The meaning of Egypt's word for God (NTR)

[rakovsky]

Your blog is neat and I like that you have given this topic of NTR thought.

I tried sending you my notes by PM on NTR's etymology. Did it go through?

[back to earth]

58 minutes ago, rakovsky said:

I agree more with your last quote than this one - I think it's pre-vedic.Probably very old concept and a cross cultural one.

Yes, pre-Vedic definitely, that is what I was outlining.  Cross cultural in that both sides had them, during the war , and before that they were a common cross cultural symbol ... but still, related to political/religious alliances  ( often the same concept back then ) .  Their flag would not be flown at the local post office, local council chambers,  (or equivalent ) , like in my town, but on the temple  ( in my town on the church ... and the local council chambers, ect  ... all in one building . 

Anyways, I thought the argument for axe I linked to was interesting - though I am certainly no linguist .  I would like to see a similar one for flag . 

But yeah, why not both ? I agree with  the multiple  level meaning idea and adopting similar looking motifs to that end .  

[back to earth]

1 hour ago, rakovsky said:

Egyptian mythology feels so much simpler than Hindu ones.

[rakovsky]

8 hours ago, back to earth said:

Yes, pre-Vedic definitely, that is what I was outlining.  Cross cultural in that both sides had them, during the war , and before that they were a common cross cultural symbol ... but still, related to political/religious alliances  ( often the same concept back then ) .  Their flag would not be flown at the local post office, local council chambers,  (or equivalent ) , like in my town, but on the temple  ( in my town on the church ... and the local council chambers, ect  ... all in one building . 

Anyways, I thought the argument for axe I linked to was interesting - though I am certainly no linguist .  I would like to see a similar one for flag . 

But yeah, why not both ? I agree with  the multiple  level meaning idea and adopting similar looking motifs to that end .  

Back to earth,

            Flagpoles were placed outside Egyptian temples, and Francoise Dunand noted in this context the large masts outside Neith’s temple in his book Gods and Men in Egypt. In Hinduism, the practice is very old and denotes a god’s presence. In ancient Israel, Asheroh poles and tree groves were considered sacred and could be associated with the goddess Asheroh. The scholar Oliver Myers connected the NTR flagpoles with Asheroh poles.[1] Such poles were at one time put outside Jerusalem’s temple, although the Tanakh also opposes them as pagan. The concept of sacred trees is old in Egyptian religion, as Nut, Neith, and Hathor, the goddesses of the heavens, were closely associated with sycamore trees. The Egyptologist Margaret Murray proposed that NTR was derived from nj-Tr and meant “He of the Poplar Tree”. [But I don't agree with her on that etymology, only on the importance of associating with trees.] It’s interesting to note that in the Chadic Ron language, Njakar refers to a mighty tree.

---

[1] Oliver H. Myers, The Neter Pole and the Ashera, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1950, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0307-5133(195012)36<113%3AT"PAT">2.0.CO%3B2-L

[Essan]

On 20/08/2016 at 10:31 PM, Lord Fedorable said:

Of course Ther is also:

 

nacked: also spelt knackered, meaning "broken" or "exhausted", and derived from the process used to create a gelded horse.

 

Oddly enough, after seeing kmt_sesh's comments, esepcially reference to the Coptic noute, I was thinking "n-eu-T-e-r.

Which has almost the same connotation .....

So maybe to the ancient Egyptians, the gods were simply the impotent/neutered/(k(nackered ones?   Not much good for anything really.  

Hmmm, but now, that description sounds rather similar to the Nibblers ......

Edited August 24, 2016 by Essan

[Essan]

On 21/08/2016 at 10:27 PM, Lord Fedorable said:

And maybe the "T" is actuslly pronounced "ch".

and the "n" was a misheard "m".

Making the gods of Egypt "Munchers".

And Osris came back from the dead.... 

Undead munchers? OMFG the gods of Egypt were zombies! ZOMBIE GODS!

Thats why no one knows who built the pyramids, the Egyptian Gods ATE THEM ALL!!!

 

 

THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING SHEEPLE!

Thats why no one worships the old gods anymore, the Egpytian gods ATE THE OLD GODS.

 

See my post above.

Munchers?   Nibblers? !!!    It is them

(And I had best not get started on how this surely means that when planet Nibiru finally does return, the Nibblers will turn us all into crazed cannibalistic zombies ......  )

[rakovsky]

Drew Griffith writes that Nitron ultimately derived from the Egyptian term for sodium bicarbonate:

• * Egyptian 'ntry'... is... derived from ntr, 'god". The Egyptians called carbonate of soda this as a kenning (the vox propsia being hsmn) because it is divine. Sodium carbonate is divine.... as immortal and immutable - in at least two of its uses : in metalurgy and in embalming. ... This capacity to preserve bodies from decay accounts, according to Plutarch, for the traditional idea that salt is divine... I suggest that the same word [Nitron] had been borrowed much earlier, during the Mycenaen period, when greece was under constant, if distant, Egyptian influence that included the knowledge of mummification-technology. At that time, the word in Egyptian had its old pronunciation. It was borrowed, perhaps through a semitic intermediary, as netkr with the tk representing the single original consonant t just as the kt in daktilos, date represents the single consonant q in the original semitic dql.

 

Nektar and Nitron, Griffith, R Drew. Glotta 72.1 (Jan 1, 1994): 20. http://electronicsandbooks.com/eab1/manual/Magazine/G/Glotta DE/Glotta, 72 1-4 (1994).pdf

He concludes that when the Egyptians later had more contact with the Egyptians, the Egyptian language had developed so that the K was no longer heard and Natron (ntry) came into Greek as Nitron.

[rakovsky]

Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Volume 10 By G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, Heinz-Josef Fabry also talks about how Nitron/Natron comes from Semitic languages and especially from Egyptian and their use with cleansing. This includes the origin of the Hebrew term Nether (meaning Natron):

https://books.google.com/books?id=_eJiX4seBxgC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=etymology+natron+NTR+god&source=bl&ots=KTQ0jXYur9&sig=R1anKA33p8D7EJbQj2tjPUD85FE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwispLTlwtrOAhVDYyYKHQzBDY0Q6AEIRzAH#v=onepage&q=etymology natron NTR god&f=false

 

 

 

[back to earth]

9 hours ago, rakovsky said:

Back to earth,

            Flagpoles were placed outside Egyptian temples, and Francoise Dunand noted in this context the large masts outside Neith’s temple in his book Gods and Men in Egypt. In Hinduism, the practice is very old and denotes a god’s presence. In ancient Israel, Asheroh poles and tree groves were considered sacred and could be associated with the goddess Asheroh. The scholar Oliver Myers connected the NTR flagpoles with Asheroh poles.[1] Such poles were at one time put outside Jerusalem’s temple, although the Tanakh also opposes them as pagan. The concept of sacred trees is old in Egyptian religion, as Nut, Neith, and Hathor, the goddesses of the heavens, were closely associated with sycamore trees. The Egyptologist Margaret Murray proposed that NTR was derived from nj-Tr and meant “He of the Poplar Tree”. [But I don't agree with her on that etymology, only on the importance of associating with trees.] It’s interesting to note that in the Chadic Ron language, Njakar refers to a mighty tree.

 

---

[1] Oliver H. Myers, The Neter Pole and the Ashera, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1950, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0307-5133(195012)36<113%3AT"PAT">2.0.CO%3B2-L

 

Thanks for the ref.

[kmt_sesh]

21 hours ago, rakovsky said:

Your blog is neat and I like that you have given this topic of NTR thought.

I tried sending you my notes by PM on NTR's etymology. Did it go through?

I haven't been using my blog enough for a year or so and have been thinking of new articles. Each one takes quite a bit of work and research, but it's a labor of love.

I did indeed get your PM, and my apologies for not responding yet. I do intend to read it when time permits. I'm too busy lately, but I have to admit I respect the time and effort you've put into your work. We're so accustomed to seeing cranks and fringies around here, and there is such endless grappling with Lego linguistics, that some of us can be skeptical when a new member announces his or her research. So it's quite refreshing to see the hard work in your research. I only wish I had more time to participate.

[rakovsky]

2 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

I haven't been using my blog enough for a year or so and have been thinking of new articles. Each one takes quite a bit of work and research, but it's a labor of love.

I did indeed get your PM, and my apologies for not responding yet. I do intend to read it when time permits. I'm too busy lately, but I have to admit I respect the time and effort you've put into your work. We're so accustomed to seeing cranks and fringies around here, and there is such endless grappling with Lego linguistics, that some of us can be skeptical when a new member announces his or her research. So it's quite refreshing to see the hard work in your research. I only wish I had more time to participate.

Thanks, KMT, I value your comments.

The truth is, as you may have recognized long ago, there is a pecking order in Egyptology and in who gets cited and respected. Woo is at the bottom. Not sure whether it's ET theorists or occultists at the bottom. Then above that comes the Kemetic/Black Athena theorists. Above them comes student researchers and above that come the paid Egyptologists and professors. They give limited Q&A to those lower down the pecking order. And of course above everyone else is actually E.Budge because everyone mentions him even if to disagree with him and say he is long outdated.

My first, earlier theory went as follows: In ancient Chinese, indo-European, Sumerian, and proto-Turkic mythology, the same word meant God and heavens, and in some or all of those languages the word also meant bright and day (theis God words were Tien, Dyeus, Dingir, Tengri, respectively), and by the way, the sky god is male. In Chadic languages there are many cases where the word for God is also the word for sky. So based on this pattern we should expect for Egypt's god would have a word that would also mean heavens and be male. It would have letters TN and maybe R and maybe mean day too.

And when we turn to Egyptian the word for god is indeed with the letters "NTR". But we find something curious: the sky god is a female (Nut), the day god is a male (Ra, the sun- is considered the god of day), and neither are called NTR. NET-RA is the name of the river that Ra rides daily in the underworld. And this is all curious to me because based on that pattern from other language families, I would expect a word like NTR to appear and mean male god of sky and day, but instead I find only Net and Ra. And this raises in my mind the interesting question of whether there is any relation at all between Nut, Ra, and NTR linguistically.

But when I shared this theory with others, most of them rejected it because those other languages are not in the same language family as Egyptian. And so this forced me to go to my second theory that I laid out in the OP: to go to dictionaries across Semitic, Berber, Chadic languages to see what the root words are that could be related to NTR. I think I found the best answer in the idea of Animation and Rising Up and Permanently Self-Enlivening, going along also with Budge's perception.

Still, my first theory is very curious for me and it still raises a question in my mind if there is any relationship between Egyptian and those ancient words for God. After all, Egyptian is totally unique even among Afro-Asiatic languages in picking NTR (or NKR if you like) as its word for God. In those other North African and Semitic languages, the root word for God typically seems to be something like El or Il. (Ethiopian MLK - King/God, Arabic Allah, Babylonian El, Berber Il in lower case: il.) And so Egyptian ended up picking a root word that, it's true, means living, enlivening, shaking, rising up, pure (NTR). But in doing so it was unique from all other Afro-Asiatic languages and really raises a question of why they would do such a different thing. Why make a "god" out of something "living"? Again, I know that we can speak of "the living god", so it's reasonable. But it still leaves for me the interesting question of theory #1.

 

Edited August 25, 2016 by rakovsky

[Jarocal]

On 8/24/2016 at 10:23 PM, kmt_sesh said:

I haven't been using my blog enough for a year or so and have been thinking of new articles. Each one takes quite a bit of work and research, but it's a labor of love.

I did indeed get your PM, and my apologies for not responding yet. I do intend to read it when time permits. I'm too busy lately, but I have to admit I respect the time and effort you've put into your work. We're so accustomed to seeing cranks and fringies around here, and there is such endless grappling with Lego linguistics, that some of us can be skeptical when a new member announces his or her research. So it's quite refreshing to see the hard work in your research. I only wish I had more time to participate.

I concur you have not been utilizing your blog enough. I have been waiting for years to see your detailed analysis of how the Giza pyramids were constructed utilizing hydraulic lifts powered by a cold water co2 geyser. Perchance you could correlate the ancient Egyptians word for Geysers to "ntr" further cementingthe notion that the ancient Egyptians revered this almost mythical source of power.

 Well that or maybe Cladking will try and make the connection and you could just debunk his work as usual...

I would not totally discount the ntr/nature connection as the gods were their intellectual constructs for explanation for the observations made about occurrences in nature. For all the rigid discipline in scientific investigation there are still inferences made (based on observation and evidence) which later prove to be incorrect the same as some god ferrying the sun in his ship across the sky everyday. One may quibble to the degree of inaccuracy but in the end both are wrong.

[rakovsky]

45 minutes ago, Jarocal said:

I would not totally discount the ntr/nature connection as the gods were their intellectual constructs for explanation for the observations made about occurrences in nature.

Jarocal,

The nature connection has a good side in that it matches the phonetics of NTR and conceptually God has a relationship to Nature, both being vast, all-pervasive in a sense.

However I encourage you to read my notes that I linked to. To find the root meaning, in linguistics we do look to root words and the root words found earlier in Afroasiatic languages seem to mean rising up, agitating, maybe even enlivening (in a natural sense that affects even matter), shaking.

A problem with equating NTR and Nature is also that worship was given to NTR. In Hinduism the thinking is that Brahman cannot be worshiped because it is an it, not a person. Bhagwan, the person of Brahman (nature/reality) can be worshiped. This is true whether one accepts pantheistic Hinduism or non-pantheistic Hinduism. Since the Egyptians were worshiping NTR, they would not be worshiping Nature/Reality directly, within that scheme. But then again, "nature worshipers" do exist.

[kmt_sesh]

1 hour ago, Jarocal said:

I concur you have not been utilizing your blog enough. I have been waiting for years to see your detailed analysis of how the Giza pyramids were constructed utilizing hydraulic lifts powered by a cold water co2 geyser. Perchance you could correlate the ancient Egyptians word for Geysers to "ntr" further cementingthe notion that the ancient Egyptians revered this almost mythical source of power.

 Well that or maybe Cladking will try and make the connection and you could just debunk his work as usual...

...

LOL Couldn't I just take the easy route and put a link there to one of cladking's old threads here?

[Jarocal]

49 minutes ago, rakovsky said:

Jarocal,

The nature connection has a good side in that it matches the phonetics of NTR and conceptually God has a relationship to Nature, both being vast, all-pervasive in a sense.

However I encourage you to read my notes that I linked to. To find the root meaning, in linguistics we do look to root words and the root words found earlier in Afroasiatic languages seem to mean rising up, agitating, maybe even enlivening (in a natural sense that affects even matter), shaking.

A problem with equating NTR and Nature is also that worship was given to NTR. In Hinduism the thinking is that Brahman cannot be worshiped because it is an it, not a person. Bhagwan, the person of Brahman (nature/reality) can be worshiped. This is true whether one accepts pantheistic Hinduism or non-pantheistic Hinduism. Since the Egyptians were worshiping NTR, they would not be worshiping Nature/Reality directly, within that scheme. But then again, "nature worshipers" do exist.

I will peruse them as my schedule permits.

I was not postulating a direct equation of ntr/nature as some people have but more a tangential connection that may or may not have been coincidental. It was more of a caution to not dismiss any connection as being debunked.

To be honest I am rather ambivalent about the entire field of linguistics. It is a useful tool for understanding our past and I am in no way denigrating the effort many have exerted toward unraveling its varied threads but it holds no great interest for me personally. Language is something I strive to learn enough of in various tongues to order a beer and insult someone in a profane manner. That takes care of life's necessities with the rest being able to wait on Google translate...

[Jarocal]

3 minutes ago, kmt_sesh said:

LOL Couldn't I just take the easy route and put a link there to one of cladking's old threads here?

Well you could if he would ever manage to put forth his theme in a cohesive, cogent manner. It is not that he is inarticulate, but his themes seem always to be presented in a loose scattershot method. Granted it may be the result of his ideas being tied together so loosely among disparate coincidences spanning millennia of Egyptian history that anything more than the tenuous suggestion of correlation is the best that he can accomplish but for the decade he has spent polishing his idea he should have been able to tighten up the delivery of his idea into a more presentable (though equally disprovable) package.

Back to the ntr nature though, in one of his ludicrous postulations Stephen Mehler makes the direct connection between the two and I found his arguments for such less than convincing though admittedly amusing. Even so I do not discount that they may be some intentional connection.