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Ancient Egyptian and Kushitic Religions and Waaqeffannaa Oromo Religion
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis May 10, 2008
A few days ago, I re-published (in: ´The Inexorable Radiation of Waaqeffannaa, the Oromo Religion´ - http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/60798) an excellent paper written by one of Oromia´s foremost intellectuals, Mr. Getachew Chamadaa Nadhabaasaa, a theological analysis of Waaqeffannaa, the historical Oromo religion (under the title Waaqeffannaa - Testimony of an Indigenous Religion of the African Past and Present). As I intended to extensively comment on that text that serves as a founding text for a new phase of Waaqeffannaa, as written religion, I encrusted numbers in the text. My present comments relate to the numerated points in Mr. Nadhabaasaa´s text.
Commentary
No Continuity between Anthropological Findings and Historical Societies
1. Certainly this is a weak point of the text; it rather testifies to the diffusion of evolutionist theories of Anthropology. This is not a field for theology, and I am sure that all the Oromos who practice Waaqeffannaa will agree with me that for all the Oromo Qeeses (priests) before 150 years the issue was of no concern. So it must today. The point is critical because what matters for Oromos and various other nations willing to stick to their historical cultures as a means of national originality, assertion and identification is authenticity and rejection of exterior and posterior elements. Waaqeffannaa today will not gain in anything either Africa is or is not proved to be the Origin of Man.
A theology is not apologetics of nationalist needs; the Oromos will not gain anything either Africa is or is not proved to be the Origin of Man. Similar issues can be certainly used by racist and discriminatory regimes that compile their false historical systems to promote their fallacious versions of history on the basis of differentiation and discrimination.
A similar approach is erroneous for any religion and any theology; in fact, there is absolutely no continuity between the Palaeolithic anthropological findings and the rise of the early civilizations in Mesopotamia, Transtigritane (in today´s Iraq and Iran) and Egypt. Anthropology, as long as it remains unrelated to History, is the search for life remains in various remote periods, the different sub-periods of the Palaeolithic. History starts with writing; it goes back to 3250 BCE for Sumer and Elam in Mesopotamia and Transtigritane, and ca. 2950 for Egypt. Certainly, archaeological remains of the early Sumerians, Elamites and Egyptians, interconnected with textual references to archaic periods, help us reconstruct a continuity for the same nations in the respective territories that goes back to ca. 3900 – 3750 BCE. This period is the Pre-History (the term means lack of scripture) of the Sumerians, the Elamites and the Egyptians. Before that remote period (almost 6000 years ago), all findings are not interconnected in a chain of identified developments the later of which are the consequences of the earlier.
The theory of evolutionism is an erratic colonial creation geared to destroy the impact of any religion, eliminate the very nature of the numinous, obliterate the very notion of piety, and turn spiritual life to vulgarity. The disaster has indiscriminately befallen on all the religions of the world. Even worse, those who attempt any – monstrous – combination between the elements of the evolutionist fabrication and their religion are turned to cultureless nationalists, extremists and terrorists, be they Evangelicals identifying ´already´ Prince William of England with the Antichrist, Hezbollah members expecting ´their´ Mahdi to come tomorrow, Zionists believing that the Biblical and Talmudic Messiah is the modern state of Israel, and – worst of all – Amhara and Tigray Monophysitic terrorists who pretend that God blessed – in a discriminatory way – the land of Gondar (or their ´Cenotaph of Ethiopia´) and that the Ark of the Covenant is today in … Axum!
Certainly, the subject is vast and I cannot expand further here; however, if this commentary triggers various questions, I could analyze the point comprehensively.
2. This is clearly wrong; the Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic are not characterized by ´complex social organisations´. The sentence is wrong in itself; it makes no sense to speak of simple and complex social organisations at the same point. They are two different things. History of the Mankind means "complex social organisations" – only. The ´simple´ was only the marginal; it existed of course, but did not contribute to the historical chain of events that lead from the first cities of Mesopotamia down to our times. Certainly, ´complex social organisations´ started in Asia, and more particularly in Mesopotamia and Transtigritane (Sumer and Elam), ca. 250 – 300 years before we attest them in Egypt. The Nile Civilization reached the level of Sumer and Elam at ca. 2700 BCE. And again, as earlier, the issue is totally irrelevant to any genuine theological approach and study.
Plausible Egyptian Origins of the Name of Oromo
3. This is again wrong; it emanates from the same nationalist political concept that seeks most remote past in terms of discrimination, in the sense ´we are older, we are more important´. This is all an aberration that cost much to many, and will cost even more in the future. Oromo theology has no interest in identifying the Oromos as one of the most ancient peoples of the world. A good example is given by both, the Ancient Hebrew religion and Judaism: you will never find an attempt to ´show´ that the Hebrews (and in later periods and down to our times, the Jews) were more ancient a nation than the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Elamites, the Hittites or the Egyptians. No need for that.
Certainly, every religion, every theology shapes narratives for the Creation; but these narratives (like Enuma Elish, Kumarbi, Genesis or Theogonia) are totally devoid of nationalistic viewpoints, approaches and prerogatives. These narratives are what we call myth, which of course does not mean ´falsehood´ or ´fairy tale´ as myth deformation in later periods made us erroneously imagine. Modern literary – linguistic – philosophical – historical research has helped us discover that the original myth of the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Canaanites, the Kushites, the Persians and other Oriental peoples was a completely different field of semiotics whereby the truth was expressed through terms completely different from those used by rational philosophers and thinkers. Myth helped the ancient erudite priests and scholars make a clear distinction between the Material and the Transcendental and project it among the masses. Altered this field of semiotics, the Myth went lost at the times of the Late Antiquity. However, we know very well that for the Creation narratives of the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Persians, the Hebrews and the Greeks, the First Man was not viewed as a Sumerian, an Egyptian or an Assyrian. There was no nationalistic approach, need or thought.
History of Religion, Oriental Mythologies, and Egyptology are critical for an Oromo priest of today to study; they will be of great help in the formulation of the Oromo narratives. At this moment, we cannot identify the historical period in which some earlier Kushitic populations started identifying themselves as ´Oromoo´, and we cannot identify the time they used the name ´Waaqa´ to design the Supreme Being.
This does not mean anything, and – above all – does not signify ´not great past´. One has to realize that in the Antiquity people perceived names very differently; personal names were meaningful and at times they were brief or even long sentences. Lost of piety (as aforementioned) reduced our capability to clearly perceive these ´details´. Today, we call someone Michael, and then without further thought, we start a discussion with him; this shows the extent of the loss. Mi-kha-El, as it is in Hebrew, means the following: ´who is like You, Oh God´? This was clearly understood then.
Today, to describe the historical country of Northern Mesopotamia and Transtigritane, we name that land ´Assyria´, and this is just another name for us, and nothing more. When we study the Cuneiform texts of the Ancient Assyrians, we notice that they used different symbols but the same name to designate their God, the land, their nation, and the main capital city – that all were named Ashur. In a way, the Assyrians called themselves as nation, as people, ´divine´ or ´dedicated to God´, and their land and capital had rather the meaning of ´Land of God´ and ´City of God´.
With the Meroitic Hieroglyphic undeciphered, we are deprived of access to the literature of the ancient nation that seems most plausibly to have been the ancestors of the Oromos. Yet, the present national name of the world´s largest Kushitic people may have well been derived from an Ancient Egyptian expression, one of the many royal titles and insignia of power that had been diffused among the Kushitic and Meroitic ancestors of the Oromos in Ancient Ethiopia as the Greeks and the Romans called the fatherland of the Oromos in today´s Sudan. There is a great number of possibilities that have still to be searched out, most probably around the Ancient Egyptian adjective wr (meaning ´great´, ´strong´; w being pronounced as u in pull); wr im3 (wr ima would signify ´great and gentle´), wr ´im´i (wr imi denoting someone ´given great´ – by God), and wr imy (the superlative of wr) being all plausible as adjectival compositions.
There is no doubt that both, the Ancient Egyptians and Kushites, were the earliest Black African families; interlinked with them, today´s Oromos are the most conscious descendants of the most illustrious Khammitic nations. Among today´s Khammitic nations, one identifies the Berbers of Northern and Northwestern Africa (from the Northwestern confines of Egypt through Libya and Tunisia to Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania), the Egyptians, the Arabic speaking Sudanese, the Kushitic nations of Eastern Africa (Oromos, Afars, Sidamas, Kaffas, Shekachos, etc), the Somalis, and the Hausa and Fulani speaking peoples of Western and Central Africa. In respect to all cases of arabization (from Mauritania to Egypt and thence to Eritrea), one has to stress the point that the phenomenon was limited only at the linguistic level, as consequence of the gradual islamization of all these countries from the 7th until the 16th century; it has no ethnic and no cultural impact. To all those who may oppose the approach, based on considerations of the currently prevailing sociopolitical and cultural conditions, one has to remind that all this is result of Anglo-French colonialism, and has no historicity, no impact, and no value. It is the result of the diffusion of the perverse and disastrous theories of Pan-Arabism and Islamic Fundamentalism that were both systems produced by the colonialist Orientalist academia, and then projected among ignorant local students who thought opportune to continue with postgraduate and doctoral studies in French and English universities.
4. This is an important point; black as colour in general and black as skin colour was never considered as negative or inferior in the Antiquity. It all started with the rise of Christianity and the demonization of the black (either colour or skin colour). Islam rebuffed the concept, but this did not save the non-Muslim Africans from discriminatory attitude in Abbasid Baghdad. Within the context of the Ancient Egyptian religion, the black colour symbolized the all-inclusiveness and the supreme power. We have good reason to believe that these concepts were shared by the Kushitic – Meroitic Ethiopians, the ancestors of the modern Oromos. A comparative historico-religious examination of the fundamental concepts of Waaqeffannaa and those of the Ancient Egyptian religion would help tremendously in retracing the origin of the Oromo religion.
Waaqa and Ra
5. Waaqa seems to have in Oromo religion the same position as Atum in the Ancient Egyptian Heliopolitan system and Ra – Atum in the Ancient Egyptian Hermopolitan system. In other words, Waaqa seems to have retained the most original aspects of Khammitic / Kushitic monotheism. The rise of the Memphitic (around Ptah) and Theban (around Amun) polytheisms seems to have reduced the primordial Egyptian monotheism to great extent; however, there has always been a rivalry between monotheism and polytheism in Ancient Egypt, and the monotheistic current triggered in the middle of the 14th century BCE a radical ideology promoted and supported by several pharaohs before Akhenaten who simply institutionalized for the first time in the World History monotheism as state religion. Amenhotep III, Thutmoses IV, Amenhotep II, and Thutmoses III were all strong monotheists.
Only Christian European colonial racism and Jewish bias prevent modern scholars from saying publicly that the Solar Religion and Ideology of Akhenaten (also known as Atonism after the name of Akhenaten´s Unique God, Aten or Aton) was more complete and more explicit monotheism that the other two religious systems, and that entire verses of Ancient Egyptian hymns to Aten have been reproduced within the Psalms of Torah (Old Testament).
The polytheistic comeback plunged Egypt into strife and centuries long decay, but even after the departure of the Egyptian monotheists and the Hebrews under Moses, the Egyptian monotheism survived within temples and among priesthoods that resisted the expansion of the polytheism and the decomposition of the mythical semiotics.
The entire issue was transferred among the Kushitic Ethiopians in the South of Egypt, and later sources (mainly Greek) shed insightful into the religious divisions of Meroitic Ethiopia that may have been at the origin of the final collapse of Meroe. The priests and the court seem to have formed two opposite camps among the Meroitic Ethiopians, and following the defeat to the Axumite king Ezanas, the monotheistic part prevailed in exile.
6. The Oromo concept of Law and Order, set up by Waaqa and granted to the first men, reflects the Ancient Egyptian concept of Maat. To the Egyptian mind, Maat was the Law and Order that kept the entire universe in function. The concept was diffused among the Kushitic and Meroitic Ethiopians. The legislature stipulated by the Pharaoh in Egypt and the Qore (the title ´King´ in Kushitic language) in Kush (Ethiopia) had to be a derivate and an emanation of the Maat Law and Order. Contradicting Maat would be viewed as a from of self-annihilation.
The Unknown Holistic Societies of the Antiquity
7. The origins of the civilization either in Mesopotamia and Transtigritane or in Egypt seem to have been egalitarian. A rivalry between the early palaces and the early temples seems to have generated the accumulation of wealth as a means of imposition in and control of the society. The formation of the social hierarchy did not involve impartiality; it rather functioned as a way to incorporate everyone in a system, a programme, a system of thought, and an ideology that offered the same chances to everyone. In Egypt, the Pharaoh was considered as divine, but this rather increased his responsibilities not his benefit. Progressively there were landowners, but there were no slaves, and the same concerned Sumer, Assyria and other Oriental countries and civilizations; only few war prisoners were kept as slaves. The notion of slave as ´thing´ was formed mainly in Greece and Rome.
In Ancient Egypt, the temples functioned as educational centers, hospitals, research centers, libraries, administrative centers (as they controlled vast lands and part of the trade) and spiritual centers; operating like that, the temples were – within the then societies – a reflection of the political parties in our modern societies. Every follower and believer of a temple´s god was the recipient of the help and the support of the temple´s priesthood whereby he had adhered; every follower and believer of a temple´s god was the beneficiary of the promotion that he deserved, and every follower and believer of a temple´s god would function – if promoted in the pharaonic administration and army – as arm of influence of the priesthood that promoted him, diffusing the ideology he had studied and accepted.
8. The situation described by Mr. Nadhabaasaa may sound strange today when there is no religion, systems of thinking, behavioural system and ideology to rule the daily lives of the believers in a total and durable way; or even if it exists, it is rather viewed as totalitarian, whereas it is simply holistic. Few, remote, and rather marginal societies have preserved similar systems. One can encounter Buddhist societies in remote provinces of Myanmar, Islamic societies in Africa and Asia, Hindu societies in India, and some genuine African cultural societies in several parts of the Black Continent. However, in the Antiquity this social model prevailed everywhere until the times of the Late Antiquity; then the development of the trade between East and West, the cosmopolitan cities, and the amalgamation of populations of different origins and backgrounds brought about theoretical compilations, religious and philosophical systems, and an unprecedented behavioural and ideological syncretism that put an end to the holistic societies of the Antiquity. The rise of Christianity and Islam was an attempt to re-establish a holistic order but the earlier diffusion of a great number of theoretical systems and the amalgamation of various behavioural systems (also due to the great invasions) did not truly allow this to happen. In addition, the universal vocation of the two religions was another hindrance in the re-establishment of a holistic order.
One should not confuse between holistic societies and totalitarian realms. In the former there is no tyranny involved, no dictatorial decision making, and no marginalization of eventual oppositions. The existence in 7th century BCE Egypt of various interpretative schools and approaches, theories and cults (the Heliopolitan, Hermopolitan, Memphitic and Theban systems) did not harm the cohesiveness of the Egyptian culture, because these systems were various interpretational systems of the same – Egyptian – values. 1000 years later, everything was different, and there was no holistic social order in Egypt anymore, as the existence on the Egyptian soil of followers of the aforementioned systems was of limited extent as there were Egyptians and foreigners (Persians, Aramaeans, Phoenicians, Jews, Meroites, Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Berbers and others) who adhered to various Gnosticisms, Hermetism, Manichaeism, Sarapism, various early Christian currents, Chaldaism, Ostanism, plus the official religious systems of the aforementioned peoples (which in their respective countries were not anymore able to constitute holistic systems either).
A holistic order means choice to stick to a historical culture and full awareness of the culture itself; a totalitarian order comes out of a desire to re-establish something that is lost and brutal methods are involved because in reality the authenticity has been lost, and the interest to stick to one´s past does not concern life itself but interest for power and expansion. The Islamic extremists of our times are an excellent paradigm of totalitarianism (even if they don´t rule a country, the way they organize their party and society affairs is totalitarian); but this is due to the fact that the real Islamic civilization and culture is totally lost among them. They have not a clue of the classical Islamic sciences, the meaning of the Islamic Art is totally lost, the Islamic philosophers and historians are not studied, understood, assessed and used in today´s bogus-Islamic religious decision making, and what is thought to be preserved, the reading of the Coran and the Hadith, plus limited Tafsir and Aqidah, are all totally disfigured and altered, and thus absolutely misunderstood. Today´s Islamic sheikhs and imams are a copy of the Pharisaic priests of the Jesus times´ Judaism.
Why the Oromos do not need Christianity, Islam and the West
9. Waaqeffannaa theologians have to clash in this regard with the Western intelligentsia who will depict this holistic Oromo system as a totalitarian threat. This is the hypocrisy and the mendacity of the Western pseudo-intellectuals who intend to further diffuse their contamination among all the peoples of the entire world through the bias of ´free choice´; in fact, the future of Waaqeffannaa does not depend on the Amhara and Tigray uneducated and uncultured cruel and criminal rulers (and the Oromo opposition to them) but hinges on the theoretical strength of the Oromo theologians who will have to explain that
a. Christianity gravely contradicts the Oromo system of values.
b. Islam is very similar to Waaqeffannaa but mainly developed and preached for other backgrounds´ peoples; in addition, Waaqeffannaa practicing Oromos are like Muslims without the Coran (the concept exists in Islam where monotheistic beliefs before Islam are interpreted as the result of prophetic work carried out by known or unknown prophets).
c. Oromoness does not rely on Western lifestyle which represents nothing Oromos should envy or need, if they judge based on Waaqeffannaa criteria.
10. This is wrong if phrased like this; it looks as if the Oromos coexisted with the early Pharaonic Egyptians, which is not true. Through the establishment of a continuity between the Ancient Kushites and Meroites, once can retrace the origins of the Oromo monotheism, which is very correct. What is plausible to say is that today the Oromos are the heirs, the recipients and the representatives of the most ancient Khammitic / Kushitic spirituality and doctrine of monotheism.
In fact, there is an urgent need for the Oromos to support financially at least ten (10) young Oromo students, well versed in Waaqeffannaa and the practice of Gadaa system, and help them study Egyptology up to the doctoral level. The establishment of theoretical, spiritual, artistic and literary parallels and historical continuity between Ancient Egypt and Kush / Meroe and the modern Oromos makes of this a need of national dimension.
England: the Oromos´ Worst Enemy
11. This sentence highlights what I developed earlier about holistic systems; it reveals the unique importance of Waaqeffannaa for the Oromos. At the same time, this simple truth reveals the unknown to almost all the Oromos reasons of their misfortune during the last 150 years. Certainly the vicinity of the perpetrators of genocidal acts against them made the Oromos see the hand that turned against them, but because of this, they did not identify correctly the brain that conceived the iniquitous development and the mouth that instigated the desire of expansion to the barbaric and cruel rulers of the Abyssinians.
Yet, the Oromos are fully aware of the past of their kingdoms that for three centuries coexisted – at times in war and at times in peace – with the tiny Abyssinian kingdoms; despite their isolation, hostility and animosity toward many neighbouring states, the Abyssinians had never shown the desire for a colonial expansion of so great dimensions prior to the middle of the 19th century. The tiny and rancorous, pathologically anti-Islamic Abyssinian state was unrelated and unfriendly to the Christian Ethiopian states Makkuria (in the area of Northern Sudan around Dunqulah Agouza) and Alodia (in the area of Khartoum); the latter had sent a delegation (in the very first years of the 17th century) to ask help against the Funj Muslims but the otherwise Christian Abyssinian king did not bother to send any.
Who changed the minds of the Abyssinians and offered them the perspective of the formation of a colonial empire? And why? The Oromos should investigate the two questions extensively. Behind the Abyssinian hand turned against them is hidden the British mouth and mind. The reasons for this anti-Oromo and anti-Kushitic act evolve around the following axes:
A. The English had to find a suitable solution to contain the French expansion in Eastern Africa.
B. They had to pursue their anti-Ottoman and anti-Islamic policy in the Red Sea area where for a while they counted on semi-independent (under viceroy) Egypt to control the formerly Ottoman African Red Sea coast.
C. They had to prevent the colonial expansion of Italy and Germany.
D. And they had to find in that part of the world (as they did I many other) allies whom they could control and penetrate, use and manoeuvre. The easily manoeuvrable political structure is the closed and reclusive society whereby they deal with few decision makers whom they can threaten (with words or deeds) and thus tie them to their policy.
Open societies with egalitarian structure do not offer this possibility because the great number of decision-makers minimizes the importance of the local interlocutor of the British, and consequently their impact and threat on him and the entire society.
During the 20th century and particularly after the elimination of Italy from the Abyssinian colonial territory, the British demanded the dismantle of the social Oromo structures to be carried out by the Abyssinian tyrant Haile Selassie. The rising global world with the postcolonial ruling classes was viewed by the British and their allies in America as a means to utterly destroy the impenetrable societies of egalitarian structure that they viewed as serious rivals in their effort to impose their inhuman Western pseudo-values of the consumers´ societies and the ensuing repugnant materialism.
In fact, the method of postcolonial interference imposes the selection of several persons among all nations, their initiation in secretive societies that rule the world´s political and diplomatic scene, and their usage as factors of diffusion of the Western ´values´ in their dismantled societies. Not a single member of a society organized according to an egalitarian system and its own values would necessitate to be initiated in the pseudo-mysteries of the Anglo-French Freemasonry. This is insupportable for the colonial gangsters, so panicked they feel if someone rejects to be controlled.
In fact, the enemy of Gadaa as system is one: Freemasonry.
Opet and Irreecha
12. One could establish several parallels between the Oromo Irreecha ceremony and the Ancient Egyptian feast Opet, which involved ceremonials during the sailing of Amun´s sacred barque at Thebes (Luqsor).
13. Opet occurred precisely during the 2nd month of the Flood Season (Akhet) that followed the difficult and dry Summer Season when the Nile waters went very low; in fact, due to the environmental and climatological divergence between the Nile Valley and the Oromian plateau, the two feasts seem to take place in the respective periods of the two calendars.
14. This was precisely the meaning of Opet and many bas-reliefs depicting scenes from the holy feast testify to the sacramental use of flowers during Opet.
15. The term implies religions with holy books and sacred texts. In fact, as soon as a nation enters into History, by introducing a writing system, the religion starts being written down, and religious texts appear. Beyond this point, there can be a great variety of cultural differences. In Ancient Egypt and Kush (Ethiopia) the holy texts (the Book of the Hours, the Book of the Caverns, the Book of what exists in the Amduat/the nether World, the Book of the Dead, the Litany of the Sun, etc.) were not comprehensively composed and made available. Contrarily to what happened in Mesopotamia (Enuma Elish), Anatolia (Hittite holy text of Ullikummi), Persia (Avesta) and other cultures, in Egypt and Kush it seems that the holy texts were written on valuable documents deposited in some temples, and from there the priests and artists copied only different excerpts on different monuments (temples, tombs) according to the precise need per case. We have mainly reconstituted the basic holy texts of Ancient Egypt that were equally holy in Ancient Kush (Napata).
The use of the holy book became compulsory for almost every religion of a people whose scribes had introduced a certain system of writing. A higher step was marked with Hermetism, a Gnostic syncretism around the Supreme being named Hermes Trismegistus in Greek and Djawty Aa Aa Aa in Egyptian; in the last pre-Christian century, Hermetism was the first religion that worshipped a God who was believed to have written a book, Poimandres. The concept became a few centuries later pivotal within Islam. But it was immaterial for the Oromos who preserved their monotheism without using a writing system and therefore without having a holy book. We will continue the commentary in a forthcoming article.
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ra? this is a NEW one claimed by you. OROMO's only have one god-Waaq-stop making up stuff so that you can get closer to this kingdom than you realy are.
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