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Did the Ancient Egyptians use the word 'Geb/Seb' to indicate "earth/soil" or was it "foreign speech?" Was it Herodotus' indoctrination into ancient Egyptian wisdom that caused him to recognize that the metaphorical Egyptian 'Doves' of oracular Greek mythology were merely women speaking a foreign language?
According to G. H. Massey the Egyptian word for land/soil/earth is 'Ta' or 'ta-ta' for the two lands and Ab/p-ta for the land of Egyptian origins/Motherland. If Massey is correct then we ought to be seeking another meaning for the Nile goose/bird of Egyptian hieroglyphs. I found this little excerpt from Wikipedia quite interesting:
"Some Egyptologists, (specifically Jan Bergman, Terence Duquesne or Richard H. Wilkinson) have stated that Geb was associated with a mythological divine creator goose who had laid a cosmic egg from which the sun and/or the world had sprung. This theory is assumed to be incorrect and is a result of confusing the name "Geb" with that of a Whitefronted Goose (Anser albifrons), also called originally gb(b): 'lame one, stumbler'. An alternative ancient name for this goose species was 'trp' meaning equally 'walk like a drunk' and 'stumbler.' Coloured have been observed depicting images of a Nile Goose with an opened beak on a papyrus dating from the 21st Dynasty. Similar images have also been found on temple walls, showing a scene of the king standing on a papyrus raft and ritually plucking papyrus for the Theban god Amun-Re-Kamutef), that said "creator goose." 'Ngg-wr' = 'the Great (or Oldest) Honker', appeared solely in the shape of a Nile Goose (=Egyptian Goose = Fox Goose [Alopochen aegyptiacus]), both within texts and vignets. In Underworld Books a diacritic goose-sign (most probably denoting then an Anser albifrons) was sometimes depicted on top of the head of an standing anonymous male anthropomorphic deity, pointing to Geb's identity. Geb himself was never depicted as a Nile Goose, as later was Amun, called on some New Kingdom stelae explicitly:'Amun, the beautiful smn-goose (Nile Goose). The only clear pictorial confusion between the hieroglyphs of a Whitefronted Goose (in the normal hieroglyphic spelling of the name Geb, often followed by the additional -b-sign) and a Nile Goose in the spelling of the name Geb occurs in the rock cut tomb of the provincial governor Sarenput II (12th Dynasty, Middle Kingdom) on the Qubba el-Hawa desert-ridge (opposite Aswan), namely on the left (southern) wall near the open doorway, in the first line of the brightly painted funerary offering formula."
Do you think speciation was part of Egyptian determination: Or was it simply the nature (ntr) of the beast? All geese 'honk' and all are migratory.
Here is another excerpt: "The oldest representation in a fragmentary relief of the god was as an anthropomorphic being accompanied by his name, dating from king Djoser's reign, 3rd Dynasty, and was found in Heliopolis. In later times he could also be depicted as a ram, a bull or a crocodile. Frequently described mythologically as 'father' of snakes (e.g. in a Coffin Texts-spell Geb was described as father of the primeval snake Nehebkau, while his mother was in that case the goddess Neith) and depicted sometimes (partly) as such. In mythology he also often occurs as a primeval ruler/king of Egypt. Geb could be seen as earth containing the dead, or imprisoning those not worthy to go to the North-Eastern heavenly Field of Reeds."
Now why would Geb/Seb be the father of 'snakes' when snakes eat geese? Could it be that 'snake' is used as a metaphor? Is it possible that Geb/Seb is the father of 'primeval chaos?' A representation of a time when all of Lower Egypt (North of Aswan/Elephantine) was wet-lands or marsh-lands; the beginnings of foreign infiltration; these foreigners who spoke gibberish or gabbed and jabbered like geese; and like snakes had sloughed off their skins? Think 'Marsh Arabs' of Iraq.
I believe in the 'natural genesis' of all ideological thought so the name assigned to the Hapiru/Habiru/'Ablau/'Abel/Al'AB/Arab/Hebrew/'Ebro; by the ancient Egyptians must also have its origin in nature. Were these foreigners/Al-ie/ans merely foreign to Egyptians or were they foreign to Africans/'Ophirans/Havillans. My search for that answer brought me to the Iberian Peninsula and the 'Ibero:
"These geological formations were deposited during the early part of the Jurassic Period some 175 to 200 million years ago, when the African tectonic plate collided tightly with the Eurasian plate. The Mediterranean became a lake that, over the course of time, dried up during the Messinian salinity crisis. The Atlantic Ocean then broke through the Strait of Gibraltar, and the resultant flooding created the Mediterranean Sea. The Rock forms part of the Betic Cordillera, a mountain range that dominates south-eastern Iberia." See Link.
If one didn't know better one would think that the Messinian salinity crisis occured in the early Jurassic, but fortunately for us we've read the geological history of the Nile (The Nile River) and know that evaporation of the Mediterranean occured a mere six million years ago in the age of Hominidae. The subsequent drying and flooding of North Africa and its attendant climate upheaval gave these early hominids more than they could handle. Its no wonder Neanderthal fossils are found at the points of continuous separation and contact between the African plate and the European and Asian/Arabian plate.(Gibraltar & Sinai) Imagine a Dead Sea environment encompassing the entire Mediterranean; flooding producing isolation (metamorphosis) and drying reestablishing contact (hybridization).
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