Linguistic Degeneration: From biradicals to triradicals

Alice C. Linsley

The Danish linguist Holger Pedersen (1867-1953) explained in The Discovery of Language that “Hebrew, Aramaic and Accadian languages had all undergone significant linguistic degeneration. Only Old Arabic, due to its relative isolation in the Arabian peninsula, remained closer to the old stratum of the ‘Semitic’ form of the language.”

The degeneraton of which Pedersen speaks is also due to a prevalent prejudice against exploration the Afro-Canaaite roots of many Hebrew words.  Consider the word Dedan, as an example. Most commentaries explain that the terms Dedan/Dedanite are from ded'-a-nim/dedhan/dedhanim, meaning "low." This is an odd connection since the region of Dedan had a relatively high elevation and the Dedanites were known to dwell in caves and elevated rock shelters.

Genesis 10:7 provides the more accurate explanation that Dedan and the Dedanites and the so-called "Dodanim" are probably red Kushites or Red Nubians among whom there were Horite Hebrew priests who were associated with the red people of Edom (Gen. 36). The original context is Nilotic where the word Dedan means "red" and is a cognate to the Egyptian didi (red fruit) and the Yoruba diden (red).

Pedersen is correct also that old Arabic texts can provide the closest cognates to the older stratum, which is really Afro-Arabian, such as the language spoken by the people of Dedan, where the oldest Arabic texts have been found. It also has been noted that the oldest mosques triangulate to a point in the region of Dedan.

Dedan was the son of Raamah, the brother of Sheba and the grandson of Kush. This means that the peoples of the regions of Raamah, Dedan and Sheba were kin and Kushites. They spoke a North Arabian dialect which is sometimes referred to as Dedanite or Dedanitic. It has been grouped with Canaanite and Aramaic (Faber 1997).

The Dedanite alphabet consisted of 28 letters and resembled other dialects spoken on the Arabian Peninsula, though Dedanite is also distinctive. It is distinct from Southern Arabian in its use of the definite article h- or zero (a sun symbol) whereas Southern Arabic and the Arabic spoken today uses al-. (The Cambridge Encyclopedia of World’s Ancient Languages, Roger D. Woodard, Ed., p. 488). The frequency of the definite article h- or the zero in the words used by Abraham’s people indicates a Northern Arabian setting.

Since Dedanite is the language of the Arabian Kushites we would expect to find significant parallels to the Kushitic/Nilotic languages. This is evident in the Dedanite and ancient Egyptian use of the root MR. The Egyptian word for love is mer which is related to the word for mother ‘m in Egyptian and in Dedanite. In both languages the word for woman is mr’t.  Mer is also the root of the name Meri/Mary.

Not surprisingly, Dedanite shares some features with Hebrew. For example, the final /a/ was represented by –h, as in Hebrew. So the biradical word Rama (RM) would be becomes a triradical word Ramah (RMH). In both Dedanite and Hebrew the final /u/ is replaced by –w. Scholars believe that the earlier form is represented by the biradical RM. (See "The Biradical Origin of Semitic Roots" by Bernice Varjick Hecker.)

More surprising is the evidence of a common Proto-language for the Nilotic, Dedanite, and Dravidian languages, further evidence of the Kushite expansion. This is seen in correspondence between Dedanite, the Nilotic Manding and the Dravidian first person singular pronouns. The first person singular pronoun in Dedanite is ‘n which corresponds to the first person singular in Dravidian an and to the Manding na.

To see a Family Tree of Ancient Semitic Scripts, go here, to page 8 and note that only one African language is included whereas many should be included.  This area requires considerable future effort on the part of linguists and the work is long overdue. It appears that prejudice has contributed to the failure of scholars to correct inaccurate interpretations of many biblical words.


Related reading:  The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; Thamudic Scripts; Ancient African Writing Systems; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; What Language Did Abraham Speak?

The Jerusalem that David Knew

Alice C. Linsley


The Jerusalem that David knew is the oldest part of the city, a 12-acre ridge south of the Temple Mount, known as the "city of David" (II Samuel 5:9). It extended south of the Old City walls. This area was inhabited continuously for 2000 years before David. In David's time, there was a fortified citadel under control of the Jebusites. Jerusalem, which was called "Urusalim" in Akkadian, was an important shrine city in David's time, exhibiting typical characteristics of ancient shrine cities. It had flowing water from a perennial spring and was built on a precipice, as was the shrine city Nekhen at El-Kab on the eastern bank of the Nile in Sudan. The region around Amman in Jordan (Gen. 36:35) was likewise famed for its springs and high citadel.

The name Urusalim in Akkadian cuneiform

Excavations of the City of David have uncovered remains from the Early Bronze Age through the Muslim Period.  Bronze ancestor figurines (teraphim) were found which have perforations around the top of the head. Human hair from the dead ancestor was woven through these perforations. This was common practice and observed among extant biblical tribes.

Bust (Ife) showing perforations for hair

In Area E, the Iron Age rampart reused the Bronze Age city wall. In Area G, the Iron Age remains are on top of the stepped-stone structure. This is a system of foundation walls erected below the summit of the southeastern slope.  The system is comprised of boxes filled with stone and the construction protrudes beyond the natural contour, providing an additonal 2691 square feet. The yellow courses of stone are believed to have served as the base for the Jebusite citadel, and David would have been familiar with this area.

Dame Kathleen Kenyon's partial excavation of the southeastern hill uncovered a fragment of a pilaster capital with the palmette design typical of that which originated in ancient Egypt with subsequent development into various forms throughout Eurasia. 

Jerusalem's Importance in Abraham's Time

The first biblical evidence of the city's importance is Melchizedek.  He was the ruler-priest of Salem who came to Abraham after the battle of the kings (Gen. 14).  It was the custom among Abraham's Kushite people to make atonement for the shedding of blood after battle and likely this is the service that Melchizedek performed for Abraham. Melchizedek, the king of Salem, is called "the priest of the most high God" in Genesis 14:18. His name mean "righteous king."

Three centuries before David ruled in Jerusalem, the city was ruled by Abdi-hepa.  He received his training in Egypt, as was proper for sons of the ruling Kushite caste. The Egyptians regarded him as a warrior and Adbi-hepa claimed to rule by the authority of Pharaoh. The name hepa may be a variant of heqaib, a common name among men of the ruler-priest caste, according to the Egyptologist Labib Habachi. Another ancient water shrine was that of Prince Heqaib on the island of Elephantine. On that same island was found the biography of Pepi-nakht-Heqaib, an official and military commander under Pepi II (BC 2278-2184). As a ruler, Pepi-nakht-Heqaib was known for upholding the rights of firstborn sons.

David himself appears to have been kin to the Kushite rulers of Jerusalem which might explain why he is described as ruddy or red (1Samuel 17:42). This is the same Hebrew word used to describe Esau, one of David's ancestors. Kushite rulers had a red-brown skin color. 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. David's kingdom, with its center in Jerusalem, would have been at the crossroads of such commerce and would have enjoyed the benefits of trade between Africa and Eurasia.

Had David's claim to the throne been accepted by his kinsmen in Jerusalem, which it apparently was, this would explain why there is no archaeological evidence of David's "conquest" involving destruction of property. Further support for the theory that David was related to the Jebusites is found in II Samuel 24, where we are told that David built a fire altar at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite. David was of the ruler-priest caste and therefore qualified to offer sacrifice.  He was also a shepherd. All the Horite ruler-priests were shepherds.  These are very roles that characterize the Horite ruler-priests whose patrilineal lines intermarried, bringing us to the Joachim, Mary's father, a descendant of David's prophet Nathan. The Virgin Mary was Miriam Daughter of Joachim Son of Pntjr (Panther) Priests of Nathan of Beth Lehem. From the earliest predynastic times in Egypt, ntjr designated the king among the Kushites. The name Panther or p-ntjr meant "God is King."  It is certain that Mary was of the ruler-priest class because even those who hated her admit this. Sanhedrin 106a says: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.”


Jebusite Builders
The Jebusites were a Kushite people and the Kushites were known as great builders.  Nimrod, the son of Kush, is an example. He built cities in the Tigris River Valley, though his people originated in the Nile Valley.  From the Nile, the Jebusites migrated both east and west. The western boundary of the Jebu is marked by a 1000-year old rampart that is 70 feet high and 100 miles long. The British archaeologist Patrick Darling is credited with drawing world attention to the discovery of the Eredo system of walls. He reports, "We are not linking what we found to a city, but to a vast kingdom boundary rampart."

Eredo rampart

The Eredo walls and ditches are located to the south-west of the Jebu town of Ijebu-Ode in Ogun state in southwest Nigeria. This is the largest single pre-colonial monument in Africa. Local people link the Eredo boundary walls to Bilikisu Sungbo, another name for Sheba, according to Dr Patrick Darling. This discovery confirms the biblical genealogical data that links the clans of Jebu and Sheba (in ancient Yemen).

German archaeologists working in the Ethiopian highlands have identified the remains of settlements from the the time of David that reveal strong cultural and religious connections to biblical Sheba. The clans of Sheba were close relatives of the Jokanite clans of South Arabia. The territory of Sheba is referred to 24 times in the Hebrew Bible. Beersheba, Keturah's home, was at the northern end of the territory of Sheba. Keturah was Abraham's cousin wife.  See diagram below.

Related reading:  Who Were the Kushites?;  Edom and the Horites; The Jebusites Unveiled; Frank Moore Cross: Israel's God is the God of the Horites

The Genesis Kings and the Fall

Alice C. Linsley


The men listed in Genesis 4-6 (Cain to Noah) were rulers over territories. They had a complex and unique marriage and ascendency pattern, involving two wives.  The first wife of the ruler-to-be was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and this marriage took place at a young age.  The firstborn son of this union ascended to the throne of his biological father (as did Isaac). The second wife was either a patrilineal cousin or a niece (as was Keturah to Abraham) and was married close to the time of ascent. This is why Abraham expressed urgency concerning Isaac's marriage to Rebecca. The firstborn son of the second wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather (as did Joktan, Keturah's son).  By the time of Cain, the marriage and ascendeny pattern was well established, suggesting that this had been the pattern for more than a few generations of rulers.  The "begats" speak of archaic rulers and establish a pattern whereby Abraham's descendants would recognize the Jesus as the promised Son of God.

Analysis of the king lists in Genesis 4 and 5 reveals that this was the pattern for Abraham's royal ancestors and I believe that this is an authentic pattern. Further, this pattern is older than the Genesis 1-3 narratives and is useful in understanding those narratives.  For one thing, we can't use the regnal years to determine the age of the earth, as was tried by Bishop Ussher. By his calculations, the earth is only 6000 years old.  What are we to make of the mining operations in the Lebombo Mountains 60,000 years ago?

The span between the rulers in Genesis 4 and 5 and Noah may be 950 years, but all these men were rulers over territories that were well established and which had neolithic technologies.  In other words, these rulers lived long after the first created humans. Clearly, there is a much greater span between Adam and Cain. Adam represents either the historical or ahistorical first man created by God, fully human and in the divine image. As such, he would have lived around 3.4 million years ago, since the oldest human fossils are at least that old.

Must Adam have been historical to believe that the Fall happened? We only have to look around for evidence that we live as sinners in a sinful world. In the Eastern Church, the Fall doesn't mean that each of us inherited Adam's guilt. The prophets teach that each of us will receive that which our own lives deserve. Instead, the Fall means that we all are subject to death since by Adam's sin, death entered the world.


Related reading:  The Marriage and Ascendency Pattern of Abraham's People; Cain's Father; Getting the Facts About Human Origins

Thamudic Scripts

Yeha altar at the Almaqah temple was built in the 8th to 6th centuries BC.

The "monumental script" on the Almaqah altar found near the city of Wuqro in the region of Tigray, Ethiopia has been identified as Thamudic (Giovanni Garbini, 1976).

Connections have been made between the ancient Thamudic scripts found from Syria to Yemen and the ancient Afro-Asiatic languages. Approximately 11000 Thamudic inscriptions have been found scattered from Syria to Ethiopia. Most are found in Yemen. These are often accompanied by petroglyphs of humans and oxen with circles and spirals. Similar marks have been identified along the Nile in Sudan and in the 6th century Kok Turki runes (Orkhon script) of the pre-Islamic Turkic people of Northern China.

Thamudic scripts are found on ancient rock etchings and paintings. These often show a human-ox head bucranium with or without horns, and sometimes associated with a symbol such as circles with internal radial lines. Such images also have been found in Sudan.

3000 BC rock carving in Sudan along the Nile
Credit: Tim Karberg/Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster

Related reading: Early Written Signs; The Writing System of Menes; Enigmatic Petroglyphs of Saudi Arabia's High Plateau; Proto-Elamite Script; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Thamudic and Nabataean Inscriptions from Umm Al-Rasas by M.C.A. Macdonald; Old North Arabian Scripts; The Dispilio Tablet

In the article that follows, the cultural anthropologist Ahmed Achrati provides an argument for a wide diffusion of Thamudic scripts among different populations from the Neolithic period to the Islamic Middle Age.

"Thamudic traces: some remarks on 'Regarding the thamoud' by G. Lombry"
By Ahmed Achrati

G. E. Lombry's comments are a welcome reminder of the importance of the pre-Islamic Arabian archaeological heritage and the need to improve the focus and orientation of our research in this area. He re marks that' The "Thamoudian style" is a common but indistinct term to refer to a badly defined period of time; some of the petroglyphs attributed to it belong to different cultures, even to the Neolithic or the Islamic Middle Age. These remarks capture the essence of the problem involved in the study of the Arabian inscriptions, including publication, interpretation and chronology. The following note is intended to amplify some of the ideas in these remarks, albeit within the broad ethno-linguistic framework of what is often referred to as the Near East.

1. Ethno-linguistic framework

A. Thamudic script
The names used for the designation of ancient scripts are sometimes purely taxonomic inventions, with no known connection to the referent ethnic group. The vexing question of identifying the people who used a given script is further complicated by the fact that people who use a script do not necessarily speak the language of that script. As a classificatory device, the term 'Thamudic' was coined by Mark Lidzbarski (Van den Branden 1966:16), but what is comforting about it, as A. F. L. Beeston has indicated, is that it enjoys an internal structure resting on a large and diverse quantity of inscriptions and a wide spatial distribution.

Thamudic also benefits from considerable external validation (Beeston 1984). S. Jamme and van den Branden even argue for the unity of the Thamudic script (van den Branden 1966), although this is resisted by J. Ryckmans (1984: 74-75) and MacDonald (2000: 32).

What is referred to in the literature as Thamudic consists of approximately 11000 inscriptions found scattered all around the Arabian Peninsula from Syria to Yemen (MacDonald 2000: 44). The bulk of the Thamudic texts, about 9000 of the inscriptions, were collected by the Philby-Ryckmans-Lippens expedition in central Arabia. The remaining Thamudic inscriptions come from north-west Arabia. These have been divided by Winnett into three groups: Thamudic B, C, and D. A fourth group E has been added by G. King.

B. Thamud
Within the corpus of the Thamudic inscriptions, the narre tmd occurs four, possibly six, times (in Thamudic B and D). Two more instances occur in Safaitic (MacDonald 2000:66, n. 39; also Dhayyeb 2000: 3). A variation of this tenn is also thought to exist in South Arabic texts (Dhayyeb 2000: 5).

Not much is known about the Thamud, but, as Lombray said, tribes by that name are referred to in the Assyrian records of Sargon II (722-705 B.C.E.). Arab tribes and people are also referred to in the Assyrian records, but in one of a set of letters coming from southern Mesopotomia and dating back to about the sixth century B.C.E., a person is called te-mu-da-a arba-a-a, which has been translated as the 'Tamudean', the 'Arab' (Retso 2003:190-1). The letter also mentions Tayma, an oasis in central Arabia. Thamud is also found in Classical sources. In Diodorus and Strabo, for example, we find the Thamud referred to as Tamoudenoi, and in Expositio Totius Mundi (c. 357 C.E., author unknown), they are called Thamudeni. In the Qur'an, 'Thamud' is mentioned twenty-six times, and Muslim exegetes and historians have commented on them extensively (e.g. Ibn Hisham, al-Tabari and al-Tha'alibi).

C. Chronology
Some of the Thamudic texts are dated or datable, but most of them are chronologically indeterminate. While dating the Thamudic script is important, the issue of chronology is not particular to this script. In fact, as G. Mendenhall (1984) has indicated, what is needed is a chronological framework that encompasses all the Arabian scripts, which raises the question of the development of alphabetic writing itself, and also calls for a greater integration of parietal, epigraphic and linguistic knowledge in the archaeological research.

The chronology and development of the pre-Islamic Arabian scripts is yet to be firmly established but we know that the Arabian and the North-West Semitic (Phoenecian, Canaanite) alphabetic traditions are the two great alphabetic systems of the ancient Near East. Each with its own alphabetic order, the Phoenecian 'bgd and the Arabian hlhm, these two alphabetic traditions are thought to have originated from a common source in the Syro-Palestinian region and separated sometimes in the Bronze Age (Mendenhall 1984; MacDonald 2000). Features of these two alphabetic traditions are found in the older (cuneiform alphabet) of Ugarit texts and also in the much older syllabic texts of Ebla (2500) and Byblos. This indicates that 'both letter orders were in use before the beginning of the twelfth century B.C.' (MacDonald 2000: 32). What is remarkable, though, is that whereas the North-West Semitic lost some of the old phonetic features, many of these are retained only in the Arabian, including most of the Ugarit 30 consonants system, in contrast to only 22 Phoenician letters, as well as a set of differentiated emphatic consonants (Owens 1998: 53; MacDonald 2000: 32; Mendenhall 1984: 98; also Lipinski 1997: 150; and Gordon 1997: 102). Moreover, although sources of Classical Arabic go only to the seventh century C.E., this relatively young language still contains most of the older inventory of Semitic phonological, morphological and lexical elements (e.g. the independent personal pronouns of Ugarit, and also the personal pronoun suffixes; see Moscati 1964: 106; Rabin 1984: 291). In fact, as J. Owens has pointed out, so much of the older Semitic phonological inventory is presenved in Arabic, that in relation to the old Akkadian, 'one can say that Arabic is "older" ' (Owens 1998: 53). Lexically, Al Yasin also thinks that the Arabic of the seventh century C.E. contains more of the Ugaritic cognates of 1400 B.C.E. than does the Hebrew Old Testament (in Hayes 1991: 610).

What all this means is that 'a thorough re-examination of the history and relationship of the Semitic languages is now in order', as Mendenhall (1984: 95) has pointed out. 'The basis of this re-examination', he added,' cannot be a mere evolutionary theory, but the much more solid foundation of historical linguistic evidence on the one hand, and archaeological evidence of population centres of diffusion, on the other'. This leads to a broader question of socio-cultural origin.

D. Afroasiatic roots
Ancient speech may be impossible to excavate but language is an important indicator of ancestry and population movement (Ruhlen 1994a: 149 and passim, 1994b: 18). In Africa, the linguistic affinities among Berber, Ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Chadic, Semitic and Cushitic (Befa) have been understood to imply a single origin, leading to their inclusion in a single family, called Afroasiatic, instead of the racially-tainted 'Hamitic'. For a long time, it was thought that the origin of Afroasiatic was in the Levant. Accordingly, groups of Eurasian populations are believed to have 'backtracked to Africa, giving rise to the Afroasiatic family' (Ruhlen 1994a: 193). This view, however, has been rejected by many linguists, including C. Ehret (1995), Allan R. Bomhard (1988, 1996), Daniel F. McCall (1998). These linguists distance themselves from the traditional views that favour Semitism (Ehret 1995: 5). Thus, for example, Ehret believes that pre-Proto-Semitic roots are closer to the Proto-Afroasiatic, making consideration of the Semitic etymology secondary rather than a prerequisite for reconstructive work (ibid. 3). And A. R. Bomhard decries the fact that'many Semiticists stubbornly cling to the reconstructivn' of Proto-Semitic alone without taking into account phonological data from other Afroasiatic phyla (Bomhard 1988:113).

2. Rock art
There is an imbalance in the archaeological research and publication in favour of the monumental, the literal, and the settled coasts of the Arabian Peninsula. Nomadic life is often brought in only for the purpose of filling the archaeological gaps between urban/ settled agricultural periods. Sometimes they are even presented as the agent of urban decline/destruction. For example, espousing Dostal's theory of camel domestication, P J. Parr thinks 'it is hard to resist the temptation to speculate on the possible connection between this breakdown of urban conditions and the rise of camel nomadism' (Parr 1984: 47). But Parr's idea of periods of 'archaeological blanks' in the east and the centre of the Peninsula does not account for rock art, and the lasting record of the most perennial phenomenon of Arabia, nomadism.

3.'Idolatress', scripts and scriptuae
In his comments, Lombry refers to a statement by M. Abu Murwah al Qahtani that 'the term thamoud [sic] should be considered as meaning "idolatress", Le. "unknown to Islam-. It has been difficult to check this source, but leading aside the possible religious (even misogynist) tenor of the term 'idolatress', it is clear that such a scriptural or exegetic reference is merely a confirmation of antiquity of the Thamud, not the endorsement of an established religious/theological view of history, a sin that has particularly afflicted the Near-Eastern archaeology for a long time. Indeed, as pointed out by D. Potts, archaeology has been driven by a need to find Biblical parallels, leading to an excessive focus on Mesopotamian religious and literary aspects of the Near East (see Potts 1997: 303).

Perhaps the best approach to the Islamic texts as they relate to Thamud is to recognise their theological and historiographic nature and to limit their impact on empirical research, which Dhuyayb (2003) tries to do in his study of the Thamudic script. The best yet, regarding scriptural and exegetic references to Thamud, is J. Stetkevych's approach. In his brilliant study of the Thamudean legend of the Golden Bough, Stetckovysh combines literary, mythological, philosophical and archaeological information to read this Thamudic narrative as a mythopoeia, but one that is 'integrated into the decline and fall of sendentism and the growth of nomadism in Arabia' (Stetkevych 1996: 61).


REFERENCES

ACHRATI, A. 2006. The story of the Arabian rock art: a Thamudic 'informant'. Rock Art Research 23: 153-164. [WP]

AGHALI-ZAKARA, M. 2003. Messages graphiques et gravures rupestres. La Lettre du RILB 9: 3-4. [WP]

AGHALI-ZAKARA, M. 2005. Retour sur l'association des gravures et inscriptions rupestres. La Lettre de l'AARS 28: 11-14. [LQ]

AGHALI-ZAKARA, M. and J. DROUIN 2007. Inscriptions rupestres libyco-berberes. Sahel nigero-malien. Sites d'Iwelen et d'Adar-en-Bukar. Moyen et Proche-Orient 3, Droz, Geneva. [LQ]

ARNAIZ VILLANA, A. and J. ALONSO GARCIA 2000. Egipcios, Bereberes, Guanches y Vascos. Editorial Complutense, Madrid. [WP]

LIFINSKI, E. 1997. Semitic languages. Outline of a grammar. Peeters Publishers and Department of Oriental Studies, Leuven. [AA]

MACDONALD, M. C. A. 1998. Kilroy in the desert. A database of Bedouin graffiti. CSAD Newsletter 6: 3-4. [WP]

MACDONALD, M. C. A. 2000. Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia. Arab Archaeology 11: 28-79. [AA]

MCCALL, D. F. 1998. The Afroasiatic language phylum: African in origin or Asian? Current Anthropology 39: 139-140. [AA]

MENDENHALL, G. E. 1984. The Bronze Age roots of pre-Islamic Arabic. In A. M. Abdella, S. Al-Sakkar and R. Mortel (eds), Pre-Islamic Arabia. Studies in the history of Arabia, pp. 95-102. King Saud University Press, Riyadh. [AA]

MOSCATI, S. (ed.) 1964. An introduction to the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages, phonology and morphology. Otto Harrassowitz-Wiesbaden, Wurzburg. [AA]

OWENS, J. 1998. Case and froto-Arabic, Part I. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 61: 51-73. [AA]

PARR, P. J. 1984. The present state of archaeological research in the Arabian Peninsula: achievements of the past, and problems for the future. In A. M. Abdella, S. Al-Sakkar and R. Mortel (eds), Pre-Islamic Arabia. Studies in the history of Arabia, pp. 43-53. King Saud University Press, Riyadh. [AA]

PICHLER, W. 1996. Libysch-berberische Inschriften auf Fuerteventura. Almogaren 27: 7-83. [WP]

PICHLER, W. 2005a. The Libyco-Berber inscriptions of the Canary Islands--misused as a playground for specialists and amateurs. La Lettre de l'AARS 28: 4-5. [WP]

Swelling of Sun and River Speak of God

Alice C. Linsley


In Genesis 1 the creation begins when God’s speaks order (tehut) into the chaos (tehom) and says, “Let there be light.” This is not the light of the Sun, but the uncreated light of God’s presence which counters the chaotic deep. Psalm 29:10 describes “Yahweh who sat as king upon the flood; He is king forever.”

God spoke, saying "Let there be light," and light flooded the vast darkness. There is a parallel between flooding by light and flooding by water. Both the sun and the river swell and in the ancient Nilotic cosmology both speak of God.

A central experience of Abraham’s Kushite ancestors was the annual flooding of the Nile. As spring rains fell in the Ethiopian headlands the river rose above its banks, flooding the Nile Valley between June and October. The flooding lasted for forty days and turned the valley into shallow lakes and deposited fertile silt which renewed the earth. As the waters receded, only the highest mounds of earth would been seen at first. These mounds seems to swell up from the water. When the waters began to recede, families waited another forty days before returning to their homes. This is the origin of the biblical phrase “forty days and forty nights.” It is distinctly Nilotic (which explains why the number forty doesn't appear in Daniel, a book rich in number symbolism).

The Nile flooding brought disorder and was likened to the primordial waters of tehom, the watery and disordered deep which God put in order by His Word, tehut. The victory of tehut over tehom helps us to understand one of the oldest creation myths in which the ancient Egyptians envisioned the world as a mound emerging from the waters of a universal ocean. Here the first life form was a lily growing on the peak of the primeval mound. The mound itself was named Tatjenen, meaning "the emerging land."

The Kushites carried this notion to Asia where it is found today in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The emerging mound is called Mount Meru. It emerges from the center of the cosmic ocean, and is encircled by the Sun and the seven visible planets. Mount Meru in Hinduism is a mythological mountain. However, it relates to a real Mount Meru in East Africa known to Abraham’s Kushite ancestors. The names meru, meri (Egyptian) and Mary are cognates. The Virgin Mary, whose womb swelled with the Son of God, is sometimes portrayed in icons as a mountain. The Prophet Daniel saw a mountain, from which a stone was cut by the hand of God (Dan. 2:34, 45).

At the Annunciation, the Angel's greeting to Mary was ave, perhaps related to the Hebrew vav צבה meaning "to swell.” Ave also means bird. In many icons and paintings of the Annunciation a dove appears in the background or hovers over the Virgin. There is a relationship between ave and vav if you consider that the dove eats seeds (never worms) and their stomachs swell as the seed expands. Jesus is called the "Seed" of the Woman in Gen. 3:15. He identified himself as the fulfillment of this first biblical promise in John 12:23: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  I tell you the truth, unless a kernal of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

The grain rising from the earth, the heads of wheat swelling parallel the stone pillars by which the ancients established boundaries and covenants. In the Lower Nile small pyramids were carved from single blocks of stone. These were known as bnbn (benben), from the root, bn, meaning to "swell forth." This relates to the sun's rising or swelling. The Egyptian word for the rising sun is wbn. Tombs of officials from the 4th Dynasty (2613 to 2494 BC) were surmounted by conical mounds or benben. These tombs, along with the east-facing royal tombs at Giza, indicate that the ancient Kushite and Egyptian rulers hoped to rise from death, even as the Sun rises. Doubtless this is what the Prophet alluded to when he wrote, “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise [swell/be magnified] with healing in its wings.” (Mal. 4:2).

Many of the practices of the ancient Israelites originate in the Nile Valley.  It is not far fetched then to suspect an ancient Nilotic background for the Tetragrammaton: Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. In Aramaic and Hebrew the hey הא means "behold."  The vav pertains to the tribal ruler and deity. So the meaning is something like “Behold our God. Behold he is magnified.”


Related reading: Etymology of the Vav; Mount Mary and the Origins of Life; Cosmology and Ethics; Tehut's Victory over Tehom

The Question of Patriarchy

Alice C. Linsley

While some feminists consider the Bible outdated and chauvinistic, through the lens of the sciences of anthropology and psychology it appears to be quite accurate in its descriptions of human behavior. Due to their bias, feminists miss some significant details that serve their cause of elevating the status of women. Bible scholar Jane Schaberg (University of Detroit Mercy) finds the Bible to be a source of valuable information about the role and experience of women during Biblical times and she is a feminist.

Feminist scholarship, writes Schaberg in her Biblical Views column for the November/December issue of BAR, aims to turn the old, male-dominated understanding of the Bible on its head and thereby reveal new insights into the lives of often-marginalized women in the ancient world.

Likewise, while feminist scholarship on the Bible does not necessarily aim for complete objectivity, which Schaberg calls an "impossible ideal," it does aim for fairness in assessing the scriptural texts. Feminists also focus attention on issues that have often been sidelined in biblical studies, like slavery, gender equality and sexuality.

It is assumed that the ancient laws were enacted to subordinate women and Genesis 3:16 is often quoted to support this view. "Yet your desire and craving will be for your husband and he will rule over you." This relationship of subordination is not established by Horite Hebrew Law, though Horite Law recognizes this arrangement. The subordination of the female to the male is a direct result of fear, the first emotion described after the Fall. When men are fearful they become aggressive and defensive of their turf and family. When women become fearful, they tend to get "clingly" and surrender their wants/needs in order to preserve the relationship.

Feminists argue that patriarchy is the result of universal oppression of women by men. They want to make men the oppressors, and ignore the effects of fear on males and females. In the biblical worldview patriarchy came as the result of fear entering the male-female relationship after disobedience (Gen. 3:10).  Because of fear, the woman's desire is for her husband and he "rules" over her (Gen. 3:16).  In her seminal book, In a Different Voice, Harvard psychology professor Carol Gilligan demonstrated through her research how this is so.

The feminist worldview and the biblical worldview are contradictory.  This is especially evident when addressing the question of patriarchy.  Patriarchy is the universal norm.  Feminists will argue that this isn't true by pointing to soft patriarchal societies where line of descent or rights of inheritance are traced through females.  A true matriarchy is characterized by the following conditions:

* line of descent must be traced through the mothers
* rights of inheritance must be figured through the mothers
* political power must be vested with ruling females
* females must have the final say in deciding matters for the community

It is a matter of fact that, after eighty-five years of ethnographic studies, no true matriarchal society has ever been identified by cultural anthropologists.

Related reading:  The Paradox of Feminism; The Bible as the Woman's Story

The Genesis "Begats" Speak of Archaic Rulers, Jesus Christ

Alice C. Linsley



The “begats” of Genesis list ruler-priests of a vast territory that extended from Nigeria to India between10,000-3000 years ago when this part of the world was wet. The point of origin of these rulers and their people is biblical Eden, a well-watered region that extended from the Nile Valley to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

Waterways seen from space (NASA photo)

In Noah’s time (about 2,500 BC) this region was much wetter. Lake Mega-Chad had an area of 249,000 miles and connected several lakes and rivers. Lake Mega Chad was about 600 feet deep.

The water systems controlled by the rulers included the Nile, the Red Sea, the Jordan River and the part of the Sahara that was wet in the late Holocene. Southern Arabia was also much wetter. The region is called Ha-dhra-maut, derived from dhara which in the Dravidian referred to channels of water and maut which in Egyptian meant mother.

This 8000 year old dugout (shown right) was discovered 16 feet below the Saharan clays and sands in the Upper Yobe valley along the Komadugu Guna River in Northern Nigeria. (The oldest Egyptian boats are only about 4000 years.)

The rulers of this region expanded their territories and established new territories. One such ruler was Nimrod, known as Sargon the Great. He moved into the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and built great cities there. An earlier city builder was Kain (Cain) who lived at the western edge of Eden.
The great water systems were interconnected then, making movement between the land masses easier. The movement of Abraham’s Kushite people out of Africa has been confirmed by DNA studies, linguistics, archaeology and biblical anthropology.

The symbol of the ruler and his territory was the tent peg, represented by the vav in modern Hebrew (waw in ancient Hebrew and in Arabic).

The waw/vav orignally symbolized the crook/hook of the ruler or the tent peg of the ruler's tent. As a glyph this represented a cluster of related ideas including:

• the ruler himself
• the ruler's authority
• the ruler's territory
• the ruler's clan or tribe
• the ruler's resources such as his flocks and water sources

The waw/vav speaks of an ancient world in which settlements near water were ruled by elders and a chief. Travelers moved from settlement to settlement and the ancient water laws were generally generous to those who wa-ndered. Wells were neutral ground for waring parties or enemies, but were fought over, as in the story of Moses driving away the intruder shepherds at the well of the Midianite ruler-priest Reu-el. (Exodus 2:16-19). It was common for the river, lake, oasis or well to have a shrine over which their was a priest. So it is not surprising to read that Moses' future father-in-law was a "priest of Midian." As such, he was a direct descendant of Abraham by Abraham's cousin bride, Keturah.

Many words in various languages today still reflect this ancient world. Consider these examples: wa-ter, wa-gon, va-gabond, va-grant, va-gar meaning "to wander" (Spanish), wa-kdar meaning "ruler" (Pashto), and ya-raki meaning "power" (Persian).

Those who needed water went from Y to Y, which is to say "from water settlement to water settlement."

The great chiefs of the biblical world were designated as such by the initial Y in their names. This is more evident in Hebrew than in English. Consider the following:

Yishmael - Ishmael (Abraham's son by Hagar)
Yitzak - Issac (Abraham's son by Sarah)
Yaqtan - Joktan (Abraham's firstborn son by Keturah)
Yishbak - Yishbak (another of Abraham's sons by Keturah)
Yacob - Jacob
Yeshua - Joshua/Jesus

Consider the importance of wells in the lives of these biblical figures. Ishmael's life was saved when an angel revealed a well or spring to his mother. Abraham's servant found Isaac a wife at a well. Moses met Zipporah at a well. Jesus met the Samaritan woman (Photini) at Jacob's Well.


Related reading: Egyptian Shrines on the Horus Way; Water Systems Connected the Nile and Central Africa; The Jordan River; Wells and Brides; The Migration of Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; A Woman at a Well; Susan Burns on Hadhramaut of Arabia

Why Zipporah Used a Flint Knife

Badarian flint knife
BC 3500

Alice C. Linsley

A reader has asked, "Why did Zipporah use a flint knife to circumcise her son when she could have used metal? Didn't she live during the Bronze Age?"

It is true that Zipporah lived in the late Bronze Age (BC 1550-1150). She was the daughter of the priest of Midian. His name was Jethro and he was a descendant of Abraham, the Hebrew, by Abraham's cousin wife, Keturah (Gen. 25).

The Hebrew people were careful to preserve the ritual practices of their Horite Hebrew ancestors (their Horim). It was the tradition to use flint knives for circumcision. The ruler of Og (Numbers 21) slept in an iron bed. An iron bed was an innovation, but the Horim didn't encourage innovation when it came to sacred rituals such as animal sacrifice, the coronation of rulers, and circumcision.

It is likely that the knives were made of flint with a high sodium content. This would inhibit infection. The knife shown here was produced by a process called "knapping." Some of the oldest and largest collections of knapped stone tools has been found at Kathu in South Africa.


For further information, read Zipporah's Flint Knife; Circumcision Among Abraham's People; The Origins of Circumcision, Circumcision and Binary Distinctions

Who was Cain's Father?

Alice C. Linsley

Many wonder who was Cain's father? If Adam was the first created man on earth (something the Bible does not support), Cain would have lived at least 3.8 million years ago because that is the age of the oldest human fossils. Yet the Bible tells us that Cain was a city builder, a ruler, and his descendants worked metal. Clearly, Cain could not have lived before the emergence of metal work. 

The Bible says that Cain and Seth were the sons of the historical Adam and Eve, the founding parents of the Hebrew lines that descended from Cain and Seth. These were rulers and priests.

When Eve gives birth in Genesis 4:2 she declares kan-itti. E.A. Speiser noted that Qany(ty) or Qanitti shows close affinity to the Akkadian affix itti, as in itti šarrim, which means "with the king." Akkadian was the language of Nimrod's territory (c. BC 2290-2215). 

Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod was a Kushite kingdom builder, so it is not surprising to find that Akkadian shares many roots with Nilotic languages. Among the Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia, itti is attached to names. Examples include Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti. That itti is associated with Nilotic rulers is evident in the name Nefertitti.

The Nilotic Oromo

The kinship data

Analysis of the Genesis 4 and 5 king lists reveals that Cain married a woman who named their first-born son Enoch. Enoch is not a name, but rather a royal title that means "ruler-to be" or "heir to the throne." Enosh (Seth's firstborn son) is the linguistic equivalent of Enoch. The first-born sons of Cain and Seth were named by their mothers after their royal father, according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative, a distinctive trait of the marriage and ascendancy structure of Abraham's Hebrew ancestors.

Enoch appears to be a variant of the names Ha'nock (Reuben's first born son) and Anak. Anak was a ruler among the Anakim of Hebron. Enoch is a royal title related to the word anochi which means "one who replaces or succeeds", as in heir to the king.  

What is the significance of Cain's wife naming their first-born son Enoch after her father? It was the cousin wives who named their first-born sons after their fathers. This would mean that Cain's father-in-law was called Enoch. Cain's first-born son by his cousin bride belonged to the household of his maternal grandfather.


Cain as warrior and metal worker

Shalom E. Holtz (Yeshiva University, New York) believes that itti can mean "against" as is evidenced from its appearance in numerous cases of adversarial relationships in the Old Testament. Since Cain and his descendants, the Kenites of Canaan, are associated with metal work, we have a line of evidence to investigate. Early metal work was done in the service of kings, priests and high-ranking warriors.

Metal work places Cain in history between 4600 and 3500 B.C. This corresponds to the beginning of the Copper Age (3500-2300 B.C.) During the Copper Age the warriors were of high social rank. Copper mining and the fabrication of copper tools and weapons gave rise to new a social hierarchy. At the top, were the warriors who protected their communities.


Conclusion

Who was Cain's father? The historical Adam, one of the founders of the red people. Adam is to the word Edom (land of red people) as Enoch is to the word Anak. 



Related reading: The Adam and Eve of History; The Hebrew Were a Caste

Answers to the Quiz

Here are the answers to the most recent quiz:


Multiple Choice.

Who was Peleg's brother?
A. Dedan
B. Joktan   This is Joktan (Yaqtan) the Elder. Joktan is also the name of Abraham's firstborn son.
C. Ramah
D. None of the above.


What does Terah mean?
A. priest   Tera is an Ainu word meaning priest. Abraham's father was a priest.
B. idol worshiper
C. foreigner
D. warrior


What was Abraham's ethnicity?
A. Horite
B. Habiru
C. Hebrew
D. All of the above  The Horites were a caste or ruler-priests who were called "ha-biru." They were temple attendants in the ancient Afro-Asiatic world. Habiru (hbr) was rendered "Hebrew" in English Bibles.


How many sons did Abraham have?
A. 2
B. 5
C. 7
D. 9  The Septuagint lists Eliezar as a son of Abraham, son of his concubine Masek.


When did Noah's flood happen?
A. about 4500 years ago   Noah's deluge took place during the late Holocene Wet Period in Africa.
B. about 6500 years ago
C. about 10,000 years ago
D. about 12,000 years ago


The Biblical description of Noah's flood represents...
A. the perspective of Noah and his descendants
B. the account of the Biblical author
C. the collective memory of Moses' Horim (the Horites)
D. All of the above   Moses was a descandant of Noah and Abraham. Moses' family was Horite.



Related reading:  Test Your Knowledge of Genesis; Test Your Knowledge of Africa

The MSNBC Spin on Jesus

An estimated 2 billion Christians around the world celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. While those believers take the stories of Jesus as told in the New Testament on faith, archaeologists have scoured the Holy Land and beyond in search of clues about the real life of Jesus and his followers. — John Roach, msnbc.com contributor (From here.)


I find it fascinating that educated journalists know so little about Christianity and assume that our Faith has no basis in historical realities.

Note that Mr. Roach neglects the central doctrine of Christianity; that Jesus is the Son of God whose coming into the world fulfilled a divine promise made to Abraham's Nilotic ancestors that the Woman (Mary) would bring forth the "Seed" (Jesus Christ) who would crush the serpent's head and restore paradise (Gen. 3:15).  Jesus claimed to fulfill the Edenic Promise when He told his disciples that He was going to Jerusalem to die. When they protested, He explained, "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24)

The ancient Horites observed the death and resurrection of HR (Horus) in a five day festival in which they planted grain on the third day, signifying the resurrection of HR, who they called "Son of God."

People think of Christianity as an off-shoot of Judaism. However, the core of Christianity can be traced back to Abraham and his Nilotic ancestors long before Judaism. In this sense, Christianity isn't original. What it lacks in originality, it makes up for in antiquity and herein rests its authority.

The origins of Christianity came to Abraham, not as special revelation, but as a tradition received from his forefathers (horim). The distinctive traits of this tradition align remarkable well with the key features of catholic faith and practice and have been confirmed by archaeological finds, anthropology and linguistics:

1. All-male ruler-priests
2. Blood sacrifice at altars
3. Expectation of the appearing of a Divine Son
4. Belief in an eternal and undivided Kingdom
5. As in heaven, so on earth - reflected in the Lord's Prayer
6. Circumcision

Because of God's promise in Eden (Gen. 3:15) Abraham and his ancestors lived in expectation of the Son of God and taught their children to do so. Their priestly lines intermarried exclusively (endogamy) in expectation that the Seed of the Woman would come of their priestly lines. In other words, the Edenic tradition is a family-tribal tradition. This is evident when one studies the genealogies and discovers that the ruler-priest lines of Abraham's people intermarried and shared common beliefs and practices. Using the genealogical data of the Bible, specifically the king lists, it is possible to trace Mary and her cousin Joseph back to the earliest rulers of the Bible in Genesis 4 and 5. It is possible because the Horite ruler-priest lines (some of whom were later called "Levites") practiced endogamy.

Since the Bible contains 66 books written by many different authors over about 1300 years, it is not possible that this scheme was imposed at a late date.  In other words, analysis of the marriage and ascendency pattern of the Horim shows that Jesus is the direct descendant of Abraham's ancestors to whom God made the promise concerning the coming of the Son of God. There is a reason why Jews call their ancestors horim.

John wrote, "This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him." (1 John 4:9) This sounds like foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who know that God's promises are sure, it is the hope and assurance of life eternal.



Related reading:  The Marriage and Ascendency Pattern of Abraham's People; Eden: A Well-Watered Region; Extant Biblical Clans and Tribes; Nilotic Celestial Archetypes; Challenge to Shaye Cohen's Portrayal of Abraham; The Ethnicity of Abraham and David