools of African origin on the island of Crete. Others have been found on the Iranian plateaus, helping experts trace the steps of an Nilotic tribe that passed through the region on their way to India where it settled in the Andaman Islands. The tribe has all the physical features of black East Africans. Their ancestors are believed to have migrated out of East Africa about 60,000 year ago. According to Hamed NasabVahdati, a member of the archeological society at Iran's Cultural Heritage Center, the Stone Age artifacts found in Iran are very similar to those found in East Africa.
Many moved across land as the sea level was lower during of the ice age. However, for many the final stage of the journey would have been by sea. Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford University, believes that the population discovered at Lake Mungo, in southeastern Australia, was originally from Africa. The Lake Mungo site holds the remains of an adult man who was sprinkled with copious amounts of red ochre in a burial ritual common among early humans. These humans would have had to cross 50 miles of ocean between the nearest point of Southeast Asia and the landmass of New Guinea and Australia, which were then attached.
The most recent involved the African population known as Kushites. In a study conducted under the direction of Clyde A. Winters at the Uthman dan Fodio Institute in Chicago, data from archaeology, linguistics, genetics and craniometric studies were used to explore the role of the Kushites in the spread of haplogroup R from Africa to Eurasia. Here we find that the Dravidians of India originated in ancient Kush:
There is genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence pointing to the African origin of the Dravidian speakers in India (Aravanan 1980; Winters 2007). The Indian archaeologist B.B. Lal (1963) believes that the Dravidian speaking people may have belonged to the C-Group. The C-Group people spread culture from Nubia into Arabia, Iran and India as evidenced by the presence of Black-and-Red Ware (BRW). Although the Egyptians preferred the cultivation of wheat, many ancient C-Group people (Nubia/Kushite) were agro-pastoral people who cultivated millet/sorghum and maintained large herds of cattle which were used for sacrifice and food. Bovine skulls were used to decorate their graves.
The C-Group people lived in northern Nubia, southern Egypt, and southward to the modern Sudan between 2300-1500 B.C. Winters believes that the Dravidian speakers of C-Group took millet to India (C. Winters, 2008b). B. B. Lal contends that the Dravidians came from southern Egypt and Sudan (Nubia/Kush). This would explain their dark complexion. Lal writes: "At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical." The Nubian megaliths of which Lal speaks date from 1000 B.C.
There is evidence that ancient peoples of Africa migrated in many directions. The Ashante moved west from Sudan to what is today Ghana. Some went eastward to the Near East, to Iran, to India and to Indonesia. This explains the correspondence of names like Orissa in Nigeria and northern India and the correspondence between the wedding ceremony of the Agharias of Orisha, India and that described in Genesis among Abraham's people.
Kushite Commerce
Diffusion is common among groups whose homelands are geographically contiguous. However, the land area of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion is so vast that the diffusion of the Afro-Asiatic worldview must have been driven by traveling merchants as well as migration. In other words, the Sahara was not a barrier to travel before 10,000 years ago because there were water routes to follow and the central part of the Sahara was wetlands (see map below).
Anne Osborne, lead author of a
Bristol University paper on this topic has said: “Space-born radar images showed fossil river channels crossing the Sahara in Libya, flowing north from the central Saharan watershed all the way to the Mediterranean. Using geochemical analyses, we demonstrate that these channels were active during the last interglacial period. This provides an important water course across this otherwise arid region.”
Dr Derek Vance, senior author on the paper, added: “The study shows, for the first time, that monsoon rains fed rivers that extended from the Saharan watershed, across the northern Sahara, to the Mediterranean Sea. These corridors rivaled the Nile Valley as potential routes for early modern human migrations to the Mediterranean shores."
Cultural diffusion was aided by caravans that moved back and forth between west central Africa and Asia. This explains the appearance of ancient
African artifacts in China.
Wild donkeys were domesticated by the Kushites between 6500 and 4000 BC. The wild donkey was native to the Red Sea Hills and the arid Ethiopian highlands. Kushites used both camels and donkeys as beasts of burden. These hearty creatures enabled the transport of cargo across the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia and Pakistan. As
Roger Blench has noted, "The spread of the donkey across Africa was linked with the proliferation of long distance caravans."
The region of Sheba in southern Arabia was famous for horses. The people of Sheba were close kin to Abraham and ethnically Kushite. The high-spirited, high-stamina Arabian horse is one of the oldest breeds, dating back 4,500 years. They were valued for breeding across the ancient Middle East and among Japheth’s Magyar descendants. Today Arabian bloodlines are found in almost every modern breed of riding horse. The world's oldest saddles are from Nubia and the Upper Nile region.
The region of Dedan in northern Arabia was famous for trade and commerce. Isaiah 21:13 speaks of the “caravans of Dedanites” and Ezekiel 27:20 speaks of Dedan as supplying Tyre with precious things. They traded in spices, ivory, incense, and cotton with lands as distant as India, Cambodia and China. They traded in copper from the 4000 B.C. mines in the Air region of Niger where there are rock drawings of chariots, and evidence of early copper smelting and copper weapons. The Dedanites were ethnically Kushite and kin to the people of Sheba.
The Sudanese Kushites were the first to domesticate wild sorghum and millet. These became staple grains in Egypt and were taken to Pakistan and India between 3000 and 1000 BC, probably by the Dravidians. The Dravidians also mined gold in southern Africa in 1000 B.C. and it is likely that they transported both grain and gold by ship from northwestern Africa to India.
Migration and commerce do not sufficiently explain how peoples living across such a vast expanse of land should have a common worldview and linguistic heritage. The evidence suggests a more complex picture of migration, commerce, and alliances among peoples located around the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula and the Dead Sea.
The Kushite Marriage Pattern Drove Kushite Expansion
My research into the genealogical material in Genesis involves analysis of the Horite kinship pattern. This kinship pattern is unique and makes it possible to trace Kushite rulers.
The Horite pattern involved two wives and at least two concubines. The ruler's first wife was a half-sister and the second wife was a patrilineal cousin or niece. The marriages of firstborn sons contributed to the diffusion of Horite religion. The firstborn son of the half-sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. The firstborn son of the patrilineal
cousin or niece bride ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather. All other sons were given gifts of camels, jewelry, flocks, herds and servants and sent away to conquer settlements and build territories for themselves. The importance of these "sent-away sons" as a driving factor in Kushite expansion should not be overlooked.
This pattern is evident in the case of the Kushite kingdom-builder Nimrod. Nimrod, one of Abraham's ancestors, is an example. He was ethnically Kushite but was probably sent away from his older brother Ramah whose territory was in northern Arabia. This explains why he regarded his mother as "lowly." She would have been a woman of less wealth and status than the wife of Ramah, Kush's the firstborn son. After numerous conquests, Nimrod’s territory was far greater than his brother’s. It extended the length of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and within this territory there were three principal cities: Babel, Erech and Accad in the plain of Shinar (Gen. 10:10). The script used to communicate across Nimrod’s empire is called “Accadian.”
The conquest of the Sumerian city states by Kushites rulers is well-documented. Sargon the Great lived from about 2290 to 2215 BC, which is when his son Rimush (Ramesh) by his sister-wife ascended the throne. Alternative dates for Sargon the Great are 2360-2279, but these dates likely refer to his maternal grandfather after whom he was named. It was Sargon the Elder, not Sargon the Great, who conquered Nippur in 2340 B.C. and established his capital in Accad.
Sar-gon is the name by which Nimrod of the Bible is remembered in history. Sar-gon is a title meaning High King or King of Kings. The Elamite word for king is
sunki, a cognate of the Hahm/Hamitic
sarki, meaning king. The Sumerian word for king is
sar and the Chadic word for ruler -
gon.
The researcher on African Culture, Dr. Catherine Acholonu, reports that in Nigerian lore Nimrod is known as
Sharru-Kin which is interpreted to mean “the righteous King.” Nimrod's Accadian name was
Šarru-kīnu, which is usually translated “the true king.”
Many of the place names of Sargon’s kingdom in Kur-gal match places names in ancient Kush. For example, Accad is Agade, which is the original name of a river settlement in Odukpani, Nigeria. (Its geographical coordinates are 5° 29' 0" North, 7° 58' 0" East.) The name Accad is also related to the name of the city of Agadez in Niger, with a long association with metalworkers. Sargon’s territory was called Kish, which is Kush. One of the cities of his territory was Mari which is the Egyptian word for Mary. Another was Yar-muti (Old Arabic) which means Obedient (muti) Friend (yar).
A seventh century Assyrian text says that Sar-gon's birthplace was a city on the banks of the Euphrates called
Azu-piranu. It was a Horite shrine as evidenced by the word piranu. The Hapiru devotees of Horus called a temple O-piru, meaning "House of the Sun."
Azu is an East African name for God -
Asa. Azu-piranu means “House of God” and is equivalent to the Hebrew word Beth-el.
Hur-azu was a title for Horus and the
Babylonian word for gold.
Kushite rulers, like Egyptian rulers, did not name their biological fathers in their king lists. This is because they believed that the ruler-priest was the son of Re whose emblem was the sun. The Pharaoh was called "son of Re" which is why Egyptian texts never mention an earthly father of the king. Kingship was rather a manifestation of the solar deity's overshadowing of noble women. Sargon the Great (Biblical Nimrod) claimed not to know his father. He based his authority to rule on the suggestion that he
was conceived according to the Horite myth of miraculous virgin conception.
The evidence is conclusive that the Afro-Asiatic Dominion was essentially Kushitic and a vehicle for the diffusion of Horite worship. Dr Christopher Ehret has expressed this succinctly in his treatise "History in Africa." He writes, "The linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence combine in locating the origins of this family far south in Africa, in Eritrea or Ethiopia, and not at all in Asia. A complex array of lexical evidence confirms that the Proto-Afrasian society belonged to the pre-agricultural eras of human history." (p.4)
Related reading:
The Kushite-Kushan Connection;
Migrations Out of Africa;
Sent-Away Sons;
The Kushite Marriage Pattern Drove Kushite Expansion;
Who Were the Kushites?;
The Christ in Nilotic Mythology;
Features of Afro-Asiatic Religion;
Nimrod: Afro-Asiatic Kingdom Builder;
The Genetic Unity of Black African Elamite, Dravidian and Sumerian Languages by Clyde A. Winters;
False Correlations
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