Katunkumene and ancient Egypt in Africa

It is remarkable that contemporary Egyptologists on the whole reject an idea that the ancients

and others in the intervening epochs embraced, that is, the idea that black Africans founded the

ancient Egyptian civilization. The polymath, Cheikh Anta Diop, a pioneer among Africans of the

study of ancient Egypt, devoted several works to demonstrating, as an African cultural insider,

that these observers of the ancient world were, indeed correct (see Diop, [1955] 1974; [1963]

1989; [1981] 1991). Sadly, although his influence continues to grow among black scholars, many

other scholars have dismissed it, in most cases off-handedly (e.g. Howe, 1998; Lefkowitz, 1996;

MacDonald, 2003; O’Connor and Reid, 2003; Smith, 2009). The aim of this article is to try and

strengthen Diop’s argument with additional data, focusing on the identification of names and

concepts in current Africa that we may trace to ancient Egypt.

As intimated in the last paragraph, Diop’s contention is hardly new. Others have

advanced the same or similar views: for instance, Herodotus, Count Volney, Champollion the

Younger (see Diop, [1955] 1974), Gerald Massey (1974), Henri Frankfort ([1948] 1978), Martin

Bernal (1987, 2001), and Nicolas Grimal [1988] 1992). Massey argued plausibly, as might

become apparent at the end of this article, that ancient Egypt was not only black African, but also

that the English owes much of its vocabulary to ancient Egyptian, and that English appears to be

rooted in Sanskrit only because Sanskrit itself borrowed immensely from ancient Egyptian.

It is worth noting, however, that for a long time, defense of the notion that the ancient

Egyptians were black people has been dominated by African Americans, among them in the

nineteenth century, Martin Delaney, Frederick Douglass, and Solomon Coles, and in the

twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Yosef ben-Jochannan, John Henrik Clarke, Leonard Jeffries,

Jacob H. Curruthers, Ivan van Sertima, Asa Grant Hilliard, Maulana Karenga, and Molefi Kete

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Asante. Continental African intellectuals have increasingly begun to take an interest, as reflected

in the work of Theophilius Obenga and Mubabinge Bilolo, and articles appearing in the journal

Ankh. In many cases, however, these Africans possess an advantage over Diaspora Africans of

having intimate knowledge of African languages. Jacob Carruthers rightly pointed out that

understanding African history authentically requires “African scholars trained not only in the

ancient Egyptian language” and other ancient languages, “but also in the [indigenous] languages

of Africa” (Carruthers, 1992: 26). This work is in the main an attempt to deploy knowledge of

African languages in the service of showing linkages between ancient Egypt and Africa today.

Consequently, rather than try and thrash out the conceptual intricacies of “race” to try to

show that the ancient Egyptians were black, I will focus my attention on answering a question

that a critic of Diop posed. That critic, Raymond Mauny, asked where those black people who

supposedly founded ancient Egyptian civilization went (see Diop, [1955] 1974: 250-251).

Mauny, to be sure, did not expect us to find the descendants of those black people in current

Africa, but it must be said that he asked the right question. Diop’s largely unrecognized

contribution to the debate on the “race” of the ancient Egyptians was his attempt to answer

Mauny’s question. I try to do the same, but, lacking Diop’s multidimensional skills I avoid the

controversies in archaeology and physical anthropology regarding the topic and emphasize,

instead philological analysis. I try to show that many of the ancient Egyptians who left the

country after the conquests by the Greeks and then the Romans relocated to other parts of Africa.

Their descendants constitute a large proportion of the contemporary Africans.

The article has six sections. The next section discusses issues of methodology. The third

section tries to link pharaonic names to traditional African rulers, hinting at possible historical

continuities. In this section, I also analyze the ancient Egyptian appellation “Hyksos” as reflected

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in two Zambian last names. The fourth section suggests and discusses current African language

equivalents of the ancient Egyptian terms ntr and ushabti. In section 6, I analyze Massey’s

terminology for the name Lower Egypt and suggest alternatives for the name Kemet, using

words and names found in southern African languages that I believe give the hieroglyph Kmt

more fitting meaning.

Some methodological issues

I begin this section with the story of Katunkumene, because the name, Katunkumene not only

ignited my interest in Ancient Egypt, but also made me readily receptive to Bernal’s

methodological alternative to Classicism in the study of ancient history.

I was a graduate student in Canada during the late 1970s when the “King Tut” craze was

underway. I took one look at the name Tutankhamen and burst out laughing: it bore an uncanny

resemblance to Katunkumene, a character whose image our neighbor used to invoke to chastise

her children. She would say, “I told you to go to the store for me, but you are just standing there

like Katunkumene.” The image conveyed would be of one of the children in a hilariously funny

posture behind the thick lunsonga plant fence. As I contemplated the name, I told myself there

could not possibly be a relationship between “Tutankhamen” and “Katunkumene.” The

resemblance, as far as I was concerned was entirely fortuitous, but the fortuity simply added to

the comedic humor of the remembrance. Besides, in my high school History of Ancient Egypt

class, no mention was ever made of the race of the Egyptians and nobody seemed to care to

know.

About two decades later, in the mid-1990s, upon a friend’s recommendation I read

Diop’s The African Origins of Civilization. Encountering the name, Tutankhamen, I then paused

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to consider the possibility of its actually being a version of “Katunkumene.” I suspected that the

Chibemba adjective uku tunkumana had origins in the name, Katunkumene. According to the

White Fathers Bemba-English Dictionary, uku tunkumana means “to be fat, squat, puffed up”

(White Fathers, 1954: 805-806), and according to Malcolm Guthrie, to “become big in girth”

(Guthrie 1995: 109). And so a certain king of the Babemba of northern Zambia, a Chitimukulu

XIX, was called “Chifunda-ca-busoshi,” because he was said to have had a squat, bulging,

rotund appearance, like a “a stuffed bag” (“pantu alitunkumene nge cifunda ca busoshi”)

(Tanguy, ([1948] 1961: 21). Despite the obvious contrast of such a physique with the popular

physical image of Tutankhamen, I searched in Google under “Tutankhamen physique” and came

upon an article by Maggie Owens entitled, “King Tut’s Clothing Puzzles Researchers.” In the

article, Owens (n.d.) reported that, “Through a study of his clothing and images of his father,

Amenhetep IV, researchers say Tutankhamen may have suffered from a type of hereditary

disease that gave him large hips. His clothes reveal a measurement of 31”, 29”, 43”, which seem

to indicate an extremely small upper body and very wide hips” (see also Nardo, 2005: 81-84).

The report went on to say, “Although they are excited by the study, the Dutch team cautions that

their theory is based on a study of his clothing, not his body.” But, one may argue, if the

researchers ascertained the clothes to have been those of the young king, surely we can

reasonably infer that the clothes must have been tailored to suit his body, especially being a king.

At any rate, the discovery by the Dutch research team would seem to validate what I have hinted

might be the probable etymology of uku tunkumana, which, if correct, may in turn suggest a

connection, historically, between Ababemba and ancient Egypt.

A doubter might say that from “Tutankhamen” to “Katunkumene” represents too radical

a transformation in name. The doubter may be right, if we take Tutankhamen as is and ignore, to

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start, the fact that the “Ka” in Katunkumene is a nominal prefix. Dropping the prefix, we have

“Tunkumene.” It is possible that the second t in “Tut” simply gives the term a feminine form, so

that it, too can, without loss of meaning be dropped, along with the letter a, because in Bantu

languages vowels do not typically follow one another. Add the vowel e at the end of the name to

conform to the Bantu language rule by which words cannot end in a consonant and we have

“Tunkhamene,” a name that resonates phonetically with Tunka Men, the name of the Emperor of

the ancient kingdom of Sudan (see Diop, 1987: 90). We are still left with the discrepancy of the u

after the k in Katunkumene. It is quite possible, though, that Katunkumene developed from

Katunkamene, and that the verb probably started as uku tunkamana.

Sadly, the Dutch researchers’ thinking already suggests a problem with the connection I

have suggested between the two names, when their thinking implies that we cannot conclude

confidently that Tutankhamen was squat and rotund from the measurements of his clothing

because we do not have evidence of his actual body measurements. They seem inclined to await

more physical evidence. Much more pointedly, the editors of Ancient Egypt in Africa have

stated, without apparent justification, that relating ancient Egypt to Africa demands considerable

“additional, predominantly archaeological, fieldwork . . .” (O’Connor and Reid, 2003: 21;

emphasis added). To varying extents, the two attitudes seem to reflect “archaeological

positivism,”– a form of “scientism” which dominates mainstream Classicism and which Bernal

has assailed as downgrading “information about the past” garnered through alternative means –

“legends, place names, religious cults, language and the distribution of linguistic and script

dialects” (Bernal, 1987: 9). Although he cautions care in treating alternative sources of evidence,

he argues that such evidence “is not categorically less valid than that from archaeology” (Bernal,

1987: 9). “Scientism” aims at establishing scientific veracity, but at stake often in historical

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investigation is not proving the veracity of assertions, but, as Bernal contends, establishing their

“competitive plausibility” as gauged against opposing claims – a much more realistic goal, given

the extreme difficulty of attaining to “truth” in some areas of investigation, especially those

concerning lives lived tens of thousands of years ago.

My approach to answering Mauny’s question has relied primarily on finding names and

words in ancient Egypt that resonate at some levels with those in current Africa. A researcher on

ancient Egypt, Ferg Somo has argued that words that are vital to a people’s survival tend not to

get lost as a result of the people’s movements (Somo, 2008e: 3). Similarly, names also tend to be

especially impervious to change (Bernal, 2001). In Africa, in particular, totemic or clan names,

transmitted across time in their proper form, help maintain the integrity of personal and group

identity. Buried within African language vocabularies and nomenclatures, albeit often in merely

suggestive form, are vital clues to the ancient African past. Thus, for example, names of kings in

ancient Egypt seem to have survived in southern Africa and, quite surprisingly in most cases, as

royal clan names. Moreover, many of the names of ancient Egyptian gods live on not only as

personal names or epithets among current Egyptians, but also among other current Africans.

The problem arises whether the words as transcribed from the hieroglyphs are a true or

close-enough rendering of the actual words used by the ancient Egyptians. A main assumption of

scholars like E.A. Budge, who developed the master keys for deciphering the ancient Egyptian

hieroglyphs was that, save for some remnant elements of the ancient language in Coptic, ancient

Egyptian was dead. Thus, corroboration of decipherments made using languages such as Greek

is almost impossible. Consequently, we have no choice but to trust that the decipherments upon

which we rely to make sense of ancient Egyptian civilization reflect truly the language of that

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civilization. What if the master keys are fundamentally flawed? What if the decipherments are

wrong or misleading to a significant degree?

The perceived unreliability of many renderings of hieroglyphs has caused some

researchers to begin viewing hieroglyphs in a radically different manner, as explicable only in

relation to not only the surviving elements of the ancient language in Coptic, but also and more

importantly, other current African languages. Somo, for example, has successfully provided clear

renderings of ancient Egyptian words in current African languages, and has done so with

seeming ease because he has attacked the problem from the assumption that a family relationship

exists between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa (see e.g. Somo, 2008a).

Assuming such a family relationship permits more accurate spelling of ancient Egyptian

words. Right now, not only has erroneous decipherment hampered efforts to identify such words

as current African language words, the Europeanization of the largely correct ones has had the

same effect. Thus, even Carruthers, whom, as we saw earlier, argued that an understanding of

ancient Egyptian history as part of African history requires African scholars knowledgeable in

African languages, not only thought of the ancient land as Kemet, but also thought of its people

as Kemites (see Carruthers 1992: 28). Both designations, as I intend to show, are wrong.

“Kemites” is particularly misleading because, being an anglicized demonym, it does not force

the reader to think about what the ancient Egyptians might have called themselves.

Somo, unlike most Egyptologists has arrived at his conclusions not merely through strict,

albeit imaginative interpretations of hieroglyphs, but also by detecting similarities in sound of

words. Massey as well made his discoveries largely by perceiving similarities in sound of the

words, contrary, he argued, to what the comparative philology of his time considered sound

methodology. He argued that comparative philologists

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have so worried us into believing that verbal likeness is no sign whatever of relationship

. . . . Which from my point of view, is somewhat like saying that, if two men have a

strong family likeness, and bear the same surname, they cannot be brothers. It is

positively asserted that ‘SOUND etymology has NOTHING to do with sound. . . . To

compare words of different languages together because they agree in sound is to

contravene all the principles of scientific philology: agreement of sound is the best

possible proof of their want of connection’ (Massey, 1975: 135).

Massey argued that this attitude has constrained “the comparative philologists to the

narrowest possible area” (Massey, 1975: 135), that, in particular, it has led to the tendency to

exclude languages other than Indo-European as sources of many European language words.

Indeed, Bernal (2001), making similar arguments against the philologists of his day, has shown

that many Greek words ascribed to the Indo-European substrate may have a source in ancient

Egyptian. The thrust of Massey’s view on methodology is that we must assume common origins

for words that sound the same or similar, while guarding against tendentiousness by marshalling

additional evidence to buttress our claims. On my part, I maintain that better to deal with

potential tendentiousness in identifying African words in ancient Egyptian than to assume that

ancient Egyptian bears little or no relationship to any living language, an assumption that has

resulted in hard-to-pronounce ancient Egyptian words and names.

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Pharaonic and other ancient Egyptian names in Africa

For my discussion of the kings of ancient Egypt, I start with Pharaoh Siamen (Siame [Sì-âmé] in

Bantu) because it was the second name I encountered after Tutankhamen that resonated with a

Zambian name, and because it is my clan name. The literature identifies him also as Siamon and

Siamun. He ruled from Tanis from 986-967 B.C.E. Siamen was also the name of the second son

of Pharaoh Ahmose I (1550-1525 B.C.E.), a prenom that is probably the Amusa found among

the Balozi of Zambia. We find Siames among two related ethnic groups in Zambia – the

Winamwanga (my ethnic group) and the Yamambwe of the Northern Province. One might be

tempted to trace the descent of those Siames from the royal Egyptian Siamens. However, that

name was not a clan name, but a given name that meant “son of Amen.” Yet among both the

Winamwanga and Yamambwe the Siame clan is the royal clan. Moreover, we find in both

groups what I have deduced to be pharaonic names, such as Kafola or Kafula (Khafra), Nsokolo

(Osochor, from Libya, a name also spelled as “Osorkon”). Nsokolo is the title of the Yamambwe

king, but we find the name also among the Babemba, as Sokoni (Sokôni), and among the Ngoni,

as Soko (Sôko). West Africans also have Soko and Sissoko (Si-Soko). We should note also that

Pharaoh Siamen succeeded Osochor the Elder. We also find the Libyan monarchical name Ker

(Kềla). Among the Winamwanga branch of the Siames, Kela appears as Chela and Kachela and

as the clan names Sichela and Nachela. Titaru (Kitalu in Tanzania , Chitalu in Zambia) is the

name of an ancient Libyan king we find among the Babemba and the Yamambwe.

If the reader is wondering from where the “y” in Nayame came, Amen was also spelt

Yamen (Wikipedia “Amun”: para. 1). Indeed, the older male members of the clan spell their

name “Siyame.” The name may have alternative origins in the name of the ancient Kingdom of

Yam, part of the Kushite Empire, whose inhabitants are found in the literature as Yamites. It

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might mean a people that originally came from Yam. The name, Yame, however, seems also to

have discernible spiritual significance. Growing up I used to hear my father and a Mumambwe

neighbor invoke the name in solemn moments. Quite possibly, therefore, the clan name, Siyame

might have started out as the property of a group of devotees of the god Amen, perhaps priests,

or scribes, or both. In this case, Yame may also be the equivalent of the Akan god Nyame, which

could also be the Nyam of the Nuer, Nnambi among the Baganda, the Nyambe of the Balozi, and

the Nzambi of the Bakongo, to name a few. Affirming but also complicating the view of the

name Siyame as having spiritual significance is the fact that Yam (Sea) was one of the gods of

the Canaanites. K. Akwadapa, a Ghanaian also says Nyame is the Akan name for Yam

(Akwadapa, 2008: 36). Was the Canaanite god, Yam simply Amen in another form?

It appears that the prefix N’, as is the prefix “Na” or “Nya” (perhaps the Greek “Nea”)

serves to emphasize the female/matriarchy principle that Diop ([1955] 1974) discusses at length.

Many names in contemporary Egypt still retain the “Na” prefix, such as Nakouzi (Nakuze just

happens to be a Chinamwanga name, for that matter, my late paternal grandmother’s name). A

few ethnic groups such as the Balungu, the Watumbuka, the Winamwanga, and the Yamambwe

assign the prefix strictly to female members of the clans. Most other ethnic groups seem to have

continued the ancient Egyptian practice of non-gender-specific prefixes, for instance, the

Zimbabwean name, Nyaundi, which in Cameroon happens to be Yaounde and in Zambia is

stripped down to Undi, who happens to be the king of the Nsenga people. Akwadapa also has

spoken of a queen-mother of the Diana people called Nyamkomaduewuo (Akwadapa, 2008: 11).

Nyamkoma in southeastern Tanzania would be the feminine of Mukoma, the name of a regional

governor of the Winamwanga whom some regard as the king. We find, however, among some

ethnic groups, that patriliny has acted as a counterbalance to the principle of matriliny. Since,

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contrary to Diop’s claim, many of these groups have been relatively untouched by Arab

influence (see Diop, [1955] 1974: 143), the practice of patriliny among them would seem to

suggest a weakness in Diop’s “two cradle theory” (see Diop, [1963] 1989: 27-34). Moreover, the

use of the masculine nominal prefix “Si” among the Yamambwe, Winamwanga, and Balungu

has possibly acted to reinforce patriliny.

Some Egyptologists think that the first king of Egypt is one personage with three

different names: the Scorpion, Narmer (perhaps the Silozi expression “Nalumela,” meaning, “I

believe”), and Menes. Others think the names represent three different kings. I hereby, however,

concern myself with just the name Menes. A Ugandan, an Acholi, has called him Menya, saying

that the name means “shines on me” in Acholi ((karibkween, 2010, “Reconstructing”: para. 1).

Massey (1975: 39) also has called him Mena, which may be pronounced the same way as

Menya. Indeed, we find not only a place called Menya in ancient Egypt, but also Chimenya and

Semenya as last names in Zambia and South Africa, respectively, and the names would appear to

mean, “It shines on me.” In Akan also nyam means shining, and nyali in Chibemba means a

source of artificial light. However, could that rendering of “Menes” be, instead, the name of the

ithyphallic god Men (Min), who was assimilated with the god Amen?

Asar Imhotep has hinted plausibly that the correct form of “Menes” may be Mwene

(Mwềne) (Imhotep, 2009: 11), which stands for “owner of the realm,” a title that conforms to the

ancient Egyptians’ idea of their king as a god with “absolute power over the land and its people”

(Kramer, [1948] 1978: vii). In Chimambwe, mwene means “a chief, king” (Halemba, 1994: 519),

but it carries the same meaning across the eastern DRC, northern Zambia and Malawi: for

example, Mwine Munza, Mwine Lubemba, Mweni Mpanza, and Mwene Chanya, and in the

times of the Rozwi Empire, in Mwene Motapa. It can also be found as a last name among

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Batonga of southern Zambia. Since the Batonga are known to be stateless, the name suggests that

at one point in the distant past they might have had monarchies. Mwene as owner of the realm

also conforms well to Ohene, the Akan word for ruler of the state. Replacing the nominal prefix

o with the nominal prefix mu, more common among Bantu speakers (but also found in Akan, as,

for example, in Dr. Molefe Asante’s kingly title, Kyidomhene of Tafo, a title that should recall

the name of the Cretan king, Idomeneus), results in “Muhene,” pronounced Mwềne. An

informant, Javeline Chansa, an ethnic Mutabwa related to me how she always wondered why the

King of the Batabwa was often called Mwana Puta (personal communication, February 10,

2012). The king’s name brings to mind Pharaoh Meneptah (1213-1203 B.C.E.), also known as

Merenptah and Merneptah. Since, as we have said, we can translate Menes as Mwene, Mwana

Puta may also be Mwene Puta. (Meneptah’s prenom or Horus/Throne name, Banenre reminds

one of the Chitonga honorific, Banene, which in Lingala seems to mean “Great one”) (see

Guthrie, 1935: 148, “bonene”). Similarly, the name, Mwanakatwe, of a ruling family of the

Balungu, may derive from that of Pharaoh Tefnakht (Tafuna-Katwe) and might be Mwenekatwe.

Tafuna (possibly the Greek Daphnai, the name of an ancient Egyptian city near Sinai [Sì-nâi]) is

the title of the king of the Balungu. Among the Balozi we also find a monarch, Mwanawina

(Mwana Wina) Lewanika. (Wina is probably the pharaonic name Wenis.)

We may be troubled by the apparent incongruity between Mwana and Mwene as titles of

kings. We may decide that Mwana causes the incongruity. However, Mwana appears in the titles

of too many traditional rulers in south-central Africa to be simply a mistaken vocalization of

Mwene. Mwana and Mwene may both just be correct appellations for the kings. It may just be

that African kingship in the area provided for Mwana to counteract potential tendencies of

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conceit emanating from the title Mwene. The Africans probably meant for the king to be viewed

as both “owner” and “child” of the realm.

Pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops (2589-2566 B.C.E.), is a particularly interesting

case: Cheops, the name of the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid of Giza, is probably the

Bantu version of Diop. When I read in Stephen Howe’s book that “[Clyde] Winters worries that

the enemy” of Afrocentrism “is focusing its assaults on the dead Pharaoh, Diop . . .” (Howe,

1998: 243), I doubted at the time that Winters was calling Diop “Pharaoh” because his name was

pharaonic. Cheops may simply be the Hellenized form of Chopa (Chi-o-pa), a name we find in

the Northern Province of Zambia and in Tanzania. It should be easy to see, therefore, that Diop

turned into Bantu is Chopa. Diop is a pharaonic name. It appears also that the Canaanite city,

Joppa (Dioppa) was named after Pharaoh Cheops. It is the present-day Israeli city of Jaffa, a

name that corresponds to Chapa, a Chibemba name. We find the name also in Kenya and

Tanzania.

Given the lack of space, I present only two non-monarchical names in current Africa that

seems to originate in ancient Egypt, and these are Mwisa (Chibemba) and Mwikisa (Silozi).

These names seem to derive from the name Hyksos, Greek for the Egyptian Hk3 H3st or Heka

Khaswt, supposedly meaning, “Rulers of Foreign Lands” (see Bernal, 1987: 19-20; Silverman,

1997: 31). The Hyksos conquered and ruled much of Egypt during the Second Intermediate

Period (1850-1550 B.C.E.). Much more readily recognizable as deriving from “Hyksos” is the

Silozi name Mwikisa (Mu Hyksos/Mu Iksa, meaning a Hyksos. The H is mute, i replaces y, and

another i is added). In Chibemba the “ki” in “Ikisa” disappears and we have Mwisa (Mu Isa).

Uku isa in Chibemba means to come. Mwisa, therefore, would denote a foreigner who has come

and settled in the land, in contrast to an indigenous person. This interpretation of “Hyksos”

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should lead to a more correct rendering of the Egyptian term, Heka Khaswt as Heka Khuisawa,

which, in Chibemba might be Ba Kateka Abaisa (in other Zambian languages, Khuisawa

probably becomes Bakwiza or Wakwiza), that is, “Rulers Who Came.” Thus, rather than “Rulers

of Foreign Lands,” Hk3 H3st would mean simply, “Foreign Rulers.” Before Zambia’s

independence, Chibemba speakers used the term “Ba Mwisa” (foreign rulers/occupiers) as an

appellation for the British colonial government officials and white settlers.

Two concepts found in Africa from ancient Egyptian religious practice

a. Ntr

The Egyptian pantheon is discussed using the word god, assuming the word to be a

reasonable approximation of the ancient Egyptian term ntr, which many also take to mean holy

or divine. Most writers are quick to point out that, indeed it is merely an approximation and that

a more precise rendering is elusive (see e.g. Rice, 2003: 40; emphasis added). I, however, am

much more concerned with the particular renderings of ntr as neter, netjer, neteru, or netjeru.

Troubling is that these renderings do not surface as natural elements of any language, including

the Coptic language of Egypt and modern African languages. The inability of scholars to furnish

a satisfactory etymology for ntr might arise from their refusal generally to consider Bantu and

other African languages as potential repositories of more satisfactory etymologies for ancient

Egyptian words.

Looking at the tradition of kingship among some Kiswahili-Bantu speakers, Somo (1999)

has derived a few alternative terms that he says more suitably represent ntr: ntora, nchora, and

ntjora – all of them encapsulated by the concept of the Creator-God (see also Carruthers, 1992).

Somo arrives at these terms by taking us back to Champollion the Younger’s interpretation of the

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hieroglyph sign for “god” as an axe or a pointed tool for performing hieroglyph inscriptions, not

a flag or flagpole as some seem to think (see e.g. Bernal, 1991: 169; Carruthers, 1992: 53-54),

nor a pole with a cloth wrapped around it, representing a talisman with spiritual properties (see

Rice, [1990] 2003: 50), nor a combination of the two (Hornung, 1982: 38). In addition to its role

in writing hieroglyphs, the tool, according to Somo, is the embodiment of sovereignty. As he has

put it, “The Ancient Egyptian emblem of divinity must be seen in terms of Bantu cultural

traditions. Might and power are essential qualities for a nation to survive. Thus the emblem of a

spear or a hand axe signifies authority to rule and govern” (Somo, 1999: sect. 2, para. 1; see also

Massey, 1975: 8). Among the Akan, the appropriate hand-axe is called Nyame akruma, that is,

God’s axe (Somo, 1999: sect 3, “Axe”), and the king of the eastern Luba-Lunda people has the

title Mwata Kazembe (“Lord Small Axe”). The sharp edge of the axe underlies its significance as

an effective tool for piercing, which accomplishes the killing of animals or human enemies,

probably the reason for the kingly names Mukoma and Kakoma among Zambians, names that

mean killer (koma in ancient Egyptian means to end).

Roberts and Roberts have also argued that, not only are many Baluba insignia

weapons or tools transformed into emblems of power and embodiments of royal secrets,

through the making and wearing of an ax or an adze, a royal official remembers and

commemorates the origins of Luba royalty, for the culture hero said to have founded

kingship is also said to have introduced advanced metalwork (Roberts and Roberts, 1996:

72; emphasis added).1

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The “royal secrets,” of which the axe and the spear were embodiments, must have included the

means of accessing spiritual powers – the means through which the king maintained communion

with the spiritual world of ancestors. Indeed, the commemoration of Egyptian kings, as do the

commemoration of traditional African rulers (see Roberts and Roberts, 1996), included induction

into the divine secrets of kingship.

Credo Mutwa has provided another interpretation of ntr, as “the most ancient of times . . .

the time when the rocks were too soft, the time when everything was being formed.” He says that

the Mazulu call this time “Endelo-ntulo” (Mutwa, 1996: 154). Intulo in Chibemba,

Chinamwanga, and other Zambian languages means the source (of a river, for example) or the

primeval beginnings. The carrying of the axe by someone in power among the Baluba may also

symbolize such beginnings. We find ntr also among the Akan, as ntoro. Noel King says that we

may think of these ntoro as “spirits,” involved in procreation and over which the gods (bosom)

preside (King, 1986: 22). Somo’s depiction of “Ntora” as Creator and Designer seems to

conform to Mutwa’s notion of endelo-ntulo and the notion of ntoro among the Akan. Among the

Baluba as well, tula means “forge, beat out iron, shape or make by hammering” (see Morrison,

1939: 129). Among the Babemba also, intulo, such as waterfalls or sources of rivers, constitute

objects of veneration and prayer (uku tula is the verb for intulo as a source).

Akwadapa has informed us that “Akankadie ntoro” means “the property of the ancient

Akans,” a meaning of ntr consonant with intulo. According to Akan mythology, the first ntoro

ever bestowed on man was the “Bosommuru ntoro” (Akwadapa, 2008: 41; emphasis added). The

–uru suffix for names, one that Akwadapa practically restricts to Kenya, we find all over East

Africa and southern Africa. The suffix seems to derive from the name of the god Heru (Horus) –

the sky-god of the ancient Egyptians and of other Africans in the aforementioed regions. In fact,

17

I would translate Bosommuru as “sky-god” (“god of the sky”), in contrast to the Sky God, who is

Nyame.

Ntora as piercing or carving appears in Chibemba as uku tula (same pronunciation as uku

tula meaning the source). However, the Babemba also use uku tûla in their contemporary

Christian practices to mean “to make an offering to God” (White Fathers, 1954: 794), or praise

God, as in “Lesa Katula,” that is, “God the Helper” or “God the Redeemer.” As Somo has

pointed out, “The consonant N is a Bantu prefix formative morpheme” which translates as “That

which is or the one who is” (Somo, 1999: section 7).2 Ntula is, therefore, the same as Katula and,

ntuli (nthuli), found as a personal name in Kenya and South Africa, or perhaps even luthuli

(South Africa, Zimbabwe), should mean one who receives help from or is redeemed by God.

Rendering ntr as ntula makes even more sense when we consider the concept of Tera-Neter

(God’s devotee), a title for a nobleman or chief in predynastic Egypt. Tera-Neter becomes

tarantula, a kind of scorpion. As noted earlier, the first ruler of Egypt might have been a man

known as the Scorpion king.

b. Ushabti

In the early dynasties, the Egyptians adhered to the practice of human sacrifice, a

practice that was still in practice in Africa in the waning days of colonialism. In both

cases, the sacrificed human beings were meant to serve the king during his eternal life.

Eventually, in ancient Egypt statuettes and wall paintings began to replace slain human

beings. The statuettes, called shabti or ushabti or shawabty, were placed in tombs among

the grave possessions and were intended to act in place of the dead, should the dead be

called upon to do compulsory manual labor in the afterlife (see e.g. James, 2005: 136).

18

Most authors agree with the English translation of ushabti as “answerer.” It

appears, however, that the translation is incomplete. First, shabti, shawabty, and ushabti

are basically the same word, except the second term incorporates “wa” (“of” in most

Bantu languages) to emphasize what the person “sha” does, and “ushabti” has the

singular nominal prefix u. In contemporary Chibemba and related Bantu languages, “sha”

is the root for slave. A slave is musha or umusha. “Abati” in Chibemba translates as

“They say” or “They answer.” Thus, not only is the idea of answering present in the term

ushabti, but also the idea of a servant or a slave. Ushabti, therefore, might mean a servant

or slave who answers the call to duty. The word might actually be the mushabati of the

Silozi language of western Zambia and the word umhlabathi found in Sizulu and

SiXhosa. This latter rendering of the word hints at what some commentators have

suggested, that originally, the word did not have the implication of servant (Wikipedia,

“Ushabti,” n.d.: “History”). “Umuhla-” suggests simply the idea of remaining behind

(uku shala in Chibemba), as persons represented by the figurines did, to perform chores

for the deceased. Later, it came to mean servant or even slave. Quite possibly, therefore,

the Chibemba term for slave originates in ancient Egyptian funerary practice, from the

idea of remaining behind.

The names for Egypt in Africa

The name Egypt appears to have Bantu language origins, but commonly, it is thought to have

origins in “the Ancient Greek form Aiguptos, itself derived from the Late Egyptian Hikuptah

(“Memphis”), which means, ‘Home of the Soul of Ptah’” or “Hwt-ka-Ptah” (Wikipedia, “Egypt”

n.d.: “Names”; see also Carruthers, 1992: 27-28). In modern Chibemba, Hwt-ka-Ptah becomes

19

simply kwa Kaputa, meaning at Kaputa’s place (or house) or at Kaputa (when Kaputa refers to

the town in Luapula Province on the border with the D.R.C.). The Zambian name Kaputa is thus

semantically equivalent to Memphis, capital of Lower Egypt before unification. However,

reading Massey, it could not have been the source of the name, Egypt. According to Massey,

“The name Egypt, Greek Aiguptos, is found in Egyptian as Khebt, the Kheb, a name of Lower

Egypt. Khebt, Khept or Kheft means the lower, the hinder part, the north, the place of emanation

. . .” (Massey, 1975: 5). Massey is exceedingly hard to follow, but I find his explanation for the

name Egypt more persuasive than the explanation which traces the name to Hikhuptah or

Khikhuptah. In this latter conception, not only is the phonetic link weak, but the justification for

identifying a country by the name of its capital is lacking. On the other hand, the justification for

calling the country Khept seems straightforward.

First, if Khebt is a name for Lower Egypt, then Khept must be one, too. Rendered into

Bantu, khept becomes kiputi or chiputi (ciputi), which, in Chibemba and in Chimambwe

translates as anus (see White Fathers, 1954; Halemba, 1994). However, the word chiputi is also

used quite often in the sense of a person’s or animal’s posterior. All one has to do is add the

nominal prefix I and we have Ichiputi. If one were to ask the very old Chibemba or Chimambwe

speakers with little or no knowledge of English to repeat after them the name Egypt, they would

most likely hear “Ichiputi.” In Egypt, the hinder part is the Delta, where the River Nile empties3

into the Mediterranean Sea, and thus Massey’s expression, “the place of emanation.” Possibly,

therefore, Ichiputi passed directly into English as Egypt. In this context, Khept is the metaphoric

expression for ancient Lower Egypt, an expression quintessentially black African in its

exploitation of apparent vulgarity.4

But why should the hinder part signify North?

20

It might have to do with what Diop ([1955] 1974) said about the primacy of Nubia in

relationship to ancient Egypt, a primacy reflected in how some Africans say left and right and

indicate compass directions. For the ancient Egyptians, to obtain one’s bearings and thus

establish firmly one’s identity as an Egyptian, one had to orient oneself towards the south,

towards Nubia. Thus oriented, an Egyptian could indicate east and west, using left or right hand

pointing. Like the ancient Egyptians, most Africans today indicate direction in indigenous

languages by indicating left or right. The Chibemba word for left is kuso. A name for the ancient

Kingdom of Kush is Kuso. Facing east, towards the rising sun, left points north, where Kuso

used to be. North in Chibemba is akapinda ka kuso – in the direction of Kuso. Similarly, the left

hand in Chimambwe and Chinamwanga is kamani. Chinamwanga speakers indicate left by

saying, “kwe kamani,” and North by saying, “kambazwa kwe kamani” – “in the direction of the

land of Kamani.” Going through a list of Kushite kings by Derek Welsby, I counted seven kings

whose names had “kamani” in them (see Welsby 1996: 207-209). And when southern Africans

such as the Mazulu and the Batswana speak of Ningizimu (many gods), meaning North, they also

seem to be talking about Nubia, the land of the ancestors – the kings and the gods. We find

among the Zulu the name Nonyanda ka Sugda Jere. The epithet, Nonyanda ka Sugda means

Nonyanda from the south, that is, Sudan (Nubia). Nonyanda ka Sugda Jere (Djer) was the father

of the early nineteenth century Zulu army commander, Zwangendaba. Here we have people I

have identified with Egypt in the body of the essay, but their languages and names reveal an

antediluvian primary allegiance to Nubia.

Carruthers, among others, would contend that the name Egypt be discarded because,

properly conceived it describes only one part of the country. He recommended, as other

Afrocentrists have, using the designation Kemet or Kemit (hieroglyph Kmt), by which the ancient

21

“Egyptians” supposedly meant both “the Black land” and “the Black people” or, as Diop put it,

the “land of the Blacks” (Carruthers, 1992: 28; Diop, [1955] 1974: 168). It does not, however,

seem plausible that the ancient Egyptians called their country Kemet.

First, taking Kemet to mean “land of the Blacks” opens one up to the charge of

transposing current racial attitudes into the ancient past. We need not go as far as Frank Snowden

(1983) in claiming a lack of racist attitudes in that past. We should, however, be on firm ground

arguing that black people were not preoccupied with their race, let alone so preoccupied with it

as to feel the necessity to advertise pride in it by naming their country the “land of the

Blacks.”Admittedly, the interpretation of Kemet as “the black land” (see, for example, James,

2005: 8) has more to recommend it. After all, in the modern world we have places such as

Greenland named for the color of their appearance. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that a highly

spiritual people such as the ancient Egyptians would choose to name their country for the color

of the land, albeit the color associated with fertility. “Black” is not an intrinsic element of

fertility and, moreover, as color cannot be conceptualized as a spiritual entity, as can a river or a

mountain. I believe Km should be rendered Kime or Chime (Chimé) and not Kemit or Kemet.5

We may render the feminine form Kmt as Kimeta or Chimeta (Chìméta or Chìmếta), or even

Dimeta.6

Here is why. First, precedence exists for calling the country Chime. Chancellor Williams

([1974] 1987) calls it Chem, which we can easily render in Bantu as Chime. Second, Chime

conforms phonetically and morphologically to the Coptic kēme and kēmə (Wikipedia, “Egypt,”

n.d.: “Names”). Coptic is the acknowledged closest language to ancient Egyptian. Third,

accepting Bernal’s thesis on the close relationship in the ancient past between on the one hand

Egypt and on the other Greece and the Aegean (see Bernal, 1987, 2001), we should entertain the

22

possibility of the ancient cities of Cyme (Kyme), one each on the coast of Lydia and on the coast

of Euboea, and the island of Syme off the coast of Caria (Karia) being named after Chime, that

is, ancient Egypt.7 Fourth, the name Chime may be associated with or might even derive from the

name of the goddess known as Sekhmet or Sikhmet. The ancient Egyptians may have regarded

her as a vital element in their agricultural success, for she was seen as transforming to good use

the destructive force of the River Nile (see Ellis, 1999). She is sometimes called simply Khmet

or Khemit (see Akwadapa, 2008: 25), indicating that the “Se” or “Si” is a nominal prefix. Thus

we may say that she is Chimeta, a name we find in Malawi. When we add the prefix we get

Sichimeta. We find the name Sichimata among the Yamambwe.

I have taken liberties in assigning the Chibemba term chime (dime in Chiluba) the

meaning of wetness, even though in both Chibemba and Chiluba it means dew. Cimata (chimata)

in Chibemba means a large drop of rain (White Fathers, 1954: 106) and thus belongs to the same

semantic field as dew. Therefore, even disallowing a vowel shift from é to ầ, Sichimata is

probably the same as Sichimeta, meaning, of the Chimeta clan or, someone from Chimeta. The

idea of Egypt as Chime or Chimeta bespeaks a land of abundant, albeit seasonal, wetness amidst

extreme dryness. By drinking much of the excess flood waters of the Nile, as legend goes (see

Ellis, 1999), Chimeta, one might say, was the goddess who facilitated the cultivation of the Nile

Valley; she made possible the very habitation of the land, thus meriting the naming of the land

after her.

Conclusion

Diop’s critic, Mauny wished to know where the black people that Diop claims to have

established ancient Egyptian civilization went. I hope I have shown that their descendants ended

23

up in various African countries. I hope that I have shown that Africans were not simply part of a

cosmopolitan Egypt, that the survival of royal Egyptian names among African royalty suggests

strongly a provenance in ancient Egypt of the descendants of many current Africans. I have not

traced, historically, the movements of the ancient Egyptians out of Egypt but I hope I have laid

the groundwork for research in that direction.

No doubt the reader will find in the article much more evidence of Ancient Egypt in

southern Africa, lending credence to David Livingstone’s claim, according to Massey, that “the

typical negro found in Central Africa is to be seen in the ancient Egyptians, not in the native of

the west coast” (Massey, 1974: 24). Indeed, not all Africans can claim provenance in the lower

Nile Valley, but Diop showed convincingly, especially through demonstrating linguistic

commonalities, that substantial numbers of West Africans can trace their ancestries to ancient

Egypt (see Diop, [1955] 1974). Research by West Africans similar to the one I conducted should

enlighten us further on this matter, but we can say for now that beneath the crystallizations of

current ethnicities and the emergence of regional groupings such as East Africa and West Africa

lie evidence of lasting family relationships whose precise nature we should also attempt to

explore.

Mauny asked not only where the “West Africans” went, but also why, “if the West

African Blacks are descendants of the Egyptians . . . they have become ‘decivilized’ between 500

B.C., when Diop says they left Egypt around 900 A.D., after which we have texts depicting them

as being rather ‘retarded’”? (Quoted in Diop, [1955] 1974: 250-251). Rather than continuing to

defend what should now be obvious – that ancient Egyptian civilization was black African –

Mauny’s question should provide much more suitable fodder for future research. Diop started us

on this road, trying to answer Mauny’s question. We should take up the challenge.

24

Endnotes

1. Indeed, Winamwanga legend has it that after observing the accomplishments of a master

blacksmith Musiani, who had settled on the outkirts of one of their villages with his fellow

Babisa, the Winamwanga grew to respect him a great deal and in time decided to make him

their king (Sinkamba, 1984: 4).

2. It is perhaps not exclusively Bantu, because Nyame, an Akan term, seems to have been

formed from Yame by adding the prefix N, which I suspect stands for Na.

3. I have deliberately used “emptied” because of the phonetic and morphological similarities of

“empty” and “imputi,” an alternative form of ichiputi in which the contracted form of the

nominal prefix “imu” precedes the stem “puti,” suggesting that, just as “Egypt” might derive

from “Ichiputi,” “ empty” might derive from “imputi.” We may compare the name Ichiputi to

that of Mosul or Musul (in Turkish). Mosul, an ancient city in Iraq, just happens, like Lower

Egypt, to be in the northern part of the country, and mosula or musula means the same thing

as chiputi, in Chibemba and in Chishona.

4. The unabashed use of such terms among Africans comes under the concept of frank speech.

See Siame (2010) for a discussion of frank speech in comparative perspective.

5. Many proffered etymologies of Egyptian words suffer from improper identification of

syllables. Instead, for example, of Kmt being deagglutinated as Ki-me-ta, it is deagglutinated

as Kem-et, producing the misleading notion that the term contains the concept of the color

black. In Kimeta, “ki” (or “ci” or “chi”) is the augmentative nominal prefix, and “me” may

represent the Egyptian mes for a source of water. Water in Chibemba is menshi and in Silozi,

mezi.

25

6. Potentially, we have here a more elegant derivation of Demeter, the Greek mother goddess of

agriculture, than the convoluted ones furnished by glosses from Indo-European (see

Wikipedia, “Demeter,” n.d.: “Etymology”) or the simply misleading one that Bernal proffers

(Bernal, 1987: 57). Sekhmet and Demeter share two attributes: both are mother goddesses

and both are connected to agriculture – rather strong reasons to believe that they are one and

the same goddess.

7. Carruthers (1992) imputed to Egypt and Greece in the mid-Bronze Age a stronger

relationship between them than has Bernal. He argued, moreover, that Egypt came to

exercise immense cultural influence on Greece through its connections with Crete, the

Aegean, and western Anatolia (Kheftiu, which probably denoted the long bend from Cyprus

[Alasiya, Yadanana] to the central Aegean. Chifutu in Chibemba means a bend). Considering

the many African-sounding toponyms in the region, we should treat seriously Carruthers’

argument. A. Josef Ben-Levi has also written, “The Hurrians were of Old Teutonic (German)

stock, though the proto-Hittites [perhaps properly known as Hàîté or Kàîté] were probably

Black” (Ben-Levi, 1986: 64). Again, the very name, Hittite, even when rendered as Hatti or

Katti, along with the African-sounding toponyms of the Hittite lands of an early period, seem

to support the latter claim.

26

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