Abraham's Horite Hebrew Ancestors

This diagram shows how the Hebrew lines of Ham and Shem intermarried. Note also that Nimrod's wife named her first born son Asshur, after her father, indicating that she was his cousin bride. This is called the "cousin bride's naming prerogative."


Alice C. Linsley


Abraham is a pivotal figure in the Bible. He is the father of many peoples, the icon of faith, and a sent away son to whom God delivered a kingdom.The Bible designates Abraham a Hebrew, but clearly he was not the first.

"Hebrew" is the English form of an ancient word Habiru, or Hapiru, or 'Apiru. The words Habiru and 'Apiru are found in Akkadian cuneiform texts before Abraham's time. The corresponding word in the Egyptian is pr - house or temple; pr-nfr - good house or house of rejuvenation; pr pn - this house, and prw - houses (cf. Dravidian Opiru - Sun House, shrine, or temple; Ugaritic upr - house; an pero - house, royal granary in the Apatani language of Pradesh, India).

After Abraham's time, the Harris Papyrus speaks of the 'Apriu of Re at Heliopolis (biblical On). Jacob's son Joseph married into this Horite Hebrew line.

The number seven was a sacred number for the Habiru and there may be a connection to the Nilotic Luo word for seven, which is abiriyo. 

The Horite Hebrew of Nekhen offered salutations to the rising Sun at their Sun piru/house. The Arabic yakburu means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru which means "he is enlarging." The Arabic expresses a linguistic relationship between the house/temple and the rising Sun.

The anthropological evidence suggests that the Hebrew were caste of priests who served the archaic kingdom builders, like the Kushite ruler Nimrod (Gen. 10). They served in the royal temples and shrines, held strictly to moral codes similar to the Decalogue, maintained ritual purity, practiced circumcision, and animal sacrifice on stone altars.

The Hebrew priest lines intermarried (endogamy). This preserved their blood lines and guarded their secrets. They were skilled in astronomy, medicine, stone work, metal work, and funerary practices such as mummification.

Before Abraham's time, the Hebrew priests had dispersed in the service of kingdom builders. The data of Genesis 4-12 presents the dispersion of the early kingdom builders out of Africa. Nimrod, an ancestor of Abraham, is an example. Genesis 10 tells us that he was a Kushite kingdom builder. The religion observed in the territories of the Kushite rulers would have been the religion of their ancestors, their Horim. Most, if not all, the dispersed Kushite rulers had Horite Hebrew in their service. The Horite Hebrew were a very prestigious ruler-priest caste. Thus, it appears that the ancient Horim/Horites were the first missionaries of the Messianic Faith. This happens thousands of years after the Earth was already populated, just as Messiah's appearing comes thousands of years after the earliest Messianic expectation. Apparently, the Eternal One does not rush matters.

The High God is sometimes shown with horns and a solar halo in images found from the Nile to the Kushan territories and as far as Northwestern France and Ireland.

Among the biblical Horite Hebrew the archetype of Messiah was Horus or Enki, the son of God who was said to rise from the dead on the third day.

Among the Celts he was recast as Crom Dubh, and among the Serbs as Hromi Daba or Hrom Div. He was regarded as the "Giving God."

Etruscan image, 520 BC

At Nile shrines Horus appears as man with a falcon's head. His mother,Hathor, wears the long horns of the bull in the shape of a Y that cradles the Sun. This Y shape is a solar cradle indicating divine appointment. The Canaanite Y designates a Horite Hebrew ruler. Note that many names have the initial Y. Some examples include Yaqtan (Joktan), Yacob (Jacob), Yistzak (Isaac),Yosef (Joseph) Yetro (Jethro), Yishai (Jesse), and Yeshua (Joshua/Jesus). The Y was a solar cradle that indicated a Horite Hebrew ruler-priest in Canaan.

Sargon I is said to have been of a virgin queen who was overshadowed by the High God. He was born in an O-piru. His home city was called Azu-piranu, meaning "House of the God Anu" In Akkadian, the High God was called Anu  and his so was called Enki.

Here is a sign post pointing to the origins of Messianic expectation, concerning the divine appointment of a virgin who is to bring forth the "seed" of God (Gen. 3:15). We recall the angel Gabriel's reply to Mary's question, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" The angel explained, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore the Holy One which shall be born of thee shall be called the "Son of God." (Luke 1:34, 35)

The image of Hathor shows her overshadowed by the Sun. The Sun rests in the horns of a cow, a solar cradle (Y). An ancient Egyptian ritual involved placing a male baby before the image of Hathor and the priests placed gifts before the "divine son."

Hathor overshadowed

The cultural context of the Horite Hebrew in Canaan is Kushite. "Kushite" is a general term for people who lived in the region of Kush along the Nile between about 2000 BC and 500 BC. Before the time of the Kushites.

The Kushite king Menes was the first to unite the Upper and Lower Nile and the Kushite influence is seen on the earliest dynasties of Egypt.

Abraham's Horim

Abraham's ruler-priest ancestors are listed in Genesis 4, 5, 11 and 36. Apparently, they had a distinctive reddish (ruddy) skin tone. They are called Horites in Genesis 36 because they were devotees of Horus, who was regarded as the "son" of the Creator.

The oldest known center of Horite Hebrew worship is Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) on the Nile. Votive offerings at the Nekhen temple were ten times larger than the normal mace heads and bowls found elsewhere, suggesting that this was a very prestigious shrine. Horite priests placed invocations to Horus at the summit of the fortress as the sun rose. This is the origin of the morning ritual of devout Hindus (Agnihotra) and the Jewish Sun Blessing ritual (Birkat Hachama) that is performed every 28 years.

The Kushite peoples are descendants of Kush and Kush's sons Ramah and Nimrod. Kush is listed in Genesis 10 as one of Noah's grandsons. Kush was the father of Nimrod.

About 5200 years ago, Nimrod established a kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. His name is of Nilotic origin, and he was a Kushite kingdom builder.The language of his kingdom was Akkadian and it shares roots with the languages of the biblical populations of the Nile, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia.

Nimrod married a patrilineal cousin, the daughter of Asshur, and she named their first born son after her father. This is consistent with the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Horite Hebrew rulers.

Here is an image of an ancient image of a priest from the Upper Nile. Priests were called "tera" and Abraham's father held this title (Gen. 11:24-28). 

Abraham's Annu ancestors knew the holy Name YHWH. Moses knew that Name because his father Amram was Horite Habiru and Moses' half-sister wife was Kushite.

Genesis 6 speaks of "the mighty men of old," the earliest kingdom builders who constructed cities, temples, and fortified high places. They controlled commerce on the major water systems of the ancient world. They migrated out of the Upper Nile Valley in different directions, and they were served by a prestigious caste of Horite Hebrew priests.

Migrations out of the Upper Nile traced genetically 

DNA evidence confirms the Kushite migration out of the Nile Valley. There were many migrations out of Africa. The first took place about 120,000 years ago and the second about 70,000 years ago. About 18,000 years ago the distinction between R1 and R1b was evident.

About 70% of men in Britain, Scotland and Ireland are in Haplogroup R1b.  The most recent expansion out of Africa is the Kushite expansion about 5500 years ago. This appears to have spread the Horite Hebrew religion and carried the Messianic expectation to distant lands.

Related reading: Why Cows Were Sacred in the Ancient World; The Nubian Context of YHWY; Solar Imagery of the Proto-Gospel; Kushite Kings and the Kingdom of God; The Migration of Abraham's Ancestors; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; Who Was Abraham?

Racism of Young-Earth Creationists

Alice C. Linsley

At the back of Young Earth Creationist books such as Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth by Terry Mortenson one finds the 12 Affirmations and Denials. Affirmation XII claims that the diversity of languages and skin color came about as a result of divine judgment at the Tower of Babel.

XII. We affirm that all people living and dead are descended from Adam and Eve...and that the various people groups (with their various languages, cultures, and distinctive physical characteristics, including skin color) arose as a result of God's supernatural judgment at the Tower of Babel..."

This is the easiest of the Young Earth Creationist claims to refute since the evidence of many languages and skin colors before the time of the Tower of Babel is overwhelming and cannot be denied by reasonable persons. The spread of the early written marks is an example. Other examples involve the dispersion of peoples out of Africa and studies of phoneme variance among them. A recent phoneme study has identified the Nile Valley as the point of origin of modern languages. These dispersed peoples had a range of skin color and languages and they were already widely dispersed before the time of Noah and his 3 sons.

Tera means priest in the ancient Egyptian (and in Japan). Abraham's father was Terah (Tera). This is a title, as is evident from the Petrie image above which gives tera-neter as "one devoted to God." Tera is a title associated with the Ainu, the builders of the shrine city of On (Heliopolis) on the Nile. The Harris papyrus speaks of 'apiru (Hebrew) of Re at Heliopolis. Joseph married into this royal priest line when he took Asenath as his wife. She was a daughter of the priest of On, also known as Iunu, meaning "place of pillars."

The Horite priests of Heliopolis were known for their meticulous devotion to the Creator and his son, and for their sobriety and purity of life. Plutarch wrote that the “priests of the Sun at Heliopolis never carry wine into their temples, for they regard it as indecent for those who are devoted to the service of any god to indulge in the drinking of wine whilst they are under the immediate inspection of their Lord and King. The priests of the other deities are not so scrupulous in this respect, for they use it, though sparingly.” 

The Nilotic Ainu had a reddish-brown skin tone and their elders wore beards, moustaches and caps with frontal knobs, just as do the Ainu elders of Japan and Eastern Canada. The Ainu spread from the Nile to Japan and to Northeastern Canada via Scandinavia. In Canada they are known as the Micmaq. They came in two waves from the Middle East to Scandinavia, then to Greenland and to the Hudson Bay area of Eastern Canada. They are in haplogroup X2b5, which is traced by maternal line and dates to about 1,550 B.C.

There is evidence that the early written signs of the Nilotic Ainu may have become the basis for the Ainu script of Japan. It is perhaps the most lasting heritage of the Ainu of whom only about 300 pure-blooded remain. This explains why the Hebrew and Japanese alphabets are so similar.

Migrations Out of Africa

The negrito Andaman and Nicobar Islanders migrated between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago from Africa and Arabia along the coastlines, and eventually crossing the seas.  The Onges and Jarawas of Andaman and Nicobar belong to Haplotype D, a subtype of Haplogroup C, which is also common in Tibet and Japan. The Ainu aboriginal people of Japan are in haplotype D (Y-chromosome) and haplogroup X (mitochondrial chromosome).

Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, found stone tools at Jwalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India that were remarkably similar to those found in the African Middle Stone Age about 100,000 years ago. He states, “Whoever was living in India was doing things identical to modern humans living in Africa.”

Thomas Strasser and his team found hundreds of tools of African origin on Crete dating to between 100,000 and 130,000 years. Others have been found on the Iranian plateaus. Ancient African artifacts have even been found in China. There is considerable tool and pottery evidence indicating prehistoric movements out of the Nile Valley.

The 20,000 year old human skeletons found at Lake Mungo in New South Wales are likely descendants of early peoples who migrated from Africa, if we follow the red ochre trail. The Lake Mungo population buried its rulers in red ochre, derived from hematite (Fe2O3). This appears to have been a common practices among ancient peoples who dispersed out of Africa. The earliest known use of red ochre powder (300,000 years) is at the site GnJh-03 in the Kapthurin Formation of East Africa, and at Twin Rivers in Zambia.

The Kushite movement out of the Nile Valley is a more recent exodus. The Kushites went as far east as the Philippine Islands. (See Kushites in Mindanao.)


The Proto-Saharans (ca. 10,000-3000 BC)

Between 10,000-3000 years ago the Sahara was much wetter. Seasonal rainfall turned the Sahara into a fertile savannah with sedentary populations. The oldest known cemetery in the Sahara (ca. 7500 B.C.) reveals "The burial density, tool kit, ceramics, and midden fauna suggest a largely sedentary population with a subsistence economy based on fishing and on hunting of a range of savanna vertebrates." The discovery was made by National Geographic photographer Mike Hettwer in 2000.

Proto-Saharan peoples fished and hunted. Ancient Sudan rock paintings show fishing nets. The much older Khormusan sites of ancient Nubia (65,000 and 55,000 years) also reveal evidence of fishing and hunting.

The Proto-Saharans navigated the interconnected rivers which were their highways and trade routes. Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger had rivers and lakes that connected to major water systems that are identifiable today, such as the Niger, the Benue, Lake Chad and the Nile. The 8000 year old Dufuna boat, a fishing dugout, was found buried in the Sahara.

The cave paintings at Gilf Kebir in the Sahara date to about 6000 BC. At that time a sizeable community lived on this vast sandstone plateau near the Egyptian-Libyan border, about 400 miles from the Nile.

The Proto-Saharans raised cattle in the Lake Chad region which was a much larger lake. They venerated cattle and left behind engravings of bulls and cows with solar disc between their horns. This image was associated with Hathor, the Virgin Queen whose son was Horus. They built the oldest known fortress city dedicated to Horus and Hathor at Nekhen (4000 BC). At archaeologists have discovered a temple, elaborate burial sites, and evidence of animal sacrifice. The rulers of Nekhen had access to sub-Saharan mineral resources of the eastern desert. The high quality of the gold work at Nekhen is evidenced by the discovery of this gold plumed falcon representing Horus.

Proto-Saharan peoples moved into the Nile Valley as the Sahara began to dry. Some would later be called "Kushites." Some crossed the Indian Ocean from East Africa and settled in southern India. These are the Dravidians. There is a close linguistic and religious connection between the Kushites and the Dravidians. The Africanist Geoffrey Parrinder has noted that at least twenty-five tribes in East Africa worship Murungu as the Supreme God, and like the Dravidian god Murugan, the African Murungu self-reveals on sacred mountains.


The Kushite Expansion (ca. 3500-1500 BC)

Genetic research indicates that the term "Kushite" embraces a wide range of peoples. Some of Abraham's ancestors came out of the Nile Valley and are referred to as Kushites in Genesis 10:6-12. Kushite in the Bible refers to the descendants of Noah by his grandson Kush. However, the term includes many people of different skin tones and languages. The Amratian "Kushites" lived about 4000-3500 BC, before the time of Noah.

The Kushites included red and black Nubians, reddish Ainu, red, white and black Canaanites, red, black and yellow Nilotes, red-brown, light brown, black and yellow Egyptians, red-brown and black Sudra, and red, white and brown Mesopotamians. The variety of skin tones is evident on ancient monument paintings in Egypt, Sudan and in the Middle East and Turkey.

Red and black Nubian captives
(Detail from Ippolito Rosellini's drawing from the 1828 Franco-Tuscan expedition to Egypt)

Genesis 10 speaks of the migration of the Kushites into Mesopotamia. The Kushite migration has been confirmed by DNA studies. The Kushites were great pyramid builders and the ziggurats were a type of stepped pyramid similar to that of Djoser at Saqqara constructed between 2667–2648 BC. No pyramids had yet been built in Sumer/Kish. The ziggurats date to the Akkadian period, about 2334–2218 BC. The earliest monarch of Sumer whose historical existence has been independently attested through archaeological inscription ruled Kish about 2700–2600 BC.

Amenhotep III ruled between about 1382 and 1350 B.C. His name means "peace of Amen" and indicates a date when Amen, a name for God was favored over the name Set, which was favored in the Delta. It was during the 18th dynasty that the title 'King's Son of Kush' was first used. The earlier known Kushite ruler was called Kashta which means "The Throne of Kush." This is about 1000 years after the construction of ziggurats, so the Kushite expansion out of Africa is one of the most recent movements out of Africa.

The Kushite expansion out of the Nile Valley is one of the later migrations out of Africa, between about 3500 and 1500 B.C. The Kushites represent a highly organized people, consisting of numerous clans and castes. Their rulers controlled the major water systems and founded early mining industries along the Nile and in southern Israel. Nimrod was a Kushite kingdom builder. He and his brother Ramah were the sons of Kush (Gen. 10:6-12).

The Biblical term "Kushite" refers to peoples, castes and specific culture traits that emerged from the archaic Proto-Saharans. This would include Canaanites, Hittites, Sumerians, Elamites, and the Horite Hebrew/Habiru. Among these peoples there was a wide range of skin color and a great diversity of languages. To this day, the greatest linguistic and genetic diversity exists in Africa, from which the ancestors of these peoples spread along the coastlines and by sea around 70,000 years ago.

Linguistic Diversity

There are hundreds of language families in the world. Each subdivides into hundreds of languages, dialects and sub-dialects. The most diverse of the language groups is the oldest group, the Afro-Asiatic language family. This includes Chadic, Kushitic, Ugaritic, Elamite, Semitic, Hausa, Amharic, Ethiopic, Magyar, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Babylonian, etc. There is also a linguistic connection to Dravidian and Yoruba.

All the peoples and rulers mentioned in Genesis 10 can be placed linguistically within this language family. The Bible is their story. It tells how God fulfilled the promise of the Son that was made to their ancestors in Eden (Gen. 3:15). These peoples exhibit a range of physical features so that it is impossible to speak of a "race" - a term that does not appear in the Bible. It is ignorant and groundless to assert that skin color is the result of God's judgment.

I agree with Dr. Joshua Zorn, a former young-earth creationist, who said: "The worst aspect of YECS teaching is that it creates a nearly insurmountable barrier between the educated world and the church."

Related reading: Bishop Ussher's Flawed Timeline; The Begats Speak of the First people on Earth?; The Tower of Babel; The Red-City of Petra Reflects Horite Beliefs; The Nile and Tigris Linguistically Connected; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; Moses' Horite Family; Nilotic Cattle Herders; Genesis as History?

More East Africa-Asia Connections

Alice C. Linsley

The peoples and languages of Madagascar, Borneo, and Sulawesi in Indonesia appear to have linguistic connections to populations in East Africa. The African–Indonesian connections have been confirmed by numerous genetic, linguistic, ethnographic and archaeological studies. The connections indicate migration and mixing of populations across the Indian Ocean, called "an Afro-Asiatic Mediterranean" in this study. The seasonal monsoon winds made movement and trade possible across great distances with boats hopping from island to island.

Findings published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, show that half of the genetic lineages of Madagascar derive from settlers from Borneo to the east, and the other half from East Africa. Archaeological evidence indicates that people were moving in and out of East Africa, Madagascar, Borneo and Sulawesi well before 1200 years ago. Evidently some travelers settled in these islands and contributed to the genetic makeup of their populations.

Young worker in Madagascar

According to Dr Matthew Hurles, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the language of Madagascar, called Malagasy, has its closest linguistic relative in the Ma'anyan language of southern Borneo.

Malagasy peoples have a 50:50 Indonesian and East African ancestry. A team, from Cambridge, Oxford and Leicester, used Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA to test how similar the Malagasy were to populations around the Indian Ocean. The set of non-African Y chromosomes found in the Malagasy was much more similar to the set of lineages found in Borneo than in any other population. A 'Centre of Gravity' was estimated for every mitochondrial DNA to suggest a likely geographical origin for each.

"The Centres of Gravity fell in the islands of southeast Asia or in sub-Saharan Africa," explained Dr Peter Forster, from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, one of the co-authors. "The evidence from these two independent bits of DNA supports the linguistic evidence in suggesting that a migrating population made their way 4500 miles across the Indian Ocean from Borneo." Read more here.

Sulawesians and Madagascans exhibit the same range of physical appearance, including African, Arabian, Indian, Indonesian and Chinese. They may be genetically related to the Dravidians, if the linguistic connections have a biological basis. Sulawe appears to be related to ancient Egyptian, Dravidian, and East African words for rice.

The term "Sulawesi" might be related to written rice records. If those who were moving from island to island were merchants, they would have recorded their transactions. Sulawe resembles the Egyptian word for writing ssw; and the Mande sewe; and the Dravidian ha-verasu (referring to written record of rice sales).

Linguistic connections are further evident in term for slash and burn cultivation used in Sulawesi and East Africa. The word trematrema is used in Northeast Betsimisaraa to refer to a one-to-three-year old slashed-and-burnt field. It is related to the Swahili word tema, ‘to cut’, and the redoubled form tematema, ‘to slash, to chop. This technique is used also by Sulawesians who practice "dry rice" planting.

Rice grain formed the basis of weight measurement from East Africa to Sulawesi. On Madagascar, the weight of one grain of rice is called vary and corresponds to the Swahili wari and to the Dravidian verasu. The Hebrew word for rice is orez and Arabic ruz and these share the RZ root with Dravidian. The Dravidian word reflects the written records of commercial weights.

There are two species of cultivated rice in the world: African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and Asian rice (Oryza sativa). African rice was domesticated from the wild ancestor Oryza barthii (Oryza brevilugata) by peoples living in the Benue-Niger floodplain about 3,000 years ago. The two strains of Asian rice are Oryza japonica and Oryza indica, identified with Japan and India.

Rice terraces in Madagascar

A Royal Society report edited by Murray P. Cox states, "The settlement of Madagascar is one of the most unusual, and least understood, episodes in human prehistory. Madagascar was one of the last landmasses to be reached by people, and despite the island's location just off the east coast of Africa, evidence from genetics, language and culture all attests that it was settled jointly by Africans, and more surprisingly, Indonesians. Nevertheless, extremely little is known about the settlement process itself. Here, we report broad geographical screening of Malagasy and Indonesian genetic variation, from which we infer a statistically robust coalescent model of the island's initial settlement. Maximum-likelihood estimates favour a scenario in which Madagascar was settled approximately 1200 years ago by a very small group of women (approx. 30), most of Indonesian descent (approx. 93%). This highly restricted founding population raises the possibility that Madagascar was settled not as a large-scale planned colonization event from Indonesia, but rather through a small, perhaps even unintended, transoceanic crossing."

Recently rock paintings dating to about 40,000 years have been found in caves at Maros in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Other migrations out of the Nile Valley

The Nilotic Ainu also crossed great distances arriving in Northern Japan and continuing on to the Marianas which had human settlements 3,500 years ago. These long-distance migrations involved crossing the Indian Ocean. The Ainu, in mtDNA haplogroup X, also traveled overland to Finland, as shown in the chart below.

The Canadian Ainu (Micmac) report that their ancestors came to Canada via Finland, Greenland and Labrador.

Related reading:  The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; Coin Confirms Medieval China-East Africa Trade; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors

Phoneme Study Pinpoints Origin of Modern Languages

Alice C. Linsley

Scientists agree that the point of origin of modern humans is Africa. Evidence in support of this theory is found in DNA studies, climate studies, and linguistics.

As early as 200,000 years ago humans began to move out of Africa. Another major movement came around 120,000 years ago. Subsequent movements happened between 80,000 and 70,000 years ago, and between 20,000-10,000 years ago. This last period involved Proto-Saharan Sumerians, Nilotes and Kushites. The most recent migration took place around 6000 years ago.

Genetic research indicates a common African ancestor for the Chinese about 80,000 years ago.

Quentin Atkinson of Auckland University in New Zealand believes that the point of origin of modern languages is somewhere in the southwest of Africa (the region of the Khoisan). The 2011 report, which appeared in Science, caused something of a sensation. Michael Cysouw published a commentary in Science which argues that this neat "Out-of-Africa" hypothesis for the origin of language is not adequately supported by the data presented. Atkinson's phoneme study can only be traced to about 10,000 years ago.

According to this theory, the phonemic complexity decreased as human populations dispersed farther from their point of origin in Africa. As can be seen in the map above, the further away from Africa a language is spoken, the fewer distinct phonemes it has.

Dr Atkinson believes that every language in the world developed from a prehistoric 'mother tongue' first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

• 500 languages traced back to Stone Age dialect
• The further away from Africa a language is spoken, the fewer distinct sounds it has
• English has around 46 sounds, while the San bushmen of South Africa use a staggering 200
• Study finds speech evolved 'at least 100,000 years ago

The findings suggest that human speech was a reality at least 100,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought.


Related reading: The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; DNA Evidence of the Kushite Expansion; Is Hebrew an African Language?; Migrations Out of Africa

The Linguistic Methods of Chiekh Anta Diop

By Clyde Winters


Chiekh Anta Diop has contributed much to the Afrocentric social sciences. Here we discuss many of Diop's views on using the linguistic sciences to rediscover the ancient history of Blacks.

Chiekh Anta Diop has made important contributions to linguistic theory in relation to African historiography. Diop's work illustrates that it is important for scholars to maintain a focus on the historical and linguistic factors which define the "personnalitè culturelle africaine" (Diop 1991, 227).

Language is the sanctum sanctorum of Diop's Afrocentric historical method. The Diopian view of historiography combines the research of linguistics, history and psychology to interpret the cultural unity of African people.

C. Anta Diop is the founder of modern Afrocentricism . Diop (1974,1991) laid the foundations for the Afrocentric idea in education. He laid these foundations using both the historical and anthropological/linguistic methods of research to explain the role of the Blacks in World History.

There are three components in the genetic model: 1) common Physical type, 2) common cultural patterns and 3) genetically related languages. (Winters 1989a) Diop over the years has brought to bear all three of these components in his illumination of Kemetic civilization. (Diop 1974,1977,1978,1991)

The opposition of many Eurocentric scholars to Afrocentric -ism results from white hostility to Diop's idea of a Black Egypt, and the view that Egyptians spoke an African, rather than Afro-Asiatic language.

Recently, Eurocentric American scholars have alleged to write reviews of Diop's recent book (Diop 1991). Although these reviewers mention the work of Diop in their articles, they never review his work properly, because they lack the ability to understand the many disciplines that Diop has mastered.(Lefkowitz 1992; Baines 1991)

For example Lefkowitz (1992) in The New Republic, summarizes

Diop (1974) but never presents any evidence to dispute the findings of Diop. The most popular "review" of Diop (1991) was done by Baines (1991) review in the New York Times Book Review. In this "review" Baines (1991) claims that "...the evidence and reasoning used to support the arguments are often unsound".

Instead of addressing the evidence Diop (1991) presents of the African role in the rise of civilization that he alleges is "unsound", he is asking the reader to reject Diop's thesis without refutation of specific evidence presented by Diop of the

African contributions to Science and Philosophy. Baines (l991) claims that Diop's Civilization or Barbarism is not a work of originality, yet he fails to dispute any factual evidence presented by Diop.

Baines (1991) wants the public to accept his general negative comments about Civilization or Barbarism, based on the fact that he is an Egyptologist. This is not enough, in academia. To refute a thesis one must present counter evidence that proves the falseness of a thesis not unsubstantiated rhetoric. We can not accept the negative views of Baines on faith alone.

In the recovery of information concerning the African past, Diop promotes semantic anthropology, comparative linguistics and the study of Onomastics. The main thesis of Diop is that typonymy and ethnonymy of Africa point to a common cradle for Paleo-Africans in the Nile Valley (Diop 1978, 67).

Onomastics is the science of names. Diop has studied legends, place names and religious cult terms to discover the unity of African civilization. Diop (1981, 86) observed that:

"An undisputed linguistic relationship between two geographically remote groups of languages can be relevant for the study of migrations. A grammatical (or genetic) relationship if clear enough is never an accident".

As a result, Diop has used toponyms (place names), anthroponyms (personal names) and ethnonyms (names of ethnic groups/tribes) to explain the evidence of analogous ethnic (clan) names in West Africa and the Upper Nile (Diop 1991).

In Precolonial Black Africa, Diop used ethnonyms to chart the migrations of African people in West Africa. And in The African Origin of Civilization, Diop used analyses acculturaliste or typological analysis to study the origin and spread of African cultural features from the Nile Valley to West Africa through his examination of toponyms (Diop 1974, 182-183). In the Cultural Unity of Black Africa, Diop discussed the common totems and religious terms many African ethnic groups share (Diop 1978, 124).

LINGUISTIC TAXONOMY

This linguistic research has been based on linguistic classification or taxonomy. Linguistic taxonomy is the foundation upon which comparative and historical linguistic methods are based (Ruhlen 1994). Linguistic taxonomy is necessary for the identification of language families. The determination of language families give us the material to reconstruct the proto-language of a people and discover regular sound correspondences.

There are three major kinds of language classifications: genealogical, typological, and areal. A genealogical classifica-tion groups languages together into language families based on the shared features retained by languages since divergence from the common ancestor or proto-language. An areal classification groups languages into linguistic areas based on shared features acquired by a process of convergence arising from spatial proximity. A typological classification groups languages together into language types by the similarity in the appearance of the structure of languages without consideration of their historical origin and present, or past geographical distribution.

COMPARATIVE METHOD

Diop has used comparative and historical linguistics to illuminate the Unity of African civilization. Diop (1977, xxv) has noted that

"The process for the evolution of African languages is clearly apparent; from a far we (have) the idea that Wolof is descendant by direct filiation to ancient Egyptian, but the Wolof, Egyptian and other African languages (are) derived from a common mother language that one can call Paleo-African, the common mother language that one can call Paleo-African, the common African or the Negro-African of L. Homburger or of Th. Obenga."

The comparative method is used by linguists to determine the relatedness of languages, and to reconstruct earlier language states. The comparative linguist has two major goals (1) trace the history of language families and reconstruct the mother language of each family, and (2) determine the forces which affect language. In general, comparative linguists are interested in determining phonetic laws, analogy/ correspondence and loan words.

Diop is a strong supporter of the comparative method in the rediscovery of Paleo-African. The reconstruction of Paleo-African involves both reconstruction and recognition of regular sound correspondence. The goal of reconstruction is the discovery of the proto-language of African people is the recovery of Paleo-African:

(1) vowels and consonants

(2) specific Paleo-African words

(3) common grammatical elements; and

(4) common syntactic elements.

The comparative method is useful in the reconstruction of Proto-languages or Diop's Paleo-African. To reconstruct a proto-language the linguist must look for patterns of correspondences. Patterns of correspondence is the examination of terms which show uniformity. This uniformity leads to the inference that languages are related since uniformity of terms leads to the inference that languages are related since conformity of terms in two or more languages indicate they came from a common ancestor.

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

A person's language provides us with evidence of the elements of a group's culture. Diop has noted that reconstruction of Paleo-African terms can help us make inferences about a group's culture going backwards in time to an impenetrable past undocumented by written records. This is semantic anthropology, a linguistic approach which seeks to discover aspects of man's culture from his language. Thusly, linguistic resemblances can help the anthropologist make precise inferences about a groups culture elements.

Linguistic resemblances denote a historical relationship. This suggest that resemblances in fundamental vocabulary and culture terms can help one reconstruct the culture of the speakers of genetically related languages.

LINGUISTIC CONSTANCY

The rate at which languages change is variable. It appears that linguistic change is culture specific. Consequently, the social organization and political culture of a particular speech community can influence the speed at which languages change.

Based on the history of language change in Europe most linguists believe that the rate of change for all languages is both rapid and constant.(Diagne, 1981,p.238) The idea that all languages change rapidly is not valid for all the World's languages.

African languages change much slower than European languages. (Armstrong, 1962) For example, African vocabulary items collected by Arab explorers over a thousand years ago are analogous to contemporary lexical items.(Diagne,1981, p.239) In addition there are striking resemblances between the ancient Egyptian language and Coptic, and Pharonic Egyptian and African languages.(Diagne, 1981; Diop, 1977; Obenga, 1993)

The political stability of African political institutions has caused languages to change very slowly in Africa. Pawley and Ross (1993) argue that a sedentary life style may account for the conservative nature of a language.

African oral traditions and the eye witness accounts of travelers to Africa, make it clear that African empires although made up of diverse nationalities illustrated continuity. To accomodate the plural nature of African empires Africans developed a Federal system of government. (Niane , 1984) In fact we can not really describe ancient African state systems as empires, since this implies absolute rule or authority in a single individual. This political state of affairs rarely existed in ancient Africa, because in each African speech community local leadership was elected by the people within the community. (Diop, 1987) For example the Egyptians often appointed administrators over the conquered territories from among the conquered people. (Diop ,1991)

The continuity of many African languages may result from the steady state nature of African political systems, and long standing cultural stability since neolithic times. (Diop, 1991; Winters 1985) This cultural stability has affected the speed at which African languages change.

In Africa due to the relative stability of socio-political structures and settled life, there has not been enough pressure exerted on African societies as a whole and African speech communities in particular, to cause radical internal linguistic changes within most African languages. Permanent settlements led to a clearly defined system of inheritance and royal succession. These traits led to stability on both the social and political levels.

This leads to the hypothesis that linguistic continuity exist in Africa due to the stability of African socio-political structures and cultural systems. This relative cultural stability has led African languages to change more slowly then European and

Asian languages. Diop (1974) observed that:

First the evolution of languages, instead of moving everywhere at the same rate of speed seems linked to other factors; such as , the stability of social organizations or the opposite, social upheavals. Understandably in relatively stable societies man's language has changed less with the passage of time.(pp.153-154)

There is considerable evidence which supports the African continuity concept. Dr. Armstrong (1962) noted the linguistic continuity of African languages when he used glottochronology to test the rate of change in Yoruba. Comparing modern Yoruba words with a list of identical terms collected 130 years ago by Koelle , Dr. Armstrong found little if any internal or external changes in the terms. He concluded that:

I would have said that on this evidence African languages are changing with glacial slowness, but it seems to me that in a century a glacier would have changed a lot more than that. Perhaps it would be more in order to say that these languages are changing with geological slowness. (Armstrong, 1962, p.285).

Diop's theory of linguistic constancy recognizes the social role language plays in African language change. Language being a variable phenomena has as much to do with a speaker's society as with the language itself. Thus social organization can influence the rate of change within languages. Meillet (1926, 17) wrote that:

Since language is a social institution it follows that linguistics is a social science, and the only variable element to which one may appeal in order to account for a linguistic change is social change, of which language variations are but the consequences.

THE BLACK AFRICAN ORIGIN OF EGYPT

Diop has contributed much to African linguistics. He was a major proponent of the Dravidian-African relationship (Diop 1974, 116), and the African substratum in Indo-European languages in relationship to cacuminal sounds and terms for social organiza-tion and culture (1974, 115). Diop (1978, 113) also recognized that in relation to Arabic words, after the suppression of the first consonant, there is often an African root.

Diop's major linguistic effort has been the classification of Black African and Egyptian languages . Up until 1977 Diop'smajor area of interest were morphological and phonological similarities between Egyptian and Black African languages. Diop (1977, 77-84) explains many of his sound laws for the Egyptian-Black African connection.

In Parènte Génétique de l'Egyptien pharraonique et des Langues Négro Africaines (PGEPLNA), Diop explains in some detail

his linguistic views in the introduction of this book. In PGEPLNA , Diop demonstrates the genetic relationship between ancient Egyptian and the languages of Black Africa. Diop provides thousands of cognate Wolof and Egyptian terms in support of his Black African-Egyptian linguistic relationship.

PALEO-AFRICAN

African languages are divided into Supersets (i.e., a family of genetically related languages, e.g., Niger-Congo) sets, and subsets. In the sets of African languages there are many parallels between phonological terms, eventhough there may be an arbitrary use of consonants which may have a similar sound. The reason for these changes is that when the speakers of Paleo-African languages separated, the various sets of languages underwent separate developments. As a result a /b/ sound in one language may be /p/ or /f/ in a sister language. For example, in African languages the word for father may be baba , pa or fa, while in the Dravidian languages we have appan to denote father.

Diop has noted that reconstruction of Paleo-African terms can help us make inferences about an ethnic group's culture going backwards in time to an impenetrable past undocumented by written records. This is semantic anthropology, a linguistic approach which seeks to discover aspects of man's culture from his language. Thusly, linguistic resemblances can help the anthropologists make precise inferences about a linguistic group's cultural elements.

BLACKS IN WEST ASIA

In PGEPLNA Diop makes clear his views on the role of African languages in the rise of other languages. Using archaeological evidence Diop makes it clear that the original West Asians: Elamites and Sumerians were of Black origin (1974, 1977, xxix-xxxvii).

Diop (1974, 1991) advocates the unity of Black Africans

and Blacks in West Asia. Winters (1985,1989,1994) has elaborated on the linguistic affinity of African and West Asian languages.

This view is supported by linguistic evidence. For example these languages share demonstrative bases:

Proximate Distant Finite

Dravidian i a u

Manding i a u

Sumerian bi a

Wolof i a u

The speakers of West Asian and Black African languages also share basic culture items:

Chief city, village black, burnt

Dravidian cira, ca uru kam

Elamite Salu

Sumerian Sar ur

Manding Sa furu kami,"charcoal'

Nubia sirgi mar

Egyptian Sr mer kemit

Paleo-African *sar *uru *kam

OBENGA

Obenga (1978) gives a phonetic analysis of Black African and Egyptian. He illustrates the genetic affinity of consonants within the Black African (BA) and Egyptian languages especially the occlusive bilateral sonorous, the occlusive nasal apico-dental /n/ and /m/ , the apico-alveolar /r/ and the radical

proto-form sa: 'man, female, posterity' in Black Africa.

Language

Agaw asau, aso 'masculine

Sidama asu 'man'

Oromo asa id.

Caffino aso id.

Yoruba so 'produce'

Meroitic s' man

Fonge sunu id.

Bini eso 'someone'

Kikongo sa,se,si 'father'

Swahili (m)zee 'old person'

Egyptian sa 'man'

Manding si,se 'descendant,posterity,family'

Azer se 'individual, person'

Obenga (1978) also illustrated the unity between the verbs 'to come, to be, to arrive':

Language

Egyptian ii, ey Samo, Loma dye

Mbosi yaa Bisa gye

Sidama/Omo wa Wolof nyeu

Caffino wa Peul yah, yade

Yoruba wa Fonge wa

Bini ya Mpongwe bya

Manding ya,dya Swahili (Ku)ya

between t =/= d, highlight the alternation patterns of many Paleo-African consonants including b =/= p, l =/= r ,and

g =/= k.

The Egyptian term for grain is 0 sa #. This corresponds to many African terms for seed, grain:

Galla senyi

Malinke se , si

Sumerian se

Egyptian sen 'granary'

Kannanda cigur

Bozo sii

Bambara sii

Daba sisin

Somali sinni

Loma sii

Susu sansi

Oromo sanyi

Dime siimu

Egyptian ssr 'corn'

id. ssn 'lotus plant'

id. sm 'herb, plant'

id. isw 'weeds'


In conclusion, Diop has done much to encourage the African recovery of their history. His theories on linguistics has inspired many African scholars to explain and elaborate the African role in the history of Africa and the world. This has made his work important to our understanding of the role of Black people in History.



REFERENCES

Armstrong, R.G. (1962). Glottochronology and African linguistics. Journal of African History,3(2), 283-290.

Baines, J. (1991, August 11). Was civilization made in Africa? The New York Times Review of Books, 12-13.

Bynon,T. (1978). Historical linguistics. London: Cambridge University Press.

Crawley,T. 1992. An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Delafosse,M. (1901). La Langue Mandigue. Paris.

Diagne, P. (1981). In J. Ki-Zerbo (Ed.), General history of Africa I: Methodology and African prehistory (233-260). London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.

Diop, C.A. (1974). The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Westport, Conn.:Lawrence Hill and Company.

Diop, C.A. (1977). Parentè gènètique de l'Egyptien Pharaonique et des languues Negro-Africaines. Dakar: Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire.

Diop, C.A. (1978). Precolonial Black Africa. Wesport, Conn. :Lawrence Hill and Company.

Diop, C.A. 1981. A methodology for the study of migrations. In African Ethnonyms and Toponyms, by UNESCO. (Unesco: Paris) 86--110.

Diop, C.A. (1991). Civilization or Barbarism. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lawrence Hill Books.

Dweyer, D.J. (1989). 2. Mande. In John Bendor-Samuel (Ed.), The Niger-Congo Languages (47-65). New York: University Press of America.

Ehret,C. (1988). Language change and the material correlates of language and ethnic shift. Antiquity, 62, 564-574.

Ehret,C. & Posnansky (Eds.). (1982). The Archaeological and linguistic reconstruction of African history. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hock,H.H. (1988). Principles of historical linguistics. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.

Labov,W.(1965). The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 19, 273-309.

Labov., W. (1972). The internal evolution of linguistic rules. In Stokwell, R.P. and Macaulay, R.K.S. (eds.) Linguistic change and generative theory (101-171). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lefkowitz, M. (1992, February 10). Not out of Africa. The New Republic, 29-36.

Mbiti, J.S. 1970. African religions and Philosophy. Garden City: Anchor Press.

Meillet, A. 1926. Introduction à l'etude comparatif des languages Indo-Europeennes. Paris.

Moitt, B. (1989) Chiekh Anta Diop and the African diaspora: Historical continuity and socio-cultural symbolism. Presence Africaine, 149/150, 347-360.

Pawley,A. & Ross,M. (1993). Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history. Annual Review of Anthropology, 22, 425-459.

McIntosh, S. K. & McIntosh, R. (1983). Forgotten Tells of Mali. Expedition, 35-47.

Niane, D.T.(Ed.). (1984). Introduction. General History of Africa IV (1-14). London: Heinemann Educational Books.

Obenga,T. (1978). The genetic relationship between Egyptian (ancient Egyptian and Coptic) and modern African languages. In

UNESCO (Ed.), The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script (65-72). Paris: UNESCO.

Obenga, T. (1993). Origine commune de l'Egyptien Ancien du Copte et des langues Negro-Africaines Modernes. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan.

Lord, R. (1966). Comparative Linguistics. London: St. Paul's House.

Olderogge, L. (1981). Migrations and ethnic and linguistic differentiations. In J. Ki-Zerbo (Ed.),General History of Africa I: Methodology and African History (271-278). Paris: UNESCO.

Robins, R.H. (1974). General Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana State University Press.

Ruhlen, M. 1994. The origin of language. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Welmers, W. (1968). Niger Congo-Mande. In T.A. Sebeok (Ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, 7,113-140.

Williams, B. (1987). The A-Group Royal Cemetery at Qustul:Cemetery L. Chicago: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Press.

Winters, C.A. (1985). The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians, Manding and Sumerians.Tamil Civilization,3(1), 1-9.

Winters, C.A. (1986). The Migration routes of the Proto-Mande. The Mankind Quarterly,27(1), 77-96.

Winters, C.A. 1989. Tamil, Sumerian, Manding and the genetic model. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 18 (1), 98-127.

Winters, C.A. (1994). Afrocentrism: A valid frame of reference. Journal of Black Studies, 25 (2), 170-190.

Yurco, F. 1989. Were the ancient Egyptians Black? Biblical Archaeology.


Related reading:  What Color was Abraham?; Recovering the African Background of Genesis; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1; The Bible and the Question of Race; The Proto-Elamite Script; Is Hebrew an African Language?

Recovering the African Background of Genesis

Modupe Oduyoye 

Alice C. Linsley

Modupe Oduyoye is a Nigerian philologist whose book Sons of Gods and the Daughters of Men: An Afro-Asiatic Interpretation of Genesis 1-11 makes connections between the book of Genesis and African names, places, narratives and religious practices. The book was published in 1984 by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York.

In his book, Dr. Oduyoye notes the connection between Adamu Orisa (of Lagos State) and the Hebrew r’ison Adam. He notes that Hebrew Qayin (Kain/Cain) and the Arabic word for smith qayn are cognates. This relates to the biblical Kenites who were metalworkers and descendants of Cain. Oduyoye notes that these words are related to the Yoruba Ogun and Fon Gun, both referring to the “patron saint of smiths.”

Other cognates include Ebira Egene (the metalworker caste) and Hamn Kuno (who invented iron smelting). This may connect Kain to the city of Kano, which is north of the ancient complex at Nok, the place to which Kain likely "wandered" after he was sent away, and where he married a daughter of the ruler of Nok. Oduyoye notes that the Hebrew Nod נוד and Nok נוך are almost identical.

Oduyoye’s book was a response to the 1969 publication "Biblical Revelations and African Beliefs," a report of the first consultation of African theologians held in Ibadan in 1966. Oduyoye is a member of the Anglican Church and has served as a Bible teacher, a seminary professor, and the literature secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria.

Dr. Oduyoye studied English, Latin and History at University College, Ibadan, Nigeria, before theological studies at Yale Divinity School. He also studied Comparative Semitic Linguistics at Ann Arbor and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics at London University Extra-Mural Dept. He is the author of "Words and Meaning in Yoruba Religion" and "The Vocabulary of Yoruba Religious Discourse" (1972).

Oduyoye is a humble man.  He has acknowledged his debt to Archdeacon Olumide Lucas who taught his father. Lucas was appointed Vicar of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos in 1936. Oduyoye sought Lucas' advice while writing "The Sons of Gods and the Daughters of Men."

Acknowledging his debt to earlier pioneers, Oduyoye wrote, "The thoughtful restudy of past scholarship is not criticism for the sake of criticism, but an attempt to elucidate the principles involved in the discovery of truth… in doing this, however, it is right that we express our gratitude and respect to those whose work is being used and restudied, and, without whose pioneering zeal and daring, the present evaluation will not have been attempted."


Oduyoye Challenged Seminarians

In August 1979, Dr. Oduyoye was asked to lead a Bible study by the Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Odogbolu (Ogun State). The Rt. Rev. I.B.O. Akintemi asked him to teach seminarians. This marked the beginning of serious exploration into the linguistic intricacies of Genesis 1-11.

Oduyoye asked the seminarians why the Hebrew language uses the plural suffix (-iym) for God in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 6:1 when the Hebrew religion is anti-polytheistic. In the beginning eloh-iym (the gods) created the heavens and the earth. Why the plural form? Is this the Old Testament counterpart of the Baptism of Jesus in which the Trinity is manifested?

In Genesis 6:1, who are the sons of the Gods? Some say they are the nephilim, others say angels, and still others argue for the Israelites. The clue to understanding Genesis 6 is the word gibbor-iym (powerful ones). This passage is speaking about ancient Horite rulers, the "sons of the gods" or deified kings. This is a common theme in Africa, especially among the Buganda of Uganda, the Yoruba, and the ancient Egyptians.

Oduyoye says, “The sons and daughters of Naa Nyamo (“Father God”) are known to us as jemawoji, 'the gods of the world.' They are powerful and intelligent beings who walk about the world, but they have their own abodes in the seas, lagoons, mountains and other natural objects. Having been delegated by Naa nyamo to be his vicegerents, they are in active contact with the world of nature in man.”

In other words, the Genesis text reveals a henotheistic worldview, typical of the oldest tribal societies. Henotheism is the view that there is a single supreme Creator who is served by lesser assisting powers (baals). God alone is worshiped, but the lesser powers are venerated as good since they are not free to defy the Creator. These are the messengers (angels) of God.

The idea of fallen angels rests on the assumption that the word nephilim is the masculine plural participle of Hebrew naphal, meaning to fall, but this likely reflects the Jewish tendency to disdain the powerful rulers of their past. In the Book of Daniel the Aramaic term used to denote angels is `îrîn (watchers). Each is also called `îr weqadîsh (watcher and holy one). "Watcher" implies that angels act as God's sentinels, as did the angels appointed to guard the entrance to Eden.

Oduyoye wanted the seminarians to dig into the text because they needed to understand its cultural context, a context suggested by the etymology. He explained, “Christian preaching certainly needs a stronger pillar to lean upon than a basis of obscurantism.”

In seeking to understand Genesis 1-11, Oduyoye drew from many of the Afro-Asiatic languages and encouraged his students to consider their own African dialects and folklore. Having considerable acquaintance with many languages, Oduyoye's vantage point enabled him to ask questions that European and Anglo Bible scholars were not asking. He also questions many of the long-accepted interpretations of Jewish scholars.


Connecting the Linguistic Dots

One of the most significant contributions of Dr. Oduyoye has been to demonstrate common roots in Yoruba, Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic and Hausa. European and Anglo linguists already acknowledged a relationship between Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, Ugaritic, but it took this Nigerian philologist to demonstrate a clear connection to African languages like Tiv, Efik, Yoruba, Ibibio, Igbo, Fon, and Twi.

Oduyoye pointed out that Igbo dibia (medicine man) is cognate with the Arabic tibia (doctor) and that the Yoruba ajo is cognate with the Hebrew haj and the Arabic hajj. He notes also that the word ha-rison-iym (ancestors) in Psalm 79.8 is related to the Ijebu lisa (first in rank), to the igbo olise (God as in Olisemeka), to the Arabic ras, the Aramiac resh, the Akkadian rishu and the Yoruba orisha.

Oduyoye noted that the Arabic word harem and the Hebrew heremboth convey the idea of something set apart as sacred. Oduyoye explains that the /h/ is missing in Yoruba because “Yoruba nouns generally do not begin with an /h/ or any h-type sound.” This is more characteristic of the Afro-Arabian languages.

Oduyoye notes that confused in Hebrew is balal, but the Genesis writers use babel (b-b-l). Oduyoye explains that the writer of Genesis is basing etymology on a single leg of sound similarity without any consideration for the other leg. Hebrew balal means mingle, mix, confuse, confound and is cognate with Chichewa balala-balala which means to scatter or disperse. Oduyoye says, "Here, etymology has two legs to stand upon. Phonology and semantics."

“Babel is the name of the Babylonian capital whose only gate was memorably designed with religious motiffs. It came to be known by the Babylonians as baab ilu, "the gate of God." Babylon was very powerful and very ambitious. The Jews therefore saw the ruins of its ziggurats as divine punishment.

Oduyoye argues that at some point the historical becomes mixed with a redactor's agenda. He writes, “The etymology of Genesis 1-11 are based on fancy, not fact. They serve the purpose of mythology, not that of linguistics or philology.”

Oduyoye goes on to say, “The truth is that the story is one of many told by the Hebrews to ridicule nations against whom they harbor a grudge.” The Jews labeled their Canaanite kinsmen “idolaters” which justified their attempts to annihilate them in the name of Yahweh. They labeled their Moabite kinsmen as an incestuous race. They suggested that God destroyed all the other peoples of the earth in a catastrophic flood, save Noah and his family.

Oduyoye notes the relationship between the Yoruba Lamurudu (N-m-d / l-m-d) and the name Nimrod. He says, “Given this anterior greatness of the Kushite Nimrod, the first gibbor, the writers of Genesis did with Nimrod what they did with Nebuchadnezzar. For no reason other than his greatness, they stated that Nimrod’s greatness was offensive to God.”


Related reading: Why Does Genesis Speak of Gods?; Who Were the Nephilim?; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1; Kain's Princess Bride; Nimrod was a Kushite Ruler; Was the Land of Nod Enoch's Territory?; Ancient African Astronomers; Kushite Kings and the Kingdom of God; African Religion Predates Hinduism

Ket-Navajo Linguistic Connection

Alice C. Linsley


This 2008 study showed that Ket, spoken in Siberia, and Na-Dene, the language of the Navajo, are cognate languages. Another study that traces the connection based on DNA has been reported at Science Daily.

Linguistic evidence indicates that the Yeniseian family of languages, spoken in central Siberia, is most closely related to the Na-Dene family of languages spoken, for the most part, in northwestern North America. This hypothesis locates the source of one of the three migrations responsible for the peopling of the Americas.

These reports indicate that some native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and the American southwest came from Asia. This is not new information among anthropologists or linguists. What is new information is the migration of the Nilotic Annu. The Ainu did not come across the Bering Strait. They came through Finland, Greenland and Labrador to Eastern Canada. Why is this not grabbing media attention?

Many native peoples of the Atlantic coast of North America migrated from the Nile Valley, via Finland, Greenland and Labrador. These are the Ainu, a seafaring people who also went to Japan. The Ainu are at the center of Cavalli-Sforza's genetic distance chart, which is what we might expect from such an early migration out of Africa.

The Ainu are connected to Abraham's ancestors. Abraham's father held the title Tera which meant "priest" among the royal Ainu of the Upper Nile. Tera-neter means priest of  God. The name is associated with Het-u temples. Genesis 10 lists Het as a descendant of Noah. Het and Sidon are indicated as the original inhabitants of Canaan.


Related reading:  The Orign of the Na-Dene; Navajo and Ket are Cognate Languages; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; A Kindling of Ancient Memory

Is Nehesi Related to the Name Nahor?

Alice C. Linsley


A reader from Torrence, California has asked if the name Nehesi might be the same as the Biblical name Nahor. On the surface this seems a possibility since the vowels are not certain and the root is the same. Removing the vowels, we have NH as a common root. Na-Hor means the Na of Horus, that is to say "One who serves Horus." In the Akkadian, Na is a modal prefix indicating service to, affirmation, or affiliation. Nahor was apparently a Horite ruler-priest, as was his father Terah. Terah means priest. Terah and Nahor are not names. They are titles.

Nehesi is also a title. It means One who serves Hesi.  Hesi refers to wisdom. There is a relationship between the Nehesi and Nahor in that both appear to be dedicated to Horus and his mother Hathor-Meri, the patroness of smiths and an ancient symbol of wisdom (sophia). Shrines were dedicated to both Horus and Hathor throughout ancient Canaan, Syria and Lebanon. These were mound cities with water sources. Tell-Hesi is an example. Other mound shrines included Hazor and Beersheba.

Nahor was Abraham's older brother. He was named after his maternal grandfather. Nahor the Younger ascended to the throne of his father Terah in the region of Aram Naharaim, between the western Tigris and the Euphrates. This territory was ruled by Nimrod, one of Nahor's ancestors (Gen. 10:8-12).

Nehesi refers to people of the Upper Nile, a region called Ta-Nehesi, meaning "Land of Nehesi." This was earlier called Wawat. The Upper Nile appears to be the point of origin of the features of religion that are associated with Moses and his people. This includes animal sacrifice, the burning of incense, circumcision, ruler-priests, the Holy Name YHWH, and the solar imagery of the Habiru/Hebrews.

Red and black Nubians

Terah is a title found among the ancient Nubians. Tera-neter designated a nobleman of the Ainu people, pre-dynastic inhabitants of the Upper Nile. Neter refers to ruler or a deified king. Neter was retained in the Coptic language as Nuti.


The Line of Nahor the Elder

Nahor the Elder was Abraham's maternal grandfather. He was a descendant of Nimrod, the great Kushite kingdom builder. Erech (Uruk), Accad (Akkad or Agade) and Calneh were centers of Nimrod's initial territory. From there he went north and conquered or founded Asshur, Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen. All these city-states were united by a common script, the Akkadian cuneiform. The language of Nimrod's territory was related to Elamite, Dravidian, Chadic and Kushite languages. This should not surprise us since Nimrod was a son of Kush (Gen. 10:8-12).


Related reading:  God's African Ancestors; Issues in the Historical Phonology of Chadic Languages; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; Tomb of Nubian Priest Found; Terah's Nubian Ancestors

Linguistic Degeneration: From biradicals to triradicals

Alice C. Linsley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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