[p.599]

A BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS

SECTION 23

ROOTS IN AFRICA BEYOND EGYPT

[p.604] The Rusizi was found by Livingstone and Stanley to be a feeder of the lake, and this river, with its thirteen tributaries, rises in the land of Kivo, south of the southern head of the lake, according to the native report, on the south-western side of one of the mountains, and flows down between two ranges of mountains, the Ramata on the east, and the Chamati on the west, into the lake[7]. The name of the birthplace in the form kep, means the concealed, the hidden place of the source; kebeb is the source. Kefi denotes the navel, the nipple and the uterus. Kepu signifies the mystery of the hidden source, the flowing source; the mysterious fertilization of the Nile. Kef is a name of the inundation of the Nile, which modifies into hep, or hapi-mu, the hidden water of source. Kivo, then, is the Egyptian name for the birthplace, the land of the hidden fountainhead; the mystery of the inundation and its secret source; and so concealed is the embouchure of the Rusizi river as it issues stealthily from the land of Kivo that, although Livingstone and Stanley constantly kept their binoculars searching for it, they could not see the main channel until within 200 yards of it, and then only by watching the fishing canoes come out[8]. Kivo is an earlier form of kheb which is repeated in kep-kep for Nubia, and duplicated in khebt, as the name of Lower Egypt. Of course it may have been thought that Lake Tanganika was the head of the water-system immediately connected with the Nile, in which case the land of Kivo would be the country of the secret source of the inundation of Egypt.

The name of Khebma, the mother, Kheb, Kep, or Khep, who impersonated the womb of the race, is found in abraded forms as that of the womb or belly in various of the inner African languages, as abum, in Bagba; ibum, Orungu; ebom, Melon; ebum, Ngoten; ebam, Bamon; apom, Pati; ivumu, Kabenda; avom, Papia; vum, in pfam, Balu; bum, Momenya; bum, Nso; bam, Kum; wemo, Pangela; iwumu, Mpongwe; and yafun, in Fanti. The y in the latter represents the k found in kabin (Teor) for the belly or uterus. To these names corresponds the Hebrew ibm, to be bellied, big, great, pregnant, as the khebma was portrayed. In wemo, Pangela, we have the wame or womb. All these names, inclusive of wame and bum, together with the Greek Βωμος and Hebrew המב, are derivable from khebm, the hippopotamus, who also represented the hinder-part of the heaven; one of her types being the tomb in the mounts and mounds of the cavemen. These names identify the original type of the khebma, the cwm, quim, khem (a name of Hathor, the habitation), Xhosa, gomba; the hem, ham, home, and am. The reduced kâm supplies the name for woman in the African languages, as koomara, in Dor; game, Bode; kamu, in Kanuri, Munio, Nguru, [p.605] and Kanem; uma, in Dodi, and ma, in Bassa. Deco for woman in Fula; kvviquis, woman, in Hottentot; t'aifi, woman in Bushman; wopua, woman, in Gurma, Kura, and Dizzela, and djof, for the belly in Mahari, are all African, and each word is a form of the name of the oldest African great mother.

The natives of the Sudan have the legend of Eve and her oven. They relate that Hauve bore so many black babies that Abou the father god said he would have no more darkies. Then she hid them in an oven, from which they emerged black with soot. These were the negroes[9]. Eve, Hauve, Kef, Kafu, Cefn, Kivan, Kabni, cabin, and oven, all meet in the name and types of the one original genetrix, Khebma. The cabin, the kabni (Eg.), the yafun woman, the cefn, the cave, the kabni, as Eve's oven, the cabin of the primordial ark, the haven, and the heaven, had but one prototype in nature.

Without expecting to find the placenta of the mother earth, to which her latest child was attached, we may do something to further identify the birthplace so far as the articulate has left any record of inarticulate man in that water-region where the human tadpole made its transformation into a being that could go by land as well as water and so make its way out over the world.

In the Dahoman goddess Gbwejeh, to whom are ascribed the attributes of Minerva as goddess of wisdom, it is not difficult to identify the ancient Khepsh, who was the living word of the Typhonians in Egypt. She also lives in the Egba mythology as Iye or Hauva, another form of the negro Eve, Kefa, Khebma, or Khepsh. The west African kingdom of Futa also bears the name of Aft, a modified form of Kheft, for the hinder-part west. Aft and fut are interchangeable as in the English aft and fud for the hinder-part. According to Cosmas Indicopleustes[10], who copied the inscription from the monument of white marble erected at Adule, a port on the Red Sea, in latitude 150, the King Ptolemy Euergetes, the later conqueror of Ethiopia and Central Africa, penetrated to the Snowy Mountains. He described the great mountain named Kha­Kuni, which was doubtless Mount Kenia, one of the only two snowy mountains known in Africa. The kha (Eg.) is the high earth, one of the four supports of heaven; kheni means inland, interior. Ptolemy[11] reported that from this mountain seven chains advanced seaward and one inland towards a province named Haniot. If this geographical formation be really extant, the seven mountain ranges would be the early African seat of the Lady who sat on the seven hills at Rome, Great Grimsby, or wherever there was a cluster of seven; the eighth would complete the number of the Great Bear and Dog-star, the eight of Am-Smen who were in the beginning, and the cradle of Sut-Typhon and of the oldest mythology would be dis- [p.606] covered In the great mountain of Kha-Kenia. The kha is also the adytum of the genetrix. Haniot would indicate the region of the water-source; the hant or hent is the fount, the vase, the matrix of the feminine bringer. Kenia is also called Ndur-kenia, and ntur (Eg.) means the divine, the goddess or the god. Also one of the rivers that run down from the supposed seven mountain chains into the Indian Ocean is named Sabaki, and this as Sevekh (Eg.), Hebrew העבש, for number seven, would denote the river of the seven, whether as the seven ranges or as the great mount of the seven stars. The two provinces of Abyssinia, Lasta and Samen, answer by name to the Egyptian Rusta and Smen, the two regions found in the Ritual.*

* In discussing the origin of the Hebrew rashith, it should have been noted that the 'rusta,' (Eg.), technically means the 'guiding gates,' or the 'towing-paths,' as the primitive forms of the celestial roads and gates of entrance, passage, and egress. To tow is synonymous with leading or conducting, and in Egyptian imagery the sun was towed through the ru's, which were early forms of the gates, houses, asterisms, sieus, or manzils of the heavens.

In the provinces of Lasta and Samen rise the sources of the last tributary of the Nile, amid mountains which attain the altitude of 15000 feet. The name of the Rusizi river contains a root also found in those of the rivers Merazi and Mala­garazi, which are feeders of the southern sources of the Nile. Ras or rus (Eg.), to rise up, is the name for the south as the place for rising up and watching, the south being the upper of the two heavens. In the Semitic languages ras came to mean the head, but Ras Awath, Ras Asuad, and Ras Maruti, in Somali land, facing the Indian Ocean, are not only headlands, they are southern headlands, which corresponds to the meaning of ras as in the Egyptian triple sense. The Ruanda river flows into the Rusizi, and both into the Tanganyika[12]. Ruanta (Eg.) is the mouth, outlet, or gorge of a river. The Ruanda country is full of gorges or ravines, in which the dark tops of trees are seen. Ruanta (Eg) is the gorge of a valley as well as the mouth of a river. The Kagera is 'broad, and deep, and swift, and its water, though dark, is clear.' Kak (Eg.) means dark, and rua, or raau, is the rapid river. Rweru, the small lake in Karagwé, eight miles long and two and a half wide[13], agrees with ruru (Eg.), a pool of water; also a mere drop; this being in the region of the great lakes. The natives of Ihuna Island told Stanley of a lake, a three days' journey round in canoes, named the Akanyaru. 'Hamid Ibrahim said the Ni-Nawarongo river rises on the west side of the Ufumbiro mountains, sweeps through Ruanda, and enters Akan­yaru, in which lake it meets the Kagera from the south; united, they then empty from the lake.'[14] Akhen or khen (Eg.), is the lake, and aru, the river; this would thus be named, in Egyptian, as the river-lake.

The Kingani river was said, by the natives, to rise in a gurgling [p.607] spring on the eastern face of the Ukambaka mountain. The bakhu (Eg.) is the birthplace in the east; the birthplace of the sun as old as the solar chart, and the time when the spring equinox occurred in An. Bakh means to engender, bring forth; whence bakhu, the birthplace. Kam (Eg.) is to create.

The Wamrima people appear to be named from the Wami river, and rema (Eg.) signifies the people, the natives, aborigines. The Wajiji did not know why the Lake Tanganika was so named, unless it was because it was so large and long canoe voyages could be made on it[15]. In accordance with this, Egyptian would offer a more satisfactory derivation for the name of the great lake Tanganika than any yet proposed. Stanley found that the natives could not explain the meaning or derivation of the word 'Nika.'[16] In Egyptian tan signifies to extend, spread, stretch, lengthen out, fill up. Khen is the lake, the water. Khennu also means to navigate, transport, carry; hence the name of the canoe. The khenit are the sailors as conveyers. The khent ideograph is composed of three vases with two spouts, answering to the two Niles and the three great lakes. Ka means the land or country; also interior. Thus Tan-khani-ka (Eg.) reads the vast extended navigable lake in the heart of the country. As before cited, Horapollo claims that one of the three vases of the inundation stood as symbol for the rains which prevailed in the southern parts of Ethiopia, i.e., Africa[17]. Again, tan (Eg.) signifies to rise up, increasingly, become vast, extended, full; and ka is the inner land. Neka is a type-word for power and puissance. Also, in the African languages, water is ngi, in Nguru; ngi, Kanuri; ngi, Kanem; engi, Munio; aningo, Mpongwe; onoou, Fertit, engi, Mumo; inji, Bangbay: nki, Ngoala; nke, Balu; nke, Bamon. These words agree with ankhu (Eg.) for the liquid of life. In the Malemba dialect a lake is called eanga. In the Kaffir languages, however, the Xhosa, and others, nika is a word expressly used for giving, in the restricted sense of handing over, or passing on, and transmitting from one to another[18]. This would especially apply to Lake Tanganika considered as the head of a water-system. In the same language, the Xhosa, tanga is the thigh or place of emanation, like the Egyptian khep, and the seed of certain fruits, such as the pumpkin and water-melon, which is a type of source within. So interpreted, tanga-nika is a water-source transmitting from within.

The Urunga people call the lake the Iemba. Iem or Ium (Eg.) is a sea, and ba (Eg.) is a name of water for drinking. Iem-ba would denote a fresh-water sea. The name of Tanganika was known to a native of Western Usue as Lake Uzige. In Egyptian usekh (with the variant sekh) means to stretch and range out, vast and broad; the modified usesh signifies the overflow or [p.608] evacuation, and sekha is the name for flood-time and the season of the inundation. Lake Usige, in Egyptian, is the Lake of the Inundation, and Stanley describes it as 'rising and encroaching on its shores so fast that the dwellers on its banks are compelled to move every five years farther inland.'[19] The overflow which he predicted has been found to have occurred[20]. Here then, is a lake with a periodic inundation known by the same name as the flood-time in Egypt, which was designated from the inundation of the Nile.

A communication was lately made to the Royal Geographical Society by Mr. E. C. Hore, of Ujiji, who was the first to solve the moot question of the Lukuga outlet of Lake Tanganika, on the long-continued rise of the lake level which has never yet been satisfactorily explained[21]. A succession of extraordinarily rainy seasons, of which we have no evidence, would not, in his opinion, account for it. He says he can bear testimony to an enormous evaporation; but how, he asks, is it that the waters suddenly gained upon the evaporation, as they had never done before? He seems disposed to connect the changes of water-level with earthquake movements, and at the date of his letter—September 15th—he mentions that his house was shaking with earthquake, as it had been for several days previously. Some years ago, according to one of his Arab informants, there occurred an extraordinary disturbance of the lake-waters, a long line of broken water being seen, bubbling and reeking with steam. The next morning all was quiet, but the shore was strewn with masses of a stuff resembling bitumen[22].

This opens up a vast vista of possibility; for this region may have been in the past the seat and scene of the largest deluges on the surface of the globe, before the beds and the sheds of the waters had been formed as safely as they are at present. This, of all regions beyond the land of the inundation of the Nile, should be the terrene birthplace of the deluge imagery of mythology.

The origin of Tanganika is said on the spot to have been a small deep well that bubbled up from the heart of the earth, and, in consequence of the unfaithfulness of a woman who could not keep a certain secret, the world cracked asunder down to the centre, the fountains overflowed and filled the profound gulf of the earthquake rent, and there was the Tanganika[23]. A similar story is told of the origin of Loch Awe.

Cailleach Bheir is the Gaelic name of a rugged rock overlooking the loch. Cailleach means the 'woman of old,' who is here personified as Bheir or Beir, the old woman who had charge of the well or fountain on Ben Cruachan. When the sun went down, it was her work to cover up the well by placing a lid on it. One night she fell asleep, and forgot to make the fountain secure. In the morning there [p.609] was the deluge: the fountain had overflowed and covered the plain Loch Awe had taken the place of man and beast. The old woman was turned into stone. Bera is also said to have made Loch Eck in Cowal, above Holy Loch. She is likewise known in Ireland[24].

The name as beru (Eg.) signifies the cap, tip, roof, supreme height; the beru is a well. Beru also means to boil up, ebullition, well up as in the Bore. Bu-ru (Eg.) would denote the place of the outlet; hence the fount and flood. Loch Eck corresponds to uka (Eg.), for the waters of the inundation. Au and Af (Eg.), answering to awe, mean the old one, the one born of, who as Aft or Kefa was the ancient mother, Cailleach Bheir.

When Stanley asked an African chief what river it was he was voyaging down, 'the River,' was the reply.

'Has it no name?' he asked.
'Yes; the great River.'
'I understand; but you have a name, and I have a name; your village has a name. Have you no particular name for your river?'
(We spoke in bad Kikusu.)
'It is called Ikutu Ya Kongo,—the River of Congo.'[25]

Egyptian will yield more meaning than that. It was in the midst of a long series of cataracts or falls that the river was so named. The traveller counted fifty-seven altogether. Now, in Egyptian, khut means going down with the current, or shooting the cataracts, 'making the khut' is making the shoot. Also, the khutu are steps, the equivalent of the cataracts. So read, this river of falls is the River of the Steps or Cataracts. Kongo probably represents the type-word for water, extant in Pali as khonkha, in Tonquinese as khungu, and in Maori as ngongi, which duplicates the African ngi. Ngawha (Mao.) denotes the water that bursts open and overflows its banks; and wha is to burst forth and get abroad. In Egyptian, khen-khu would denote the interior water or lake that rises up, extends, elongates, and runs with great rapidity.

One group of falls is called the 'Falls of Ukassa.' 'U' denotes place, and kasha in Egyptian signifies to water, spread, and inundate; represented in English by wash, gush, and gwash; in Xhosa Kaffir by qwesha; Irish, cas; Arabic, ghazio; Circassian, kheeza, applied to swiftness of motion. This reminds us that m'gussa is a powerful water-spirit who has his dwelling in the lake (Victoria Nyanza) and his priest, who lives on an island in the lake. M'Gussa is said to wreak his vengeance on all who offend him, and his dominion also extends over the rivers that communicate with the lake. The Waganda would not allow Speke[26] to throw a sounding line into the water, lest M'Gussa should rise up in his wrath and punish them.

[p.610] The Babwendé, whose territory on the Congo is far away down toward the Atlantic Ocean, have a typical term for a river, or the river: it is njari. That is the original for the name of the Nile. The word is formed from aru or ari, the river, with the definite plural article nai prefixed. Naiari is the Nile as the waters, not merely a river. The j may represent the k in the earlier karua, whence the form nachar or nachal, the Nile, in Ethiopic. In the African Nalu dialect, nual is the type-name for water.

The river Niger is also known by the native name of the quorra. Karua (Eg.) means the lake as a source; and ni, or in the full form nni, is the flood or inundation. It can be shown that this ni represents the Egyptian Nun, because in the Bight of Benin the Niger is called the nun or nin, as in the word Benin. Thus the name of Niger in full is Nun-quorra, and Nun-karua (Eg.) is the flood from the lake. Benin in Egyptian would read, the place of the inundation, or the flood of fresh water.

According to Livingstone, the people of rua, on the west side of Lake Tanganika, live in rock-excavations, and he heard that some of these dwellings were of enormous size[27]. Ruha is the Egyptian name for a stone-quarry, and it will be interesting to learn whether the Rua Mountains have been excavated and chambered, or whether they are remarkable for their natural caves.

In one of the most recent utterances on the subject of the Egyptian origins, M. Renouf says, 'It is in vain that the testimony of philology has been invoked in evidence of the origin of the Egyptians.' The language, he asserts, cannot be shown to be allied to any other known language than its descendant, the Coptic. 'It is certainly not akin to any of the known dialects either of North or of South Africa, and the attempts which have hitherto been made towards establishing such a kindred must be considered absolute failures.'[28]

Possibly we have not set about it in the right way. What is it we are looking for? Sameness in grammatical structure, under the guidance of Grimm's Law? Then such seeking is not likely to find the missing affinity. When we see that in Egyptian the word is in many instances no specialized part of speech, but potentially noun, verb, adverb, adjective, all in one, and that what concerns us as primary data lies far beyond the extant state of speech in Coptic, it becomes evident, that grammar can be no test of original likeness, and the attack on the problem has to be made in flank instead of front. As time was when the word was everything, and distinctions had to be made by other means, words must still count for something in evidence of origin.

The missionary Saker, who translated the Bible into one of the African dialects, was especially impressed with the signs pointing to a common origin for the African languages. He says of the people [p.611] amongst whom he worked on the West Coast, 'They had a language, for they could communicate with one another; but they had no books, their tongue was not a written one. There were no means which we could lay hold of for teaching us the language they were using.' So he learned it from them, and was able to represent it to them in a written shape. In his researches he made the discovery that this was only a dialect form of language, and observes:—

'The language that the people use is a language which prevails with its dialectic differences throughout the whole of that region. I have no trouble there. There are millions and millions of miles that I know nothing about, because the country itself where I live is something like 2,000 miles across it, and there are 2,000 miles more down to the south; yet in the interior districts, so far as I can discover, there is one original tongue broken up into an innumerable multitude of parts. Away in the far east a missionary sat down to learn their tongue, and committed it to paper, and he printed a part of the Scripture. I can read his Scripture. Another man has gone south without any reference to me, or anybody else, and has worked there and learnt their tongue, and written a portion of the Scripture. I can read it. And wherever our brethren have gone, they have worked quite independently one of another, and they have shown us the result, and I can read the whole. And my book goes into their hands. They read it; their people read it. They understand it. Now, what I have done on the coast where I have been living is only one little thing accomplished. Other men have done a little here and a little there, and by and by some good man will be able to take up the work and bring all these languages together; and who can tell but that he may direct our hearts and thoughts, and our eyes too, to the source whence comes all these broken dialects. It may be that we shall some day discover whence they emanate. I have sought to find it out, but I have failed. I have looked to the Amalic. It is not there. It has nothing in common with it. Of course I could not find it in the Ethiopic. I have looked to the Coptic. It is not there. And whence comes it? I have sought everywhere, but I have not found. They have the tongue. It is beautiful now. In its ruin it is beautiful. They have the tongue, and it is expressive. It is a tongue of power.'[29]

The original language at the root of these African dialects is no more extant in the modern sense than is the primal type of man: The first matter of speech must have consisted mainly of noun and verb, the earliest articulators of words being mere namers of things and acts; and even at this stage Egypt is the mouthpiece of the Afrka beyond. The following comparative list of words will at least show the identity of naming to the extent illustrated in the Kaffir (Xhosa and Zulu) and Egyptian:—

These words have been quoted the parts of speech to which the words belong in forming the Xhosa language. The words are the same in Egyptian where the Kaffir prefixes have been shed, and the language has been constructed on other lines of development. Here we find in the 'click' stage of language that speech and the personified speaker are the same by name as on the monuments, where Taht has become a mythological divinity, the male moon-god. The magistrate and advocate are there under the same names. The very durable tree, tata, the sneezewood of the colonists, has the identical title of the Egyptian Eternal. Tuta, the genius, and the ancestral spirit are represented by the [p.615] mummy image or genius, called the tutu. Tut (Eg.) signifies to unite, to engender, to establish a covenant; and tatana (X. K.), to establish a covenant, take one another according to a sacred rite, as in marriage. Lastly, the root of all these variants is expressed by a 't-t,' the very sound assigned to the kaf-cynocephalus as his especial contribution to the language of clicks. He is the clicking kaf, who preceded the clicking Kaffir, and on the Egyptian monuments he is a type of Taht and An, both of whom represent speech, to speak, and the speaker in person.

This illustrates one of two things; either these words went back from the Egyptian stage to take on the prefixes and include the clicks, or else the Egyptian has shed both clicks and prefixes. No evolutionist can doubt that the clicks denote the earlier stage of language; and the inference is inevitable that the language in which the speaker has risen from the type of the kaf monkey to the status of a god; the ancestral spirit is typified by the mummy figure, and Taht has become the divine advocate and saviour, must have advanced from the Kaffir condition. Other instances of this visible development abound. 'Xoxa' denotes a general and confused conversation, talking together, Kaffir conversation. Xoxa is the name of the frog, which, says W. Davis[30], is onomatopoetic, and refers to the sound of 'xo-xo,' as that which represents the confused noise of many persons speaking all at once. In the click condition of language, onomatopoeia has a real meaning, and in such sounds as 'xo-xo,' or 'ka-ka,' the frog undoubtedly may have named itself. In Egyptian, 'ka-ka' denotes calling and crying as do the frogs. In Basunde, the frog's 'xo-xo' becomes 'huku,' as the name of the frog. In Egypt the frog has attained the status of Mistress Huku (or Heka), the frog-headed goddess, consort of Num, the lord of the inundation and king of frogs. Huku and huka are modified forms of xo-xo or ka-ka. Uka wears down to ka, for the frog's name; and ka means to cry, call, say. The frog was the caller and crier, and the self-given name was adopted as a type-word for saying and conversing, especially of manifold and therefore frog-like conversation.

It may be noticed, in passing, that the Sanskrit name of the frog, bheka, is the Egyptian heka, with a prefix answering to the Egyptian article the. Thus bheka in the one language is the heka from the other. In a Sanskrit story, Bheki, the frog, became a beautiful girl, and one day she was discovered by the king sitting beside the well. He asked her to marry him. She consented; but warned him against his ever letting her see a drop of water. The king promised that she never should. But one day, when thirsty, she asked the king for some, and he, forgetful of the conditions, gave her water to drink; whereupon Bheki disappeared. Egypt will tell [p.616] us who the king was, for a title of Num is 'King of Frogs.' His consort was Heka, or, as the frog, p-heka. The frog was a type of transformation, as the water-born and breather on the land. Num, king of the frogs, has two characters: in one, as Khnef, he is lord of breath in the firmament above. In the other, as Num, he is lord of the waters. Heka was his mistress in the deep, his water domain. Out of the waters Heka changed characters with the beautiful Seti, the sunbeam. In that phase the king found her sitting beside the well. But when Khnef-Ra (the sun) goes down his consort is Heka, the frog, because of the passage of the waters in the north by night, and the beautiful Seti, wearer of the white crown, disappears as the frog in the deep[31]. This will explain how it is that the story of Bheki, the sun-frog which squats on the water, has been found in Africa, among the natives of Natal.

The evidence of faeryology tends to show that the frog was a lunar type. In a Russian story the fairy bride of the Prince Ivan is a frog that transforms into a lovely woman. When the prince finds her frog-skin empty he burns it. His wife on coming back from the ball seeks for it in vain. 'Prince Ivan,' she cries, 'thou hast not waited long enough. Farewell! Seek me beyond twenty-seven lands in the thirtieth kingdom.' The numbers identify the luni-solar myth. Twenty-seven is the proper number of days during which the moon was reckoned visible, and the three days before it rose again completed the luni-solar month of thirty days, and there is a new conjunction of the sun and moon. In another version the burning of the frog-skin is followed by the flight of the Beauty, who has to be sought for 'beyond thrice nine lands in the thrice tenth kingdom, in the home of Koshchei the deathless.'[32]

In another Russian variant of the story the princess whose fairy skin has been destroyed, has to be sought in the seventh kingdom. That is, the one beyond the six periods of five days each, into which the luni-solar month was divided. The seventh would be the first stage of another new moon. A Turkish story describes the beautiful woman who becomes a frog, and says her 'face when she looked that way was like the moon, when she looked this way it was like the sun,'[33] showing the imagery to be luni-solar, or the exact representation of Num's two consorts who are interchangeable as Heka the frog-headed, and Seti, the sunbeam; the one being his wife by day: the other by night.

In the Zulu tale the frog is represented as swallowing the princess to carry her safely home[34], which agrees with the transformation into the frog, or Seti passing into Heka as the consort of Num in the waters. But we must identify a few more of the African 'roots' which were developed in Egypt, and are scattered throughout the world.

[p.617] The nam in the African Kiamba is a goat. In Egypt the goat-headed god is Num. Nome, in Bidsogo, is a serpent, and Num the divinity wears the serpent as one of his types. Num represents the sun of the waters, one of whose types was the crocodile; and in Dsuku, the alligator is nime. The monkey, which is named kefu in Krebo, kebe in Kra, and efie in the Anfue language, is kafi in Egyptian as the cynocephalic type of the god Shu, and the later Hapi a genie of the four quarters.

Nebo, in Ekamtulufu is heaven. In Egyptian, Nupe is the lady of heaven, or heaven depicted in the female form, the typical heaven that supplied the drink of life as nupe, and the breath as neft. The efam is a cow in Akurakura, and in Egyptian afam is the beast, but the original beast is the water-cow or hippopotamus, Khebma, who is a goddess in Egypt and a divine type. The sun in Gafat is named cheber, and in Egyptian, Khepra is the beetle-headed solar god.

Ker (Eg.) is the claw, and ker-ker means to seize, embrace, lay hold, especially to seize with the claw; ker-ker is literally to claw with the claw, or claw-claw. This expresses what the scorpion does; and the scorpion is named kere-kere in Eki and Owaro; kire­kire in Vagba; akar-kere, Dsebu, Ife, Egba, and Ota; akekere, Idsesa; ikekuru, Okuloma; kekire, Hwida and Basa; wakure, Padsade; greaswe, Dewoi; kele-kele, Dsumu; kialea, Kiamba; kulis, Timne and Bulom; yare in the Pulo group, and kal, kel, wur, and el in other dialect forms. The scorpion goddess, who seizes and holds the Apophis serpent, is named Serka, worn down from kerka, and the full form is only found in the ker-ker of the scorpion which seizes with its fore-claws and stings with the hinder one, and was consequently named kere-kere or claw-claw.

Here are five divinities, Num, Shu, Khebm, Khepra, and Serk, identified with their types by name in inner Africa.

The bee is keme in Baga and other African dialects. In Egypt it is made an ideograph of kam and kheb. The boy or son is designated tobo in Udso; diube in Kru, and dew in Adampe. He is named after Tef, Tep, or Typhon, the old first mother before the fatherhood was known. This fact is distinguished in Egyptian where tefu has become the name for an orphan or the fatherless child. When the father is individualized it is as the Atef, and this name is assigned to the double crown of the fatherhood.

Tut, in Egyptian, is the male member; tut is the engenderer, procreator, or father; and tata is a type-name for the father in some thirty or forty other African languages. This tut was a type of the Eternal as the re-erector and establisher of the mummy. Papa (Eg.), to produce, supplies forty languages with the name of the father, as papa or baba[35]. The producer under this name, as before shown, was originally the mother, the breather and quickener of life.

[p.618] Bukeem, in Bola, is the palm-tree, the plural being munkeem; bukiam in Sarar, with the plural munkiam; bekiame in Pepel, with the plural menkiam. Now buk is the Egyptian name for palm­wine; and menkam is some kind or quantity of wine[36]. Am (Eg.) means the tree, to give, or find; and buk-am would denote the tree which yielded the palm-wine, called the toddy-palm. Buk (Eg.) is to fecundate, engender, inspirit, and as such it passed into the name of Bacchus, for the spirit of fermentation and wine.

In the African Gbe language fire is nasuru; and in Egyptian nasru is not only fire and flame, the word becomes the type-name for the fiery Phlegethon of the Hades, where the consuming sun of a land which had a soil of fire and a breath of flame, first suggested a hell of heat in that region of the underworld in which the Black Sun (later Red Sun) first impersonated the great judge of the dead.

Star in Hebrew is kokab; Arabic, kaukab; Egyptian, khabsu. But these are abraded forms of a duplicated kab. Seb is a star; this was the earlier Kheb or Khab. Khab also signifies shade or eclipse, and this is determined by the star. Thus shade and star are both khab; these being the two truths of night—the light-and-shade—which are also illustrated by the feather of Shu (light-and-shade). The star then is kabkab as the light in the dark, and in the African Mahari, kab-kob is the name of the star; this is the duplicated form in full.

In Egyptian ma is a type-name for the beast. The accented â (U, eagle sign) is a worn-down fa, so that the word is really 'mfa' and this recovers an African type-name of the beast or animal. The goat is named mfi in Nalu; mvi in Param and Bamom; mm, Isoama; mpi, Pati; mpie, Abadsa; mbom, Orungu. The cow is mfau in Papiah; mfon, Udomi; mfou, Eafen, Pati, Kum, Bagba, Bamom, Param, Bayon, Mbofon, and Ekamtulufu; mpon, animal was otherwise distinguished, and in many African languages in Nki, Mfut and Konguan. The mbame in Wolof is the hog; the mupun in Tumu, a ram. 'The Beast' was a type-name before the the typical beast is the dog, which is mumvo in Papiah; mvo, Param; mfo, Dsarawa; mvi, Tuma; mfa, Murundo; mfa, Babuma; mpfa, Ntere; mbue, Baseki; mpua, Melon; mpoa, Nhalmoe; mboa, Muntu and Kisama; ombua, Pangela; mboa, Basunde, Nyombe, Kasands, Ngoten, Kabenda, Mimbosa, Bumbete; and mu in Konguan. The typical beast appears under this name as mmaft or maft, the lynx, with the determinative of Sut-Typhon. Also, with the lion as determinative, and in the worn-down form maau or mau, the name is chiefly applied to the lion, leopard, panther, or cat, the ideographs of Shu and Tefnut or Pasht. The dog, and Baba, the beast (the hippopotamus), were to a great extent superseded, these being the images of Sut-Typhon, and of the chaos which preceded the lifting of the [p.619] firmament by Shu, and the migration from the celestial Egypt The older the types, the more do they become inner African. This mf was almost worn out in Egyptian, but survived in the Hebrew ומ, and here it is in full force. Not only with one m, for the goat also in N'goala is momfu; mampi in Pati, and membi in Bagba, where we find the double m expressed by the sound of mim for m, which is still apparent in the hieroglyphic mm or m for with; mm having been the ideographic value. Thus we find that mmau[37], the beast, is an earlier form of ma, and with the f instead of the accented a, this is identical with the N'goala momfu, and Fati mampi. The ideographic mm which preceded the phonetic m is extant in the Welsh mam for the mother, and in the African Darrunga mimi for the woman, Malemba and Embomma mama, for the mother. In Egyptian the mother is mu, and may be expressed by the phonetic m which was the earlier mim. The Hebrew names of letters like mim and nun are ideographic; this the hieroglyphics prove, and these inner African words are likewise in the ideographic stage.*

* Here is another example of the ideographic stage passing into the phonetic. The hieroglyphic sign of the inundation is both a khent and a fent. The Finns call themselves Qvains, and this name modifies into Quains and Finns, because the ideographic kf deposits a phonetic k and f. So the ape is kafi (Eg.), and aan from an original kfn which will answer for kaf, kan, fan, pan, ban, aan, and an, including the types of Sut, Shu, Pan, and the lunar An. This primate is found in kaften (Eg.), for the monkey. The kaftens, kafns, or qvains are those who derive from the female kaf (kaft), the ape-type of the ancient genetrix, known to the Finns as Kivutar, Egyptian Khept, and British Ked.

The working of the principle of repetition is not limited to the reduplication of the same sounds. Kaf, for example, the hand, deposits ka, fa, and a; fâ and â also signifying the hand. This accounts for the interchange of gh and f in English; both of which meet in the one word 'laughter,' where the gh has the f sound. The ideographs take the student into a domain of derivation never yet penetrated, not only by the current school of philologists, but by any writer on language. The sisterhood, so to say, of Egyptian, Akkadian, Maori, Hebrew, and English may no longer be seen in syntax or grammar, or be traceable by means of Grimm's Law, and yet the common African motherhood may be visible in what is here termed the typology.

Manka is the type-name for woman, in Udom, Mbofon, and Ekamtulufu; muka, Wakamba; mokas, Babuma; mokas, Ntere; macha, Gonga; machoa, Woratta; muketu, Kasange; manyi, in Makua, and meya, Nda. In Egyptian menkat, maka, menka, and mena are the equivalent names for the typical nurse, the wet-nurse of the child, the lady of the vases and therefore the vase-maker, the potteress and creatoress of many mythologies. The name of the Irish macha—Akkadian Nin-muk; Sanskrit and Greek maya, and Egyptian mena and ma—simply denotes woman in [p.620] the Kaffir languages of the Gabun. These are what the present writer looks upon as the Egyptian roots in Africa beyond, where we can trace by name the natural origins of the types which became symbolical in the hieroglyphics.

To denote the mother, says Horapollo, the Egyptians delineate a vulture, and they signify the mother by it, because in this race of creatures there is no male. 'Gignuntur autem hunc in modum. Cum amore concipiendi vultur exarserit, vulvam ad Boream aperiens, ab eo velut comprimitur per dies quinque, during which time she partakes neither of food nor drink, being too intent upon procreation'[38]. Which means that the vulture, the hieroglyphic type of maternity, royal or divine, was the symbol of the genetrix as the virgin mother, from whom men reckoned their descent in the early times as the sole progenitor. This representation was imitated in the Egyptian tombs by the small aperture opening towards the north, from whence, according to African ideas, came the breath of life which re-begot the god or soul in the womb of the tomb for the second life. The name of the vulture, in addition to its denoting mu, the mother, is narau. This is extant in the English norie, to nourish or nurse; Maori ngare, for the family and blood relations; Hebrew רענ for the young and to bear; Albanian, nieri; Zend, nairi, and Sanskrit, nari; inor (Peel River, Australia), inar (Wiradurei), and inur (Wellington), for the woman. This is the type-word for the name of woman in various groups of African languages, as nvoru in Adampi; nvire in Grebo; nviro in Gbe; nvero in Dewoi; ngerem, Budumah; unali, Biafada. The Yoruba alo for woman probably shows an abraded form, as in the Kouri dialects, Kaure and Legba, nyoro means the head, and woman was not only the first head, but the narau (Eg.), vulture, is also represented by the sign of the vulture's head. Alo is the woman, and abalo the man; the plural for a Kouri population being nebalo, and neb (Eg.) means all, composed of both sexes.

Here we find the hieroglyphic type, the ideograph of the motherhood, both royal and divine in Egypt, which has gone to the other side of the world, extant by name in Upper Africa as the type-name for woman.

In Wolof and Galla, dug signifies the truth; in Egyptian tekh is the moon-god, the measurer, calculator, and reckoner of truth, and the tekh is the needle of the balance of truth. One of the hieroglyphic m's or em's is the sickle, the sign of cutting. From this may be traced the Welsh amaeth, for the husband-man; English math, a mowing; the Latin emeto, to reap, and Greek ametos, a reaping. This has the earlier form of hamtu, the sickle, in the Galla language, and emata in Meto; omata in Matatan, for the farm. Ma-aut (Eg.) is the stalk, and the word [p.621] contains the meaning of that which is cut with the sickle. Still earlier kamadi (Galla) denotes corn, grain, wheat. Amt (Eg.), the abraded kamadi, is a name for food, and a peculiar kind of bread, called amtmu, or food of the dead. The maziko in the African Swahili is a burial-place. In Egyptian the meska, founded on the tomb, was the eschatological place of rebirth for the mummied dead.

Such 'types,' whether in words, customs, things, or personifications, are the root-matters and objects of the present quest. For example, in a paper recently read on the 'different stages in the development of music in prehistoric times,' the author, Mr Rowbotham, showed that although the varieties of musical instruments might be countless, yet they are all reducible under three distinct types: 1. The drum type; 2. The pipe type; 3. The lyre type[39]. And these three types are representative of three distinct stages of development through which prehistoric music passed. Moreover, the stages occur in the order named; that is to say, the first stage in the development of instrumental music was the drum stage, in which drums and drums alone were used by men; the second stage was the pipe stage, in which pipes as well as drums were used; the third stage was the lyre stage, in which stringed instruments were added to the stock. The three stages answer respectively to rhythm, melody, and harmony. And as in the geological history of the globe the chalk is never found below the oolite nor the oolite below the coal, so in the musical history of mankind the lyre stage is never found to precede the pipe stage, nor the pipe stage to precede the drum stage. Now the drum in Egyptian is teb, and the tupar is a tabor or tambourine. Tur means first; ar, to make, and tupar reads in accordance with facts, the first made; the primary type. The drum then bears the name of the genetrix Tef, Tep, or Typhon, who in her secondary phase carried the tambourine as Hathor. The son of Typhon, Sut, Suti or Sebti (in full) gives the name to the oblique flute, named the sebt and the mmu. This mmu and sek to play upon, yields the name for music, thus identified with playing the flute. Sebti or suti (5+2) has the value of number seven, and the octave really consists of seven notes, the eighth being a repetition of the first. Now the races of Central Africa include all three of these musical types beyond which music has not yet gone. The primitive original of the Egyptian harp to be seen in the Harpers' or Bruce's tomb, is extant as the guitar of Uganda[40]. This process of identifying the African origins with Egypt as their supreme interpreter might be continued until volumes were filled. But we have not yet done with 'words.'

The following list, which does not contain one-half of my own collection, is taken from various African dialects on the authority of Koelle[41], Bleek[42], Norris[43], Tuckey[44], Burton[45], and others.