The Gold of Ophir

Alice C. Linsley


The Bible names two sites from which massive amounts of gold were exported: Havilah and Ophir. Havilah was in Africa (Gen. 2:11) and Ophir was in southwest Arabia, probably Yemen (Biblical Sheba and Ramah). It appears that both mining regions were under Horite control. The peoples of the east African seaboard and Yemen have been linked by archaeologists.

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 from Khartoum. More than 55 grinding stones made of granite-like gneiss were found at the site. The ore was ground to recover the gold 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 oldest mines at Timnah are at least 6,000 years old and the patron of the miners was Hathor-Meri, the mother of Horus. Her totem was a cow and she is shown at Nile shrines holding her offspring in a manger.

In 1939, the American mining engineer Karl Twitchell led an exploration in southern Arabia where he discovered a mining site of several square miles. Arabs call the place Mahd adh Dhahab, "Cradle of Gold." Between 1934 and 1954, a British company extracted substantial amounts of gold from that site and also discovered fifty-five other ancient mines in the area.

In 1946 an inscribed pottery shard was found at Tell Qasile (Tel Aviv) dating to the eight century BC. The Paleo-Hebrew inscription says, "gold of Ophir for Beth-Horon [...] 30 shekels." This, and other such finds, confirm that gold was exported from Ophir and that it was connected to Horus, the Golden One.


The Horites and Gold

Gold was associated with the sun, the Creator's emblem and with Horus to whom the Horites were devoted.This meant that gold served as a symbol of Horite belief in Ra and Horus.

Horus the Golden

Every three years Solomon received tribute of gold, silver, sandalwood, precious stones, ivory, apes and baboons (some say peacocks) from Ophir. Solomon's navy traveled to Ophir, taking "four hundred and twenty talents of gold from there" (1 Kin. 9:26-28; 22:48; 2 Chr. 8:17-18; 9:10). This gold probably came from the Dedanite and Joktanite tribes of southern Arabia.

I Kings 10:18,19 tells of a great ivory throne with two lions standing beside the arm rests. Golden lions were a common motif found on royal thrones. Even today, the throne of the Coptic Pope retains this symbolism. Often the back of the ancient thrones was an ivory and gold inlay with an image of Horus the Golden.


Ophir of the Jokanites

Ophir is a variant of O-pir. The O-piru are known in biblical and extra-biblical texts as Ha-piru and Ha-biru. The English for Habiru is Hebrew. O-piru and Ha-biru are Horites. Even today Jews refer to their distinguished ancestors as Horim and the Joktanites refer to their distinguished ancestors as Houris.

The homeland of the Dedanites extended the length of the Red Sea to the northern boundary of Ophir. The word Dedan means red and is a cognate to the Egyptian didi (red fruit) and the Yoruba diden (red). The Dedanites probably had a reddish skin tone like their Horite kinsmen the Edomites (Gen. 36).

The homeland of the Joktanites includes Yemen and southern Arabia. Abraham's firstborn son was named Joktan (Yaqtan) after his maternal grandfather, Joktan the Elder.

Horites were dispersed throughout all of Arabia and served as priests at water shrines and shrine cities such as Hazor, Jerusalem and Petra. The Horites were devotees of Horus, after whom they take their name.


Horite Beliefs

The Horites believed that the "Seed" of God would be born of their blood because of a promise the Creator made to their Edenic forefathers (Gen. 3:15). They expected a woman of their Horite caste to be overshadowed by the Sun, the Creator's emblem, and to thereby conceive. This is why the wived of Horite ruler-priests word a solar image on their foreheads. The mark is called a tikla. From this Hindu women developed the custom of the bindi. Here we glimpse the solar imagery of the Proto-Gospel.

The oldest evidence of this is found on the mummy of Amunet, devotee of Hathor-Meri (2160-1994 BC). Hathor-Meri was the virgin mother of Horus. As Abraham and Sarah were Horites, it is likely that the mark on Sarah's forehead in the recent Bible mini-series was like that of Amunet. This mark on Sarah, their Horite beliefs, and the miraculous events surrounding Isaac's birth, suggest that Abraham may have believed Isaac to be the promised Seed.

Christians believed that the Edenic Promise has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Seed/Son of God. He alone fulfills the pattern of Horus, to whom the Horites were devoted.  Jesus' true identity was recognized, not in Jerusalem, but rather in Tyre (Matt. 15:21-28; Mark 7: 24). In Tyre, Jesus "could not pass unrecognized" because the Horus myth was still remembered there.

The rulers of Tyre were kinsmen of David and Solomon. King Hiram and David had a common Horite ancestry, as analysis of the Genesis king lists indicates. This Horite lineage can be traced back to Eden. Hiram (Huram /Horam) sent skilled artisans to help David build a palace in Jerusalem. Hiram is a variation of the names Hur or Hor and refers to Horus or HR in the Proto-Egyptian.

According to Midrashic tradition, Hur was Moses’ brother-in-law. Hur’s grandson was one of the builders of the Tabernacle. I Chronicles 4:4 lists Hur as the "father of Bethlehem", David's city. It was a Horite shrine long before it was taken by the Horite warrior Caleb. I Chronicles 2:51 gives Caleb's son Salma as the founder of Bethlehem. One of Caleb's grandsons was named Korah (I Chron. 2:43), which refers to the Horite priesthood. Moses' half-brother was Korah. The name means "shaved one" as Horite priests shaved their bodies before their time of service.

The Horites were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor-Meri who conceived miraculously by the overshadowing of the Sun. Horus is the archetype by which Abraham's descendants would recognize Jesus as the promised Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15). His authentication was His rising from the dead on the third day, in accordance with Horite expectation. Abraham's ancestors believed in the resurrection of the body and awaited a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death.



Related reading: Kushite Gold; The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Who Were the Horites?; The Shock of Mohammad Atta's Afterlife

How the Deuteronomist Changes the Genesis Narrative

The Joktanite clans of Southern Arabia
Among them were Horite Hebrew priests.

Alice C. Linsley

The whole canon is inspired and has been superintended by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is self-interpreting. We must use our God-given intelligence to sort through the material, context by context, to discover the various concerns of Biblical writers. For example, the Deuteronomist Historian seeks centralized worship at the Jerusalem temple, and the reshaping of the Passover and Tabernacles into national observances. This theological account does not align well with the historical, archaeological, and anthropological data concerning Abraham and his cattle-herding ancestors.

The Deuteronomist Historian is the final hand on the Genesis. This presence represents fundamentalism and iconoclasm and attempts to reshape Hebrew history. The book of Genesis contains information about Abraham and his ancestors who lived long before the Neo-Babylonian Period (about 700-300 BC), the period of the Deuteronomist Historian.  The DH stresses rejection of images, exclusive devotion to Yahweh, and obedience to his prophet Moses (Deut. 18:18; cf. Mark 6:125; Matt. 16:13-20; John 1:21).

Thankfully, this source preserved the King Lists in Genesis, by which another version of the history of Abraham's ancestors is told. These were the Nilo-Saharan and Saharo-Nubian cattle herding rulers who lived between the Nile and Lake Chad. Analysis of their marriage and ascendancy pattern reveals that Moses, Aaron and their half-brother Korah were Horite priests, as was their father Amram. The idea of Moses as a prophet is an anachronism.

From the Neo-Babylonian perspective, Genesis is about the people who dwelt in the Western Asian satrapy of Eber-Nahar which was comprised of Syria, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. Eber-Nahar or Eber ha-nahar means the "territory beyond the river." Eber as the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews is problematic since analysis of the Genesis king lists makes it clear that Eber is a descendant of both Ham and Shem and the father of both Afro-Arabians (the Joktanite clans of Southern Arabia) and Afro-Asians (the Mesopotamian clans of Peleg).

An overlooked effect of the Deuteronomist's perspective is that it cuts out of the picture the importance of the Arabians, especially the Horites of Edom (Gen. 36). The word "Hebrew" does not come from Eber, as is often reported. It comes from ha-biru and refers to an ancient priest caste that included Arabians. In fact, one of the oldest words for priest is "Korah" from which comes the Arabic word for priest which is Khouri or Hori, referring to the Horite priesthood.

Some Jews and some Arabs have Horite blood. Arab historians identify twenty Jewish clans living in Arabia, including two priestly lines. The priestly lines intermarried exclusively, with priests marrying the daughters of priests according to a fixed marriage and ascendancy pattern. This intermarriage began long before Jews can be identified as a distinct ethnic group. The ruling ancestors of Jews and Arabs intermarried so that the two groups are blood kin.

One of Moses' older brothers held the title "Korah" before Aaron was consecrated a priest. Korah relates to the practice of the Horite priests to shave in preparation for their terms of service in the temples. (See Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2007, p.37)

The Neo-Babylonian Empire had two main provinces: Eber-Nahar and Babylonia.The satrap of Eber-Nahar resided in Babylon and he was served by governors who lived in Eber-Nari. One of the local governors was Tettenai, who is mentioned in the Bible and in Akkadian cuneiform documents.

Genesis took shape under the Neo-Babylonian rulers. In other words, the story is told from the perspective of those who lived east of Arabia. This perspective does not recognize the traditions of the Arabians who were never Babylonian subjects. The Babylonians and Assyrians were not able to defeat the warriors of Arabia. Nor were the Greeks able to defeat the Nabataean warriors. The Greeks called them the Idumea, meaning red people. 

The Deuteronomist Historian shapes Genesis in a way that distorts the image, just as photo-shopping a portrait gives a false impression. Ignoring the Arabians in Genesis makes it appear that they have no place in Biblical history. Nothing could be farther from the truth! 

The Horite ruler-priests of Arabia are among the great rulers named in Genesis 1-12. Abraham spoke Proto-Arabic dialects. His firstborn son was Joktan, which is Yaktan in Arabic. Josephus knew him as Joctan and his name is preserved in the ancient town of Jectan near Mecca. The Joktanite clans of Arabia are related to Abraham, and are the descendants of his Afro-Arabian forefathers Ramah, The brother of Nimrod, and Kush's grandsons, Dedan and Sheba.

Genesis 10:7 indicates that the Dedanites are related to the Kushite ruler Dedan. Dedan means "red" and is a cognate to the Egyptian didi (red fruit) and the Yoruba diden (red). Here we are scratching the older pre-Babylonian layer of Genesis. Old Arabic texts provide the closest cognates to the older stratum, which is Afro-Arabian. Dedan is where the largest collection of the oldest Arabic texts have been found at the oases of Tema and Dedan in the Hijaz. Tema (Taima) lies about 70 miles north-east of Dedan. Tema, Dedan and Dumah were caravan stops along the trade route from Sheba to Babylon.

Red Nubians wearing feathers
(Ippolito Rosellini)

Red Nubians wearing feathers
(Dr. Arthur Brack)

These resemble the Nabataean warriors (shown below) with their feathers and long wavy hair.

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

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

Dedanite shares some features with Hebrew also. The final /a/ was represented by –h, as in Hebrew, so the bi-consonantal word Rama (rm) becomes a tri-consonantal word Ramah (rmh). In both Dedanite and Hebrew the final /u/ is replaced by –w.

Linguistic connections between the Proto-Saharan, Nilotic, Dedanite, and Dravidian languages adds to the evidence of the Kushite expansion out of Africa. An example is the correspondence between Dedanite, the Nilotic Manding, and the Dravidian first person singular pronouns. The first person singular pronoun in Dedanite is ‘n which corresponds to the Dravidian first person singular an and to the Manding na.

It has been noted also that the qiblahs in the oldest mosques in Cairo and in Baghdad point to Dedan, about 500 miles north-northwest of Mecca.


Related reading: Abraham's Firstborn Son; Abraham and Job: Horite Rulers; Petra Reflects Horite Beliefs; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion: The Shock of Mohammed Atta's Afterlife; The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; Understanding Violence in the Old Testament by Eric Jobe

Thamudic Scripts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Ethno-linguistic framework

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


REFERENCES

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The Sun and the Moon in Genesis

Alice C. Linsley

A total eclipse of the moon occurred on Tuesday, December 21, 2010 slowly turning the silver moon into a crimson disk. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth's tilt is such that it casts its shadow on the full moon and blocks the solar rays that reflect off the moon’s surface. This event also marked the winter solstice. It was the first total lunar eclipse to fall on a winter solstice in 372 years.

In the ancient world this celestial event would have been a portent. The principal "as in the heavens so on earth" is also part of the Christian worldview, though we usually don't consider this when we recite these words: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Solar and lunar eclipses occur in cycles known as the Saros, and this was known in antiquity by peoples who kept records over a long period. (Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. Brown University Press, p. 195)

For the ancient sky-watching priests, the eclipse of the moon was less significant than the eclipse of the sun because in their binary worldview the sun was regarded as superior to the moon. This was not an arbitrary preference for one over the other, but a description of reality since the sun gives light whereas the moon merely reflects the sun's light (refulgent). The sun's superiority is expressed in Genesis 1:16: "God made the two great lights: the greater to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night."

In ancient Egyptian symbolism, the right eye is the Eye of Ra the Creator and represents the sun. The left is the Eye of Thoth and represents the moon. Together they are the Eyes of Horus, but the left (moon) is weaker than the right (sun). This is consistent with the binary worldview of Abraham's Afro-Arabian people and suggests why Abraham's father was accused of idol worship in Joshua 24:2: “In olden times, your forefathers – Terah, father of Abraham and father of Nahor – lived beyond the Euphrates and worshiped other gods.”

The implication is that Terah, whose ancestors were Nilotic ruler-priests, fell into worshiping contrary to the tradition of his Horite Hebrew ancestors while living “beyond the Euphrates.” However, there is no evidence that Terah strayed from that tradition. The word "terah" refers to a Nilotic priest.

Abraham's Horite Hebew ancestors never worshiped the moon as a deity. To them, this was idolatry since the moon was regarded as the lesser celestial power.

The Horite Hebrew worldview was binary, unlike Asian dualism. Within this binary framework there is consideration of the heavenly and hidden Third, so the angelic Three appear to Abraham at the time of his visitation in Mamre. A shrine to the Three God was located at Baal Shalisha. Among the Horite Hebrew of ancient Mesopotamia the Three God was understood as God Father (Anu), God Son (Enki) and God Spirit (Enlil).

In the binary worldview the sun and the moon were male and female. This is why the male rulers of ancient Egypt appeared with darkened skin, but their queens appeared with whitened skin (as shown in these images).

The sun's rays were thought to inseminate the earth over which the sun has dominion. The moon was associated with feminine virtues as the sun's companion. Like a great queen of old, it reflects the ruler's glory. Ancient peoples recognized that the moon influences the woman's monthly cycle.

In the Song of Songs, there is possibly a gender reversal, suggesting a sacred mystery. The royal female is described as dark "as the tents of Kedar".  This was not the normal custom for the Horite Hebrew ruler-priest caste, and in 6:10 she is described as "fair as the moon."

The ancient Horite Hebrew were great observers of the celestial bodies. This was part of their work. Plato reported that the ancient Nilotes had been recording celestial events for 10,000 years.

They imagined a great battle in the heavens between the Light and the Dark. They viewed the Milky Way as the celestial path to immortality. This is why their rulers were buried with scarabs. The scarab is a stylized dung beetle, a creature that navigates at night by the Milky Way.

They believed that the Light is victorious, just as the sun is the greater light (Gen. 1). Solar eclipses were perceived as moments of combat, but Horus, the son of God, was believed to be the victor.

Temple architecture of ancient Egypt provides evidence that Egyptians observed solar eclipses over 4,500 years ago. The Zodiac of Dendera shows two disks in the constellation of Pisces. One is the moon and the other disk contains the Wadjet or Eye of Horus decorated with the markings of the eyes of a falcon, the totem of Horus. When the right eye is shown it indicates a solar eclipse.

David Smith explains that "a nearly total solar eclipse occurred on a date corresponding very closely to the actual depiction of the positions of the planets in the constellations and the position of the disk containing the Wadjet eye in 51 B.C. This symbolism reminds us of the myth of Horus losing an eye in his fight with Set and raises the possibility that this may have had its origins in a very early observation of a solar eclipse." (David G. Smith, Total solar eclipses in Ancient Egypt)

The solar eclipse also is portrayed in the ancient Egyptian myth of Apophis, the cosmic water serpent who attacks the Creator's solar boat in an attempt to devour it.  In ancient Egyptian mythology, Horus is victorious over the enemies of his Father.

The oldest known Messianic texts are not found in the Bible. However, the Bible alludes to them. In Genesis 3:15 where we are told that the divine Seed will trample the enemy, a Messianic reference. Psalm 110:1 alluded to the same: The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”

This expectation was expressed in the Pyramid Texts about 1000 years before the Psalm. "Horus has shattered (tbb, crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot (tbw)" Utterance 388

Some will argue that this has nothing to do with the Seed of God who was born of Mary. Jesus himself claims to be the Seed when he told his disciples that he was going to Jerusalem to die.

"The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernal of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:23)

Among the ancient Horite Hebrew the sun was the emblem of the Creator and it was believed to inseminate by overshadowing. When Mary asked the angel how she as a virgin would conceive (virginal conception), Gabriel told her:

"The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

Biblical archaeologists have recognized for years that the ancient Horite Hebrew (Abraham's people) regarded the sun as The High God's emblem. They believed that the Moon was the lesser light and, though there was veneration for the Moon as a reflection of God's glory, the Sun was the most sacred symbol. (Read about that here.)

In ancient Horite Hebrew theology the Creator and his Son Horus were worshiped, and Hathor, the mother of Horus, was venerated much as the Virgin Mary is venerated today in Christianity.


Related reading: The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Roles Reversed in the Song of Songs?; A Tent for the Sun; The Solar Imagery of the Proto-Gospel; Two Powers in Heaven

Genesis 1 Sets the Scene

Genesis looks at what the culture around it believes about the nature of the material world, and disagrees with it profoundly. -- Jane Williams


Genesis 1 and 2 must be among the most hotly debated texts in the Bible. But our obsession with whether and how they can be reconciled with scientific descriptions of the beginning of the universe is distorting our understanding of where these "creation narratives" fit into the wider concerns of the Book of Genesis. In its printed form, Genesis has 50 chapters, only one and a bit of which directly concern the origins of the universe. They are there to set the scene for what follows.

Genesis is, from beginning to end, a theological book. It opens with God, "the beginning", and everything that follows is based on this assumption of the relationship between God and the world. So when we get on to the main action of Genesis, with God's conversations with Abraham and his descendents, we know that what is happening is not just of local significance. The God who calls Abraham is the one we have just seen, making the world, so we know that Abraham's story is one about the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Read it all here.

This is an interesting article, though it contains nothing controversial or new.  Williams asserts that Genesis presents a view of the material world unlike the cultures around it. The first question one might ask is "Cultures around whom?" It is meaningless to speak of cultures around a text.  It would be more meaningful to ask "What culture produced this text?"

The second question to ask is this: "If the Genesis creation stories are akin to the Gilgamesh Epic, then in what way do they represent a worldview different from the culture that produced the Gilgamesh Epic?"

In fact, the Genesis creation stories have much closer affinity to the creation stories of the part of Africa from which Abraham's ancestors came. This is evident in motif and in theological detail. We might more accurately speak of these as Afro-Arabian narratives since Abraham's ancestors were Nilotic and spread across the Arabian Peninsula. This is why the Genesis creation stories have close affinity to the creation stories of the Nilotic peoples.


Related reading:  The Genesis Creation Stories; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Afro-Arabian Number Symbolism

The Afro-Arabian Dedanites

The oldest mosques in Egypt and Baghdad were oriented to Dedan, not Mecca.

Alice C. Linsley

Islam claims that Mecca has always been the sacred center of that faith system. Yet the mosque build by Mohammad in Medina was aligned to Jerusalem. Later the alignment changed to Mecca.

The qiblahs in the oldest mosques in Cairo and in Baghdad point to Dedan, about 500 miles north-northwest of Mecca. This is also where the oldest Arabic scripts have been found. The script is sometimes called "Dedanite" after the location of the trove of archaic Arabic documents. The highest concentration of Old Arabic texts has been found in the region of Dedan (shown on the map on the right side of the Dead Sea across from the word Ham.)

Dedan was home to an industrious Afro-Arabian people who had close association with the Joktanite clans of Arabia and the peoples of Raamah, Sheba, Ophir, and Kush.

The Dedanites were famous as traders and caravan merchants. The regions where they did business were rich in gold, copper, onyx, and fragrant resins used for making incense and perfumes.

Isaiah 21:13 speaks of the "caravans of Dedanites" and Ezekiel 27:20 speaks of Dedan as supplying Tyre with precious things. They traded in spice, ivory, incense, and textiles with lands as distant as India, Cambodia and China. They probably also traded in horses which were bred in Sheba. They traded in copper from the 4000 B.C. mines in the Air region of Niger where there are rock drawings of chariots, evidence of early copper smelting, and copper weapons.

The Joktanite clans are related to the Dedanites and to Abraham's Horite Hebrew clans. Joktan is the name of Abraham's first born son by his cousin wife, Keturah. In Hebrew Keturah (qeṭûrâh) refers to incense. Keturah resided in Beersheba, at the southern boundary of Abraham's territory in Edom. This was a stop of the incense road that the Dedanites traveled.

Genesis 10:7 tell us that Dedan the Elder was a grandson of Kush by his son Raamah. Raamah was Nimrod's brother. Raamah settled in the region to the southeast of Dedan while Nimrod built a kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley. Genesis reveals a kinship connection between the Afro-Arabian Dedanites and the Afro-Asiatic Arameans. The separation of the two groups in the time of Peleg and Joktan was territorial only, as the ruling lines continued to intermarry.

Dedan the Younger was the son of Abraham's first-born son Joktan (Gen. 25:3). Most Arabs are descended from Abraham through Joktan. He is remembered by Arabs as Yaqtan. Josephus knew him as Joctan and his name is preserved in the ancient town of Jectan near Mecca.

Related reading: The Gold of Ophir; Kushite Gold; Peleg: Time of Division; Biblical Sheba and East African Settlements Linked; Who Were the Kushites?; Afro-Asiatic Metal Workers; Was Keturah Abraham's Wife?

Alignment of the Oldest Mosques

Alice C. Linsley

The prayer alignment of some 200 mosques is not to the Ka'bah in Mecca. Neither do the original prayer orientation of the oldest mosques in Cairo, Baghdad and Wasit. They triangulate to a single point a little north of Dedan, probably Al-`Ula, one of several important ancient Afro-Arabian sites that were shrines in ancient times. Another is Al-Hijr, to the northwest of Al-Ula.  Al-Hijr which was earlier simply HR, a reference to Horus, the "son" of the Creator born to Hathor. Hathor was the patroness of the metal workers among Abraham's Horite people. Incense was supplied to these ancient shrines in ka-Hr-ka-jars, that is royal jars consecrated to Horus by Horite priests.

Al-Hijr is in northern Saudi Arabia, about 1400 km to the north of Riyadh. It is called "Mada'in Saleh" and is considered one of the oldest settlements in the Saudi Arabia. Mada'in Saleh was recognized by the UNESCO as a site of patrimony, the first world heritage site in Saudi Arabia.

The people of these ancient settlements spoke languages identified as Thamudic. Within this group three dialects have been identified by linguists: Thamudic B, C and D. These were spoken at Petra and are mentioned several times in the Quran along with prophet Saleh.

The oldest mosque in Egypt is Fustat in Cairo. It dates to the reign of Qurra b. Shira between 709-714 A.D. The oldest mosque in Saudi Arabia is Quba Mosque. It was rebuilt in the 1980's.

All mosques have a niche called a "qiblah" which shows the direction of prayer. The older mosques are aligned with a point north of Mecca but south of Jerusalem. If early mosques were aligned toward northern Arabia or Jerusalem, a qiblah facing the Ka'bah represents a later development. (Source: BBC News)

The qiblahs of the oldest mosques in Mecca, Iraq and Egypt do not align with Mecca. Instead they align to the region of Dedan, home of some of Abraham's Horite ancestors. Abraham's Horite people spoke languages in the North Arabian group (sometimes called "Dispersed Oasis North Arabian"). Abraham's ancestors controlled this area and spread their religious beliefs along the water ways, expanding their influence across the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Abraham's six sons by Keturah are the founders of the Joktanite clans who dwell in the region of Mecca and Southern Arabia.

The ancient Afro-Arabians included the clans of Joktan and Yishbak, Abraham's sons by Keturah and the clans of Yishmael the Egyptian, Abraham's son by his concubine Hagar. The Afro-Asiatic Arameans became linguistically distinct in the time of Peleg and his brother Joktan the Younger. However, the ruling lines of the Afro-Arabians and the Arameans continued to intermarry exclusively according to the marriage and ascendency pattern of the ancient Horites.

Mount Ithlib (map) is located to the north-east of Al-Hijr. It was a Horite shrine later dedicated to the Nabatean deity Dushara. Đū Shará (Arabic: ذو شرى‎) means "Lord of the Mountain." It is transliterated as "Du-sares." The Lord of the Mountain was worshipped by the Nabataeans at Petra and Madain Saleh. The Dushara sanctuary at Petra contained a great temple in which a large cubical stone (Ka'ba) was the centrepiece. Ka-Ba is an Egyptian word that refers to the body-soul.

Abraham's Horite ancestors controlled this part of Arabia. The Nabateans appear to be descendants of the Horites. Keturah and Abraham were the progenitors of the Joktanite clans of Arabia who still reside in this region.

The three mosques under consideration reflect a late development over a very ancient earlier religion. The Wasit Mosque (built 705 A.D.) and the Kufa Mosque (built about 698 A.D.) align to a point in northwest Arabia, not to Mecca. According to Islamic tradition, Mohammad's household taught that Kufa Mosque was founded by Adam. Another tradition states that it was built by the angels in accordance with Gabriel's revelation to Prophet Muhammad. No other narrator of Islamic tradition has referred to this however.

Related reading:  The Ra-Horus-Hathor Narrative; Hittite Religion; The Dedanites and the Edomites Intermarried; The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; Who Were the Horites?; Peleg: Time of Division