quote:Originally posted by Narmerthoth: ^ This is what perplexes me to no end. The fact of the absence of written records from Africa detailing major ancient events that the rest of the world has records of. Were Africans so primitive to had never developed writing prior to being taught by foreigners? Every time there is a discussion around this topic and some African or historian states they didn't, but they didn't need to become of their oral tradition, it make me want to puke. As if oral traditions are a reliable method of passing on knowledge and history. Ancient Egypt definitely possessed some long forgotten form of technology in it's history and there are many myth and legends describing it. Around the same period in time, ancient India is also recorded to have possessed a form of high technology, and there is also the well known myth of Atlantis which supposed to have existed during the same period. Why is it that no where in African history can any records be found that record Africans and their interactions with any of these advanced ancient cultures?
The problem with traditional African societies is that everything is kept within the confines of the secret society. As a result, the elders keep all knowledge away from the masses through an oath of secrecy, maintained by keeping history through oral transmission.
Asians and Europeans have never had the integrity to maintain accurate oral records. as a result, these populations keep history through written media.
Because everything is kept in the secret society, in African traditional cultures, you only learn about the greatness of African societies when they migrant to new areas like the Nile Valley or LaVenta in Mexico. Here they made evident the sciences and knowledge they had learned in the secret society in plain sight because they were not controlled by the elders who could force them to adhere to an oath of secrecy.
The sciences were considered practical arts, so you learned them through apprenticeship. this method education and history was adequate until Africans met Europeans and Asians. These populations did not believe in sharing plus they practiced genocide as a way to take, and make new lands under their control. In the process of conquering new lands, the oral historians were killed off and the history was usually lost.
After Europeans came in contact with Africans, many Africans began to detest the arrogance of Europeans and hey began to tell them secrets about their societies such as religion and writing to let Europeans know their civilizations were just as highly developed as those of Europe.
You can bet that Europeans may have found written histories recorded by Africans detailing historical events but they are not going to publish them, because they like to keep certain aspects of history secret so they can control us.
This is one of the reasons I learned how to read just about all the ancient languages spoken by the civilizations of the world so I could get a true picture of our history.
As Mike and I like to say Europeans lie. they tell us only what they want us to know. The best example is the roots of Afro-Americans. Look at how they were able to make us believe, eventhough our parents may have told us otherwise, that the Apache were the "Copper Colored" Native Americans when this was never the case. If they could hide the fact that many of our ancestors were the indigenous Americans, think about what else they are hiding.
it is for this reason Eurocentrics and the Academe promote people like Gates and Keita as symbols of astute 'African-American scholars, while they vilify Asante, Mike, Mar Washington and myself. They hate us because Asante provided researchers with a methodology to research our history, Mike and Marc Washington gave us the pictorial evidence of the makers of Black/African civilizations, while I provide the basic research confirming the theories about our history developed by W.E.B. DuBois .
We must never forget that it was Dubois' Negro, and The World and Africa, that influenced all the modern Afrocentic researchers from Anta Diop to J.A. Rogers.
I thank God everyday that my research and the pictoral evidence accumulated by Mike and Marc Washington will lead our dedicated researchers in finding and disseminating the truth about the history of Black and African people.
Aluta continua...the struggle to free our minds continues...
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Do you know of Uthman Dan Fodio? He wrote 100 books on science, history, law and culture. A foremost African scholar of the 18th century. Have you read his books?
Before Uthman Dan Fodio there was Ahmad Baba of Sankore University in Timbucktu. He wrote more than 100 books on law, history and medicine. Have you read those books?
After Uthman Dan Fodio, there was Usman Bello his son. He wrote many books on history, law, and religion. Have you read those books?
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Understanding that Africa has been populated for 10s of thousands of years before Asia and Europe it's unbelievable to believe that the only African writing we can point to is late in the AD periods,
I don't doubt that a small minority of Africans were writing well before other cultures, it seems the non-writing/reading majority very likely destroyed them as were as the African cultures that created them. As Dr. Winters has stated, perhaps most of these non-writing African cultures relied on oral tradition and saw no value in recording by writing. I also believe that at some point in African history, well before what is recorded, some African nation did attempt to consolidate African.
-------------------- Selenium gives real life and true reality Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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quote:Originally posted by IronLion: Do you know of Uthman Dan Fodio? He wrote 100 books on science, history, law and culture. A foremost African scholar of the 18th century. Have you read his books?
Before Uthman Dan Fodio there was Ahmad Baba of Sankore University in Timbucktu. He wrote more than 100 books on law, history and medicine. Have you read those books?
After Uthman Dan Fodio, there was Usman Bello his son. He wrote many books on history, law, and religion. Have you read those books?
Yea. Back in the 1970's I studied under Charles Stewart at the Univ. of Illinois, so we read the French and Arabic versions of these books in Seminar courses I took under Stewart.
That is why my research institution is called the Uthman dan Fodio Institute.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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There is plenty of written history out there but you have to learn to read the ancient languages. Just like Europeans used Divide and Rule tactics to separate Black and African people from their history. For example, they would write about Egypt and refer to people living in Upper Egypt "Negroes", when the Egyptians had no such term.
Next the European researchers claimed that the Sumerians, Elamites, Malinke-Bambara, Dravidians (of the Indus Valley) and Egyptians belonged to different ethnicities. This was false. My research proved that they originally belonged to the Maa Confederation, and as Kushites left Africa to settle in the Americas and Eurasia.
Narmerthoth Africans and other Black people did write their history but Europeans tell you only what they want you to know to maintain the illusion of white supremacy.
You can read this history yourself or read it in the 14 books I have written so far of these ancient civilizations.
I wrote these books after learning numerous languages including Malinke-Bambara, Tamil, Chinese and etc. My knowledge of the Vais script and comparative linguistics has allowed me to decipher several ancient wring system. These books will help anyone read the literatures of these Black Civilizations.
This is why you will see laymen attack my research--but never established scholars. They don't dare because then we might have a debate which they can't win.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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How we began the study of African history and what we need to study is important. The discussion makes it clear that eventhough each person has had a different experience coming around to learning about African history it has always been an experience in which the learner has had to go out of his way to gain knowledge of the subject.
Since books are easy to come by we usually have a very good knowledge of the "big picture", i.e., the Mali and Ghana empires, but we know almost nothing about the cultures and civilizations that led up to these great ancient Black Empires like Sumer and Elam . This results from the fact that most of this knowledge base is found in articles.
In the 1970's it was easy to find this material because there were so few publications to read. Now when I go to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, to keep up with the literature, just in the field of ancient history I am overwhelmed by the literature sources. Much of it leading nowhere because of the Eurocentric nature--doxic assumptions made by many authors of these works--which were published to support the status quo view of history.
As a result, to truely benefit from this body of literature you need a frame of reference. People like to study Egypt because Diop provides this frame of reference. To study other aspects of African history is hard for most people because they don't have the background to interpret the material.
This is further complicated by the fact that many English speaking Africans are so brain washed that they have failed to seriously research their history, as opposed to the French speaking Africans, and as a result Eurocentric dogmas continue to dominate interpretation of history in these areas.
I will never forget how in 1985, I wrote a three volume World History of Black people for Ahmad Patel, a Nigerian publisher which Nigerian historians refused to support because they could not believe we had such a history. Subsequently Patel got so mad at me, he refused to publish the books or give me the proofs to publish them myself.
This incident made it clear to me that writing about African history is a priority--but if we wait for English speaking Africans, especially Nigerians to do this, it will never happen because the academe in English speaking Africa is so gutless.
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-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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I can understand how some information would be kept secret and maintained at the highest levels by African elites. This makes sense and follows other cultures such as Egypt and their securing proprietary information by ritual, religion or caste. Egypt kept much of it's proprietary information in the hands of it's elites and priests, but they still maintained open records also. I think the same was true for Meroe.
However, what about writing for non-proprietary information. For example, planning or just plain relaying of orders. This would not be essential for small African tribes, but I would think writing would be required for the larger African nation with thousands of citizens.
-------------------- Selenium gives real life and true reality Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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quote:Originally posted by Narmerthoth: Dr. Winters
I can understand how some information would be kept secret and maintained at the highest levels by African elites. This makes sense and follows other cultures such as Egypt and their securing proprietary information by ritual, religion or caste. Egypt kept much of it's proprietary information in the hands of it's elites and priests, but they still maintained open records also. I think the same was true for Meroe.
However, what about writing for non-proprietary information. For example, planning or just plain relaying of orders. This would not be essential for small African tribes, but I would think writing would be required for the larger African nation with thousands of citizens.
You are right Africans were highly literate. But Europeans love to maintain these languages are not deciphered so we can not read what they wrote. This is false my discovery of the Ancient Maa Confederation and the Vai script has allowed me to decipher: the Indus Valley Writing, Proto-Sumerian, Minoan Linear A and the Olmec Writing. Using information from the Greco-Romans I also deciphered the Meroitic writing system.
Now you can read these literatures for yourself and decipher new inscriptions .
' I used knowledge of these languages to write my books on Ancient Black Civilizations.
As a result, the literatures of our ancestor are now available to us to read if we take the time to study their writing.Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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Afro-American scholars have met the standards of scholarship for almost 200 years supporting the role of Blacks in ancient history.
During this period Eurocentric researchers have attempted to whiteout , Blacks from history. In the book below I provide a detailed explanation of how to use the genetic model to study Ancient African and Black Civilizations.
Knowledge is cumulative. In other words we build new knowledge on the research of the giants in our field. From your lack of knowledge about DuBois' it is clear you have no recognition of the fact that what you guys are writing about has already been discussed formerly, and your job should be confirming or disconfirming what these giants wrote.
I used to teach educational philosophy on occasion at University. In this class I just don't talk about contemporary educators I also talk about the Greek philosophers.
The themes Ironlion, Mike, Marc and I write about are part of a 200 year tradition of Afro-American scholarship. Many Afro-American researchers need to learn to respect your own scholars. Don't let white supremacy continue to blind you to the truths of history.
Afrocentrism, is a mature social science that was founded by Afro-Americans almost 200 years ago.
These men and women provided scholarship based on contemporary archaeological and historical research the African/Black origination of civilization throughout the world. These Afro-American scholars, mostly trained at Harvard University (one of the few Universities that admitted Blacks in the 19th Century) provide the scientific basis the global role played by African people in civilizing the world.
Afrocentrism and the africalogical study of ancient Black civilizations was began by Afro-Americans.
The foundation of any mature science is its articulation in an authoritive text (Kuhn, 1996, 136). The africalogical textbooks published by Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) provided the vocabulary themes for further afrocentric social science research.
The pedagogy for ancient africalogical research was well established by the end of the 19th century by African American researchers well versed in the classical languages and knowledge of Greek and Latin. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) in the Freedom Journal, were the first African Americans to discuss and explain the "Ancient Model" of history.
These afrocentric social scientists used the classics to prove that the Blacks founded civilization in Egypt, Ethiopia, Babylon and Ninevah. Cornish and Russwurm (1827) made it clear that archaeological research supported the classical, or "Ancient Model" of history.
Edward Blyden (1869) also used classical sources to discuss the ancient history of African people. In his work he not only discussed the evidence for Blacks in West Asia and Egypt, he also discussed the role of Blacks in ancient America (Blyden, 1869, 78).
By 1883, africalogical researchers began to publish book on African American history. G.W. Williams (1883) wrote the first textbook on African American history. In the History of the Negro Race in America, Dr. Williams provided the schema for all future africalogical history text.
Dr. Williams (1883) confirmed the classical traditions for Blacks founding civilization in both Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia) and West Asia. In addition, to confirming the "Ancient Model" of history, Dr. Williams (1883) also mentioned the presence of Blacks in Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula. Dr. Williams was trained at Howard.
A decade later R.L. Perry (1893) also presented evidence to confirm the classical traditions of Blacks founding Egypt, Greece and the Mesopotamian civilization. He also provided empirical evidence for the role of Blacks in Phoenicia, thus increasing the scope of the ASAH paradigms.
Pauline E. Hopkins (1905) added further articulation of the ASAH paradigms of the application of these paradigms in understanding the role of Blacks in West Asia and Africa. Hopkins (1905) provided further confirmation of the role of Blacks in Southeast Asia, and expanded the scope of africalogical research to China (1905).
This review of the 19th century africalogical social scientific research indicate confirmation of the "Ancient Model" for the early history of Blacks. We also see a movement away from self-published africalogical research, and publication of research, and the publication of research articles on afrocentric themes, to the publication of textbooks.
It was in these books that the paradigms associated with the "Ancient Model" and ASAH were confirmed, and given reliability by empirical research. It was these texts which provided the pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of the africalogical normal social science.
The afrocentric textbooks of Hopkins (1905), Perry (1893) and Williams (1883) proved the reliability and validity of the ASAH paradigms. The discussion in these text of contemporary scientific research findings proving the existence of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Nubia-Sudan (Kush), Mesopotamia, Palestine and North Africa lent congruency to the classical literature which pointed to the existence of these civilizations and these African origins ( i.e., the children of Ham= Khem =Kush?).
The authors of the africalogical textbooks reported the latest archaeological and anthropological findings. The archaeological findings reported in these textbooks added precision to their analysis of the classical and Old Testament literature. This along with the discovery of artifacts on the ancient sites depicting Black\African people proved that the classical and Old Testament literature, as opposed to the "Aryan Model", objectively identified the Black\African role in ancient history. And finally, these textbooks confirmed that any examination of references in the classical literature to Blacks in Egypt, Kush, Mesopotamia and Greece\Crete exhibited constancy to the evidence recovered from archaeological excavations in the Middle East and the Aegean. They in turn disconfirmed the "Aryan Model", which proved to be a falsification of the authentic history of Blacks in early times.
The creation of africalogical textbooks provided us with a number of facts revealing the nature of the afrocentric ancient history paradigms. They include a discussion of:
1) the artifacts depicting Blacks found at ancient sites
recovered through archaeological excavation;
2) the confirmation of the validity of the classical and Old
Testament references to Blacks as founders of civilization in Africa and Asia;
3) the presence of isolated pockets of Blacks existing outside Africa; and
4) that the contemporary Arab people in modern Egypt are not the descendants of the ancient Egyptians.
The early africalogical textbooks also outlined the africalogical themes research should endeavor to study. A result, of the data collected by the africalogical ancient history research pioneers led to the development of three facts by the end of the 19th century, which needed to be solved by the afrocentric paradigms: (1) What is the exact relationship of ancient Egypt, to Blacks in other parts of Africa;
(2) How and when did Blacks settle America, Asia and Europe;
(3) What are the contributions of the Blacks to the rise, and cultural expression ancient Black\African civilizations;
(4) Did Africans settle parts of America in ancient times.
As you can see the structure of Afrocentrism were made long before Boas and the beginning of the 20th Century.In fact , I would not be surprised if Boas learned what he talked about from the early Afrocentric researchers discussed in this post.
As you can see Afro-Americans have be writing about the Global history of ancient Black civilizations for almost 200 years. It was Afro-Americans who first mentioned the African civilizations of West Africa and the Black roots of Egypt. These Afro-Americans made Africa a historical part of the world.
Afro-American scholars not only highlighted African history they also discussed the African/Black civilizations developed by African people outside Africa over a hundred years before Bernal and Boas.
Your history of what you call "negrocentric" or Black Studies is all wrong. It was DuBois who founded Black/Negro Studies, especially Afro-American studies given his work on the slave trade and sociological and historical studies of Afro-Americans. He mentions in the World and Africa about the Jews and other Europeans who were attempting to take over the field.
There is no one who can deny the fact that Leo Hansberry founded African studies in the U.S., not the Jews.Hansberry was a professor at Howard University.
Moreover, Bernal did not initiate any second wave of "negro/Blackcentric" study for ancient Egyptian civilization. Credit for this social science push is none other than Chiek Diop, who makes it clear that he was influenced by DuBois.
DuBois Africalogical study of ancient history There are four philosophical schools associated with the afrocentric study of ancient history: perennialist, essentialist, existentialist, and progressivist. The taxonomic system we use to classify the various afrocentric philosophical positions and related values affecting afrocentrism are modeled on philo-sophical developments associated with education.
We can use taxonomies of educational philosophies to discuss any proposed afrocentric curriculum because both education and philosophy are "cultural experiences". Moreover, because afrocentrism seeks to explain and delineate the story of African people, it clearly is a field of study which encompasses all aspects of the culture of Black and African people (Asante, 1990, 1991; Winters, 1994).
The perennialist afrocentrists study the great works. The adherents of this school include Martin Delaney (1978), Cornish and Russwurm (1827), Frederick Douglas (1966), and Edward Blyden (1869). These Afrocentrists see knowledge as truth, which is eternal.
The essentialist afrocentric school emphasize in their writing data that is well established through scientific research. Afrocentrists of this philosophical school include W. E. B. DuBois (1965, 1970), John Jackson (1974), C.A. Winters (1985, 1989, 1991, 1994) and Leo Hansberry (1981). They believe that as new research is published, it should be analyzed to discover how it relates to the ancient history of African and Black people to enrich our understanding of the past.
The existentialist afrocentrists believe that africalogical studies should thrive to teach African people to know more about themselves so we can have a better world. The afrocentric existentialists include J.A. Rogers, Anta Diop (1974, 1991), G.M. James (1954), Marcus Garvey (1966) and A.A. Schomburg (1979).
Research is the foundation of good science, or knowing in general. There are four methods of 1) Method of tenacity (one holds firmly to the truth, because "they know it" to be true); 2) method of authority (the method of established belief, i.e., the Bible or the "experts" says it, it is so); 3) method of intuition (the method where a proposition agrees with reason, but not necessarily with experience); and 4) the method of science (the method of attaining knowledge which calls for self-correction). To explain African origin of the Egyptians, I use the scientific method which calls for hypothesis testing, not only supported by experimentation, but also that of alternative plausible hypotheses that, may place doubt on the original hypothesis.
The aim of science is theory construction (F.N. Kirlinger, Foundations of behavior research, (1986) pp.6-10; R. Braithwaite, Scientific explanation, (1955) pp.1-10). A theory is a set of interrelated constructs, propositions and definitions, that provide a systematic understanding of phenomena by outlining relations among a group of variables that explain and predict phenomena.
Scientific inquiry involves issues of theory construction, control and experimentation. Scientific knowledge must rest on testing, rather than mere induction which can be defined as inferences of laws and generalizations, derived from observation. This falsity of logical possibility is evident in the rejection of the African origin of the Egyptians. These writers base their theories solely on observation--nonscientific knowledge is not science. Karl Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, rejects this form of logical validity based solely on inference and conjecture (pp. 33-65). Popper maintains that confirmation in science, is arrived at through falsification.
Therefore to confirm a theory in science one test the theory through regorous attempts at falsification. In falsification the researcher uses cultural, linguistic, anthropological and historical knowledge to invalidate a proposed theory. If a theory can not be falsified through yes of the variables associated with the theory it is confirmed. It can only be disconfirmed when new generalizations associated with the original theory fail to survive attempts at falsification.
In short, science centers on conjecture and refutation. Given 200 years of research in Afrocentrism, our job is to confirm the research into the role of Blacks in ancient history uncovered by the giants in Afrocentric Social Sciences discussed above.
Dr. Winters has written extensively on the ancient history of the African diaspora. He has numerous sites on the web were explains the ancient history of African people. His major work is Afrocentrism: Myth or Science . In Afrocentrism: Myth or Science Dr. Winters provides a detailed discussion of how to study Afrocentrism and provides an intimate and detailed study of the ancient Black civilizations outside Africa in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The final afrocentric philosophical school is the progressivist. The afrocentric school of progressivism believes that we should have knowledge of the process and futuristic focus on afrocentric studies. The major exponent of this frame of reference is Molefi K. Asante (1991).
In general Diop (1974, 1991) caused an africalogical social scientific revolution because he was able to prove that Egypt was the archetypical civilization for many West Africans. This was an important discovery because almost all of the slaves that were sold in the United States had originally came from West Africa. Verification of the Egyptian origin of West Africans provided African Americans with relationship to the ancient Egyptians. Moreover, Diop's use of linguistics, and anthropological evidence to confirm the African origin of Egypt eliminated the need for africalogical researchers to use the classical writers to prove the African origin of Egypt (Diop, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1986, 1987, 1988). This finding by Diop has led africalogical researchers to seek a better understanding of African philosophy through an interpretation of Egyptian philosophy.
Moreover, africalogical researchers like Dr.Winters, have also began the reconstruction of the Paleo-African language used by Blacks in prehistoric times (Anselin, 1982, 1982b, 1989; Winters, 1994) so that we will know more about the culture and civilization of the Proto-Africans. Dr. Winters in Before Egypt: The Maa Confederation, Africa's First Civilization, is about the Maa civilization. The Maa civilization existed in the Saharan highlands. The people of Maa founded many civilizations including Egypt, and Sumer.
Dr, Winters in Egyptian Language, Niger-Congo Speakers and the Mountains of the Moon , provides the linguistic evidence that confirms the hypothesis of Cheikh Anta Diop, L. Homburger, M. Delafosse that the Niger-Congo speakers and Egyptians had a common origin. In this book we argue that many Egytians living in the 22 sepats of Upper Egypt spoke Niger-Congo languages including the Bantu Fulani and Mande languages.
Egyptian Languages , provides the genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence relating to the diverse Niger-Congo speakers who made up segments of the Egyptian nation. Readers of this book will learn that the Niger-Congo speakers originated in the Highland regions of Middle Africa: the Mountains of the Moon ; and that this population which later settled Upper Egypt, formerly belonged to the Ounanian culture.
The last major confirmation of the ASAH paradigms was made by Clyde Ahmad Winters (1977, 1979, 1981, 1983a, 1983c, 1983d, 1984, 1985) when he expanded our understanding of the role of Blacks\Africans in Indo-China, India and China; and the ancient literacy of Blacks (1979, 1983d, 1985c, 1986b). Using linguistic, anthropological and historical evidence, he proved that the earliest cultures of China and Indo-China were founded by Blacks from West Africa and modern Ethiopia (Winters, 1979, 1983d, 1985c, 1986b). In support of this history Dr. Winters has posted over 70 videos on YouTube.
Winters also made it clear that the earliest Japanese were Blacks and that Japanese is related to African languages (Winters, 1979, 1981, 1983a, 1983c, 1984). In addition he was able to prove that the founders of Xia and Shang were of African and Dravidian origin (1983c,1985c).
Using the findings of Wiener in regards to the writing of the Olmecs Winters discovered that the Blacks from West Africa left numerous inscriptions written in the Manding language (Winters, 1977, 1979, 1983a, 1985b) . Winters later discovered that due to the cognition between the Mande writing and ancient scripts used by the Minoans and Indus Valley he could read the Indus Valley Writing and the Linear A inscriptions (1985b).
• The study of Africans in ancient America has been fruitful. Dr. Leo Wiener, in Africa and the Discovery of America was the first to recognize that the ancient civilizations of Mexico had been incluenced by Africans. He was especially sure that the Mande speaking people influenced the religion and civilization of the Aztec and Maya people; and that the writing on the Tuxtla statuette was written in the Mande writing system.
Later Ivan van Sertima wrote an important book which highlighted the influence of Africans in Mexico. In They Came before Columbus, van Sertima discussed the African influence on the Olmec civilization, and the discovery of America by Abubakari, a ruler of the Mali empire in the 1300's A.D. Dr. Winters expands the discussion of Abubakari's voyage to America by discusing the colonies they left in North America and Brazil in his book African Empires in Ancient America.
Dr. Clyde Winters has written extensively on the African origins of the Olmec. He deciphered the Olmec language and since then he has published numerous websites where he discussed the Olmec Kings and their civilization. The most important work of Dr. Winters is Atlantis in Mexico, in this book Dr. Winters provides a detailed account of the migration of the Mande speaking people from Africa to the Americas. He explains that they called themselves Xi (Shi) or Si people and provides an informative discussion of the Mexican traditions regarding the expansion of the Olmec from the Gulf Coast, to the Pacific coast of Mexico. .
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Atlantis in Mexico will provide any researchers with a wealth of knowledge to understand the African origin of the Olmec. And the contributions of the Xi to the civilizations of Mexico.
Dr. Winters has expanded knowledge about the other Blacks who established colonies in the Americas before Europeans. In African Empires Ancient America,Dr. Winters discussed the Axumite, Mound Builders and other ancient Black Americans.
Proficiency in a language other than English, helped africalogical researchers conduct the normal africalogical social science. It was DuBois' (1965, 1970) and Hansberry's knowledge of German that allowed these afrocentrists to conduct research into the role of Blacks in Egypt and Ethiopia. J.A. Rogers mastered many languages including French and German to prove that Blacks inhabited almost every continent on the globe. Dr. C. A. Winters (1977,1981\1982, 1985, 1991, 1994) had to learn Arabic, Chinese, Malinke, Portuguese, Otomi, Mayan, Swahili, Tamil and Tokharian (Kushana) to conduct his africalogical studies of Blacks in Asia and the Americas. Dr. Wintes used his linguistic knowled to decipher the Olmec, Meroitic and Minoan writing systems. Dr, Winters gives a detailed explanation of his decipherment of Meroitic writing numerous Meroitic inscriptions deciphered and in his book: Meroitic Writing and Literature.
In the 1960's due to the rise of independence in the east African country of Tanzania, Swahili became a language used by africalogical scientists. Swahili terms were used to explain and define the phenomena associated with africalogy. This is one of the reasons that the terms used in the Kwanza ceremonies practiced by blacks are Swahili lexical items (Coleman, 1971). Swahili is still among africalogical researchers but today Egyptian is recognized as the classical language for africalogical research (Wimby, 1980). Diop (1974,1991) popularized the idea that Egyptian should be used as the classical language for the study of ancient africalogical language and historical studies. As a result, most of the africalogical researchers today concentrate on Egypt and use Egyptian terms to explain the culture and Proto-African language of Africa people (Carruthers, 1977,1980).
Dr. Winters in Afrocentrism: Myth or Science , Has been able to update the literature regarding African civilizations in Asia, Europe and the Americas. This text provides the blueprint necessary for students to understand why the Afrocentric model of history continues to find support from the archaeological, linguistic and anthropological fields of study
This africalogical research by Winters (1981/1982, 1983b, 1983d, 1989a, 1991, 1994) made it clear that the first civilizations in Indo-China and China were founded by Blacks. He has also proved the lie to Hume's (1875) claim that Blacks have "No literacy" and "No letters".
These scholars recognized that the people of ancient Greece, Southeast Asia and Indo-China were African people. When giants in study of Afrocentrism discussed Blacks in Asia they were talking about people of African descent. So when you claim that these civilizations should be outside the study area of Afrocentric scholars you don't know what you're talking about.
These researchers used anthropological, archaeological historical and linguistic evidence to support their conclusions. It is only natural that these well founded hypotheses developed by these scholars can be supported by population genetics.
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Bernal,M. (1987). Black Athena. New York: Free Association Press. Volume 1.
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Blyden, E.W. (1887). Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Cornish, S. & Russwurm, J.B. (1827). European colonies in America, Freedom Journal, 1.
Carruthers, J. (1977). Writing for Eternity, black book bulletin,
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Get up off your knees and learn from the Afro-American scholars who began the study of Blacks in ancient history.
In conclusion, Afrocentrism is a mature social science. A social science firmly rooted in the scholarship of Afro-American researchers lasting almost 200 years. Researchers like Ironlion, Marc Washington, Mike and I are continuing a tradition of scholarship began 20 decades ago. All we are doing is confirming research by DuBois and others, that has not been disconfirmed over the past 200 years.
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Narmerthoth over the years I have tried to relay to the ES community the literatures of Ancient Blacks. In 2006 I published here at ES the decipherment of many Meroitic inscriptions. To make you and others aware of these literatures I will republish the Meroitic and other inscrptions written by Black people around the world.
I deciphered the Meroitic writing based on the Kushana hypothesis.
The Kushana Hypothesis and Meroitic Writing I have deciphered Meroitic based on the most logical path to the decipherment of any dead language. Maurice Pope , made it clear that before a dead language can be deciphered you must have the right theoretical structure to base your inquiry upon it (p. 191). There were three preliminary conditions that must be met before any decipherment: (1) confidence that a script can be deciphered; (2) location of proper names must be determined; (3) the grammatical rules of the target language must be known.
Conditions #1 and #2 were met by Griffith when he deciphered the Meroitic script in 1910, and his discovery of the proper names of the Meroitic gods and individuals in the Meroitic text.
Griffith also discovered the directions in which the Meroitic writing was written. The recognition for the solubility of Meroitic was reinforced by the publication of it because it provided up-to-date material on Meroitic and the idea of using the comparative method to decipher Meroitic.
Condition #3 was met in 1978 when Hintze published his work on Meroitic grammar. This allowed me to test other languages similar to Meroitic to find the cognate language.
I chose Kushana for two reasons. Firstly, Philostratus in , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Kush, who settled along the Nile, descended from the Brahmins of India, having been forced to migrate after the murder of their King. This passage pointed to the Kushana, who left China in 176 B.C., after the murder of their king. The Kushana were of high caste.
The Meroites and Kushana often referred to themselves as Kuš . Because both of these groups called themselves Kushana, it suggested that they may be related, given the Classical tradition for a migration of "Indians" to Kush. Moreover, C.B. Rawlinson, in "Notes on the early History of Babylonia," pp. 221-222, discussed the Kushites of Asia and Africa.
Using the evidence of classical traditions pointing to the Kushana as possible settlers of Meroë gave me the confidence to compare Kushana to Meroitic. This comparison proved fruitful.
The key to understanding the use of Kushana/Tokharian to write Meroitic depended on the multi-lingual/ethnic character of the Kushana language. Although this language is considered Indo-European, I believe that it was used as a trade language in Central Asia to give the people of the region a common medium of exchange.
The Meroitic empire was made up of many groups: the Kusa/Kushites, Blemmyans, Medes, and Reherahas according to Hakem and Millet. I believe that the Meroites recognized the possibility of using Tokharian, which I believe was a trade language , in Meroitic Kush to unite the diverse people living in the region because it was not of Egyptian origin.
There is disturbing linguistic evidence that hinders the proper placement of Kushana/Tokharian in the I-E family. This results from the fact that it is more closely related to the western branch of I-E, than Indo-Iranian its closest neighbor. The Tokharian isoglosses in I-E are ranked as follows: (1) Germanic, (2) Greek, (3) Indic, (4) Baltic, and (5) Iranian.
The Tokharian lexicon has also been influenced by Tibetan, Chinese, and Uighur. This is suggestive that Tokharian was a trade language and that Greek and Slavic words came into the "lingua franca" after the Greek conquest of Bactria. The borrowing pattern in Tokharian is consistent with the spread of the Greek language by a small politically dominant minority of Greek settlers into a far larger and previously long-established non–I-E speaking majority. My decipherment of Meroitic is based on the Kushana theory.
The Kushana theory is that a group of “East Indian” scholars introduced the Meroitic writing system to the Meroites.
The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language. Meroitic is not related to languages spoken in this area. Griffith and Haycock tried to read Meroitic using Nubian and failed. K.H. Priese tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudani; he also failed.
The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who were engaged in constantly conflict with the Meroites , failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites.
The idea that the Meroites spoke Nubian has been revised by Rilly. Recently Rilly has suggested that we may be able to read Meroitic using Proto-Eastern Sudanic. We must reject this alledged break through in Meroitic linguistics on two points, he believes Nubia can be used to interpret Meroitic when the Nubians were never part of the meroitic Confederation; and 2) you can not read a dead language based on proto-terms because a proto-language is purely theorectical and can not be proven as ever existing in the real world.
Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol.1 , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana(p.45),1950). Given the fact that the Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to the Kushite civilization, led to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been Kushana philosophers.
The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to Indians in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the possible location ofthe cognate language of Meroitic.
There is external evidence, which supports my theory. A theory explains observed phenomena and has predictive power. I have theorized that due to the claims of the Classical writers that some of the Meroites came from India (F.C Conybeare (Trans.), Philostratus: The life of Apollonius of Tyana Vol.2, (1950) pg.271). According to the Life of Apollonius, the Indian Meroites were formerly led by a KingGanges, who had "repulsed the Scythians who invaded this land [India from] across the Caucasus" (Conybeare, Vol.1, Pg.273). Pilostratus also made it clear that the Indians of Meroe came to this countryafter their king was killed.
The presence of this tradition of an Indian King of the Indian-Meroites conquering the Scythians predicts that the Indian literature should record this historical episode. This prediction is supported by aJaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka, which reports that when the Scythians invaded Malwa, the King of Malwa, called Vikramaditya defeated the Scythians (H. Kulke & D. Rothermund, History of India(London, Routledge: 1990, pg.73). This king Vikramaditya may be the Ganges mentioned in the Life of Apollonius.Confirmation of the Ganges story,supports the Classical literary evidence that their were Indianized -Meroites that could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites.
In addition to the classical mention of the Indians settling Meroë, we also have a horde of Kushana coins that were found on the floor of a cave at the present monastery-shine at Debra Demo in modern Ethiopia in 1940. Moreover, there were other Indians in North Africa in addition to Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community (see: R. Salomon, "Epigraphic remains of Indiantraders in Egypt", Journal of the American oriental Society, (1991) pp.731-736; and R. Salomon, Addenda,Journal of the American Oriental Society, (1993) pg.593). These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Meroitic writing system. All of this supported the traditions of the Meroites that speak of a knowledge of the Kushana/Indians among the Meroites.
The evidence that the Classical references to an Indian-Meroite King who conquered the Scythians is supported by the Indian literature, provides external corroboration of the tradition that some of the Meroites were of Indian origin. The presence of Indian traders and settlers in Meroe (and Egypt), makes it almost impossible to deny the possibility that Indians, familiar with the Tokharian trade languagedid not introduce this writing to the Meroites who needed a neutral language to unify the diverse ethnic groups who made up the Meroite state. In relation to the history of linguistic change and bilingualism, itis a mistake to believe that linguistic transfer had to take place for the Meroites to have used Tokharian, when it did not take place when they wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In summary the classical literature makes it clear that there was a connection between the Gymnosophists (of Meroe) and the Indians. The fact that historical events mentioned in the classical sources are found in the Indian literature confirm the view that there were Indian-Meroites who could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites. The fact that the Nubians who were probably not part of the"Meroitic state", used hieroglyphics and Coptic to write their language without abandoning their native language support the view that the Meroites could have also used Tokharian to write Meroitic. And that eventhough the Kushites wrote Meroitic inscriptions in Tokharian, theywould not have had to abandon their own language.
The evidence presented above provides internal and external validity for my theory based upon the sources I have cited previously. The sources I have used are impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully informed[i.e., there were no Indians North Africa and Kush when the Classical writers maintained they were] and present rival explanations based on the evidence. The fact that the claims made by the Classical writers issupported by the Indians themselves if further strong confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis.
The hypothesis based on the classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana Hypothesis. The predicting power of the original theory, matches the observed natural phenomena which was confirmed elsewhere by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexicalitems and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified.
The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic, was further confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections were deducible from prediction. I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the statements of the classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and toponymic evidence found not only in Africa, but also India and Central Asia [where the people also used Tokharian as a trade language to unify the various people in Central Asia]. I constructed three testable hypotheses in support of the Kushana theory, and it seems only fair that these variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana Hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: If the meroites used a writing system of non-African origin a tradition mentioning this fact will exist. (Hypothesis confirmed. Classical literature mentions Indian scholars in ancient Meroe.)
Hypothesis: 2. If the classical literature mentions Indians who lived in Egypt influencing the Meroites their should be historical evidence relating to this tradition. (Hypothesis confirmed .Classical literature mentions a King who left his country is mentioned in the Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka.)
Hypothesis: 3. If Classical literature is true about the Indian origin of the Gymnosophists Indians will be found living near the Meroites around the time the Meroitic inscriptions appear. (Hypothesis confirmed. Artifacts and coins with Indian inscriptions have been found in Egypt and Ethiopia.) Failure to disconfirm this theorem, implies validity of my prediction.
LINGUISTIC SUPPORT
The classical literature supported the view that we might be able to find the Meroitic cognate language through a comparison of the Meroitic terms and Kushan lexical items. To test the Kushana hypothesis we had to then: 1) find agreement between Kushana and Meroitic terms; 2) compare Central Asian and Egypto-Sudanese toponomies; 3) compare Kushana and Meroitic grammatical forms.
Hintze's (1979) grammar of Meroitic provided the necessary material to compare Meroitic with other languages to find its cognate language. Hintze (1979) recognized three approaches to the study of Meroitic: 1) philological, 2) comparative, and 3) structural (i.e., the morphological-syntactical). The philological methods of Hintze (1979) were informed guesses based upon context.
In the comparative method the structures of two or more languages are compared to determine the relationship between languages. Hintze's (1979) discussion of the Meroitic affixes provided us with the linguistic material to compare Meroitic successfully with Tocharian. Linguist to determine the relatedness of languages, and to reconstruct earlier language states uses the comparative method.
The comparative linguist looks for patterns of correspondence, i.e., the isolation of words with common or similar meanings that have systematic consonantal agreement with little regard for location and/or type of vowel. Consonantal agreement is the regular appearance of consonants at certain locations in words having analogous meanings.
Using the comparative methods proposed by Hintze we have found that the Meroitic inscriptions are written in Tocharian, a language used as a lingua franca in Central Asia by the Kushana or Kush people. The Kushana people ruled Central Asia and India. Linguist prefer to call the Kushana language Tocharian, after the Sanskrit term for Kushana: Tu-kara.(Winters 1984,1989) There is structural, morphological and toponymic evidence which support the view that Tokharian is cognate to Meroitic (Winters 1984,1989).
There are many Central Asian place names that agree with toponomies in Nubia/ Sudan. Below we list a few of these common toponomies:
Central Asia Sudan
Pap Pap Karnak Karnak Kukushka Kurush Shaur Sarur Kandi Kandi Urban Borgan Khara Kara- Kupuri Gabur, Capur
These placenames cam be compared with the maps of Central Asia and the Sudan supplied me by Dr. Vamos-Toth and attached hereto.
Some of the alleged Meroitic terms, but not all have being verified by my decipherment. What you must remember though, is that most of the alleged Meroitic lexical items were simply guesses by the researchers themselves. These Meroitic terms could only become valid when they can be read in all the Meroitic text and have consistent meaning. I found that some of these terms are homonyms, while other terms "discovered " by Griffith and others were good guesses that do not prove valid given our discovery of the cognate language of Meroitic. There are several recognized Meroitic words they are not of Egyptian origin (Hintze 1979). The following words correspond to Tokharian words:
Meroitic Tokharian
0 kadke / ktke # queen 0 katak # master of the house 0 ato # water 0 ap # 0 s # 'race' 0 sah # 'man' 0 wide # youth 0 wir # 0 qor # monarch 0 oroce # 'the grand king' 0 parite # agent 0 parwe # 'first' 0 apote # 'envoy' 0 ap # 'father'
Around 57% of these terms show agreement. This made it highly probable that Meroitic and Tokharian were cognate languages.
The grammar of Meroitic determined by Hintze (1979) also allowed us to make comparisons with Tocharian to test the Kushana hypothesis for reading Meroitic. This comparison of grammatical structures showed cognition between this language and Meroitic. Hintze was sure that there were number of Meroitic affixes including:
p ye -te -to -o
B.G. Trigger in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned several other possible Meroitic affixes including:
-n -te -b
In addition , A. M. Abdalla in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned three possible verbal suffixes , including:
-n -t -y
The Kushana language includes all of these affixes. Recognition of analogous structural elements in relation to Kushana and Meroitic allowed us to divide the Meroitic phonemes into words. Griffith provided us with evidence for selected Meroitic nouns. Abdalla (Hintze 1979, 149) was sure that he detected several common verbs in Meroitic including: hr, the, tk, we, pl, do, mde and yi mde.
Following this lead we searched the Kushan language to determine if it possessed any verbs that might match the proposed hypothetical verbs of Abdalla. A comparison of Kushan and Meroitic proved to be successful. We now know that he was absolutely right about his interpretation of possible Meroitic verbs. Below is the interpretation of these Meroitic verbs:
hr to have dignity the to move tk to set in motion, to investigate w-e to give escort pl to boast, to praise m-de measure the offering y i m-de go make (full) measure of the offering
Recognition of these Meroitic terms as verbs gave us any more confirmation that Kushana was probably the Meroitic cognate language. This discovery of Meroitic verbs and nouns, and cognate toponomies in Central Asia and Upper-Nubia-Sudan proved that Meroitic could be read using Kushana lexical items.
The discovery that Tocharian is cognate to Meroitic has led to the full decipherment of the Meroitic script. We can now translate Meroitic using Tokharian. This allows us to obtain new information about the Meroitic civilization. My research into Kushan or Tokharian has led me to recognize that this language was probably used as a lingua franca or trade language in Central Asia by the diverse peoples living there in an intense bilingual environment. C. A. Winters (1991) has illustrated how the Greek and Slavic terms in Tokharian were loanwords, absorbed by Tokharian after the Greek conquest of Bactria. This borrowing pattern was consistent with the spread of the Greek language into Bactria by a small elite group of warriors.
To test this hypothesis at attepted to decipher an inscription from Mussawarat es-Sufra. The inscription included several Meroitic signs.
The picture associated with this inscription is a graphic depiction of a sexual experience.
Reading from right to left we have the following Meroitic words
Nem pkh ote
In Kushana these words had the following meaning in Kushana
Nam = tendency Pak = to aim Ote = Wonderment
This allows us to read the Musawwarat es-Sufra inscription as follows: "The tendency (is) to aim for the Wonderment of (sex)!
Once I had made this breakthrough in the decipherment of Meroitic I began to decipher other Meroitic inscriptions and learn more about the Meroitic language.
Meroitic Language
The classical and Egyptian sources make it clear that Upper Nubia and numerous tribes inhabited the Sudan. The possible early use of Kushan\Tokharian as a trade language made it an ideal candidate for use by the Meroitic elites who ruled an empire that was made up of many diverse ethnic groups as the language for literate Meroites.
Meroitic is basically a suffixing language. The funerary tablets are written in the third person.
Conclusion
In conclusion the multiethnic populations that lived in the Meroitic empire used the Meroitic language as a lingua franca. This would explain the inability of earlier researchers to find the cognate language of Meroitic in the Sudan, even though they might find some analogous lexical items.
As a result of the above, I believe that my decipherment of the Meroitic script is correct. You will find that these lexical items allow us to gain insight into the Meroitic religious and funerary world. I look forward to finding some historical Meroitic text, but up to now I have just found materials relating to funerary customs and the Meroitic religion. The Meroitic chamber inscription is interesting , but it also deals mainly with things funerary.
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My confirmation of the above , and 1) the presence of Kushites in Africa and Asia; 2)the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe;3) cognate lexical items; 4)cognate verbs and 5) cognate grammatical features; indicates systematic controlled, critical and empirical investigation of the question of Kushana representing the Meroitic cognate language.
You can read more about my decipherment of Meroitic in the following articles:
Winters,Clyde Ahmad. (Juin 1984b). "A Note on Tokharian and Meroitic", Meroitic Newsletter\Bulletin d"Information Meroitiques , No.23 , pages 18-21.
Winters,Clyde Ahmad. (1989b). "Cheikh Anta Diop et le dechiffrement de l'ecriture meroitique",Cabet: Revue Martinique de Sciences Humaines et de Litterature 8, pp. 149-152.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad.(1998). Meroitic funerary Text. Part1,Inscription Journal of Ancient Egypt 1,(1), pp. 29-34.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad.(1998). Meroitic funerary Text. Part1,Inscription Journal of Ancient Egypt 1,(2), pp. 41-55.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad. (1999). The inscriptions of Tanyidamani.Nubica IV und Nubica V., pp.355-388. You can read more about my decipherment of Meroitic in my book : Meroitic Writing and Literature.
Meroitic Writing and Literature is divided into three parts. The first part of the book explains how I used the Kushana hypothesis to decipher the Meroitic script. It will outline the Classical literature that informed my decipherment of Meroitic and how Buddhists early settled in Upper Egypt and the Meroitic Empire and spread their religion and writing system: Tocharian.
In Part two we outline the grammar of Meroitic. It will provide readers with a detailed overview of the Meroitic language and its grammar.
Part Three provides translations of key Meroitic text. These texts provide knowledge of the lifeway’s of the Meroites especially their religion and some historical data.
The Meroitic literature discussed in this book include : The Inscriptions of Tanyidamani; The Meroitic Chamber Inscription of Philae; and Meroitic Evidence for a Blemmy Empire in the Dodekaschoinas. These text were chosen because they include text written in archaic Meroitic (Tanyidemani), and other text written in late Meroitic.
Meroitic Writing and Literature, is the first account of the Meroitic language and literature. It will allow readers the opportunity to learn how to read/decipher Meroitic text, while acquiring an intimate knowledge of the Meroites as individuals.
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In 2006 I published a series of Meroitic inscriptions here at ES. Below I will republish some of the Inscriptions. You can find the inscriptions at the following site:
The decipherments are tentative because it is hard to read the Meroitic letters, because I am looking at published versions of the inscriptions published in books. In the future some of these decipherment may have to be done over.
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Stela of queen Amanishaketo. Reverse
Transliteration
1. nišheto qo-ne qo
2. n-ne he ñk e li-ne ml o
3. ps e o-ne a r-i te
4. k-ne a ine rm i l-ne t d b e šo
5. sli n0 tene q en ne-n
6. te ši-ne ht nk tone n h-ne
7. tek ……ok…….nm…..n h n om-ne
8. hl[e]…. O h p ne š m r
9. m ……. Te r h tl k-ne l tene
10. [………….. ……]
11. h ne m e ter h te m n š nel l
12. w-ne q š-ne l h mete o om-ne
13. sl lne tek nei h r tne š
14. k ñh d ne ate h te ši kne
15. r-ñ h ne-ñ kne ane e-m bo
Translation
1. Anishkheto noble and good restored
2.Manifest the external spirit now; command the transmittal of the sould to commence.
3. Give guard the accession (of the) apparition—may it go forth.
4. The Object of Supplication and Good [Anishkheto] goes to witnee [a new] existence. Arrange to leave a legacy [and] blessed life.
5. Leave to set in motion now the Rebirth. Act to command Good to manifest.
6. The propitiation to pour out. God ignites and manifest the abstract personality of man.
7. To investigate…….a new…..reverence and Good the offering’s only acquisition.
8. Reverberate…….initiate the offering a good pray[er] [for] the patron’s luck
9. m… …. ..te indeed the blessings to elevate the Object of Supplication’s rebirth.
10. [……….. ….. …. … …]
11. The abstract personality of man to unlock indeed the great holy place (of) good (to) merit existence
12. The Commander acts to uplift Greatness, unlock from a distance (its) acquisition.
13. Set in motion (her) existence to investigate benevolence (and) dignity. Lay Good (on) the patron.
14. It (is) obligatory at this time to leave a legacy at this moment dispensing (your) satisfaction.
15. Certainly her abstract personality of man to manifest the Object of Supplication’s spirit much favor (and) increase.
The inscription on the edge
Transliteration
1. ah
2. e k p
3. k h
4. š ne nek e
5. [………..]
6. [….. …… ]
7. […. …… ..]
8. a šne
9. š
10. [… ….. …..]
11. [….. ….. ….]
12. [… ….. …. ..]
13. ñ l li
14. l d
15. b ene
Translation
“The blessed dead [Anishkheto] prays (for) nourishment (of) the obligatory offerings…..to merit……patron……retire exalted. (Her) lasting legacy is abundant almsgiving.”
The Meroites have left many Offering Tables. The Offering Tablets have the following pattern:
1. Invocation to the Gods
2. Name of deceased
3. Sometimes, the name of relative making the offering of the deceased person
4. The wish statement of the deceased requesting his/her passage to rebirth.
Often Anubis & Nephtys are depicted on the stela or tablet pouring libations.
I would estimate that it took me around 30-60 minutes to read the text. First I have to transliterate the text. This takes the most time because I am usually reading the text from photographs in books since I don't have access to the original text. Below I will decipher the Offering Stela of Tedeqen
Woš-i-ne …Tdeqeň …ne …ĥ …ml …. ol … ħo ….lk …tene ..at …mlo …ne… p … rem … eš …. d …. o … tl … wi-ne … el …ĥ …tene ….ete …. eš …. d…. ot …. el … ĥ … tene …ĥe …. ra …. Ke-ne-l ….l …d …tene.
Translation
[Oh] Good Isis (give) Tedeqeň kha, grand inner heart (and) soul to behold the path of rebirth. The good inner heart prays to witness (its) manifestation. (This) bequeathal to open (and) elevate the Object of Respect (i.e., Tedeqeň) gift (of the) Kha’s rebirth (Oh Isis). You give the manifestation of the bequeathal prestige. The gift (of) the Kha’s (and the) external body’s rebirth . Indeed [Tedeqeň] revitalization (will) be the rebirth of the bequeathal (of the Kha).
Naqa Temple
At the lion temple of Naqa, we find Natakamani on the left façade and Amanitore on the right. Under the feet of the ruling pair we find friezes of their defeated enemies.
There are a number of Meroitic hieroglyphics on the front of the Naqa Lion Temple. There are three columns of hieroglyphic inscriptions on under the falcon of King Natakamani. Reading from left to right we see the following
Transliteration
1. ter tel i ne
2. …ni-ne b-q r
3. ikh iy kh te b d r te Translation
"1….the erection (of this structure) elevates (our) tradition [of building].2…brilliance (is) also desired indeed.3…this spot bring Great light (and) also leave a legacy (of) unity."
We can interpret the inscriptions and engraving from this part of the temple as follows:
"King Natakamani smites the enemies of Meroe. The royalty "...[has made] the erection (of this structure) to elevate (as is our) tradition.2…Brilliance (is) also indeed desired.3…This spot to bring Great light (to many and) also leave (to the Meroites) a legacy (of) unity."
.. Tedeqen Funerary Tablet
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. Inscription under the gods:
[………] lo…. wi-ne ….šo ….tk ….te
Translation:
“Dispatch (this) Object of Respect [Tedeqen] to live and to reflect (on good)—may (it go forth).”
Inscription on the funerary tablet reading from left to right and around the tablet :
Wosi …i-ne …a…. šore ….. yi-ne ….tedeqen ….qo-ne …ah ..d …s-ne-l …. d …h … lo-ne… me …ň …tone …e ….ri-ne …..ke …. li-ne …..e … ri …ke …lo… ne … atom … lo ..ne ….el … h …..tene ….al …ml …ol
Translation
“Isis the Good, Osiris the eternal. Tedeqen to live good (and) to acquire a lasting legacy (of Good). The patron’s legacy (is for) the Kha’s transmigration , measure the Good Rebirth (now). Give withdrawal (to the Kha) for revitalization (and) exaltation. Register the sendoff (of the Kha) to invigorate the good offering (of Tedeqen). He is to be (re)born to transmit Good (as his) gift (to mankind). The Kha’s noble (re)birth (of a) grand soul.”
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Funerary Stela of Meteye
This Stela dates back to the 2nd to 3rd Centuries. It is has a reddish-white undercoat. It comes from Grave 275, Karanog. The stela is located in Cairo, Egyptian Museum JE40229.
The couple Meteye and Abakharta stand under the inner wings of the sun disk. Meteye wares her hair with a topknot and cornrows. This man may be either Meteye’s husband or father. (I am uncertain because the words ab-a can be interpreted as ‘[her] father’. If this is the correct reading aba Kharta would mean ‘her father Kharta’.)
The grave was excavated by Woolley-Randall-MacIver at Karanog. The skeleton in the grave was of a woman. The pointed breast on the figure indicate that she was a young women. Standing side by side suggest that this man was her husband. Since the grave contained only one skeleton we can imagine that Abakharta was depicted on this stela to show his devotion to his wife.
There are three sets of inscription on this stela. There are inscriptions in front of Meteye and Abakharta, and an inscription between the legs of Abakharta.
Reading from right to left beginning with the inscription between the legs of Abakharta, then the inscription before Abakharta and finally the one in front of Meteye we have the following: Inscription between Abakharta’s legs.
P .. š ….o ….
“Pray for the patron to commence……”
Inscription in front of the man:
Wosi .. ne. Sore… yi-ne. Abkharta… ke ….lo …..wi-ne... a…kh…m…še..
“ Isis the Good. Osiris the eternal. Abakharta gives permission (for) the offering of this Object of Respect (Meteye) to acquire greatness (and) protection.”
“Isis the good. Osiris the eternal. Meteye , renew (her) honor down the path (to) abundant alms giving. The patron [Meteye] has commenced the Rebirth”.
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My interest in linguistics and ancient languages began back when I was a preteen living on the Southside of Chicago. At this time I lived near a Moorish Science Temple.
At this temple many of the people spoke Arabic. I often talked to the Moors and they taught me Arabic.
This experience had a great affect on me. It taught me that I could learn languages easily. As a result, I decided to learn French in High School. I studied French for four years.
At DuSable High School they had one of the first Afro-American history programs in the late 1960s. I enjoyed studying history so I decided that I would be a High School History teacher specializing in African and Afro-American history.
In the fall of 1969 I began study at the University of Illinois-Urbana. At the U of I-Urbana I graduated with both my B.A. and Master's Degrees in June 1973.
At UofI I took just about every African history course and I earned an unofficial minor in African studies. My History professor was Charles Steward.
Dr. Steward taught every African history course at the University back in the early 1970's. He specialized in Islamic history. My background in Arabic and French allowed me the ability to read many of the primary documents relating to African Islamic History. This also encouraged me to learn more about the Arabic language.
As a student at Illinois I worked for the Student Affairs Department. One of my duties was to organize programs for Afro-American students living in the dorms.
One of my major projects was publishing a literary magazine for Afro-American students called Yombo. In this magazine I wrote many articles on ancient Black History. My most important article was on Africans in ancient America. In this article I discussed all the evidence of Africans living in America before Columbus came to the New World.
It was while writing this article that I became familiar with the work of Leo Wiener's Africa and the Discovery of America. Reading this book introduced me to the Mande influence in Mexico, and the possibility that the Olmec introduced writing to the Mexicans as evidenced by the Tuxtla statuette.
I was especially interested in East African history, so I minored in Swahili for my Master's Degree and decided I would become a specialist in East African History.
I chose this area because of the fact John Williams in his book: The man who Cried I am, mentioned the fact that knowledge of Yemeni textual material may allow one to understand why the Africans and Chinese shared many cultural items and traditions. My Master's Thesis was titled Zanj to Zanj: Blacks in the Countries Bordering the Indian Ocean.
It was while writing this thesis I began to learn about the Dravidians in India. Having read the work of Anta Diop and Th. Obenga in French , I knew the Dravidians and Africans shared cognate cultures and languages. Th. Obenga even talked about an Indo-African family of languages.
After College I taught High School and wrote articles for a Swahili language magazine. The article I wrote for Yombo regarding the Pre-Columbian Blacks and my Master's thesis have been the inspiration behind my interest in ancient scripts. These works led to my interest in the literature of Blacks in ancient Asia and the Americas.
Later I learned that the Mande speaking people had created many writing systems. Wangara mentioned that the Mande probably left inscriptions in the Americas--via the Vai syllabary. Once I saw the Vai script and learned about the Vai tradition that it was invented in ancient times I studied the Vai script and found that I could use it to read the inscriptions on the LaVenta celts.
My linguistic studies indicated to me that the Dravidians, Mande, Sumerians and Elamites spoke cognate languages that share a genetic linguistic connection. Given the fact that the Mande and Dravidians spoke cognate languages I hypothesized that the Indus Valley writing might also be deciphered using the phonemic values of the Vai signs, but reading the signs in Tamil. This hypothesis was correct and I deciphered the Indus Valley writing.
Since then I have went on to decipher the Proto-Sumerian, Meroitic and Minoan A scripts. In the following pages we will explore the literature these Blacks left mankind over the millennia.
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Learning from Leo Wiener in Africa and the Discovery of America, that the Tuxtla statuette was written in Malinke-Bambara I decided to attempt to decipher the La Venta Offering #4 celts. I published these celts in the Journal of African Civilizations back in 1979. In 1980, I went on a lecture tour around the country with Dr. Alexanjro von Wuthenau talking about the Olmecs and my decipherment of their writing.
You can learn more about my decipherment of the Olmec language by watching the Video below.
The inscribed celts found at La Venta in 1955, named offering No.4, are inscribed jadeite celt. All the translations of Olmec artifacts are based on the Manding dictionary of Delafosse (1921).
The celts of La Venta offering no.4, were discovered by Drucker in 1955. These celts show both the plain and cursive forms of the Olmec script. These inscribed celtswere part of a collection of 16 figurines and jade and serpentine found in offering no.4 (Soustelle, 1984).
In La Venta offering no.4, fifteen figurines were arranged around a central figure. According to the inscriptions on the celts in this collection, the personage buried in this tomb was Pè. The bold head of Pè suggest that he was their cult leader.
A pit had been dug over the incised celts and figurines, a hole leading from the earth's surface down to the burial cache suggest that this was used for pouring libations on the figurines. This view is supported by the fact that the inscriptions written in the plain Olmec syllabic style ( Fig. 1), mentions the fact that Pè tomb was to act as a talisman or protective shrine for the faithful.
The six celts found in La Venta offering no.4, were arranged in a semi-circle. Four of the celts were engraved. The first and last celts in the semi-circle were not engraved. Moving from left to right two engraved jade celts when joined together depict an Olmec priest wearing an elaborate headdress and holding what appears to be a torch or baton in his hand.
This figure probably represented Pè. It is analogous to the figure engraved on a jade Breastplate (no. 13:583), now located in the National Museum of Anthropology at Mexico City ( Wuthenau, 1980).
The first two Laventa celts probably were originally joined together and served as a symbol of authority for the deceased priest while he was alive. The breakage of this celt into two parts probably symbolized the withdrawal of the priest's physical body, from the physical plane to the spiritual plane. The placement in the tomb of Pè's "celt of power" was meant to hold his spiritual power at the grave site.
The third engraved celt at La Venta offering no.4, was engraved in the cursive Olmec script.
In the text of the cursive script we find Pè's obituary. Transliteration of Symbols on Figure 1 Fè fè mi pè po gbè without breath void consumed Pè pure/holy below (in) lu bè ma the family habitation lay low the celebrity (the) Lord (in) yu ka-pè ba ko the big hemisphere tomb Ka-Pè the Great (in) the back of se yu we (to) possess for posterity the big hemisphere tomb Hence ta lu ba i this place the family habitation great/strong thine gba kyè be po fixed in the ground inheritance/estate here pure/holy mbe be lay low the celebrity lay low the celebrity.
Translation
" Without breath. Void. Consumed (lies) the Hole Pè, below the family habitation. Lay low the celebrity, the Lord, in the hemisphere tomb. The Great Ka-Pè, in the back of the big hemisphere tomb, possesses (this place) for posterity. Thine inheritance (is) fixed in this ground. Here the pure celebrity lays low. Lay low the celebrity".
Vocabulary
fè, v. to be void, empty, without breath mi, v. consumed Pè, proper name; v. spacious, pin down po, adj. : superlative of white translated as holy, pure, the good gbè, v. lay low, below; virtue lu, family habitation bè, v: lay low the celebrity ma, it can be translated as "Great one" or "Lord"; it can also be a suffix joined to a substantive or a verb to show intensity. yu, the big hemisphere tomb Ka, a title given to Olmec elites ba, adj.: great ka, adv.: in the back of se, possess (this place) for posterity we, adv.: hence ta, this place, place, here lu, n.: the family habitation ba, adj.: great i, pronominal particle of the second person: thine, thou, you gba, transitive v.: fixed in the ground kyè, inheritance, estate be, here
It is interesting to note that on this celt, after the use of the Olmec term po, a /g/ or /m/ is prefixed to bè, to make this word into a CCV term. Another interesting fact about this inscription is that reduplication is used at the end, and beginning of this inscription to denote emphasis.
The fourth engraved celt from left to right in La Venta offering no.4, is written in the plain Olmec script.
This inscription declares that the tomb of Pè is a talisman of great power.
Transliteration of Figure 1
Kyè gyo dè gbè
A man the leader of the cult indeed virtue
le gyo we mbè to
to be consecration hence here place of rest
he gyo
good talisman.
Translation
"The man (was) the leader of the cult. Indeed (a man of) virtue to be an object of consecration. Hence here a place of rest (a) good talisman (protective shrine for the faithful)".
Vocabulary
kyè, Man gyo, one faithful to the cult/deity, object of consecration, leader of the cult association; talisman, amulet dè, suffix of determination or definite article; indeed gbè, virtue, righteousness, etc. le, verbal postposition: to be we, adv.: therefore, hence mbè, here to, place of rest he, adj.: good
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After my decipherment of the La Venta Celts I was able to fully read the Olmec language. Being able to read Olmec allowed me to finally find the identity of some of the rulers represented by the Giant Olmec Heads.
I discovered that the headdresses of the Olmec Heads contain the title of the Olmec ruler represented by the stone Olmec heads.
The best evidence that the Olmec Heads represent actual Olmecs is the Cascajal tablet. This tablet was found in Mexico.It is the obituary of Bi Popo, San Lorezo Olmec Head 3.
The Olmec writing on the Cascajal tablet is an obituary for a King Bi Po. This writing is written in Hieroglyphic Olmec (Winters,2006). Hieroglyphic Olmec includes multiple linear Olmec signs which are joined together to make pictures of animals, faces and other objects.
Some researchers have recognized insects and other objects in the signs. In reality these signs are made up several different Olmec linear signs (Winters,1998).
To read the Olmec writing I use the Vai script. The Vai script includes a number of syllabic signs that have been used to engrave rocks in the Sahara for the past 4000 years. I read the signs in Malinke-Bambara which was the spoken language of the Olmec.
The Olmec writing is read right to left top to bottom. Each segment of the Olmec sign has to be broken down into its individual syllabic sign. In most cases the Olmec signs includes two or more syllabic characters. The Olmec signs can be interpreted as follows:
1. La fe ta gyo 2. Bi yu 3. Pa po yu 4. Se ta I su 5. Ta kye 6. Beb be 7. Bi Po Yu to 8. Tu fa ku 9. Tu pa pot u 10. Ta gbe pa 11. i-tu 12. Bi Yu yo po 13. Kye gyo 14. Po lu 15. Fe ta yo i 16. Be kye 17. Fe gina 18. Po bi po tu 19. Lu kye gyo to 20. Kye tu a pa 21. Yu gyo i 22. Pa ku pa 23. Po yu 24. Day u kye da 25. Po ta kye tap o 26. Ta gbe 27. Bi Fa yu 28. Bi Yu / Paw
Translation Reading the Cascajal Tablet from right to left we have the following:
(8) Bi Po lays in state in the tomb, (7) desiring to be endowed with mysterious faculties.
(6) This abode is possessed by the Governor . (5)…. (4) Bi Po Po.
(3) Bi (was), (2) an Artisan desires to be consecrated to the divinity. (1) (and He) merits thou offer of libations.
(14). Admiration (for) the cult specialist’s hemisphere tomb. (13) The inheritance of thou vital spirit is consecration to the divinity.
(12) In a place of righteous admiration, (11) Pure Bi (in a) pure abode
(10) A pure mark of admiration (is) this hemispheric tomb.
(9) [Here] lays low (the celebrity) [he] is gone.
(22) The place of righteousness, [is] (21) the pure hemispheric tomb
(20) (19) Thou (art) obedient to the Order. (18) Hold upright the Order (and) the divinity of the sacred cult.
(17) Pure Admiration this place of, (16) Bi the Vital Spirit. (15) [Truly this is ] a place consecrated to the divinity and propriety.
27) Lay low (the celebrity) to go to , (26) love the mystic order—thou vivid image of the race,
(25) The pure Govenor and (24) Devotee [of the Order lies in this] hemispheric tomb ,desires [to be] a talisman effective in providing one with virtue, (23) [He] merits thou offer of Libations.
(34) Command Respect. (33)….this place of admiration. (32) Thou sacred inheritance is propriety. (31) The Govenor commands existence in a unique state, (31) [in] this ruler’s hemispheric tomb. (29) The Royal (28) [was] a vigorous man.
(36) The pure habitation (35) [of a ]Ruler obedient to the Order. (37) This abode is possessed by the governor. (38) Admiration to you [who art] obedient to the Order. (49) Pure admiration [for this] tomb. (48) Thou hold upright the pure law. (47). Pure admiration [for this tomb]. (46) [It] acts [as] a talisman effective in providing one with virtue. (45) Bi Po, (44) a pure man, (43) of wonder, (42) [whose] inheritance is consecration to the Divinity. (41) Bi Po lays in state in the tomb, (40) desiring to be endowed with mysterious faculties. (62) Bi Po lays in state in the tomb. (61) [This] tomb [is a] sacred object, (60) a place of righteous wonder. (59) Bi’s tomb (58) [is in] accord [with] the law (57) Bi exist in a unique (and) pure state the abode of the Govenor is pure.. (56) The inheritance of [this] Ruler is joy. (55) [In] this tomb of King Bi (54) lays low a celebrity, [he] is gone. (53) The tomb of Bi (52) is a dormitory [of] love. A place consacreted to the divinity. (51) Thou the vivid image of the race love(d) the mystic order. (50) [He] merits [your] offer of Libations.
This translation of the Cascajal tablet makes it clear that the tablet was written for a local ruler at San Lorenzo called Bi Po. This tablet indicates that Bi Po’s tomb was recognized as a sacred site. It also indicates that the Olmecians believed that if they offered libations at the tombs of their rulers they would gain blessings.
The Cascajal Tablet according to the road builders at the village was found in a mound. The fact that a mound existed where the tablet was found offers considerable support to the idea that the mound where the tablet was found is the tomb of BiPoPo.
The obituary on the Cascajal Tablet may be written about one of the Royals among Olmec heads found at San Lorenzo. The Cascajal Tablet may relate to the personage depicted in San Lorenzo monument 3. Head 3 San Lorenzo
We have found that the names of these rulers is probably found among the symbols associated with the individual Olmec heads. The headband on monument 3 is made up of four parallel ropes encircling the head. In the parallel ropes there are two serrated figures that cross the ropes diagonally.
There is also a plaited diadem or four braids on the back of the figure covered with serrated element. On the side of the head of monument 3, two serrated elements on four parallel lines hang. This element ends with a three-tiered element hanging.
In the Olmec writing the serrated elements means Bi, while the boxes under the serrated element within the four parallel lines would represent the words PoPo. This suggest that the name for monument 3 was probably BiPoPo.
The hanging element on monument 3 is similar to one of the signs on the Cascajal tablet. Although symbol 57 on the Cascajal monument is hard to recognize it appears to include the Bi sign on the top of the symbol. This finding indicates that the BiPoPo of monument 3, is most likely the BiPo(Po) mentioned in the Cascajal Tablet.
Cascajal Sign 57
Stirling said that monument 3 was found at the bottom of a deep ravine half-a-mile southwest of the principal mound of San Lorenzo, along with ceramic potsherds. This is interesting because the village of Cascajal is situated southwest of San Lorenzo.
According to reports of the discovery of the road builders who found the Cascajal Tablet, the tablet came from a mound at Cascajal which was located about a mile from San Lorenzo. The coincidence of finding San Lorenzo Monument 3 in the proximity of the Cascajal mound where the Cascajal Tablet was found suggest that these artifacts concern the same personage. This leads to the possibility that the Cascajal mound was the tomb of BiPoPo.
In conclusion the Cascajal Tablet is an obituary for San Lorenzo Olmec Head 3, which depicts BiPoPo .
Given the presence of similar signs on the Olmec head called San Lorenzo monument 3, which also read BiPoPo suggest that the Cascajal Tablet was written for the personage depicted in Olmec head 3.
Head 3 San Lorenzo
If the Cascajal Tablet really corresponds to one of the Olmec heads suggest that Cascajal may have been a royal burial site. If this is the case it is conceivable that other tablets relating to Olmec rulers may also be found at this locale, since some of these other mounds may be the “hemispheric” tombs of other Olmec rulers.
References to African Inscriptions:
M. Delafosse, Vai leur langue et leur ysteme d'ecriture,L'Anthropologie, 10 (1910).
Lambert, N. (1970). Medinet Sbat et la Protohistoire de Mauritanie Occidentale, Antiquites Africaines, 4, pp.15-62.
Lambert, N. L'apparition du cuivre dans les civilisations prehistoriques. In C.H. Perrot et al Le Sol, la Parole et 'Ecrit (Paris: Societe Francaise d'Histoire d'Outre Mer) pp.213-226.
R. Mauny, Tableau Geographique de l'Ouest Afrique Noire. Histoire et Archeologie (Fayard);
Kea,R.A. (2004). Expansion and Contractions: World-Historical Change and the Western Sudan World-System (1200/1000BC-1200/1250A.D.) Journal of World-Systems Research, 3, pp.723-816
Winters, Clyde. (1998). The Decipherment of the Olmec Writing System. Retrieved 09/25/2006 at http://olmec98.net/Rtolmec2.htm
Winters,Clyde.(2006). The Olmec Hieroglyphic Script. Retrieved 09/25/2006 at:
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once I knew the Olmec invented Mayan writing I was able to decipher the Mayan writing especially after I found a bilingual Olmec-Mayan text.
The Olmecs founded writing in the Mexico. Dr. Coe, in "Olmec Jaguar and Olmec Kings" (1968), suggested that the beliefs of the Maya were of Olmec origin and that the pre Maya were Olmecs (1968,p.103). This agreed with Brainerd and Sharer's, The ancient Maya (1983,p.65) concept of colonial Olmec at Maya sites. Moreover, this view is supported by the appearance of jaguar stucco mask pyramids (probably built by the Olmecs) under Mayan pyramids e.g., Cerros Structure 5-C-2nd, Uxaxacatun pyramid and structure 5D-22 at Tikal. This would conform to Schele and Freidel's belief that the monumental structures of the Maya were derived from Olmec prototypes.
Terrence Kaufman has proposed that the Olmec spoke a Mexe Zoquean speech. My research as discussed in the articles mentioned above indicate that the Olmec people spoke a variation of the Malinke Bambara language and not a Zoquean language.
An Olmec origin for many pre-Classic Maya, would explain the cover-up of the jaguar stucco mask pyramids with classic Maya pyramids at these sites. It would also explain Schele and Freidel's (1990,p.56) claim that the first king of Palenque was the Olmec leader U-Kix-chan; and that the ancient Maya adopted many Olmec social institutions and olmec symbolic imagery.
There is a clear prevalence of an African substratum for the origin of writing among the Maya. All the experts agree that the Olmec people probably gave writing to the Maya. Mayanist agree that the the Proto Maya term for "write" is <*c'ihb'> and probably *c'ib'.
Yucatec c'i:b' Chorti c'ihb'a Mam c'i:b'at
Lacandon c'ib' Chol c'hb'an Teco c'i:b'a
Itza c'ib' Chontal c'ib' Ixil c'ib'
Mopan c'ib' Tzeltalan c'b'
Thus we have Proto Mayan *c'ihb' and *c'ib'. This /c/ in Mayan is often pronounced like the hard Spainish /c/ and has a /s/ sound.
C.H. Brown in "Hieroglyphic literacy in ancient Mayaland: inferences from linguistics data", , 32 (4), (1991, pp.489 495) argues that *c'ihb may be the ancient Mayan term for writing but, it can not be Proto mayan because writing did not appear among the Maya until 600 B.C. This was 1500 years after the break up of the Proto Maya . This view is supported by Mayan traditions recorded by Landa and discussed by B. Stross in "Maya Hierogyphic writing and Mixe Zoquean", 24(1), (1982 , pp.73 134) all point to the extra Maya origin of writing.
This word for 'write' is probably of Olmec/Manding origin. The Proto Manding term for writing is: *se'be', *safa^.
Malinke se'be' Serere safe
Bambara se'be' Susu se'be
Dioula se'we' Samo se'be
Sarakole safa W. Malinke safa
Landa in makes it clear that the Yucatec Maya claimed that they got writing from a group of foreigners called Tutul Xiu (Tozzer,1941). The term Tutul Xiu, can be translated in Manding as Tutu l ,"Very good Subjects of the Order", Xi u, "The Shi" , or The Shis (who) are very good supporters of the cult order". In this passage the l, is a suffix of augmentation and the u, is the plural element. The Shi, is probably related to the Manding term "Si", which was also an ethnonym.
The fact that the Yucatec term for writing is "c'i:b'" and the Olmec/ Malinke Bambara term for writing "se'be'", are analogous in sound support a Manding origin for the Mayan term for writing. Moreover this confirms the earlier findings by Wiener of a Malinke Bambara substratum in the culture and religious terms of the Maya and Aztec people.
In addition to the Mande speaking Olmec or Xi people influcing the Mayan languages they also influenced the Otomi language of Mexico.
In conclusion the affinity between Olmec and African skeletons, artifactual evidence from Olmec sites, of Olmec/Manding and Mayan signs support the view that the Mande speaking Olmecs gave the Maya writing. These Olmecs as discussed in earlier postings came from Saharan/ North Africa before 1000 B.C. This would explain the agreement beween Mayan *c'ihb' and Olmec/Manding *se'be'. This along with the obvious total affinity of the Olmec symbols and the symbols used by the Manding people at Oued Mertoutek in 3000 B.C., and later around the Nigerbend which Wiener used to compare with the Tuxtla symbols, all support the fact that the Olmec were Manding speaking Meso Americans.
The fact that the Olmecs were predominately African in no way demeans the abilities of native Americans. In fact, the Olmecs left behind a rich culture/ civilizations that has made the later civilizations of the Zapotecs and Maya some of the greatest civilizations in World History.
Bi-Lingual Olmec Mayan Text
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. Support for my decipherment of the Olmec writing comes from a bilingual Mayan-Olmec/Mande inscribed brick from Comalcalco. Comalcalco is a Mayan archaeological site found in Tobasco. Here archaeologist Neil Steede found over 4000 inscribed bricks at the Comalcalco site.
The Comalcalco site encompasses around 360 pyramids. Here almost all of the structures were built of fired bricks (tabiques) . Between 1977-1978, 9 of these pyramids were excavated.
Comalcalco is located in the State of Tabasco. It was built by the Chontal. It is the only city in Mexico built entirely of brick.
Comalcalco means "in the house of earthenware" in Nahuatl
This Mayan site has interesting architecture. For example, "The Great Acropolis" probably used for civil and religious purposes.
In addition to building fine temples, walls and altars, there are fine "stucco" used to face their constructions, which resemble images on the sub-pyramids of many Mayan sites, that have analogy to Olmec iconography.
Neil Steede became interested in the bricks in 1979. He obtained permission to photograph the bricks from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (NIAH).
Many of the inscribed bricks from the Comalcalco ruins were published by Neil Steede in a bilingual book entitled Preliminary Catalogue of the Comalcalco Bricks.
Brick T1-452 R16 is a very special brick. This brick has a bilingual Mayan-Olmec inscription. In this inscription we see a Mayan inscription , and beside it on the right hand side an Olmec/Malinke inscription .
The Olmec writing used on this brick is the plain Olmec style of writing. The plain Olmec style of writing was usually used to inscribe celts and other Olmec artifacts.
On the far right hand side we see two additional characters. These characters also are written in the plain Olmec style of writing (The Decipherment of Olmec Writing).
Steede was advised by Dr. Alexander von Wuthenau, to send me copies of the bricks to determine if I could identify the writing on some of the bricks that appeared to Steede as similar to scripts used in the Old World in advance of his publication of the Comalcalco Catalogue. After an examination of the photographs I spotted the bilingual Olmec-Maya inscription.
I immediately recognized that the T1-452 R16 brick appeared to be include both Mayan and Olmec inscriptions. To test this hypothesis, I suggested to Steede that he decipher the Mayan inscription , and I would decipher the Olmec passage which had been partially defaced.
Steede agreed to this test. He then divided the inscription into three segments (we were both to decipher) and we began our decipherments. Below is the division of the T1-452 R16 text:
I sent a copy of my decipherment of T1-452 R16 to Steede. On this decipherment I include a translation of the Malinke inscription on the right-hand side of the T1-452 R16, and also the Olmec/Mande signs found inside of the Mayan glyphs. Please note in my decipherment that I had placed on this chart a breakdown of the Olmec/Mande signs and the plain Olmec signs found inside of the Mayan glyphs (as well). Below is a copy of the decipherment I sent to Steede in 1984.
Translation/Transliteration Olmec Plain Signs
A be ki
a-ni gyo fe
Ti lu
Thou exist incomplete.
He is the manifestation of life, a talisman in this proximity.
The person of considerable dignity is void of breath.
[He goes to me the] Jaguar God.
[He] is no longer alive/ or Powerful Righteousness!
[His] Place of rest exist here.
Steede wrote me back (28-3-84) that his interpretation of the Mayan signs was almost identical to my translation of the Mayan and Olmec/Mande signs. He wrote the following:
" 1A shows a face with slashed eyes (blind or non=seeing), nostriless nose (non-breathing) and "clamped shut" mouth ( non-speaking). This would indicate death alright, but below the cartouche is added onto by two breath scrolls on each side of an intricate sacraficial blade. These breath (or speak) scrolls indicate that the person in question has expressed that he feels as though he is "dead" spiritually and wishes t make a self-sacrifice.
1B underlines the fact that he is dead, but note the "S" in the ear of the jaguar. This indicates pentiteuce, or repentence. Therefore, though the person is "dead" spiritually he has heard and accepted repentence.
Therefore 1A and 1B together would read extremely similar to your hieroglyphic translation, but almost exactly as your Manding translation. The person in question is considered to be incomplete until he accepts the priesthood.
2 is identical to your Manding translation and similar to your hieroglyphic interpretation. The part to the right is a dorsal fish fin.
I don't have any notes infront of me but I believe it is Stela 1 of Izapa which shows that Quetzalcoatl "fishes" for all types of fish (men). This stela also implicates that the dorsal fish fin is associated with priesthood.
Here we can see the fish fin "hatching" from an "egg?" or from "inner self?" The person in question is being born again as a priest.
3. I can't understand, but your rendering would seem to be correct. He is now at rest because he is (complete)."
This translation of the Mayan side of this bilingual brick from Comalcalco , and other inscribed bricks from this site indicate that it was probably a Mayan College where scribes learned Mayan writing and possibily pyramid construction. The bilingual text on T1-452 R16, indicates that the Mayan scribes had to learn how to write Olmec inscriptions and translate them into Mayan. The fact that the Olmec inscriptions were defaced indicate that the Mayan scribes while they studied Mayan writing first wrote a piece in Olmec and then wrote the same inscription in the Mayan language(s)
Below we see T1-452 R16. If you look carefully at the brick we see two Olmec signs written vertically.
Reading from top to bottom we find the following signs Mayan. The interpretation of Mayan in Olmec is the following: "It's done well--full of life". These signs appear to indicate a grade or comment on the brick made by the instructor. This supports the view that Comalcalco was a College, where Mayan initiates into the priesthood and scribal classes learned how to write Mayan hieroglyphics. .
We know the name of the Olmec from the Maya. Landa noted that the Yucatec Maya claimed that they got writing from a group of foreigners called Tutul Xiu from Nonoulco (Tozzer, 1941). The Olmec originated writing in Mexico., so we can assume that the term Tutul Xiu refer to the Olmec. The Tutul Xi were probably Olmecs. The term Tutul Xiu, can be translated into Olmec which is a member of the Manding Superfamily of languages as follows: Tutul, "Very good subjects of the Order". Xiu, "The Shi (/the race)".
"The Shis (who) are very good Subjects of the cult-Order".
The term Shi, is probably related to the Manding term Si, which was also used as an ethnonym. Since Si/Xi was used as an ethnonym, the Tutul Xi-u were the Olmec people. Thusly I call the Olmec by their own name: Xi.
Sources
C.H. Brown, Hieroglyphic literacy in ancient Mayaland, , 32 (4), (1991) pp.489-495.
K. Hau, "Pre Islamic writing in West Africa", K. Hau, "African Writing in the New World", ,t.40 ser.B no.1, (1978) pp.28 48.
R. A. Diehl and M.D. Coe, "Olmec Archaeology". In , (Ed.) Jill Guthrie (pp.11-25), The Art Museum, Princeton University Press, 1996.
T. Kaufman and W.M. Norman, "An outline of Cholan phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. In , (Ed.) by J.S. Justeson and L. Campbell (pp.77-166). Albany : Institute of Mesoamerican Studies.
Landa, D. de. (1978). Yucatan before and after the Conquest. (Trans. by) William Gates. New York: Dover Publications.
C. Marquez, Estudios arqueologicas y ethnograficas>. Mexico, 1956.
S.G. Morley, G.W. Brainerd and R.J. Sharer. . Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
C.A. Winters, "The influence of the Mande scripts on American ancient writing systems", , t.39, Ser.B no.2, (1977) pp.405 431.
C. A. Winters, "Manding writing in the New World Part 1", Journal of African Civilization , 1 (1), (1979) pp.81 97.
C.A. Winters, "Appendix B: The Jade Celts from La Venta". In , by A. von Wuthenau (pp.235 237). 2nd Edition, Mexico, 1980.
C.A. Winters, "The Ancient manding Script". In , (ed) by Ivan Van Sertima (pp.208 214), New Brunswick, Transaction Books, 1983.
C.A. Winters, "The African influence on Indian Agriculture", Journal of African Civilization 3(1), (1981) pp.100-110.
C. A. Winters, "The Indus Valley Writing and related scripts of the 3rd millennium BC", 2(1), (1985) pp.13 20.
M. Delafosse, "Vai leur langue et leur systeme d'ecriture", 10, (1899).
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posted
You mention the San Bartolo inscriptions, you are right they are related to the earliest forms of Mayan writing. They were written by the Black Mayans who lived in Guatemala.
The San Bartolo, Guatemala murals are very beautiful they were discovered by William Saturno of the University of New Hampshire.
Stone head From San Bartolo These murals were found in an unexcavated pyramid. Entering a looter’s trench Dr. Saturno dug into the pyramid and discovered the murals. Much of the mural was destroyed when the Maya built another pyramid over the original structure.
King Kali
The San Bartolo pyramid has two murals. One of the murals is of a procession of people on a boat . The other mural is of King Tali, sitting on his pyramid.
On the boat there are a number of figures. Moving from right to left we see four standing figures nearest the end of the boat. These figures are carrying bundles raised above their heads.
In front of these figures we see several symbols. These symbols provide context to the procession.
There are a number of female figures on the boat. The woman near the Corn God has writing symbols on their faces. The kneeling figure holding the vase on the far left side toward the end has the words gyo ti “righteous cult specialist” on her cheek.
The standing female figure in front of the last three symbols placed in front of the person carrying gifts has the words ti i “she is righteous.
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The Popol Vuh, gives us insight into Mayan history.
In the Popol Vuh it is made clear that the ancestors of the Quiche Maya came from across the sea. We will use quotes from Tedlocks translation of the Popol Vuh
We shall write about this now amid the preaching of God,in Christendom now. We shall bring it out because there is no longer a place to see it, a Council Book, a place to see “The Light That Came from Beside the Sea”, the account of “Our Place in the Shadows”, a place to see “The Dawn of Life”……(p.63).
The ancestors of the Maya came from east. “…[b]the first people came from beside the sea, from the east. They came here in ancient times. When they died they were very old” (p.175).
Claiming that the nacestors came from the East is very important. East of the Maya, would be the Gulf Region where the Mande/Olmec people settled and founded the Olmec civilization.
You guys, in your racism assume that their were no Blacks among the Maya. This is a false view. The Popol Vuh notes that: They didn’t know where they were going. They did this for a long time, when they were there in the grasslands:the black people, the white people, people of many faces, people of many languages, uncertain there at the edge of the sky (pp.149-150).
The Blacks introduced civilization among the Maya. In the Popol Vuh, it is noted that And then the boys made fire with drill and rosted, the bird over the fire. And they coated one of the birds with plaster, they put gypsum on it (p.86).
It is interesting to note that the boys drilling are depicted as Blacks in the Dresden and Tro-Cotesianus Codexes.
As a result, the color Black and Black individuals were recognized as important in Mayan culture. The major Black gods were God C, Xaman and Ekchuah. God C is personification of the concept of sacreness. It has the phonetic value of ku or ch’in deity or sacreness. The Mayan term for deity/god is of Mande Olmec origin:
Maya ……..English………Mande
Kin………….day…………..kene
K’u,ku……..sacre,god………Ku
This is another indication of the Olmec origin of Mayan civilization.
The jaguar played an important role in Mayan society as it did in Africa. The jaguar pelt or cushion was the symbol of the ‘enthroned lord’. This is why we see the jaguar pelt around the neck of the Black royal represented in the Chama vase.
Blacks also introduced writing and trade among the Maya. The usual Mayan term for black is ’Ek’. Thus the merchant god signified by the back pack staff and etc was called Ekchuah. Thus we see these Blacks, gods etc. represented in many Mayan Codexes. .
God C
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To read the Mayan inscriptions I break down the Olmec syllabic signs which make up the Mayan hierogyphs. Once these signs are given a phonetic value I read them in Yucatec Maya.
As you can see when you look at the syllabic nature of many Mayan hieroglyphs the Codecs tell us much more than dates.
The fact is that there were Black Maya, and that these Blacks played an important role in Mayan society.
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posted
Many pyramids are of Olmec origin. This is evident in the dragon motifs.
This Olmec motif is found on pyramids that were covered over by later Mayan pyramids. These subpyramids were probably built by the Olmec.
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A good example of the Architectural skill and innovations of the First Nation Blacks is the pyramidal complex at Xultun. These Blacks left evidence of their identity in the architectural workroom.
The Xultun pyramidal complex shows a variety of architectural styles and buildings
You discover that under many Mongoloid Mayan pyramids you will find a pyramid that was originally built by the Black Mayan, like the Cerros, San Bartolo, Xultun and etc. pyramids.
The First Nation Blacks in Mexico had a right to create their own architectural style just like other Blacks in Africa who developed different pyramidial styles:
As Mike and I like to say Europeans lie. they tell us only what they want us to know. The best example is the roots of Afro-Americans. Look at how they were able to make us believe, eventhough our parents may have told us otherwise, that the Apache were the "Copper Colored" Native Americans when this was never the case. If they could hide the fact that many of our ancestors were the indigenous Americans, think about what else they are hiding.
it is for this reason Eurocentrics and the Academe promote people like Gates and Keita as symbols of astute 'African-American scholars, while they vilify Asante, Mike, Mar Washington and myself. They hate us because Asante provided researchers with a methodology to research our history, Mike and Marc Washington gave us the pictorial evidence of the makers of Black/African civilizations, while I provide the basic research confirming the theories about our history developed by W.E.B. DuBois .
posted
Since the rise of worldwide Western European supremacy it has been argued that Africans, due to a strong oral tradition, failed to invent writing. As a result, opposition to Afrocentrism has been the unfounded belief that only Egypt had writing in Africa (Appiah 1983). Although it is alleged that Africans were always illiterate, archaeological, historical, and epigraphic evidence indicate that Africans invented many writing systems. And that these writing systems were used from ancient times all the way up to the present (Bekerie 1994). We will show in this paper that archaeological evidence indicates that African literacy began in the Sahara over 5000 years ago (Winters 1971, 1981a,1983). This earliest form of writing was a syllabic system that included hundreds of phonetic signs, which over time was shorten to between 22 and 30 key signs, and used as an alphabet by the Egyptians, Meroites, Phonesians and Ethiopians.
The original inhabitants of the Sahara where the Egyptian or Kemitic civilization originated were not Berbers or Indo-Europeans (Winters 1985b). This was the ancient homeland of the Dravidians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Niger-Kordofanian-Mande and Elamite speakers is called the Fertile African Crescent (Anselin 1989, p.16, 1992; Winters 1981,1985b,1989, 1991,1994). The inhabitants of this area lived in the highland regions of the Fezzan in modern Libya and Hoggar until after 4000 B.C. We call these people the Proto-Saharans (Winters 1985b, 1991). The generic term for this group is Kushite.
The Proto-Saharans were called Ta-Seti and Tehunu by the Egyptians. In the archaeological literature they were called A-Group and C-Group respectively. Farid (1985, p.82) noted that: We can notice that at the beginning of the neolithic stage in Egypt on the edge of the Western Desert corresponds with expansion of the Saharian Neolithic culture and the growth of its population .
The Fertile Saharan Crescent is an arc shaped series of highland regions in the Saharan zone of Africa. The Saharan zone is bounded on the north by the Atlas mountains, the Atlantic Ocean in the West, the tropical rain forest in the south and the Red Sea in the East. It was here that the ancestors of the founders of the river valley civilizations in Africa, the Middle East, China and Indus Valley developed their highly organized and technological societies (Winters 1983a, 1985b).
The discovery of Intercultural style vessels from Susa (in Iran),Sumerian, Egyptian and Indus Valley sites suggest a shared ideological identity among these people (Kohl 1978). In fact the appearance of shared iconographic symbols and beliefs within diverse areas suggest cultural and ethnic unity among the people practicing these cultures. The common naturalistic motifs shared by the major civilizations include, writing (symbols), combatant snakes , the scorpion, bull and etc.
This evidence of cultural unity is explained by the origin of these people in the Proto-Sahara (Winters 1985a, 1989).
The Proto-Saharans or Kushites used similar terms for writing. In general the term for writing was formed by the labial stops /p/ and /b/. For example:
Dravidian par 'write' Manding bo, bu 'make a stroke', sebe 'write' Elamite tipu 'to write' Galla tafa 'to write'
There are also other corresponding terms for 'mark', or 'draw' that begin with velar stops: Dravidian kiri, kuri 'write, draw, mark' Egyptian hti 'carve' Manding kiri, kiti 'mark'
In Egyptian we have several terms for write 0 ss #, 0 zs # , and 0 ssw #. During the Old Kingdom writing was referred to as 0 iht # .
The Egyptian term for writing 0 ssw # is analogous to the Mande terms 0 sewe # or 0 sebe # 'writing, trace, design'. In Dravidian among other terms we have rasu 'write', and shu 'writing' in Sumerian. The Egyptian term 0 zs # is also closely related to Sumerian 0 shu #. Writing systems among African people were mainly devised for two purposes. Firstly, to help merchants keep records on the business venture they made. Secondly, the Proto-Saharan script was also used to preserve religious doctrines or write obituaries.
The scarcity of documents, written for historical preservation among ancient African groups resulted from the fact that the keeping of history, was usually left in the hands of traditional (oral) historians. These historians memorized the histories of their nation and people for future recitation before members of their respective communities. This oral history was often accompanied by music or delivered in poetic verse and remains the premier source for the history of most African nations even today.
It is obvious that the first inscriptions were engraved in stone by the Proto-Saharans , or a stylus was used to engrave wet clay (Winters 1985b). The use of the stylus or stick to engrave clay is most evident in the pottery marks found on the pottery excavated at many ancient sites which possess similar symbols impressed on the pottery.
This view is supported by the fact that the term for writing in Dravidian and Egyptian include the consonants /l/, /r/ or /d/. A "u", is usually attached to the initial consonants (Winters 1985b). For example:
Sumerian ru, shu
Elamite talu
Dravidian carru
Egyptian drf
These terms agree with the Manding terms for excavate or hollow out 0 du #, 0 do #, 0 kulu #, 0 tura #, etc. The Sumerian term for writing was 0 du #. This show that the Proto-Saharan term for writing denoted the creation of impressions on wet clay and hard rock.
The origin of writing among the Proto-Saharans as an activity involving the engraving of stone is most evident in the Egyptian language. This hypothesis is supported by the Egyptian words 0 m(w)dt #. The term 0 md t # means both '(sculptor's) chisel' and 'papyrus-roll, book'. The multiple meanings of 0 md t # makes it clear that the Egyptian, and probably other descendants of the Proto-Saharans saw a relationship between engraving stone and the creation of books.
Other Egyptian lexical items also support the important role Proto-Saharans saw in engraving rocks, and writing. In addition to md t we have, 0 hti # 'carve, sculpture' and 0 iht# 'writing'. The fact that iht is an Old Kingdom term for writing, almost identical to hti, is further evidence that writing involved the engraving of stone.
POTTERY INSCRIPTIONS
The Proto-Saharan writing was first used to write characters on pottery (Winters 1980), to give the ceramics a talismanic quality . Similar signs appear on Chinese, Harappan, South Indian Megalithic, Libyan and Cretan pottery (see figure 1). These signs were invented by the Proto-Saharans for purposes of communication. These pottery signs agree with the so-called linear Egyptian signs mentioned by Petrie (1921, p.83). They frequently appear on Egyptian pottery . .
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The Egyptian pot marks in Upper and Lower Egypt. Petrie (1900) was the first to record the Egyptian potmarks. These potmarks are found on pottery dated to Dynasties O to I (van den Brink 1992). These Thinite potmarks published by van den Brink (1992) agree almost totally with the Oued Mertoutek, Gebel Sheikh Suleiman, Harappan, Proto-Elamite and Proto-Sumerian (see figure 3).
SYLLABIC WRITING
It is clear that a common system of record keeping was used by people in the 4th and 3rd millennium B.C. from Saharan Africa, to Iran, China and the Indus Valley. Although the Elamites and Sumerians abandoned the Proto-Elamite writing and the Uruk script respectively, in favor f cuneiform writing, the Dravidians, Minoans (EteoCretans) and Manding continued to use the Proto-Saharan script (see figure 2) (Winters 1985c).
The pottery signs were symbols from the Proto-Saharan syllabic writing. David (1955) was sure that the Dravidian and Cretan writings were analogous to the Egyptian pottery script. Moreover Dr. J.T. Cornelius (1956-57) used epigraphic evidence to show that the graffiti marks on the South Indian Megalithic pottery has affinity to other ancient scripts including the Libyan, Egyptian and Cretan signs.
The oldest Proto-Saharan inscriptions come from Oued Mertoutek and Gebel Sheikh Suleiman. These inscriptions are over 5000 years old (Wulsin 1941; Winters 1983a ).
The Oued Mertoutek inscription was found in the Western Sahara (see figure 4). This inscription was found on the lower level of Oued Mertoutek and dated to 3000 B.C. by Wulsin (1941). The Oued Mertoutek inscription like other Libyco-Berber writing is in the Manding (Malinke- Bambara) languages.
In ancient time a major Manding group was the Garamantes, they lived in the Fezzan. Graves (1980) claimed that the Garamantes who primarily lived in the Fezzan region of Libya, founded Attica, and worked the mines at Laureuim and Trace in Asia Minor.
The Oued Mertoutek inscription is of a ram with syllabic characters written above the ram, and within the outline of the ram's body (see figure 4). This inscription written in an aspect of Manding was deciphered in 1981 (Winters 1983a).
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. We were able to decipher the Oued Mertoutek inscription, and the Minoan Linear A, Harappan writing and the Olmec script because of the Vai script (Winters 1984a,1984b,1984c). Winters (1977,1979) discovered that the Vai syllabary of 200 characters matched all the signs in the syllabaries of Crete, Olmec America, Oracle Bone writing of China and the Harappan script (Winters 1979,1983b,1983c). And that due to the genetic linguistic unity of the people who made these signs, when you gave the signs in these diverse areas, the phonetic values of the Vai signs, but read them in the Dravidian or Manding language you could read the ancient literature of Crete and the Indus Valley (Winters 1985b).
Thus the syllables which retain constant phonetic values can be used by different groups to write their own languages.
Many would-be decipherers have assumed that it is almost impossible to prove a genetic linguistic relationship using data of comparatively recent time-depth. But this view of archaeological decipherment is untenable. In fact, in the well known decipherments of Egyptian and Cuneiform, linguistic data of a comparatively recent time-depth was used to interpret the inscriptions.
For example, Jean Champollion used Coptic to read the ancient Egyptian writing. And Sir Henry Rawlinson, the decipherer of the cuneiform script used Galla (a Cushitic language spoken in Africa) and Mahra ( a south Semitic language) to interpret the cuneiform writing. This meant that we could read the Proto-Saharan writing using recent Manding and Dravidian linguistic data.
This view is supported by the use of cuneiform writing by different groups in West Asia and Asia Minor. The cuneiform script was used to write many distinct languages including Akkadian, Elamite, Hurrian, Hittite and Sumerian. The key to deciphering the world of cuneiform writing was the fact that each sign had only one value.
As a result, to read a particular cuneiform script took only the discovery of the language written in the cuneiform script. Therefore the decipherment of the Persian cuneiform script provided the key to the cuneiform cognate scripts. The decipherment of the ancient Manding inscriptions using the Vai sounds, was the key to the decipherment of the Proto-Saharan scripts: Linear A, the Oracle Bone writing, the Olmec and the Harappan writing (Winters 1979, 1983b,1984).
The second oldest inscription in the Proto-Saharan script comes from Gebel Sheikh Suleiman in Nubia. The Gebel Sheikh Suleiman relief has been discussed by many scholars such as Williams (1987) and Trigger (1980). The Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription is found near Buhen, Nubia. It is carved on a sandstone rock (see figure 5). This inscription was probably written by the A-Group people who helped found ancient Egypt. The ancestors of the Egyptians or Kemites originally lived in Nubia. The Nubian origin of Egyptian civilization is supported by the discovery of artifacts by archaeologists from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, at Qustul (William 1987; Winters 1994).
On a stone incense burner found at Qustul we find a palace facade, a crowned King sitting on a throne in a boat, with a royal standard placed before the King and hovering above him, the falcon god Horus. The white crown on this Qustul king was later worn by the rulers of Upper Egypt.
Many Egyptologists were shocked to learn in 1979, that the A-Group of Nubia at Qustul used Egyptian type writing two hundred years before the Egyptians (Williams 1987). This fact had already been recognized much earlier by Anta Diop (1974) when he wrote that it was in Nubia "where we find the animals and plants represented in hieroglyphic writing".
In conclusion, the discovery of the genetic unity between the Manding, Elamite, Dravidian and Sumerian languages along with cognate writing systems allowed me to decipher other ancient scripts used by Blacks in Eurasia. . .
The languages of the Dravidians, Elamites, Sumerians and Manding are genetically related (Winters 1985d, 1989b, 1994). N. Lahovary (1957) noted structural and grammatical analogies of Dravidian, Sumerian and Elamites. K.L. Muttarayan (1975) provides hundreds of lexical correspondences and other linguistic data supporting the family relationship between Sumerian and Dravidian. C. A. Winters (1980, 1985d, 1989b, 1994) and L. Homburger (1951) have provided evidence of a genetic relationship between the Dravidian languages and the Manding Superset of languages. Dr. Homburger has also proven that the Manding and Coptic languages are closely related.
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Williams (1987) and Trigger (1980) have failed to discuss the entire inscription on the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman relief. These scholars ignore the Proto-Saharan inscription, and describe only, the relief from left to right as follows: a serekh topped by a falcon looking over a victorious battlefield, sacred bark and a bound prisoner (see figure 5).
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But in reality we find more than these figures on the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription which appears to date back to the A-Group period of Nubia over 5000 years ago. This is obvious when we examine the photograph of the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman relief.
From left to right on this relief we see a falcon on a serekh sign surmounting a house/ palace. In front of this village/ palace scene we see a prisoner bound by Stj bow ( the sign for the Steu). Facing the prisoner bound by Stj bow ( the sign for the Steu). Facing the prisoner bound by the stj sign we see a bird over a circle with the letter X inside.
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Besides this scene we have another bird setting a top the letter X within the circle sign facing a victorious battle scene which includes a man bound to a sacred bark.
Over the sacred bark we find 21 Proto-Saharan signs. These signs agree with the Egyptian pottery symbols (see figure 3). The Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription is an obituary written about a king called Fe .
As noted above Homburger found that the Manding languages are closely related to the Coptic language. Using the Manding language we can read the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription.
Reading from right to left we read:
1. i gba lu
2. fe kye nde
2 1/2. ka i lu
3. fe fe tu
4. be yu su (su su) tu
5. su se lu gbe
6. po gbe tu
Below is the translation of the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription:
"1. Thou family habitation, hold (it) upright.
2. Fe's estate (is on) the shore (of the watercourse). 2 1/2. Cut thou (sepulchre) habitation for the family (here). 3. Fe preferred to be obedient to the order. 4. Lay low the (celebrity) in the large hemisphere tomb (and) offer up libations that merit upright virtue.6. Pure righteousness (is) King (Fe)."
This King Fe, of Gebel Sheikh Suleiman, may relate to Pharoah Pe-Hor (Throne of Horus) since in African languages /f/ and /p/ are often interchangeable. It is interesting to note that there is an inscription on a storage jar from Cemetery L of Qustul, Nubia that reads Pe-Hor (Williams 1987, p. 164). This Pe-Hor may be the Fe, of the Gebel Sheikh Suleiman inscription.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
The origin of writing was in Africa, not the Middle East. The Sumerians came from Africa. They originally used a syllabic writing system originally called Pro-Sumerian or linear Sumerian.
The first syllabic writing system of Africans was the Thinite script. This writing was used first by Blacks in Nubia, like the Niger-Congo people who migrated out of this region into the rest of Africa.
The Thinite script provides many of the signs that are included in later scripts used by Africans.
In Nubia, Black Africans were using Thinite symbols before the rise of Egypt to record their ideas and report on important events.
The Sumerians, and Harappans of the Indus Valley were Kushites. There civilization originated in Nubia this is why they share the same writing system. The ancient Sumerians before they adopted the cuneiform writing invented by the Anu in Mesopotamia wrote tablets in the Uruk script.
It is obvious that the first inscriptions were engraved in stone by the Proto-Saharans , or a stylus was used to engrave wet clay (Winters 1985b). The use of the stylus or stick to engrave clay is most evident in the pottery marks found on the pottery excavated at many ancient sites which possess similar symbols impressed on the pottery.
This view is supported by the fact that the term for writing in Dravidian and Egyptian include the consonants /l/, /r/ or /d/.
A "u", is usually attached to the initial consonants . For example:
Sumerian ……..ru, shu
Elamite…………..talu
Dravidian……….carru
Egyptian……………. drf
These terms agree with the Manding terms for excavate or hollow out ø du #, 0 do #, ø kulu #, ø tura #, etc. The Sumerian term for writing was ø du #. This show that the Proto-Saharan term for writing denoted the creation of impressions on wet clay and hard rock.
The origin of writing among the Proto-Saharans as an activity involving the engraving of stone is most evident in the Egyptian language. This hypothesis is supported by the Egyptian words ø m(w)dt #. The term ø md t # means both '(sculptor's) chisel' and 'papyrus-roll, book'. The multiple meanings of ø md t # makes it clear that the Egyptian, and probably other descendants of the Proto-Saharans saw a relationship between engraving stone and the creation of books.
Other Egyptian lexical items also support the important role Proto-Saharans saw in engraving rocks, and writing. In addition to md t we have, ø hti # 'carve, sculpture' and ø iht # 'writing'. The fact that iht is an Old Kingdom term for writing, almost identical to hti, is further evidence that writing involved the engraving of stone.
Thinite was used to make many later African writing systems. As a result,it was later used by Africans to write inscriptions throughout Middle Africa, before the Sumerians migrated from Middle Africa to Mesopotamia..
The evidence of this writing is found throughout the Sahara. By the time Mande speaking people settled Dar Tichitt they left numerous inscriptions.
The people of Dar Tichitt were Mande speakers. These Mande speaking people also lived in the Fezzan where they were called Garamante/Garamandes. The Garamante settled Crete and are recognized as the Eteo-Cretans or Minoans.
As you can see from the above chart the Linear A signs and Mande/Manding signs are identical. If you look careful you will note that Africans, or Black people had also taken their writing system to Anatolia were your ancestors were living in the Caucasus mountains as hunter-gatherers.
The Minoans, who were Africans introduced Linear A, whose signs are identical to the writing left by Africans throughout the Sahara, like those found at Tichitt and presently represented in the Vai and several other West African scripts.
The Afro-Greeks were not called Ethiopian. They were native to Greece when the Indo-Europeans came to Greece, Homer, who was an Afro-Greek refered to his people as xanthos (brown) in color.
The earliest inhabitants of Greece and the Aegean Islands were Blacks from ancient Libya, Palestine, and Asia Minor. These Blacks founded Athens, Thebes Thera and Attica. They occupied much of the mainland and all the Aegean Islands.
These Blacks are frequently depicted in the art associated with the so-called Dark Ages (1200-600 BC). There are also fine frescos from Thera (Sanorin) Island which illustrate one of the Agean cities occupied by these Blacks during the 16th and 15th centuries BC.
This is one of the Thera Frescos. Note the busy atmosphere Associated with the Pelasgian cities during the 16th Century BC
Although these people of the Heroic age came from diverse origins, the Aryan-Greeks called them Pelasgians. According to the Greeks, the first man was Pelasgus--ancestor of the Pelasgians. The Pelasgians were a combination of different Black tribes called Achaeans, Cadmeans, Leleges, Carians or Garamantes. The term Pelasgian was applied to all these pre-Hellenic inhabitants of Greece. R.J. Hopper, in
The Early Greeks, noted that "indeed the classical Greeks believed in the separate existence of diverse ethnic elements side by side, and thought particularly of the Pelasgians in this connection".
According to tradition, the Pelasgians inhabited Arcadia and many Aegean Islands. These Blacks took their own writing to Greece which was later used by the Aryan-Greeks. According to Herodotus quadrigas or four-horse chariots were introduced to Greeks by the Libyans .
The Aryan-Greeks adopted the language of the Pelasgians and Egyptians. The linguistic evidence shows that there was a differentiation of Greece into East Greek and West Greek. The Black Greeks spoke East Greek (Achaioi or Achaean). West Greek was spoken by the Dorian or Aryan Greeks. The earliest Aryan tribe called Ionians spoke a dialect of East Greek called Aeolic.
Many classical scholars teach the world that the Greek language is entirely Indo-European. This view of Greek is wrong.
Dr. Anna Morpurgo Davies, has made it clear that "less than 40% of the words which have an Indo-European etymology". According to Dr. Davies, 52.2 % of the Greek terms in Chantraine's Dictionnaire Etymologique de la langue Grecque (1968) have an unknown etymology. The mixed nature of the Greek language results from the early settlement of the Aegean by Blacks from Africa.
Some of these words are of African origin. Robert K.G. Temple, in The Sirius Mystery, shows that many of the most common words of the Greek vocabulary are of Egyptian origin. Diop (1991) has also discussed the Egyptian origin for many Greek terms.
The Xanthos or Palasgians of Thera
The Greeks often called the first inhabitants of Greece Pelasgians. The Greek writers claimed that Pelasgus, the great ancestor of the Pelasgians was the first man. The Pelasgians were a combination of diverse Black tribes which included the Achaeans , Kadmeans, and Leleges.
The Garamantes were also often called Pelasgians by some classical writers. Strabo said "that the Pelasgi, as indeed the most ancient nation, were diffused through all Greece, and especially among the Aeolians".
The city of Argo was founded by Phoroneus, the father of Pelasgus, Iasus and Agenor. It was these folks who divided the Peloponnese between them.
Herodotus referred to the Pelasgians as "venerable ancestors". He said that the first Athenians "they were Pelasgi, the later possessing the country now designed Hellas". The Pelasgian founding of Athens is also noted by Plutarch in Theseus 12, and Ovid in Metamorphosis vii.402ff. According to Herodotus vii.91, the Pelasgians also founded Thebes in Europe. Pausanias, noted that "The Arcadians make mention of Pelasgus as the first person who existed in their country. From this king the whole region took the name Pilasgia". Hopper noted that the Pelasgians founded Attica.
The Black immigrants from Canaan were also settled in the Aegean at Argolis. They called themselves the "Sons of Abas". Many of the Melampodes later took part of Argolis away from the Canaanites.
The earliest Greek alphabet was made by the Pelasgians, it was lost and later reintroduced by Kadmus to Boeotia. Another Pelasgian, Evander of Arcadia introduced writing to the Italians. This script was used to make the first fifteen characters of the Latin script according to Pliny and Plutarch. Pelasgians from Thera
Pliny says that one of the Aegean scripts was created by an Egyptian named Menos. An Egyptian creation of one of the early Greek alphabets is not out of the question because the early Predynastic Egyptians used the Proto-Saharan script as did the founders of the 12th Dynasty. Moreover, the Tiles of Rameses II, published by F. Hitching, in The Mysterious World, are analogous to the early Greek characters.
Europeans adopted this writing to write business documents and we know it as Linear B.
Europeans only got writing from the Egyptians. The Greeks who obtained writing from the Blacks of Africa and Phonesia passed on writing to the Romans. With the fall of Rome Western Europeans got writing from the African Muslims who taught them the arts and sciences.
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quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Narmerthoth over the years I have tried to relay to the ES community the literatures of Ancient Blacks. In 2006 I published here at ES the decipherment of many Meroitic inscriptions. To make you and others aware of these literatures I will republish the Meroitic and other inscrptions written by Black people around the world.
I deciphered the Meroitic writing based on the Kushana hypothesis.
The Kushana Hypothesis and Meroitic Writing I have deciphered Meroitic based on the most logical path to the decipherment of any dead language. Maurice Pope , made it clear that before a dead language can be deciphered you must have the right theoretical structure to base your inquiry upon it (p. 191). There were three preliminary conditions that must be met before any decipherment: (1) confidence that a script can be deciphered; (2) location of proper names must be determined; (3) the grammatical rules of the target language must be known.
Conditions #1 and #2 were met by Griffith when he deciphered the Meroitic script in 1910, and his discovery of the proper names of the Meroitic gods and individuals in the Meroitic text.
Griffith also discovered the directions in which the Meroitic writing was written. The recognition for the solubility of Meroitic was reinforced by the publication of it because it provided up-to-date material on Meroitic and the idea of using the comparative method to decipher Meroitic.
Condition #3 was met in 1978 when Hintze published his work on Meroitic grammar. This allowed me to test other languages similar to Meroitic to find the cognate language.
I chose Kushana for two reasons. Firstly, Philostratus in , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Kush, who settled along the Nile, descended from the Brahmins of India, having been forced to migrate after the murder of their King. This passage pointed to the Kushana, who left China in 176 B.C., after the murder of their king. The Kushana were of high caste.
The Meroites and Kushana often referred to themselves as Kuš . Because both of these groups called themselves Kushana, it suggested that they may be related, given the Classical tradition for a migration of "Indians" to Kush. Moreover, C.B. Rawlinson, in "Notes on the early History of Babylonia," pp. 221-222, discussed the Kushites of Asia and Africa.
Using the evidence of classical traditions pointing to the Kushana as possible settlers of Meroë gave me the confidence to compare Kushana to Meroitic. This comparison proved fruitful.
The key to understanding the use of Kushana/Tokharian to write Meroitic depended on the multi-lingual/ethnic character of the Kushana language. Although this language is considered Indo-European, I believe that it was used as a trade language in Central Asia to give the people of the region a common medium of exchange.
The Meroitic empire was made up of many groups: the Kusa/Kushites, Blemmyans, Medes, and Reherahas according to Hakem and Millet. I believe that the Meroites recognized the possibility of using Tokharian, which I believe was a trade language , in Meroitic Kush to unite the diverse people living in the region because it was not of Egyptian origin.
There is disturbing linguistic evidence that hinders the proper placement of Kushana/Tokharian in the I-E family. This results from the fact that it is more closely related to the western branch of I-E, than Indo-Iranian its closest neighbor. The Tokharian isoglosses in I-E are ranked as follows: (1) Germanic, (2) Greek, (3) Indic, (4) Baltic, and (5) Iranian.
The Tokharian lexicon has also been influenced by Tibetan, Chinese, and Uighur. This is suggestive that Tokharian was a trade language and that Greek and Slavic words came into the "lingua franca" after the Greek conquest of Bactria. The borrowing pattern in Tokharian is consistent with the spread of the Greek language by a small politically dominant minority of Greek settlers into a far larger and previously long-established non–I-E speaking majority. My decipherment of Meroitic is based on the Kushana theory.
The Kushana theory is that a group of “East Indian” scholars introduced the Meroitic writing system to the Meroites.
The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language. Meroitic is not related to languages spoken in this area. Griffith and Haycock tried to read Meroitic using Nubian and failed. K.H. Priese tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudani; he also failed.
The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who were engaged in constantly conflict with the Meroites , failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites.
The idea that the Meroites spoke Nubian has been revised by Rilly. Recently Rilly has suggested that we may be able to read Meroitic using Proto-Eastern Sudanic. We must reject this alledged break through in Meroitic linguistics on two points, he believes Nubia can be used to interpret Meroitic when the Nubians were never part of the meroitic Confederation; and 2) you can not read a dead language based on proto-terms because a proto-language is purely theorectical and can not be proven as ever existing in the real world.
Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol.1 , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana(p.45),1950). Given the fact that the Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to the Kushite civilization, led to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been Kushana philosophers.
The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to Indians in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the possible location ofthe cognate language of Meroitic.
There is external evidence, which supports my theory. A theory explains observed phenomena and has predictive power. I have theorized that due to the claims of the Classical writers that some of the Meroites came from India (F.C Conybeare (Trans.), Philostratus: The life of Apollonius of Tyana Vol.2, (1950) pg.271). According to the Life of Apollonius, the Indian Meroites were formerly led by a KingGanges, who had "repulsed the Scythians who invaded this land [India from] across the Caucasus" (Conybeare, Vol.1, Pg.273). Pilostratus also made it clear that the Indians of Meroe came to this countryafter their king was killed.
The presence of this tradition of an Indian King of the Indian-Meroites conquering the Scythians predicts that the Indian literature should record this historical episode. This prediction is supported by aJaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka, which reports that when the Scythians invaded Malwa, the King of Malwa, called Vikramaditya defeated the Scythians (H. Kulke & D. Rothermund, History of India(London, Routledge: 1990, pg.73). This king Vikramaditya may be the Ganges mentioned in the Life of Apollonius.Confirmation of the Ganges story,supports the Classical literary evidence that their were Indianized -Meroites that could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites.
In addition to the classical mention of the Indians settling Meroë, we also have a horde of Kushana coins that were found on the floor of a cave at the present monastery-shine at Debra Demo in modern Ethiopia in 1940. Moreover, there were other Indians in North Africa in addition to Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community (see: R. Salomon, "Epigraphic remains of Indiantraders in Egypt", Journal of the American oriental Society, (1991) pp.731-736; and R. Salomon, Addenda,Journal of the American Oriental Society, (1993) pg.593). These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Meroitic writing system. All of this supported the traditions of the Meroites that speak of a knowledge of the Kushana/Indians among the Meroites.
The evidence that the Classical references to an Indian-Meroite King who conquered the Scythians is supported by the Indian literature, provides external corroboration of the tradition that some of the Meroites were of Indian origin. The presence of Indian traders and settlers in Meroe (and Egypt), makes it almost impossible to deny the possibility that Indians, familiar with the Tokharian trade languagedid not introduce this writing to the Meroites who needed a neutral language to unify the diverse ethnic groups who made up the Meroite state. In relation to the history of linguistic change and bilingualism, itis a mistake to believe that linguistic transfer had to take place for the Meroites to have used Tokharian, when it did not take place when they wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In summary the classical literature makes it clear that there was a connection between the Gymnosophists (of Meroe) and the Indians. The fact that historical events mentioned in the classical sources are found in the Indian literature confirm the view that there were Indian-Meroites who could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites. The fact that the Nubians who were probably not part of the"Meroitic state", used hieroglyphics and Coptic to write their language without abandoning their native language support the view that the Meroites could have also used Tokharian to write Meroitic. And that eventhough the Kushites wrote Meroitic inscriptions in Tokharian, theywould not have had to abandon their own language.
The evidence presented above provides internal and external validity for my theory based upon the sources I have cited previously. The sources I have used are impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully informed[i.e., there were no Indians North Africa and Kush when the Classical writers maintained they were] and present rival explanations based on the evidence. The fact that the claims made by the Classical writers issupported by the Indians themselves if further strong confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis.
The hypothesis based on the classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana Hypothesis. The predicting power of the original theory, matches the observed natural phenomena which was confirmed elsewhere by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexicalitems and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified.
The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic, was further confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections were deducible from prediction. I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the statements of the classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and toponymic evidence found not only in Africa, but also India and Central Asia [where the people also used Tokharian as a trade language to unify the various people in Central Asia]. I constructed three testable hypotheses in support of the Kushana theory, and it seems only fair that these variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana Hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: If the meroites used a writing system of non-African origin a tradition mentioning this fact will exist. (Hypothesis confirmed. Classical literature mentions Indian scholars in ancient Meroe.)
Hypothesis: 2. If the classical literature mentions Indians who lived in Egypt influencing the Meroites their should be historical evidence relating to this tradition. (Hypothesis confirmed .Classical literature mentions a King who left his country is mentioned in the Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka.)
Hypothesis: 3. If Classical literature is true about the Indian origin of the Gymnosophists Indians will be found living near the Meroites around the time the Meroitic inscriptions appear. (Hypothesis confirmed. Artifacts and coins with Indian inscriptions have been found in Egypt and Ethiopia.) Failure to disconfirm this theorem, implies validity of my prediction.
LINGUISTIC SUPPORT
The classical literature supported the view that we might be able to find the Meroitic cognate language through a comparison of the Meroitic terms and Kushan lexical items. To test the Kushana hypothesis we had to then: 1) find agreement between Kushana and Meroitic terms; 2) compare Central Asian and Egypto-Sudanese toponomies; 3) compare Kushana and Meroitic grammatical forms.
Hintze's (1979) grammar of Meroitic provided the necessary material to compare Meroitic with other languages to find its cognate language. Hintze (1979) recognized three approaches to the study of Meroitic: 1) philological, 2) comparative, and 3) structural (i.e., the morphological-syntactical). The philological methods of Hintze (1979) were informed guesses based upon context.
In the comparative method the structures of two or more languages are compared to determine the relationship between languages. Hintze's (1979) discussion of the Meroitic affixes provided us with the linguistic material to compare Meroitic successfully with Tocharian. Linguist to determine the relatedness of languages, and to reconstruct earlier language states uses the comparative method.
The comparative linguist looks for patterns of correspondence, i.e., the isolation of words with common or similar meanings that have systematic consonantal agreement with little regard for location and/or type of vowel. Consonantal agreement is the regular appearance of consonants at certain locations in words having analogous meanings.
Using the comparative methods proposed by Hintze we have found that the Meroitic inscriptions are written in Tocharian, a language used as a lingua franca in Central Asia by the Kushana or Kush people. The Kushana people ruled Central Asia and India. Linguist prefer to call the Kushana language Tocharian, after the Sanskrit term for Kushana: Tu-kara.(Winters 1984,1989) There is structural, morphological and toponymic evidence which support the view that Tokharian is cognate to Meroitic (Winters 1984,1989).
There are many Central Asian place names that agree with toponomies in Nubia/ Sudan. Below we list a few of these common toponomies:
Central Asia Sudan
Pap Pap Karnak Karnak Kukushka Kurush Shaur Sarur Kandi Kandi Urban Borgan Khara Kara- Kupuri Gabur, Capur
These placenames cam be compared with the maps of Central Asia and the Sudan supplied me by Dr. Vamos-Toth and attached hereto.
Some of the alleged Meroitic terms, but not all have being verified by my decipherment. What you must remember though, is that most of the alleged Meroitic lexical items were simply guesses by the researchers themselves. These Meroitic terms could only become valid when they can be read in all the Meroitic text and have consistent meaning. I found that some of these terms are homonyms, while other terms "discovered " by Griffith and others were good guesses that do not prove valid given our discovery of the cognate language of Meroitic. There are several recognized Meroitic words they are not of Egyptian origin (Hintze 1979). The following words correspond to Tokharian words:
Meroitic Tokharian
0 kadke / ktke # queen 0 katak # master of the house 0 ato # water 0 ap # 0 s # 'race' 0 sah # 'man' 0 wide # youth 0 wir # 0 qor # monarch 0 oroce # 'the grand king' 0 parite # agent 0 parwe # 'first' 0 apote # 'envoy' 0 ap # 'father'
Around 57% of these terms show agreement. This made it highly probable that Meroitic and Tokharian were cognate languages.
The grammar of Meroitic determined by Hintze (1979) also allowed us to make comparisons with Tocharian to test the Kushana hypothesis for reading Meroitic. This comparison of grammatical structures showed cognition between this language and Meroitic. Hintze was sure that there were number of Meroitic affixes including:
p ye -te -to -o
B.G. Trigger in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned several other possible Meroitic affixes including:
-n -te -b
In addition , A. M. Abdalla in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned three possible verbal suffixes , including:
-n -t -y
The Kushana language includes all of these affixes. Recognition of analogous structural elements in relation to Kushana and Meroitic allowed us to divide the Meroitic phonemes into words. Griffith provided us with evidence for selected Meroitic nouns. Abdalla (Hintze 1979, 149) was sure that he detected several common verbs in Meroitic including: hr, the, tk, we, pl, do, mde and yi mde.
Following this lead we searched the Kushan language to determine if it possessed any verbs that might match the proposed hypothetical verbs of Abdalla. A comparison of Kushan and Meroitic proved to be successful. We now know that he was absolutely right about his interpretation of possible Meroitic verbs. Below is the interpretation of these Meroitic verbs:
hr to have dignity the to move tk to set in motion, to investigate w-e to give escort pl to boast, to praise m-de measure the offering y i m-de go make (full) measure of the offering
Recognition of these Meroitic terms as verbs gave us any more confirmation that Kushana was probably the Meroitic cognate language. This discovery of Meroitic verbs and nouns, and cognate toponomies in Central Asia and Upper-Nubia-Sudan proved that Meroitic could be read using Kushana lexical items.
The discovery that Tocharian is cognate to Meroitic has led to the full decipherment of the Meroitic script. We can now translate Meroitic using Tokharian. This allows us to obtain new information about the Meroitic civilization. My research into Kushan or Tokharian has led me to recognize that this language was probably used as a lingua franca or trade language in Central Asia by the diverse peoples living there in an intense bilingual environment. C. A. Winters (1991) has illustrated how the Greek and Slavic terms in Tokharian were loanwords, absorbed by Tokharian after the Greek conquest of Bactria. This borrowing pattern was consistent with the spread of the Greek language into Bactria by a small elite group of warriors.
To test this hypothesis at attepted to decipher an inscription from Mussawarat es-Sufra. The inscription included several Meroitic signs.
The picture associated with this inscription is a graphic depiction of a sexual experience.
Reading from right to left we have the following Meroitic words
Nem pkh ote
In Kushana these words had the following meaning in Kushana
Nam = tendency Pak = to aim Ote = Wonderment
This allows us to read the Musawwarat es-Sufra inscription as follows: "The tendency (is) to aim for the Wonderment of (sex)!
Once I had made this breakthrough in the decipherment of Meroitic I began to decipher other Meroitic inscriptions and learn more about the Meroitic language.
Meroitic Language
The classical and Egyptian sources make it clear that Upper Nubia and numerous tribes inhabited the Sudan. The possible early use of Kushan\Tokharian as a trade language made it an ideal candidate for use by the Meroitic elites who ruled an empire that was made up of many diverse ethnic groups as the language for literate Meroites.
Meroitic is basically a suffixing language. The funerary tablets are written in the third person.
Conclusion
In conclusion the multiethnic populations that lived in the Meroitic empire used the Meroitic language as a lingua franca. This would explain the inability of earlier researchers to find the cognate language of Meroitic in the Sudan, even though they might find some analogous lexical items.
As a result of the above, I believe that my decipherment of the Meroitic script is correct. You will find that these lexical items allow us to gain insight into the Meroitic religious and funerary world. I look forward to finding some historical Meroitic text, but up to now I have just found materials relating to funerary customs and the Meroitic religion. The Meroitic chamber inscription is interesting , but it also deals mainly with things funerary.
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My confirmation of the above , and 1) the presence of Kushites in Africa and Asia; 2)the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe;3) cognate lexical items; 4)cognate verbs and 5) cognate grammatical features; indicates systematic controlled, critical and empirical investigation of the question of Kushana representing the Meroitic cognate language.
You can read more about my decipherment of Meroitic in the following articles:
Winters,Clyde Ahmad. (Juin 1984b). "A Note on Tokharian and Meroitic", Meroitic Newsletter\Bulletin d"Information Meroitiques , No.23 , pages 18-21.
Winters,Clyde Ahmad. (1989b). "Cheikh Anta Diop et le dechiffrement de l'ecriture meroitique",Cabet: Revue Martinique de Sciences Humaines et de Litterature 8, pp. 149-152.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad.(1998). Meroitic funerary Text. Part1,Inscription Journal of Ancient Egypt 1,(1), pp. 29-34.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad.(1998). Meroitic funerary Text. Part1,Inscription Journal of Ancient Egypt 1,(2), pp. 41-55.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad. (1999). The inscriptions of Tanyidamani.Nubica IV und Nubica V., pp.355-388. You can read more about my decipherment of Meroitic in my book : Meroitic Writing and Literature.
Meroitic Writing and Literature is divided into three parts. The first part of the book explains how I used the Kushana hypothesis to decipher the Meroitic script. It will outline the Classical literature that informed my decipherment of Meroitic and how Buddhists early settled in Upper Egypt and the Meroitic Empire and spread their religion and writing system: Tocharian.
In Part two we outline the grammar of Meroitic. It will provide readers with a detailed overview of the Meroitic language and its grammar.
Part Three provides translations of key Meroitic text. These texts provide knowledge of the lifeway’s of the Meroites especially their religion and some historical data.
The Meroitic literature discussed in this book include : The Inscriptions of Tanyidamani; The Meroitic Chamber Inscription of Philae; and Meroitic Evidence for a Blemmy Empire in the Dodekaschoinas. These text were chosen because they include text written in archaic Meroitic (Tanyidemani), and other text written in late Meroitic.
Meroitic Writing and Literature, is the first account of the Meroitic language and literature. It will allow readers the opportunity to learn how to read/decipher Meroitic text, while acquiring an intimate knowledge of the Meroites as individuals.
Thanks Dr. Winters for the response. I'm sure you're aware that I've read these documents long ago when I first encountered your work, as well as all of the Afrocentric historians such as Van Selma, Bernal, Diop, DuBois, etc.
I was really impressed with your work on Buddhism in Meroe which I feel is one of your most innovative research projects.
Due to your work on the presence of Buddhists in Africa I began to wonder about the strong influence of these African Buddhists on Judaism, especially the Essenes wing of the religion which appears to practice many Buddhist inspired thought. I.E. The Way=The Middle way. The Essenes world-view being totally different and enlightened then that of the Pharisees and Sadducees branches of Judaism. Their commune structure closely parallels that of Asian Buddists in rejecting the world and it's sins for isolation akin to Asian and Indian Buddhist monasteries. The Essenes definitely were NOT "JEWS" as those today that call themselves such. Understanding that the deification of Jesus was totally an A.D. Roman injection, what Jesus preached was closer to Buddhism than any other school of religion.
However, in regards to African writing, we see how one small book written with an agenda by Constantine changed the dynamics of the whole word.
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Pliny says that one of the Aegean scripts was created by an Egyptian named Menos. An Egyptian creation of one of the early Greek alphabets is not out of the question because the early Predynastic Egyptians used the Proto-Saharan script as did the founders of the 12th Dynasty. Moreover, the Tiles of Rameses II, published by F. Hitching, in The Mysterious World, are analogous to the early Greek characters.
The Pelasgians also had writing and kings. On this vase we see a funeral procession.
On this part of the vase we see a swastika and a number of painted signs that look like our 'M'. The Swastika is read Kaka "deliverance, protection and safe keeping', the 'M' sign reads to rain, to fall, pour down. These signs should be read as follows: Rain down safe-keeping for [deceased]".
There is a Pelasgian text over 3500 years old.
-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Narmerthoth over the years I have tried to relay to the ES community the literatures of Ancient Blacks. In 2006 I published here at ES the decipherment of many Meroitic inscriptions. To make you and others aware of these literatures I will republish the Meroitic and other inscrptions written by Black people around the world.
I deciphered the Meroitic writing based on the Kushana hypothesis.
The Kushana Hypothesis and Meroitic Writing I have deciphered Meroitic based on the most logical path to the decipherment of any dead language. Maurice Pope , made it clear that before a dead language can be deciphered you must have the right theoretical structure to base your inquiry upon it (p. 191). There were three preliminary conditions that must be met before any decipherment: (1) confidence that a script can be deciphered; (2) location of proper names must be determined; (3) the grammatical rules of the target language must be known.
Conditions #1 and #2 were met by Griffith when he deciphered the Meroitic script in 1910, and his discovery of the proper names of the Meroitic gods and individuals in the Meroitic text.
Griffith also discovered the directions in which the Meroitic writing was written. The recognition for the solubility of Meroitic was reinforced by the publication of it because it provided up-to-date material on Meroitic and the idea of using the comparative method to decipher Meroitic.
Condition #3 was met in 1978 when Hintze published his work on Meroitic grammar. This allowed me to test other languages similar to Meroitic to find the cognate language.
I chose Kushana for two reasons. Firstly, Philostratus in , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Kush, who settled along the Nile, descended from the Brahmins of India, having been forced to migrate after the murder of their King. This passage pointed to the Kushana, who left China in 176 B.C., after the murder of their king. The Kushana were of high caste.
The Meroites and Kushana often referred to themselves as Kuš . Because both of these groups called themselves Kushana, it suggested that they may be related, given the Classical tradition for a migration of "Indians" to Kush. Moreover, C.B. Rawlinson, in "Notes on the early History of Babylonia," pp. 221-222, discussed the Kushites of Asia and Africa.
Using the evidence of classical traditions pointing to the Kushana as possible settlers of Meroë gave me the confidence to compare Kushana to Meroitic. This comparison proved fruitful.
The key to understanding the use of Kushana/Tokharian to write Meroitic depended on the multi-lingual/ethnic character of the Kushana language. Although this language is considered Indo-European, I believe that it was used as a trade language in Central Asia to give the people of the region a common medium of exchange.
The Meroitic empire was made up of many groups: the Kusa/Kushites, Blemmyans, Medes, and Reherahas according to Hakem and Millet. I believe that the Meroites recognized the possibility of using Tokharian, which I believe was a trade language , in Meroitic Kush to unite the diverse people living in the region because it was not of Egyptian origin.
There is disturbing linguistic evidence that hinders the proper placement of Kushana/Tokharian in the I-E family. This results from the fact that it is more closely related to the western branch of I-E, than Indo-Iranian its closest neighbor. The Tokharian isoglosses in I-E are ranked as follows: (1) Germanic, (2) Greek, (3) Indic, (4) Baltic, and (5) Iranian.
The Tokharian lexicon has also been influenced by Tibetan, Chinese, and Uighur. This is suggestive that Tokharian was a trade language and that Greek and Slavic words came into the "lingua franca" after the Greek conquest of Bactria. The borrowing pattern in Tokharian is consistent with the spread of the Greek language by a small politically dominant minority of Greek settlers into a far larger and previously long-established non–I-E speaking majority. My decipherment of Meroitic is based on the Kushana theory.
The Kushana theory is that a group of “East Indian” scholars introduced the Meroitic writing system to the Meroites.
The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language. Meroitic is not related to languages spoken in this area. Griffith and Haycock tried to read Meroitic using Nubian and failed. K.H. Priese tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudani; he also failed.
The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who were engaged in constantly conflict with the Meroites , failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites.
The idea that the Meroites spoke Nubian has been revised by Rilly. Recently Rilly has suggested that we may be able to read Meroitic using Proto-Eastern Sudanic. We must reject this alledged break through in Meroitic linguistics on two points, he believes Nubia can be used to interpret Meroitic when the Nubians were never part of the meroitic Confederation; and 2) you can not read a dead language based on proto-terms because a proto-language is purely theorectical and can not be proven as ever existing in the real world.
Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol.1 , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana(p.45),1950). Given the fact that the Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to the Kushite civilization, led to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been Kushana philosophers.
The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to Indians in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the possible location ofthe cognate language of Meroitic.
There is external evidence, which supports my theory. A theory explains observed phenomena and has predictive power. I have theorized that due to the claims of the Classical writers that some of the Meroites came from India (F.C Conybeare (Trans.), Philostratus: The life of Apollonius of Tyana Vol.2, (1950) pg.271). According to the Life of Apollonius, the Indian Meroites were formerly led by a KingGanges, who had "repulsed the Scythians who invaded this land [India from] across the Caucasus" (Conybeare, Vol.1, Pg.273). Pilostratus also made it clear that the Indians of Meroe came to this countryafter their king was killed.
The presence of this tradition of an Indian King of the Indian-Meroites conquering the Scythians predicts that the Indian literature should record this historical episode. This prediction is supported by aJaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka, which reports that when the Scythians invaded Malwa, the King of Malwa, called Vikramaditya defeated the Scythians (H. Kulke & D. Rothermund, History of India(London, Routledge: 1990, pg.73). This king Vikramaditya may be the Ganges mentioned in the Life of Apollonius.Confirmation of the Ganges story,supports the Classical literary evidence that their were Indianized -Meroites that could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites.
In addition to the classical mention of the Indians settling Meroë, we also have a horde of Kushana coins that were found on the floor of a cave at the present monastery-shine at Debra Demo in modern Ethiopia in 1940. Moreover, there were other Indians in North Africa in addition to Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community (see: R. Salomon, "Epigraphic remains of Indiantraders in Egypt", Journal of the American oriental Society, (1991) pp.731-736; and R. Salomon, Addenda,Journal of the American Oriental Society, (1993) pg.593). These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Meroitic writing system. All of this supported the traditions of the Meroites that speak of a knowledge of the Kushana/Indians among the Meroites.
The evidence that the Classical references to an Indian-Meroite King who conquered the Scythians is supported by the Indian literature, provides external corroboration of the tradition that some of the Meroites were of Indian origin. The presence of Indian traders and settlers in Meroe (and Egypt), makes it almost impossible to deny the possibility that Indians, familiar with the Tokharian trade languagedid not introduce this writing to the Meroites who needed a neutral language to unify the diverse ethnic groups who made up the Meroite state. In relation to the history of linguistic change and bilingualism, itis a mistake to believe that linguistic transfer had to take place for the Meroites to have used Tokharian, when it did not take place when they wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In summary the classical literature makes it clear that there was a connection between the Gymnosophists (of Meroe) and the Indians. The fact that historical events mentioned in the classical sources are found in the Indian literature confirm the view that there were Indian-Meroites who could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites. The fact that the Nubians who were probably not part of the"Meroitic state", used hieroglyphics and Coptic to write their language without abandoning their native language support the view that the Meroites could have also used Tokharian to write Meroitic. And that eventhough the Kushites wrote Meroitic inscriptions in Tokharian, theywould not have had to abandon their own language.
The evidence presented above provides internal and external validity for my theory based upon the sources I have cited previously. The sources I have used are impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully informed[i.e., there were no Indians North Africa and Kush when the Classical writers maintained they were] and present rival explanations based on the evidence. The fact that the claims made by the Classical writers issupported by the Indians themselves if further strong confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis.
The hypothesis based on the classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana Hypothesis. The predicting power of the original theory, matches the observed natural phenomena which was confirmed elsewhere by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexicalitems and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified.
The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic, was further confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections were deducible from prediction. I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the statements of the classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and toponymic evidence found not only in Africa, but also India and Central Asia [where the people also used Tokharian as a trade language to unify the various people in Central Asia]. I constructed three testable hypotheses in support of the Kushana theory, and it seems only fair that these variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana Hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: If the meroites used a writing system of non-African origin a tradition mentioning this fact will exist. (Hypothesis confirmed. Classical literature mentions Indian scholars in ancient Meroe.)
Hypothesis: 2. If the classical literature mentions Indians who lived in Egypt influencing the Meroites their should be historical evidence relating to this tradition. (Hypothesis confirmed .Classical literature mentions a King who left his country is mentioned in the Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka.)
Hypothesis: 3. If Classical literature is true about the Indian origin of the Gymnosophists Indians will be found living near the Meroites around the time the Meroitic inscriptions appear. (Hypothesis confirmed. Artifacts and coins with Indian inscriptions have been found in Egypt and Ethiopia.) Failure to disconfirm this theorem, implies validity of my prediction.
LINGUISTIC SUPPORT
The classical literature supported the view that we might be able to find the Meroitic cognate language through a comparison of the Meroitic terms and Kushan lexical items. To test the Kushana hypothesis we had to then: 1) find agreement between Kushana and Meroitic terms; 2) compare Central Asian and Egypto-Sudanese toponomies; 3) compare Kushana and Meroitic grammatical forms.
Hintze's (1979) grammar of Meroitic provided the necessary material to compare Meroitic with other languages to find its cognate language. Hintze (1979) recognized three approaches to the study of Meroitic: 1) philological, 2) comparative, and 3) structural (i.e., the morphological-syntactical). The philological methods of Hintze (1979) were informed guesses based upon context.
In the comparative method the structures of two or more languages are compared to determine the relationship between languages. Hintze's (1979) discussion of the Meroitic affixes provided us with the linguistic material to compare Meroitic successfully with Tocharian. Linguist to determine the relatedness of languages, and to reconstruct earlier language states uses the comparative method.
The comparative linguist looks for patterns of correspondence, i.e., the isolation of words with common or similar meanings that have systematic consonantal agreement with little regard for location and/or type of vowel. Consonantal agreement is the regular appearance of consonants at certain locations in words having analogous meanings.
Using the comparative methods proposed by Hintze we have found that the Meroitic inscriptions are written in Tocharian, a language used as a lingua franca in Central Asia by the Kushana or Kush people. The Kushana people ruled Central Asia and India. Linguist prefer to call the Kushana language Tocharian, after the Sanskrit term for Kushana: Tu-kara.(Winters 1984,1989) There is structural, morphological and toponymic evidence which support the view that Tokharian is cognate to Meroitic (Winters 1984,1989).
There are many Central Asian place names that agree with toponomies in Nubia/ Sudan. Below we list a few of these common toponomies:
Central Asia Sudan
Pap Pap Karnak Karnak Kukushka Kurush Shaur Sarur Kandi Kandi Urban Borgan Khara Kara- Kupuri Gabur, Capur
These placenames cam be compared with the maps of Central Asia and the Sudan supplied me by Dr. Vamos-Toth and attached hereto.
Some of the alleged Meroitic terms, but not all have being verified by my decipherment. What you must remember though, is that most of the alleged Meroitic lexical items were simply guesses by the researchers themselves. These Meroitic terms could only become valid when they can be read in all the Meroitic text and have consistent meaning. I found that some of these terms are homonyms, while other terms "discovered " by Griffith and others were good guesses that do not prove valid given our discovery of the cognate language of Meroitic. There are several recognized Meroitic words they are not of Egyptian origin (Hintze 1979). The following words correspond to Tokharian words:
Meroitic Tokharian
0 kadke / ktke # queen 0 katak # master of the house 0 ato # water 0 ap # 0 s # 'race' 0 sah # 'man' 0 wide # youth 0 wir # 0 qor # monarch 0 oroce # 'the grand king' 0 parite # agent 0 parwe # 'first' 0 apote # 'envoy' 0 ap # 'father'
Around 57% of these terms show agreement. This made it highly probable that Meroitic and Tokharian were cognate languages.
The grammar of Meroitic determined by Hintze (1979) also allowed us to make comparisons with Tocharian to test the Kushana hypothesis for reading Meroitic. This comparison of grammatical structures showed cognition between this language and Meroitic. Hintze was sure that there were number of Meroitic affixes including:
p ye -te -to -o
B.G. Trigger in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned several other possible Meroitic affixes including:
-n -te -b
In addition , A. M. Abdalla in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned three possible verbal suffixes , including:
-n -t -y
The Kushana language includes all of these affixes. Recognition of analogous structural elements in relation to Kushana and Meroitic allowed us to divide the Meroitic phonemes into words. Griffith provided us with evidence for selected Meroitic nouns. Abdalla (Hintze 1979, 149) was sure that he detected several common verbs in Meroitic including: hr, the, tk, we, pl, do, mde and yi mde.
Following this lead we searched the Kushan language to determine if it possessed any verbs that might match the proposed hypothetical verbs of Abdalla. A comparison of Kushan and Meroitic proved to be successful. We now know that he was absolutely right about his interpretation of possible Meroitic verbs. Below is the interpretation of these Meroitic verbs:
hr to have dignity the to move tk to set in motion, to investigate w-e to give escort pl to boast, to praise m-de measure the offering y i m-de go make (full) measure of the offering
Recognition of these Meroitic terms as verbs gave us any more confirmation that Kushana was probably the Meroitic cognate language. This discovery of Meroitic verbs and nouns, and cognate toponomies in Central Asia and Upper-Nubia-Sudan proved that Meroitic could be read using Kushana lexical items.
The discovery that Tocharian is cognate to Meroitic has led to the full decipherment of the Meroitic script. We can now translate Meroitic using Tokharian. This allows us to obtain new information about the Meroitic civilization. My research into Kushan or Tokharian has led me to recognize that this language was probably used as a lingua franca or trade language in Central Asia by the diverse peoples living there in an intense bilingual environment. C. A. Winters (1991) has illustrated how the Greek and Slavic terms in Tokharian were loanwords, absorbed by Tokharian after the Greek conquest of Bactria. This borrowing pattern was consistent with the spread of the Greek language into Bactria by a small elite group of warriors.
To test this hypothesis at attepted to decipher an inscription from Mussawarat es-Sufra. The inscription included several Meroitic signs.
The picture associated with this inscription is a graphic depiction of a sexual experience.
Reading from right to left we have the following Meroitic words
Nem pkh ote
In Kushana these words had the following meaning in Kushana
Nam = tendency Pak = to aim Ote = Wonderment
This allows us to read the Musawwarat es-Sufra inscription as follows: "The tendency (is) to aim for the Wonderment of (sex)!
Once I had made this breakthrough in the decipherment of Meroitic I began to decipher other Meroitic inscriptions and learn more about the Meroitic language.
Meroitic Language
The classical and Egyptian sources make it clear that Upper Nubia and numerous tribes inhabited the Sudan. The possible early use of Kushan\Tokharian as a trade language made it an ideal candidate for use by the Meroitic elites who ruled an empire that was made up of many diverse ethnic groups as the language for literate Meroites.
Meroitic is basically a suffixing language. The funerary tablets are written in the third person.
Conclusion
In conclusion the multiethnic populations that lived in the Meroitic empire used the Meroitic language as a lingua franca. This would explain the inability of earlier researchers to find the cognate language of Meroitic in the Sudan, even though they might find some analogous lexical items.
As a result of the above, I believe that my decipherment of the Meroitic script is correct. You will find that these lexical items allow us to gain insight into the Meroitic religious and funerary world. I look forward to finding some historical Meroitic text, but up to now I have just found materials relating to funerary customs and the Meroitic religion. The Meroitic chamber inscription is interesting , but it also deals mainly with things funerary.
.
My confirmation of the above , and 1) the presence of Kushites in Africa and Asia; 2)the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe;3) cognate lexical items; 4)cognate verbs and 5) cognate grammatical features; indicates systematic controlled, critical and empirical investigation of the question of Kushana representing the Meroitic cognate language.
You can read more about my decipherment of Meroitic in the following articles:
Winters,Clyde Ahmad. (Juin 1984b). "A Note on Tokharian and Meroitic", Meroitic Newsletter\Bulletin d"Information Meroitiques , No.23 , pages 18-21.
Winters,Clyde Ahmad. (1989b). "Cheikh Anta Diop et le dechiffrement de l'ecriture meroitique",Cabet: Revue Martinique de Sciences Humaines et de Litterature 8, pp. 149-152.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad.(1998). Meroitic funerary Text. Part1,Inscription Journal of Ancient Egypt 1,(1), pp. 29-34.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad.(1998). Meroitic funerary Text. Part1,Inscription Journal of Ancient Egypt 1,(2), pp. 41-55.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad. (1999). The inscriptions of Tanyidamani.Nubica IV und Nubica V., pp.355-388. You can read more about my decipherment of Meroitic in my book : Meroitic Writing and Literature.
Meroitic Writing and Literature is divided into three parts. The first part of the book explains how I used the Kushana hypothesis to decipher the Meroitic script. It will outline the Classical literature that informed my decipherment of Meroitic and how Buddhists early settled in Upper Egypt and the Meroitic Empire and spread their religion and writing system: Tocharian.
In Part two we outline the grammar of Meroitic. It will provide readers with a detailed overview of the Meroitic language and its grammar.
Part Three provides translations of key Meroitic text. These texts provide knowledge of the lifeway’s of the Meroites especially their religion and some historical data.
The Meroitic literature discussed in this book include : The Inscriptions of Tanyidamani; The Meroitic Chamber Inscription of Philae; and Meroitic Evidence for a Blemmy Empire in the Dodekaschoinas. These text were chosen because they include text written in archaic Meroitic (Tanyidemani), and other text written in late Meroitic.
Meroitic Writing and Literature, is the first account of the Meroitic language and literature. It will allow readers the opportunity to learn how to read/decipher Meroitic text, while acquiring an intimate knowledge of the Meroites as individuals.
Thanks Dr. Winters for the response. I'm sure you're aware that I've read these documents long ago when I first encountered your work, as well as all of the Afrocentric historians such as Van Selma, Bernal, Diop, DuBois, etc.
I was really impressed with your work on Buddhism in Meroe which I feel is one of your most innovative research projects.
Due to your work on the presence of Buddhists in Africa I began to wonder about the strong influence of these African Buddhists on Judaism, especially the Essenes wing of the religion which appears to practice many Buddhist inspired thought. I.E. The Way=The Middle way. The Essenes world-view being totally different and enlightened then that of the Pharisees and Sadducees branches of Judaism. Their commune structure closely parallels that of Asian Buddists in rejecting the world and it's sins for isolation akin to Asian and Indian Buddhist monasteries. The Essenes definitely were NOT "JEWS" as those today that call themselves such. Understanding that the deification of Jesus was totally an A.D. Roman injection, what Jesus preached was closer to Buddhism than any other school of religion.
However, in regards to African writing, we see how one small book written with an agenda by Constantine changed the dynamics of the whole word.
The book had little to do with the spread of Christianity. Christianity was spread by the sword, first with the Romans and lastly by the Spanish and English.
Christian worship the religion of Paul, because Jesus demanded we worship God without an intermediary , People prefer to be led, so they look towards a religious authority so they can place responsibility on someone else rather than themselves.
This was not case with Islam which demanded that no one should be forced to join/worship religion/faith in God.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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True, violence is the Albino path to success in all of their endeavors. Violence in Christianity was also in both directions. Once other cultures realized albinos were using Christianity and the Bible to indoctrinate their people, they killed many of their people who had been compromised by the religion in an attempt to halt it's penetration, as did the Romans.
-------------------- Selenium gives real life and true reality Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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quote:Originally posted by Narmerthoth: True, violence is the Albino path to success in all of their endeavors. Violence in Christianity was also in both directions. Once other cultures realized albinos were using Christianity and the Bible to indoctrinate their people, they killed many of their people who had been compromised by the religion in an attempt to halt it's penetration, as did the Romans.
This was true of many groups but not Africans. Africans have a tradition of polytheism, as exemplified by the Egyptians. As a result, Blacks usually respected members of their family and community who accepted other faiths.
The only Blacks who are religious nationalists are Blacks dominated by Europeans especially Blacks in the Western Hemisphere. As a result, Afro-Americans have aligned themselves into various religious camps Hebrews, Catholics, Muslims, Moors and Jahova Witnesses. In traditional egalitarian African societies this was never the case.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:This was not case with Islam which demanded that no one should be forced to join/worship religion/faith in God.
Come on Clyde be serious now--if at all possible. Islam was spread by the sword as the Arabs burst forth from Arabia to plunder and colonize by the machete and axe. All of West Asia and North Africa fell under its invasions sway. The conquered had to convert or pay the jizya tax. Islam then invaded Spain was there for 800 years before the Spaniards under El Cid booted them out. Islam invaded India and forced conversions in what is now Pakistan and parts of India. Indian historians claim that Muslim invaders killed some 80 million Indians in its conquest of the sub-Continent. Turkey and Afghanistan also fell under the sway of Islam after conquest. The military advance of Islam was blocked in France by Charles Martel and in Eastern Europe by Vlad, the Impaler(the movie Dracula). Southern Russia was also conquered by Islam in places like Chechnya.
Muhammad: "I was made victorious through terror" Sahi Bukhari 4:52.220.
Qur'an 9:5(Verse of the Sword). "Slay the infidels wherever you find them", if they resist--or they convert or pay jizya.
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One must recall too that the priest Manetho wrote a definitive history of Ancient Egypt/Nubia. And there were many historians at Tombouctou such as Sadi and Kati.
In fact, Kati wrote movingly of the defeat of the Songhay army by an expeditionary from Morocco at the Battle of Tondibi, 1591.
On European history, one should that is is only Roman historians such as Tacitus, Livy,Sallust, etc. who wrote the early history of Europe. There was no other written history of Europe until the 8th/9th century by writers such as Bede, a monk who wrote in Latin.
History in the languages of Europe besides Latin came to the fore in the 15th century onward.
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: what about pre-colonial tribal warfare ?
These wars were not based on religion.
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There were far too many causes for tribal warfare, and this is as true for Africa as with England, Scotland, Ireland, China, and almost every other country in existence. Unification was seen as the path to halt all tribal/Clan conflicts because by unifying all, would greatly reduce the loss of life due to the many causes for tribal conflict. I believe the greater religious conflicts for Africa didn't begin until European albinos instigated it, for example, the Templar holy wars for Israel where they convinced a million African to be their canon fodder.
Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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quote:Originally posted by Narmerthoth: violence is the Albino path to success in all of their endeavors.
Again with the nonsense. I didn't say the ancestors of the European albino, but of course you know this but insist on being a deceiving Jew.
Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: [qb] what about pre-colonial tribal warfare ?
These wars were not based on religion.
.
There were far too many causes for tribal warfare, and this is as true for Africa as with England, Scotland, Ireland, China, and almost every other country in existence. Unification was seen as the path to halt all tribal/Clan conflicts because by unifying all, would greatly reduce the loss of life due to the many causes for tribal conflict.
So are you doing anything locally to promote black unity?
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Clyde Winters. Why did you pick Manding for the Olmec language? Did it have anything to do with their oral history?
Posts: 1254 | From: howdy | Registered: Mar 2014
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Dr. Winters: "It is obvious that the first inscriptions were engraved in stone by the Proto-Saharans , or a stylus was used to engrave wet clay (Winters 1985b). " - - - This was very late, compared to other script writing/drawing on body and on portable/perishable materials.
you may be correct that the earliest formal script was syllabic. Phoenician = Japanese katakana script.
(KuMbuti): ebembe = ceremonial body painting
= PAint/PAmphlet/PAlimpset/PAmper PRint/PRim/PRimp/PRincess/PRincipal/ PRomenade/ POmp/POrnograph/ Pimp/Pimple-Pump-pompa(Spanish)-bomb-blow (paint on cave wall)
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: [qb] what about pre-colonial tribal warfare ?
These wars were not based on religion.
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There were far too many causes for tribal warfare, and this is as true for Africa as with England, Scotland, Ireland, China, and almost every other country in existence. Unification was seen as the path to halt all tribal/Clan conflicts because by unifying all, would greatly reduce the loss of life due to the many causes for tribal conflict.
So are you doing anything locally to promote black unity?
LOL!
Does ID'ing the riff-raff and pretenders count? The number 1 cause for the failure of a movement is infiltration and internal instigation, but you know this right?
Posts: 4693 | From: Saturn | Registered: Apr 2012
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All wars were initiated by a male wanting a female at some point, just like chimpanzees. I guess. - The Eden myth, the Noah myth and the Atlantis myth all were forged at the Black Sea, at the confluence of 4 rivers: DaNube/DNieper/DNiester/DoN and Crimea-Colchis-Ararat.
Gilgamesh Myth: Gilgamesh & Enkidu kill Bull of Heaven
IE myth: Manu & Yemo kill Bull.
"The Proto-Indo-European Creation myth seems to have involved two key figures: *Manu- ("Man"; Indic Manu; Germanic Mannus) and *Yemo- ("Twin"; Indic Yama; Germanic Ymir), his twin brother. Reflexes of these two figures usually fulfill the respective roles of founder of the human race and first human to die.[16][17]" wiki
- - -
Note: 7 auras ~ 7 = Sabbath/sage/angel
Gilgamesh tricks the monster Humbaba into giving away his seven "radiances" by offering his sisters as wife and concubine. When Humbaba's guard is down, Gilgamesh punches him and captures the monster. Defeated, Humbaba appeals to a receptive Gilgamesh for mercy, but Enkidu convinces Gilgamesh to slay Humbaba. In a last effort, Humbaba tries to escape but is decapitated by Enkidu, or in some versions by both heroes together; his head is put in a leather sack, which is brought to Enlil, the god who set Humbaba as the forest's guardian. Enlil becomes enraged upon learning this and redistributes Humbaba's seven splendors (or in some tablets "auras"). "He gave Humbaba's first aura to the fields. He gave his second aura to the rivers. He gave his third aura to the reed-beds. He gave his fourth aura to the lions. He gave his fifth aura to the palace (one text has debt slaves). He gave his sixth aura to the forests (one text has the hills). He gave his seventh aura to Nungal."[7] No vengeance was laid upon the heroes, though Enlil says, "He should have eaten the bread that you eat, and should have drunk the water that you drink! He should have been honored."
As each gift was given by Gilgamesh, he received a "terror" (= "radiance") in exchange, from Humbaba. The seven gifts successively given by Gilgamesh were:[8] 1.his sister, Ma-tur, 2.(a gap in the text), 3.eca-flour, 4.big shoes, 5.tiny shoes, 6.semi-precious stones, and 7.a bundle of tree-branches.
- - - Gilgamesh = Bilgames
In the Qumran scroll known as Book of Giants (c. 100 BC) the names of Gilgamesh and Humbaba appear as two of the antediluvian giants, rendered (in consonantal form) as glgmš and ḩwbbyš. This same text was later used in the Middle East by the Manichaean sects, and the Arabic form Gilgamish/Jiljamish survives as the name of a demon according to the Egyptian cleric Al-Suyuti (c. 1500).[16]
The name Gilgamesh appears once in Greek, as "Gilgamos" (Γίλγαμος), in Aelian's De Natura Animalium (On the Nature of Animals) 12.21 (written c. AD 200).[17] In Aelian's story, the King of Babylon, Seuechorus or Euechorus, determined by oracle that his grandson Gilgamos would kill him, so he threw him out of a high tower. An eagle broke his fall, and the infant was found and raised by a gardener, eventually becoming king. - - -
Relationship to the Bible[edit]
Further information: Panbabylonism
Various themes, plot elements, and characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh have counterparts in the Hebrew Bible, notably the accounts of the Garden of Eden, the advice from Ecclesiastes, and the Genesis flood narrative.
Garden of Eden[edit]
The parallels between the stories of Enkidu/Shamhat and Adam/Eve have been long recognized by scholars.[21] In both, a man is created from the soil by a god, and lives in a natural setting amongst the animals. He is introduced to a woman who tempts him. In both stories the man accepts food from the woman, covers his nakedness, and must leave his former realm, unable to return. The presence of a snake that steals a plant of immortality from the hero later in the epic is another point of similarity.
Advice from Ecclesiastes[edit]
Several scholars suggest direct borrowing of Siduri's advice by the author of Ecclesiastes.[22]
A rare proverb about the strength of a triple-stranded rope (a triple-stranded rope is not easily broken) is common to both books.
Noah's Flood[edit]
Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.[23] What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.[24] In a 2001 Torah commentary released on behalf of the Conservative Movement of Judaism, rabbinic scholar Robert Wexler stated: "The most likely assumption we can make is that both Genesis and Gilgamesh drew their material from a common tradition about the flood that existed in Mesopotamia. These stories then diverged in the retelling."[25] Ziusudra, Utnapishtim and Noah are the respective heroes of the Sumerian, Akkadian and biblical flood legends of the ancient Near East.
Other biblical parallels[edit]
Matthias Henze suggests that Nebuchadnezzar's madness in the biblical Book of Daniel draws on the Epic of Gilgamesh. He claims that the author uses elements from the description of Enkidu to paint a sarcastic and mocking portrait of the king of Babylon.[26]
While not directly discussed in the Epic itself, many of the characters in the Epic also have myths associated with them with close biblical parallels, notably Ninti, the Sumerian goddess of life, was created from Enki's rib to heal him after he had eaten forbidden flowers. Some scholars suggest that this served as the basis for the story of Eve created from Adam's rib in the Book of Genesis.[27] Esther J. Hamori(Echoes of Gilgamesh in Jacob Story) also claims that the myth of Jacob and Esau is paralleled with the wrestle match between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
Influence on Homer[edit]
Numerous scholars have drawn attention to various themes, episodes, and verses, that indicate a substantial influence of the Epic of Gilgamesh on both of the epic poems ascribed to Homer. These influences are detailed by Martin Litchfield West in The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth.[28] According to Tzvi Abusch of Brandeis University, the poem "combines the power and tragedy of the Iliad with the wanderings and marvels of the Odyssey. It is a work of adventure, but is no less a meditation on some fundamental issues of human existence."[29]
quote:Originally posted by Fourty2Tribes: Clyde Winters. Why did you pick Manding for the Olmec language? Did it have anything to do with their oral history?
Leo Weiner in Africa and the Discovery of America found a Mande substratum in the Mayan languages. He also noted that the symbols on the Tuxtla Statuette were probably written in Mande characters based on the inscriptions they left in Africa.
The first Africans to introduce writing to the Americas were the Olmecs. They took writing into Mexico around 1200 BC. The first researcher to recognize that the Olmec writing was Mande was Leo Wiener, in Africa and the discovery of America. He recognized that the writing on the Tuxtla statuette was written in Mande characters.
Mojarra Stela .
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Tuxtla Statuette
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Many of these Blacks continued to use the Vai script to write into Mayan times.
. The Vai script was also taken to America by the the Malian explorers led by Abubakari in 1310. They left inscriptions across the United States.
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Dr. Winters: "It is obvious that the first inscriptions were engraved in stone by the Proto-Saharans , or a stylus was used to engrave wet clay (Winters 1985b). " - - - This was very late, compared to other script writing/drawing on body and on portable/perishable materials.
you may be correct that the earliest formal script was syllabic. Phoenician = Japanese katakana script.
(KuMbuti): ebembe = ceremonial body painting
= PAint/PAmphlet/PAlimpset/PAmper PRint/PRim/PRimp/PRincess/PRincipal/ PRomenade/ POmp/POrnograph/ Pimp/Pimple-Pump-pompa(Spanish)-bomb-blow (paint on cave wall)
etc.
From KuMbuti/xyuambuatlachya to the world
Xyambuatlachya = Family/Home/Heimat/Goulash
You have made an interesting suggestion about writing existing in the body painting and tatoos. This is very likely because the South Americans often had writing in their garments. See Video:
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Enjoy.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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Body painting LONG preceded worn garments, tattoos, and all ochre decoration(+/-300,000 yrs).
Pygmy hunters apply char for camouflage, girls & boys for social coming-of-age rituals. Red wood powder, white soil mineral powder, black char, blue mud, etc.
As people moved outwards from their ancestral rainforest home, they encountered new color forms and materials, these were exchanged (!hxaro) & then traded(Phoenix/pea(cock)/paint).
Posts: 2021 | From: Miami | Registered: Aug 2014
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