Early Smiths and Masons

 

Bronze figure of a smith (900-800 BC) was discovered in Vranište, Serbia.

This figurine shows a metal worker with mandibular prognathism.

Alice C. Linsley

The ancient rulers were served by expert metal workers and stone masons. The stone masons built the great temples and tombs, and the metal workers fashioned weapons, sacred vessels, and symbols of authority. These early smiths and masons were not slaves. They were respected because of their sophisticated skills.

These craftsmen were specialists who kept their skills secret to protect their position in society. They crafted their pieces away from prying eyes. One way they preserved their secrets was through endogamy. They took as their wives only from their caste, and over time their descendants developed distinctive physical traits. This may explain the physical trait of a prominent chin. 

The condition is called mandibular prognathism and it is a relatively recent development. "A protruding chin was absent in archaic humans and Neanderthals." (Emes, Aybar and Yalcin, 2011 Report of the Evolution of Human Jaws and Teeth, Bulletin of the International Association of Paleodontology, p. 40). 

It appears that the prominent chin was a trait among the early metal workers. Mandibular prognathism is a well-known example of an inherited facial trait in humans. However, it is not apparent in archaic humans. According to Emes, Aybar and Yalcin, "A protruding chin was absent in archaic humans and Neanderthals." (2011 "Report of the Evolution of Human Jaws and Teeth", Bulletin of the International Association of Paleodontology, p. 40.)

The condition is evident in Akhenaten, the father of King Tut. This suggests a connection between the royalty of Egypt and the royal metal workers of Serbia. King Tut's paternal ancestry has been identified as Y-DNA R1b. The oldest R1b-V88 (believed to have differentiated c. 9700 BC) that is found in Africa is also found in Serbia. There also are rare incidences of R1b-V88 in Corsica, Sardinia, and Southern France.

Blacksmiths living in what is today Serbia knew the secret of transforming copper ore into metal copper. Miljana Radivojević has shown that the metal workers of the 7000-year-old Vinča culture were expert smiths.

As metal work requires water sources, it was done near springs and rivers. Many mines and smithing sites are found in the Carpathian Basin with its abundant water sources. This map shows copper smelting sites (red) and iron smelting sites (black) in the Carpathian Basin. Note the abundance of rivers.

Masons of the ancient world

In southern Anatolia stone masons built Catalhoyuk beginning in 7500 BC. The Turkish word catal means fork and hoyuk means mound. This was a settlement built on two mounds (east and west) and a channel of the Çarşamba River once flowed between them. It appears to be one of the earliest examples of twin settlements on opposite sides of the river.

The houses excavated in Catalhoyuk date between 6800-5700 B.C. Recent excavations have identified a shrine or small temple on the eastern side. 

At Horoztepe, in northern Anatolia, masons built royal tombs dating from 2400–2200 BC, the time of Abraham. The burial goods in these tombs are the products of smiths who crafted fine artifacts in copper, bronze, gold, and silver.

Related reading: Serbia, a place where man discovered metal? - Serbia.com; Early Balkan Metallurgy: Origins, Evolution and Society, 6200–3700 BC | SpringerLink; Zoltán Czajlik: Traces of Prehistoric smelting workshops in the Carpathian Basin. In: Sándor Berecki (ed.): Iron Age Crafts and Craftmen in the Carpathian Basin. Proceedings of the International Colloquium from Târgu Mureş, 10-13 October 2013, Târgu Mureş, 2014, 139-146. | Zoltán Czajlik - Academia.edu

Archaic Nes Peoples

Alice C. Linsley

Much research needs to be done to gain a better understanding of the ancient Nes peoples who appear to have dispersed widely. Likely these were a caste of metal workers in the service of rulers and chiefs. One of their totems was the serpent and their signs appear to have been were NS and HT.

Goran Pavolic reports that in Serbian "nas" means us and "naši" means ours, or one of us. Nas and Nes share the same archaic root NS. In Akkadian, "na" is a modal prefix indicating service to, affirmation, or affiliation. The name Na-Hor would then indicate a servant of Horus. I have a suspicion that Na-S refers to archaic metal workers for whom the serpent was a sacred symbol and their totem.

The association of copper with serpent is evident is the relationship between the Akkadian words: sibbu - serpent and siparru - copper. The words Hittite and Het share the same primitive root HT. HT is the Hebrew and Arabic root for copper - nahas-het. As an adjective, HT means shining bright, like burnished copper. Nahash (NS) refers to a serpent. The HT copper smiths ranged from Timnah in Canaan to Anatolia in Turkey. The serpent image was sacred for them, just as it was for Moses the Horite Hebrew ruler who fashioned a bronze serpent and set it on the standard (Numbers 21:9).

The root NS appears in the variants Nes, Neshi, Nehesi, Nesli, and Nuzi. Nuzi was a Horite administrative center on the Tigris. The Horite Hebrew were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor, the patroness of metal workers. Documents from the household of a Nuzi official named Tehiptilla record grants of food, clothing, and shelter to a number of Hebrew in his service. One who likely served in a military role received a horse.

Nehesi is a name found in ancient Nubia. Hesi is a variant of Hathor, and she was the patroness of metal workers in the archaic world. The metal workers of Anatolia (modern Turkey) called themselves the Nes (NS) and their language was called Nesli. They are referred to as Hittites or Hivites (likely related clans) in II Chronicles and I Kings 9:20. The Nes/Neshi/Nehesi appear to be in the same R1 Haplogroup as Abraham. This haplogroup is both European and African.

These ancient stone masons built palaces, tombs and temples, and the metal workers fashioned weapons and symbols of royal authority. Many magnificent artifacts have been recovered from these tombs, including the magnificent sun disk from Alaca Hüyük shown above.

In southern Anatolia royal stone masons built Catalhoyuk beginning in 7500 BC. (The Turkish words catal means fork and hoyuk means mound.) This was a settlement built on two mounds (east and west) and a channel of the Çarşamba River once flowed between them. The houses excavated in Catalhoyuk date between 6800-5700 B.C. Recent excavations have identified a shrine or small temple on the eastern side. At Horoztepe, in northern Anatolia, they built royal tombs dating from 2400–2200 BC. These are richly furnished with finely crafted artifacts in bronze, gold, and silver.

Related reading: The Nuzi Tablets; Abraham and the Hittites; Hittite Religion

Paradise of Ancient Memory

Biblical Eden was a well-watered region with forests and grasslands. The region had inter-connected water systems including the Nile, Lake Chad, Lake Victoria and the Benue-Niger Trough.

Biblical Eden

Alice C. Linsley

Kush (Cush) is first mentioned in Genesis 10 as the father of the archaic rulers Nimrod and Ramah. They controlled commerce on the water ways in their territories. Nimrod ruled in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and Ramah ruled in southwestern Arabia. Beside providing a means to transport cargo, the rivers supplied the necessary water for mining. Genesis 2:11 alludes to the gold of Kush where the river Pishon flowed through the land of Ha'vilah.

The term "Havilah" refers to the place where the waters form a V, likely the head of the Nile formed by the White Nile and the Blue Nile. Another river mentioned is the Gihon which flowed through the land of Kush (Gen. 2:13). Possibly, the Pishon and the Gihon are ancient references to the White Nile and the Blue Nile.

In 2007, archaeologists from the Oriental Institute discovered a 4000 year gold-processing center along the middle Nile in the Sudan. The site is called Hosh el-Guruf and is located about 225 miles north of Khartoum where two rivers flow into the Nile, forming a V shape.  More than 55 grinding stones were found at the site and the water was used to separate the flakes from the particle residue. Similar grinding stones have been found in Egypt and at Timnah in southern Israel.

The Oriental Institute expedition that discovered the gold operation at Hosh el-Guruf also discovered a cemetery with Kushite artifacts at the nearby site al-Widay. These included high-status pottery vessels like those produced at Kerma in Sudan. Kerma flourished from between 2500-1500 BC. In 2300 B.C., the peoples living between the first and second cataracts were under different rulers. The territories were called Irtjet, Setju, Medja, and Wawat. Later all of the land between the first and the second cataracts was called Wawat. Wawa is a redoubling or reduplication of the term for water and indicates a well-watered region.

In addition to an abundance of gold, the Ha'vilah region of the Upper Nile is described as having onyx and bdellium. Onyx was used in Egypt as early as the Second Dynasty to make bowls and other pottery items. It was mined south of there and also in areas of Eurasia that came under Egyptian control. Bdellium is a resin that comes from trees that grow in the Upper Nile region, especially in Ethiopia.

The term "Kushite" does not designate a single people but rather a regional identity that includes many peoples of the Nile Valley, Lake Chad, and the Sahara during the African Humid Period. The Nilotic peoples of East African and the people of Yemen have been linked by archaeologists. The flora and fauna of these areas are the same.

Linguistically, the peoples of the eastern African plate and the southwestern Arabian plate share many common roots. Many of these are found in the Luo languages and in the Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language. Key roots pertain to the pastoralism of the Nilo-Saharans before Abraham's time. These include the terms for cattle, sheep, goatskin, hen, cock, livestock enclosure, butter, milk and blood. This suggests that Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors were part of the C-Group Culture.

Mineral and ore deposits in the Upper Nile where the Gihon and Pishon form a V were exposed by water erosion and by the rifting in that area.

This is the vast region called "Eden" in the Bible. The Tigris-Euphrates Valley marked the northeastern boundary. Eden was not a small garden, but rather a vast being well-watered region. The phrase "east of Eden" in the Hebrew is quimat-Eden and is an ancient Nilotic reference to a place of bulrushes. Quimat is derived from the root qma, and ancient Egyptian word that refers to bulrushes.

The Bible names two sites from which massive amounts of gold were exported: Havilah and Ophir. Havilah is in Africa (Gen. 2:11) and Ophir is in southwest Arabia (the territories of Sheba and Ramah). It appears that both mining regions were under the control of Horite smiths.

The Horites were devotees of the Creator Ra and his son Horus, born of Hathor who conceived when she was "overshadowed" by the Creator whose emblem was the Sun. Gold was associated with the Sun and with Horus. In fact, the word oro - gold - comes from Horos/Horus. Mining operations were under auspices of the miners' patroness Hathor, as at the Timna Valley copper mines. A temple dedicated to Hathor was discovered at the southwestern edge of Mt. Timnah by Professor Beno Rothenberg of Hebrew University.

For Abraham's Horite ancestors, the Sun and the dung beetle spoke to them of their deity, HR (Horus in Greek). He was regarded, with his father Ra, as the fixer of boundaries. In ancient Greek philosophy horos refers to the boundaries of an area, or a landmark, or a term. From horos come the English words hour, horizon and horoscope. The association of Horus with the horizon is seen in the word Har-ma-khet, meaning Horus of the Horizon. Today "horoscope" connotes astrology, but originally it referred to someone who observes the hours or watches the times. The Indo-European root for year - yeHr - is a reference to Horus.

Related reading: Kushite Diversity; Kushite Gold; The Gold of Ophir; The Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; What Paradise Must Have Been Like; Archaic Rulers, Ascendancy, and the Foreshadowing of Christ; Religion of the Archaic Rulers; Monuments of the Ancient Kushites

Metal Workers of West Africa

The first workers of metal in the Bible are associated with the ruling line of Kain. One of his descendants, Tubal-Cain, "forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain's sister was Naamah." (Gen. 4:22)  Naamah married her patrilineal cousin Methusaleh and named their first born son Lamech after her father.

Watch this fascinating video that shows the smelting of iron from ore by a West African smith family. Watch as the elders make charcoal, dig ore and flux, build the kiln, fire the kiln, offer sacrifice, smelt the iron, and finally forge the iron into tools. The women play an important role also.

Related reading: Red and Black Smiths; Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Methusaleh's Wife; Lamech Segment Analysis

Joseph of Ar-Mathea: Fact and Fiction

Alice C. Linsley

There is a great deal of medieval elaboration surrounding Joseph of Arimathea. One account says that he brought Jesus as a teenager to England. Local legends say that among the places they visited were St. Just in Roseland and St Michael's Mount. A 12th-century account connects Joseph to the Arthurian legends and names him as the first keeper of the Holy Grail. It is said that he hid it in a well at Glastonbury, now called the Chalice Well. There is no evidence to support these inventions. The association of Joseph with Glastonbury in Somerset added to the status of Glastonbury by associating it with a prestigious Christian who was known to have been in Cornwall.

In Matthew 27:57-8 and John 19:38-40, Joseph is described as a "man of means." Jerome's Vulgate version calls him nobilis decurio. The term decurion was often used for an official in charge of mines. It is also said to be part of Cornish tin-miners folklore that there is a saying and song that "Joseph Was a Tin-Man and the miners loved him well." Joseph apparently had business dealings in Cornwall where it is said he visited the Ding Dong Mine.

Mining in Cornwall and Devon began as early as 2150 BC. The Ding Dong Mine is one of the oldest mines. An old miner told A. K. Hamilton Jenkin in the early 1940's: "Why, they do say there's only one mine in Cornwall older than Dolcoath, and that's Ding Dong, which was worked before the time of Jesus Christ." (Hamilton Jenkin, A. K. Cornwall and its People. London: J. M. Dent; p. 347)

The inhabitants of Cornwall were involved in the manufacture of tin ingots. The area has prehistoric tin mines, stone monoliths, and iron age fortresses. Joseph probably had Jewish friends and family living in the area. The presence of Hebrew is evident in place names like Marazion, meaning "sight of Zion" and Menheniot, which is derived from the Hebrew min oniyot, meaning "from ships." Menheniot was a center of lead mining.

These metal workers and miners were among the Damoni, an early population of Cornwall. Dam-oni means "red people." Their ancestors were the builders of the great shrines like Carnac in Brittany because the stone monoliths in Damnonia are like those in Carnac, though smaller. On the Nile the ancient shrine at Karnak was built with huge stones by skillful craftsmen. Kar-nak means place of rituals. The red skin Annu/Onnu also built Heliopolis on the Nile, called "On" in Genesis 41. They were the builders of pyramids also.

Kar or car appears in many words for sacred mountains (Carpathians), shrines at high elevations and circles of standing stones. The original name for Cornwall was Kernow, which is related to the words Karnak and Karnevo.  According to Jasher 7:50, Abraham's father Terah had a wife who was the daughter of a man of Karnevo. Her name was Amsalai.

The ancient masters of stone monuments, tombs, and mining operations also built circles of standing stones in reverence to the Sun, the emblem of the Creator.

Joseph of the venerable clan of Mathea

Joseph was a kinsman of Mary and Jesus. They were of the Hebrew line of Matthew. It was a venerable lineage indicated by the Ar prefix. That is the meaning of the name Ar-Mathea. Ar in ancient Sumerian means "praiseworthy" or "venerable" and was used to describe sacred mountains, rivers, clans, and rulers. Many famous persons throughout history have been regarded as venerable, as is evident in their AR names: Arpachshad, Archelaos, Arwium (King of Kish), Ar-Shem, Arsames, Artix, Araxes, a Jebusite called Araunah, Artaxerxes, Artabanus, and Joseph Ar-Mathea. The name Arthur is especially interesting.

Some Hebrew examples include are Aroch (1 Chr 7:39, Ezr 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.” 

The association of the name Ar with the scribal caste is suggested by the discovery of Aramaic scrolls from Arsames, the satrap, who wrote 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)

There is evidence that a group of warrior-priests were regarded as praiseworthy. Dr. Catherine Acholonu explains, "In Nigeria the caste under reference is the Ar/Aro caste of Igbo Eri priest-kings, who were highly militarized in their philosophy." 

Joseph is identified in the New Testament as being of Ar-Mathea. This identifies his venerable Hebrew lineage. The Mathean clan names include Mattai, Matthew, Mattatha, Matthat, and Mattathias. All of these names appear in reference to the family into which Jesus was born (Luke 3:23-31).

Joseph was a mining expert and a tomb builder who provided his own expertly excavated tomb for Jesus’ burial. His business took him to the Ding Dong Mine in Cornwall.

Mining in Cornwall has existed from the early Bronze Age around 2150 BC. In 1600 BC, Cornwall experienced a trade boom driven by the export of tin across Europe. Pytheas of Massilia, a Greek merchant and explorer, circumnavigated the British Isles between about 330 and 320 BC and produced the first written record of the islands. He described the Cornish as civilized, skilled farmers, usually peaceable, but formidable in war. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus named Cornwall Belerion, meaning “The Shining Land", the first recorded place name in the British Isles. Cornwall was one of the few parts of Britain where the dead were buried in ancient times.

As a member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Ar-Mathea was qualified to ordain priests with the written consent of two other members of the Sanhedrin (Nicodemus and James the Just?). Therefore, it is likely that Christian priests in Cornwall were ordained by him as early as 40 AD. Eusebius of Caesarea (AD 260-340) wrote of Christ's disciples in Demonstratio Evangelica, saying that "some have crossed the Ocean and reached the Isles of Britain." This was likely a reference to the Seventy who Christ commissioned (Luke 10) and Joseph is numbered among them, according to John Chrysostom (347-407), the Patriarch of Constantinople, who wrote that Joseph was one of the Seventy Apostles.

According to Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae there were Christians in Britain as early as 46 AD. Tertullian (AD 155-222) wrote in Adversus Judaeos that Britain had already accepted the Gospel in his lifetime. These Hebrew/Habiru Christians would have had priests among them. We know from the Bible that there were skilled metal workers among the Horite priests. Aaron fabricated a golden calf and Moses made the bronze serpent on a staff. The earliest high-ranking rulers in Cornwall would have served as priests with powers equivalent to bishops as early as 46 AD and probably earlier than this. The episcopacy of Evodius of Antioch dates to 53–69 AD. The episcopacy of James of Jerusalem must correspond to that, as he died before 69 AD, and the episcopacy of Linus, the first bishop of Rome, dates to 67-79 AD.


Related reading: Stonework of the Ancient World; The Priesthood in England 

Etymology of the Word "Horite"

Alice C. Linsley



The term Horite is derived from the root HR which in the ancient world pertained to Horus, to gold, to elevated persons, and to the Sun, the Creator's emblem. The word is associated with the functions of the Horite priesthood who weighed and evaluated commodities at the rock (kar) shrines and the river shrines. In ancient Egyptian inscriptions Khar referred to a commercial unit of measurement. (See James Orr, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, page 1421.)

The association of the roots gr (trader) and hr (Horite) is evident in Southern India in place names such as Gurgaon Haryana and in Leviticus 27:25, which equates twenty gerahs to one shekel. The custom of the priests weighing and placing value on offerings and traded commodities explains the linguistic connection between the Gurjar tradesmen and smiths and the Horites.

The words khar, kur and gur are related. Kur and gur means man or person in Ainu. Recent DNA and anthropological studies reveal that the Ainu, whose point of origin appears to have been the Nile Valley, dispersed widely. In Akkadian gurguri means metalworkers or copper smiths. In Oromo gurguru means to sell (gurgurtaa = sale, gurguraa = seller). In Somali gur- means to collect something and gurgure means one who Collects and Keeps Collecting. The Gurgure clan of the Dir refers to traders who collect wares and resale them. Among the Dir guri means stick, rod or firearm.

In Abraham's time, the Horite ruler-priest caste and metal working traders ranged from the Nile to ancient Babylon and into Pakistan and Southern India. They were rulers who controlled the major water systems which they used for commerce. They were a sufficiently important people to attract the attention of Chedorlaomer, King of Elam who attacked the Horites of Mount Seir (Gen. 14). Jews call them Horim (חרי), and Arabs call them Houris. In the Qur'an the Houris are deified ancestors. Some Jews and some Arabs share this common ancestry.

Analysis of Genesis 36 indicates that the Horites and Edomites intermarried, as is evidenced by this diagram which shows two named Esau. Esau the Younger was Jacob's brother. Possibly they were half-brothers.

These are all Horite clans. Job of Uz was a Horite.

In the region of Edom in modern Jordan and in Dedan they lived in caves as is mentioned in the Genesis 14:6, 36:20 and Deuteronomy 2:12. Their descendants built Petra in Edom (modern Jordan).

The Persian and Urdu word Saudagar means trader. This contains the gr root in connection with Arabia. However, Horites dispersed across the ancient world and their religious beliefs are reflected among the Scythian Saka. The Saka of the Kurgan (rock fortress) culture traded in horses about 3000 BC.

According to Hindu sacred texts, the Saka ruled the ancient world for 7000 years. They were ethnically Kushites. Genesis calls these rulers of the archaic world "the mighty men of old"(cf Nehemiah 3:16). Some of these rulers dispersed far from their ancestral homes and established kingdoms in Syria, Southern Europe, Northern India and the Tarim Valley of China.

A linguistic connection to the Horites is retained in the name Horowitz (also spelled Hurwitz or Gurvich), a surname found among Jews. The word Horite takes many forms including Hur, Horonaim, Horoni, Horovich, Gurwitz, and Hori. Hori was the son of Lotan son of Seir whose pre-Edomite descendants were the "lords of the Horites in the land of Seir" (Gen. 36:20-29 and 1 Chronicles 1:38-42). Lot, Lotan, and Nim-Lot are Egyptian titles. Nimlot C was the High Priest of Amun at Thebes during the latter part of the reign of his father Osorkon II.

The Gir-gam tells the story of Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors Cain, Seth and Noah. All were trader-rulers who controlled the water ways of West Central Africa.

The Jews call their ancestors Horim because many are direct descendants of the Biblical Horites. "Horite" does not refer to the ethnicity of the people, but to their caste. The ancient world had a caste structure. This explains why Horites are found among many peoples across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.



Related reading:  The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; The Relationship of Somali Kushitic Languages and Somali Oromo; Petra Reflects Horite Beliefs; Nimrod and the Baptism of Jesus; Edom and the Horites; Horite Expectation and the Star of Bethlehem; "The Horites" by The Rev. John Campbell, M. A.; Ha'biru, Ha'piru, 'Abiru or Hebrew?

The Nile and Tigris Linguistically Connected

Alice C. Linsley

Numerous linguistic connections between the Nile Valley and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley have been demonstrated here. Today another connection was called to my attention by an Oromo speaker living in the Horn of Africa. In the Nilotic Oromo language the word gurguru means "sell" and gurguraa means "seller." The word gurgur refers to metal workers who sold their wares in the city market places. Likely this is the root of the Japanese (Ainu) word guruma, meaning wheel. The Ainu originated in the Nile.

The Akkadian name Dûr-gurgurri (Bad-tibiri) means Wall of Copper Smiths or Fortress of Smiths. The Akkadian prefix Dûr- means "fortress of" as in Dûr-Sharrukin, “Sargon’s fortress.” According to the Sumerian King List, Dûr-gurgurri was the second city to "exercise kingship" in Sumer, following Eridu (City of Idu). The word Eridu is related to Eredo, a sacred site in Nigeria protected by 70-foot barrier wall that runs for about 100 miles. Eredo appears to be associated with the royal House of Sheba in later times and with the Ido of Benin.

The building of Dûr-Sharrukin at the confluence of the Tigris and the Greater Zab rivers was undertaken by Sargon II in 717 BC. It was to be the new capital of Assyria, replacing Nineveh. The royal court relocated in 706 to Dûr-Sharrukin, although the city was not completed. The building project was abandoned after Sargon died in 705.

The fortress walls of Dûr-Sharrukin were huge, with 157 guard towers and 7 gates. The central temple was dedicated to Nabu, the guardian of scribe-priests. Nabu was the son of Marduk. A ziggurat was built within the confines of the royal palace.

Shedu from Khorsabad
University of Chicago Oriental Institute

The French consul, Paul-Émile Botta, began excavations at Dûr-Sharrukin in 1843. Botta painstakingly copied the cuneiform script he found etched on the palace walls. The subsequent translation by Rawlinson and Hinks revealed information that enabled historians to confirm Biblical information.

Finds at Dûr-Sharrukin include ivories encrusted with lapis lazuli, cuneiform inscriptions, bas-reliefs showing slaves yoked together, and monumental shedu, human-headed winged bulls. This is where the Assyrian King List was discovered which records kings from ca. 1700 BC until the middle of the 11th century BC.


Related reading: Hittite Religion; 70,000 year old settlement discovered in Sudan; Water Systems Connected Nile and Central Africa; The Genetic Unity of Black African Elamite, Dravidian and Sumerian Languages by Clyde A. Winters; Biblical Sheba and East African Settlements Linked; Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; The Kushite-Kushan Connection

Edom and the Horites

Hebron (where Sarah lived) and Beersheba (where Keturah lived) are in Idumea.
Abraham's territory extended between the settlements of his two wives
and was entirely in the region of Edom or Idumea.

Alice C. Linsley

The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor, the patroness of Horite metal workers. The word "Horite" is the English variant of the word Horim, the term Jews use when speaking of their ancestors. Hathor and Horus are archetypes of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. They are the principal characters of the proto-Gospel among Abraham's Nilo-Saharan cattle-herding ancestors.

The Horite rulers of Edom are listed in Genesis 36. Abraham's territory was entirely in the region of Edom. It extended on a north-south axis between Hebron and Beersheba and on an east-west axis between Engedi and Gerar. This region was called Idumea by the Greeks which means "land of  red people."

Horite priests were attached to the rulers of many territories in the ancient world. Some are associated in ancient Egyptian records with the Shasu on Nubia and Edom. Lists of place names in Nubian temples of Soleb and Amara West record six toponyms located in “the land of Shasu.” A monument of Ramesses II claims that he “has plundered the Shasu-land, captured the mountain of Seir”in Edom; a 19th Dynasty letter mentions “the Shasu-tribes of Edom” and Ramesses III declares that he has “destroyed the Seirites among the tribes of the Shasu.” Clearly, the Egyptians regarded the Shasu as a prominent part of the Edomite population which is described in Genesis 36.

The Horites controlled a vast region from Southern Arabia to Syria. Petra reflects Horite belief and the rulers of Petra and the other Nabataean cities had Horus names. Petra is in the red sandstone mountains of Edom, a territory in modern Jordan. According to Genesis 36, Edom was ruled by the Horite clans of Seir and Esau the Elder who married Adah. Esau the Elder was a contemporary of Seir the Horite.

Esau the Younger married Oholibamah. It is possible that Esau the Younger was Jacob's half-brother, rather than his twin. Their father was Isaac, but they would have had different mothers, as Horite rulers had two wives.

The territory over which they ruled was rich in copper and within the Horite caste there were highly skilled metal workers.  The patroness of their mines and smelting operations was Hathor, the virgin mother of Hor who was called "son of God/Ra."

Edom (BAR photo)

The Horite metal workers of Edom used the same techniques as the Horite metal workers who lived in the Timna Valley in the Wilderness of Paran. Esau the Elder's son Eliphaz married Seir's daughter who was named Timna.

The soil at Timna is also reddish-brown. Some scholars believe that there must have been a Timna in Edom as well in Paran, but it is more likely that the Horites controlled the metal working industries from Egypt to Jabal Harun (Aaron's Mountain) in Jordan. Timna is a Horite name.

Timna metal working shop

Edom is a variant of the Hausa odom which mean reddish-brown and the Hebrew adam which also means reddish-brown, the color of the soil from which God made the first man. The original context of the story of Adam is Nilotic. Adam is derived from the root DM which refers to blood (dam in Hebrew; dammu in ancient Akkadian). This is a reference to the color of the soil (adamah) from which Adam was made. 

Abraham's ancestors lived where red soil washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic Cambisols have a strong brown or red color. The copper in the hills of Edom resembled the soil color of the "Red Land" (Deshret/dshrt) of the Nile Valley.

Esau is called "Edom" and the rabbis made much of how he sold his birthright for a pot of red stew, but this idea comes from a later period than when Esau lived, approximately 1980 to 1920 B.C. 

According to Yoruba oral tradition, Esau was the third king of Ketu. The kingdom of Ketu is in the present-day Republic of Benin.  Abraham's cousin wife was Keturah. The Jebusites (Ijebu) who controlled Jerusalem were divided into clans and one clan was called Ketu.

Earlier Coppersmiths

Abraham interacted with the Hivities and Hittite clans of Het who are listed in Genesis 10.  HT is the Hebrew and Arabic root for copper - nahas-het. Nahash means serpent. As an adjective it means shining bright, like burnished copper. The clans of HeT were Bronze Age coppersmiths. The serpent image was sacred for them, just as it was for Moses and the people of Israel in the wilderness.

Genesis 23:3-20 tells us that the descendants of Heth were living in the land of Canaan where Abraham lived. He bought a burial site from them. They considered Abraham “a prince of God” among them (Gen. 23:6)

The Hittites spread into Anatolia and introduced iron work there. They didn’t call themselves “Hittites” (an anachronism) but Nes or Nus (Nuzi), and their language was called Nesli. They were Afro-Asiatic metal workers, and the root of their original name is NS.

Related reading: Solving the Ainu Mystery; Edo. Edom and Idumea; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Tamar of Timnah; The Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Petra Reflects Horite Belief

Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers

Alice C. Linsley


Here are photos of related peoples whose ancestry is Kushite or Proto-Saharan. Both photos are of BJA people. Some Beja are nomadic. Linguist Penelope Aubin notes, "In Demotic sources they are called Brhm while in classical sources they are the Blemmyes, ancestors of the modern Beja."

Beja of Sudan

Beja of Pakistan



In ancient Egypt the Beja were called "Medjayu." These metalworking nomads from the eastern Nubian desert were recognized for their military skills. They served as mercenaries in the Egyptian army and policed the desert in the late Old Kingdom. At the end of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1640–1550 B.C.) they played a role in expelling the Hyksos from the Nile Delta. The Medjayu buried their dead in a distinctive way in circular "pan graves" which they marked with the decorated skulls of bulls, gazelles and goats. These have been found in cemeteries of Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia beginning in the Second Intermediate Period. (Source: Sudan, 2000–1000 B.C., Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art) They brought gold to Egypt from mines deep in the heartland of Nubia and Kush.

The Beja (Arabic: البجا‎) are Kushitic people who live in parts of Sudan, Egypt and the Horn of Africa. Their name comes from the ancient Egyptian word for meteoric iron - bja (metal from heaven), and they were metalworkers. Beja corresponds to the Sanskrit word bija, meaning semen or seed. Meteoric iron was used in the fabrication of iron beads in Nubia about 6000 years ago. These beads may have been perceived as seeds from heaven which brought divine power to the wearer. Meteoric iron was used in the fabrication of crooks and flails, the symbols of the Egyptian and Kushite pharaohs. These symbols were believed to give the ruler powers from heaven.

Prehistoric painting of warrior-priests carrying crooks and flails, found in Sudan.
In other paintings from Hierakonpolis figures are shown wearing beads around their necks.

"Around 4000 BC small items, such as the tips of spears and ornaments, were being fashioned from iron recovered from meteorites." R. F. Tylecote, A History of Metallurgy (2nd edition, 1992), page 3.

Meteoric iron was prevalent on the Arabian Pensinsula due to iron meteoroids which caused hypervelocity cratering. Iron meteoroids are able to pass through the atmosphere intact. The so-called Wabar craters of Rub' al Khali or the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia were caused by iron meteoroids. These were discovered in 1932 by a British explorer, Harry St. John "Abdullah" Philby, father of Soviet spy Kim Philby. Buried fist-sized iron balls and smooth sand-blasted fragments at the site indicated a meteorite impact, as there are no iron deposits in the region. Storzer's fission-track dating analysis of glass fragments found at the site suggested the Wabar impact took place thousands of years ago.



Metal Work and Serpent Symbolism

According to II Kings 18:4, King Hezekiah destroyed the Nehustan, the bronze serpent on Moses' wand. “He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it [dismissively] Nehushtan.”

When bitten by vipers in the wilderness the people who looked upon the rod/wand or staff with the serpent were saved. Jesus compared his crucifixion to Moses raising up the rod with a brass serpent: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:14,15). Why the comparison? Because Moses’ staff was a symbol of Horus, who was called the "son of God."

Biblical anthropologist Susan Burns reports, "Jewelry work requires coils of metal. Coiling makes the metal stronger and easier to work. I have a picture of a bronze coil with a flattened nose resembling a snake from the Neolithic."

The flat part was where the metalworker held the coil to work it. Such coiled bronze serpents have been recovered at Neolithic metal working sites in the Arabah.

Mining operations were always under auspices of Hat-Hor, the virgin mother of Horus, as at the Timna Valley copper mines near Eilat.


A Hausa Legend

BJA is likely the root of the Hausa name Bayajidda. He too is associated with metalworkers.

Bayajidda (also known as Tu-peshe) is a legendary character of the Hausa of Nigeria. The root his name is bja. Bayajidda's closest biblical counterpart is Cain. Cain was sent away from his father, married a princess who he met at a well, and was involved with metalworkers. Most of the heroes of Genesis met their wives at sacred wells or springs. Abraham married Keturah at the Well of Sheba (Beersheva). Issac (Yitzak) found a wife at a well in Aram. Moses encountered his wife at a well sacred to the Midianites and won her had after he delivered the women and flocks from Egyptian raiders.

The antiquity of the Hausa legend is attested by the role which water plays in the story. In the ancient world shrines were built along rivers and at wells or springs from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley. Serpents inhabited these places and were both venerated and feared. In Sanskrit serpent is “naaga”, in Hebrew “nahash”, and in Hausa “naja.”

Bayajidda then went to the town of Daura in Katsina State, where he asked an old woman for water. She informed him that a serpent named Sarki (Hausa word for emir) guarded the well and that the people were allowed to draw water only once a week. Bayajidda went to the well and beheaded the serpent with the knife the blacksmiths had made for him. The well has since become a tourist attraction.

In the story of Bayajida we note again the association of the serpent with metalworkers. The original root for serpent is probably NS and the same root was likely used for all things serpentine: rivers, veins, sinew, lightening, and veins of ore. According to the Monier-Williams' lexicon ka 'ns means "to shine." The Sanskrit word for bronze or copper-tin alloy is kansa. If the first metal workers were Nilotic peoples, as the evidence suggests, this suggests an older association of KA+NS.  Ka represents Kain, the first ruler in the Bible and the "father" of metal workers. N refers to the Deity and S was originally a pictograph of a serpent. It is easy to see how prehistoric peoples might have regarded lightening as God's serpent connecting heaven and earth.


The Beja were Devotees of Ra and Horus

Until the 6th century the Beja were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor. They were associated with different Horite temples, especially on the island of Philak (image below) and at Thebes. Today many are Christians and others are Sufi Muslims.

Panaramic view of the ruins of the Temple at Philak

It appears that there were famous ruler-priests among the Beja, and the rulers of the priestly lines intermarried.

Pinedjem I was the High Priest at Thebes from 1070 - 1032 B.C. He was the son of the High Priest Piankh and probably ruled over the southern portion of Piankh's territory beginning in 1054. Pinedjem's mummy was found at Deir el-Bahri. Pinedjem I married Duathathor-Henuttawy (“Adorer of Hathor; Mistress of the Two Lands”), the daughter of Ramesses XI.

Horu-Pasibkhanut I was the second king of the Twenty-first dynasty of Egypt who ruled from Tanis (Biblical Zoan) from 1047 BC to 1001 BC.  His intact tomb was discovered in Tanis.  Here is a description of his funerary mask which is presently housed at the Cairo Museum:  "it proved to be made of gold and lapis lazuli and held inlays of black and white glass for the eyes and eyebrows of the object." Horu-Pasinkhanut I's mask is "one of the masterpieces of the treasure of Tanis" and his "fingers and toes had been encased in gold stalls, and he was buried with gold sandals on his feet. The finger stalls are the most elaborate ever found, with sculpted fingernails. Each finger wore an elaborate ring of gold and lapis lazuli or some other semiprecious stone." (From here.)  His sister bride was named Mutnedjmet, a daughter of Pinedjem I the high priest of the temple at Thebes.

3000-year old gold funerary mask of Horu-Pasinkhanut I discovered in 1940 by Pierre Montet

Afro-Asiatic Metalworkers in Service of their Rulers

The extraordinary quality and workmanship of the ancient metalworkers has been attested repeatedly by finds such as those buried with the Egyptian and Kushite pharaohs. The Kushite metalworkers dispersed wherever their overlords established territories. In Sumeria they were called the "Bira" or "ti-bira." At an ancient city in southern Iraq there is a place call "Bad-tibira" which means "Wall of the Copper Worker." This ancient site appears among antediluvian cities in the Sumerian King List. Its Akkadian name was Dûr-gurgurri. 

Akkadian, the oldest known Semitic language, was used throughout the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. A kingdom builder of this period was of Nimrod. According to Genesis 10:8, Nimrod was ethnically Kushite.

The Asian Beja of Pakistan and India achieved extraordinary metallurgical feats. An example is the 1600 year old pure iron pillar (shown right) near Qutub Minar at New Delhi which has never rusted. There is a long-standing connection between pillars, mountains and shrines. Genesis 28:10-22 tells of how Jacob set up a pillar and called that place Beth-el (House of God). Then Jacob anointed the pillar, as Hindus anoint the lingam.

In Urdu (a language of Pakistan) the word "beja" means inappropriate or incongruous. This suggests that the blacksmiths in ancient Pakistan, like the Gypsy tinkers of Europe, were regarded as a lower class/caste. There is evidence that they once were in the service of rulers and chiefs and as such held high status. However, as with Sarki of Nepal, once royal craftsmen, they were enslaved to ensure that their unique skills were retained by the ruler.

The word sarki designates a priest-ruler from Africa to Nepal. In ancient Egypt, sarki and harwa referred to orders of priests. In Hausa, sarki means king. The term is related to these ancient Akkadian words: šarrum - king, šarratum - queen, and šarri - divine.

The metalworking Inadan of Niger suffered a similar fate. They are subservient to their Taureg overlords. The metal working chiefs of the Inadan who live in the Air Desert maintain two wives in separate households on a north-south axis (National Geographic, Aug. 1979, p. 389). This is the pattern found among the rulers of Abraham's Horite Hebrew people.

The word for blacksmith in Sanskrit is lohakara and in Pali (spoken by the Buddha) it is lohara. The Egyptians did not have the letter L (Barton, "Archaeology and the Bible," 4th ed., note on p. 335.) The Sanskrit lo designates a male who "moves to and fro" and suggests that the smiths of Pakistan and India were itinerant metalworkers like their African counterparts.


The Beja of Ancient Kush 

There has been a good deal of speculation about whether the BJA metalworkers came to Pakistan and India from Africa or came from Pakistan and India to Africa. Genesis indicates that there was a Kushite migration out of Africa. Nimrod, a Kushite, built a kingdom in Mesopotamia. Recent DNA studies have confirmed the Biblical picture of a Kushite migration by demonstrating fairly conclusively that the Beja are originally Kushites.

Biblical Kush was a vast region that included Sudan, southern Egypt, ancient Nubia, the coastal areas of the Horn of Africa and the populations living in the Nile Valley. 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) et. al). The data shows 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 Nilotics.

The Copt Y-DNA profile, the genetic strain passed through the male line, suggests that they "represent a living record of the colonization of southern Egypt" by Nubians, something that conforms to recorded history and to Egyptian mythology. See Hisham Y. Hassan 1, Peter A. Underhill 2, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza 2, Muntaser E. Ibrahim 1. (2008). Also see Y-chromosome variation among Sudanese: Restricted gene flow, concordance with language, geography, and history. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2008.

Haplogroup E-M78, is thought to have an origin in eastern African, is more widely distributed. This haplogroup has been found to depict several well-established subclades with defined geographical clustering (Cruciani et al., 2006, 2007). All clades and subclades correspond to Afro-Asiatic speakers. Although haplogroup E-M78 is common to most Sudanese populations, it has exceptionally high frequency among populations whose ancestral home is the heart of Biblical Kush, including the Beja in eastern Sudan.

The Beja and Amhara from Ethiopia are in one sub-cluster based on shared frequencies of the haplogroup J1, and the distribution of M78 subclades indicates that the Beja are also related to the Oromo living in the Horn of Africa (Cruciani et al., 2007).


Related reading: Archaic and Ancient Symbols of Authority; Iron Seeds from Heaven, Who Were the Horites?; Who Were the Kushites?; African Religion Predates Hinduism