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The Serer (West Africa) and Ancient Egyptians


Abramelin

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"You're correct that Rmnn is an ancient Egyptian word for Lebanon (one of them, anyway). However, by all appearances, this was not native to the ancient Egyptian language, but an "Egyptianized" import-word from the Levant. The original as spoken in the Levant was the Semitic root LBN. The oldest attestation of this word is on Mesopotamian tablets dating to around 2900 BCE."

An "Egyptianized" import-word from the Levant...

If the Serer "Lamanes" are the same as these RMNN, then it's interesting to note they used the Egyptian word for the LBN.

As a page of the Phoenicia,org site showed, the Serer and related tribes still use Phoenician signs:

http://phoenicia.org/Discovery_Raampa_Pictography_Senegambia.html

.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I take my hat off to you guys for this rather interesting thread. Very interesting indeed. Sorry I missed the party.

Welcome to Unexplained Mysteries, Laman!

Well, with a username like 'Laman', I of course am going to ask you: are you a Laman? Or maybe a West African?

As you can see we got a bit stuck: we either need someone who has access to French papers and books and is willing to translate some of it, or is West African and is willing to tell about his or her traditions that have a connection with this topic.

.

Edited by Abramelin
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I take my hat off to you guys for this rather interesting thread. Very interesting indeed. Sorry I missed the party.

I'll tell you something else.

From what I have learned searching the web, Africans should be proud of their history.

Their history in most Western eyes is 'primitive', and they were nothing but 'slaves'.

But despite the white gringo I am, I have learned a lot.

And I want black Africans to stand up, and tell us about their real past, not the Western version of their past.

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Welcome to Unexplained Mysteries, Laman!

Well, with a username like 'Laman', I of course am going to ask you: are you a Laman? Or maybe a West African?

As you can see we got a bit stuck: we either need someone who has access to French papers and books and is willing to translate some of it, or is West African and is willing to tell about his or her traditions that have a connection with this topic.

.

Ha ha ha! No! I'm not a Laman. The Lamanic classes (and era) as they used to be no longer exists. Their descendants still exist though (e.g. the Joof family - especially the Joof family of Tukar, the Sarr family, etc). I do have access to French papers about the Serers. Yes!

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  • 4 weeks later...

KEMIT - The Egyptian Origins of the Bassa of Liberia

The Bassa`r established themselves in modern-day Togo, the Bassa-ri (Land of the Bassa) in Senegal, Sierra-Leone, and the Bassa la Mpasu (Bassa of the River) in the Congo. The most interesting group is the Bassa of Liberia who were led to the area by....

They came from Khemit (ancient Egypt) and called themselves, again, ADBASSA. The ability of Bassa people to absorb other people has always assured their influence in the political order wherever they have settled. 2,716 years b.d.Um, a man called Shabako forced recognition of himself as pharaoh throughout Khemit. He reigned 14 years and his successors, Shebiko (who reigned 12 years) and Taharko (who reigned 26 years) were named by later historians as the Egyptian Dynasty XXV. After the collapse of this dynasty, it was MBEM SOYE (42nd ancestor) and KUKAME DI KUKAME (52nd ancestor) who directed their people to the Lake Chad and later to the Adamawa Heights where they built three successive empires: Rifum, Kororafa, and Adbassa.

PHARAOHS SHABAKO, SHEBIKO, AND TAHARKO OF KHEMIT Shabako, Shebiko and Taharko came from the south of Khemit, a land known as PUT, in the kingdom of KUSH, and referred to themselves as ADBASSA. At approximately 3,008 b.d. Um, a power was to determine the history of the Nile valley from the First Cataract to beyond Khartum for no less than a thousand years. This power, called the kingdom of Napata and Meroe, is also known as the kingdom of Kush.

The history of Kush is divided in two periods: 1) the Napatan Period lastin until 2178 b.d. Um, 2) the Meroitic Period existing until the fall of the kingdom toward the year 1588 b.d.Um.

This division is based only upon changes in the socioeconomic and political structure of the kingdom, for which we have as yet the following evidence: 1) the transfer of the royal cemetery from Napata to Meroe, 2) the replacement of Egyptian as the only written language by Meroitic, the language of the people who had achieved political dominance in the beginning, and 3) the gradual advance of indigenous cultural traditions and modes of perception which in the past had found practically no expression in official religion and art.

Napata and Meroe are not only periods in Kush history; they were two centers. Napata was built at the foot of Gebel Barkal, known to Egyptians as the "Holy Mountain". The cemetery of the Napatan kings (El Kurri and Nuri, ca. 2858-2658 b.d. Um) were located nearby.

And so on:

http://www.peuplesawa.com/fr/bnlogik.php?bnid=265&bnk=&bnrub=&sites=280

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  • 5 years later...
On 01/09/2012 at 3:59 PM, Abramelin said:

I don't think so if you take into account that Serer "Jaw" means snake or serpent, and the Egyptian "Neheb Kaw" means "unites the Ka" (or Kaw as it should be pronounced...?), and was only represented by a snake..

EG Ka(w) = soul

SE Jaw = serpent

OK, not sure of anything here, but to me it looks like 'Jaw' is short for 'Neheb-Kaw'.

Or the 2 words have no connection at all...

.

In Serer the, the soul is also represented by a snake. The soul transforms itself into a snake in order to reach jaaniiw (abode of the death where good souls go). 

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On 02/09/2012 at 7:56 AM, Abramelin said:

Yes, I did too, and that's why I hope Kmt_sesh shows up.

I use an actual Egyptian word for Lebanon, "RMNN", which should be read as LMNN, for Lebanon, the homeland of the Phoenicians. LMNN >> LAMANAN?

Then there is a very great possibility the Phoenicians traded gold with these Serer (think Hanno) or mined it themselves after travelling up the Senegal River, exchanged their script as I showed you, maybe some even settled there, and became part of the Serer people as the LamaneS, both as rulers and fishermen. So it may not be true, but it sure looks very possible.

But your FANG is a (North-) European word which indeed would relate to something 'snake'.... but you don't know if the Serer FANG even has anything to do with a snake.

The Serer word is FANG QOOL, Sacred Serpent. FANG could mean SACRED. Then what?

.

Fang Qool , fangol /fangool means snake/serpent. The writer you guys were probably quoting was probably trying to indicate that the serpent is sacred. But Fang Qool , fangol,/fangool. Its plural if pangool. 

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On 02/09/2012 at 3:29 PM, Abramelin said:

LA CIVILISATION SEREER : PANGOOL DE HENRI GRAVRAND, DAKAR, NEAS, 1990

http://ethiopiques.r....php?article222

And those 2 articles by Gravrand, the online book of my former post, and the Wiki pages is all there is to find about the Serer.

The French or the Senegalese are not very eager to put much online.

But I am quite sure the double pyramid thing is by his hand.

+++++++

EDIT:

LOL, I think we will actually have to go to a library to find out more !!

.

That representation of the universe is not Gravrand's own work. That is exactly how the Serer represent the universe. That diagram was given to him by some Serer elders he interviewed when when he was researching his book including the late Armand Diouf from Ndimaag - which is a Serer village in Senegal.

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  • 3 years later...
On 9/11/2012 at 12:29 PM, Abramelin said:

After watching the 4 videos ("African Historical Ruins - you never see on tv...") I think the Africans deserve a lot more attention from archeologists and historians than they get at present. Nowadays everybody is being amazed about the latest discoveries of Aztec or Mayan temples.

The only African country that gets all the attention is Ancient Egypt, but those who are willing to watch the videos will know the other African countries deserve as much attention as Ancient Egypt gets.

Here an image of an African city as old as any Aztec one:

Tanzania_complex_1400AD.gif

And how about this: a graphiti of a boat, as ancient (or very probably a lot more ancient) than the Egyptian boats:

(why the hell does the pic not show up?? If it doesn't show up, use this link: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y225/Abramelinn/Miscellaneous/Mali_boat.gif )

Mali_boat.gif

Why did they need these large boats?

Did they sail the Atlantic or the Med, long before anyone else did?

.

Perhaps representing boats that could have existed on the paleolake Mega-Chad? Modern speculation maps of filled in depressions:

txoyyxkvvvvz.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&au

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I posted this map before:

sahara-map-fish-101228-02.gif

 

Edited by Abramelin
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4 hours ago, Abramelin said:

I posted this map before:

sahara-map-fish-101228-02.gif

 

Yep plenty of opportunities for recreational boating.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 11/16/2021 at 12:24 AM, Hanslune said:

Yep plenty of opportunities for recreational boating.

Recreational boating? You were thinking of cruise ships??

Well, the second oldest boat/canoe is from Nigeria:

ECRWqTZXoAAWY7E.jpg?fit=640,480&ssl=1

 

The Dufuna canoe is a canoe discovered in 1987 by a Fulani cattle herdsman a few kilometers from the village of Dufuna in the Fune Local Government Area, not far from the Komadugu Gana River, in Yobe State, Nigeria. Radiocarbon dating of a sample of charcoal found near the site dates the canoe at 8,500 to 8,000 years old, linking the site to Lake Chad. The canoe is 8 metres (26 ft) long.

(....)

Professor Breunig said that the skill of construction showed a long development and that the canoe was not a new design. In another study by an American science team in 2015, they found that Lake Chad had shrunk by 95% in forty years and therefore it could be assumed that area of the village of Dufuna would have been part of the lake's flood plain in the distant past.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dufuna_canoe

https://keyamsha.com/2019/09/07/the-8000-year-old-dugout-canoe-from-dufuna-ne-nigeria/

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Did anyone offer proof that Serer means "he who traces the temples"?

I have checked my Egyptian dictionaries and don't see anything like that offered (and the phrase would be rather longer in AE.)

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On 12/9/2021 at 12:31 AM, Kenemet said:

Did anyone offer proof that Serer means "he who traces the temples"?

I have checked my Egyptian dictionaries and don't see anything like that offered (and the phrase would be rather longer in AE.)

I have downloaded the dictionary mentioned on the wiki page about the Serer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serer_people

[13] Pierret, Paul, Dictionnaire d'archéologie égyptienne, Imprimerie nationale 1875

You can download it here:

https://archive.org/details/dictionnairedarc00pier

I couldn't find the expression in French.

My guess: something went wrong while translating from French into English. When I translate "he who traces the temple" back into French, I get "celui qui trace le temple".

I cannot find that combination of words in Pierret's dictionary.

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14 hours ago, Abramelin said:

I have downloaded the dictionary mentioned on the wiki page about the Serer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serer_people

[13] Pierret, Paul, Dictionnaire d'archéologie égyptienne, Imprimerie nationale 1875

You can download it here:

https://archive.org/details/dictionnairedarc00pier

I couldn't find the expression in French.

My guess: something went wrong while translating from French into English. When I translate "he who traces the temple" back into French, I get "celui qui trace le temple".

I cannot find that combination of words in Pierret's dictionary.

Cheik Anta Diop's book Precolonial Black Africa (translated from the original in French) can be downloaded from here:

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ia803109.us.archive.org/28/items/PrecolonialBlackAfrica/%20Precolonial%20Black%20Africa_text.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjnx7vwgNz0AhXd7rsIHVdNB58QFnoECAgQAg&usg=AOvVaw30C1LBNdRIBCWJWGYyWxx9

On page 236 of the pdf is Diop's quote (?) from Pierret's dictionary, the one I cannot find in that dictionary. The rest of the chapter about the origin of the Serer also contains this:

It should then be possible through further digs to find the road followed by the Serer from the Upper Nile. The sacred city of Kaôn, which they founded on arrival in the Sine-Salum, seems to have been a replica of a city of the same name in ancient Egypt. We know that there are even Egyptian hieroglyphic texts called “from Kaon, because they came from that city. The Serer heavenly god, whose voice was the thunder, was called Rôg, which is often complemented by Sen, a national epithet, typically Serer. Rôg suggests Ra. Sar is also a widely used Serer name: it designated the nobility of ancient Egypt. A linguistic variant of the same word, San, designated the nobility of the Sudan, whence San-Koré, which was the neighborhood of the nobles in the city of Timbuktu, where the famous university-mosque of Sankoré was built. We know that some Pharaohs of the Third Dynasty had the name of Sar, whereas Per-ib-Sen and Osorta-Sen (Senwart = Sesostris) were Pharaohs respectively of the First and Sixteenth Dynasties. The Egyptians did not have family names in the present- day sense: all the added names they assumed could thus be translated, such as Sen[14] meaning brother. But we know that modern names also derive from similar expressions which have been more or less disguised: thus, the French Dupont (du-pont) is the man from the bridge, Duval (du-val) the one from the valley. "

 

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3 hours ago, Abramelin said:

We know that there are even Egyptian hieroglyphic texts called “from Kaon, 

I couldn't find any online...

:huh:

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3 hours ago, Abramelin said:

I couldn't find any online...

:huh:

Perhaps because there are no such texts. Diop, and to be kind, made what could be termed, adjustments to reality, in his unique interpretation of ancient Egypt and Greece.

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4 minutes ago, Wepwawet said:

Perhaps because there are no such texts. Diop, and to be kind, made what could be termed, adjustments to reality, in his unique interpretation of ancient Egypt and Greece.

Yeah, I am slowly but surely realizing Diop must have been somewhat creative...

He'd probably never have expected his sources would be online for anyone to read.

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15 hours ago, Abramelin said:

The sacred city of Kaôn, which they founded on arrival in the Sine-Salum, seems to have been a replica of a city of the same name in ancient Egypt.

As said before, no mention of any ancient Egyptian city with the name "Kaôn". At least not online.

It appears to be a Greek word, and it means 'burning' :

Ka-n-Firefox.jpg

 

And it appears to be a name in Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, Kaôn/Kaônos :

http://www.papirologia.unipr.it/ricerca/CPPHTMLprova.htm

https://relicta.org/cpp/detail.php?CPP=0195

 

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I found a website in French discussing Diop's book, and he's quoted:

"Noter que le terme « Sérère » désigne ceux qui sont chargés de délimiter les temples."

"Note that the term "Serer" refers to those who are responsible for the demarcation of the temples."

https://www.abibitumi.com/community/?wpfs=Histoire-de-la-Nubie

And again, I couldn't find it in Pierret's dictionary...

 

But now about that city, Kaôn.

Here a couple of links to sites about Ancient Egyptian cities, villages, castles and fortifications:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Egyptian_towns_and_cities

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_castles,_forts,_fortifications_and_city_walls

The only city name that comes closest to "Kaôn" is "Iken", and it is situated on the Upper Nile.

 

"According to Francis Geus, who has worked at Mirgissa, this excavation was the most colossal enterprise undertaken by Jean Vercoutter. It runs over more than 2.5 km along the Nile in an essentially rocky environment. To his surprise, the archaeologist discovered in a small sanctuary dedicated to Hathor, ‘mistress of Iu-ka-na’, that is the famous port of Iken in the Egyptian texts, is no other than the fortress of Mirgissa."

 

Iken > Iukana > Kaôn?

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2015/09/18/the-fortress-of-mirgissa/

 

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Abramelin said:

I found a website in French discussing Diop's book, and he's quoted:

"Noter que le terme « Sérère » désigne ceux qui sont chargés de délimiter les temples."

"Note that the term "Serer" refers to those who are responsible for the demarcation of the temples."

https://www.abibitumi.com/community/?wpfs=Histoire-de-la-Nubie

And again, I couldn't find it in Pierret's dictionary...

 

 

 

 

Diop has this wrong, as usual. The person responsible for the demarcation of the temple was the king, who would probably have actually carried out what was known as the "Stretching the cord" ritual at major temples constructed at his command. He was magically assisted by the goddess Seshat. This name is also rendered into French as Seshat, so it's not a case of Seshat as "Sérère". If the "Stretching of the cord", say at some minor temple, was not physically conducted by the king, it is still the king who would be credited with conducting the ritual along with Seshat.

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59 minutes ago, Wepwawet said:

Diop has this wrong, as usual. The person responsible for the demarcation of the temple was the king, who would probably have actually carried out what was known as the "Stretching the cord" ritual at major temples constructed at his command. He was magically assisted by the goddess Seshat. This name is also rendered into French as Seshat, so it's not a case of Seshat as "Sérère". If the "Stretching of the cord", say at some minor temple, was not physically conducted by the king, it is still the king who would be credited with conducting the ritual along with Seshat.

But there must have been architects or whoever to draw the actual ground plan (?) on paper/papyrus?

Like this:

 

 

593px-Temple_Layout.jpg

Edited by Abramelin
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