The Ruler Seth

Alice C. Linsley

TIMELINE

Late Neolithic period (ca. 4000-3000 B.C.)
          - Nilotic pastoralists who were sedentary for part of the year
          - Dead buried with their faces toward the rising sun
          - Hierakonpolis, the most ancient Nilotic temple; dedicated to Horus. Here a 4000 B.C. tomb painting of two red ochre men. They carry crooked staffs and flails, suggesting that they are pre-dynastic ruler-priests.
          - Wine making equipment found in the tomb of the Scorpion I (c. 3150 B.C.)

Noah was drunk with wine on at least one occasion and the outcome wasn't good. Likewise, Lot's drunken stupor led to unfortunate events. Genesis is critical of excessive wine consumption.


The Saharan Wet Period (c. 4000-2000 B.C.)
          - Noah (ca. 2490-2415 B.C.)  Saharan Late Holocene (Karl W. Butzer 1966)
          - The Great Pyramid, aligned to the Dragon Star on the Vernal Equinox in 2141 B.C.
          - Lake Chad was much deeper and covered an much larger area
          - The Nile waters flooded more widely, with drainage channels extending west into the desert
          - Stronger monsoonal circulation throughout sub-tropical regions increased rain in Sudan

Analysis of deposited sediments in the Nile delta shows this period had a higher proportion of sediments coming from the Blue Nile, due to higher rainfall also in the Ethiopian Highlands.


Kingdom of Kush (ca. 2000-1500 B.C.)
          - Kushite rulers built pyramids for elite burials and ruled Egypt as its 25th Dynasty
          - Pan Grave burials of Nubia and Egypt of the Medjay/Beja people, about 1700 B.C
          - King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep (c. 2043-1992 BC) married Ashait, a Medjay princess


The Napatan Period (ca. 1575-525 B.C.)
          - King Kasta ("the Kushite")
          - King Piye named his firstborn son Hor (Horus)
          - King Sheba-qo 


Origin of the Name Seth

Seti was a royal name among the Nilotic peoples.  The name is associated with the territory of Ta-Seti, meaning the "Land of Set." Set and the biblical word Seth are cognates. Ta-Seti is also translated as "Land of the Bow" and attests to the skill of the Nubian archers, a skill for which the later Kushites were also famous.

I Chronicles 1:50 mentions an important Horite bride - Matred. Her name is related to Menmaatre, the throne name of Seti I. Seti is a name associated with Piye, which is identified with the "city of Pai" in I Chronicles 1:50. Queen Piye was a Nubian queen.

The great Nubian king Piye (780 B.C.) installed a black granite falcon head image of Horus in Napata, his capital.  Piye's brother and successor, Sheba-qo, moved the royal residence to Memphis. Sheba-qo (716-702 B.C.) and his successors Shebit-qo (702-690 B.C.) and Tahar-qo (690-664 B.C.) thought of themselves as God's earthly representatives and it was probably during their time that the rulers came to wear the double crown of Horus.

The biblical Seth lived before the emergence of the Kushite Kingdom, probably around 3000 B.C. He was an ancestor of Noah and Noah's son Kush. Director of museum of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute, Geoff Emberling reports that excavations at Kerma and the Fourth Cataract, "suggest that the early Kingdom of Kush was larger than previously believed, and that its raids into Egypt in about 1650 B.C. were a serious threat to the capital at Thebes. Compared with other civilizations of the region, such as Mesopotamia, early Kush controlled a vast area and was able to amass significant military power."

Thirty Palaeolithic sites were discovered in the region by a team of archaeologists led by Henryk Paner between 1996-2003. At seven Mesolithic site shards of wavy line and dotted wavy line pottery were found. Paner believes that these reflect an older decorative tradition. He reports, "The Neolithic witnessed a boom in settlement evidence. Of the total number of 711 sites recorded over 240 yielded ceramic, stone and flint artefacts dating from this period. Some Neolithic settlements tended to be located on higher terrain within natural hollows. Oval and circular stone structures up to 1.5m in diameter probably represent hearths. Larger concentrations of stones (also circular in plan but with larger diameters) may possibly mark the remains of dwellings which were made from organic materials.Querns and grinders were also found at these sites. Agate was among the raw materials used for making tools, with white quartz becoming increasingly popular on late Neolithic sites." (From here.)

At Hosh el-Guruf in Sudan, Emberling's team found a Kushite gold-processing center along the middle Nile. Gold was processed here between 2000 and 1500 B.C. This may be the biblical land of Havilah (Gen. 2:11), known for gold. The Gihon wound through the entire land of Kush (Gen. 2:13) and was connected to the Pishon which wound through the entire land of Havilah. The identification of this area with the Nile is further supported by the claim that aromatic resin (amber) is found there (Gen. 2:12).  The Gihon and Pishon appear to be sections of the Nile, probably between the 4th and 6th cataracts. As Northern Sudan is geologically active, the Nubian Swell has diverted the Nile's course to the west, making it difficult to definitively locate these waterways of Eden.


The Biblical Seth

Having established that the name Seth comes from the Nile region of ancient Nubia and Kush,we must now explore the biblical information that sheds light on this royal person.

Genesis tells us that Seth was Cain's younger brother. (Cain is also spelled Kenan, Qayan, Kano).  According to Genesis 5:6, Seth's firstborn son was Enosh. There has been some debate as to whether Enosh is equivalent to Enoch, the name of Cain's firstborn son (Gen. 4:17). I believe that both names are derived from the Nilotic or Proto-Saharan word anochie, meaning "one who is to follow" as heir to the throne. The word anochie is found among peoples who migrated westward from the Nile, such as the Ashante. Among the Igbo, anochie means “a replacer” or “to replace.” A Nigerian biblical anthropologist reports that "Anochie also means 'direct heir to a throne'."  The biblical word Enoch is clearly a royal name or title, as is the name Seth.

Genesis provides more detailed information about Cain's line (Gen. 4) than about Seth's line (Gen. 5). Likely this is because the Canaanites, Cain's descendants, were the dominant people in the land where Abraham became established as a ruler. It is possible that the majority of Seth's descendants remained in the area of Nubia, though the lines of Cain and Seth continued to intermarry, as is common among royalty. The women of these royal lines married their patrilineal cousins or uncles and named their firstborn sons after their fathers.  Naamah, the daughter of Lamech, is an example.

© 1995 Alice C. Linsley

Another royal title of Nubian origin is Terah, the name of Abraham's father. It means "devotee" and is found on the Tera-neter tile, shown below.

Tera-ntr was a ruler of the Anu people, pre-dynastic inhabitants of Egypt. Abraham’s father, Terah, is named after this line that comes out of the Nile Valley. They are the earliest known to worship Horus, the prefigurement of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Another name for Heliopolis is On (Gen. 41:50). Joseph married a daughter of the high priest of On. The residents called it iunu, meaning "place of pillars" due to the many pillars of the temple.

Related reading: The Daughters of Horite Priests; Abraham's Nubian Ancestors; The Ethnicity of Abraham and David; The Saharan Origins of Pharaonic Egypt

Morkot's Book Might Have Been Stronger

Alice C. Linsley


Mizraim (Egypt) and Kush (Upper Nile/Sudan/Ethiopia) are classed together by the prophets because the Lower and Upper Nile regions were first unified by the Kushite King Meni/Menes around 3000 BC. The first rulers of a unified Nile Valley were Kushites. Robert G. Morkot has written about these early rulers in his book The Black Pharaohs. Their territory is referenced by different names: Nubia, Kush and Ta-Seti, which is the royal title Set or Seth and also refers to the bow which was used by the red Nubians hunters and warriors. They wore feathers around their ankles and closely resembled the warriors of Petra.

There are many connections between the Kushite rulers presented in Morkot's book and the different Nilotic and Proto-Saharan peoples who are mentioned in Genesis. Unfortunately, Morkot did not investigate these Nilotic connections thoroughly.

As an historian, he shows discipline in not venturing from his area of expertise. However, his book would have been stronger had he explored the anthropological and linguistic evidence. He missed many clues that would have made his work more compelling. For example, he might have explored the linguistic connections between Nilotic peoples today and the ancient Kushite rulers. Consider Nefertitti, someone to whom he directs a good deal of attention in a later chapter.

Her name Nefer-itti contains a typical suffix of the Kushite rulers.  As E.A. Speiser noted in his Anchor Bible commentary on Genesis, the suffix is found in the biblical name for Cain, which is Qan-itti. As is evident from the Akkadian, -itti pertains to the king, as in itti šarrim which means "with the king" or "against the king." Akkadian was the language of the empire during Nimrod's time (BC 2290-2215).  Genesis 10 tells us that Nimrod was a Kushite, so it is not surprising to find that Akkadian shares many words with Nilotic languages. Among the Kushite Oromo of Ethiopia and Somalia, itti is attached to names of high ranking individuals. Examples include Kaartuumitti, Finfinneetti and Dimashqitti.

Morkot's book focuses mainly on the 25th Dynasty.  He would have done well to explore earlier dynasties more deeply.  For example, consideration of the 18th Dynasty would have made a stronger case for the long duration of Kushitic dominance in the Nile Valley. Amenhotep III ruled Nubia, Libya, Gaza and Syria in the 18th Dynasty. His 42-foot tall statue was recently excavated in Thebes (modern Luxor) on the west bank of the Nile.

Amenhotep III ruled between about 1382 and 1350 B.C. (roughly 600 years after Abraham's firstborn son, Joktan). His name means "peace of Amen" and indicates a period when the divine name Amen was used in Nubia instead of the name Set/Seti/Seth, which was favored in the Delta. It was during the 18th dynasty that the title 'King's Son of Cush' was first used.

Finally, Morkot would have done well to reference biblical data when doing his research. He dedicates a good deal of his book to the late Kushite rulers Sheba-qo (or Shaba-qo), Tahar-qo and Shebit-qo, but he never makes the linguistic connection to the Meroitic honorary suffix - qo . Once we remove the suffix, we are left with the name Sheba. The Kushite ruler Sheba-qo ruled about 716-702 BC. Earlier Kushite rulers held the royal name Sheba before him. Genesis 10 lists Sheba as an ancestor of Abraham and his cousin-wife Keturah. He was a descendant of Ham and Shem, as the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried exclusively. Sheba-qo’s double crown is shown on the Sheba-qo Stone with parts of his Horus name. Here we have archaeological evidence linking the royal house of Sheba and Abraham’s Horite people.



Related reading:  Enoch: a Royal Title; Cain's Father; Who Were the Kushites?; Kushite Kings and the Kingdom of God

Some Jews and Some Arabs Have Horite Ancestry

J1 and T1 have a wide dispersion: Anatolia, Yemen, north-east Africa, Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, the Fertile Crescent, and the Caucasus. Where J1 and T1 are found in high frequency, mtDNA haplogroups HV, N1 and U3 are also present. ZS226 is a subclade of J1. ZS227 includes the Kohanim (priest) haplotype found among both Jews and Arabs.


Alice C. Linsley

Jewish identity is traced through the mother. Genetic studies have revealed that many who self-identify as Jewish are actually descendants of non-Jewish mothers. Jon Entine. "Ashkenazi Jewish Women Descended Mostly from Italian Converts, New Study Asserts." Genetic Literacy Project (October 8, 2013). Excerpts:

"[...] Professor Martin Richards, who heads the University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group (and who participated in the 2002 study), and colleagues sequenced 74 mitochondrial genomes and analyzed more than 3,500 mitochondrial genomes - far more data than the 2006 survey, which reviewed only a short length of the mitochondrial DNA, containing just 1,000 or so of its 16,600 DNA units, in all their subjects. [...] According to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, Doron Behar, one of the key authors of the 2006 analysis, said he disagreed with the conclusions, but has provided no detailed critique as yet. Wade also talked to David Goldstein, who said he believed the estimate that 80 percent of Ashkenazi Jewry originated in Europe was too high considering the unpredictability of mitochondrial DNA data. [...]"

For the purposes of this article, we are able to speak of some Jews as the descendants of Abraham and his ancestors, but not all Jews.

Likewise, not all Arabs are descendants of Abraham. Ishmael was an Egyptian Arab, the son of an Egyptian Arab mother and the husband of an Egyptian wife. Further, Abraham's grandson Joseph married into a royal Egyptian house at Heliopolis (Biblical On).

Other Arabs related to Abraham and his ancestors are found in Arabia. Josephus reports that the descendants of Abraham by Keturah were called "Horites" and, quoting an ancient historian, speaks of them as "conquerors of Egypt and founders of the Assyrian Empire." Keturah was Abraham's cousin bride and her first born son was Joktan (Yaqtan). He is identified with the Joktanite tribes of Arabia.

The Jews call their ancestors Horim and the Muslims refer to their righteous ancestors as Houris. Horim and Houris are "Horite" in English.

Abraham's people were Horite Habiru (Hebrew), a caste of ruler-priests who originated in ancient Kush. Their ancestors were cattle-herding Proto-Saharans who dispersed widely about 40,000 years ago. J1-FGC11, the most common lineage among Bedouins, Jews, and Arabs, is related to that ancient herding culture. Other haplogroups of interest to Biblical Anthropologists include Mt-DNA L and Y-DNA R1b.  In human mitochondrial genetics, L is the mitochondrial DNA macro-haplogroup that is at the root of the human Mt-DNA phylogenetic tree. As such, it represents the most ancestral mitochondrial lineage of all currently living modern humans. All modern humans have ancestry that is traced to Africa.

The Habiru spread their religion across the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. That is why many of the religious practices of peoples in Southern Europe, the Levant, and West Aisa share many common traits.

The Horites were devotees of Horus, the archetypal "son" or "seed" of the Creator. The Ra-Horus-Hathor narrative is the proto-Gospel by which some of Abraham’s descendants came to recognize Jesus as the Messiah and the fulfillment of God's promise (Gen. 3:15). The Virgin Mary, a woman of the Horite Hebrew bloodline, brought forth the Seed who crushes the serpent's head and restores Paradise.

Isaac, one of Abraham’s 9 sons, was a Horite. His tribal confederation consisted of 3 sons: Esau, Jacob and Yishbak (the grandson of Yishbak the Elder who is named in Gen. 25:1). This is consistent with a trait of Horite rulers whereby 3 sons were designated as heads of clans and these 3 clans represented a tribal unit. Other examples include Jubal, Jabal and Tubal, Uz, Huz and Buz and Og, Gog and Magog.  Not all 3-son confederations involved alliterative sets however, as is apparent from the confederations of Haran, Nahor and Abraham. However, the common occurrence of alliterative sets in naming is suggestive of this confederation for Abraham's sons: Yitzak (Isaac), Yishmael (Ishmael) and Yishbak.

Yishbak means “sent away” and this is referenced in Genesis 25:6 which says that Abraham’s gave gifts to all his sons and sent them away from Isaac.

Martin Noth, in his seminal work "The Scheme of the Twelve Tribes of Israel" (1930), showed that the Twelve Tribes of Israel did not exist prior to the covenant assembly at Shechem described in the book of Joshua. The 12-tribe organization appears to be an attempt to neatly classify the ruler descendents of Noah according to a celestial pattern. The older organization comprised three sons of the same father. Where three sons appear in Genesis we have a code indicating a joining of three clans or a tribal unity. Perhaps this is why Leah named her third son Levi, meaning "joining" (Gen. 29:34). Leah probably hoped that she would be credited (and loved?) by providing Jacob with the three sons necessary to establish a tribe.

The 3-son confederation of rulers is still evident long after Abraham. The Kushite ruler Piye united Nubia and Egypt and established the 25th Dynasty. Before his death, Piye divided his kingdom between his 3 firstborn sons, whose names were Sheba, Shebit and Tahar. The appear in history as Sheba-qo who ruled in Thebes, Shebit-qo who ruled in Napata, and Ta-har-qo who ruled in Memphis. Sheba-qo revived the office of high priest, which he awarded to his son Hori-makhet who was high priest in Thebes. Here we see a clear reference to Horus. Hori or Huri refers to Horus and Horite. Clearly, the term Horite can't be taken anachronistically when speaking of Abraham's descendants as late as 700 B.C.

Meroitic had an honorary suffix qo as in the names Sheba-qo and Shebit-qo. These are linguistically equivalent to the biblical name Sheba, an ancestor of Abraham and his cousin-wife Keturah. Sheba is named in Genesis 10. The clans of Sheba (Sabaea) are close relatives of the Joktanite tribes of South Arabia. The territory of Sheba is referred to 24 times in the Hebrew Bible. Beer-sheba, Keturah's home, was at the northern end of the territory of Sheba. The Joktanite tribes descend from Abraham through Keturah.


Intermarriage Among the Horite Ancestors of Arabs and Jews

Abraham’s Horite sons married kin so it is not likely that all Abraham’s descendants through Isaac are Jews. Both Arabs and Jews have Horite ancestors. This is why the Kohan genetic marker is found among Arabs as well as among Jews. The Horite priestly lines intermarried, that is, they practiced endogamy. The dispersion of these ruler-priests corresponds to the aggressive kingdom-building activities of the archaic rulers. J1 and T1 have a wide dispersion: Anatolia, Yemen, north-east Africa, Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, the Fertile Crescent, and the Caucasus. Where J1 and T1 are found in high frequency, mtDNA haplogroups HV, N1 and U3 are also present. ZS226 is a subclade of J1. ZS227 includes the Kohanim (priest) haplotype found among both Jews and Arabs.

Both Arabs and Jews are descendants of Ham and Shem whose lines exclusively intermarried, as did the lines of Cain and Seth before them. The marriage pattern involved 2 wives living in separate households on a north-south axis. One wife was a half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham) and the other wife was a patrilineal cousin of niece (as was Keturah to Abraham).

The brides are the key to understanding the ethnicity of Abraham's people who were Horites, a caste of ruler-priests who originated in ancient Kush. The Kohan DNA or "priest marker" is identifiable and distinctive because Horite priests married daughters of priests exclusively. The haplotype studies based on mitochondrial samples reflect the women since we receive the mtDNA from our mothers. DNA studies confirm that the Horite ancestors of the priests of ancient Israel did marry exclusively within the priestly divisions/lines, which is what analysis of the Biblical genealogy material shows. This is the blood ancestry of Jesus Christ our Lord.


Isaac's Two Wives

Isaac had 2 wives, as did all his Horite ruling ancestors. The wife who isn't mentioned was a half-sister who lived in Beersheba. She bore Isaac a son named Yishbak, so Isaac had at least three sons: Esau who married a Horite daughter (Gen. 36), Jacob who married into the Horite clan of Nahor, and Yishbak (Ishbak). Yishbak the Elder is mentioned in Gen. 25:1. He is Abraham's son by Keturah. His daughter married Isaac and named their firstborn son Yishbak, according to the Horite custom which I have identified in my 34 years of research on Genesis. I've called this distinctive practice "the cousin bride's naming prerogative."

Isaac’s sons were not Jews, but Horites like their father and grandfather Abraham. That is why Esau the Elder married into the line associated with Seir the Horite (Gen. 36) and why Jacob married into the Horite line of Nahor. See diagram and note that there are 2 named Esau.  Esau the Elder married Adah, the daughter of the Horite ruler Elon.  Esau the Younger was Esau the Elder's grandson.  Esau the Younger married Oholibamah, a high-ranking Horite maiden.

Yishbak, Isaac's Firstborn

Isaac's three sons were Esau, Yacob and Yishbak. Since Isaac married his half-sister before he married Rebecca, as was the pattern among Horite rulers, Yishbak is likely Isaac's firstborn son. Yishbak, son of Isaac is not explicitly mentioned in Genesis but he is found in analysis of the Genesis genealogies. He is inconvenient for those who seek to perpetuate myths about Abraham as a Jew and Isaac as the line through whom the Jews claim exclusive rights to the Land of Palestine.

The evidence for Isaac’s sister wife is rather hidden, as is the identity of Abraham’s Horite mother. It appears that the final editors of Genesis wanted to preserve the claim of Isaac as the son of promise through whom Israel would claim the Land. It wouldn’t do to admit that Isaac had other children by an Arabian wife of the house of Sheba, or that Abraham’s mother was the daughter of a Horite ruler-priest. Yet the kinship pattern of Genesis provides the essential information to draw these conclusions and to justify them on the basis of the text alone.


Related reading:  The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; The Shock of Mohammed Atta's Afterlife; Who Were the Horites?; Christ's Kushite Ancestors; Are Zionism and the Bible in Agreement?; The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; Petra Reflects Horite Beliefs; Messianic Jews and the Antecedents of Judaism; Who Was Abraham?; The Nubian Context of YHWY;  Busting Myths About Abraham; Nicholas Wade. "Genes Suggest European Women at Root of Ashkenazi Family Tree." The New York Times (October 9, 2013); Religion of the Archaic Rulers
 

God's African Ancestors

Monument of Nehesi in Nubia/Kush.
Kush was also called Ta-Nuhusi. 

Alice C. Linsley


Religious belief is conditioned by the faith tradition which we receive from our parents, grandparents and, if we are to believe Jung’s theory of the collective consciousness, from our ancient ancestors. The Bible articulates this notion in this phrase: “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And the expectation of the coming Christ was preserved through a long line of priests who were kin to Abraham, the "father of faith."

In as much as Jesus Christ was God in the flesh and He was born of a long line of ruler-priests whose point of origin was Africa, we may speak of Him as having African ancestors.

The ancestry of Jesus Christ our God is not a matter of private revelation. His coming was foretold from the beginning of time. Those to whom God declared that He should be born of their bloodline, lived in expectation of His coming for many millennia. His appearance on earth was announced by the unique conjunction of the king planet (Jupiter) and the king star (Regulus). Indeed all of the created order speaks of the God-Man Jesus Christ, so we should not be surprised when we find signs pointing to Christ in God’s handiwork. St. Paul recognized that all creation makes God’s nature known to us so that all are without excuse when they deny or ignore Him.

An anthropological study of the ancestors of Christ our God reveals that great attention has been paid to the matter of His coming. Most people have not attempted to deny or ignore Him. Almost universally, people have yearned for the benefits of His Incarnation and his shed blood.

It is fitting that attention should be paid to Christ's ancestors and to the evidence that His ancestors included Africans. It is interesting how consistently Africa is ignored when investigating the etiology of biblical practices such as circumcision and the linguistic connections between biblical words and the African languages.

Consider the names Nim and Lot, both Egyptian names, yet neither has been identified as such by biblical scholars. Rulers in Egypt with the name Lot include Iuwelot, Nimlot and Takelot. Egypt is the origin of the biblical names Nim-rod and Lot. Nimlot C was the High Priest of Amun at Thebes during the latter part of the reign of his father Osorkon II. He died before the end of his father's reign since his son Takelot F (king Takelot II) succeeded him as High Priest of Amun towards the end of Osorkon II's reign. This secession is established from the reliefs of Temple J at Karnak which depicts Takelot F as the priest-dedicant at a ceremony and mentions the ruling pharaoh as Osorkon II. Temple J has been dated to the final years of Osorkon II's reign in Tanis (which ended in 837 BC).

The Egyptian word nakh means "the powerful." Ha-Noch, the name of Reuben's first-born son is more a title than a proper name. It should be rendered something like "the Chief." Likewise, the Egyptian anoch can be rendered both Ha-Noch and Enoch. Nakh can also be rendered simply as Nok.

The biblical names Seth and Noah are equivalent to the Egyptian names Set and Nu and there are Egyptian stories in which the principal characters have these names.

Jesus Christ's ancestors were Afro-Asiatics. They spoke Afro-Asiatic languages which include Akkadian, Amharic, ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Berber, Chadic, Ethiopic, Hahm, Hausa, Hebrew, Kushitic, Meroitic, Omotic, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. Twelve of these language groups are spoken by populations in Africa. Christ our God spoke Aramaic, a language that shares many roots with the African languages Tigrina, Tigre, Amharic and the older Ge’ez.

Places associated with clans and rulers in Genesis are found only in Africa - Nok (Enoch), Kano (Cain), Ham, Bor' nu (Land of Noah), Terah, and the Jebu tribe (biblical Jebusites). Elephantine, at the border between Egypt and Sudan, was known to the ancient Egyptians as Yebu, the linguistic equivalent of Jebu. Some of these names appear also in Canaan: Terah, Jebu, Sheba, and Hor are among them. Jerusalem was a Jebusite city in the time of Abraham and Abraham paid tribute to that city’s ruler-priest, Melchizedek. Abraham’s Horite people apparently had kin-based alliances with the Jebusites. Both Horites and Jebusites were closely allied with the ancient Egyptians. Abdi-hepa ruled Jerusalem three centuries before its conquest by David. His name is Egyptian. (Hepa, Hap, or Hapi was a predynastic name for the Nile.) The first mention of Jerusalem, not surprisingly, is found in ancient Egyptian texts.

We also have the evidence of the four rivers mentioned as being at the heart of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon and the Gihon. The last two are in Africa. Clearly there are two distinct traditions concerning the location of the garden, one African and the other Asiatic. The view that Eden was at the western border of Iran is based on the location of the Tigris and Euphrates. Yet we are explicitly told in Genesis 2:10-14 that the Gihon flowed through all the land of Ethiopia and the Pishon "skirts the whole land of Havilah". Havilah was a son of Kush (Gen. 10:7) and the "Kushites" lived in the upper Nile region and Sudan. So two rivers are in Mesopotamia and represent the Asiatic tradition while the other two rivers are in Africa and represent the African tradition. Both traditions are preserved in Genesis, but obviously the garden can't have been in both places. So where was it? If we accept that God drove the man out of the garden toward the east and the garden was west of Noah's homeland near Lake Chad, we must consider Nigeria as the likely location of the garden. So, we may speculate that some of Christ's ancestors came out of Nigeria.

Institutions and practices that characterize Abraham’s people are also distinctively African. These include the practice of circumcision (both male and female). To understand the cultural context of male and female circumcision we must recognize that Africans assign firm structure to males and softness and fluidity to females. It is important that women be less like men and men less like women (one reason that homosex is abhorred in traditional African societies.) In Africa, a family's honor is vested in the conduct of its women. Femininity is stressed and Pharaonic circumcision is seen as an enhancement of the woman’s femininity, potential fertility and purity. Likewise male circumcision was seen as an enhancement of maleness, potency and purity. The complement to the circumcised male is a circumcised female. The practice of female circumcision is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, but that may be because the female aspect is often hidden.

The African view is different from the binary exhibit of Hinduism in which both the lingam (male organ) and the yoni (female organ) are displayed. In the African tradition, phallic pillars (show right) are never displayed with the female organ. The female organ is always covered or hidden, pointing to the biblical distinction between revealed and hidden.

The institution of priest is distinctively African also. Sheba-qo’s son Hori-makhet, was high priest in Thebes. Hori is related to the Egyptian word harwa (priest) and is the linguistic equivalent of Horus and Horite. (Horus represented the power of kingship.) The term Horite can't be taken anachronistically when speaking of Abraham's ancestors, who were devotees of Horus, who they regarded as the “Son of God.” In African caste systems priests are always in the higher caste. Among the Mande of western Africa the highest caste are called the Horon, although few in this caste are priests. Most are warriors, farmers, animal breeders and fishermen.

As is evident today in traditional African religion, there are orders of priests, each assigned specific duties at the shrines. The Khar (Egyptian word for Horite) order of priests was responsible for providing fuel for the burnt offerings/sacrifices. Joseph's family lived in Nazareth which was the home of the eighteenth division of priests, that of Happizzez (1 Chronicles 24:15). The idea that only the Levites were priests simply isn't supported by the evidence of Scripture.

Rulers married the daughters of priests who served them. Joseph, Jacob's first-born son by Rachel, married Asenath, daughter of a priest of the Egyptian shrine at Heliopolis. Likewise, Moses married the daughter of a priest of Midian and his second wife was likely the daughter of a Kushite priest. Kush was known by many names, including Ta-Kash, Ta-Seti, Ta-Nuhusi and Ta-Kensat. In 747 B.C., a ruler named Kash united Lower Nubia as far as the Egyptian border at Aswan.

There were twenty-four priestly divisions after the construction of the Second Temple. Nineteen of these divisions are listed in Nehemiah 12:10-22. In the Nehemiah list we find these names of particular interest: Joachim, Joseph, and Mattenai. These are the names of priests who married the daughters of priests and from these lines came John the Baptist, Joseph, Mary and Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God.

Joachim is the name of Mary’s father, which is one reason that scholars believe that Mary was the virgin daughter of a priest. Hippolytus writing in the early third century, records that Mary’s mother was a daughter of a priest named Matthan. This means that Mary was of a priestly line. According to the custom of her noble African ancestors, Mary married into a priestly line when she became Joseph’s wife. According to Matthew 1:16, Joseph was the grandson of the priest Mattenai (sometimes spelled Mattai, Mattan or Matthew).


In the Masoretic Text the name of Samuel's city is hara-matatyim zophim. (See The Anchor Bible Commentary on I Samuel by P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., p. 51.)  Zuph was a Horite priest of the line of Matthew/Mattai/Mattan. Hara-matatyim is the same priestly line as that of Joseph of Hara-mathea, one of Jesus' relatives and the member of the Sanhedrin who requested the Lord's body in order to bury Him.


Related reading: Recovering the African Background of Genesis; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; Terah's Nubian Ancestors; Samuel's Horite Family; Abraham's Saharan Ancestry; Is Nehesi the Same Name as Nahor?; Tomb of Nubian Priest Found

Kushite and Horite Hebrew Rulers Linked

Ta-Har-qo

Har is a Horus name and qo is a Meroitic honorary suffix.

Alice C. Linsley 

The Genesis genealogical information indicates that Abraham's ancestors came out of the Nile Valley. The oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship is Nekhen on the Nile (4000 BC). Prayers of the Horite and Sethite Hebrew priests are found in ancient texts dating to as early as 2600 BC.

From the Nile Valley Abraham's Hebrew ancestors dispersed into Arabia, Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. 

Abraham was a descendant of Nimrod, a son of Kush. Nimrod left the Nile Valley and became a mighty man in Sumer where He gained fame as a city builder (Gen. 10). He later married the daughter of Asshur, and this marriage extended Nimrod power. He then became to build cities in other parts of Mesopotamia. 

Nimrod was a Kushite, meaning he was from the Nile Valley. Verification of a link between Abraham's Hebrew people (a royal caste) and the rulers of the Nile Valley appear in related disciples, including linguistics, ancient texts, anthropology, and archaeological studies of the ancient rulers, some of whom are referred to as "the black pharaohs" of Egypt. 

These rulers' names have parallels in the Bible. Tahar-qo is identified as Tirhakah in 2 Kings 19:9 and Isaiah 37:9. Their monuments and royal burial grounds are being studied extensively. 

The name Tahar-qo has the Meroitic honorary suffix - qo - as do the names Sheba-qo and Shebit-qo. The last two are linguistically equivalent to the biblical name Sheba, an ancestor of Abraham and his cousin-wife Keturah. Sheba is one of the rulers listed in Genesis 10. He is a descendent of Ham and Shem since the lines of those two Hebrew chiefs intermarried. 

The Sheba-qo Stone, while containing many gaps, reveals a belief in Memphis as the sacred center and the Creator God's residence. Sheba-qo’s double crown is shown on the stone and parts of his Horus name. So, we have evidence linking the House of Sheba and Abraham’s Horite Hebrew people. Sheba-qo was buried in his ancestral cemetery at el-Kurru which is in Sudan. The prevalent theory is that his Pharaonic burial represents the introduction of Egyptian culture to the Sudan, but it may well be that cultural influences came from Sudan to Thebes and Memphis after Piye united the separate kingdoms.

Piye of Nubia (Piankhy) defeated the armies of Tefnakht of Sais (Twenty-fourth Dynasty), captured Memphis, and subdued the princes of Lower Egypt, restoring the status quo to that area. Piye's Twenty-fifth Dynasty has been the subject of speculation among Egyptologists who do not agree on the timeline of this Kushite succession. All recognize that Piye's successors were Sheba-qo, Shebit-qo, and Tahar-qo and they also agree that each ruled from a different shrine city. Why would they rule from different cities? This would not have impressed upon their subjects that their father had forged a single kingdom. Wouldn't the establishment of a single capital city symbolize that unity better than three capitals? The theory that each succeeded to the throne upon the death of the former ruler gives us this timeline: 716 BC: Piye dies; Sheba-qo becomes ruler of Kush and Egypt 710 BC: Sheba-qo moves his capital from Napata to Thebes 702 BC: Sheba-qo revived the office of high priest, which he awarded to his son Hori-makhet who was high priest in Thebes. Hori is a Horus name, which was simply HR in ancient Egyptian. HR means "Most High One." Horus was believed to be the son of Re. Re means "father" in Ancient Egyptian.

The term Horite applies to devotees of Horus and cannot be taken anachronistically. Sheba-qo died and Shebit-qo became the ruler of Kush and Egypt 701 BC. Shebit-qo formed alliances with the kingdom of Israel against Assyrian threat 690 BC. Shebit-qo died and Tahar-qo became the ruler of Kush and Egypt. He moved the capital to Memphis 684 BC and began building a temple to Amon-Re at Kawa c. 680 BC. Tahar-qo built a temple to Mut at Gebel Barkal in Nubia 671 BC. The Assyrians defeated Tahar-qo and captures Memphis c. 664 BC. Tahar-qo withdrew to Napata, built the Nuri pyramid, the first in one 1000 years in 664 BC. Tahar-qo died and was buried in largest known pyramid in Sudan. 

Based on my kinship research, I suggest a different scenario, one proposed by Robert Morkot who has written: "It is most likely that there was more than one family group involved in the development of the Kushite state, and that the process was one of mixed military and diplomatic actions cemented by marriage alliances." This assessment is consistent with my findings of 3 ruling priestly clans who intermarry. The Hebrew three-clan confederation is an example.

Before his death, Piye divided his vast kingdom between his 3 first-born sons. Piye had more than one wife and they are mentioned in his victory stela. This means that he at least two first-born sons. Each was given his own territory when he came of age and the three had overlapping reigns. This explains the separate capitals. Sheba-qo ruled in Thebes, Shebit-qo ruled in Napata, and Tahar-qo ruled in Memphis. 

The provision of territories for first-born sons predates the Twenty-Fourth Dynasty by about 2000 years. The following statement is found on the Inscription of Pepinakht-Heqaib who lived during the reign of Pepi II (c. 2800 BC): "Never did I judge two brothers in such a way that a son was deprived of his paternal possession." The Pepinakht-Heqaib inscription appears on the 2 jambs of the facade of his tomb on Elephantine Island near Aswan (ancient Swenet/Syene). From the inscription we surmise that this man judged inheritance disputes between brothers and refused to deprive a rightful heir of his paternal possession. (See the Theme of Two Sons, here.) 

NOTES

The Assyrians captured Memphis on 11 July 671. Tahar-qo escaped, but one of his brothers and his son were taken captive. 

Robert Morkot, The Black Pharaohs, The Rubicon Press, p. 156. 5. 

Pepinakht was ennobled (saH) and sanctified a living god (nTr anx) 300 years after his death. As a deified huma, he was regarded as a mediator between people and the gods. 

Elephantine stands at the border between Egypt and Nubia/Sudan. It was known to the ancient Egyptians as Yebu which is the linguistic equivalent of Jebu according to THE DIPLOMATISTS HANDBOOK FOR AFRICA by Count Charles Kinsky. This links Elephantine with the Jebusites who controlled the major water systems in parts of Africa. They also held Jebu/Jerusalem during under the rule of Melchizedek and until the time of Solomon.

Related reading: Was Abraham a Black Man?; Horite and Sethite Mounds; The Hebrew were a Caste; BIBLICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Hebrew Names and Titles

Isaac's Three Sons

Alice C. Linsley

When I was in seminary, my Old Testament professor told the class that he doubted Isaac’s existence because there is so little information about Isaac. He noted that the story of Isaac pretending that Rebekah was his sister parallels the story of Abraham asking Sarah to say that she is his sister. He concluded that Isaac is a literary construction reflecting the author’s love of narrative doublets, duplicates of the same event believed by critics to be told by two different sources.

While I appreciate this professor’s observations, I disagree with his conclusion. Isaac’s historicity can be verified by analysis of the Hebrew kinship pattern. Kinship patterns as complex as that of the early Hebrew are not found with fictional characters. Further, the kinship pattern of Abraham's people reveals a good deal of information about the principal figures of Genesis.

According to the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the early Hebrew, Isaac was Abraham's proper heir because he was the firstborn (only) son of Abraham's principal wife, his half-sister bride, Sarah. When Abraham died, Isaac became the ruler over Abraham's territory which extended on a north-south axis between Hebron and Beersheba (shown on this map).

After the binding of Isaac, Abraham and Isaac were living in Beersheba, and it was to the region of Beersheba in the Negev (Gen. 24:62) that Abraham’s servant brought Rebekah to meet her betrothed. 

Beersheba was the settlement of Abraham’s cousin wife, Keturah. Isaac probably had already married his first wife, a half-sister. That wife was a daughter of Abraham and Keturah. By his first wife Isaac had sons and daughters who became the marriage partners of the sons and daughters born to Isaac by Rebekah. All of these persons were Hebrew and the Hebrew were a ruler-priest caste that practiced endogamy.

The kinship pattern of the early Hebrew provides the essential information to draw this conclusion and to justify it on the basis of the text alone.

It is possible to trace some of Isaac's children by his first wife through the cousin bride’s naming prerogative. Rebekah’s father was Bethuel (Gen. 22:23), a son of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. Why didn’t she name her firstborn son Bethuel after her father? This is the pattern for those who were to rule. We are given this explanation: Jacob grasped his twin brother’s heel as he was born (Gen. 25:26) “so his name was called Jacob.” It is also possible that Rebecca didn’t name her first-born son after Bethuel because this son was not the one who would rule after Isaac’s death. Isaac's proper heir according to the Hebrew marriage and ascendancy pattern was Esau.

Rebecca is central to Isaac’s claim as the heir to Abraham’s territory and to the divine promises, yet she did not name her firstborn son after her father, as was the practice for the sons of cousin brides who were to be rulers in the territories of their maternal grandfathers. This suggests that Isaac had another firstborn son by another wife. His proper heir was the firstborn son of his first wife, a daughter of Keturah.

Tracking Firstborn Sons

How do we track Isaac’s first-born by his other wife? We must look for the hidden third son, which involves looking for linguistic similarity as in the case of Og, Magog and Gog. When we do this, we find three sons of Abraham: Yitzak (Isaac) by Sarah; Yishmael (Ishmael) by Hagar, and Yishbak (Ishbak) by Keturah. We note the parallel names and Yitz and Yish, which recall the 3-son confederations of the ancient Kushite rulers.

Yishbak the elder would have had a grandson name Yishbak. This younger Yishbak is the first-born of Isaac by a daughter of Yishbak. She named their first-born son Yishbak after her father, according to the naming prerogative of the cousin bride.

Yishbak’s name means he will leave, indicating that he was a sent-away son. He is likely one of the sons to whom Abraham gave gifts before sending them away to the east (Gen. 25:6). Yishbak’s descendants lived in the lands to the east of Canaan. Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch identified the name Ishbak with Iasbuk found on cuneiform inscriptions from a land whose king was allied with Sangara of Gargamis (Carchemish) against Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmaneser II (c. 859 B.C.). This Ishbak or Yisbak was likely a descendant of Abraham and Isaac.

It is fairly safe to conclude that Isaac had at least three sons and their names were: Jacob, Esau and Yishbak, the last being named by the cousin bride after her father, according to the cousin bride's naming prerogative. All three appear to have been rulers over their own territories.

Related reading: The Hebrew Hierarchy of Sons; The Hebrew Were a Caste; Terah's Two Wives; Moses' Two Wives; Three-Clan Confederations of the Bible; Hebrew Rulers with Two Wives

NOTE

This pattern is like that of the Kushite rulers. The Kushite ruler Piye united Nubia and Egypt and established the 25th Dynasty. Before his death, Piye divided his kingdom between his 3 first-born sons, whose names are linguistically similar. Sheba-qo ruled in Thebes, Shebit-qo ruled in Napata, and Ta-har-qo ruled in Memphis. Shebaqo revived the office of high priest, which he awarded to his son Hori-makhet who was high priest in Thebes.