Kushite Diversity and Unity

Alice C. Linsley


The Kushite rulers held a theology that Biblical Anthropologists recognize. This can be determined from artifacts such as the Sheba-qo Stone which describes the theology that held sway at Heliopolis (Biblical On) and Memphis. The Stone dates to the Nubian Dynasty or the Kushite Empire, but the theology is much older. According to this theology the Creator is the great Craftsman who gives wisdom and skill to the King and his craftsmen. This is expressed in Proverbs 25:2 - "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter."

The royal craftsmen worked with visible things such as tools of stone and metal. The Creator, on the other hand, works with what is concealed and mysterious like the wind or breath (ruach). The breath of the Creator went forth at the beginning of creation and things were created out of His mouth/word, and not from a pre-existing substance. He crafted the heavens above and the earth below, and separated the light from darkness. This theology is expressed in Genesis 1 and in the Wisdom Tradition that regards God as the architect whose wisdom is evident in the order of creation.

The seats of wisdom that have been identified in the Bible include Tema, Edom and Tyre, all of which have a history of metal work and connection to the Horite ruler-priests.

The Feminine Principle (Heb: hokma, Gr: sophia) is described in language that identifies her with the ruach of God. She says, “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth like a mist… I walk in the depth of the abyss.” (Wisdom of Ben Sirach 24:3,5) Here we have echoes of Genesis 1 where we are told that the Spirit of God went forth over the chaotic waters and brought order, separating the waters above (firmament) from the waters below, and the seas from the day land. This ordering Principle is sometimes called Tehut, and the oldest known moral code is the Law of Tehut.

Tehut is sometimes likened to the Egyptian Ma'at, but there is a significant difference. Ma'at was created whereas Tehut appears to be the generative and uncreated Word of God (logos). Proverbs 8:22-31 and 9:1-6 appear to be about Ma'at. She says that "Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works... the deep was not, when I was born..." Whether Proverbs is attributed to Solomon or to a time well after Solomon, the theology concerning Ma'at comes from a period much later than Abraham's Kushite ancestors.


The Kushites reflect the genetic diversity of Africa

Among the Kushites are the dark skinned Dravidians, the Sudra, who established their religious practices in southern Pakistan and India. This is called the Harappa culture. Har-appa is Dravidian for "Horus is Father". The Dravidians have much in common with the Nilotic people living in the Horn of Africa.

"Kushite" is a general term that includes many people groups who lived along the Nile and in the Chadic Basin. Some were light skinned, some black, some reddish, some reddish-brown, and some were brown. To this day Africa has the greatest genetic diversity of any place in the world.

Ancient Nilotic cattle herders were red and black.

Among the Kushites we find Nubians, Beja, Copts, Egyptians, Proto-Saharans, Horites, and their kinsmen who were living on the western and southern coast of Arabia.

DNA studies of the Sudan show "genetic unity and linkage" between the Sudanic, Egyptian, Nubian and other Nilotic peoples, as well as some populations of the Horn of Africa (Yurco (1996), Keita (1993, 2004, 2005) Lovell (1999), Zakrewski (2003, 2007). Genetic and linguistic research indicates that the Copts are one of the oldest Egyptian populations. This is based on the relatively high frequency of the B-M60 marker, indicating early pre-dynastic colonization of Egypt by Upper Nilotes.

From the University of Khartoum we have this report:

The area known today as Sudan may have been the scene of pivotal human evolutionary events, both as a corridor for ancient and modern migrations, as well as the venue of crucial past cultural evolution. Several questions pertaining to the pattern of succession of the different groups in early Sudan have been raised. To shed light on these aspects, ancient DNA (aDNA) and present DNA collection were made and studied using Y-chromosome markers for aDNA, and Y-chromosome and mtDNA markers for present DNA. Bone samples from different skeletal elements of burial sites from Neolithic, Meroitic, Post-Meroitic and Christian periods in Sudan were collected from Sudan National Museum. aDNA extraction was successful in 35 out of 76 samples, PCR was performed for sex determination using Amelogenin marker. Fourteen samples were females and 19 were males. To generate Y-chromosome specific haplogroups A-M13, B-M60, F-M89 and Y Alu Polymorphism(YAP) markers, which define the deep ancestral haplotypes in the phylogenetic tree of Y-chromosome were used. Haplogroups A-M13 was found at high frequencies among Neolithic samples. Haplogroup F-M89 and YAP appeared to be more frequent among Meroitic, Post-Meroitic and Christian periods. Haplogroup B-M60 was not observed in the sample analyzed.For extant DNA, Y-chromosome and mtDNA haplogroup variations were studied in 15 Sudanese populations representing the three linguistic families in Sudan by typing the major Y haplogroups in 445 unrelated males, and 404 unrelated individuals were sequenced for the mitochondrial hypervariable region.

Y-chromosome analysis shows Sudanese populations falling into haplogroups A, B, E, F, I, J, K, and R in frequencies of 16.9, 8.1, 34.2, 3.1, 1.3, 22.5, 0.9, and 13% respectively. Haplogroups A, B, and E occur mainly in Nilo-Saharan speaking groups including Nilotics, Fur, Borgu, and Masalit; whereas haplogroups F, I, J, K, and R are more frequent among Afro-Asiatic speaking groups including Arabs, Beja, Copts, and Hausa, and Niger-Congo speakers from the Fulani ethnic group.

Accordingly, though limited on number of a DNA samples, there is enough data to suggest and to tally with the historical evidence of the dominance by Nilotic elements during the early state formation in the Nile Valley, and as the states thrived there was a dominance by other elements particularly Nuba/Nubians."

Correlating the data with the Bible

It is difficult to correlate the Kushites with the peoples living in Arabia and the coast lands who are listed in Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy and Joshua. It is evident that Canaan, Phoenicia and greater Arabia were populated by many peoples, including Amorites, Dedanites, Horites, Jebusites and Kenites. The tent-dwelling Kenites were in Canaan during Saul's reign, as evidenced by I Samuel 15:6 - "Saul sent this warning to the Kenites: 'Move away from where the Amalekites live, or you will die with them. For you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up from Egypt.' So the Kenites packed up and left."

The Kenites were itinerant metal workers and probably related to the metal working Nes of Anatolia. In ancient Egypt the term Nesu biti refered to the ruler of a united Upper Nile and the Lower Nile. Nesu biti contains the signs for papyrus sedge and bee. Sedge symbolized the Upper Nile and the bee was the symbol of the Lower Nile.

Genesis 10:15-19, traces the Canaanite peoples to an otherwise unknown descendant of Noah: "Canaan fathered Sidon his first-born, then Heth, and the Jebusites, the Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites. Later Canaanite clans spread out. The Canaanite frontier stretched from Sidon all the way to Gerar near Gaza and all the way to Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim near Lehsa."

The root of the names Arkite and Arvadite is AR and its origin is likely Proto-Saharan. Among the Igbo of Nigeria, the scribe clans were called Ar or Aro. The ancient Egyptian Asa-ar means the Serpent of Asa (Deity). The peoples living in Arvad, Tyre and Sidon employed serpent imagery in their temples and shrines.

A Jebusite ruler called Araunah sold King David a threshing floor upon which David constructed an altar. Araunah means "the lord".

In II Chronicles and I Kings 9:20 only the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites are identified as living in the land.

Exodus 3:8 provides this list: "The Canaanite, and Hethite, and Amorite and Perizzite, and Hivite, and Jebusite."

Joshua 12:8 provides this list of peoples living in Canaan in the hill country, the western foothills, the Jordan Valley, the mountain slopes, the Judean wilderness, and the Negev: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Another list appears in Deuteronomy. "When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you..." (Deut. 7:1)

Genesis 15:19-21 lists "the Kenites, the Kenizzites, Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Raphaim, the Amorites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites."

Some names are descriptive. Perizzites, for example, means "scattered people." The Hivites are connected to the Hittites. These were metal workers who introduced iron work to Anatolia. They called themselves the Nes (NS) and their language was called Nesli.

The proto-root for vein, river, tongue, sinew, lightening and serpent was NS. The S originally would have been a pictograph representing a serpent or anything serpentine. It also indicates "great" and can mean "Man" (Egyptian - sa), and throne (Proto-Saharan es or is). NS suggests connection between heaven and earth, and between deity and man. The serpent was a sacred symbol to the Kushites, especially to the metalworking clans, such as the Hittites.

The names Hittite and Hivite share the root HT (same as the name Het or Heth). Genesis 10 tells us that these two clans form a Heth confederation. HT in the Hebrew and Arabic refers to copper - nahas-het. Nahash means serpent. As an adjective it means shining bright, like burnished copper. So the evidence suggests that the clans of HT were Bronze Age coppersmiths. The serpent image was sacred for them, as it was for Moses and the people in the wilderness.

We note that the Horites do not appear in any of these lists. That is because they were not a people, but rather a caste of ruler-priests who lived dispersed among the peoples from the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates (cf. Gen. 15:18). The Septuagint incorrectly identified the Horites (“Choraios”) with the Hittites, though doubtless there here Horite Hebrew priest serving among the Hittite rulers.

The only peoples that appear in all these lists are the Amorites and the Jebusites. The Biblical writers are in agreement that these two peoples inhabited Canaan from very early. They are probably related clans, not different ethnic groups.


Who were the Amorites?

The Amorites, also called the Amurru, lived in ancient Egypt and are shown on tomb as light skinned with reddish brown hair. This has been confirmed by Flinders Petrie and Archibald Sayce. According to Sayce, "The Amorites… were a tall, handsome people, with white skins, blue eyes and reddish hair, all the characteristics, in fact, of the white race." (The Hittites, 1889)

The Amorites are represented on the Egyptian monuments with fair skins, light hair, blue eyes, and pointed beards. Tomb No. 34 at Thebes (18th Dynasty, c. 1550-c. 1292), shows a bearded Amorite chief with white skin and red-brown hair. Henry George Tomkins (1897), a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, also concluded that the Amorites were fair haired with blue eyes.


Who were the Jebusites?

The Jebusites likely ranged from reddish-brown to black with dark hair and dark eyes. Some may have had green eyes. Prince Rotimi Obadofin believes that “perhaps the Jebusites, that is the original inhabitants of Jerusalem were Ijebu people of today, since Oke-Eri is owned and inhabited by Ijebu people.” Eri is connected with the huge archaeological monument of Eredo. Eridu is also the name of the oldest known Sumerian city.

The Jebusites may indeed be the Ijebu who are an extant people and related to the modern day Edomites who are called "Edo." Both peoples live in Nigeria and Benin. The Jebusites had close connections with the Horites of Edom. Melchizedek, the Priest-King of Jerusalem (Jebu/Yebu), was Jebusite and a kinsman to Abraham. Melchizedek was probably the brother-in-law of Joktan, Abraham's father-in-law.



Related reading: Confirmation of Early Biblical Populations; The Jebusites Unveiled; The Victory of Tehut Over Tehom; Canaanite Origins of the Alphabet; The African Background of Genesis; Kushite Kings and the Kingdom of God; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Kushite Gold; Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; The Kenite-Horite Connection

The Amorites: a caste of royal scribes?

Alice C. Linsley

Aaron  A. Burke has written,

"After more than a century of scholarship on Amorites no real consensus has emerged on their origins, identity, and cultural legacy. It remains the case that little dialogue occurs across geocultural zones or between scholars working on different historical periods. Furthermore, few efforts have been made to incorporate anthropological approaches, despite the fact that more than thirty years ago Kamp and Yoffee (1980) noted its conspicuous absence among prior methods. The only consensus that exists, therefore, is that there is no consensus."

The Amorites do indeed remain a mystery, but Biblical Anthropology provides some insights that should be considered. Given that archaic languages in the Afro-Asiatic family share common consonant roots with different vowels, it is likely that "Amorite" is an anglicized form of the word Amur-ru.

The peoples of Amur-ru were related to and under the governance of the Nile rulers. Some lived in Egypt and are represented on ancient monuments as having "fair skins, light hair, blue eyes, aquiline noses, and pointed beards.” (Easton’s Bible Dictionary)

Henry George Tomkins (1897), a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute wrote that the Amorites were blue eyed and fair haired.

Egyptologists Flinders Petrie and Assyriologist Archibald Sayce believed that the Amorites/Amurru were white, with blue eyes and fair hair. According to Sayce (The Hittites, 1889): The Amorites… were a tall, handsome people, with white skins, blue eyes and reddish hair, all the characteristics, in fact, of the white race.

According to Sayce, tomb No. 34 at Thebes, belonging to the Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1550-c. 1292), illustrates a bearded Amorite chief with white skin and red-brown hair. This tomb dates to a time after the earliest evidence of Amorites in Genesis 10:16.

Amur-ru is also the name of the northernmost district of Egypt's empire and it included the coastal region from Ugarit to Byblos. The Orontes in Turkey marked the northern boundary of Amur-ru.

In ancient times, the Orontes (Draco) River was the chief river of the Levant and had sufficient depth for boats to sail up the river from the Mediterranean near modern Beirut in Lebanon. This was aided by the north-flowing currents. Meroe on the Orontes was a fortress on the spur of Mount Silpius overlooking the Orontes. It was named IO, which means “pillared place dedicated to the Creator.” The O was a solar symbol and the emblem of the Creator. Likewise Heliopolis (Biblical On) on the Nile was called “iunu” which means "place of pillars." because it was a shrine city. Meroe on the Orontes was about 2185 miles from Meroe on the Nile. This Meroe was the farthest outpost of the Egyptian Empire and at its peak the city would have had Amur-ru.

Perhaps the Amur-ru/Amorites were Am-Ar, meaning the people/tribe/caste of Ar. Their name appears in the titles of many of their rulers. Some variations include Ar-Shem, Arsames, Artix, and Araxes, and all of these are named in historical texts.


White Canaanites?

Genesis 10 does not tell us about all the human populations living on earth. There were many migrations of peoples 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, long before Noah.  However, the name Ar does not appear in the Genesis king lists until four generations after Noah. Consider the following:

B.C. 2490-2415 – Noah, lived when the Sahara experienced a wet period (Butzer 1966)
B.C. 2438-2363 – Ham, son of Noah by his cousin-wife
B.C. 2417-2342 – Kush, son of Ham and the father of Nimrod and Raamah
B.C. 2290-2215 - Nimrod, probably “Sargon the Great”
B.C. 2238-2163 - Arpacshad, son by Asshur's daughter. (Shad means happy.)
B.C. 2217-2042 - Salah, likely Arpacshad's son by his sister-wife
B.C. 2196-2121 - Eber, likely Salah's son by his sister-wife
B.C. 2175-2100 - Peleg, likely Eber's son by his sister-wife. Peleg's brother was Joktan the Elder.

Arpachshad, Salah, Eber, Peleg and Joktan would have lived during the 9th and 10th Dynasties between 2445–2160 B.C. The name Ar is found in the names of biblical places, such as Wadi Arnon. Ar-non (originally Ar-nxn) refers to the Ar of Onn/Heliopolis. Here we find a possible connection between Abraham's Anu ancestors of Onn and the Amorites.

Genesis 10:16 and 1 Chronicles 1:13-14 mention the Amorites in connection with the Canaanites. The Arvadites (residents of Arvad) and Arkites (Gen. 10:15-18) appear to be related to the Amorites. They are peoples of Sidon and also classified as Canaanites.

During Abraham's time, the Amorites were centered in Engedi, a large oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea bounded on the south by the Wadi Arnon. They apparently considered the Arnon a natural boundary because they eventually forced the Moabites south across the river.

Genesis 10 maintains that the Amorites are descendants of Noah by his great grandson Nimrod who, though himself a Kushite, lived in Mesopotamia. Clearly the Amorites had been living among and marrying Abraham’s Kushite ancestors.


The Amorites: a caste of royal scribes?

There are linguistic clues as to the Am-Ar’s identity as a scribal caste. Arsh means “throne” in Arabic, suggesting a connection to the royal house. Among the Igbo, the scribe clans are called Ar or Aro. It appears that the Am-Ar were a caste of ruler-scribes, just as the Horites were a caste of ruler-priests. This is further evidence that the archaic world had a caste structure and marriage within the ruling castes was endogamous.

Israelites associated by their names with the Am-Ar include Aroch (1 Chr 7:39, Ezra 2:5, Neh 6:18, Neh 7:10) and Ariel (Ezr 8:16, Isa 29:1, Isa 29:1, Isa 29:2, Isa 29:2, Isa 29:7). Ariel means “scribe/messenger of God.” So it appears that the Am-Ar were scribes and royal messengers. This is further suggested by the name Ar-vad. Vad means “to speak” in Sanskrit.

The association of the name Ar with the scribal caste is further demonstrated by the discovery of Aramaic scrolls from the satrap Arsames to his Egyptian administrator Psamshek and to an Egyptian ruler named Nekht-hor. (A.T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, Chicago, 1948, pp.116-117)

The alphabetic inscriptions from the Wadi El-Hol in Egypt date between 1800 and 2000 B.C. and provide some of the earliest evidence for the development of the alphabet that would have been known to the Am-Ar. Concerning this find, Dr. John Coleman Darnell (Yale University) has stated, “These are the earliest alphabetic inscriptions, considerably earlier than anyone had thought likely."

The inscriptions were found at Mount Tjauti, where caravan routes converge about 25 miles northwest of Luxor and about 250 miles south of Cairo. The Farshut Road, or the “Road of Horses,” departs Thebes north of the Valley of the Kings, crosses the high plateau between Mount Antef and Mount Roma and descends at the Wadi el-Hol.  This is a very ancient commerce route, possibly established by King Menes who was the first to unite into a single empire the regions of the Upper and Lower Nile. Menes was called Ahauiti and Mount Tjauti was likely named for him.  His territory was called Tjenu. The earliest evidence of Tjenu as a ruled territory dates to 4000 B.C. Royal scribes and messengers would have traveled this route.

We find further association between Ar and the royal name Auti in the region of Arachosia, which corresponds to the Aryan land of Har-auti. Har refers to Horus.

Dr. Catherine Acholonu writes, "The Igbo Ar/Aro are the scribes of the Igbo God Ele/El (Chukwu Abiama) who dwells in the southern extension of the Underground Duat called the Long Juju. They were and are still proficient in various kinds of ancient scripts called Akwukwo Aka Igwe, and Nsibidi which has many Sumerian pictographs and Egyptian hieroglyphics and has been said to be older than 5000 yrs. Sumerian pictographs were in use by 3500 BC. That shows how old Nsibidi is. It has been called the oldest writing system in Africa. The Aro were originally the military arm of the Eri clan of Priest-kings who were the first Pharaohs of Egypt and the first kings of the world. They were charged with guarding the Great Serpent's Shrine called ARO BU N'AGU."

The Ar venerated the serpent. The metal working Nes of Anatolia who venerated the serpent are likely related to the ancient scribes of old Nsibidi. In ancient Egypt Nesu biti referred to the ruler of a united Upper and Lower Nile.

Related reading:  The Peoples of Canaan; The Genesis King Lists; The Clans of Ar; Afro-Arabian versus Aryan Religion: the horse as example