134 Abibisika (Black Gold) Points

Rank: Unranked Obibini

Greetings,
I am posting this text as a kind of listing of Négro-Egyptien words resembling Kemetic jmn ‘Amun’. I have not used the comparative method here, but the point it can be used as materials for reconstruction. Your comments would be much appreciated. I believe that the reconstruction of theonyms is important for the spiritual liberation of Black people.

R. Palmer (1936) suggested the connection between the name of Amun and a number of African parallels. According to him, the Mune, both a talisman held by the rulers of the Kanem Bornu Empire and the ancestor of several Kanembu ‘tribes and people’ is to be compared to Amun (m-n/m-n). Palmer (1936:185) also compares the Kemetic god to the Beli and Zaghawa words Mâni for a ram “which was kept in a cave with other sacred objects” (m-n / m-n). This author also compared Amun to Amane, a deity once worshipped by the Hausa people of Kano, also pointing out the existence of a ‘stone ram’ in Kano ‘comparable with those in the Kemetic temples at Luxor and elsewhere’ (m-n/m-n). Of significant interest is the fact that the Mune talisman was a pre-Islamic symbol that could not be opened. This obviously points to Amun, whose name’s meaning in Kemetic was ‘the hidden one’. It is believed that its opening by Dunama Dabbalemi, a 13th century Muslim ruler of Kanem-Bornu led the kingdom into a civil strife. Lange (1993:266-267) suggested that the Mune was a statue of the god Amun obtained from the kingdom of Meroe. Still according to Palmer (1926:105), the word for the ram-god among the Tebu (Teda-Daza) was wona (m-n/w-n). According to Meek, one the two Jukun high gods, Ama, must also be compared with Kemetic Amun and so should be Amad’ongha (Amadioha), which he wrote means ‘Ama of the firmament’ in Igbo (m-n/m-Ø). Both gods were associated with rams and Amadioha was specifically associated with thunder, similarly to Shango, the Yoruba thunder deity which has also been compared to Amun (Meyerowitz 1946). Another deity compared with Amun is the Great Lakes supreme deity Imana (Obenga 1993). This deity has not been mentioned by Lam as evidence for a migration of Kemetians into inner Africa. However, in the Kirundi language, Imaana is embodied by the ram and the white cock which are Sango and Amadioha’s favorite sacrificial offerings. Among the Akan, the name of the masculine aspect of God, Nyankopon, answers to the word Amen (m-n/m-n). Like Amun, it is associated with both the ram, the sun and kingship (Meyerowitz 1951). Among several speakers of Voltaique languages, the supreme deity has a name similar to that of Amun and is also linked to the ram. Obenga (2005) has compared Kemetic imn ‘Amun’ with Dagara myin, which means both ‘God’ and ‘sun’. Among the Dagomba people of Northern Ghana, God, which is named wune or wuni is thought to live in the sun (m-n/w-n). There, he is thought to own a ram, that generates thunder (Cardinall 1931). The word wune/wuni is of course related to Dagara myin (m-n / w-n). The situation in the related More language is even more interesting. In this language spoken by the Mossi people of Burkina-Faso, the words for ‘sun’ and ‘god’ are different, respectively winniga/wintoro and wende. As pointed out by Zwernemann (1961:245), that the word wende is used for both the male sky-god (nāba wẽnd daoƔo) and the female earth god (nāba wẽnd poko) shows that wende means ‘god’ rather than ‘sun’. This root for ‘sun’ is widespread in Nigero-Kordofanien (Westermann 1927:226-227), but not with a distribution similar to the word for ‘god’. This suggests that the word for ‘god’ is probably a more recent loanword. From this case, it seems that the roots merged into one in many Voltaique languages such as Dagara because of their phonetic similarity. A comparison made by Ki-Zerbo (1978) between rituals of kingship associated with wende and the Moro Naba, the king of the Mossi, makes clear that this borrowing was done from the Kemetic language.
“Le Mogho-Naba, roi des Mossi, après son élection et au lever du soleil, fait le tour de la case où il a été élu, exactement comme le pharaon élu fait le tour du ‘mur blanc’ (son palais) symbolisant ainsi la prise de possession du royaume. Le Mogho, comme le pharaon, est assimilé au soleil. Sa mort signifie aussi le renversement de l’ordre cosmique et ses sujets comme en Egypte se prosternent devant lui en ‘flairant le sol’. Enfin, de même qu’au bout de trente ans de règne, le pharaon célébrait la ‘fête du jubilé’ (heb sed) pour rajeunir ses forces , rappelant ainsi sans doute la mise à mort rituelle du chef, pratiquée d’après Strabon à Méroé, où de même au bout de trente ans de règne, le Mogho-Naba accomplissait les rites du bik togho où, d’après la tradition, un substitut de l’empereur était sacrifié.”
“The Mogho-Naba, king of the Mossi, after his election and at sunrise, goes around the hut where he was elected, just like the chosen pharaoh goes around the ‘white wall’ (his palace) thus symbolizing taking possession of the kingdom. The Mogho, like the pharaoh, is assimilated to the sun. His death also signifies the overthrow of the cosmic order and his subjects as in Egypt bow down before him “smelling the ground”. Moreover, at the end of thirty years of reign, the pharaoh celebrated the ‘jubilee feast’ (heb sed) to rejuvenate his forces, thus probably recalling the ritual killing of the chief, practiced according to Strabo in Meroe, where likewise after thirty years of reign, the Mogho-Naba performed the rites of bik togho where, according to tradition, a substitute for the emperor was sacrificed.
This is also suggested by the Dogon god Amma, already compared to Amun by Diop, Lam and Obenga (m-n / m(m)-). As pointed out by Lam (1994, 1997), the description of Amma as a ram with a sun disk and its association with specific features of Kemetic cosmogony shows that this influence most likely came from Kemet. Interestingly, recent documentation of Dogon dialects by Roger Blench has shown that the word for ‘god’ is more diverse than the forms Amma/Ama popularized by early European ethnologists. One of these forms is of particular interest is Amana, found in several Dogon languages (Blench 2012a,b,c), which is even closer to the Kemetic form than Amma/Ama is.