Ancient Egypt

The ancient Mediterranean was full of religious expression, and Kemetic culture’s concept of a divine family influenced early Christians.

Osiris flanked by Horus on the left and Isis on the right

To most people today, “the Trinity” is a distinctly Christian concept, referring to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But as African American studies scholar Jennifer Williams writes, this wasn’t the first religious trinity. Christianity borrowed the idea from ancient Egyptians, making some significant changes along the way.

Williams notes that early Christians found inspiration for their spiritual system in religions from around the Mediterranean. The region was full of stories involving resurrection, salvation, virgin births, and central figures who were the sons of supreme gods. In ancient Egypt—or Kemet, as it was known to its people at the time—one key concept was the relationship among three deities, Asar, Aset, and Heru. (Most Americans today know them better by the names the Greeks gave them: Osiris, Isis, and Horus, respectively.)

Like many Egyptian gods, these divine beings started out as humans. Asar was a revered king who was murdered by a usurper but became king of the afterlife, or spiritual realm. His wife, Aset, took their son, Heru, into hiding, and Heru eventually returned to reclaim the earthly throne.

Kemetic culture relied on the principle of Ma’at, or order. This included the grouping of deities in families or pairs, such as the Asar-Aset-Heru trinity.  “Enacting change on the tangible and intangible realms usually required more than one deity so that the essence of one deity would not overwhelm the balance of the worlds seen and unseen,” Williams writes.

A part of Ma’at was the complementary male and female principles, both in the universe and in human society. Egyptians passed property and titles down matrilineally. And while men typically occupied the formal positions of political authority, royal women also had a powerful role in decision making.

At the start of the Middle Kingdom, around 2040 BCE, Williams writes, Egypt was largely patriarchal, and celebrations often focused on Asar. But during the New Kingdom, a time of powerful queens that began around 1570 BCE, Aset gained new attention. She became known as the protector of the living and the most powerful healer among the gods. Over time, the worship of Aset spread to Greeks and Romans, particularly among women. Her identity sometimes merged with other goddesses, like Astarte and Hera.  READ MORE

Cats & Ancient Egypt

Along with hieroglyphics, obelisks and geometric patterns, cats feature prominently in ancient Egyptian art, reflecting the animal’s unique status among the people who dwelled along the Nile River. The animals were initially adopted as useful predators in ancient Egypt and gradually became symbols of divinity and protection.

“Though it is hard to say the Egyptians thought one thing or another, since so much change happened across their 3,000+ years of history, the ancient Egyptians, in general, did not worship animals,” says Julia Troche, an Egyptologist, assistant professor of history at Missouri State University, and author of Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. “Rather, [they] saw animals as representations of divine aspects of their gods.”

Whether or not they were worshiped as deities, cats were an integral part of ancient Egyptian life. And, based on mummified cats discovered in tombs alongside humans, they carried an important role in the afterlife, as well.

Cats Provided Companionship and Pest Control
For most of the civilization’s history, ancient Egyptians saw cats as mutually beneficial companions, according to Troche. “Cats might come inside when it was hot, and they in turn would chase away dangerous animals, such as snakes—many of which were venomous—and scorpions,” she explains.

Some of what we know about the function of cats in ancient Egyptian society comes from scenes of everyday life depicted in paintings on the walls of tombs. “In tombs scenes, cats are shown laying or sitting below chairs, chasing birds and playing,” Troche says. “In some mortuary texts, they are shown with a dagger, cutting through Apopis: the snake deity who threatens Ra (the sun) at night in the Underworld.”  READ MORE

Tep Zepi: Egyptian Creation

Ancient Egyptian creation myths are the ancient Egyptian accounts of the creation of the world. The Pyramid Texts, tomb wall decorations and writings, dating back to the Old Kingdom (2780–2250 BC) have given us most of the information regarding early Egyptian creation myths.  These myths also form the earliest religious compilations in the world.  The ancient Egyptians had many creator gods and associated legends. Thus, the world or more specifically Egypt was created in diverse ways according to different parts of the country.  Some versions of the myth indicate spitting, others masturbation, as the act of creation. The union between the first divine couple brought forth another brother-sister pair, Geb and Nut, who in turn created Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys. An extension to this basic framework was the Osiris myth involving god, his consort Isis, and their son Horus. The murder of Osiris by Seth, and the resulting struggle for power, won by Horus, provided a powerful narrative linking the ancient Egyptian ideology of kingship with the creation of the cosmos.

In all of these myths, the world was said to have emerged from an infinite, lifeless sea when the sun rose for the first time, in a distant period known as zp tpj (sometimes transcribed as Zep Tepi), "the first occasion".  Different myths attributed the creation to different gods: the set of eight primordial deities called the Ogdoad, the self-engendered god Atum and his offspring, the contemplative deity Ptah, and the mysterious, transcendent god Amun. While these differing cosmogonies competed to some extent, in other ways they were complementary, as different aspects of the Egyptian understanding of creation.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

According to modern historians, the earliest dynasty of Egypt began with the reigns of the proto-dynastic pharaoh Narmer or perhaps his predecessor King Scorpion who united the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt around 3,100 BCE. The ancient Egyptians, however, saw their origins in the mythic Tep Zepi—the “first time”—believed to be the golden age when the gods lived upon the earth. Was the Tep Zepi a distant memory of their prehistoric ancestry?

Alternative historian Robert Bauval in his book Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt argues that Egypt grew out of a sophisticated African civilization that existed for millennia prior to the civilization of the pharaohs. This theory is not new—it was first proposed by 19th century European explorers as well as the eminent Egyptologist Sir Wallis-Budge in 1911 who wrote that the religion of ancient Egypt was derived from the indigenous peoples of Northeastern and Central Africa.

Budge found numerous similarities between ancient Egyptian and modern African religion and magic: ancestor worship, veneration of animals and cattle, funerary customs, pantheons of gods, use of fetishes, etc. He reasoned that since many of the African tribes he surveyed had probably never had contacts with the Egyptians, cultural influences must have originated with them and spread north up the Nile. Budge’s colleagues dismissed his theory as impossible, instead espousing the theory that invading Caucasoids conquered Egypt and founded the first dynasties.  SOURCE:  TreeofVisions

The three main human races are:  Caucasian (Causasoids), Mongoloids (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Native American), and Negroid.  Minor human races are:  Capoids and Pacific races (Aborigines, Polynesians, Melanesians, and Indonesians).